Kitabı oku: «The German War», sayfa 2

How could an honest German whose mind was undebauched by a controlled Press justify such an interference as that? He is or should be aware that in annexing Bosnia, Austria was tearing up a treaty without the consent of the other signatories, and that his own country was supporting and probably inciting her ally to this public breach of faith. Could he honestly think that this was right? And, finally, he must know, for his own Chancellor has publicly proclaimed it, that the Invasion of Belgium was a breach of international right, and that Germany, or rather, Prussia, had perjured herself upon the day that the first of her soldiers passed over the frontier. How can he explain all this to himself save on a theory that might is right, that no moral law applies to the Superman, and that so long as one hews one’s way through the rest can matter little? To such a point of degradation have public morals been brought by the infernal teachings of Prussian military philosophy, dating back as far as Frederick the Second, but intensified by the exhortations of Press and professors during our own times. The mind of the average kindly German citizen has been debauched and yet again debauched until it needed just such a world crisis as this to startle him at last from his obsession and show him his position and that of his country in its true relation with humanity and progress.

Thus I say that for the German who stands outside the ruling classes our victory would bring a lasting relief, and some hope that in the future his destiny should be controlled by his own judgment and not by the passions or interests of those against whom he has at present no appeal. A system which has brought disaster to Germany and chaos to all Europe can never, one would think, be resumed, and amid the debris of his Empire the German may pick up that precious jewel of personal freedom which is above the splendour of foreign conquest. A Hapsburg or a Hohenzollern may find his true place as the servant rather than the master of a nation. But apart from Germany, look at the effects which our victory must have over the whole wide world. Everywhere it will mean the triumph of reasoned democracy, of public debate, of ordered freedom in which every man is an active unit in the system of his own government; whilst our defeat would stand for a victory to a privileged class, the thrusting down of the civilian by the arrogance and intolerance of militarism, and the subjection of all that is human and progressive to all that is cruel, narrow, and reactionary.

This is the stake for which we play, and the world will lose or gain as well as we. You may well come, you democratic over-sea men of our blood, to rally round us now, for all that you cherish, all that is bred in your very bones, is that for which we fight. And you, lovers of Freedom in every land, we claim at least your prayers and your wishes, for if our sword be broken you will be the poorer. But fear not, for our sword will not be broken, nor shall it ever drop from our hands until this matter is for ever set in order. If every ally we have upon earth were to go down in blood and ruin, still would we fight through to the appointed end. Defeat shall not daunt us. Inconclusive victory shall not turn us from our purpose. The grind of poverty and the weariness of hopes deferred shall not blunt the edge of our resolve. With God’s help we shall go to the end, and when that goal is reached it is our prayer that a new era shall come as our reward, an era in which, by common action of State with State, mutual hatreds and strivings shall be appeased, land shall no longer be estranged from land, and huge armies and fleets will be nightmares of the past. Thus, as ever, the throes of evil may give birth to good. Till then our task stands clear before us – a task that will ask for all we have in strength and resolution. Have you who read this played your part to the highest? If not, do it now, or stand for ever shamed.

II
THE WORLD-WAR CONSPIRACY

It is instructive and interesting now, ¹ before fresh great events and a new situation obliterate the old impressions, to put it on record how things seemed to some of us before the blow fell. A mental position often seems incredible when looked back to from some new standpoint.

I am one of those who were obstinate in refusing to recognise Germany’s intentions. I argued, I wrote, I joined the Anglo-German Friendship Society; I did everything I could for the faith that was in me. But early last year my views underwent a complete change, and I realised that I had been wrong, and that the thing which seemed too crazy and too wicked to be true actually was true. I recorded my conversion at the time in an article entitled “Great Britain and the Next War” in the Fortnightly of March, and reading over that article I find a good deal which fits very closely to the present situation. Forecasts are dangerous, but there is not much there which I would wish to withdraw. What brought about my change of view was reading Bernhardi’s book on Germany and the next war.

Up to then I had imagined that all this sabre-rattling was a sort of boyish exuberance on the part of a robust young nation which had a fancy to clank about the world in jackboots. Some of it also came, as it seemed to me, from a perfectly natural jealousy, and some as the result of the preaching of those extraordinary professors whose idiotic diatribes have done so much to poison the minds of Young Germany. This was clear enough. But I could not believe that there was a conspiracy hatching for a world-war, in which the command of the sea would be challenged as well as that of the land. No motive seemed to me to exist for so monstrous an upheaval, and no prize to await Germany, if she won, which could at all balance her enormous risks if she lost. Besides, one imagined that civilisation and Christianity did stand for something, and that it was inconceivable that a nation with pretensions to either the one or the other could at this date of the world’s history lend itself to a cold-blooded, barbarous conspiracy by which it built up its strength for a number of years with the intention of falling at a fitting moment upon its neighbours, without any cause of quarrel save a general desire for aggrandisement.

All this, I say, I could not bring myself to believe. But I read Bernhardi’s book, and then I could not help believing. I wrote an article in the hope that others who had been as blind as myself might also come to see the truth. For who was Bernhardi? He was one of the most noted officers in the German army. And here was a book addressed to his own fellow-countrymen, in which these sentiments were set forth. You could not set such a document aside and treat it as of no account. As I said at the time, “We should be mad if we did not take very serious notice of the warning.”

But the strange thing is that there should have been a warning. There is a quaint simplicity in the German mind, which has shown itself again and again in the recent events. But this is surely the supreme example of it. One would imagine that the idea that the book could be translated and read by his intended victims had never occurred to the author. As a famous soldier, it is impossible to believe that he was not in touch with the General Staff, and he outlines a policy which has some reason, therefore, to be looked upon as an official one. It is as bright a performance as if some one on Lord Roberts’s staff had written a description of the Paardeberg flank march and sent it to Cronje some weeks before it was carried out. And yet it was not an isolated example, for Von Edelsheim, who actually belongs to this amazing General Staff, published a shorter sketch, setting forth how his country would deal with the United States – an essay which is an extraordinary example of bombastic ignorance. Such indiscretions can only be explained as manifestations of an inflated national arrogance, which has blown itself up into a conviction that Germany was so sure of winning that it mattered little whether her opponents were upon their guard or not.

But Bernhardi’s programme, as outlined in his book, is actually being carried through. The whole weight of the attack was to be thrown upon France. Russia was to be held back during her slow mobilisation, and then the victorious legions from Paris were to thunder across in their countless troop trains from the western to the eastern firing-line. Britain was to be cajoled into keeping aloof until her fate was ripe. Then her fleet was to be whittled down by submarines, mines, and torpedo-boats until the numbers were more equal, when the main German fleet, coming from under the forts of Wilhelmshaven, should strike for the conquest of the sea. Such were the plans, and dire the fate of the conquered. They were in accordance with the German semi-official paper, which cried on the day before the declaration of war: “We shall win – and when we do, ‘Vae victis!’” With France it was to be a final account. Our own fate would be little better. It needs a righteous anger to wage war to the full, and we can feel it when we think of the long-drawn plot against us, and of the fate which defeat would bring.

However favourable the general trend of events, we can hardly hope to escape some bad hours during this war. The Germans are a great and brave people, with a fine record in warlike history. They will not go down without leaving their mark deep upon the Allies. We must not take the opening successes too seriously, or allow ourselves to have the edge taken off our resolution by the idea that things will necessarily go well with us. On land and sea vast efforts and occasional disappointments will await us. But it will not be long. It is, as it seems to me, absolutely impossible that it should be long. The temper of the times will not brook slow measures, nor will the enormous financial strain upon Germany be tolerated indefinitely. How dangerous is prophecy, and these very words may come back to mock me; but I cannot myself see how it can be over in less than six months, or how it could extend for more than twelve.

If it should happen that the military affairs of Germany are as rotten as her diplomacy, then it certainly should not last long. That, no doubt, is too much to expect, but there are many degrees of incapacity which are short of that extreme limit. For of that, at least, there can be no dispute. What has come from all this crazy science of Real-politik and Welt-politik and the rest of it? Simply that wherever it was possible to lose the trick Germany and her partner have done so. An alliance with Italy so loose that it was useless, a Mediterranean understanding with Austria so vague that it only operated after it had become of no service to the German cruisers, the drawing of Servia, Montenegro, and, finally, of Belgium, into the field against them, the dealing with England in the one fashion which must unite our ranks and cut the ground from under the feet of any party which might cause dissension – these are the results of the Wilhelmstrasse combinations, with Potsdam embellishments. Was there ever so colossal a muddle? Is there any one point which could have been worse handled? And then as a by-product the universal distrust and anger which such policy has aroused in the neutral countries – yes, it really is a thing complete.

But the German soldier may prove himself as good as ever. That he will be as brave as ever I have no doubt at all. That he will be as hardy as ever is less likely, as the population of the Fatherland has drifted largely from fields to factories, and as the standard of comfort, and even luxury, have greatly increased. The Westphalian artisan of William is very different material from the Brandenburg peasant of Frederick, even as the short-service soldier of 1914 is very different from the ten-year man of 1750. I should expect to see the German as good, but no better than his neighbours. But the whole issue of this campaign depends, from his point of view, upon his being better. He has to win against superior numbers. He must not only win, but win quickly. If an equilibrium were established, the strangulation from England must bring victory to the Allies. It is a great deal that the Kaiser has asked from his men.

And there is his much-vaunted military organisation. An American friend of mine, who had means of forming an opinion, remarked to me, “Yes, it is a huge and smooth-running machine, with delicate adjustments. Like all such machines, if a few cogwheels stuck the whole might racket itself to pieces.” A cogwheel stuck at Liége, another may stick before long, and it all depends on how the machine can adjust itself. The lesson of history is ominous. The Prussians of Jena and Auerstadt were men who had been swollen up by the tradition of Frederick’s prowess. Yet in a single day their defeat was so great and their power of recuperation so slight that they were utterly dispersed, and their country for seven years ceased to exist as a factor in European politics. They have always been great winners. They have not always been great in adversity. How will they now stand this test if it should come their way?

III
THE DEVIL’S DOCTRINE

I have been interesting and exasperating myself, during a most untimely illness, ² by working through a part of the literature of German Imperial Expansion. I know that it is only a part, and yet when I look at this array – Treitschke and Bernhardi, Schiemann and Hasse, Bley, Sybel, “Gross-Deutschland” and “Germania Triumphans” – it represents a considerable body of thought. And it is the literature of the devil. Not one kindly sentiment, not one generous expression, is to be found within it. It is informed with passionate cupidity for the writer’s country and unreasoning, indiscriminate hatred and jealousy towards everything outside it – above all, towards the British Empire. How could such a literature fail to bring about a world-coalition against the country which produced it! Were there no Germans who foresaw so obvious a result? The whole tendency of the doctrine is that Germany should, artichoke fashion, dismember the world. Not a word is said as to the world suddenly turning and dismembering her. But was not that the only protection against such monstrous teaching as these books contain?

You may object that these Imperialists were but a group of monomaniacs and did not represent the nation. But the evidence is the other way. They represented that part of the nation which counts in international politics – they represented the Kaiser and his circle, Von Tirpitz and the Navy men, Krupp, von Bohlen and the armour-plated gang, the universities where such doctrines were openly preached, the Army, the Junkers – all the noisy, aggressive elements whose voice has sounded of late years as the voice of Germany. All were infected by the same virus of madness which has compelled Europe to get them once for all into a strait-jacket.

The actual policy of State was conducted on the very lines of these teachings, where the devilish doctrine that war should be for ever lurking in a statesman’s thoughts, that he should be prepared to pounce upon a neighbour should it be in a state of weakness, and that no treaty or moral consideration should stay his hand, is repeated again and again as the very basis of all state-craft. At the time of the Agadir crisis we have the German Minister of Foreign Affairs openly admitting that he took the view of the fanatical Pan-Germans. “I am as good a Pan-German as you,” said Kiderlen-Waechter to the representative of the League. Each was as good or as bad as the other, for all were filled with the same heady, pernicious stuff which has brought Europe to chaos.

Where, now, is that “deep, patient Germany” of which Carlyle wrote? Was ever a nation’s soul so perverted, so fallen from grace! Read this mass of bombast – learned bombast of professors, vulgar bombast of Lokal-Anzeigers and the like, but always bombast. Wade through the prophetic books with their assumption that Britain must perish and Germany succeed her; consult the scolding articles and lectures, so narrow, ungenerous, and boastful in their tone, so utterly wanting in the deeper historical knowledge or true reading of a rival’s character; see the insane Pan-German maps, with their partitions of Europe for the year 1915 or thereabouts; study the lectures of the crazy professors, with their absurd assumption of accurate knowledge and their extraordinary knack of getting every fact as wrong as it could possibly be – take all this together, and then say whether any nation has ever in this world been so foolishly and utterly misled as have the Germans.

I have alluded to their knack of getting everything wrong. It is perfectly miraculous. One would not have thought it possible that people could be always wrong. So blinded have they been by hate that everything was distorted. Never even by accident did they stumble upon the truth. Let us take a list of their confident assertions – things so self-evident that they were taken for granted by the average journalist:

“The British Army was worthless; its presence on the Continent, even if it could come, was immaterial.

“Britain herself was absolutely decadent.

“Britain’s commerce could be ruined by the German cruisers.

“The United States would fall upon us if we were in trouble.

“Canada and Australia were longing to break away from the Empire.

“India loathed us.

“The Boers were eager to reconquer South Africa.

“The Empire was an artificial collection of States which must fly to pieces at the first shock.”

This was the nonsense which grave Berlin Professors of History ladled out to their receptive students. The sinister Treitschke, who is one of half a dozen men who have torn down Imperial Germany just as surely as Roon, Bismarck, and Moltke built it up, was the arch-priest of this cult. Like Nietzsche, whose moral teaching was the supplement to the Pan-German Material doctrine, Treitschke was not, by extraction, a German at all. Both men were of the magnetic Slav stock, dreamers of dreams and seers of visions – evil dreams and dark visions for the land in which they dwelt. With their magic flutes they have led the whole blind, foolish, conceited nation down that easy, pleasant path which ends in this abyss.

Nietzsche was, as his whole life proved, a man upon the edge of insanity, who at last went obviously mad. Treitschke was a man of great brain power, who had an idée fixe– a monomania about Britain. So long as he raved in Berlin, Englishmen took no more notice than they do of an anarchist howling in the park; for it is the British theory that a man may say and think what he will so long as he refrains from doing. But Treitschke was always dangerous. He was magnetic, eloquent, enthusiastic, flashing wondrous visions of the future before his listeners, varying in beauty, but always alike in that they were seen across our prostrate body. Those who are in a position to judge, like the late Professor Cramb, say that his influence on young Germany could only be compared with that of Carlyle and Macaulay united in Great Britain. And now, after his death, his words have all sprung to deeds to the ruin of his own country and to the deep misfortune of ours. He used to visit England, this strange and sinister man, but as he was stone deaf his bodily presence brought him little nearer to us. With useless ears and jaundiced eyes he moved among us, returning to Berlin for the new Semester as ignorant as he had left it, to rail against us once again. He worked to harm us, and he has done so, but Lord! what is the worst that he has done to us compared with the irretrievable ruin that he has brought to his own country! He and Von Tirpitz, Count Bieberstein, Maximilian Harden and a few more, to say nothing of the head plotter of all – a fine Germany they will leave behind them! Treitschke is dead, and so is Bieberstein, but a good many of their dupes may live to see the day when Indian princes ride as conquerors down Unter den Linden and the shattered remains of the braggadocio statues of the Sieges Allée, that vulgar monument of bastard Imperialism, will expiate the honoured ashes of Louvain.

But the stupidity of it all – that is the consideration which comes in a wave to submerge every other aspect of the matter. For consider the situation: as lately as 1897 the European grouping was clear. The antagonists were already ranged. Russia had definitely taken her side with France; against them, equally definitely, were Germany and Austria, whilst Italy clearly was on an orbit by herself. War sooner or later was a certainty. Unattached, but with a distinct bias to Germany on racial, religious, and other grounds, lay Great Britain, the richest Power in the world, the ruler of the seas, and a nation which was historically tenacious and unconquerable in war. Was it not clear that the first interest of Germany was to conciliate such a Power and to make sure that if she were not an ally she would at least never be an enemy? No proposition could be clearer than that. And yet cast your minds back and remember the treatment and bearing of Germany towards Britain since that date – the floods of scorn, the libels, the bitter attacks, the unconcealed determination to do her harm. See how it has all ended, and how this atmosphere of hatred has put a driving force into Great Britain which has astonished ourselves. This is the end of all the clever Welt-Politik. Truly Quos Deus vult perdere– the gods must have willed it much, for no nation was ever madder.

Where were the sane Germans? Why was there no protest from them? Perhaps there was, but we never heard of it amid the beating of those great Pan-German drums. Did the whole nation, for example, really agree in so harebrained a scheme as the Bagdad Railway? Think of the insanity of such a project as that. Here is a railway representing very many millions of German capital which is built in the heart of Asia Minor, as far removed from any sort of German protection or effective control as if it were in the moon. The next step, vaguely thought out, was that German settlers were to be planted along the line of the railroad, but upon that being advanced the Turks, who had smiled most amiably at the actual railway construction, put down their slippers in the most emphatic manner. The net result, therefore, would seem to be that Turkey holds a hostage of a great many millions of German capital which, so long as Germany behaves herself, may or may not return some interest; but if Germany goes against Turkish wishes could at once be confiscated. Apart from Turkey, Russia in the Caucasus, and England in North-West India regard with a good deal of interested attention this singular and helpless German railway which projects out into space.

There is one phase of their doctrines which has, perhaps, received less attention than it deserves. It will be found very fully treated in Professor Usher’s book on Pan-Germanism, which, coming from an American authority who seems to have studied his subject very thoroughly, has the merit of impartiality. This proposition is that just as a treaty is only a scrap of paper, so also is a bond or debenture, and that just as the highest interest of a nation may at any moment override ordinary morality, the same vital urgency may justify anything in the nature of repudiation of debt. This is not to be done on account of inability to pay the debt; but through a deliberate, cold-blooded plot to weaken the creditor by robbing him of his property.

Modern Germany has been largely built up by foreign capital. In war, if Germany is conquered the debt necessarily holds good. But if Germany wins, part of her reward of victory is the complete repudiation of all debts. Thus the glorious or inglorious prize of success would be, that all her vast industrial plant would be freed from every debenture and start without an encumbrance, a free present from the enemy. This example, they hope, would lead other nations to do the same, and so still further ruin the finances of England and France, which are the great lending nations of the earth. They frankly admit that such a coup would make it very difficult for their nation to borrow money again, but on the other hand, they would have made such an immense profit over the transaction that they would be able to go on for many years without any need of more capital. “To secure so stupendous a result as this,” said the American Professor, “is well worth the expenditure of money for building a fleet. That money, so far as the German nation is concerned, is merely invested in an enterprise from which they confidently expect returns perhaps a hundred-fold.”

As to the morality of this transaction, the Professor, who has certainly no anti-German bias, expresses their views very plainly. It is the same as Frederick the Great’s views as to the morality of treaties which have descended with such fatal effects upon his successor on the Prussian throne. Once admit such anti-social theories and there is no end to their application. Here it is in the domain of economics just as shameless as in that of politics. “Once more,” says the Professor, “the Germans hear around them our cries against the morality of this procedure. The Germans refuse to recognise as moral anything which jeopardises their national existence.” They are to be the judges of what these are, and if repudiation of debt is considered to be one of them, then all debt may be repudiated. They will not put their views into practice this time because they will not be the victors, but when the reconstruction of Germany begins and she comes once again as a chastened borrower into the market-place of the world, it would be well to have some assurance as to how far she retains these views upon commercial morality.

But I have visions of a really chastened Germany, of a Germany which has sloughed all this wicked nonsense, which has found her better self again, and which is once more that “deep, patient Germany” with which I began this essay. She never can be now what she could so easily have been. She could have continued indefinitely to extend from Poland to the Vosges, one vast community, honoured by all for industry and for learning, with a huge commerce, a happy, peaceful, prosperous population, and a Colonial system which, if smaller than that of nations which were centuries older in the field, would at least be remarkable for so short a time. None of these things would the world have grudged her, and in the future as in the past she would have found in the British Dominions and in Great Britain herself an entry for her products as free as if she were herself part of the Empire.

All this must be changed for the worse, and it is just that she should suffer for her sins. The work of sixty years will be destroyed. But will not the spiritual Germany be the stronger and better? We cannot say. We can but hope and wait and wonder. What is sure is that the real Germany, of whom Carlyle spoke, can never be destroyed. Nor would we desire it. Our wrath is not against Germany, but against that Krupp-Kaiser-Junker combination which has brought her to such a deadly pass.