The game of empires

Front matter

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Contents

Prefatory Note by Theodore Roosevelt Foreword

CHAPTEE

I, Diplomacy's Downfall

Chapter I Chapter I

Among the many traditions associated with the founding of the City of Rome was one to the effect that the god Terminus, who presided over boundaries and whose power and glory were symbolized by a large stone, was the only minor deity who refused to acknowledge the superiority of Jupiter. "A favorable inference was drawn from his obstinacy," says Edward Gibbon, "which was interpreted by the Augurs as a sure presage that the boundaries of the Roman power would never recede." That the confidence of the Romans in the potency of the rebellious Terminus was misplaced it is hardly necessary to state, for Mars, with or without the sanction of Jupiter, has been always mischievously busy in undoing the work of the God of the Boundaries, whose stone appears to be, as the centuries pass, as unstable as that which provides eternal punishment for the crimes of the avaricious Sisyphus.

The modern heirs to "the grandeur that was Rome" have been, like the ancient Latins, betrayed by the fickle deity who alternately makes and unmakes the maps of the world. Repeatedly in the last few centuries have the powers of Europe, through their representatives assembled in solemn conclave, endeavored to place the God of the Boundaries under bonds to keep the peace, but as he was treacherous to those who first paid him homage so has he been unfaithful in more recent times to diplomatists who have endeavored, with more or less honesty of purpose, to use the power of Terminus as a bulwark against the ever-threatening menace of the god Mars. For wherever the God of the Boundaries establishes a stone a new casus belli exists in posse, and toward it envious eyes, quick to note a desirable place in the sunshine, are turned.

Midsummer 1914 found the nations of Europe confronted by the most stupendous and appalling crisis in the history of mankind. The hideous possibilities lurking in the changes of boundaries caused by the recent Balkan wars were only vaguely suspected by the masses of the people, but to rulers, statesmen, diplomats and others closely in touch with what might be called the remorseless logic of instability, the havoc that Mars had just played with the important, but always impermanent, work of Terminus presented itself as fraught with novel and imminent peiils to the peace of the world. The rapidity with which, following a state of comparative calmness in Europe, the war of wars, despite the most frantic efforts of diplomacy, forced a large part of the human race into a condition of active hostilities is the most amazing, if not the most deplorable, feature of a cataclysm the full horrors of which only posterity will be able to appraise.

On July 20, Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, wrote as follows to Sir H. Rumbold, British Councilor of Embassy at Berlin: "I asked the German Ambassador today if he had any news of what was going on in Vienna with regard to Servia. He said that he had not, but Austria was certainly going to take some step, and he regarded the situation as very uncomfortable." Less than three months later the losses in killed, wounded and missing in the war whose approaching shadow had rendered Prince Lichnowsky "very uncomfortable" had been estimated conservatively at a million men. Russia, Germany, France, Austria, England, Servia, Japan, Belgium and Montenegro, with armies numbering in all nearly eighteen million men, were in a state of war, and other nations were mobilizing while endeavoring, more or less hopelessly, to maintain their neutrality.

That Sir Edward Grey had good reason on July 20 to suspect that events of serious moment to Servia were taking place at Vienna is apparent. Gavrilo Prinzip, one of several Servian conspirators disgruntled at the recent, and unusually ephemeral, achievements of the God of the Boundaries, had placed his name on June 28 on the list of the world's most noted assassins. Unknown before that date outside of a small circle of agitators scheming for a "greater Servia," he had sprung at a bound into world-wide prominence and had assured for himself an unenviable immortality as the murderous youth whose crime served as a torch to explode the European powder-mine. The assassination of the successor to the Austrian throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and of his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, at Sarajevo, Bosnia, will be recognized by posterity as a tragedy productive of more slaughter and misery, directly and indirectly, than any single event in recorded history. Why the god Terminus, who betrayed Rome and who has been responsible for nearly all the wars that the human race has fought, is to be held as an accessory to Prinzip's crime is shown by the young assassin's confession. "Although I was born in Bosnia," said Prinzip after his arrest, "the big Servian idea has always existed in me since my earliest childhood. I considered it unjust that a foreign power should be established in Bosnia, where the Serbs, on account of their numbers and their commercial and economic position, should take part in the govemment. It pained me that Austria should oppress us, for she is the old and eternal enemy of Servia. I also knew that the first place among those who were hated by Serbs was occupied by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I knew that he was the sworn enemy of all Servian aspirations, and that he had sworn to destroy Servia and the Servian dynasty. I hope that the fatal revolver shots will open the way to the Servian army to march here to occupy Bosnia, for this land is destined by its inclinations and traditions to belong to Big Servia."

Fatal revolver shots indeed ! Millions on millions of men engaged in the ghastly work of destroying European civilization, tens of millions of helpless, hopeless women and children struggling against poverty and death, fair cities in ruins, whole countries ravaged and made desolate, war on land and sea, under the sea, in the air, rendered, through the achievements of modern science, more devastating than heretofore — these are the dire offspring of young Gavrilo Prinzip's disapproval of the game that Terminus is forever playing with the boundary-stones. There are many today, and in all coming time there will be others, who place Prinzip upon a pedestal as a patriot. But was not the Archduke a patriot ? Is not the German Kaiser a patriot ? Love of country, upon which the God of the Boundaries relies in the pursuance of his mischievous activities, is a seemingly universal human passion to which both the autocrat and the anarchist, in following their respective and antagonistic aims, appeal at times with equal success. In the embattled armies of Europe may be found men of every religious creed, of every color, of every political affiliation, men loyal to autocrats, men devoted to democracy, to anarchy, to socialism, fighting and dying for the only passion that, in the last analysis, makes them all brothers. Unreasoning devotion to a certain country and a certain flag underlies, in well-nigh each individual case, the motive power that has driven both the man with the hoe and the man with the coronet forth to fields where modern weapons mow down victims inspired by the same incentive that made patriots of both the ancient Roman legionary and his barbarous opponent. If civilization, so-called, should eventually perish, blown to pieces by lyddite, upon its monument should be carved a tattered flag and a boundary-stone, not cubical but spherical.

It is true, of course, that when mobilization began in July, 1914, in certain countries of Europe, there were indications, here and there, that terrorism is sometimes necessary to make this passion of patriotism universally effective when the mysterious powers-that-be have declared war. "Rather than fight against my Slav-brethren," exclaimed a reservist of

Slav origin at Salzburg, "I would level my rifle against my commanding officer." He was tried at once by a court martial and condemned to be summarily shot. In Fragile three Bohemian reservists were executed because they refused to fight against Slavs. In Buda-Festh a sectarian of the ISTazarenes was condemned and shot because religious scruples forbade him to go to war. In France and Germany there were, at the outset of the conflict, many Socialists who at first disjDlayed an inclination to place their philosophical antagonism to war above their loyalty to their respective countries. But pressure from their comrades and the police combined presently to break down their efforts to remain consistent, and the interesting fact confronts us that the armies of Europe are today full of Socialists amazed to find themselves fighting not to bring nearer an. economic and social millennium but from the same motive that inspired the Roman legionaries or their savage foes. The God of the Boundaries, backed by a firing-squad, quickly puts an end, at great international crises, to religious, racial or philosophical prejudices that deny the ancient but ever rejuvenated creed that it is a man's bounden duty to offer his life when his country requires the sacrifice.

Upon June 28 Gavrilo Prinzip fired the shot that was to call Battle, Rapine, Famine, Disease and Death to the colors. Three weeks later Prince Lichnowsky regarded the situation as "very uncomfortable." There is something grimly humorous in the diplomatic restraint of the German Ambassador's choice of words. Nowhere in the historical archives of the race can be found documents even remotely approaching in human interest the published letters and telegrams that were exchanged by the European ambassadors and their subordinates during the pitifully few weeks that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the invasion of Servia by the forces of Austria-Hungary. These diplomatic interchanges have been given to the world under the title of the White, the Orange and the Gray Papers. Posterity will bind them in Red.

Diplomacy, long devoted to the praiseworthy effort of preventing the vagaries of the God of the Boundaries from precipitating a world-wide war, realized at the outset that it was confronted suddenly, almost unexpectedly, by a problem more difficult of solution, and more iconoclastic if not solved, than any international complication that had hitherto startled and tested the well-nigh limitless resourcefulness of the European chancelleries. For the crisis that had arisen, involving the issue of war or peace in a large portion of the civilized world, had to be, under existing conditions, controlled, if controlled it could be, by Emperors, Kings, Ambassadors, Ministers, Chancellors, Prime Ministers, Secretaries for Foreign Affairs and their assistants. If representative bodies, Reichstag, Parliament, Duma, Chamber of Deputies, were to have a part in the endeavor to save the world from an impending cataclysm, of unprecedented possibilities for destructiveness, it was evident that their role would be not unlike that of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. As for the people at large, it was for them, if a war, universal or restricted, should become unavoidable, to provide the men, the money and the mourners.

Close study of the diplomatic interchanges in Europe from the latter part of July to the first few days in August force an unprejudiced student to several unavoidable general conclusions. "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Neither this generation nor posterity will be able to convict any individual, or group of individuals, of full responsibility for the overthrow of the pillars that upheld, less securely than had been supposed, the temple of European civilization. The heir-apparent to the Austrian throne had been assassinated by Servian conspirators. The reigning house of Austria naturally demanded redress. Servia, humbly enough, agreed to conform to the demands of Austria in so far as they did not deprive her of a future national existence ; accepting, with two seemingly justifiable exceptions, all the terms of Austria's ultimatum and suggesting that the demands to which she could not accede be submitted to arbitration. Russia's interests, and, of course, her sympathies, were on the side of Servia. The house of cards, erected by European diplomacy after the second Balkan war had played ducks and drakes with the boundary-stones, was tumbling down, and bade fair to bury the peace of the world under its flimsy ruins.

Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, endeavored vainly to save the situation. His proposal that a conference of the four great powers not immediately concerned in the questions at issue between Austria and Servia — namely, France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain — be held at once was based upon common sense and momentarily seemed to promise a method of escape from the impending world-tragedy. As we look back upon it now, Sir Edward's appeal to reason, his invocation to a modem deity, the God of Arbitration, takes upon itself the nature of a challenge to so-called Civilization to vindicate itself, to prove at the most awful crisis in the history of the race that mankind has grown sufficiently enlightened, sufficiently elevated above the ancestral cave-man, to defend and conserve the higher human attributes that have seemingly been the acquisitions we have fondly attributed to a process called, perhaps too hastily, human progress. For if ever, in the troublous struggle of the race to what have appeared to be higher planes of being, a crisis that pointed both upward and downward had been reached it confronted mankind in the last weeks of July, 1914. The upward pathway led to peace or, at the least, to a localization of the war between Austria and Servia. Downward the crisis pointed to a conflict so widespread, so potent in destructiveness, so full of unknown and unprecedented agencies of disaster, that even the modern successor of the ancient god Mars, today called Militarism, shuddered at the outlook.

Sir Edward Grey's effort to save Europe from becoming a himian slaughter-house proved futile. France and Italy cordially agreed to support him in his effort to use arbitration as a poultice to heal the blows of racial, national and dynastic hatreds, but Germany, employing the language of diplomacy to conceal her thoughts, placed an insurmountable barrier in the path of the only remaining project that gave to diplomacy the slightest chance to fulfill its highest mission, namely, to keep Mars quiet while Terminus plays with the boundary-stones. London, Paris and Rome approved of a conference that might prevent the fire that Prinzip's "fatal shots" had started from becoming a general conflagration. Berlin split diplomatic hairs and refused to conform to Sir Edward Grey's proposal upon the basis that the form of procedure he suggested was not adapted to the exigencies of the case at issue, and that Austria should not be haled before the tribunal of Europe in a manner that placed her upon the same level as a Balkan state. Whatever might happen to modern civilization, a reigning Hohenzollern felt obliged to defend the imperial dignity of a reigning Hapsburg.

At this, the greatest crisis that the race has yet confronted, it is interesting to observe that no communications passed between the legislative bodies representing the various peoples whose lives and possessions were hanging upon the issues under discussion by rulers and diplomatists. Parliamentary action, conforming to precedent, consisted, both on the Continent and in Great Britain, in eventually ratifying, officially, drastic measures that the impotence of diplomacy had made inevitable, and in voting war supplies to monarchs, closely related by blood, whose divine right to speak the final word that plunged millions of men into war had been again made manifest to the eyes of a self-deceived generation. Historians have dwelt entertainingly, and more or less convincingly, upon the amazing progress made in Europe during the last century by Democracy. They have, in many cases, pointed to the seemingly incontrovertible evidence that democratic tendencies are antagonistic fundamentally to militarism. But Democracy as a force, side by side with Diplomacy as a fine art, failed woefully to avert what, it is to be fondly hoped, is to be known for many generations as the war of wars. What power, then, defiant of Diplomacy and disregardfnl of Democracy, was siifiiciently great to plunge civilization into what is practically a universal war ? Can it be possible that Autocracy, Hereditary Monarchy, is so potent in the twentieth century that it could give the fillip, at the most crucial moment in the career of mankind, that should determine the all-embracing issue of war or peace ?

In connection with this astounding query, for such it is when thus baldly put, various telegrams that were exchanged by certain royal personages on the last days of July, 1914, have taken their place as unrivaled in grim significance among all the messages that have clicked across international wires since the ingenuity of Morse made telegraphy practicable. If their phraseology has caused laughter in a world not at present given to merriment, that fact does not detract from the overwhelming effect of the proof they furnish that the attitude of Louis XIV toward the state is assumed by certain reigning monarchs today, an attitude placing them, at a great world crisis, in a position in which they can use diplomatists, deputies and democrats to further their own personal ends. The King is not dead! Long live the King!

On July 30, Prince Henry of Prussia telegraphed to the King of England in part as follows: "Have informed William (the German Kaiser) of what you kindly told me at Buckingham Palace last Sunday, who gratefully received your message. William, much preoccupied, is trying his utmost to fulfill jSTicky's appeal to him to work for maintenance of peace and is in constant telegraphic communication with Nicky, who today confirms the news that military measures have been ordered by him equal to mobilization, measures which have been taken already five days ago. We are furthermore informed that France is making military preparations whereas we have taken no measures, but may be forced to do so any moment, should our neighbors continue, which then would mean a European war. If you really and earnestly wish to prevent this terrible disaster, may I suggest you using your influence on France and also Russia to keep neutral, which seems to me would be most useful. . . . Believe me that William is most sincere in his endeavors to maintain peace, but that the military preparations of his two neighbors may at last force him to follow their example for the sake of his own country, which otherwise would remain defenseless."

In answer to this His Majesty of England at once sent the following dispatch : ''Thanks for your telegram. So pleased with William's efforts to concert with Nicky to maintain peace. Indeed, I am earnestly desirous that such an irreparable disaster as a European War should be averted. My Government is doing its utmost, suggesting to Russia and France to suspend further military preparations if Austria will be satisfied with occupation of Belgrade and neighboring Servian territory as a hostage for satisfactory settlement of her demands, other countries meanwhile suspending their war preparations. Trust William will use his great influence to induce Austria to accept this proposal, thus proving that Germany and England are working together to prevent what would be an international catastrophe. Pra}^ assure William I am doing and shall continue to do all that lies in my power to preserve the peace of Europe."

On July 31st, the German Kaiser, signing himself "Willy," telegraphed this message to his cousin "Georgie," King of England: "Many thanks for your kind telegram. Your proposals coincide with my ideas and with the statements I got this night from Vienna, which I have had forwarded to London. I just received news from Chancellor that official notification has just reached him that this night Nicky has ordered the mobilization of his whole army and fleet. He has not even awaited the results of the mediation I am working at and left me without any news. I am off for Berlin to take measures for insuring safety of my eastern frontiers, where strong Russian troops are already posted."

Behold the amazing interplay of antagonistic forces : Democracy, an increasing power in Europe, as in the world at large, is not well disposed toward war; Diplomacy deprecates it, but Despotism decrees it. England's king, who is not an autocrat, is having trouble with his subjects; seems, in fact, to be threatened with a civil uprising. His neutrality appears to be assured as a matter of prudence, if not of necessity, if Cousin Willie assists his ally, Francis Joseph, to punish ISTicky for backing Servia against Austria. It will be necessary, of course, for Willie to overwhelm France quickly that he may have at his disposal sufficient forces to confront IsTicky's troops in the East when their slow mobilization has made them more or less formidable.

Meanwhile it is best, perhaps, not to trust too thoroughly to Cousin George's inability or disinclination to fulfill his obligations as a member of the Triple Entente and a pledged defender of Belgian neutrality. In fact. King George seems to have a most reprehensible way of obeying very lofty and altruistic motives. To put France in her place, and get his armies back in time to teach Nicky the lesson he needs, it is necessary for Willie to make use of Belgium, gently but firmly, as if her territory had already become a part of the German Empire. The

Kaiser's Chancellor knows how to state the matter with forceful bluntness, does he not? "Gentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity," says von Bethmann-Hollweg to the Reichstag on August 4th, "and necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps they are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary to the dictates of International Law. . . . The wrong — I speak openly — that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Anybody who is threatened as we are threatened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, can have only one thought — ^how to hack his way through."

But when a nation, with the laudable intention of finding its divinely appointed place in the sunshine, from whence it may disseminate culture and spirituality for the benefit of a world that is, like Belgium, too thickly populated with barbarians, sets out to "hack its way through" it is essential for success that there should be no misapprehension at the outset regarding all the factors that will affect the ultimate outcome of the venture. It may be true, as the Chancellor asserted, that necessity knows no law, but necessity, before it rushes into action, should always know the facts. It is now apparent that Germany's warlike precipitancy was based upon several suppositions that proved to be ill-founded. That Belgium was either too weak or too frightened to fight, that England was too disturbed regarding Ireland and India to fulfill her treaty obligations to Belgium, that Russia would be slow in mobilizing, and that Italy would construe liberally her duty to the Triple Alliance were convictions held by the Kaiser and his advisers that illustrate how easy it is for men to believe what they passionately wish to believe. Belgium resisted, England rushed to war, supported by the Irish and the Hindus, Russia mobilized with great rapidity and Italy, technically correct in her attitude, announced her neutrality.

It must not be inferred from the above, however, that England's procedure was left by Germany wholly to chance. The latter made to Great Britain, just before actual hostilities had begun, what Prime Minister Asquith has labeled ''infamous proposals." The neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by the European powers, including Prussia, in 1839. Sir Edward Grey, now that war seemed to be inevitable, had asked Germany and France, frankly and pertinently, what attitude they intended to take toward their solemn obligations under an ancient but still valid treaty. The answer of France was emphatically to the effect that she recognized her duty toward Belgium and would abide by it. Germany dodged the moral issue involved in Sir Edward Grey's query. If England would stand aside, Germany promised to compensate Belgium eventually for allowing her to get through to France without excessive "hacking," and agreed to reestablish Belgium's independence at the end of the war. Assurances were also given to England that German designs against France were not inordinately grasping and that French colonies seemed to offer more tempting opportunities for Germans to find desirable places in the sunshine than France itself. There are those who assert, in connection with German diplomatic activities at this time, that she offered to Italy a bribe consisting of Nice and Savoy in return for active support in the approaching conflict for the spread of German culture. If "infamous proposals" were made to England, is it unreasonable to believe that such were also made to Italy ?

On August 3rd, Sir Edward Grey delivered a parliamentary speech, destined to become historic, in which he declared that on moral, political and diplomatic grounds it was Great Britain's duty, in defense of the sacredness of international treaties and the rights of neutral states, to enter upon a justifiable war. On July 28 Austria had declared war against Servia. On August 1st Germany had declared war against Russia. Diplomacy's house of cards had been overthrown and the survival in the world of hereditary autocracy had become responsible, in the last analysis, for the precipitation of an international conflict of greater magnitude than mankind had hitherto experienced. It was asserted above that no one man, nor group of men, can be held wholly responsible for the world tragedy that so quickly followed the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. If it be true, as many partisans are inclined to maintain, that the German Kaiser had it in his power to prevent this universal war, in which he and his allies are fighting against tremendous odds, the indictment lies not against an individual but against a system, not against an autocrat, a product of heredity and environment, but against a people, a nation, that has permitted in the twentieth century the continued existence of a fundamentally despotic form of government that, despite its apparent recognition of representative forms, was able, at a crisis affecting the very bases of civilization, to give dominance to that reactionary force known by the general term Militarism. "If it C9sts me my throne, I will bury the world under its ruins," said K'apoleon to Mettemich, in a moment of passion, but in a calmer mood he remarked : "I have always been of the opinion that the sovereignty lay in the people." The influence of modem scientific modes of thought applied to the study of history leads us today to the conviction that for what is called the Napoleonic era the French nation was responsible. With his people supporting him, an autocrat can have his way. Without them, he goes into exile. He who today condemns only the Kaiser for the war of wars is too severe upon an individual and too lenient to a nation whose recent prophets have been Nietzsche, Treitschke and Bernhardi.

CHAPTEE II

THE FASHIONS OF MABS

CHAPTEE II

THE FASHIONS OF MAES

Historical parallels are sometimes extremely enlightening, despite the fact that the temptation to carry them too far in detail always besets a student of the past, and frequently leads to erroneous conclusions regarding contemporaneous events. If, however, one fully comprehends the errors that may creep into the comparative method of treating historical periods, it is possible to avoid them; to so safeguard our investigations into the records of previous generations as to make them of value in our endeavor to throw light upon the permanently significant events of our own time. The somewhat depressing truth that human nature has changed little, if at all, during the ages in which mankind has been engaged in making its self-revelation serves as a stable foundation-stone upon which to base a judgment of passing occurrences and even to rest a prophecy regarding the immediate future.

Before going into details, therefore, respecting the tragic occurrences that followed the downfall of

Diplomacy in July, 1914, it may be worth while to glance at the situation in Europe just a century ago, a situation that, taken broadly, emphasizes the grain of truth in the assertion that history repeats itself, and convinces us that until man becomes by evolution superman there can be but little that is really new under the stars. For the year 1814 found an aggressive autocrat, addicted to the habit of "hacking his way through," at war with a coalition of European powers determined to check his ambitions. N^apoleon — the incarnation of last-century militarism — had won, to the eyes of the Allies of that day, too large a place for his people in the sunshine.

The reductio ad dbsurdum of Hereditary Autocracy had been exhibited, to a world seething with new ideas, by Louis XVI. The reductio ad absurdum of Government by the People had been displayed to the disgusted eyes of a Corsican lieutenant by the sans-culotte of Paris. Crowning himself Emperor of the French by the divine right of genius Napoleon overran Europe, indifferent to the toll of human life his victories cost, and persuading his subjects, and sometimes even the minds of his opponents, that widespread slaughter was necessary to the upbuilding of an all-inclusive European Empire that, under his despotic sway, should result in what he called "European regeneration under monarchical forms." The sacrifice of innumerable human lives

THE FASHIONS OF MARS 41

to his purpose was not a matter of great moment to JSTapoleon. "In spite of all the libels, I have no fear whatever about my fame," he wrote at St. Helena. "Posterity will do me justice. Had I succeeded, I would have died with the reputation of the greatest man that ever existed. I have fought fifty pitched battles, almost all of which I have won. Europe was at my feet." To Metternich, who said to him in 1813, "It rests with your Majesty to give the world peace," ISTapoleon replied, with a haughtiness worthy of one born to the purple, "My honor first, and then peace. You cannot know what passes through a soldier's mind. A man like me does not count the lives of a million men." In a recently published book by Miss Anne Topham, entitled "Memories of the Kaiser's Court," the writer, who acted as a governess to Emperor William's children, speaking of her imperial employer, says: "Sometimes he falls into ISTapoleonic attitudes, and occasionally attempts to pinch the ear of a particular friend."