The Lost Fruits of Waterloo

The Germans are a docile people with respect to their superiors, and this trait is a condition of their Kultur. It is traditional in Germany for the peasant to obey his lord, the lord to obey his over-lord, and the over-lord to obey his ruler. To the kaiser look all the people in a sense which no citizen of the United States can understand without using a fair amount of imagination. The lords and over-lords constitute the Junkers, who in the modern military system make up the officer class. A high sense of authority runs through the whole population, the upper classes knowing how to give orders and the lower classes knowing how to take them.

Before the battle of Jena, 1806, the Prussian army was made up of peasants forced to serve under the nobles, who took the offices. Townsmen were excluded from the army. The peasant’s forced service lasted twenty years. The system was as inefficient as it was unequal, and a commission was appointed to reform it. The result was the modern system of universal service, put into complete operation in 1813. After a hundred years it is possible to see some of the effects of the system on the ideals of the people. It has taught them to work together in their places, formed habits of promptness and cleanliness, and lessened the provincialism of the lower classes. It has been a great training school in nationalism, preserving the love of country and instilling in the minds of the masses a warm devotion to the military traditions of the nation.

It has also produced results of a questionable value. By fostering the military spirit it has developed a desire for war, on the same principle that a boy in possession of a sharp hatchet has a strong impulse to hack away at his neighbor’s shrubbery. It is probable that the temptation to use a great and superior army was a vital fact in bringing on the present war. Furthermore, the wide-spread habit of docility leaves a people without self-assertion and enables their rulers to impose upon them. As to the influence of universal service in promoting militarism, that has been frequently mentioned.

On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that not all states that have had universal military training have been saddled with these evils. France, for example, has had universal training without becoming obsessed with the passion for war and without the loss of popular individualism. It seems well to say that universal training itself does not produce the evils sometimes attributed to it. In Germany, at least, it seems that it was the purpose for which the army existed, and not the army itself, that developed militarism and brought other unhappy effects.

Probably the German army before the war was the most efficient great human machine then in existence. There was less waste in it and less graft than in any other army. Since the army included all the men of the empire at some stage or other of their existence, it was a great training school in organization. Its effects on German history are hardly to be exaggerated.

I have said that military organization alone was not sufficient to make the modern Germany. It was also necessary to give the nation a definite national purpose, and this was the task of its intellectual leaders. The purpose itself was expressed in the idea of German nationality. By a bold stretch of fancy every part of Europe that had once been ruled by Germans, that spoke the German language, or that could be considered as a part that ought to speak that language was fixed upon as territory to be brought within the authority of the Fatherland. It was in accordance with this principle that Schleswig-Holstein was taken from Denmark in 1864 and Alsace-Lorraine in 1871. Here the march of annexation paused. Bismarck was too wise to carry the theory to an extreme; but a growing number of writers and speakers in the empire took up the idea and kept it before the people with winning persistence. It is thus that Pan-Germanism has come to be one of the great facts in German public opinion. By preaching race unity with patriotic zeal the intellectual leaders have established a powerful propaganda of expansion.

Of the men most prominently associated with this movement especial attention must be given to Heinrich von Treitschke, for years professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Berlin, whose remarkable influence reached all classes of people. He was a handsome man with an open face that invited admiration without appearing to care whether it was given or not. When he spoke the auditor heard “a raucous, half-strangled, uneasy voice” and noticed that his movements were mechanical and his utterances were without regard to the pauses that usually stand for commas and periods, while his pleasant facial expression had no apparent relation to what he was saying. The explanation was that he was so deaf that he did not hear himself speak. That such a speaker could fire the heart of a nation is evidence that he was filled with unusual earnestness and sympathy.

He had great love of country, and if he exalted royalty and strong government it was because he thought that Germany would reach her highest authority through them. It was no selfish or incompetent king that he worshiped, but one that lived righteously and sought diligently to promote the interest of the people. He held that the nobility should serve as thoroughly as the common men. Strong government in his idea did not mean privilege, as ordinarily understood, but vital energy in all the organs of administration, efficiently directed by a will that was not hampered by the contrarywise tugging of individual opinions.

Treitschke’s penetrating eloquence was heard throughout the land. Editors, preachers of religion, schoolmasters, authors, members of the legislative assemblies, high officials, and even ministers of state came to his class-room and went away to carry his ideas into other channels. He inspired the men who did the actual thinking for the nation. All his efforts were expended for what he considered the enhancement of Germany’s position among nations.

In giving him his due we must not overlook his faults. He was narrow in his ideas of international relations. His exaltation of Germany would have left other nations at her mercy. He seems to have had small respect for the principle of live-and-let-live among states. As much as any one in his country he was responsible for the idea that the British are a pack of hypocrites, offering inferior races the Bible with one hand and opium with the other. That they had not a good record with respect to the opium trade is true, but it was sheer narrowness to make it the chief characteristic of a people who have done a great work in behalf of the backward races.

Although Treitschke wrote many pamphlets on topics of current interest, all bearing upon what he considered the destiny of Germany, he was preëminently a historian. It was by telling the story of Germany since the revival of national feeling after the battle of Jena that he wished to serve best the generation in which he lived. For him it was the historian to whom was committed the task of making the citizen realize what place he had in the nation’s complex of duties and hopes.

He came upon the scene when history had become fixed upon the basis of accuracy and detached research. Men like Leopold von Ranke had insisted that history should deal with the cold exploitation of universal laws. For them Treitschke was a bad historian, and they used their influence to prevent his appointment at the University of Berlin. He was a Chauvinist, undoubtedly, and his History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century is a highly colored picture of what he conceived the reader should know about the history of his country. It is a work written to arouse the enthusiasm of the people for their country, rather than to instruct them in the universal laws of human development; and it would be a sad day for the world if all history were written as he wrote this. But it was a powerful appeal to national pride and energy. It played a great part in the formation of the Germany with which we are concerned in this chapter, the striving, self-confident, and aspiring empire that set for itself the task of dominating the European continent.

This chapter is not written to reconcile American readers to the German side of the controversy that now engages the attention of all men. I wish to enable the reader to have a clear view of the people with whom we fight. It is they with whom we must deal in building up the system out of which the future is to be constructed again; and we shall not know how to deal with them if we do not see their point of view and know what they are thinking about.

If in some of their ideals they are superior to other peoples, and if their organization of individuals into the state has some elements of strength not found in other systems, it is not for us to seek to destroy the advantage they have won. It would be better for us to adopt their good points, in order that we might the more surely defeat them on the field of battle. Having won the victory we desire, we should certainly not seek to destroy that which we cannot replace. Live and let live, a principle which Germans have ignored in some important respects, must be recognized after the military ambition of Germany is broken, if we are to have an enduring peace.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FAILURE OF THE OLD EUROPEAN SYSTEM

Much has been written to prove that one side or the other was responsible for the present war. Minute facts, as the words in a dispatch, or the time at which the troops were mobilized, or whether or not a preliminary summons of troops to the colors was in itself an act of mobilization, have become the subjects of bitter debate. Such questions will have to be settled by the historians of the future years: they cannot be discussed here with any profit, since this book is an appeal to the reason of men on each side of the controversy.

Back of the events of July, 1914, is a more fundamental cause of the war. It is the breakdown of the systems of concert and balance to which the powers had trusted themselves. Castlereagh and Metternich allowed themselves to slip into these theories, when they set aside the suggestion of a federated Europe, which came from Alexander I. Granted that the tsar’s dream was too ethereal for a world steeped in selfishness, it does not follow that a policy entirely devoted to the balancing of selfishness with selfishness would have preserved peace.

On the other hand, we must admit that nations are not idealists. Selfishness is their doctrine. So long as the project of a federation is viewed idealistically it is practically impossible. But if it ever comes to be admitted by the people who count in political things that it is for the interests of the nations to adopt it, that is, if it is brought within what we may call the sphere of selfishness, it ceases to be idealistic and comes to be a subject worthy of the consideration of the practical statesman.

Furthermore, the political philosopher has ever to answer the question, “What about the future?” What are we going to do after the present debauch of waste and murder is over? Are we to trust the world to the same old forces that brought us this ruin? One says that human nature is the same forever, that it learns only in the hard school of experience, and that it must fight its wars as the price it pays for being human nature. To such a man the Napoleonic wars did all that could be expected of them when they so impressed the world with the cost of war that a system was adopted which gave the world a measure of peace for a hundred years. “What more can you ask?” said such a philosopher to me. In humble responsibility to the throne of reason I reply that we can try as intelligent beings to remove the war madness permanently, making it our duty to posterity to do the best we can. Some generation must make the start, or we shall wring our hands forever.

In this chapter I wish to show in what way the old system crumbled before the desire of world power. It seems a vicious system by virtue of its innate qualities of selfishness, and it is all the more to be feared because its subtle spirit gets control of our own hearts as well as the hearts of other men. While our opponents – Germany and Austria – were following the system to its bitter conclusion, our friends – Great Britain, France, and Italy – were doing nearly the same things, but in a slightly different way. And there is no reason to expect that under the continuation of the balancing of great and ambitious world powers we shall have more respect for the rights of one another than we had in the past.

The system of Balance of Power flourished best in Bismarck’s time. It was his strong personality that held together the Three Emperors’ League for a brief season and the Triple Alliance for a longer period. Each of these groups had certain interests in common which gave them coherence: Bismarck alone knew how to exploit these mutual advantages and lessen the jars of clashing feelings. His objects were made easier by the fact that most of the other nations of Europe at that time had developed quarrels of their own. Great Britain and Russia were at swords’ points over the Far Eastern question, and France and Great Britain had not forgotten their century old antagonism, which only a minor dispute was sufficient to set aflame.

Moreover, Great Britain was engaged in a vast task of empire building. Manufactures increased rapidly in the United Kingdom, an ever growing trade threw out ever expanding tentacles to the remotest parts of the world, and the growth of the colonies produced greater prosperity at home and abroad than the most hopeful Briton had previously thought within the bounds of probability. She was too busy with this splendid process of internal prosperity to take notice of what was happening on the Continent, so long as her own interests were not threatened. From her standpoint Bismarck’s policy of preserving peace through the means of a German predominating influence was a welcome relief from other burdens.

This state of affairs was prolonged for at least fifteen years after the death of Bismarck. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s temperamental impetuousness did not break up the balance that had been established, although many prophets had foretold such a thing. As the corner-stone of the Triple Alliance Germany was looked upon as the protector of European peace, and the kaiser, it is said, was pleased to regard himself as the man especially responsible for that policy.

It is difficult to say when and how this happy situation began to be undermined and whose was the responsibility. One cause of the rupture was the rapid growth of German manufactures and trade, which brought about stern competition between the business interests of Germany and Great Britain. The newspapers of the two nations, like all other newspapers of modern times, were closely connected with the capitalistic interests of the respective states, and voiced the alarm and antipathy of the industrial classes. Thus the people of Germany and the people of Britain were stimulated to a condition of mutual distrust. They believed that each practiced the most disreputable tricks of competition against the other, and each talked of destroying the industry of the other. It is difficult to say who is responsible for the beginning of commercial rivalry.

Late in the last century Germany began to enlarge her navy with the evident purpose of making it rival the navy of Great Britain. Her justification was found in the idea that a navy was necessary to protect the great commerce that she was building up. At the same time German writers began to make many criticisms on the British claim of being mistress of the seas. “Freedom of the seas” became a phrase of comfort in their mouths. It is not clear that it meant what it seemed to say; for the seas were as free to the Germans in times of peace as to any other people, and Germany’s plan to build a great fleet that would defeat the British fleet would establish that same kind of rule at sea that Great Britain through her naval superiority then held.

Now it is very certain that Germany had a perfect right to enter each of these two fields of endeavor. The contests of industry are open to all, and the laws of peace protect them. She had the right, also, to build up her navy, although she should not have expected to overtop the British navy specifically without arousing the hostility of the British people. The insular position of the United Kingdom and its relations with its colonies are such that a navy is its surest protection if assailed in war; and to fall into a second position is to hold its life at the permission of another state. Germany must have seen this phase of the situation. Her statesmen were poor leaders of men if they did not realize that they were entering upon a rivalry in which was the possibility of great resistance.

Another phase of the opposition that was steadily rising against Germany was the general alarm at the growth of her military power. Her army and navy ever increased in size and readiness for that initial rush to victory which is half the struggle in modern war. At the same time German leaders did not disguise their desire for the enlargement of German territory on the Continent. The Pan-German party made a great deal of noise, and other nations were not reassured by being told that the party was not as strong as its agitation seemed to indicate.

Now and again one read in some German paper an assertion to the effect that Germany was bound to become the dominant power in Europe and that she would next turn on the United States. How many Americans have not heard some over-confident German friend make a prophecy of like import? It was evident that many Germans regarded the great republic of the West as an over-fattened commercial nation without the power of resistance and destined at the proper time to furnish rich nourishment for their conquering arms. That we considered these thoughts but the idle boasts of a nation intoxicated by success did not lessen the conviction of ourselves and others that Germany was running into a state of mind that required coöperative measures of resistance on the part of people who might become victims of her infatuation.

While these two processes of national feeling ran their courses, several political events, which have already been described added vigor to the antagonism that was rising against Germany. Her attitude toward the Boers when they were at war against Great Britain was one, Delcassé’s wise adjustment of the Fashoda incident was another, his clever formation of the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain was another, the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese alliance was still another, the defeat of Russia by Japan and her elimination as a threat against British interests in India was another, and the formation of the Triple Entente by Great Britain, France, and Russia, announced in 1907, was the final act of the series. Great Britain was not only again seriously concerned in Continental affairs, but a combination had been formed of three great European nations, with the strongest power of the East as a flying buttress, to hold back the much dreaded aggressions of the Triple Alliance, consisting of Germany, Austria, and Italy. The Balance of Power had come to its most logical state of development; for instead of having one great state balancing between the other states around it, we now had the great states of the world ranged in two camps, each side checking the other in the belief that in so doing it was preserving the world from war.

It is hard to establish a balance when two opposing sides are strong and mutually jealous of one another; for the opposition of forces is then formed to secure mutual advantages, and not to promote the common interest through the preservation of equilibrium. In such a case one side or the other, possibly each side, is apt to fancy itself the stronger, and if it acts on that assumption it arouses the apprehension of the other which finds itself tempted to make a counter stroke. Once such a step is taken equilibrium is lost. This is what happened in 1914. The train of events that led up to the destruction of the international balance is now to be described.

Here we must go back to the days when Delcassé was foreign secretary in Paris, 1898–1905. One of his achievements was to come to agreement with Spain and Italy in reference to the northern coast of Africa. He effected a treaty with the former nation by which French and Spanish spheres of influence in Morocco were defined, and another with Italy by which the right of France in Tunis was accorded in exchange for recognition of the right of Italy to Tripoli and Cyrenaica.

Making this treaty by Italy did not constitute treason to the Triple Alliance, since it was clearly advantageous for Italy without infringing the rights of either Germany or Austria; but it alarmed Germany, already drawing close to Turkey, because the object of Italian policy was to get territory over which Turkey had a vital claim. Nor was it pleasant for the kaiser to see one of the members of the Triple Alliance acting in coöperation with the members of the Entente in so important a matter.

Taking these achievements in connection with the formation of the Dual Alliance and the mutual approach of France and Great Britain, Germany had reason to feel that she was being isolated. Her whole population resented this turn of events, seeing in it a sort of challenge hurled forth by France, who at last found herself strong enough to assume a position of self-assertion. It is true that Delcassé only placed Germany in a position of isolation like that which Bismarck imposed on France for many years; and it was, in strict logic, as fair for him to treat Germany thus as for Bismarck to isolate France. Let Germany submit to her fate, as France submitted, when she had to submit. But we are not dealing with logical matters here. It is a plain fact that confronts us. Germany, who had been strong through three decades without seeking to expand her territory, suddenly realized that her opponents were forming a combination stronger than hers, their acquisition of territory that followed set her in a rage, and she made plans for getting her share in the world that was to be taken. Under the system of balance then recognized as the proper means of regulating international relations her course was a natural result of Delcassé’s policy.

The particular portion of the earth to which she turned her eyes was Turkey. While she supported the plans of Austria-Hungary to acquire territory on the Adriatic, she herself looked further to the East. She encouraged the party at Constantinople known as the “Young Turks,” she furnished improved arms to the Turkish army, she formed plans to establish her influence in Palestine, and she projected a great railroad to Bagdad in the center of the Euphrates-Tigris Valley. It was a sphere of influence that might be considered more than a fair offset for the lands her rivals were about to gain.

At the same time Germany found a means of restoring her prestige, which was sorely wilted by the progress of her rivals. The occasion arose in connection with France’s occupation of Morocco, which had begun without the aid or consent of the kaiser.

Morocco had long been under a line of independent sultans. Most of her commerce was with Great Britain although German capitalists had received concessions within her border. As the country next to the French province of Algeria, France looked upon it as her own particular sphere of influence. We have already seen that Italy conceded this claim, 1901, while France conceded Italy’s claim to Tripoli and Cyrenaica. In 1904 France conceded Great Britain’s practical supremacy in Egypt and in return was assured the protectorate over Morocco. She asked no concession from Germany but came to an agreement with Spain, who had a small strip of territory south of the Straits of Gibraltar.

In 1905 Delcassé was quietly preparing to carry out his plan for the development of Morocco, when the kaiser landed in Tangiers without the slightest warning, and announced in a public address that he had come to visit his friend, the independent sultan of Morocco, in whose country all foreign nations had equal rights. The speech was received by the world as a challenge to France and a means of announcing that Germany was no longer to be ignored. The moment of the landing at Tangiers was well chosen by the kaiser; for only three weeks earlier Russia, the ally of France, had been defeated by the Japanese at Mukden and could give her no assistance.