New York Times Current History The European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 Part 36

By LOUISE VON WETTER.

Sodger lad, O sodger lad, The dawn will see ye marchin'-- The nicht drag's on--its dark is out Wi' searchlichts, shiftin', archin'.

Sodger lad, O sodger lad, D'ye mind our Summer meetin'?

And noo, ye'll gang. The heather's dead ...

I canna keep frae greetin'.

Sodger lad, my sodger lad-- D'ye mind, my time is nearin'?

Alone--alone--wi'out yer hand!

How shall I keep frae fearin'?

Sodger lad, O sodger lad, Far, far awa' ye're goin'-- I'll not dare count the leagues an' days-- _Gude G.o.d! The c.o.c.ks are crowin'!_

Sodger lad, my luve, my dear, Awake! The morn is grayin'!

E'en tho' my heart drags, sick wi' dread, I wouldna have ye stayin'.

French Hate and English Jealousy

By Kuno Francke.

It is easy to see why American public opinion should have condemned by an overwhelming majority the diplomatic acts of Austria and Hungary which have been the immediate occasion of the terrific explosion which now shakes the foundations of the whole civilized world. Austria's break with Servia and Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality--the one leading to war between Russia and Germany, the other bringing England into the fray--must appear to the uninitiated as reckless and indefensible provocations and as wanton attacks upon the laws of nations.

The thoughtful observer, however, should look beyond the immediate occasion of this world conflict and try to understand its underlying causes. By doing so he will, I believe, come to the conclusion that fundamental justice is to be found on the German side, and that Germany has been forced to fight for her life.

It is an unquestionable fact that the unification of Germany and the establishment of a strong German Empire, half a century ago, were brought about against the bitter opposition of France, and that the defeat incurred by France in 1870, in her attempt to prevent German unification, is at the bottom of the constant irritation that has agitated Europe during the last forty-three years. Germany's policy toward France during these forty-three years has been one of utmost restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire of making her forget the loss of the two provinces, German until the seventeenth century and inhabited by German stock, which were won back from France in 1870. Whether the acquisition of these provinces was a fortunate thing for Germany may be doubted. The possession of Alsace-Lorraine has certainly robbed Germany of the undivided sympathy of the world, which she otherwise would have had. But it is probably true that from the military point of view Alsace-Lorraine was needed by Germany as a bulwark against the repet.i.tion of the many wanton French invasions from which Germany has had to suffer since the time of the Thirty Years' War and the age of Louis XIV.

Sought to Heal the Breach.

However this may be, Germany has done her best during the last four decades to heal the wounds struck by her to French national pride. She abetted French colonial expansion in Cochin-China, Madagascar, Tunis.

She yielded to France her own well-founded claims to political influence in Morocco. In Alsace-Lorraine itself she introduced an amount of local self-government and home rule such as England has not accorded even now to Ireland. While Ireland still is waiting for a Parliament at Dublin, Stra.s.sburg has been for years the seat of the Alsace-Lorraine Diet, a provincial Parliament based on universal suffrage. And even in spite of the incessant and inflammatory French propaganda which last year led to such unhappy counter-strokes as the deplorable Zabern affair, there can be no reasonable doubt that the people of Alsace-Lorraine have been gradually settling down to willing co-operation with the German administration--an administration which insures them order, justice, and prosperity. Nothing is a clearer indication of the peaceable trend which affairs have lately taken in Alsace-Lorraine than the fact that the Nationalists, i.e., French party, in the Stra.s.sburg Diet has never been able to rise above insignificance, and that, on the other hand, a considerable number of responsible officers in the civil administration, including the highest Governmental positions, have been occupied by native Alsatians.

While Germany has thus repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and particularly the intellectual cla.s.s of France cannot escape the charge that they have persistently and willfully kept alive the flame of discord.

It surely cannot be said that the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine is a vital necessity to France. Without Alsace-Lorraine France has recovered her prosperity and her prestige in a manner that has been the admiration of the world. It is a mere illusion to think that the reconquest of Alsace-Lorraine would add to her glory. It would have been a demand of patriotism for the intellectual cla.s.s to combat this illusion. Instead of this, every French writer, every French scholar, every French orator, except the Socialists, year in and year out, has been dinning into the popular ear the one word revenge.

France to Blame.

There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the Alsace-Lorraine question.

If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this, called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of 1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the "vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.

The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England.

Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have j.a.pan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines?

Her Open-Door Policy.

Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the "bullying tendencies of the War Lord."

What is the reason for this singular unfairness of England toward Germany, of this incessant attempt to check her and hem her in? Not so much the existence of a large German Navy as the encroachment upon English commerce by the rapidly growing commerce of Germany has made Germany hateful to England. The navy has simply added to this hate of Germany the dread of Germany. But if there had been no German Navy, and consequently no dread of Germany, this hate of Germany might have come to an explosion before now. For the history of the last 300 years proves that England has habitually considered as her mortal enemy any nation which dared to contest her commercial and industrial supremacy--first Spain, then Holland, then France, and now Germany. As long as German firms, by the manufacture of artificial indigo, keep on ruining the English importation of indigo from India, and as long as the German steamship lines keep on outstripping the prestige of the English boats, there can be no real friendship between England and Germany. Although England has repeatedly proposed to Germany naval agreements, these agreements were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time.

She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.

That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor, and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is there any case on record where Russia has really protected the independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power?

Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly every nationality under her sway?

In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain the Finnish Const.i.tution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.

To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

Why Germany Supports Austria.

Not Russia, but Austria, is the natural protector of the equilibrium between the existing States on the Balkan Peninsula and their natural guardian against Russian domination. Austria is their nearest neighbor; indeed, the possession of Bosnia and Herzegovina makes her a Balkan State herself.

Being herself more than half of Slavic stock, she has every reason for living on good terms with the various Slav kingdoms south of her. Being herself forced, through the conglomerateness of her population, to constant compromises in her internal affairs between conflicting nationalities within her borders, she could not possibly absorb a large additional amount of foreign territory. She is bound to respect the existing lines of political demarkation in the Balkans, and her sole object can be through commercial treaties and tariff legislation to open up what used to be European Turkey to her trade and her civilizing influence.

In this she must clearly be supported by Germany. For only if Austria is left free to exercise her natural protectorate over the Balkan States can the pa.s.sage between Germany and the Near Orient, one of the most important routes of German commerce, be kept open.

Russia's unwillingness, then, to allow Austria a free hand in her dealings with Servia was an open menace to Germany, a challenge which had to be accepted unless Germany was prepared to abdicate all her influence in the Near Orient and to allow Russia to override the legitimate claims and aspirations of her only firm and faithful ally.

This formidable coalition of the three greatest European powers, threatening the very existence of Germany, has now been joined by j.a.pan, openly and boldly for the purpose of s.n.a.t.c.hing from Germany her one Asiatic possession.

If any additional proof had been needed to make it clear that, if Germany wanted to retain the slightest chance of extricating herself from this worldwide conspiracy against her, she had to strike the first blow, even at the risk of offending against international good manners, this stab in the back by j.a.pan would furnish such proof.

Dr. Sanderson Replies

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

Although I hate to enter into a controversy with Prof. Kuno Francke, who was once my excellent friend, I cannot refrain from answering his article which appeared in last Sunday's NEW YORK TIMES.

How can any one say, in all fairness, that Germany's policy toward France during the last forty-three years has been one of the utmost restraint and forbearance, and has been dictated by the one desire to make her forget the loss of the two provinces? What are the facts? We know that not once, but again and again, since 1878, Germany has tried to provoke France into war. We know that on one occasion Queen Victoria herself threatened the Kaiser with Great Britain's intervention if he did not desist from his intended attack on France. And to cite only the two most recent instances, the Agadir affair and the enforced resignation of the French Premier, Delca.s.se! Would Germany have swallowed such insults?

This may be the German conception of "utmost restraint and forbearance,"

but it appeared to the French, as it did to the rest of the world, that it required their utmost restraint and forbearance to remain calm under the affronts.

The fact that Alsace-Lorraine was German up to the seventeenth century, and inhabited by German stock, cannot be brought forward today, after more than 200 years, to justify the retaking of those provinces by the Germans. The whole world would be in a state of continual warfare if nations claimed provinces or States that belonged to them once upon a time. Richelieu's idea was that the Rhine was the natural and geographical frontier between France and Germany, and the war was undertaken to carry out that plan. Since then the inhabitants have become French, and the attempts to re-Germanize them have proved futile.

Prof. Francke may well doubt if the acquisition of these provinces was a fortunate thing for Germany. It was undoubtedly the most unfortunate thing not only for Germany but for France and the rest of Europe, for it kept open a wound which might have been healed either by a return of the lost provinces, with or without compensation, or by granting them autonomy, or, better still, by leaving it to the inhabitants to choose for themselves, as France did with Nice and Savoy.