Face to Face with Kaiserism Part 2

WHO SANK THE "LUSITANIA"?

Who is responsible for the sinking of the _Lusitania_, for the deliberate murder which has always remained deep in the consciousness of every American, and which at the outset turned this great nation against Germany?

In the first place there was no mistake--no question of orders exceeded or disobeyed. Count von Bernstorff frankly, boldly, defiantly, and impudently advertised to the world, with the authority of the German Government, that the attempt to sink the _Lusitania_ would be made. The Foreign Office, no doubt, acquainted him with the new policy. Von Tirpitz, then actual head of the Navy Department and virtual head of the whole navy, openly showed his approval of the act, and threw all his influence in favor of a continuation of ruthless tactics. But a question which involved a breach of international law, a possible break with a friendly power, could not be decided by even the Foreign Office and Navy together.

The Great General Staff claims a hand in the decision of all questions of foreign policy which even remotely affect the conduct of the war. Similarly it was the duty of the Foreign Office to point out the possible consequences under the rules of international law; but when the question of submarine warfare was to be determined, the consultation was usually at the Great General Headquarters. At these meetings von Tirpitz or the navy presented their views and the Great General Staff sat with the Emperor in council, although it was reported in Charleville at the time of the settlement of May, 1916, that Falkenhayn, speaking in favour of submarine war, had been rebuked by the Emperor, and told to stick to military affairs.

All the evidence points to the Emperor himself as the responsible head who at this time ordered or permitted this form of murder.

The orders were given at a time when the Emperor dominated the General Staff, not in one of those periods, as outlined in a previous chapter when the General Staff, as at present, dominated the Emperor. When I saw the Kaiser in October, 1915, he said that he would not have sunk the _Lusitania_, that no gentleman would have killed so many women and children. Yet he never disapproved the order. Other boats were sunk thereafter in the same manner and only by chance was the loss of life smaller when the _Arabic_ was torpedoed. It is argued that, had the Emperor considered beforehand how many non-combatants would be killed, he would not have given the order to sink that particular boat. But what a lame excuse! A man is responsible for the natural and logical results of his own acts. It may be too that Charles IX, when he ordered, perhaps reluctantly, the ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, did not know that so many would be killed, but there can be no Pilate-washing-of-the-hands,--Emperor William was responsible. He must bear the blame before the world.

Blood-shed in honorable war is soon forgotten; but the cowardly stroke by which the Kaiser sought to terrorise America, by which he sent to a struggling death of agony in the sea, the peaceful men and women and children pa.s.sengers of the _Lusitania_, may ever remain a cold boundary line between Germany and America unless the German people utter a condemnation of the tragedy that rings true and repentant.

We want to live at peace with the world when this war is over, to be able to grasp once more the hands of those now our enemies, but how can any American clasp in friendship the hand of Germans who approve this and the many other outrages that have turned the conscience of the world against Germany?

To Americans in Berlin, the sinking of the _Lusitania_ came like a lightning stroke. No Bernstorff warnings had prepared us. I believed I would be recalled immediately. In making preparations to leave, I sent a secretary to see the head of one of the largest banks in Germany, a personal friend, to ask him, in case we should leave, to take for safe-keeping into his bank our silver, pictures, etc. He said to my secretary, "Tell Judge Gerard that I will take care of his valuables for him, but tell him also, that if the _Mauretania_ comes out to-morrow we shall sink her, too."

That was the att.i.tude of a majority of the business men of Germany. German casualties at that time had been great so that the mere loss of human life did not appal as would have been the case in a country unused to the daily posting of long lists of dead and wounded. Consequently the one feeling of Germany was of rejoicing, believing indeed that victory was near, that the "d.a.m.ned Yankees" would be so scared that they would not dare travel on British ships, that the submarine war would be a great success, that France and England deprived of food, steel and supplies from America soon would be compelled to sue for peace, especially since the strategically clever, if unlawful, invasion of France by way of Belgium had driven the French from the best coal and iron districts of their country.

I do recall that one Imperial Minister, a reasonable individual whose name I think it best not to mention, expressed in private his sorrow, not only for the deed itself, but for the mistaken policy which he saw, even then, would completely turn in the end the sympathies of America to the Entente Allies. And there were others,--among the intellectuals, and, especially, among the merchants of Hamburg and Frankfort who had travelled in the outer world both on pleasure and business, who realised what a profound effect the drowning of innocent men, women and children would have on our peace-loving people.

Many of these men said to me, "The sinking of the _Lusitania_ is the greatest German defeat of all the war. Its consequences will be far-reaching; its impression, deep and lasting."

The Teutonic Knights, from whom the ruling cla.s.s of Prussia is descended, kept the Slavic population in subjection by a reign of physical terror. This cla.s.s believes that to rule one must terrorise. The Kaiser himself referring to the widespread indignation caused by German outrages of the present war, has said: "The German sword will command respect."

Terrorism--"Schrecklichkeit"--has always formed a part, not only of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in what particular do you think Americans are so different from Germans?" But they shrugged their shoulders.

I have heard that in parts of Germany school children were given a holiday to celebrate the sinking of the _Lusitania_. I was busy with preparations, too anxious about the future to devote much time to the study of the psychology of the Germans in other parts of Germany at this moment, but with the exception of the one Cabinet Minister aforementioned, and expressions of regret from certain merchants and intellectuals, it cannot be denied that a great wave of exultation swept over Germany. It was felt that this was a master stroke, that victory was appreciably nearer and that no power on earth could withstand the brute force of the Empire.

Mingled with this was a deep hate of all things American inculcated by the Berlin Government. And we must understand, therefore, that no trick and no evasion, no brutality will be untried by Germany in this war. It was against the rules of war to use poison gas, but first the newspapers of Germany were carefully filled with official statements saying the British and French had used this unfair means. Coincidentally with these reports the German army was trying by this dastardly innovation to break the British lines. It was not a new procedure. Months before the _Lusitania_ crime, the newspapers and people had been poisoned with official statements inflaming the people against America, particularly for our commerce with the Entente in war supplies.

It was the right, guaranteed by a treaty to which Germany was a signatory, of our private individuals to sell munitions and supplies, but as Prince von Buelow once remarked on December 13th, 1900, in the Reichstag, "I feel no embarra.s.sment in saying here, publicly, that for Germany, right can never be a determining consideration."

Indeed the tame professors were let loose and many of them rushed into government-paid print to prove that, according to law, the murders of the _Lusitania_ were justified. A German chemist friend of mine told me that the chemists of Germany were called on, after poison gas had been met by British and French, to devise some new and deadly chemical. Flame throwers soon appeared together with more insidious gases. And it is only because of the vigilance of other nations that German spies have not succeeded in sowing the microbes of pestilence in countries arrayed against lawless Germany.

Remember there is nothing that Kaiserism is not capable of trying in the hope of victory.

CHAPTER IV

THE KAISER AND "LeSE-MAJESTe"

The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a conspicuous place in the gallery of human events; envious, too, of the great names of the past, his ears so tuned for admiration and applause that they fail to hear the great, long drawn wail of agony that echoes around the world. His eyes are so blinded with the sheen of his own glory that they do not see the mutilated corpses, the crime, the pestilence, the hunger, the incalculable sorrow that sweeps the earth from the jungles of Africa to the frozen plains of the North, from Siberia to Saskatchewan, from Texas to Trieste, from Alaska to Afghanistan--everywhere he has brought the dark angel of mourning to millions upon millions of desolate homes.

Do you remember that picture of the Conquerors, Caesar and Alexander, Attila and Napoleon, Charlemagne and Cambyses, astride their horses or in chariots in the centre of the picture, dark, gloomy, menacing? On each side of them, lining a vast plain that fades in the distance, lie the dead--stiff, cold, grey, reproachful;--yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this war:--victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single mortal--the German Kaiser.

But the despot who sends his subjects to die, as Frederick the Great said, "in order to be talked about" is not indigenous to any one particular country. Like conditions produce like results.

The career of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," for instance, whose wars and extravagances sowed the seeds of the French Revolution, is epitomised in two phrases uttered by him: "I am the State" and "I almost had to wait."

After the French Revolution, another despot, the first Napoleon, not only sought the conquest of the world, but made his ex-waiter and ex-groom marshals and his washerwomen d.u.c.h.esses ape the manners and customs of the old regime. Despotism has been characteristic of many generations but the world had thought itself rid of the worst offenders.

Royalty still lives to torture and r.e.t.a.r.d civilisation. Its methods of perpetuation are unchanged from the middle ages. What is lese-majeste but a survival of feudalism, a kind of slavery to inviolable tradition--the immunity of the monarch and his family from that criticism and freedom of discussion which is the essence of democracy?

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNITED STATES EMBa.s.sY STAFF, BERLIN: MR.

GERARD IN THE CENTER]

To commit lese-majeste, to speak slightingly of royalty in Germany, is a very serious offence.

I have taken the following examples of decisions in lese-majeste cases not from the records of the lower courts, the decisions of which may be reversed, but from the records of the Imperial Supreme Court at Leipzig, the highest court in the land.

For instance: The defendant, a speaker at a meeting consisting chiefly of sympathisers with the socialist cause, made the following statement in reference to a speech of the Kaiser:

"Under the protection of the highest power of the State the gauntlet has been flung before the (socialist) Party, the gauntlet which means a combat for life and death. Well, then, so far as the insult concerns our Party, we are so far above it, that the mudslinging--no matter from what direction it may come--cannot touch us."

The defence pointed out that the defendant "had considered each word carefully before he had made the speech, and that in doing so, wanted to avoid any possibility of lese-majeste."

The Supreme Court held that although the defendant carefully selected his words and tried to evade prosecution, he must be adjudged guilty, because his audience could not have misunderstood the insinuation. The sentence was affirmed.

Dangerous as it is to say anything that can be construed as derogatory of the authority, of the Kaiser it is equally dangerous to attack the dead members of the Royal House.

The editor of the _Volkswacht_ had published in his paper an article ent.i.tled "The German Characteristics of the Hohenzollerns"

which the Lower Court interpreted to be a reply to a statement of the Kaiser, which had referred to a group of people considered unworthy by him to be called "Germans." Without doubt the editor was alluding to the Kaiser's speech, made at Koenigsberg to the newly enlisted army recruits, in which he called the socialists "vaterlandslose Gesellen," i.e., scoundrels without any country.

The writer, however, discussed "the conduct of the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg and of his brother Albrecht, Elector of Mainz, before and during the election of Emperor Charles V."

The defence claimed that the defendant could not be held guilty of lese-majeste against the Kaiser since the defendant "criticised the Kaiser's ancestors and not the Kaiser himself." But the Court held that it was the intent of the defendant to discredit the "House of the Hohenzollerns, and that the Kaiser by implication, being the living head of the Hohenzollern family, was thereby insulted." The Court further states that the defendant's article could not be regarded as a scientific or historical contribution since the _Volkswacht's_ subscribers, consisting chiefly of workingmen, had neither any understanding of nor interest in dynastic intrigues of the sixteenth century.

Even those Americans who have expressed themselves freely about the Kaiser will, after the war is over, be compelled to take their "cures" in some country other than Germany, for in one case it was held that an American citizen was rightfully convicted in Baden of lese-majeste because of statements made by him in Switzerland.

The Court held that the judgment of the Lower Court must be sustained, since the German Imperial Laws have precedence over any treaties engaged in by the Grand Duchy of Baden and the United States and "that the fact that the defendant had become a citizen of the United States does not exempt him from prosecution in the German Imperial Courts."

In another case a newspaper editor criticised a speech delivered by the Kaiser before the Reichstag on December 6th, 1898. The defendant did not refer to the person of the emperor himself, but simply attacked and ridiculed the propositions and proposals made by His Imperial Majesty. The defence pointed out that the Kaiser's speech was not an act of the Kaiser's own personal will, but only an act of government for which the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible, and that the defendant was not conscious of the fact that the criticism contained in his article could be an insult to the person of the Kaiser.

It was held, however, by the Court that a criticism of the Kaiser's speech at the opening of the Reichstag is _always_ to be regarded as a criticism of the Kaiser's person, and that the plea that the Imperial Chancellor should be responsible for acts of government of this sort is not sustained.

In other words it is, in Germany, a crime to criticise or ridicule any proposition uttered by the sacred lips of the Kaiser.

If the Kaiser announces that two and two make five, jail awaits the subject who dares to ridicule that novel arithmetical proposition.

It is because of these convictions for lese-majeste that the Berliners, when discussing the Emperor at their favourite table or "Stammtisch" in the beer halls and cafes, always refer to him as "Lehmann."

CHAPTER V

WHEN THE KAISER THOUGHT WE WERE BLUFFING