The Guilt of William Hohenzollern

Front matter

THE GUILT OF WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN BY KARL KAUTSKY

LONDON: SKEFFINGTON & SON, LTD. PATERNOSTER HOUSE, ST. PAUL'S, E.C.

CONTENTS

Appendix

APPENDIX

The present work was already in print when I learned the results of the investigations which were undertaken by the Foreign Office during the month of October, at the instance of Herren Montgelas and Schücking, in connection with Bussche's notes on the events of July 5th and 6th in Potsdam.

Although I could no further deal with them in the text, I consider it necessary to state that they do not alter my views of those events.

They show that the Kaiser, on the morning of July 6th, sent for Admiral von Capelle, who was acting as deputy in Tirpitz's absence from Berlin, to come to Potsdam, and informed him of “the strained situation so that he might deliberate on what was to be done.”

In addition, William sent at the same time for a representative of the General Staff. He came in the person of General von Bertrab, who in his communication to the Foreign Office still speaks of the Kaiser as “H.M.” According to a report of Count Waldersee, the Kaiser informed the General, for communication to the Chief of the General Staff—General von Moltke was then at Karlsbad—that he, the Kaiser, had promised the Emperor Francis Joseph “to back him with the German forces, should complications arise out of Austria-Hungary's proposed action against Serbia.”

Count Waldersee adds:

“General von Bertrab's audience in Potsdam did not place me, General von Moltke's representative in all matters pertaining to war, under the necessity of giving any orders. The regulation mobilization-operations were concluded on March 31st, 1914. The Army was, as ever, prepared.”

This is surely a very interesting communication from the purely military standpoint. The political significance of these interviews is as little diminished thereby as it is by insisting on styling them “audiences” instead of “conferences with military authorities.”

It is also not quite clear why such violent efforts are being made to disavow those conferences. It would have been nothing short of the height of folly had William not held them, having once promised Francis Joseph “to back him with the German forces,” whatever the Serbian adventure might entail.

Having given this pledge, and having immediately afterwards started on his northern cruise, a conference with the chiefs of the Army and the Navy was the least to which William, as Supreme War Lord, was then bound. It was in this pledge, not in the military conferences, that William's guilt lay. The conferences were only the consequences of the pledge, which is confirmed anew by Count Waldersee's evidence.

Moreover, the statements of Herren Capelle, Bertrab and Waldersee confirm the secrecy in which the military conferences were wrapped. Both Capelle and Bertrab were received by the Kaiser in the park “personally and without witnesses.” Each spoke separately with him, face to face. This was certainly a council of war of no ordinary kind. All the more does it remind one of a conspiracy.

It is to be hoped that the Investigation Committee will throw full light upon this dark affair.

But enough is already known to enable us to pass a political judgment on the proceedings of that time.

THE END

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.

Chapter 1

The Guilt of William Hohenzollern

CHAPTER I WHO ARE THE GUILTY?

Since the outbreak of the world-war one question has exercised every mind: Who brought upon us this frightful calamity? In what persons or what institutions are we to find its originating cause?

This is not merely a scientific question for the historian; it is eminently a practical one for the politician. Its answer is a death-sentence for the guilty—not in the physical sense but certainly in the political. Persons and institutions whose power has produced anything so fearful must be politically flung to the dead; they must be divested of all power.

But just for this reason, because the question of the origination of the war is not an academic but a highly practical one with far-reaching consequences for the organization of public life, the real authors of it have from the beginning sought to cover up their traces. In this attempt they have found eager helpers in all those who, though not themselves involved in any responsibility, have an interest in maintaining the power of the guilty persons and institutions.

This fact has long operated to render very difficult the discovery of the true authorship of the war. On the other hand, a practical interest in the cause had its effect in sharpening the critical insight of the opposing parties, so that there were not a few who came on the right track at the beginning. Thus the fog began slowly to dissolve, until the latest publication of documents by the Austrian and German Foreign Offices dispersed it altogether. We are now in a position to see clear.

And yet one cloud lies still before our eyes. It is alleged to be a profound piece of Marxian philosophy. Marx taught that the course of history is guided not by particular persons or institutions, but in the last resort by economic conditions. Capitalism in its most developed form, that of finance, everywhere creates imperialism—the impulse towards forcible extension of the territory of the State. This law governs all States—all are warlike by nature, and from this condition the world-war proceeded. No individual persons or institutions are guilty, but Capitalism as a whole: this it is that must be combated.

That sounds very radical, and yet it works in a very conservative sense wherever this idea governs practical effort. For Capitalism is merely an abstraction, derived from the observation of numerous individual phenomena, and affording an indispensable aid in the attempt to investigate these in the law of their mutual relations.

But one cannot fight an abstraction except theoretically. It cannot be fought in the field of practice. Practically, we can only fight the individual phenomena. The theoretic comprehension of the nature of Capital does not relieve us from the necessity of this practical struggle—on the contrary, its function is to further it, inasmuch as it enables us to bring together the details of the struggle in a systematic connection, and thereby to shape it more effectively. At the same time it always remains a struggle against definite institutions and persons, as the bearers of definite social functions.

From the Marxian standpoint, therefore, one can at most say that the object of the struggle is not the punishment of the individuals against whom it is directed. Every man is merely the product of the conditions in which he grows up and lives. It is unjust to punish even the worst of criminals. The task of society is rather to take from him the possibility of doing further mischief, to make him, if possible, a useful, not a mischievous, member of society, and to remove those conditions which made him what he was and gave him the possibility and the power of doing harm.

And this is the position which a Marxist should take up towards the authors of the world-war. But it is by no means the Marxian doctrine that we should divert investigation from the guilty persons by dwelling on the impersonal guilt of Capitalism.

Marx and Engels never contented themselves with general disquisitions on the destructive effects of capital. They were just as much concerned with tracing out the working of particular institutions and parties, and their political leaders, such as Palmerston and Napoleon. To follow the same course in regard to those who brought about the world-war is not only our right, but our duty; and that not alone from a consideration of foreign but also of home politics, so that the return of the persons and institutions guilty of this fearful ruin shall be made for ever impossible.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II THE ISOLATION OF GERMANY

It has been objected that the last days before the outbreak of war should not alone be considered in deciding the question as to where the guilt lies. We must, it is said, go further back, in order to discover how the contending elements were formed. In doing this, we shall find that imperialism, and the movement for extension of territory, characterized all the Great Powers, and not Germany alone.

Very true; but this movement of extension does not wholly explain the world-war, the peculiarity of which is that all the Great Powers and several of the smaller ones took part in it, and that all the world united itself against Germany. To show how this came about is the problem we have to deal with. The mere word “imperialism” does not take us any further.

The uprise of imperialism at the close of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century is marked by the fact that, far and wide, the Great Powers began to come into conflict with each other. First we had France with Italy, and then with England; America with Spain, and also with England; England with the Boers, with whom all the world sympathized; and, finally, Russia with Japan, behind whom England stood.

During that period Germany was the least affected by these international conflicts, which sometimes broke out in war.

Germany had, indeed, in 1871, committed the great mistake of tearing Alsace and Lorraine against their will from France, and thus driving France into the arms of Russia. The French passion for revanche, for reunion with their disruptured and enslaved brethren, began, in the course of time, to take a milder form; all the more as the prospects of the French in a war with Germany grew ever worse; for the population of France remained almost stationary, while that of Germany rapidly increased, and on this account alone the latter gained a constantly growing superiority over France. In 1866 the territory of what became later the German Empire numbered forty million inhabitants; that of France thirty-eight millions. In 1870 if France had had to do, as she hoped, with Prussia alone, her enemy would have numbered only twenty-four millions. But in 1910 the population of France was only thirty-nine millions, as against sixty-five millions in Germany.

Hence the alarm of France at the thought of a war with the overpowering strength of Germany—an alarm still evident in the conditions of the Peace of Versailles. Hence, also, the need of the alliance with Russia.

Through the hostility which prevailed between Germany and France, Russia, after 1871, felt herself in the position of arbitrator between the two, and therefore master of the whole of continental Europe. Trusting in that position, Russia ventured in 1877 to make war on Turkey, and found in the end that she was only checked in the exploitation of her victory by England and Austria. In the Berlin Congress of 1878 Bismarck had to decide between these Powers and Russia. He made himself independent of the Tsar and supported Austria and England.

From that date Russia turned away from Germany and established ever closer relations with France, so that Bismarck, in spite of his strong Russian sympathies, was ever more directed towards Austria. With Austria, in 1882, he associated Italy as an ally, when the French occupied Tunis, and thus deeply wounded the Italian imperialists who had been casting their eyes on that country.

England remained in “splendid isolation” outside of both combinations, but rather inclining to the Triple Alliance than towards the Russo-French Entente. Differences had arisen with France in connection with African aspirations (Morocco and more particularly Egypt, with the Sudan). In regard to Russia, her old hostility over the question of Turkey, and particularly of India, was continually finding fresh nourishment. On the other hand, England was always on friendly terms with Austria and Italy, and stood in no pronounced opposition to Germany, whose leader, Bismarck, had inflamed England's conflicts with Russia on the one hand, and with France on the other, in order to play between them the rôle of arbitrator and of the tertius gaudens. This was not, from the moral point of view, a very lofty policy, but it was a most fruitful one for the economic prosperity of Germany. It spared Germany all wars, at the very period of the uprise of imperialism, and enabled her to enlarge her industry, her commerce, and also her colonial possessions, by exploiting, without taking part in them, the imperialistic conflicts of the other Powers.

Thus we see that even in an epoch of imperialism it was possible for a Great Power to pursue another than a warlike policy. It is true that such a policy demanded statesmen with some stuff in their heads and with sufficient independence to assert themselves against those interested in an imperialistic policy of force. Nor were the latter more wanting in Germany than elsewhere; they were, in fact, strengthened by the success of the peace policy. The fabulous upgrowth of Germany in the economic sphere at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century provided the means for powerful military armaments, and it created a class of force-loving industrial magnates, particularly in the iron industry. With these associated themselves those old partisans of the policy of force, the Junkers, and the greater part of the intellectuals, who were professionally engaged to proclaim the warlike glory of the Hohenzollerns and to inoculate the whole youth of Germany with the virus of megalomania.

Bismarck's successor, Caprivi, pursued the old policy of maintaining peace amid all the imperialistic conflicts of the surrounding world. But when Prince Bülow, in 1897, became at first Foreign Minister, afterwards (1900) Chancellor, and with him Tirpitz became Chief of the Admiralty, we saw a completely new orientation of our foreign policy—the transition to a world-policy, which meant, if it meant anything at all, the establishment of the German domination of the world.

In the measure in which these tendencies came more and more into the light, they produced also a complete alteration in the attitude of the world towards Germany. Formerly the world was imperialistically divided, and Germany, on the principle, divide et impera, was the most powerful factor in it; henceforth all mutual opposition among the various States was absorbed in the one great mass of opposition to Germany, who seemed to threaten all of them.

The beginning of this fateful change in German world-policy is to be found in the Navy Bill of 1897, which led to the competition in armaments with England, and which was only comprehensible on the supposition that its ultimate goal was the overthrow of England's supremacy at sea. And, in fact, this has been often enough avowed by pan-German organs and politicians as the task of German naval preparations.

In this way public opinion in England was intensely excited against Germany.

England won the dominion of the seas in the time of the Napoleonic wars, and no Power has since undertaken to challenge it. Shortly after the Peace of Vienna this dominion had markedly changed its character. During the first decades of the nineteenth century England was still in large measure an agrarian country, which could support its own population, if need were. Far different was the case a little later. As the most industrialized of all countries, England saw herself compelled to rely, more than any other territory, not merely for raw materials but for food, on abundant imports from oversea.

Even in 1850, England, Wales and Scotland alone, not including Ireland, had a rural population as numerous as that of the towns. In the year 1911 the town population of England and Wales amounted to 78 per cent., in Scotland to 75 per cent., of the total inhabitants of the country.

In the eighteenth century England was a corn-exporting country. Even during the early part of the nineteenth century its home production in corn nearly covered the home demand. In the decade 1811–1820 the yearly average import of wheat was only 400,000 quarters. In 1850 an import of nearly 4,000,000 quarters was required. This was increased tenfold by 1909, while the home production was only 7,000,000. Shortly before the war fully 84 per cent. of the wheat needed in England was imported from other lands.

But this whole import was carried by sea. This meant that in case of war England would be delivered over to starvation so soon as her supremacy at sea was gone. This supremacy, which at the beginning of the nineteenth century was hardly more than a means for the extension and preservation of her colonial empire—imperialistic objects, to speak in modern language—became ever a more and more indispensable condition for the maintenance of her national independence. Supremacy at sea became for the British people not only an imperialistic but a democratic demand; at least pending a general disarmament and abolition of all warfare—pacifist objects which, precisely because of the dangers attaching to war, became very popular with the English populace, not Socialists alone but also Liberals. Since the idea of supremacy at sea made its way not only into imperialistic but also into democratic sections of the people, it took on a very liberal complexion. It was not Protectionist nor Monopolist, but had Free-Trade affinities, according to the principle of the Open Door.

Thus England contrived during the whole of the nineteenth century that no other Power should cast a threatening glance upon her naval supremacy. Germany alone began this threatening policy, at the close of the nineteenth century, when England's supremacy was demanded, as a matter of life and death, far more imperatively than in the time of Napoleon I.

Anyone who knows England and the English must be aware that the German naval programme was alone sufficient to bring round ever increasing sections of the English population to the notion that Germany must at any cost be made to put a stop to her naval preparations, even through a war, if not otherwise—a war which, thanks to Germany's former policy, also threatened to array against her Russia and France.

Herr von Bülow, who inaugurated this fatal policy, himself confesses that it threatened Germany with war. In his book on “The Policy of Germany” which appeared in 1916, he writes:

“During the first ten years after the introduction of the Navy Bill of 1897 and the beginning of our ship-building, an English policy, pursued with relentless determination, would no doubt have been in a position forcibly to prevent the development of Germany as a Naval Power, and to make us incapable of doing harm before our claws, in naval matters, were grown.... And in the eighteenth month of the war the ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ confirms the view that when it had come to a settlement by force of arms England had sorrowfully to perceive that, in spite of all her schemes of encirclement, she had missed the right moment when she could have reduced her dreaded competitor to insignificance.”—Page 40.

So the naval policy was undertaken at the peril of inciting England to war with Germany. If it did not at once come to that, it was no fault of German policy; it was the restraint of England, which, instead of violently striking down the threatening foe in war, preferred the so-called “encirclement” policy, that is to say, the promotion of that isolation of Germany which her own world-policy had brought about.

The lamentable effects of the equally senseless and provocative naval policy of Germany were intensified by her obstinate sabotage of all attempts at an international understanding as to a general limitation of armaments, and at the settling of international conflicts by peaceful methods through courts of arbitration.

This was clear even at the first Hague Conference of 1899, which was concerned with the above objects.

“It was just at the time when the Hague Conference was sitting that the German Kaiser made his speech at Wiesbaden, in which he declared that a ‘well-ground sword’ was the best guarantee of peace.”

At this Conference the German delegate could not be got to vote for obligatory arbitration even in cases of demands for compensation or of juridical controversies. Even these insignificant limitations of the settlement of international conflicts by force were wrecked on the opposition of Germany, which, later on, rejected all attempts to arrive at a limitation of armaments.

What wonder that hatred of Germany spread throughout the world, not only among the rival Imperial Powers, but also among the champions of international peace and freedom!

The rôle which Tsarism had hitherto played as the worst enemy of the European democracy now fell more and more to the German military monarchy. A more senseless policy could hardly have been conceived. It stood condemned not only from the point of view of international Socialism, but also from that of any Imperialism which should try to take account of the existing position of forces. A reasonable imperialistic policy for Germany would never have been such as to call forth simultaneously the enmity both of Russia and of England, the two Powers which, with Germany, dominated Europe. It must, on the one hand, to gain its ends against Russia and her ally, France, have enlisted the support of England, which meant, above all, the abandonment of her naval competition. And this would have meant, in accordance with the character of English policy, the triumph of the principle of the Open Door throughout the whole world—a principle which offered the most brilliant prospects to German industry.

But this would not, indeed, have been a policy after the hearts of the ironmasters, monopolists and militarists. The grand object of these was extension at the cost of England. In that case, however, it was necessary to come to an understanding with Russia. Germany, in alliance with Russia and thus more fully ensured against danger from France, might with an easy mind have taken up the naval competition with England. In case of war the English could do Germany no great harm. They might occupy her colonies, suppress her ocean-trade, but could not starve her out. Germany, on the contrary, with the help of Russia on land, would have been able to wreck the foundations of England's world-position and to achieve what Napoleon I. had in other wars in vain endeavoured to effect, namely, the occupation of Egypt and an advance on India.

It was sheer insanity to attempt the overthrow of England, not in union with Russia, but in war with with Russia, France, and with the whole world.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III GERMAN PROVOCATIONS

For the moment, German policy did not mean war with the whole world. It did, however, involve the danger of such a war. The stronger the encirclement, the more complete the isolation of Germany, the more necessary it became, in her own interests, to avoid any provocative action that might entangle her in war.

The Marxist who contends that imperialism would have brought about a war in any case, whatever policy Germany had pursued, is like one who should defend a pack of silly boys for amusing themselves by throwing matches into a cask of gunpowder. The boys, he maintains, are not to blame for the devastating explosion which followed their practices, it is the circumstance that there was powder in the cask. Had there been water in it, nothing would have happened. No doubt. But in our case the boys knew there was powder in the cask—they had put a good deal of it in themselves.

One might indeed say that the greater Germany's isolation, and the more threatening the danger of a world-war, the more her provocations increased.

The growing danger itself had the effect of intensifying the bitterness on both sides; it formed a new impulse towards the increase of armaments and thereby towards the strengthening of warlike influences. It fatally increased the number of those who believed war to be unavoidable, and who therefore urged that it should be let loose, as a preventive war, at the moment when circumstances were favourable to Germany and embarrassing to the enemy.

In Germany, step by step with her military preparations, grew also the confidence in her strength. This displayed itself in many circles as a veritable megalomania, basing itself on the history of Prussia, which for a century and a half had, with the exception of Jena, nothing but victories on its record.

The pan-German section in particular exceeded all bounds in the provocations it uttered. These were of serious significance, for the pan-Germans were the leading element in those circles of society which formed the ruling class in Germany and from which its Government sprang.

The mischief was still more increased by the personality of the Kaiser, whose mind was militarist through and through, and at the same time superficial, excessively vain, and devoted to theatrical effect. He never shrank from demonstrations and speeches of the most challenging kind when he believed that they would impress those around him.

We have already noted that in the days of the first Hague Conference he declared that, as against courts of arbitration and disarmament, a well-ground sword was the best guarantee of peace.

One year later (July 27th, 1900), when troops were embarking for China at Bremerhaven, he laid down the following beautiful principles of warfare:

“No quarter is to be given. No prisoners are to be made.... As the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves a thousand years ago... so now let the name of German go down in China for a thousand years, so that a Chinaman will never again dare even to look askance at a German.”

If later on, in the world-war, the German methods of warfare were set down to a system of cruelty thought out in cold blood, and Germans got the name of Huns, the German people have their Kaiser to thank for it.

While through such utterances the German people were made abhorrent in the eyes of all humane thinkers, William, at the same time, did not hesitate to fling down his challenge to the imperialists of other lands. He began in 1896 with his telegrams to the Boer president, Kruger, in which William at the outset of the conflict between England and the Boers assured the latter of his friendship.

Shortly afterwards, in 1898, he declared himself the patron and protector of the three hundred millions of Mohammedans in the world. That included the Mohammedans in French Algeria as well as those living under English rule in Egypt and India, the Mohammedans in Russia, and those whom Russia was threatening in Turkey.

It was merely a continuation of this policy of provocation when in Tangier in 1905, as France began to take an active interest in Morocco, William promised his support to the Sultan against anyone who should threaten his independence, and later, in 1911, in connection with the same dispute, suddenly sent a war-ship to the Moroccan harbour of Agadir.

On both occasions the peace of the world was endangered. The situation was not improved by the fact that always, when the time came for the threat to be made good, William lost courage and left in the lurch those to whom he had pledged his protection. Thus it was in Morocco, and thus, most discreditably, in the case of the Boers. And this contributed to add contempt to the hatred with which Germany was regarded.

In these conflicts the antagonists on both sides were imperialists. In the war of mighty England against the little Boer Republic, the public opinion of the whole civilized world had unanimously taken part with the smaller and weaker party. In the case of Morocco, the working classes of both Germany and France were fully agreed in opposition to their Governments, and contributed not a little to the maintenance of peace. And through this attitude of the Socialist proletariate, the incalculable, abrupt and provocative element in German world-policy was to some extent reduced.

Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV AUSTRIA

The German Government, however, was not contented to play the fool in its own house alone. It felt impelled to make itself accountable also for the stupidities of Austrian policy, which likewise threatened to kindle a world-war, not indeed for objects oversea, but in relation to the independence of States in Europe itself, which were directly threatened by Austria.

The world-policy of Germany had brought it about that she had now scarcely a friend among the independent and durable States in Europe. Even relations with Italy, her ally, had grown cool. Two States alone were on terms of close friendship with Germany—two States which had lost their vitality and could only maintain themselves by powerful help from without—Austria and Turkey.

The Habsburg State, like that of the Sultan of Constantinople, was a State of nationalities which maintained itself not through the common interests of these nationalities, not through its superiority in well-being and in freedom, but solely through military force. This type of State was growing ever more irreconcilable with modern democracy, which was developing irresistibly under the influence of modern means of communication.

Austria and Turkey, at least Turkey in Europe, were thus irretrievably doomed to perish. So little did the statesmen of Germany understand this, that it was precisely these Powers on which they chose to lean. But indeed what others had their world-policy now left to them?

Both these States stood in a position of traditional hostility to Russia, which was always straining towards an outlet on the Mediterranean, towards Constantinople, but which had learned by repeated experiences that this goal could not be directly arrived at. Russia decided therefore on a circuitous route, by dissolving Turkey into a collection of small independent States, of which it was hoped that, related as they were by religion, and also in part—in the case of Serbia and Bulgaria—by language, to the Russian people, they might become vassal States of the Tsardom. In opposition to the Austrian and the Turkish Governments, Russia therefore favoured the movement for independence in the Balkans, and therefore advanced on the inevitable course of historical progress, while the other Governments set themselves against it. The same monarch whom his own subjects cursed as a hangman and the Tsar of Blood was hailed in the Balkans as the Tsar of Deliverance. Russian imperialism, indeed, would not have attained its object among the Balkan peoples. The more their strength and their independence of the Sultan increased, the more independent they tended to become as against the Tsar also. They felt themselves drawn to him so long only as they needed his protection, so long as their independence was threatened from another side.