Face to Face with Kaiserism Part 35

Misguided old Philosopher!

The most stupid peasant of the Bordeaux country does not believe that the Americans have come to France in order to occupy permanently a section of that sandy, barren scrub pine desert which stretches to the south of Bordeaux.

And President Wilson and his cabinet, Lloyd George and the statesmen of France and Italy, Portugal and Russia must be on their guard--Wolff's agency is at work, spreading poisonous propaganda. Here is an excerpt that speaks for itself:

"The Imperial and Royal Propaganda Department, Section of Foreign Affairs, calls the editor's attention to the practice of the enemy press in caricaturing the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, Hindenburg and alleged German militarism, with the evident intention of an odius anti-German propaganda. It would, therefore, be important from the patriotic point of view for the daily newspapers also to occupy themselves by means of caricatures with the princ.i.p.al events of the day.

"The idea of such propaganda has been conceived by the supreme military command. And it is therefore desirable that all should conform to it. The official cinema has been ordered by the supreme command to enter into direct communication with the daily press, and many leading newspapers have hastened to express their readiness to insert these patriotic caricatures, for the drawing of which the service of the best artists in Munich and Berlin have been secured. These caricatures will regard chiefly the heads of state of the Entente powers, their political leaders and those who make no mystery of their hatred for Germany. The blocks will be supplied free of expense."

German employers will never be able to grind down their workmen as before the war. The men who have fought in the trenches will return with a new feeling of independence, a new spirit of revolt against the caste prejudices, a disinclination to do the same work in the same hours and for the same wages.

My tailor in Berlin told me that several of his men who had returned after being discharged from the army because of some physical disability or wounds took an entirely different att.i.tude and that one of them, for example, had said to him: "Do not think that I have come back to work as before. I have the Iron Cross, I have helped to save Germany. I am a hero and I do not propose again to be your industrial slave."

That is the new spirit which after the war will animate the deceived, hitherto down-trodden lower cla.s.ses of Germany.

In our own country, the balance of political power may be held by the soldiers who are enlisted in the war and who, like the G. A. R.'s after our Civil War, may doubtless organise not only for protection but for political purposes. And this great restless body of returned troops, veterans of wars beyond the seas, may change our whole foreign policy in ways of which we do not dream. We shall be a more warlike nation, less patient to bear insult, more ready for war, unless this war ends all wars.

The war after the war, in trade and commerce, may be long and bitter. The rivers of Germany are lined with ships of seven or eight thousand tons, many of them built or completed since the war, and Germany designs as her first play in this commercial war to seize the carrying trade of the world. The German exporter has lost his trade for years. Alliances have already been made in great industries, such as the dyestuff industry, in preparation for a sudden and sustained attack upon that new industry in America. Prices will be cut to far below the cost of production in order that the new industry of America fighting single handed against the single head German trust may be driven from the field. The German Government will take a practical hand in this contest and only the combination of American manufacturers and the erection of a tariff wall of defence can prevent the Americans, if each fights single handed and for his own end, from falling before the united, efficient and bitter a.s.sault of German trade rivals.

The war has brought new power and new responsibility to women.

Armed with the franchise they will demand not only equal rights but equal pay. In Great Britain alone, before the war, there were less than five hundred thousand women workers where now over five million carry the burden even of the war industries of the country.

Unless the war ends with a victory so decisive for the Allies that an era of universal peace shall dawn for the world, each nation will const.i.tute itself an armed camp fearing always that the German, with his l.u.s.t for war and conquest, will again terrorise the world by a sudden a.s.sault.

And a necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the desire of each nation to be self-sufficient--to produce within itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war.

Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up quant.i.ties of these materials necessary to war which it is compelled to import from other countries.

For instance, Germany will always carry great stocks of grain and of fats, of copper and cotton and wool, all of the materials for the lack of which she suffered during the present war.

In my first book, I touched on the change in the industrial system that will be brought about by the socialised buying and selling introduced first by Germany and which must be copied by the other nations if they desire to compete on equal terms with that country. In Germany for several years after the war at least, and perhaps as a permanent regulation, the purchase of all luxuries outside of Germany will be forbidden because of the desire to keep German gold and credits at home.

Germans have even stated to me that they do not fear in a trade way any prejudice created against them in other countries by their actions during this war. They say that a man always will buy where he can buy the cheapest, and that however much a merchant may hate the Germans after the war, if he can buy the goods he wants for his use from Germany at a cheaper rate than anywhere else, he will forget his prejudices in the interest of his pocketbook.

This is a question which each reader will have to solve for himself. Personally, I believe that in England, in France, and in America, too, if the war should last a long time, the prejudice against German trickery and brutality in war will become so great that many a merchant will prefer to lose a little money than deal with German sellers. However, the appeal of the pocketbook is always so earnest and so insistent that the Germans may be right in the view that financial considerations will weigh down the balance as against the prejudice engendered in this struggle. And if there comes a change of government in Germany, if the Hohenzollerns no longer control, or if in a liberalised Germany the ministers are responsible to a popular parliament, while kings sink to the political position of the kings of Great Britain or of Spain, then the commercial prejudice certainly will not last long. The boycott of Germany for fifty years suggested by the American Chamber of Commerce is a most powerful weapon.

And why, if wars are to continue after this one, should we contribute to German trade profits and consequently to German preparations for another war? The nations of the Allies must reckon, too, with the bitter, bitter hate felt for them by the whole German people--and only one who has been in Germany since the war can realise its intensity.

One great factor in forcing a change of government will be the desire of the individual German after the war to say that the government of his country existing then is not the government that ordered the shooting of Edith Cavell, the enslavement of the women and girls of northern France, the deportation of the Belgian workingmen, the horrors of the prison camps, the burning of Louvain and all the other countless barbarities and cruelties ordered by the German military commanders.

Imagine after this war in some distant island, perhaps, a Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, a Portuguese, an Italian all seated at the dining table of a little hotel. A German comes in and seeks to join them. Will he be treated on an equality?

Will he be taken into their society? Or will he be treated as a leper and a pariah?

The Germans will wish to be in a position to say: "Why, gentlemen, I was against all these cruelties. I was against the sinking of the _Lusitania_, and the murder of its women and children. I was against the starving of Poland and the slaughter of the Armenians and the crucifixion of prisoners, and we Germans have thrown out the government that was responsible for these horrors."

Stronger than any other consideration will be the desire of the German to repudiate these acts which have made the Germany of to-day a Cain among the nations,--an outcast branded with the mark of shame.

The Russian author Bloch whom I have quoted, says, referring to the future war:

"Behind all conflicts of interest between nations statesmen must balance the chances of success of their nation, promised by the recourse to arms, against the terrible miseries of the victims caused by war as well as the social peril which can be the consequence of war.

"They who ask themselves when it will be possible to propose to the people of any nation after the war a compensation for its enormous sacrifices, forget that the conquered will be so exhausted that there will be no question of being able to draw from a conquered nation the least pecuniary indemnity. All that can be imposed on the conquered will be the abandonment of some rags of frontier territory.

"In these conditions, up to what point can calm be counted on to reign among the millions of men called to the colours, when in their ranks there is not more than a handful of old officers and when the command will be in the hands of those newly promoted from among the non-commissioned officers? That is to say, men belonging to the working cla.s.ses. Will these workingmen surrender their arms in the states of Central Europe where the propaganda has spread already among the ma.s.ses?

"Will they allow themselves to be disarmed after the war and could there not come events more horrible than those which signalised the rapid triumph of the Commune of Paris?"

Just as to-day it is not isolated armies but whole peoples in arms that are opposed, so in the war of commerce after the war not single producers and exporters, corporations or individuals, but whole nations will meet in the markets of the world.

Germany has favoured trusts--controlling prices and unfair compet.i.tion--and we shall encounter in buying and in selling the whole German nation ranked behind their Central Buying Company in buying and their Kartels in selling.

Isolated firms and individuals cannot on our side cope with such an offensive--but we are hampered in effectiveness by the so-called Sherman law--a law from which England is free.

The war will produce great and sudden alterations and President Wilson in meeting new problems has pursued a progressive course; witness his support of the Webb law, which enables our manufacturers to combine in export trade.

Every sign points to a new era in business--an era in which the Government will permit--even encourage--enlightened business combinations.

The railroads of the country in the efficient hands of McAdoo have already bettered service, and the rights of the Savings Banks and of other holders of the securities of each road have been secured.

We must, on the one hand, permit the abolition of ruinous compet.i.tion and on the other safeguard the public from high prices, and the smaller firms and corporations from the unfair compet.i.tion of a powerful rival.

Great changes are coming in the social structure of the world. We are on the threshold of a great readjustment. Whatever else our entrance into the war may accomplish, let us hope that it will have made of us a nation with the throb of a single patriotism and the steady pulse of an energetic efficiency that shall not merely seek in honest rivalry to compete with other nations but in an enlightened and helpful way shall strive truly to heal a wounded civilisation in the G.o.d-given days of peace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXACT SIZE REPRODUCTION OF A PAGE OF THE FAMOUS "DIE ZUKUNFT" PUBLISHED BY MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, THE ONE UNCENSORED EDITOR OF GERMANY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: COVER OF PROGRAM OF SERVICE IN PROTESTANT CATHEDRAL, BERLIN, IN CELEBRATION OF THE FIVE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LORDSHIP OF HOHENZOLLERNS IN BRANDENBURG-PRUSSIA]