Face to Face with Kaiserism Part 18

The package was addressed to the Emba.s.sy of the United States. I took it with me on leaving Germany and restored it to the family of the owner in Paris. The Guesnet country house lay within the German lines and the sending of the jewelry to me shows conscience somewhere in the German army.

CHAPTER XIV

AIMS OF THE AUTOCRACY

I have shown how the Kaiser is imbued with a desire of conquest, how, as he himself states, he dreamed a dream of world empire in which his mailed fist should be imposed upon all the countries of the earth.

But the Kaiser alone could not have driven Germany into war. His system could.

The head of one of the great banks of Germany told me in the first few weeks of the war that the Kaiser, when called upon at the last moment to sign the order for mobilisation by the General Staff, hesitated and did so only after the officers of the General Staff had threatened to break their swords over their knees.

If this story is true, what a pity that the Kaiser did not allow the officers to break their swords! What would have happened?

Would the military have seized the power and deposed the Kaiser, putting the Crown Prince in his place? I believe it might have happened had he refused to sign the order. The Kaiser, after leaving Kiel, attended a council at Potsdam where war was decided upon, and I really doubt whether at the last moment he did not shrink before the awful responsibility or hesitate to sign the mobilisation order.

The immediate cause of Germany's going to war was the feeling on the part of the autocracy that the people would not much longer bear the yoke of militarism. That this fear had justification was shown by the enormous vote of lack of confidence in the Reichstag after the Zabern affair. At all costs the autocracy must be preserved, and if in addition the world could be conquered, so much the better.

With modern improvements on the outside the heart of the government of Germany is that of the Middle Ages. The n.o.bles as a rule are poor, the returns from their landed estates small, and, in peace times, the army general, the Prussian n.o.ble, and the Prussian official is overshadowed in display and expenditure by the rich merchant.

Army officers, n.o.bles and governing cla.s.s felt this and believed that war would restore what they regarded as the natural equilibrium of the country, the officers, the officials and the n.o.bles at the top and the merchant cla.s.s back in its place below.

With war, retired generals living on small pensions in dingy towns once more became personages, rushing about the country in automobiles attended by brilliant staffs and holding almost the power of life and death. His lands worked by prisoners at six cents a day, and their products sold at five times the original price with no new taxes on either land or incomes, the Prussian Junker is enjoying the war.

And this autocracy can make no peace which is not a "German peace," which does not mean that the Emperor and the generals can ride through the Brandenburger Thor to celebrate the conclusion of what may be thought a victorious war.

For the plain people of Germany, while they can make no revolution now, on returning to their homes maimed and broken after four years in the trenches, will revolt at last, if a peace has been concluded which does not spell success for Germany. They will say to their government,--to the autocracy,--"We had no political power. We left everything in your hands. We had nothing to say either about the declaration of this war or its conduct.

In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and we are going to overthrow you."

It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.

And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of making peace and that the Allies refuse.

Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published, the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him.

Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms, telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and "rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the Eastern Front.

Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is not a war of conquest or aggression.

But the evidence is to the contrary.

Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and journalists, have all at different times during the war declared themselves in favour of conquest.

And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented from making peace only by the wicked Allies.

The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at a banquet, said, "I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has been poured out. But it shall not be poured in vain, for the fruit of the war shall be a strengthening of the German Empire and _the extension of its boundaries_, so far as this is necessary in order that we may be a.s.sured against future attacks."

Duke John Albert of Mecklenburg, who is the gentleman who slapped his chest and cried out to me on one occasion that Germany would never forget the export of arms and ammunition to her enemies by America and that some day Germany would have her revenge, declared also in 1915 that the war would give Germany not only a mighty African Colonial Empire but a sufficiency of strongholds on earth for their navy, commerce, coaling and wireless stations.

The Kaiser, himself, speaking in July, 1915, in his call to the German people issued from the Great General Headquarters, said "that Germany would fight until peace came, a peace which offered the necessary military, political and commercial guarantees for the future."

Vice-President Paasche of the Reichstag, in April at Kreuznach, said, "We are not allowed to speak about conditions of peace. But the wish must be given expression that lives in the heart of every German that we will not give up enemy land conquered with so much German blood."

A sentiment also expressed in April, 1915, by the National Liberal Reichstag member, Wachhorst de Wente, was to this effect: "Our fatherland must be larger. We must not allow it to be taken from us. Otherwise we will have obtained nothing except victory.

We desire also to have the reward of victory. We will not give back all."

Von Heydebrand, the Conservative Leader, the uncrowned King of Prussia, as he is called, demanded as a condition of peace "a stronger and larger Germany."

Naturally, the Conservative leaders are for conquest and annexation. Numerous articles in the Centrist Cologne _Volkzeitung_ were published protesting against giving Belgium her independence again. In April, 1916, this newspaper approved the statement of Leader Spahn of the Centrum party that the war must not end without "tangible results," and also the statement of Stresemann, another member of the Reichstag: "We demand and expect a larger Germany." In February, 1916, _Germania_, the Berlin organ of the Catholic party, demanded also a tangible prize of war as one of the conditions of peace.

Countless examples can be given from speeches in the Reichstag and from leaders and newspapers of virtually all parties in Germany, showing this desire for conquest, showing that Germany will not be content to go back to the situation before the war.

Even Maximilian Harden, who is respected all over the world because of his fearlessness and reason, has written since the war in favour of a greater Germany, thus:

"We wage the war from the rock of conviction that Germany after its deeds has a right to demand broader room on the earth and greater possibilities of action and these things we must attain."

Dr. Spahn, to-day the leader of the Centrum party, answering in December, 1915, Scheidemann, who had argued against annexation, and speaking in the name of 254 members of the Reichstag representing the citizens' parties said:

"We wait in complete union, with calm determination, and let me add, with trust in G.o.d, the hour which makes possible peace negotiations, in which forever the military, commercial, financial and political interests of Germany must, in all circ.u.mstances and by all means, be protected, including the widening of territories necessary to this end."

Ludendorff is now perhaps the man of most weight and influence, barring no one, in all Germany. When only Chief of Staff of the East Army he wrote: "The Power of Middle Europe will be strengthened, that of the Great Russians pushed back towards the East, from whence it came, at a time not very distant."

These quotations simply show that the great majority of Germans--those outside the social democratic party--of the Germans, indeed, who rule the country, conduct its commerce, and officer its army and navy--all have been infected with a dangerous microbe of Pan-Germanism and of world-conquest.

Every one who professes a knowledge of German life and character, every one who writes of the origin of the war, talks of Treitschke, Nietzsche and Bernhardi.

Nothing made the Germans angrier than to find in foreign newspapers that on this triumvirate was placed the burden of the responsibility for the war. And I agree with the complaining Germans. Bernhardi, who, during the war, was given a command behind the fighting front at Posen, was not considered a skilful general by the military or a great or even popular writer by the people.

How many people in our country or in France or in England are influenced by the lectures or writings of one college professor?

And yet, according to many out of Germany, Treitschke, the deaf professor of Heidelberg, is the one man who trans.m.u.ted the soul of Germany and incited the Empire to a cruel war.

In America you can find any brand of professor, from a professor in a Virginia College who recently boasted that he would not subscribe to American Liberty war bonds, but would send the money to the Socialist, pacifist candidate for Mayor of New York, to the Professor in the University of Chicago who based his claim to fame on the fact that he had never been kissed. What professor of history has had any great political influence beyond his own college?

And it is equally absurd to think of a Prussian Junker, sitting by the fire in the evening, deeply absorbed in the philosophy of Nietzsche. All Germans, as a matter of fact, through pride of conquest in 1864, 1866 and 1870 and great industrial success, had come to believe themselves to be supermen delegated by Heaven to win the world. Treitschke and Nietzsche were simply affected in their writings by this universal poison of overweening vanity.

They but reflected the fashion of the day in thinking; they did not lead the nation's thought. Nietzsche himself wrote in one of his letters shortly before his death which occurred in 1900, "Although I am in my forty-fifth year and have written fifteen books, I am alone in Germany. There has not been a single moderately respectful review of one of my books."

I never found a German of the ruling cla.s.s who had read anything written by Treitschke, Nietzsche or Bernhardi.

Tannenberg had more readers and a greater following, although he, of course, expresses only the aspirations of the Pan-Germans. But he presents concrete positions which any one can understand.

For instance, the German merchant looking at Tannenberg's book and seeing the map of South America coloured with almost universal German domination, smiles and approves, for he thinks German trade will swallow that rich continent and clever laws and regulations will exclude the imports of all other nations.

In some aspects Tannenberg foresaw what is happening to-day when he says, "The Finns have been waiting a long time to detach themselves from the Great Russians, their hereditary enemies."

But in the main, in his sketch of the war to which he looked forward, he failed to predict accurately the att.i.tude of the world. His predictions represent many of the dead hopes of the Pan-Germans, those Germans who believe it is the right and duty of Germany to conquer all.

Prophesying war between Germany on one side and France and Russia on the other, Tannenberg believed that more confusion and resistance to war than actually occurred would come in Bohemia and Poland following the order for mobilisation in the Slav parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He mistakenly wrote also that j.a.pan would declare war on Russia, a belief shared by the torchlight paraders of Berlin in August, 1914.

Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in believing that England and the United States would only talk but would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more than eyes to cry with."