England and Germany, 1740-1914

Preface

This book is not entirely a product of the Great War. The Anglo-German problem first came under my notice some years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford. A beneficiary of the Rhodes Trust, I was imbued with the idea of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, to promote which Cecil Rhodes founded the scholarships which bear his name. But, instead of harmony, I found discord. Some of my Oxford friends were members of the British Navy League, and from them I learned that the German navy was regarded as a menace to England's traditional supremacy of the seas. When I travelled in Germany I encountered considerable animosity to England in several places, and I saw little banks, in the shape of war-ships, which tempted patriotic Germans to make contributions for the propaganda of the German Navy League. At every turn one was made conscious of this rivalry between two kindred nations, each of which professed to fear the aggressive intentions of the other. The most contradictory statements were heard, and the stranger was at a loss to comprehend them.

In time, as I studied the problem, I collected a quantity of material from different sources and of varying value: this book is the result. I have used very sparingly the voluminous literature which has appeared since the war began, except, of course, the official documents published by the belligerent governments. Nearly all of the evidence upon which my conclusions are based was in my hands before August, 1914; indeed, the first six chapters, and the eighth, were practically written by that date, although viii PREFACE

they have since been rewritten. I have tried to present the subject of Anglo-German relations from a historical point of view, and if I have taken sides it is because the available evidence seemed to warrant certain conclusions. The book has been delayed by the severe pressure of private affairs, but the lapse of time has not essentially modified the opinions formulated before I began to write.

Several of the chapters treat of topics that have been discussed already in greater detail by other writers, but their inclusion seemed warranted in a synthetic treatment of my subject. I am well aware of the difficulty of writing a history of recent diplomatic affairs, for few documents are available, but the main course of events is not in doubt. The archives will throw fresh light upon the motives of statesmen and their reactions in definite crises ; they may even disclose fresh facts; but, until they are opened, it is perhaps worth while to attempt to digest the enormous amount of unofficial evidence already obtainable.

My best thanks are due to my colleagues, Professors Samuel Ball Platner, Henry E. Bourne, and Elbert J. Benton, who have read the manuscript and offered many valuable suggestions.

Bernadotte E. Schmitt.

Western Reserve University,

Cleveland, 30 September, 1915.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction i

II. Modern England 12

Introduction

"The central fact in the international situation to-day is the antagonism between England and Germany." So ran the first sentence of the first article of the first number of the Round Table (November, 1910), a non-partisan journal of the politics of the British Empire. A French writer described this rivalry as "the essential fact which dominates the whole policy of our time, which thrusts itself into all events to embitter and warp them, and which is to be found at the bottom of all the political crises by whose succession Europe is periodically agitated." 1 In Germany "the English danger" was discussed in countless books and pamphlets, and the press of the world took up the cue. An American magazine published an article, entitled "Will England and Germany Fight?" in which the issues were represented as irreconcilable and the results fraught with incalculable consequences for the whole world. 2 In fact, no such spectacular international quarrel had been seen since the days of the great Napoleon; its existence was recognized by people to whom diplomacy is usually intangible; while the inhabitants of both England and Germany were subjected to enormous taxes on account of the colossal

1 Rene Pinon, L' Europe et VEmpire Ottoman, p. xii.

2 William Bayard Hale, World's Work, February, igog.

armaments which both caused and were caused by the strained relations between their governments and the mutual distrust of the two peoples.

In a broad sense, the issue in the struggle has been the balance of power, which, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, the great English historian, "is the principle which gives unity to the political plot of modern European history." * For since the days of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII, four hundred years ago, Great Britain has been the principal factor in the maintenance of a European equilibrium : her statesmen have consistently held that, in spite of the North Sea and the Channel, the "precious stone set in the silver sea" was not secure "against the envy of less happy lands" if a single Power achieved the ascendency of the Continent. To prevent this consummation England waged successful war against Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV, and Napoleon. And because in the early years of the twentieth century Germany bestrode the European continent like a colossus, it was inevitable that she should find ranged against herself the weight of British public opinion and the resources of British diplomacy. 2

A generation ago, when Anglo-Russian rivalry dominated the European situation, it was the fashion to speak of the struggle between the elephant and the whale, and at first sight Anglo-German tension presents a similar aspect. The British Empire is a maritime confederacy, with far-flung battle lines protected by an enormous fleet; Germany is primarily a land power, whose strong right arm is the mighty army assembled within her European frontiers. But a closer inspection reveals a situation singularly remi-

1 Lectures on Medieval and Modem History, p. 258.

2 "No nation can maintain the mastery of the continent of Europe as long as a strong and independent England exists on its flank. A nation which strives for supremacy in Europe is bound to attack Great Britain earlier or later. All the rulers from Julius Caesar to Napoleon, who have striven to become supreme in Europe, have made war upon Great Britain." (J. Ellis Barker, Modem Germany, p. 243, edition of 1012.)

niscent of the eighteenth century. In that period of European history Great Britain was repeatedly at war with France for the nominal purpose of preserving the balance of power in Europe, but the actual result of this policy was to make the island kingdom the leading commercial nation of the world, to secure for it the control of the seas in time of war, and to obtain the fairest colonies of France for the extension of her own empire. Similarly, in our own age England abandoned her former friendship for Germany when that Power deliberately challenged Britain's traditional supremacy of the seas, became her doughty competitor in the markets of the world, and expressed in no uncertain voice the opinion that Britain possessed far too many of the undeveloped regions of the world, and Germany far too few.

That England took up the challenge from across the North Sea was due, not to jealousy and envy of Germany, as has been so often asserted, but to the instinct of self-preservation; which, however, did not exclude the possibility of an accommodation between the two Powers and did not prevent repeated agreements for the delimitation of their respective ambitions. But in one matter England remained adamant. Drawing the food of its people and the raw materials for its factories from every corner of the globe, and dependent upon its export trade as the staff of life, the United Kingdom was irresistibly driven to maintain a supreme navy. And that was intolerable to Germany after she had ceased to be a congeries of petty states held together in a loose confederation and became in fact the leading nation of the Continent. Furthermore, by the application of science and patience to industrial problems, she developed an overseas trade second only to that of England. Germany therefore argued that she must possess a fleet sufficient to protect her expanding foreign commerce, lest it should exist on the mere sufferance of the overwhelming British navy; in spite of the fact that every stage in the development of her fleet was followed by still larger additions to that of England.

The colonial situation provided a third element of discord. Colonies serve a nation in various ways. They offer markets, which may be controlled by tariffs, for the surplus products of national industry; they may, with proper management and exploitation, supply the mother country with raw materials for that industry; and under favorable climatic conditions they afford opportunities for settlement to those who do not find the circumstances of life profitable or pleasant, but who wish to preserve their own institutions and their native allegiance in a new land. In the actual organization of the world, Germany possessed almost no colonies suitable for settlement and few territories worthy of exploitation. The British Empire, on the other hand, was spread over a quarter of the globe, embraced every kind of land, and might, if an imperial protective tariff were adopted, become a self-sufficing, economic entity from which German competition would be excluded. France likewise possessed a magnificent colonial domain in Africa and Asia in which she did not welcome the German merchant and the German capitalist. Germany must also expand overseas, unless she was to be outdistanced in the economic struggle, which is the basis of modern civilization.

It is further to be noted that as in the eighteenth century the British Empire was pieced together in a fit of absence of mind as the result of British Continental policy, so the maintenance of the balance of power has led to further increases of the empire in the latest age, increases which were not counterbalanced by the acquisitions of Germany. For in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Great Britain stood more or less aloof from Continental politics, she added Egypt, Burmah, large stretches of Africa, and finally the Boer republics to her already vast possessions, not to speak of extending her influence in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf; while Germany had to be content with the least desirable lands in Africa and a few islands in the Pacific. Germany therefore boldly demanded "a place in the sun." France she despised as a decadent and sterile nation whose colonies were an anomaly; Russia she patronized as an unorganized mass, powerless for either good or evil; Belgium and Holland she perhaps hoped to dispossess of their holdings in Africa and the Far East; but Britain she feared as the great obstacle to the realization of her ambitions. Not that Germany really desired to become mistress of certain British colonies; it is more probable that her appetite was to be satisfied by the annexation of North Africa. If France were deprived of this, the richest and most accessible part of her colonial empire, she would be seriously weakened as a European Power and her decline as a great nation sensibly accentuated. Germany, in turn, would become a Mediterranean Power, thus laying the foundation of a future supremacy in that sea when the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire should endow her with Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. But the German Government was under no illusions as to the attitude of Great Britain toward such a transaction, which would at once upset the balance of power and endanger the route to India, and it therefore became the great purpose of German diplomacy to prevent that rapprochement and friendship between England and France which the statesmen of those countries were bent on achieving. This is the key to that antagonism between England and Germany which finally led to war, and it is truly astonishing that, although Germany had learned, first in 1905 and again in 191 1, that England was prepared to resist excessive demands upon France, the imperial chancellor should, on the eve of the war, have asked the British

Government to stand aside while Germany appropriated the French colonies.

Behind these rivalries of commerce, sea power, and colonies there loomed the challenge of culture. "Is the world to become English?" was a question frequently to be found in German discussions of international politics. The nineteenth century witnessed the expansion of the Anglo-Saxon over every continent, often by means highly questionable from an austere moral standard; more than a million Germans settled in lands whose civilization was essentially English and there preserved but few links with their fatherland; English promised more and more to become the world language, so far as that honor was reserved for a particular speech. For generations French culture had enjoyed a wide popularity outside France itself; and even backward Russia was represented in the Balkan peninsula and the vast expanses of Siberia, not to mention the remnants of Spanish influence from the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan. Was there no place for "the German idea in the world"? demanded a well-known Pan-German book of that title. 1 German philosophy long dominated the abstractions of men, the researches of German science were appropriated by all nations, the battles of Sadowa and Sedan were held to establish the superiority of German education, and German discipline and thoroughness were eagerly imitated by the more sluggish but ambitious nations. Whatever the precise territorial ambitions of Germany, she demanded that no obstacle be raised if she offered her national culture to a world that had shown itself receptive, and the fact that English influence actually dominated a large part of the non-European world was all the more an incentive for challenging it and for proving the equality of the German spirit.

In this connection the profound difference between Eng-

1 Paul Rohrbach, Der deutsche Gedanke in der Welt (1912).

lish and German ideals must be recognized. It is doubtless true, as was often asserted by those who sought to minimize the issues of the Anglo- German quarrel, that no European nations are so near in blood, in mental and physical characteristics, and in the conditions of their economic life as England and Germany. But the parallel can easily be carried too far. For centuries Englishmen have stood forth as the champions of individual liberty, have resented the interference of the state in their private affairs; and, while in recent years a newer ideal of social obligation and the pressure of German competition have compelled them more and more to adopt the corporate theory of life, the national reluctance to discard traditions handed down from generation to generation has been frequently observed. In the mental development of such a people, the idea of compulsion obviously can play, and actually has played, but a minor role. In all the great crises of English history the desire for an amicable settlement has ever been to the fore, till the fondness for compromise, and the ability to effect it, has become notorious. And in the nineteenth century a genuine abhorrence of war was instilled into the hearts of Englishmen by statesmen like John Bright and Richard Cobden on the one hand and Lord Salisbury on the other, whose teachings were reinforced by the colossal slaughter of the Crimean War and the mismanagement of the struggle in South Africa. The British Empire has, indeed, waged many wars in the last hundred years, but the vanquished have always been generously treated, and the cause of human freedom has been immeasurably advanced by the exploits of British arms.

In Germany, on the other hand, the state has long lorded it over the individual. Prussia has become notorious for regulation and bureaucracy, and her ideas have slowly penetrated the other German states, where, it may be remarked, there were old traditions of governmental interference which the Prussian example has galvanized into renewed popularity. Nor can it be denied that the material prosperity of Germany has been quite as much the result of official guidance as of the zeal and capacity of its people. In fact, "efficiency," as we understand the term, has been forced upon the world by the precept and practise of Germany.

From the historical point of view, Germany was necessarily a military state. By sheer valor of arms the electors of Brandenburg extended their dominions and created the modern kingdom of Prussia, and the kings of Prussia by similar means accomplished the unification of Germany. It would be surprising if the German, who read in his history how for hundreds of years his fatherland was the parade-ground of foreign armies, did not believe that the new empire must rely upon its military strength alone and be able to resist any kind of attack. And the maintenance of peace for forty-three years, during which Germany ceased to be a mere geographical expression and became a Great Power, was for the German a convincing argument for military preparedness and a thoroughgoing concentration upon the problems of national defense.

But there is a sinister aspect to the picture. After 1870 there grew up, first in one, then in another, and ultimately in almost every European country, a suspicion and a fear that united Germany would one day attempt to repeat the exploits of Bismarck, and the reputation for aggressiveness thus acquired was the most potent factor in the formation of the coalition now in arms against her. Unfortunately for every one, Germany did little toward creating a different impression of her policy beyond proclaiming its peaceful character. Rather, she did not hesitate, on numerous occasions, to rattle the sabre, till she was persuaded that this was sufficient to enforce her will. Also, she regularly took advantage of every ruffle in the international situation to increase the strength of her army, and more lately to accelerate the construction of her fleet, with the avowed object of becoming the supreme power on both land and sea. 1 In other words, at a time when most nations were asking themselves if war were not out of date, and economically unprofitable, Germany was frankly proclaiming that force, and force alone, was worthy of consideration as the solvent of international difficulties.

It will doubtless long be a matter of controversy as to how far the religion of war was accepted by the German people, for the evidence published during the last generation is contradictory. They have been alternately portrayed, by competent observers, as rabid jingoes and as lovers of peace at any price. General Bernhardi declared that "the political power of our nation ... is fettered externally by its love of peace," 2 and his writing is so far removed from passion or prejudice that his deliberate statement must be considered sincere. On the other side, innumerable writers so freely propounded his doctrine of the duty to make war, albeit without his learning or candor, that a people like the Germans, who are accustomed to have their views on political questions compounded for them by specialists, must have been more or less poisoned by the constant asseveration that might is right. Either thesis can be proved to the satisfaction of one who sets out to do so. The opinion of the present writer is that, if the mass of the German people did not show positive enthusiasm for war as war, they did desire the fruits of war, and that they were less eager to restrain their military leaders than any nation in Europe. In this respect the thoroughly undemocratic character of their political institutions gave the military party an enormous advantage, monopolizing as it

1 "I shall reorganize my navy so that it shall stand on the same level as my army" — which was the most powerful and formidable in the world. (William II, 1 January, 1900.)

* Germany and the Next War, p. 12.

io ENGLAND AND GERMANY

did the high offices of state, and controlling with an iron hand the press and the educational machine, which in other countries create an independent political opinion. It is a significant commentary upon the two countries that the British Government went to war only after taking Parliament into its confidence, while the German Emperor first declared war and then appealed to the country to present a united front.

A general view of the situation reveals Germany as the challenging nation. England would have been quite content to let things stand as they were. Mistress of the seas for two hundred years and guarantor of the balance of power in Europe, the mother of many daughter nations, and in consequence of her position in the world rather inclined to ignore the susceptibilities of other peoples, her complacency received a profound shock by the advent of a Power that demanded recognition as an equal and strove for the means to secure it. The dominant note of English writing anent the controversy with Germany was that of determination to keep the heritage of the past, of insistence upon the status quo. To this point of view it was difficult, not to say impossible, for Germany to accede. "There can be no standing still or stopping for us, no permanent renunciation of national expansion: we have to choose between loss of rank among the imperial peoples and a struggle for a place beside the Anglo-Saxons;" 1 in General Bernhardi's phrase, "world power or downfall!" 2 If each power held to its course in all stubbornness, war was indeed inevitable. 3

The most tragic feature of the Great War, however, is

1 Rohrbach, Der deutscke Gedanke in der Welt, p. 8.

8 Germany and the Next War, chap. 5.

3 Price Collier remarked that an autocratic, philosophical, and continental race was pitted against a democratic, political, and insular one, and that never the twain should meet. The only remedy, in his opinion, was for them to let each other severely alone. Unfortunately, in the conditions of the modern world no nation can live without contact with all other nations. {Germany and the Germans, p. 565.)

that in the two years preceding it Anglo-German relations had "sensibly improved," to use the language of Sir Edward Grey, and that the British Government was willing "to promote some arrangement, to which Germany could be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by France, Russia, and [England], jointly or separately." * Great Britain and Germany had co-operated during the Balkan Wars to restrain their friends or allies, and the peace of Europe had been preserved. The long naval rivalry had been considerably appeased by Admiral von Tirpitz's acceptance of a sixteen-to-ten ratio in the construction of Dreadnoughts ; on the very eve of the war a treaty had been drafted which established a harmony of views as regards the Baghdad railway and African colonial questions ; the animosity between the peoples, so long an obstacle to official negotiations, had to a large extent burnt itself out. A few years more and their sound common sense would, one likes to think, have convinced both Germans and Britons that, despite their rivalries in all parts of the globe, the world was large enough for them both. The friendship of the two countries would have become a bulwark for the peace of the world, and British statesmanship might then have addressed itself to the most pressing of all international problems, the reconciliation of France and Germany; after which an alliance of the three Powers would have inaugurated a new era in the history of Europe and of mankind.

1 Sir Edward Grey to Sir Edward Goschen, 30 July, 1014, Great Britain and the European Crisis, no. 101.

Chapter II Modern England

It will be readily admitted, even by those to whom the fact is unpalatable, that since the end of the Napoleonic wars England has been the dominant nation of the world, and that her participation in the Great War will probably be the decisive factor in its length, if not in its termination. Why should so commanding a position belong to a couple of islands whose population was less than that of France (until a few years ago), Germany, Austria-Hungary, or Russia? For none of these nations has accepted British hegemony as a law of the universe. The answer is to be found in the accidents of history and geography, with which must be reckoned certain traits of character that are the product of free institutions and a peculiar consciousness of national unity.

First of all, at the end of the eighteenth century a series of remarkable inventions, for which English genius must receive full credit, transformed England from an agricultural into an industrial country and vastly stimulated its already thriving commerce. By chance this revamping of the national life coincided with the French Revolution and the first Napoleonic Empire, a period during which the continent of Europe was devastated by a succession of wars and thereby prevented from imitating the new English system. Though England was an active and the most steadfast participant in the long struggle to crush Napoleon, her territory was not invaded, and her sea power enabled her at once to destroy the foreign trade of the Napoleonic states and to establish her own monopoly in the Americas and the Far East. When peace was signed in 181 5, the United Kingdom had secured such a lead that in a hundred years no rival nation has overcome it. France was about half a century behind England in appropriating the new industrialism, Germany nearly seventy-five years, and Russia's development has begun in the last generation. If Great Britain is no longer the "workshop of the world," as the Cobdenites of the mid- Victorian period were pleased to call her, she is still the premier industrial state and the richest.

But wealth alone, in spite of its power, would not enable her to exercise such preponderant influence all over the world: that she owes to the empire which the seafaring instincts of her people have built up in the seven seas. Here the accident that Great Britain is an island assumes extraordinary interest. For centuries the sea has been the life of England, and the fact has penetrated deep into the national consciousness. Not, of course, that Englishmen have enjoyed any iron-clad monopoly of the maritime spirit. The fleets of Italian and Hanseatic cities in the Middle Ages, the argosies of Spain, and the merchantmen of Holland recall days when England was a self-sufficient island kingdom; and in our own time Greece, Norway, and Germany have again shown their flags in the waters familiar to their fathers. But in no people has the tradition of the sea and an appreciation of its importance for the national destiny been so permanent, so abiding, and so all-pervading as in the inhabitants of the British Isles. If the first discoverers were Portuguese or Spaniards or Italians, from the middle of the sixteenth century Englishmen were in the forefront of that movement which colonized the New World and brought the Far East into close relations with the markets of Europe. Colonial adventure and exploration came as second nature to a race bred to the sea and by virtue of liberal political institutions free to work out social and economic problems without the interference of a bureaucratic government. Moreover, from the first, the desire to find new markets for English goods never slackened. Until the eighteenth century woollen and linen goods were the chief articles of the export trade; after the industrial revolution, when the country was no longer able to subsist on its home-grown food-supply, and when the output of the huge manufacturing establishments far exceeded the domestic demand, it was imperative to find outlets abroad for the commodities which must pay for the imports of food. Thus English commerce made an empire necessary; the hardihood of her seamen and the weight of an enlightened public opinion permitted the government to pursue a policy which in the course of three centuries has brought a fifth of the globe and a quarter of its population under the rule of England and her daughter nations.

Other peoples have at times been inspired by the imperial ideal — Portugal, Spain, Holland, France — , but their adventures beyond the seas have ever been secondary to their purely European interests, and they lost their colonies because of European complications. Great Britain, as an island, was happily relieved of such embarrassments. Her territory inviolate through the might of her fleet, she could not, on the other hand, extend her boundaries by annexation or conquest, in spite of the innumerable wars to which she was a party lest some Continental nation should become dominant in Europe. But she invariably recouped herself by the acquisition of lands in America, Asia, or Africa, till in 1815 she alone of the Great Powers possessed a colonial empire worthy of the name. Thus her geographical situation and the political and economic genius of her people had secured for the United Kingdom an accumulation of wealth and a position in the world quite out of proportion to her own human and material resources.

To protect this empire and its commerce, to see that Britannia ruled the waves in time of war, has been the first duty of every British government in modern times. Charles I was able to collect ship money without consent of Parliament in order to renew the fleet which his father James had allowed to fall into decay. The Commonwealth stopped at nothing to secure naval supremacy in home waters and to show the British flag in the Mediterranean, and the one creditable achievement of Charles II was his insistence on naval efficiency. In 1689 began the intermittent duel with France, which lasted till 181 5; when it was over, the fleets of France, Spain, and Holland had been swept from the seas, and the Congress of Vienna tacitly accepted the maritime supremacy of the state whose resources had enabled the Continental nations to drive Napoleon from Europe. British power was not always wisely used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for Holland fell a victim to its jealousy, and in 1807 Denmark had to witness the destruction of her fleet in the harbor of Copenhagen at a moment when she was at peace with England. Likewise the laws relating to capture at sea and the right of search in time of war, which are considered illiberal in many quarters, are based mainly on British practises in the Napoleonic struggle. But, whatever one may think of the mistress of the seas, her overwhelming ascendency throughout the nineteenth century is the most important fact in the development of her foreign and colonial policy.