INTRODUCTORY
“Justfor a word—neutrality, a word which in war-time had so often been disregarded—just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war.” Such was the significant comment of the German Chancellor on Great Britain’s determination to uphold the neutrality of Belgium. A scrap of paper! This phrase, applied to a binding treaty, is destined to stick like a Nessus’ shirt to the memory of its author, his imperial inspirer, and their country until such time as the militarism which originated it has been consumed without residue. It is a Satanic sneer hurled with fell purpose into a world of civilized human beings. No such powerful dissolvent of organized society has been devised since men first began to aggregate. The primal source of the inner cohesive force which holds the elements of society together is faith in the plighted word. Destroy that and you have withdrawn the cement from the structure, which will forthwith crumble away. But this prospect does not dismay the Prussian. He is ready to face and adjust it to his needs. He would substitute for this inner cohesion the outer pressure of militarism, which, like the hoops of a barrel, press together the staves. Brutal force, in the form of jackboot tyranny, then, is the amended formula of social life which is to be forced upon Europe and the world. Such, in brief, is the new social gospel of the Hohenzollerns, the last word of Teutonic culture.
This revolutionary doctrine, applied thus simply and undisguisedly to what normal peoples deem the sacredness of treaties, has awakened dormant British emotion to self-consciousness and let loose a storm of indignation here. It startled the quietism of the masses and their self-complacent leaders, whose comforting practice was to refuse to think evil of the Germans, however overwhelming the evidence. The windy folly of theseadvocati diaboli, from whom the bulk of the British nation derived their misconceptions of the German Empire, worked evils of which we have as yet witnessed only the beginning. Those who, like myself, know the country, its institutions, its language, literature, social life, and national strivings, and who continually warned their countrymen of what was coming, were put out of court as croaking prophets of the evil which we ourselves were charged with stirring up.
It is now clear to the dullest apprehension that the most dismal of those forecasts, the most sinister of those predictions, were terribly real, while the comforting assurances of the ever-ready publicists and politicians, who knew Germany only from books of travel, holiday excursions, or the after-dinner eloquence of members of Anglo-German Leagues, were but dangerous mirages which lulled the nation’s misgivings to slumber. And now the masses have been ungently awakened. The simple declaration of a German statesman of repute, and a man, too, of the highest honesty as this term is understood in his own country, that the most solemn treaty, ratified and relied upon as stronger than fortresses bristling with cannon, is but a scrap of paper, unworthy the notice of an enterprising nation, suddenly drew into the light of Western civilization the new and subversive body of doctrine which the Teutons of Europe had for a generation been conspiring to establish, and would have succeeded in establishing were it not for a single hitch in the execution of their programme. If the combined efforts of peace-loving France, Russia, Great Britain, and Italy had moved the Tsar’s Government to stay its hand and allow Servia to be mutilated, and the Bucharest Treaty to be flung aside as a worthless scrap of paper, or if Austria had been permitted to listen to M. Sazonoff’s request and reduce her demands within the compass of the possible, the realization of the Teutonic plot against non-German Europe would have been begun later on, under much more favourable auspices, and probably worked out to a successful issue. That plot belongs to a category of crimes against the human race which can hardly be more effectively attacked than by plainly stating its objects and the means relied upon to attain them.
The objects of Prussia’s ambition—an ambition shared by every anæmic, bespectacled clerk and able-bodied tram-conductor in the Fatherland—are “cultural,” and the means of achieving them are heavy guns, quick-firers, and millions of ruthless warriors. Real German culture in all its manifestations—scientific, artistic, philosophical,musical, commercial, and military—accepts and champions the new principle and the fresh ideas which are to regenerate the effete social organisms of to-day. According to the theory underlying this grandiose national enterprise, the forces of Christianity are spent. New ichor for the dry veins of decrepit Europe is stored up in German philosophy and poetry. Mediæval art has exhausted the traditional forms, but Teutonism is ready to furnish it with new ones. Music is almost a creation of German genius. Commerce was stagnating in the ruts of old-world use and wont until German enterprise created new markets for it, and infused a new spirit into its trading community. Applied science owes more to German research and ingenuity than to the efforts of all the world besides. And the race thus highly gifted is deserving of a field worthy of its world-regenerating labours. At present it is cooped up in Central Europe with an absurdly small coast-line. Its surplus population has, for lack of colonies, to be dumped down on foreign shores, where it is lost for ever to the Fatherland. For this degrading position, which can no longer be tolerated, there is but one remedy: expansion. But to be effectual it must be expansion combined with Germanization. And the only means of accomplishing this end is for Germany to hack her way throughthe decrepit ethnic masses that obstruct her path and to impose her higher civilization on the natives. Poland was the first vile body on which this experiment was tried, and it has been found, and authoritatively announced, that the Slavs are but ethnic manure, useful to fertilize the seed-fields of Teutonic culture, but good for little else. The Latin races, too, are degenerates who live on memories and thrive on tolerance. Beef-eating Britons are the incarnation of base hypocrisy and crass self-indulgence, and their Empire, like a hollow tree, still stands only because no storm has yet assailed it. To set youthful, healthy, idealistic Germany in the high places now occupied by those inert masses that once were progressive nations is but to adjust obsolete conditions to the pressing requirements of the present time—to execute the wise decrees of a just God. And in order to bring this task to a satisfactory issue, militarism must reign as the paramount power before culture can ascend the throne. Militarism is a necessity, and unreasoning obedience the condition of its success.
It is easy to think scorn of these arrogant pretensions and to turn away from them to what may seem more urgent and more profitable occupations. And hitherto this has been the attitude towards them of the advanced wing of British progressists, who imitated the Germans in this—that theyjudged of others’ motives by their own. But the danger cannot be exorcized by contempt or indifference. The forces at the command of the Teuton are stupendous. His army is a numerous, homogeneous, and self-sacrificing nation. His weapons are the most deadly that applied science could invent and the most practised skill could fashion. And these weapons are handled not by amateur or unwilling soldiers, but by fanatics as frenzied as the Moslems, who behold paradise and its houris athwart the grey smoke of the battlefield. For Teutonism is not merely a political system, it is also a religious cult, and its symbol of faith is Deutschland über Alles. Germany above everything, including human and divine laws.
One of the dogmas of this cult resembles that of the invisible Church, and lays it down that the members of this chosen race are far more numerous in the present, as indeed they also were in the past, than the untutored mind is apt to imagine. The greatest artists of mediæval Italy, whom an ignorant world regards as Italian, nay Christ himself, were Germans whose nationality has only just been discovered. That the Dutch, the Swiss, the Belgians, the Swedes and Norwegians, and the recalcitrant British are all sheep strayed from the Teutonic flock,and destined to be brought back by the collies of militarism, is a self-evident axiom. This process of recovery had already begun and was making visible progress. Antwerp was already practically Germanized, and Professor Delbrück, in his reply to one of my articles on German expansion, described it as practically a German port. The elections to the municipality in that flourishing Belgian town were run by the German wealthy residents there. The lace manufactories of Belgium were wholly in German hands. So, too, was the trade in furs. A few years more of peaceful interpenetration would have seen Holland and Belgium linked by a postal and, perhaps, a Customs union with the German Empire.
In this new faith ethics play no part. The furtherance of the German cause takes precedence of every law, divine and human. It is the one rule of right living. Whatever is done for Germany or for the German army abroad or at home, be it a misdemeanour or a crime in the eyes of other peoples, is well done and meritorious. A young midshipman, going home at night in a state of semi-intoxication, slays a civilian because he imagines—and, as it turns out, mistakenly imagines—that he has been slighted, and feels bound in duty to vindicate the honour of the Kaiser’s navy. He is applauded,not punished. Soldiers sabre laughing civilians in the street for the honour of the Kaiser’s uniform, and in lieu of chastisement they receive public approbation. Abroad, Germans of position—German residents in Antwerp offered a recent example—worm themselves into the confidence of the authorities, learn their secrets, offer them “friendly” advice, and secretly communicate everything of military importance which they discover to their Government, which secretly subsidizes them, and betray the trusting people whose hospitality and friendship they have so long enjoyed. Their conduct is patriotic. The press deliberately concocts news, spreads it throughout the world, systematically poisoning the wells of truth, and then vilifies the base hypocrisy of the British, who contradict it. That is part of the work of furthering the good cause of civilization. Tampering with State documents and forging State papers are recognized expedients which are wholly justified by the German “necessity which knows no law.” We have had enlightening examples of them since the war broke out. Prince Bismarck availed himself of this cultural privilege when he altered the Kaiser’s despatch in order to precipitate a collision with France. And the verdict of the nation was “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, who hast made such patriotic use of the maxim thatthe end, when it is Germany’s cause, justifies the means and hallows the act.” Since his day the practice has been reduced to a system.
With such principles illustrated by such examples, how could the present Imperial Chancellor regard a mere parchment treaty that lay across the road of his country’s army other than as a mere scrap of paper?
That was a logical corollary of the root-principle of Pan-Germanism. Germany’s necessity, of which her own Kaiser, statesmen, diplomatists, and generals are the best judges, knows no law. Every treaty, every obligation, every duty has to vanish before it: the Treaty of Bucharest, establishing equilibrium in the Balkans, as well as the Treaty of 1839, safeguarding the neutrality of Belgium. Hence nobody conversant with the nature, growth, and spread of this new militant race-worship was in the least surprised at the Chancellor’s contempt for the scrap of paper and for the simple-minded statesmen who proclaimed its binding force. I certainly was not. Experience had familiarized me with these German doctrines and practices; and although my experience was more constant and striking than that of our public men who had spent most of their lives in Great Britain, they, too, hadhad tokens enough of the new ethics which Prussia had imported into her international policy to put them on their guard against what was coming. But nobody is so blind as he who will not see.
Pan-Germanism, then, is become a racial religion, and to historical and other sciences has been confided the task of demonstrating its truth. But if curiosity prompts us to inquire to what race its military apostles, the Prussians, belong, and to interrogate history and philology on the subject, we find that they are not Germans at all. This fact appears to have escaped notice here. The Prussians are members of a race which in the ethnic groups of European Aryans occupy a place midway between the Slavs and the Teutons. Their next-of-kin are the Lithuanians and the Letts. The characteristic traits of the old Prussians, the surviving fragments of whose language I was once obliged to study, are brutal arrogance towards those under them, and cringing servility towards their superiors. One has but to turn to the political history of the race to gather abundant illustrations of these distinctive marks. To the submissiveness of the masses is to be attributed the ease with which the leaders of the nation drilled it into a vast fighting machine, whose members often and suddenly changed sides without murmur or criticism at the bidding of theirchief. And it was with this redoubtable weapon that the Hohenzollern dynasty, which itself is German, won for the State over which it presided territory and renown. This done, and done thoroughly, it was Prussia who experimented upon all Germany in the way in which the Hohenzollerns had experimented on Prussia; and being supported by the literary, artistic, and scientific elements of the German people, succeeded thus far, and might have ended by realizing their ambitious dream, had it not been for the interposition of circumstance which misled them in their choice of opportunity.
Thus latter-day Germany furnishes a remarkable instance of the remoulding of a whole nation by a dynasty. For the people has, in truth, in some essential respects been born anew. The centre of its ethico-spiritual system has been shifted, and if it had a chance of gaining the upper hand Europe would be confronted with the most appalling danger that ever yet threatened. Morality, once cultivated by Germans with religious fervour, has become the handmaid of politics, truth is subservient to expediency, honour the menial of the regiment. Between the present and the past yawns an abyss. The country of Leibnitz, of Kant, of Herder,and of Goethe was marked off by fundamental differences from the Germany of to-day. The nation’s ideas have undergone since then an amazing transformation, which is only now unfolding itself in some of its concrete manifestations to the gaze of the easy-going politicians of this country. So, too, have the ethical principles by which the means of pursuing the ideals were formerly sifted and chosen. The place once occupied by a spiritual force, by the conscience of the nation and the individual, is now usurped by a tyrannical system devised by a military caste for a countless army. And this system has been idealized and popularized by visionaries and poets, professors, and even ministers of religion whose spiritual nature has been warped from childhood. To-day there is no counter-force in the land. Jesuitism, as the most virulent Calvinists depict it at its worst, was a salutary influence when compared with this monstrous product of savagery, attired in military uniform and the wrappages of civilization, and enlisted in the service of rank immorality.
What could afford our normally constituted people a clearer insight into the warped moral sense of the Prussianized German people than the remarkable appeal recently made by the “salt of the Fatherland,” German theologians and clergymen, to “Evangelical Christians abroad,” setting forth the true causes of the present iniquitouswar?1These men of God preface their fervent appeal by announcing to Evangelical Christians the lamentable fact that “a systematic network of lies, controlling the international telegraph service, is endeavouring in other lands to cast upon our people and its Government the guilt for the outbreak of this war, and has dared to dispute the inner right of us and our Emperorto invoke the assistance of God.... Her ideal was peaceful work. She has contributed a worthy share to the cultural wealth of the modern world. She has not dreamed of depriving others of light and air. She desired to thrust no one from his place. In friendly competition with other peoples she has developed the gifts which God had given her. Her industry brought her rich fruit. She won also a modest share in the task of colonization in the primitive world, and was exerting herself to offer her contribution to the remoulding of Eastern Asia. She has left no one, who is willing to see the truth, in doubt as to her peaceful disposition.Only under the compulsion to repel a wanton attackhas she now drawn the sword.”
These heralds of peace and Christian love appear to have been so immersed in their heavenly mission that they have not had time to peruse such unevangelical works as the writings ofTreitschke, Clausewitz, Maurenbrecher, Nietzsche, Delbrück, Rohrbach, Schmoller, Bernhardi. And yet these are the evangelists of the present generation of Germans. Whether the innocence of the dove or the wisdom of the serpent is answerable for this failure of the Evangelical Germans to face the facts is immaterial. The main point is that first the German professors published their justification of this revolting crime against humanity; then came the anathema hurled against the allies by German authors, who pledged themselves never again to translate into the language of God’s chosen people the works of any French, English, or Russian man of letters; these were succeeded by the Socialists, who readily discovered chapter and verse in the Gospel of Marx for the catastrophic action of the Government they were wont to curse, and exhorted their Italian comrades to espouse the Kaiser’s cause against the allies; and now the rear of this solemn procession of the nation’s teachers is brought up by their spiritual guides and pastors, who publicly proclaim that their Divine Master may fully be implored to help his German worshippers to slay so many Russians, British, and French Christians that they may bring this war to an end by dictating the terms of peace, and firmly establishing the reign of militarism in Europe.That is the only meaning of the summary condemnation of those who have “dared to dispute the inner right of us and our Emperor to invoke the assistance of God.”
If this be Evangelical Christianity as taught in latter-day Germany, many Christians throughout the world, even among those who have scant sympathy with Rome, will turn with a feeling of relief to the decree of the new Pope enjoining prayers for the soldiers who are heroically risking their lives in the field, but forbidding the faithful to dictate to the Almighty the side to which he shall accord the final victory.
As historians, this body of divines have one eye bandaged, and read with the other only the trumped-up case for their own Kaiser and countrymen. They write:
“As our Government was exerting itself to localize the justifiable vengeance for an abominable royal murder, and to avoid the outbreak of war between two neighbouring Great Powers, one of them, whilst invoking the mediation of our Emperor, proceeded (in spite of its pledged word) to threaten our frontiers, and compelledus to protect our land from being ravaged by Asiatic barbarism. Then our adversaries were joined also by those who by blood and history and faith are our brothers, with whom we felt ourselves in the common world-task more closely bound than with almost any nation. Over against a world in arms we recognize clearly that we have to defend our existence, our individuality, our culture, and our honour.” From the theological standpoint, then, Germany is engaged in a purely defensive war against nations guilty of breaking their pledged word, and of wantonly attacking the peace-loving Teutons.
Nobody can read without a grim smile this misleading exposé which ignores the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, with its forty-eight hours’ term for an answer; the exasperating demands which were drafted, not for the purpose of being accepted by the Belgrade Government, but with the admitted object of provoking a refusal; the fervent insistence with which the British Foreign Minister besought the German Government to obtain an extension of the time from their Austrian ally; the mockery of a pretence at mediation made by the Kaiser and his Chancellor, and their refusal to fall in with Sir Edward Grey’s proposal to summon a conference and secure full satisfaction and effectual guarantees for Austria;and the German ultimatum, presented to Russia and to France at the very moment when the Vienna Government had “finally yielded” to Russia’s demands and “had good hopes of a peaceful issue.”2Those were essential factors in the origins of the war. Yet of these data the spiritual shepherds of the German people have nothing to say. They pass them over in silence. For they are labouring to establish in the minds of Evangelical Christians abroad their “inner right” to invoke the assistance of God for the Kaiser, who patronizes Him. This unctuous blending of Teutonic religion with the apology of systematic inhumanity reminds one of an attempt to improve the abominable smell of assafœtida with a sprinkling of eau-de-Cologne.
These comments are nowise intended as a reproach to the theologians and pastors who have set their names to this appeal. Personally, I venture to think that they have acted most conscientiously in the matter, just as did von Treitschke, Bernhardi, and their colleagues and their followers. The only point that I would like to make clear is that they have a warped ethical sense—what the schoolmen were wont to term “a false conscience.” And the greater the scrupulosity with which they act in accordance with its promptings, the more cheerfully and abominably do they sin against the conscienceof the human race.
The simplicity and unction with which these men come forward to vindicate their “inner right” to pray God to help their Kaiser to victory over pacific peoples, the calm matter-of-fact way in which they accuse the Belgians of revolting barbarities—for that is one of their main contentions—and justify the Kaiser’s lordly contempt of the scrap of paper, are of a piece with every manifestation of the political cult which has become one of Germany’s holiest possessions. And it is because the British nation as a whole obstinately refused to listen to those who apprised them of this elemental movement, and of the dangers it concealed, that they dispensed with a large land army, slackened the work of shipbuilding, and trusted to a treaty which they are now surprised to see dealt with as a mere scrap of paper.
In like manner the British people at first smiled sceptically at the narratives of Belgians who witnessed and described the killing of unarmed men, women, and children, the finishing of the wounded on the battlefield, the living shields of women and girls with which they protected their soldiers, the taking and shooting of hostages, and other crimes against humanity. After all, it was argued, the Germans are notquite so unlike ourselves as these stories would have us believe. They, too, are men who have left wives, sisters, mothers, and children at home, and the wells of human pity are not dried up within them. They are incapable of such savagery. Those tales evidently belong to the usual class of fiction which sprouts up on all battlefields.
Yet, whatever the truth might be—and since the fiendish passions of the soldiery were let loose against Louvain, Malines, and Rheims we know that some of the narratives were based on gruesome facts—the ground at first taken up was untenable. Nobody possessing even a superficial acquaintance with Prussian history had grounds for asserting that the German army was incapable of such diabolical deeds. Its recorded doings in seasons of peace demonstrated its temper. That the officers and the rank and file are obedient to their commanders will not be gainsaid. To their Kaiser they are, if possible, still more slavishly submissive. Well, the Kaiser, when his punitive expedition was setting out for China, addressed them thus: “When you encounter the enemy you will defeat him.No quarter shall be given, no prisoners shall be taken.Let all who fall into your hands be at your mercy.Just as the Huns a thousand years ago, under the leadership of Etzel (Attila), gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again even dare to look askance at a German.” The monarch who gave utterance to those winged words was not conscious of saying aught that might shock or surprise his people. His false conscience felt no qualms. The principle underlying this behest was the foundation-stone of Prussian culture. And the Kaiser’s wish is now realized. The name of Germany, whose love of wanton destruction, delight in human torture, and breach of every principle of manly and soldierly honour are now become proverbial, will henceforward be bracketed in history together with that of the Huns.
How British people who read and stigmatized these barbarous behests, emphatically issued by the supreme ruler of the German nation and the supreme head of the German Church, should have held him who uttered or the troops that executed them incapable of the crimes laid to their charge in Belgium is a mystery. Terrorism in occupied countries has always been part of the Prussian method of waging war. It is such an excellent substitute for numbers!The examples of it given in the years 1814 and 1815 are still remembered. Since then it has been intensified. During the Boxer movement in China I witnessed illustrations of it which burned themselves in my memory. The tamest of all was when the German troops arrived in Tientsin. The nights were cool just then, and a knot of soldiers were dismayed at the prospect of spending a night without blankets. I happened to know where there was an untenanted house with a supply of blankets, and out of sheer kindness I took them to it. With a smile of gratitude the officer in command set the blankets on one side. Every portable article of value was next seized and appropriated. And then the soldiers took to smashing vases, statues, mirrors, the piano, and other articles of furniture. They laughed at my remonstrances, and reminded me of the Kaiser’s orders. All at once they abandoned the spoil, and rushed down to the courtyard to shoot some Chinese who were said to be there. As luck would have it, however, the newcomers were their own comrades, so there were no executions that first evening. But the Kaiser’s men made up for it later.
Germany’s necessity, as defined by her War Lord or any of herhigh officials, knows no law. Stipulations and treaties are for non-German States, which must be held strictly to their obligations. To Teutons the Treaty of Bucharest and the neutrality of Belgium were meaningless terms. But only to Teutons. The Japanese are to be made to respect the neutrality of China. For the chosen people are a law unto themselves. That is, and has long been, the orthodox doctrine of the Pan-German Church. What more natural than its application to the treaty of 1839, which Bismarck confirmed in writing in the year 1870, and which the Kaiser and Herr von Bethmann Hollweg, with the hearty approval of the whole articulate German nation, have recently spoken of contemptuously as a scrap of paper? If any doubt could be entertained as to the extent to which this German theory of morality has spread, it will have been dispelled by the body of eminent German theologians who have just issued their appeal to Evangelical Christians abroad. They, at any rate, have no fears that their eloquent appeal will be treated as a mere scrap of paper. It is the word of their “good old God.”