The battle of the nations, 1914-1918 ; a young folks' history of the great war

Preface

It is one of my privileges, as a writer, to spend my days at home, and hence to enjoy a closer association with my children than falls to the lot of the average father. The youthful mind grows through asking questions, and all parents with a sense of their responsibilities do their best to answer them. During the progress of the Great War I was called upon on numberless occasions to explain to my youngsters what it was all about, and my efforts in this direction seemed so satisfactory to my own children that I am emboldened to put them in the form of a book, in the hope that they may prove equally so to the children of other parents not so fortunately situated as I have been.

Frederic Arnold Kummbr.

Oatonsville, Maryland, December 10, 1918.

Contents

CHAPTER

I

PAOB

Foreword

The Battle of the Nations began in the year 1914, that is, one thousand, nine hundred and fourteen years after the birth of Christ, and lasted for over four and a quarter years. It was by far the greatest conflict in history, not alone because of the number of nations and men engaged on the two sides and the losses in life and property sustained, but also, and more particularly, because of the supreme importance to humanity of the questions involved.

Before the colossal struggle came to an end, over a score of nations had taken up arms, the fighting had extended from Europe to Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Pacific, and the effects of the conflict had been felt in every quarter of the globe. It was in truth a world war, and at its roots lay the struggle for freedom, for self-government, on the part of the people, which has been going on ever since the dawn of history.

The time had come, in the onward progress of events, when great and far-reaching changes in the world's social system were necessary, and hence, in one sense, it may be said that the war was inevitable, even though its immediate causes were the greed and arrogance of a single small group of men. For many generations the details of this epoch-making conflict will be dis-

vii viii FOREWORD

cussed; countless books will be written about it, covering its every phase. Within the limits of a single volume we cannot hope to do more than give a brief outline of its causes, its progress, and its effects. These once grasped, it becomes possible to undertake the study of the war in its more detailed aspects.

A very few figures are needed to show how vast the struggle was. It is estimated, although such estimates are by no means exact, that the war cost the world, in military expenditures alone, close to three hundred billion dollars. The human mind is unable to grasp such tremendous figures. Rough estimates of the casualties — that is, the number of men killed, wounded, and missing — in the armies of the various countries involved, are, for Russia, 7,000,000 ; for Germany, 6,000,000; for Great Britain, 3,000,000; for France, 4,000,- 000; for Belgium, 350,000; for Austria, 4,500,000; for Italy, 1,750,000; for Bulgaria, 200,000; for Turkey, 750,000; for Rumania, 200,000; for Serbia, 300,000; for Greece, 75,000, and for the United States, 275,000, a total of over 28,000,000 men. Over a million Armenians and other non-combatants were murdered. Losses in money and property almost beyond computation were sustained. The cost of the ships sunk, alone, was close to $6,000,000,000, while the value of the buildings and personal property destroyed in Belgium, France, Serbia, and other countries within the war zone runs to unbelievable figures.

FOREWORD ix

If, however, the losses were gigantic, the results obtained may in a sense be said to have compensated for them. An epitaph over the graves of some British soldiers in France reads, "For your to-morrow they gave their to-day." In this beautiful thought we find the answer to the question, Was the war worth while? Future generations, reaping the harvest which this generation has sown, will answer in the affirmative. The people of Germany, their nightmare of militarism gone, of Poland, free and united after their many years of suffering and oppression, of Austria, no longer under the iron heel of the Hapsburgs, of Bohemia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Eumania, Transylvania, Bessarabia, Serbia, and the vast territories of Russia, of Turkey, of colonies in Africa, freed from the brutal misrule of the Kaiser, and last, but not least, of the Allied countries of Europe and of the United States itself, will, as the blessings of world freedom become more and more apparent, rise up and pay homage to those heroic men who, from so many countries and in so many climes, for the sake of our to-morrow gave us their to-day.

We cannot approach the study of this war as we would that of any other war in history. It was really not a war, so much as a world movement — the greatest that mankind has ever known.

Chapter I

IN order that we may fully understand the causes of the great war let us look at a map of Europe as it was in July, 1914, before the war began.

We find that the German Empire, ruled by the Emperor or Kaiser William II, and the Austro- Hungarian Empire, ruled, when the war broke out, by the Emperor Francis Joseph, stretched in an unbroken body of land from the shores of the North and Baltic seas to the river Danube. These two countries and Italy had agreed among themselves that were any one of the three to be attacked by another power, the other two would at once come to its assistance. This agreement between Germany, Austria, and Italy was known as the Triple Alliance.

The other three great countries of Europe, as the map will show, were England, France, and Russia. Of these nations, two, France and Russia, had an agreement to support each other in case of war, and the third, England, while not bound by any definite agreements with France and Russia, had given those countries to understand that if they were attacked by the Triple Alliance, she would come to their aid. This arrangement was known as the "Entente cordiale." England had also, some years before, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Japan, the purpose of which was to preserve the peace in the Far East.

Six other and smaller nations in Europe, as well as one in both Europe and Asia, also demand our attention. These are Belgium, on the North Sea, partially surrounded by France, Germany, and Holland ; Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Greece, lying in the Balkan Peninsula, between the Black and the Adriatic seas, and Turkey, spreading from a small foothold in Europe at the tip of the Balkan Peninsula, across the Straits of the Dardanelles into Asia. It is necessary, in order to understand fully the causes which brought about the great war, to keep the locations of these several countries clearly in mind.

First, however, before we can take up the immediate causes of the war, we must understand something about Germany, and its ruler, the kaiser.

The German Empire, in the year 1914, was one of the richest and most powerful as well as one of the youngest nations in Europe. It consisted of a federation of kingdoms and smaller states under the rule of the German Emperor, who was also the King of Prussia. The Kingdom of Prussia had for a long time been a nation that loved war. The great Napoleon once said that the Prussian state was hatched from a cannon-ball. Less than a hundred years ago, and long after Washington had fought the war which made America free, Prussia was an insignificant state compared with the great nations of Europe, such as France, Eussia, and England. The members of its ruling family, the Hohenzollerns, were thoroughly unscrupulous, with little or no regard for the rights of others, and their great ambition was to make Prussia the leading nation of Europe.

Prussia was thoroughly beaten and humiliated by France under Napoleon at the battle of Jena, in 1806, but her revenge came at Waterloo, when Bliicher arrived with his army and assisted in the defeat of the great emperor. This, however, by no means satisfied the rulers of Prussia. They longed for greater power, and determined to get it, by any and every means at their command.

There was no German Empire at this time. The country we now call Germany consisted of a large number of separate states, each with its own ruler. There were also four free cities. Some of the states, especially those in the south, such as Wiirtemberg and Bavaria, hated the

Prussians cordially, but in spite of this fact the King of Prussia, William I, most ably assisted by his Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, determined to unite them in a single empire, of which Prussia should be the leading state, and he the supreme ruler.

We need not follow in detail the devious steps by which this was brought about. Prussia 's methods had been very much the same ever since the ancestor of the Hohenzollerns, the Elector of Brandenburg, first came into power. Her rulers believed that might makes right, and that in order to make one's country great it was necessary only to seize the lands of weaker neighbors. In this way the two Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, situated at the base of the Jutland Peninsula upon which Denmark lies, were boldly taken, and when Austria, who had assisted Prussia in the theft, became angry because Bismarck would give her none of the spoils, the "Iron Chancellor," as he was called, at once attacked Austria and defeated her decisively at the Battle of Sadowa, after a war which lasted only six weeks. This war made Prussia master of Austria, and she remained so for over fifty years.

One of the chief reasons for the quick military successes which Prussia gained in her wars arose from the fact that her army was not a paid or regular army, hired for the purpose of defending the country or attacking its enemies, but an army of the people. Every man physically fit was obliged to serve, the nobles, who formed the military class, taking the positions of officers, while the common people were trained as soldiers under the most severe discipline in Europe. It was Frederick the Great, one of the earlier Hohenzollern kings of Prussia, who instituted this system of universal military training, and as a result of it his armies were able to seize and add to his dominions much additional territory, including a large part of the Kingdom of Poland, the other two parts of this unhappy country being held by Austria and Russia.

One result of Prussia's success against Austria was the formation of the North German Confederation, which consisted of a union of all the independent states in the north of Germany under the leadership of the King of Prussia. Bismarck's dream of a united Germany under Prussian domination was thus partly realized.

It required a war to fulfil it completely, and this war Bismarck soon supplied. Flushed with success, confident that his country could defeat any nation in Europe, he proceeded by diplomatic means to cause Napoleon III, the weak and incompetent Emperor of the French, to declare war against Germany in 1870. France, with the glorious memories of the great Napoleon behind her, anticipated no difficulty in defeating Germany, but when the Prussian troops, assisted by the South

Germans (who had become suspicious of France's intentions toward them), crossed the border into France, it was soon evident that the French with all their bravery were not trained, equipped, or led as well as were the German forces, and the latter won a quick and easy victory. Within a few weeks two great French armies had surrendered, one at Metz, the powerful fortress of Lorraine, the other at Sedan. It would be well to remember the names of these two places, since by some strange coincidence the concluding acts of the great war took place at almost the same spots.

Now that her armies had been captured, and with them her emperor, France declared herself a republic. She was helpless, however, and although Paris made a brave resistance and held out for several months, it was at last taken, and at the palace of Versailles William I, King of Prussia, was declared the German Emperor. Thus the German Empire was formed, in the year 1871, just forty-three years before the outbreak of the great war.

France, defeated, was forced to pay to Germany a billion dollars and, what was even more important, to give up to her conquerors the valuable provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, situated along the western shores of the river Ehine. These provinces, the population of which was for the most part French, contained some of the most valuable deposits of iron in Europe, although at the time Bismarck forced France to give them up the value of these ores was not known.

As a result of this war, which she had not sought and which had cost her so much money and territory, France felt a secret hatred for Germany, and the two countries regarded each other as natural enemies. Germany, knowing that the people of Alsace-Lorraine were at heart in sympathy with the French, proceeded to make every effort to stamp out this feeling. The use of the French language in churches and schools was forbidden, the French national air could not be played or sung, nor could the tricolor be displayed. Such attempts at the repression of the patriotic instincts of a people have never succeeded, yet Germany persisted in them, for upon such repression her whole system of autocratic rule was based. She had followed the same course in Poland for years, without success, and Austria was doing the same thing in the case of the many millions of Italians, Poles, Yugo-Slavs, Czechs, Rumanians, Croats, Slovenes and others held under her rule against their will. In other parts of the world the same process was going on — in Turkey with the Armenians and Arabs, in Russia with the Poles, Finns, and other races. Down to the very end of the nineteenth century kings and emperors considered it their right to treat alien peoples and their territories as pawns, to be handed about from one to the other in accordance with the results of some mighty game of chess played about the diplomatic peace table. This arbitrary and wrongful treatment of alien races was the chief underlying cause of the great war.

From France's defeat in 1871 to the beginning of the great war, over forty years elapsed. Emperor William I died, and his son Frederick soon followed him. In 1888 Kaiser William II came to the throne, dreaming of world power. Arrogant without being able or brilliant, he soon quarreled with Bismarck, and dismissed him. During this time Germany had been secretly planning, with the assistance of Austria, to extend her rule over still other alien peoples and races, and the new kaiser began to push with redoubled vigor his preparations for the war he knew was sure to come. These preparations did not consist alone in training armies and building ships, cannon, and fortifications. Other means were adopted. The people of Germany were told over and over that their wars in the past had been enormously profitable to them, in both money and territory, and that the next war would bring to their doors the riches of the world. In the German schools war was glorified as man's highest duty; might was placed above right; children were taught to believe that the German race was superior to all other races, the chosen people of God, to whom was entrusted the divine mission to rule the world. All this nonsense was just as much a preparation for war as was the making of cannon; the kaiser's plans were to enslave other races and he thought that if he could make his people believe that in committing these crimes against humanity they were carrying out a divine command, he would have no difficulty in gaining their support. The method was an old one. From time immemorial unscrupulous rulers have claimed special permission from God to carry out their conquests so as the more easily to delude their ignorant subjects into assisting them. Hence the kaiser went up and down his country for twenty-five years, telling his people that small nations had no rights, and that he was ordained by God to give to these nations the sort of civilization they ought to have, whether they wanted it or not. It is improbable that the kaiser believed this ; he merely dreamed of being another Caesar or Alexander.

Other and more sinister methods were being used to prepare for the coming war. In every foreign country Germany's secret agents were at work, collecting information, organizing treachery, planning revolt. Among the officers of her navy "Der Tag" ("The Day") was a common toast, and meant the day when war would begin. Books were written and widely read, showing how Germany planned to seize Belgium and northern France, control the Channel ports, defeat England, make herself master of India, Egypt, and

Western Russia, and gradually force her kultur, as she called her system of philosophy, upon all the races of the world.

Among her schemes was one called Mittel- Europa, which embraced the formation of a huge central European empire, stretching from the English Channel southeastwardly through Austria, the Balkan States, and Turkey, to Bagdad and thence to the head of the Persian Gulf. In preparation for this plan of a middle-European empire the kaiser had already visited Turkey and reached a secret understanding with the rulers of that country, while German capitalists had secured a concession to build what is known as the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway, to run from Berlin via Vienna and Constantinople to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. This road was designed not only to develop a huge trade with the Far East, but to be used as a military highway for attacking England in India. A branch line from Aleppo ran down through Damascus to Jerusalem, pointing toward England's great waterway to the east, the Suez Canal. When war broke out, a large part of this Berlin-to-Bagdad railroad had been completed.

In order fully to control this road, however, it was necessary that Germany, or her vassal, Austria, should control the Balkan states of Serbia and Bulgaria, through portions of whose territory the road was obliged to run. As events later proved, Germany was able to control Bulgaria by means of a secret treaty, promising that country large increases in territory in case of a successful war. But Bulgaria and Serbia were bitter enemies, as a result of the former's defeat by Serbia in the second Balkan War, and the Serbians knew that the territory Germany had promised to Bulgaria was to be taken from them. Hence the control of Serbia by Germany and Austria became a very difficult matter.

Serbia is inhabited by an ancient and brave people belonging to the great Slavic race, which also inhabits the greater part of Russia. Serbia had once been much larger, and the two Austrian provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, unwarrantably seized by Austria some years before, were largely inhabited by people of her race. It was her dream to get these provinces away from Austria, whom she hated because the latter had persistently thwarted her desire to obtain a port on the Adriatic Sea, but Austria was bitterly opposed to a greater Serbia. Here again we observe how the arbitrary oppression of one race by another brought about enmity and ill feeling.

The Bulgarians were also largely Slavic, and the people of that country had little desire for an alliance with their national enemy Turkey, but this alliance was brought about by another autocratic ruler, not a Bulgarian by birth, the Emperor (or, as he called himself, "Czar") Ferdinand of Bulgaria, a crafty and unscrupulous monarch who thought of himself as a miniature kaiser, and dreamed of becoming more powerful by extending his rule over the peoples of other countries who did not desire it.

Russia, being of the same race as the Serbians, naturally felt a deep sympathy for them and their national aspirations. She also had another and more selfish reason for taking their part. Ever since the foundation of the Eussian Empire by Peter the Great it had been the wish of that country to obtain possession of Constantinople. Hemmed in by the nations of western Europe, Eussia had no outlet to the sea in the west except the port of Archangel, far to the north and useless for a large part of the year on account of the ice. She wished to possess Constantinople in order to send her ships, laden with grain, oil, and other commodities, from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean by way of the Straits of the Dardanelles, upon which Constantinople is situated. But the possession of Constantinople by Eussia would have blocked at once Germany's plans for a great empire stretching through Asia Minor to the Persian Gulf. Hence Eussia and Germany used the Balkan States as pawns, to checkmate each other in their political schemes. Even England in the past, before the establishing of cordial relations with France and Eussia, had played this despicable game, and her statesmen had invariably supported the Turks and refused to allow them to be driven out of Europe, because she did not wish either Russia, or Germany and Austria, to obtain possession of Constantinople, fearing that her trade with the East would be menaced. All this wretched business of playing politics with nations as pawns is in the highest degree immoral and wrong, and the world has reason to hope that the great war has finally put an end to it.

Such were the conditions of the various states of Europe when the fateful year of 1914 began. Germany, who had built up an enormous foreign trade in manufactured articles of all sorts, had become the most powerful nation on the continent of Europe. The low-grade iron ores in Lorraine, one of the provinces taken from France in 1871, had suddenly become very valuable, owing to new methods which were discovered for smelting them. Germany found herself producing almost as much steel as England, and far more than France. She had built a powerful navy, second only to that of England in size, and her merchant ships, under the flags of the great North-German- Lloyd and Hamburg-American lines, were to be found in every port of the globe. But still she was not satisfied. It was not enough to be great commercially; she wished to rule. Hor plans for launching the middle-European empire were ripe, and only the national aspirations of the Serbian people and their brothers in Austria stood in her way. The kaiser and his military party decided that Serbia must be eliminated.

To get Serbia out of the way it was necessary to find an excuse to attack her. Such matters have never been difficult, where kings are concerned, and in June, 1914, fate, or, as some think, the manipulations of German and Austrian agents, provided the excuse that was needed. The Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife, visiting Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, were assassinated by a mad student, who happened to be a Serbian. It did not take the kaiser and his advisors long to find in this event the opportunity they desired, if indeed they had not actually created it. It was contended by Germany and Austria that the act of the mad student had the secret approval of the Serbian Government, and was part of an organized plan to attack the Austrian monarchy and free Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was therefore decided to have Austria make demands upon Serbia so impossible and humiliating that no self-respecting nation could possibly submit to them, whereupon, having refused these demands, she would at once be set upon and conquered. If Russia, Serbia's friend, attempted to interfere, Germany would come to Austria's aid and keep Russia off. If Russia refused to be terrified by Germany, and with the help of her ally France opposed Germany's schemes, a general European war would result. The kaiser and his supporters doubtless weighed the case carefully and decided that "The Day" had come. They wanted war because they were ready for war, and believed that Germany would win a quick and decisive victory. England, they thought, would not come in; they would take care of her when they had finished with Russia and France. Austria was therefore instructed to send a note to Serbia, making demands of the most insulting and impossible nature. Almost as soon as the note was sent, Germany and Austria began secret preparations for war.

From what has gone before it is clear that the basic causes of the great war are to be found in the pernicious doctrine of the divine right of kings, whereby autocratic rulers arrogated to themselves the right to govern other peoples without their wish or consent. This system found its highest development in the governments of Germany, Austria, and Turkey. The personal ambition of the kaiser to rule the world was but an extreme manifestation of it. His conception of the state was that of a collection of obedient and industrious slaves, under the sole rule of one man — himself. The democracies of England, France, and the United States were based on the opposite theory, that of rule by the people. It was inevitable that in time these two theories should clash. It was asserted, in the beginning, that the war was merely a duel between Germany and England for the commercial supremacy of the world, but this is not true. Germany could have obtained such supremacy by peaceful means — was in fact already far on the road to obtaining it when the war began. She wanted actual rule, actual power, over other races, and Serbia was merely the first victim. Such attempts to enslave other peoples naturally bring about resistance, a struggle to be free, and before the great war ended this cry for freedom had been heard around the globe ; and the resistance of Serbia to Austria had developed into a struggle of oppressed peoples everywhere against their rulers, of democracy against autocracy, even in the ranks of the Allies themselves. In its largest aspect, the great war was a world revolution.

The German viewpoint, of course, was very different. Germany's leaders held that she must maintain a great army because she was surrounded on all sides by jealous enemies. Russia was regarded as a constant menace, since the Slav national aspirations ran counter to those of Germany. England and France were held to be envious of the growing commercial power of the German Empire. The kaiser and his supporters contended that Great Britain and the other European nations had seized all the overseas territories from which the raw materials of commerce could be obtained, and that the German people, just coming to the zenith of their power, should possess some of these sources of supply. The Germans were multiplying rapidly, and needed room for expansion. They felt that there should be colonies under the German flag, as there were under the flag of England. What right had the British to govern Australia, India, Egypt, the German statesmen asked, when Germany could govern them so much better? There was much talk about the " freedom of the seas." England, by reason of her powerful navy, her coaling-stations all over the world, controlled the trade routes. Germany chafed at this control, although there is no evidence that it was ever used in times of peace to hamper in any way her foreign commerce. It is perhaps possible to understand that a young and virile nation, dreaming of world power, might question the right of older nations to control vast sections of the globe by reason of prior conquest, but Germany could have hoped to replace Great Britain or France in this respect only by reason of superior ability to govern subject races and this ability she had never shown. Had she shown it, the British Empire would have collapsed at the first breath of war. That it did not do so is perhaps the best answer to German claims for world domination.

CHAPTEE n

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAB

OF all the nations of Europe which we have mentioned in the preceding chapter, Belgium was perhaps the most peaceable. More densely populated than any other country in the world, devoted to industry of every sort, Belgium when the war began was quietly pursuing her way, happily governed by her democratic king, Albert, asking nothing from her neighbors except to be let alone.

Owing to her geographical position, Belgium had been the "cock-pit of Europe" for centuries. Wars had been fought upon the fields of Flanders ever since the days of Julius Caesar and before. The epoch-making Battle of Waterloo took place almost within hearing of her capital city, Brussels. To free Belgium from the perpetual danger of war the great nations of Europe made, early in the last century, a solemn treaty guaranteeing her neutrality; that is, agreeing among themselves that in case of war troops were not to be moved into Belgian territory. Germany was one of the powers that signed this treaty, and the world at large supposed that she would prove faithful to

her obligations.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR 21

So confident was France that the neutrality of Belgium would be respected in case of war that she took no steps to fortify her Belgian frontier. All of France's great border fortresses, such as Verdun, Epinal, Belfort, were situated along her eastern frontier, where her territory joined that of Germany. It did not occur to the French people that Germany would ever dare to attack them by way of Belgium. One wonders at this confidence on the part of the French, since many books published in Germany dealing with the coming war had declared that Germany would certainly attack through Belgium, and great German military railroads running up to the Belgian frontier had been constructed solely for use in war. England did not feel so sure of Germany, and had already discussed with the Belgian military leaders what steps they should take in case Germany proved false to her trust.