The world in the crucible; an account of the origins & conduct of the great war

Front matter

THE WORLD IN THE GRUCIBLE

GILBERT PARKER

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Chapter I

THE GERMAN EMPIRE FROM WITHIN .V v . I

CHAPTER n

THE KAISER AND HIS POLICY 33

CHAPTER in

MIGHT IS RIGHT AND WAR IS THE GERMAN GOOD 56

CHAPTER IV

THE PLACE IN THE SUN 87

CHAPTER V

GERMAN COLONIAL POLICY, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE 105

CHAPTER VI

THE OPPORTUNITY 126

CHAPTER VII

THE CLOUD IN THE EAST . I42

CHAPTER VIII

BRITISH POLICY, EUROPEAN AND COLONIAL . 159

CHAPTER IX

WHAT DID ENGLAND DO FOR PEACE? I74

CHAPTER X ♦ "casus belli" 189

CHAPTER XI

WAR 207

vii viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII

ENGLAND MOVES 229

CHAPTER XIII

"brave BELGIUM" y . . . . 344

CHAPTER XIV

THE SEDUCTION OF TURKEY .' r. . . . . . 278

CHAPTER XV

SOUTH EASTERN EUROPE AND THE BALKAN QUESTION . . . . 291

CHAPTER XVI

CIVILIZATION AND THIS V^^AR . • 314

CHAPTER XVII

" FRIGHTFULNESS " > . . . . 342

CHAPTER XVIII

LIGHTS AND LESSONS OF THE WAR ...... . . . . 380

APPENDICES 409

INDEX 415

ENGLAND

"I see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering that she has seen dark days before; indeed, with a kind of instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour and a pulse like cannon. I see her in her old age, not decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, All hail! Mother of nations, Mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the policy which the mind and heart of mankind require at the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and generous, who are born in the soil. So be it! So let it be!"

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856.

CHAPTER I

THE GERMAN EMPIRE FROM WITHIN

The crime of Serajevo was In no real sense the cause of the great war now devastating Europe. It fired a mine, however, which was charged with the material of generations and had had the very anxious attention of two decades of diplomacy. To discover the origins of this tragic conflict we must travel far behind the events of June and the diplomatic correspondence of July of 1 9 14; and that correspondence cannot be understood unless read in the light of German " World Politics," or Weltpolitik.

That Germany has cherished designs of aggression is admitted by her own writers, and by no one more emphatically than by the notorious General von Bernhardi, who has been the busy missioner of Pan- Germanism and Prussian militarism. In his book, Germany and the Next War, this candid champion declares that the German people were condemned to political paralysis at the time when the great European States built themselves up and expanded into World Powers ; but that they did not enter the circle of the Powers, whose decision carried weight in politics, until late, when the partition of the globe was long concluded; when after centuries of natural development other nations had attained political union, colonial possessions, naval power, and international trade. Having thus stated the actual and numbing fact, he stoutly says :

" What we now wish to attain must be fought fovj and won, against a superior force of hostile interests and Powers."

I

The attenuated version of the doctrine so boldly enunciated by this enterprising militarist and his class — that Germany must go to war because she must expand and cannot, because she is being choked; because she needs Colonies to receive the overflow of her population; because Great Britain, the robbernation, obstructs her expansion, may for the moment be dismissed. A nation like Germany, which has given several miUions of its people to the United States alone, cannot complain of having no oversea refuge for her people, especially when German Americans are expected to remain German in all essentials, and to be organized to support German Imperial interests. Of course no nation — least of all one great, proud and powerful — can view unmoved the migration of its most virile and enterprising sons to foreign lands, to become the wealthproducers of rival countries; but of late years German emigration has been almost negligible. Growing industrial prosperity and an admirable agrarian system, supported by an equally admirable system of co-operation, enabled Prince Biilow in a recent year to record with complacency that the average emigration from Germany has shrunk to no more than 22,500 persons every year. Contrasted with the figures of British emigration these numbers are infinitesimal. Certainly they are insufficient to be an important factor in precipitating a world-wide war, even if war on such a basis were otherwise than criminal and barbaric. To make war simply to acquire territory has every precedent in Prussian history — no student can forget Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, Poland and Silesia — but it is regarded with disapproval by all other civilized nations.

Though it is impossible to account for the present

GERMANY'S IMPERIAL FAILURES 3

aggression of Germany on the ground of commercial and economic necessity; on the plea that there was no room to breathe behind the Rhine and the Baltic; that new dominions oversea were indispensable to her; it is possible to find one of the true causes in far-reaching political necessity and purpose which could not rely on natural and peaceful development, accompanied by increased constitutional freedom, responsibility, and opportunity for the masses. Boundless as may have been the ambitions of the now chastened Kaiser, to charge him with a merely aimless lust for World-Empire and the purely adventurous spirit of a chevalier-at-arms would be foolish. He cannot be credited with the higher qualities of Alexander or of Napoleon, whose vision had genius behind it in the days when the spirit of conquest for conquest's sake was still alive in a partlycivilized world. It is only possible to acquit him partially of their unwholesome attributes after studying the conditions of Germany as revealed in her contemporary history.

There is perhaps nothing in all the archives of time more surprising than the failure of Germany to succeed as an Imperial Power. More than once she had Empire — great unorganized Empire — within her grasp, and each time she let it go. She shattered the Western Empire of Rome, but she failed to establish herself on the ruins. She could seize, but she could not hold; the German people have never had the genius either for colonization or for Imperial policy.

Charlemagne's Empire covered the whole of central Europe.^ The Elbe, the Garonne, and Venice

1 By this it is not meant that Charlemagne was a German. The Prankish Empire, however, included Germany. The Ottonid sovereigns, beginning with Otto the Great, asserted their claim to the were harbours for his ships; his banner flew at Ushant and Semlin; he was crowned at Aix and in St. Peter's Church at Rome. Even after his death, the German Empire was a splendid fabric. France, indeed, was lost; but to balance that the Ottonides and Hohenstaufen extended their territories to the East, beyond Bohemia and Moravia, even across the Oder and across Pomerania towards Prussia — Borussia as it was then named. The Hohenstaufen ruled from the Rhone, the Meuse and the Scheldt to the Slavonic regions on the east, from the North Sea and the Baltic as far as Naples; Denmark, Bohemia, and Poland were their tributaries. When Frederick, the last of that great House, was excommunicated and deposed by Innocent IX, with derisive retort he could crown himself with seven crowns — the royal crown of Germany, the Imperial diadem of Rome, the iron circlet of Lombardy, the crowns of Sicily, Burgundy, Sardinia, and Jerusalem.

So in the space of a few centuries the great Empires of Charlemagne, of Otho, and of Barbarossa, rose and fell, springing up under the genius of some illustrious man, and then flickering out like those stars which, brightening for a moment into splendour, die down again to the lowest magnitude, consumed by their own internal fires. In the story of the rise and fall of these dynasties there is a singular monotony. Their very military achievements, brilliant as they were and brimming with the romance of adventure, become wearisome through repetition. Always there are the expeditions to the south, with the

Western Roman Empire as deriving from Charles the Great. Although, therefore, the Empire of Charles was not German, it was the progenitor of the later German Empire. It may be noted, too, that Charlemagne's capital was on the east of the Rhine and that his crown was preserved in Vienna.

PROFITLESS GLORIES 5

reconquest of Italy as the first step in the career of every Emperor; always the story of the conqueror recalled from the shores of the Mediterranean to deal with some truculent vassal at home. Warlike enterprises under the standard of the Cross, profitless conquests on the Po and Adige, valiant deeds, endless slaughter, and nothing to show for it all in the end. If the defeat of the forces of Genghis Khan and the stemming of the tide of Mongol invasion are expected, it is hard to point to a single victory gained by the German States which had any permanent influence on their history. But we search in vain amid all this warlike glory of the far past for any signs of a national awakening, such as may be found in England under the early Plantagenets, the contemporaries of the Hohenstaufen. We may find in Richard I a replica of the policy of the Hohenstaufen princes; but under none of them can be discerned such movements as distinguished the reigns of Henry II, John, Henry III, and Henry V of England.

Yet there never was a people to all outward seeming more destined and fitted for Empire than the Germans. They were homogeneous in blood, prolific, virile, gifted with bodily and mental powers above the ordinary, industrious, thrifty, thorough and patriotic. Their geographical position gave them outlets to every sea, while great rivers gave the people of the interior easy access to the ocean. Their lands were well adapted for defence, while their central position afforded them easy means of attack. In spite of all that they failed. Their record is one of complete failure imperially, but of amazing power to establish themselves domestically, to transcend the most discouraging and trying conditions in the single state. The proved inheritor of these attributes and capacities is Prussia, the bravest, strongest, most merciless and most uncivilized State of the German Empire and of Europe in all that is truly essential to civilization. Bounded on every hand by conflicting powers, the German countries endured and prevailed as separate States always. There were thirty-eight of them in 1815, with Prussia, the slowly emerging rival of Austria, at the head. Other nations have been beaten down and blotted out, but not Germany. Her indomitable spirit has always risen superior to defeat, however ruinous. Germans have held the German lands through the centuries, and again and again have spread their rule through almost every corner of Europe. They rose to the opportunity for acquiring and developing Empire when the fall of Rome cleared the way; but they squandered their opportunities, and proved themselves unequal to the task. Their epitaph is that of Galba : Capax imperii nisi imperasset. They could conquer, but they could not govern. They could maintain their freedom, but they could not create an empire, though they had rare virtues of nationality, of a *' particularism " never more strikingly shown than to-day. Their present organization is the triumph of a policy of forty years, wherein the separate States of the Germany of 1 87 1 have been steadily educated in the cult of war by the Prussian military element; by universities which do the bidding of the Government; by a Press which is a State Press ; by politicians and statesmen who have persistently and systematically told the German people that to them belong the governance of the world, and that by their sword shall the world be redeemed from the other arrogant Powers, such as England, that now control it»

GERMAN UNITY A MYTH 7

At first thought it is perhaps not surprising that, in the past, the German people failed to bring permanently into their Empire races so divergent as those of Italy, Bohemia, and Burgundy, though Great Britain succeeded, and Rome, Persia, and France had succeeded before her. Out of the Heptarchy grew England, an agglomeration of half a dozen races. Great Britain sprang from union with the Gaelic people of the North and the Celtic people of the West. France built up a solid State out of Provinces widely differing in blood, in language, and in ideals: from Normans and Bretons, from Gascons and Burgundians and Provencals, even from Germans of Elsass and Lotharingen; Italy evolved union from a dozen States which through centuries had been mortal foes. Germany alone remains to-day a congeries of States, which, with all allowance for modern development, in essentials is scarcely removed from the tribal condition of fifteen hundred years ago, in spite of the loud celebration of German unity which has assailed the ears of the world for the last generation.

Prince Biilow, in his book Imperial Germany ^ admits this with admirable candour. These are words of moment:

" No nation has found ft so difficult as the German to attain solid and permanent political institutions, although it was the first, after the break-up of the antique world and the troublous times of the migration of nations, to acquire that peace in national existence founded on might which is the preliminary condition for the growth of real political life. Though, thanks to Germany's military prowess, she found it easy enough to overcome foreign obstruction and interference in her national life, at all times the German people found it very hard to overcome even small obstacles in their own political development."

Indeed, as Prince Biilow further says, the story of Imperial Germany is one in which national unity has been the exception, and Separatism in various forms, adapted to the circumstances of the times, the rule, while what is true of the past is also true of the present. No nation has a history fuller of great achievements in most spheres of man's activity; certainly none will deny that German military and intellectual exploits are remarkable ; but the history of no other nation tells of such utter disproportion between political progress on the one hand and military success on the other. During long epochs of political impotence, owing to which Germany was crowded out of the ranks of the Great Powers, there are few defeats of German arms by foreign forces to record, if the time of Napoleon I be excepted. Her prolonged national misfortunes and failures to seize opportunities of colonial development were not due to foreigners, or foreign aggression or oppression, but to her own fault.^

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this judgment of his countrymen, delivered by the most notable of German statesmen since Bismarck. Nor is it an isolated opinion. It was not quite original of Prince Biilow to inform us that political talent has been denied to the German nation, and that the Germans lack that political sense which connotes a sense of the general good, for Goethe, a hundred years before, found '' The Germans very capable individually, and wretchedly inefficient in the bulk " ; while General von Bernhardi, the ever candid, superficial, and effusive, insists that there is no people so little qualified as the German to direct his own destiny in the field of diplomacy and politics, internal

2 Von Billow's Imperial Germany, pp. 127-136.

POLITICAL INCAPACITY 9

and externaL This political incapacity of thinking for the common good; of acting through constitutional forms and legislation devised and projected under constitutional forms, for many units in one whole, which has been the persistent attribute of the German race through the centuries, has taken the form of what is variously called by their own spokesmen Separatism, or " the centrifugal forces of the German nation."

In every department of Influence and activity, wherein political judgment is necessary to accommodate varying factors in the national organism, the German people are unfortunate In their acts and lacking in vision and understanding. With a somewhat fatal gift of logic and speculative thought, and a rare faculty for methodical research, they have little Instinct for discovery and small Initiative. Lacking in true discernment, their values are distorted by an egotism which leads them to believe that motives cannot be seen; that the most elementary perception Is denied those whom they oppose, or whom they would control, influence, use, or govern. Political capacity Is a combination of many attributes, and tact. In the real and deeper sense. Is as much an Integral part of statesmanship as capacity. In the politics of a nation It is not enough to accept a principle, or find an object in itself desirable; the application of the principle must depend upon and be harmonious with racial character and genius, and be adjusted to particular national circumstances. The desirable end can only be reached by finding those methods and that logic which coincide with the temper and character of the people. In a country where the peremptory attitude of mind Is characteristic of the governed and the governing, and where autocracy gives the governing class the Initiative, political development must meet with many checks both in internal and external policy. Obedience to the dictates of the ruling class may secure acceptance of policy; but voluntary will and mental assent and reciprocity are necessary to secure the effective working of any constitution and any law, in a community of free men; especially in a community affected by contiguous democratic examples and influence.

Even with the astute Bismarck at the helm, the Junker's incapacity to be politically wise, to carry out policy along the lines of negotiable resistance, had occasional demonstration, in one case imperilling the Confederation of 1871 at its very start. Aiming at the subjection and elimination, as a political factor, of the Roman Catholic establishment in Germany, the Iron Chancellor passed laws designed to undermine Catholicism as a practical force in the affairs of government. But when the Kulturkampf and the Falk Laws raised a storm, and were met by a powerful and hostile demonstration, Bismarck beat a retreat, undignified and precipitate, leaving him to the end of his career vis-a-vis of a clericalism in the State which daunted even his bold spirit.

If tactfulness may be applied to the business of war, the German nation has shown especial inaptitude for it in the present conflict. Its Press Campaign in the United States has been marked by amazing gaucherie and childishness; its Ambassador has been as awkward in pursuing his purpose as his enemies could well wish. Whenever by accident or through circumstances some moment's advantage has been gained, as in the case of the difficulty between England and the United States over contraband, the purchase of ships by the American Government, or the sailings of the Dacia, the German Government has immediately neutralized it by acts against inter-

TEUTONIC TACTLESSNESS ii

national law, ferocious in their nature and futile in effect; such as the bombardment of the unfortified Enghsh coast towns by warships, and of hamlets and villages by airships. The acts in themselves produce nothing save an incomprehensible joy on the part of the German Press and denunciation from the Press and people of all neutral countries ; while naval and military experts have been unable to see the material advantage to Germany of these demonstrations of savage force against non-combatants and unfortified places. The nation they are meant to cow or anger has only deepened its conviction that it is fighting an unsportsmanlike country, which breaks all rules, even those to which it has given its hand and seal; defies all principles, even those which are inherent in that culture to which it ostentatiously professes devotion; and repudiates the morals of that civilization which it aspires to control.

In other words, Germany's political acumen, its power to adjust theories to nation-life and world-life are antipodean to its military capacity and power, as it has always been. The leading evening paper of New York, repeating an almost universal editorial sentiment, said of the airship raid of the English coast:

" It cannot be justified, it has no warrant in International law, and Is against both the spirit and the letter of the Hague Convention. No military necessity can be pleaded. It is a bit of pure savagery, a mere exhibition of ferocity, wholly futile."

More characteristic still of the blind insistence with which Germany flings all prudence, wisdom and reason to the winds when she wills things to be and her will is crossed by her foes, was her declaration made to the world that she would meet the legitimate acts of war of Great Britain in preventing food reaching German ports by torpedoing all merchantmen, belligerent or neutral, with cargoes and passengers in a declared war-zone, which embraced the British Isles. No neutral flag would save such merchantmen, and lives and ships would be destroyed if they ventured within this prohibited sphere. That did not matter to the government concerning whose acts a great New York paper asks, " Do nations go crazy? " and adds, that Germany could not make this so-called blockade effective, and that if she could not do so it was piracy and nothing else. She would run amok out of rage and resentment at being checked on her conquering course.

Ever since the war began Germany has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds trying to influence American opinion in her favour and against the Allies. With the question of the Dacia and the transfer of ships ; of the PFilhelmina and conditional contraband, troubling and even inflaming the American spirit; with every reason for silence, yet she threw away all her advantage in rage at the idea of a British liner flying the American flag, challenged civilization, and defied American opinion; with what results the world knows. It is the madness of the bull in the ring goaded by the bandilleros, and charging the bandilleros while the matador, who is the real enemy, waits till madness and wounds have made all ready for the end. Germany, instead of keeping her eye steadily on the matador, has gone plunging down the arena, forgetting or repudiating the fact that there is a political side to war, and that the rules of the game must be observed, even from the lowest standpoint of material advantage. In the end the penalty for the broken rule is exacted one way or another. Tilly and his Bavarians paid for the sack of Magdeburg.

THE SLAVE OF THEORY 13

Yet " back to Tilly " has been the cry of the modern German militarist; hence the policy of " frightfulness " and " hacking the way through."

Thus always the slave of its theory, military, political or national, the helpless, because voluntary, victim of merciless logic, Germany deliberately invites the scorn and anger of the world because the act which produces the scorn and anger fits in with " the scheme." The greater end Is forgotten in the immediate and fanatically logical purpose. Once the logic is accepted and declared, the end is forced without assuagement or modification.

This is all in odious harmony with the afiront offered to a civilized nation, In the proposal made by Germany in the pre-war negotiations that England should repudiate her Ally, France, and hold her back if necessary by force, while Russia was being defeated. All Germany wanted. If she fought France, was to strip that country of Its colonies and oversea dominions, so reducing her to the position of a second-rate Power — that was all ! No nation with perception and perspicacity could have made such proposals, whatever the evil in Its heart. She would have foreseen the rejection of them by any honourable country. Unless she was sure of the dishonourable character of the nation she was trying to seduce she would not attempt so dangerous a task. There are some things which even a peace-loving nation like Great Britain could not endure; but German policy could not, or would not, see that. The Kruger telegram In 1896 was a political blunder of similar nature, for unless the Kaiser was prepared for war humiliation could only be the result of that challenge. Political Incapacity denied him the necessary insight to prevent that adventure Into other people's business. Then, however, was laid the plot to make

South Africa German ; then began the conspiracy and the dirty intrigues, the spying and the preparations of which General Botha has spoken since this war began; and the details of which will be given to the world in due course.

Almost as egregious was the Kaiser's blunder from the standpoint of public opinion in his own country and in Great Britain by writing the Tweedmouth letter, in which he attempted to modify the naval policy of this country privately through the First Lord of the Admiralty. It had a fitting pendant in the Daily Telegraph interview in which he acknowledged that the prevailing sentiment of his country was not friendly to England; and in which he declared that he had worked out a plan of campaign with his General Staff for the conduct of the South African war and made a gift of it to this country. The storm the Kaiser raised In Germany, the suspicion his overzealous sympathy aroused in England, were the natural fruits of a perverse political sense which to achieve its end took no account of probabilities, possibilities, or human nature. It is to be noted that in many of the Kaiser's indiscretions he has offended his own people even more than foreigners, and in each case has given fresh evidence of that political Incapacity characteristic of his House and his people. By the Swinemunde Despatch of 1903 to the Prince Regent of Bavaria, In which he rebuked the Bavarian Diet by offering to pay their rejected annual grant of ^Yt thousand pounds for art purposes, he roused the sharp resentment of Bavarians. The telegram to Count GoluchowskI, the Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, approving him as a " brilliant second " In the " tourney " at Algeclras, was wilfully provocative to Russia as It was humiliating to the historic Empire of Austria to which Prussia, before

THE BISMARCKIAN ERA 15

1866, had played a "wily and unreliable second." The Kaiser's tactlessness in 1908 in expressing his wish that the President of the United States would send Mr. Griscom as Ambassador to Berlin after Dr. David Jayne Hill had been already appointed, was as awkward for the Chancelleries of Berlin and Washington as it was bad-mannered and Intrusive. The incident, not portentous in itself, was but another proof of the sightless political intelligence of the German over-lord, who has again and again rebuffed, rebuked and offended his own Parliament, which he and his House have ever considered a hindrance rather than a help to good government.

Travel back through the pages of German history as far as you will, and the same spirit of political tactlessness is to be found and the same practice at work; In less degree, however, within the Bismarck- Ian epoch — that is, from 1858 until the great Chancellor made way for the neutral-spirited Caprivl. Bismarck's vast ambition made his policy corrupt and ruthless; but consummate adroitness and knowledge of human nature made his diplomacy possible and successful. He was sage enough, in the demon-sense, to secure Austria's assistance in the taking of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark and then to rob her of Holstein; unscrupulous and astute enough, by the battle of Sadowa, to eject Austria, which had been for so long the leader and master of the Germanic States, out of the orbit of Germanic power for ever. Realizing that Austria, after 1866, would try for her revenge in as near a day as possible, he decided to check the hope completely and for all time. The time was now ripe to carry out the big policy of German national unity — the combination of a series of German States — which could only be accomplished by an external war. The unpreparedness, disorganization and corruption of France offered him his opportunity. By the Siege of Paris and the Treaty of Frankfurt Germanic federation was secured, and Austria's revenge was indefinitely postponed. In 1 848, Frederick WilHam IV had rejected the offer of the Imperial Crown to Prussia, since Prussia was not then strong enough to be master of her sister States, but only a partner with them; but 1870 saw Prussia a leader strong enough to dominate the projected union. That was a brilliant period in German history, and, so far as war-policy is concerned, it was supreme. It had all the unscrupulous vigour and duplicity of Frederick the Great, the atheist, who became the champion of the Protestant nations, the deserter from the Pragmatic Sanction who robbed Maria Theresa of Silesia. It was the clearly stated policy embodied in Bismarck's phrase, " Not by speeches, nor by the decision of a majority, but by blood and iron." Not by the decision of a majority ! Here spoke the true Prussian in the spirit of the Middle Ages in a country where then and now and always man has been the child of the State, where representative government has been a name, not a reahty.

The Emperor William I, whom the Kaiser is forever celebrating in his speeches, early in his career as King of Prussia wished to abdicate rather than be governed by a Parhamentary majority. Bismarck, however, met the difficulty by governing for some years without a budget and freed from the control of Parliament. In 1867, in the Prussian Chamber, Bismarck bluntly said :