My Four Years in Germany Part 4

For years officers of the army, both in the discharge of their duties and outside, have behaved in a very arrogant way toward the civil population. Time and again, while I was in Germany waiting in line at some ticket office, an officer has shoved himself ahead of all others without even a protest from those waiting. On one occasion, I went to the races in Berlin with my brother-in-law and bought a box. While we were out looking at the horses between the races, a Prussian officer and his wife seated themselves in our box. I called the attention of one of the ushers to this, but the usher said that he did not dare ask a Prussian officer to leave, and it was only after sending for the head usher and showing him my Jockey Club badge and my pa.s.s as Amba.s.sador, that I was able to secure possession of my own box.

There have been many instances in Germany where officers having a slight dispute with civilians have instantly cut the civilian down. Instances of this kind and the harsh treatment of the Germans by officers and under-officers, while serving in the army, undoubtedly created in Germany a spirit of antagonism not only to the army itself but to the whole military system of Prussia.

Affairs were brought to a head by the so-called Zabern Affair. In this affair the internal antagonism between the civil population and professional soldiers, which had a.s.sumed great proportions in a period of long peace, seemed to reach its climax. Of course this antagonism had increased with the increase in 1913-14 of the effective strength of the standing army, bringing a material increase in the numbers of officers and non-commissioned officers who represent military professionalism.

The Imperial Provinces or Reichsland, as Alsace and Lorraine are called, had been in a peculiar position within the body politic of Germany since their annexation in 1870. The Reichsland, as indicated by its name, was to be considered as common property of the German Empire and was not annexed to any one German State.

Its government is by an Imperial Viceroy, with a kind of cabinet consisting of one Secretary of State, Civil and Under Secretaries and Department heads, a.s.sisted by a legislative body of two chambers, one elected by popular vote and the other consisting of members partly elected by munic.i.p.al bodies, universities, churches and so forth, and partly appointed by the Imperial Government. The Viceroy and his cabinet are appointed by the Emperor in his capacity of the sovereign of the Reichsland. Until the thirty-first of May, 1911, the Reichsland had no const.i.tution of its own, the form of its government being regulated by the Reichstag and Federal Council (Bundesrat) in about the same way as the territories of the United States are ruled by Congress and the President.

In 1911, Alsace-Lorraine received a const.i.tution which gave it representation in the Federal Council, representation in the Reichstag having already been granted as early as 1871. The sympathy of Alsace-Lorraine for France had been increased by the policy of several of the German viceroys,--von Manteuffel, Prince Hohenlohe, Prince Munster and Count Wedel, who had, in their administrations, alternated severe measures with great leniency and had not improved conditions, so that the population, essentially South German, was undoubtedly irritated by the tone and manner of the North German officials.

Great industries had been developed by the Imperial Government, especially textile and coal mining, and the industrial population centering in Mulhausen was hotly and thoroughly Social Democratic.

The upper or well-to-do cla.s.ses were tied to France by family connections and by religion. The bourgeois remained mildly anti-German, more properly speaking, anti-government, for similar reasons, and the working men were opposed to the government on social and economic grounds. The farming population, not troubling much about the politics, but being affected by the campaign of the nationalistic press, were in sympathy with France; so the atmosphere was well prepared for the coming storm.

Zabern, or in French, Saverne, is a little town of between eight and nine thousand inhabitants, beautifully situated at the foot of the Vosges Mountains on the banks of the Rhine-Marne Ca.n.a.l.

Its garrison comprised the staff and two battalions of Infantry Regiment, Number Ninety-nine, commanded by von Reuter, and among its officers was a Lieutenant von Forstner, a young man only twenty years old, whose boyish appearance had excited the school children and boys working in nearby iron factories to ridicule him. It became known that this young officer, while instructing his men, had insulted the French flag and had called the Alsatian recruits _Wackes_, a nick-name meaning "square-head," and frequently used by the people of Alsace-Lorraine in a jocular way, but hotly resented by them if used towards them by others.

It was further reported that he had promised his men a reward of ten marks if one of them, in case of trouble, should bring down a Social Democrat. Forstner had told his men to beware, and warned them against listening to French foreign agents, whom the Germans claimed were inducing French soldiers to desert in order to join the French legion. It is probable that Forstner, in talking to his men of the French Foreign Legion, used language offensive to French ears. He admitted that he had used the word _Wackes_ in defiance of an order of the commanding general, and for this he had been punished with several days' confinement in a military prison. Lieutenant von Forstner, who was ordered to instruct his squad about the regulations in case of trouble with the civil population, claimed that he had only added to the usual instructions a statement that every true soldier should do his best to suppress any disturbances and that he, Forstner, would give a special reward to any of his men who would arrest one of "those d.a.m.ned Social Democrats."

Reports of the acts of Forstner and other officers were rapidly spread among the population. The two newspapers of Zabern published articles. The excitement grew, and there were demonstrations against the officials and especially against Forstner. Finally, conditions became so bad that Colonel von Reuter requested the head of the local civil administration, Director Mahler, to restore order, stating that he would take the matter into his own hands if order was not restored. The director, a native of a small village near Zabern, replied coolly that he saw no necessity for interfering with peace loving and law abiding people. On November twenty-ninth, 1913, a large crowd a.s.sembled in front of the barracks. Colonel von Reuter ordered Lieutenant Schad, commanding the Guard as officer of the day, to disperse the crowd.

Accordingly Lieutenant Schad called the Guard to arms and three times summoned the crowd to disperse and go home. The soldiers charged and drove the mult.i.tude across the Square and into a side street and arrested about fifteen persons, among them the President, two Judges and the State Attorney of the Zabern Supreme Court, who had just come out from the court building and who were caught in the crowd. They were subsequently released. The rest of the persons arrested were kept in the cellar of the barracks over night.

The report of these occurrences caused immense excitement throughout Germany. A great outcry went up against militarism, even in quarters where no socialistic tendencies existed. This feeling was not helped by the fact that the General commanding the fifteenth army to which the Zabern regiment belonged was an exponent of extreme militaristic ideas; a man, who several years before, as Colonel of the Colonial troops, representing the war ministry before the Reichstag and debating there the question of the number of troops to be kept in German South West Africa, had most clearly shown his contempt for the Reichstag.

Colonel von Reuter and Lieutenant Schad, when court-martialled for their acts in ordering the troops to move against the civil population, claimed the benefit of a Prussian law of 1820, which provided that in any city, town or village, the highest military officer in command must a.s.sume the authority, usually vested in the civil government, whenever for any reason the civil administration neglects to keep order. The Colonel and Lieutenant were subsequently acquitted on the ground that they had acted under the provisions of this law.

The excitement throughout Germany was further increased by other circ.u.mstances. The Emperor remained during these critical days at Donaueschingen, the princely estate of his friend and favourite, Prince Furstenberg, enjoying himself with fox-hunting, torch-light processions and cabaret performances. Of course, all this had been arranged long before anyone dreamed of any trouble in Zabern, and the Emperor could scarcely be expected to realise the gravity of the situation which suddenly arose. But this very fact created a bad impression. It was even rumoured that the Empress, alarmed by the situation, had ordered a train to be made ready in order to go to him and try to convince him of the necessity of returning to Berlin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GLORY WHICH IS POTSDAM. SUMMER RESIDENCE OF THE KAISER IN THE PARK OF SANS SOUCI.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEMONSTRATION OF SYMPATHY FOR THE AMERICANS, AT THE TOWN HALL, AUGUST, 1914.]

The newly appointed minister of war, Falkenhayn, went to Donaueschingen, where he was joined by von Deimling. This action aggravated the situation, because the public concluded that the Emperor would hear the advice and report of military officers only. The sudden death, by heart failure, of the Emperor's closest friend, von Hulsen, chief of the Emperor's Military Cabinet, during a banquet at Donaueschingen, gave the rapidly developing events a tragic and mysterious colouring, and these conferences in Donaueschingen resulted in the tendering of their resignations by the Viceroy, von Wedel, and Secretary of State Zorn von Bulach, Viceroy and Secretary of State of Alsace-Lorraine, who felt that the military party had gained an upper hand in the conflict with the civil authorities. The Chancellor then hurried to Donaueschingen, arriving a few hours before the departure of the Emperor; and a subsequent order of the Emperor to General von Deimling to see to it that the military officers did not overstep their authority and directing him to investigate the occurrences and take measures to punish all guilty parties, somewhat quieted the nation and caused the two highest civil officials of Alsace-Lorraine to withdraw their resignations.

Zabern, where a brigadier-general had been sent by von Deimling to restore civil government, had begun to quiet down. But the Chancellor had hardly returned to Berlin when another incident stirred Germany. While practising field service in the neighbourhood of Zabern and marching through a village, Lieutenant von Forstner had an altercation with a lame shoemaker and cut him down. This brutal act of militarism caused a new outburst throughout Germany.

Forstner was tried by a court-martial for hitting and wounding an unarmed civilian, and sentenced by the lower court to one year's imprisonment, but acquitted by the higher court as having acted in "supposed self-defence."

No less than three parties, the Centrum, the Progressives and the Social Democrats, addressed interpellations to the Chancellor about this occurrence at Zabern. I was present at the debate in the Reichstag, which took place on the fourth, fifth and sixth of December, 1913. Three South Germans, a member of the Centrum, Hauss, a Progressive named Roser, and the Socialist deputy from Mulhausen in Alsace, Peirotes, commenced by moving and seconding the interpellation and related in vehement language the occurrences at Zabern. The Chancellor replied in defence of the government.

Unfortunately he had that morning received family news of a most unpleasant character, which added to his nervousness. He spoke with a low voice and looked like a downhearted and sick man. It was whispered afterwards in the lobbies that he had forgotten the most important part of his speech. The unfavourable impression which he made was increased by von Falkenhayn, appearing for the first time before the Reichstag. If the Reichstag members had been disappointed by the Chancellor, they were stirred to the highest pitch of bitterness by the speech of the War Minister. In a sharp, commanding voice he told them that the military officers had only done their duty, that they would not be swerved from their path by press agents or hysterical individuals, that Forstner was a very young officer who had been severely punished, but that this kind of courageous young officer was the kind that the country needed, etc. Immediately after this speech the Progressive party moved that the att.i.tude of the Chancellor did not meet the approval of the representatives of the people, and it became evident that, for the first time in the history of the German Empire, a vote of censure directed against the government would be debated. The debate was continued all the next day, the Chancellor making another speech and saying what he probably had intended to say the day before. He related what he had achieved at Donaueschingen; that the Emperor had issued a cabinet order saying that the military authorities should be kept within legal bounds, that all the guilty persons would be punished, that the Regiment, Number Ninety-nine, had been removed from Zabern, that the absolute law of 1820 had been abolished for Alsace-Lorraine, and that no Chancellor should for one moment tolerate disregard of law by any government officials, civil or military, and remain in his position.

This second speech of the Chancellor made a better impression and somewhat affected the more extreme members of the Reichstag, but it came too late to prevent the pa.s.sage of the vote of censure by the remarkable majority of two hundred and ninety-three to fifty-four. Only the Conservatives voted against it. A few days later, when the Social Democrats demanded that the Chancellor take the consequence of the vote of distrust and resign, the att.i.tude of the members of all the other parties, who had been favourably impressed by the second speech of the Chancellor, showed that they were not yet prepared to go the length of holding that a vote of distrust in the Reichstag must necessarily mean the resignation of the Chancellor.

Public excitement gradually calmed down, and a complete change of the officials at Zabern helped to bring about a normal condition of affairs. The Viceroy, Count Wedel, and Secretary of State Zorn von Bulach, resigned and were replaced by von Dallwitz and Count Rodern.

However, the everlasting question came up again a little later during the regular budget debate of the Reichstag. The Chancellor made his speech, giving a review of the political international situation. He was followed by Herr Scheidemann, leader of the Social Democrats, who mercilessly attacked the. Chancellor and stated that if the Chancellor still thought that he was the right man at the helm, he, Scheidemann, would show that the contrary was the case. He then enumerated what he called the many political failures of the Chancellor, the failure of the bill to amend the Prussian franchise law, and stated that the few bills which had been pa.s.sed, such as the bill giving Alsace-Lorraine a real const.i.tution, had been carried only with the help of the Social Democratic party. The speaker then once more rehashed the incidents of the Zabern matter, referred to the att.i.tude of the Emperor, who, he said, had evidently been too busy with hunting and festivities to devote time to such trivial matters as the Zabern Affair, and also said that, if the Chancellor had refused to withdraw, the only possible conclusion from the vote of the two hundred and ninety-three Reichstag members, who were certainly not influenced by personal feelings against the Chancellor, was that the Chancellor must be sticking to his post only because of the mistaken idea of the Emperor's authority and because he must believe in the fetish of personal government. Scheidemann begged that the same majority which had pa.s.sed the vote of censure should now follow it up by voting down the Chancellor's salary and thus force him out of office.

The Chancellor immediately replied, saying that he needed no advice from Herr Scheidemann, and that when the government had consented to change the rules of the Reichstag he had expressly reserved the authority either to regard or disregard any resolution pa.s.sed after an interpellation, and that formerly, after discussing an interpellation and the answer of the government, no vote could be taken to approve or reject a resolution expressing its opinion of such course of action. Such resolutions might be considered as valuable material, but it had been agreed that they could have no binding effect either upon the government or any member of it, and that n.o.body had ever dreamed that by a mere change of business rules the whole const.i.tution of the Empire was being changed and authority given to the Reichstag to dismiss ministers at will; that in France and Great Britain conditions were different, but that parliamentary government did not exist in Germany; that it was the const.i.tutional privilege of the Emperor to appoint the Chancellor without any a.s.sistance or advice from the Reichstag; that he, the Chancellor, would resist with all his might every attempt to change this system; and that he, therefore, refused to resign because the resolution had no other effect than to make it evident that a difference of opinion existed between the Reichstag and the government.

This debate took place on December ninth, 1913, and, with the exception of the Social Democrats and the Polish deputies, the leaders of all parties supported the view of the Chancellor.

The motion to strike out the Chancellor's salary was voted down, only the Social Democrats and Poles voting in favour of it.

It is unquestioned, however, that this Zabern Affair and the consequent att.i.tude of the whole nation, as well as the extraordinary vote in the Reichstag, greatly alarmed the military party.

It was perhaps the final factor which decided the advocates of the old military system of Germany in favour of a European war.

Usually in past years when the Reichstag in adjournments had risen and cheered the name of the Emperor, the Social Democrats absented themselves from the Chamber, but when the Reichstag adjourned on May twentieth, 1914, these members remained in the Chamber and refused either to rise or to cheer the Emperor. The President of the Reichstag immediately called attention to this breach of respect to the Emperor, upon which the Socialists shouted, "That is our affair," and tried to drown the cheers with hoots and hisses at which the other parties applauded tumultuously

This occurrence I know greatly incensed the Emperor and did much, I believe, to win his consent to the war.

CHAPTER V

PSYCHOLOGY AND CAUSES WHICH PREPARED THE NATION FOR WAR

To the outsider, the Germans seem a fierce and martial nation.

But, in reality, the ma.s.s of the Germans, in consenting to the great sacrifice entailed by their enormous preparations for war, have been actuated by fear.

This fear dates from the Thirty Years' War, the war which commenced in 1618 and was terminated in 1648. In 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia was concluded, Germany was almost a desert. Its population had fallen from twenty millions to four millions.

The few remaining people were so starved that cannibalism was openly practised. In the German States polygamy was legalised, and was a recognised inst.i.tution for many years thereafter.

Of thirty-five thousand Bohemian villages, only six thousand were left standing. In the lower Palatinate only one-tenth of the population survived; in Wurttemberg, only one-sixth. Hundreds of square miles of once fertile country were overgrown with forests inhabited only by wolves.

A picture of this horrible period is found in the curious novel, "The Adventurous Simplicissimus," written by Grimmelshausen, and published in 1669, which describes the adventures of a wise peasant who finally leaves his native Germany and betakes himself to a desert island which he refuses to leave when offered an opportunity to go back to the Fatherland. He answers those who wish to persuade him to go back with words which seem quite appropriate to-day: "My G.o.d, where do you want to carry me? Here is peace. There is war. Here I know nothing of the arts of the court, ambitions, anger, envy, deceit, nor have I cares concerning my clothing and nourishment.... While I still lived in Europe everything was (O, woe that I must appear witness to such acts of Christians!) filled with war, burning, murder, robbery, plundering and the shame of women and virgins." The Munich weekly, "Simplicissimus,"

whose powerful political cartoons have often startled Europe, takes its name from this character.

After the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War, Germany was again and again ravaged by smaller wars, culminating in the Seven Years'

War of Frederick the Great and the humbling of Germany under the heel of Napoleon. In the wars Of Frederick the Great, one tenth of the population was killed. Even the great Battle of the Nations at Leipsic in 1813 did not free Germany from wars, and in 1866 Prussia and the smaller North German States, with Italy, defeated Austria, a.s.sisted by Bavaria, Hesse-Ca.s.sel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Na.s.sau, Saxony, Baden, Wurttemberg and Hanover.

I am convinced that the fear of war induced by a hereditary instinct, caused the ma.s.s of the Germans to become the tools and dupes of those who played upon this very fear in order to create a military autocracy. On the other hand, and, especially, in the n.o.ble cla.s.s, we have in Germany a great number of people who believe in war for its own sake. In part, these n.o.bles are the descendants of the Teutonic Knights who conquered the Slav population of Prussia, and have ever since bound that population to their will.

The Prussian army was created by the father of Frederick the Great, who went to the most ridiculous extremes in obtaining tall men at all costs for his force.

The father of Frederick the Great gave the following written instructions to the two tutors of his son. "Above all let both tutors exert themselves to the utmost to inspire him with a love of soldiery and carefully impress upon his mind that, as nothing can confer honour and fame upon a prince except the sword, the monarch who seeks not his sole satisfaction in it must ever appear a contemptible character in the eyes of the world."

Frederick the Great left, by the death of that father who had once threatened to execute him, at the head of a marvellous army with a full treasury, finally decided upon war, as he admits in his own letters, "in order to be talked about," and his desire to be talked about led to the Seven Years' War.

The short war against Denmark in 1864, against Austria, Bavaria, etc., in 1866 and against France in 1870, enormously increased both the pride and prestige of the Prussian army. It must not be forgotten that at all periods of history it seems as if some blind instinct had driven the inhabitants of the inhospitable plains of North Germany to war and to conquest. The Cimbri and Teutones--the tribes defeated by Marius; Ariovistus, who was defeated by Julius Caesar; the Goths and the Visi-Goths; the Franks and the Saxons; all have poured forth from this infertile country, for the conquest of other lands. The Germans of to-day express this longing of the North Germans for pleasanter climes in the phrase in which they demand "a place in the sun."

The n.o.bles of Prussia are always for war. The business men and manufacturers and shipowners desire an increasing field for their activities. The German colonies were uninhabitable by Europeans.

All his life the glittering Emperor and his generals had planned and thought of war; and the Crown Prince, surrounded by his remarkable collection of relics and reminders of Napoleon, dreamed only of taking the lead in a successful war of conquest. Early in the winter of 1913-14, the Crown Prince showed his collection of Napoleana to a beautiful American woman of my acquaintance, and said that he hoped war would occur while his father was alive, but, if not, he would start a war the moment he came to the throne.

Since writing the above, the American woman who had this conversation with the Crown Prince wrote out for me the exact conversation in her own words, as follows: "I had given him Norman Angell's book, 'The Great Illusion,' which seeks to prove that war is unprofitable. He (the Crown Prince) said that whether war was profitable or not, when he came to the throne there would be war, if not before, just for the fun of it. On a previous occasion he had said that the plan was to attack and conquer France, then England, and after that my country (the United States of America); Russia was also to be conquered, and Germany would be master of the world."

The extraordinary collection of relics, statues, busts, souvenirs, etc., of the first Napoleon, collected by the Crown Prince, which he was showing at the time of the first of these conversations to this American lady, shows the trend of his mind and that all his admiration is centred upon Napoleon, the man who sought the mastery of the world, and who is thought by admirers like the Crown Prince to have failed only because of slight mistakes which they feel, in his place, they would not have made.

If the Germans' long preparations for war were to bear any fruit, countless facts pointed to the summer of 1914 as the time when the army should strike that great and sudden blow at the liberties of the world.

It was in June, 1914, that the improved Kiel Ca.n.a.l was reopened, enabling the greatest warships to pa.s.s from the Baltic to the North Sea.

In the Zeppelins the Germans had arms not possessed by any other country and with which they undoubtedly believed that they could do much more damage to England than was the case after the actual outbreak of hostilities. They had paid great attention to the development of the submarine. Their aeroplanes were superior to those of other nations. They believed that in the use of poison gas, which was prepared before the outbreak of the war, they had a prize that would absolutely demoralise their enemy. They had their flame throwers and the heavy artillery and howitzers which reduced the redoubtable forts of Liege and Namur to fragments within a few hours, and which made the holding of any fortresses impossible.