FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[90]January 15, 1915.[91]Di San Giuliano died on October 18, 1914. He was working for a short time on the 17th.[92]On December 20, 1914.[93]Italian Green Book, Despatch N. 8.[94]Italian Green Book, January 14, 1915, Despatch N. 11.[95]Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 64.[96]Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 71, April 16, 1915.[97]May 3, 1915. Cf. Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 76.[98]Cf.Daily Telegraph, May 10, 1915.[99]March 16, 1916.

[90]January 15, 1915.

[91]Di San Giuliano died on October 18, 1914. He was working for a short time on the 17th.

[92]On December 20, 1914.

[93]Italian Green Book, Despatch N. 8.

[94]Italian Green Book, January 14, 1915, Despatch N. 11.

[95]Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 64.

[96]Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 71, April 16, 1915.

[97]May 3, 1915. Cf. Italian Green Book, Dispatch N. 76.

[98]Cf.Daily Telegraph, May 10, 1915.

[99]March 16, 1916.

ThatRoumania would now take the field was a proposition which, after the many and emphatic assurances volunteered by her own official chiefs, was accepted almost universally. She had received considerable help from the Allies towards her military preparations. Her senators and deputies had fraternized with Italians and Frenchmen and her diplomatists had been in frequent and friendly communication with those of France, Britain and Russia. Even statesmen had allowed themselves to be persuaded by words and gestures which it now appears were meant only to be conditional assurances or social lubricants. The Serbian Premier, for instance, whose shrewdness is proverbial, exclaimed to an Italian journalist, in the second half of June: “Roumania cannot but follow the example set her by Italy. Indeed, you may telegraph to your journal that Roumania’s entry into the arena is a question of days and it may be only of hours. Of this many foretokens have come to our knowledge.”[100]But the optimists who had drawn practical conclusions from Roumanian promises and friendships lost sight of the difference between their own mentality and that of the Balkan peoples. They also failed to make due allowance for the influenceof German interpenetration, the power of German gold, and the deterrent effect of German victories. And above all, they left out of consideration the really decisive question of military prospects as conditioned by strategical position and supplies of munitions.

The party of intervention, however, was still active and full of ardour. Its chief, Take Jonescu, is not merely Roumania’s only statesman, but has established a claim to rank as one of the prominent public men of the present generation. Unluckily he has long been out of office, and his party is condemned to the Cassandra rôle of uttering true prophecies which find no credence among those who wield the power of putting them to good account. M. Bratiano’s appropriate attitude may be described as statuesque. Occasionally his Press organs commented upon the manifestations of the interventionists in words barbed with bitter sarcasm and utilitarian maxims. “Roumania’s blood and money,” theIndependence Roumaineexplained, “must be spent only in the furtherance of Roumania’s interest.” Her cause must be dissociated from that of the belligerents. To this Take Jonescu replied[101]that it is precisely for the good of Roumania that her interest should not be separated from that of the Entente Powers in the conflict. For on the issue of this conflict depends the state-system of Europe and also the future of Roumania. If the Germans are triumphant, he added, force and falsehood will triumph with them, the State will acquire omnipotence, the individual sink into serfdom. Neutrality during a war with such issues is, therefore, the height of political unwisdom.

Greece, after Venizelos’s retirement, returned to the narrow creed and foolish pranks of her unregenerate days, sinking deeper into anarchy. More than once in her history she had been saved from her enemies and once from her friends, but from her own self there is no saviour.

As soon as the Kaiser’s paladin, King Constantine, had dismissed his pilot and taken supreme command of the Ship of State, the portals of the realm were thrown open to German machinations. The weaver in chief of these was Wilhelm’s confidential agent, Baron Schenk. According to his own published biography, this gentleman had in youth been the friend of the two sisters of Princess Battenberg, the Grand Duchess Serge and of the Russian Tsaritza. He had served in the German army, become the representative of the firm of Krupps, and been received at the German court. While Venizelos was in office, Baron Schenk flourished in the shade, but as soon as the Germanophile Gounaris took over the reins of power, the secret agent went boldly forward into the limelight and became the public chief of a party, received openly his helpmates and partisans, distributed rôles and money and set frankly to work to “smash Venizelos.”

King Constantine’s protracted and strange malady hindered the Queen, who is the Kaiser’s sister, from receiving visits. Even the wives of ministers were denied access to her Majesty. But the baron was an exception. He called on her almost every day. Cabinet Ministers consulted him. Journalists received directions, articles and bribes from him. And when the elections were comingon every venal man of influence who could damage Venizelos or help his antagonists was bought with hard cash. In order to defeat some Venizelist candidates whose return would have been particularly distressing, the Baron is said to have spent six hundred thousand francs.[102]And it is held that the results obtained by these means were well worth the money spent. For the parliamentary opposition was strong and aggressive, and some of its more active members had imbibed Hellenic patriotism from the German Schenk. They have since been toiling and moiling to disqualify Venizelos permanently from office on the ground that he is a republican, and that the destinies of monarchy would not be safe in his hands. By these means German organization, which finds work and room for kings and for poisoners, for theologians and assassins, has transformed Greece into a Prussian satrapy which avails itself of the freedom of the seas, established by the Allies, to carry on contraband to their detriment and give help and encouragement to Austrians, Bulgars and Turks. And the Turks were meanwhile extirpating the Greeks of the coast of Asia Minor.

Bulgaria’s attitude underwent no momentous change during the interval that elapsed between the outbreak of the war and the close of the first year. Symptoms of a new orientation had, it is true, often been signalled and commented, but Ferdinand of Coburg and his lieutenants remained steadfastly faithful to the policy of quiescence which had conferred more substantial benefits on Germany and Austria than could have been bestowed by the activeco-operation of the whole Bulgarian army. This tremendous effect could never have been obtained if Bulgaria had entirely broken with the Powers of the Entente. It seemed as essential to its success that these should never wholly give up the hope of winning her over, as it was that her important movements should be conducive to the interests of their enemies. Hence every secret arrangement with Berlin and Vienna was emphatically denied, and every overt accord declared to be devoid of political significance.

It was thus that Europe was directed to construe the negotiations between the Sofia Cabinet and the Austro-German financial syndicate respecting the payment of an instalment of the £20,000,000 loan contracted shortly before the war. That Germany, whose financial ventures are invariably combined with political designs, would not part with her money to Bulgaria at a moment when gold is scarce, unless she were sure of an adequate political return, could not be gainsaid. And that the retention by Bulgaria of her freedom of action would be incompatible with the interests of Austria and Germany is also manifest. However this may be, the twenty millions sterling demanded by Sofia were accorded, and the legend was launched that the transaction was purely financial.

Towards the end of July[103]King Ferdinand’s ministers made another momentous move, the consequences of which cut deep into the political situation. A convention was signed in Stamboul between the Turkish and Bulgarian Governments by which the former ceded to Bulgaria the Turkish section of the Dedeagatchrailway—that is to say, the whole line that runs on Turkish territory, together with the stations of Dimotika, Kulela-Burgas, and Karagatch. The new boundary ran thenceforward parallel to the river Maritza, all the territory eastward of that becoming Bulgarian.

And this concession, King Ferdinand’s ministers would have Europe believe, was devoid of political bearings. It was merely a case of something being given for nothing. And the Allies allowed themselves to be persuaded that this was the real significance of the deal. The German Press was more frank. It announced that the relations between Bulgaria and Turkey had entered upon a decisive phase and that all fear of Bulgaria’s taking part in the war on the side of the Allies had been definitely dispelled.

The Bulgarian problem throughout all that wearisome crisis, which ended by Ferdinand throwing off the mask, was in reality simple, and the known or verifiable facts ought to have been sufficient to bring the judgment of the Entente statesmen to conclusions which would have enabled them to steer clear of the costly blunders that characterized their policy. The line of action followed from first to last by Ferdinand was supremely inelastic: only its manifestations, of which the object was to deceive, were varied and conflicting. It was bound up with Austria’s undertaking to restore Macedonia to Bulgaria and to maintain Ferdinand on the throne. This twofold promise was the bait by which the king was caught and kept in Austria’s toils, while the Bulgarian people was moved by patriotism to identify its cause with that of Ferdinand. And the arrangement was to my knowledgecompleted before the opening of the European war. Evidence of its existence was forthcoming, but the statesmen of the Entente, who allowed preconceived notions to overrule the testimony of their senses, declined to accept it. Since then the Bulgarian Cabinet, in the person of the Premier, has publicly admitted the truth of my reiterated statement. In a public speech, delivered in March 1916, “M. Radoslavoff confessed that Bulgaria had entered the war by reason of certain obligations which she had assumed.”[104]

But there was another safe test which the Entente Governments could have applied with profit to the situation. Interest was obviously the mainspring of the Bulgarian nation by whomsoever it might chance to be represented. It would be inconsistent with the conception of international politics to assume any other. Now that interest, it was obvious, could be so fully and rapidly furthered by the Central Empires, and in the judgment of the Bulgars with such finality and at the cost of so few sacrifices, that it was sheer impossible for the Entente Governments to attempt to compete with those. Bulgaria demanded immediate possession of Central Macedonia and the permanent weakening of the Serbian State. And this the Central Empires promised to effect within a few weeks from Bulgaria’s entry into the war. Moreover, while asking that she should take part in a struggle against that group of belligerents which she deemed by far the weaker, they undertook to give her the full support of the two greatest military Powers in the world.

Consider the difference between that arrangement and the attractions provided by the Entente. Russia, France and Britain could deal only in counters, not in hard cash like their adversaries. The utmost they were able to offer was an undertaking to use their good offices with Serbia and Greece to obtain the promise of a part of Bulgaria’s demands. And the fulfilment of this promise would of necessity be conditional on the victory of the Allies. As for the weakening of Serbia, it could not be entertained. On the contrary, that State, according to the Entente scheme, would be greatly enlarged, would, in fact, become by far the greatest of the Balkan nations. And for this shadowy lure, Bulgaria was expected to meet in deadly encounter the greatest military empires the world has ever seen, and to meet them without the help of any of the Great Powers of the Entente.

One has but to compare these two alternatives in order to realize that, even if Ferdinand had entered into no binding compact with Austria and Germany, he would not hesitate a moment between them. Personally and politically he was held tight by the Teuton tentacles.

The currency of the notion that with these competing offers before him, a crafty statesman like Ferdinand who felt over and above that Russia’s vengeance was hanging over his head, would take what he believed was the losing side, shows a degree ofnaïvetéwhich cannot be qualified without epithets which it had better be understood than expressed.

Looking back upon the results of the first twenty months of the war and upon the more obvious causes to which they mayfairly be ascribed, one is struck less forcibly by the military and economic unpreparedness of the Allies for the inevitable conflict than by their inaccessibility to the ground ideas on which Germany set her hopes of success. The two groups of belligerents stood intellectually on different planes. The Teuton’s faith was implicit in the law of causality, in the necessity of contemplating the vast problem as a whole, of adjusting means to ends, of co-operation at home and co-ordination of means abroad. The methods of the Allies were drawn from a limited range of experience which was no longer applicable to the new conditions, and their hopes rested on a series of isolated exertions put forth temporarily under stress of exceptional pressure.

They made noble sacrifices for the cause of liberty and justice. Pacific by temperament and conviction, they resignedly accepted military discipline as a temporary expedient, a purgatorial ordeal, and went about the while with a sense of displacement, the longing of exiles to get back. Spurred by stress of circumstance, they achieved more than foresight and insight had led them to design but far less than their optimism had encouraged them to anticipate. Step by step they were driven by hard reality to widen their angle of vision, to extend their schemes, and to concert certain measures in common. The meeting of the three Finance Ministers in Paris was followed by the Councils of the allied generals, by the combined expedition to the Dardanelles, and by the nationalization of the manufacture of munitions in each of the allied countries. And all these innovations were moves in the right direction. But they were made as temporaryexpedients under pressure of outward events, and it is still to the future that one looks for tokens of statesmanlike intuition which from a comprehensive survey of the problem in its entirety will draw the materials wherewith to weave a coherent scheme of general action and permanent co-operation.

Events travelled fast in the month of July 1915, and their effect on the Allies was depressing. In Russia the Austro-Germans were advancing steadily against Riga and Warsaw, where a battle which experts accounted the most sanguinary and momentous in the war was approaching a decision. A fatal bar being placed by Russia’s reverses and other untoward occurrences to the realization of the hopes that had been raised by Kitchener’s army, the French, headed by M. Pichon and backed by the Russian Press, once more mooted the vexed question of Japanese intervention. In the Turkish dominions the Greeks were subjected to relentless persecution, especially on the coast of Asia Minor. The massacre of Armenians on an unprecedented scale was reported from Bitlis, Moosh, Diarbekir and Zeitun. In the first-named region 9,000 bodies, mostly women and children, were, it is alleged, cast into the river Tigris.[105]The Swedish Premier, by an enigmatic speech in which the doctrine of neutrality at all costs was ostentatiously repudiated, aroused suspicion of an intention on the part of his Government to join the Teutons in order to weaken the Slav neighbour, and to this apprehension colour was imparted by the tardy announcement that since the outbreak of the war Sweden had increased her army from 360,000 to 500,000 men. In theUnited States mysterious “accidents” and mishaps occurred on board warships and in munitions and arms manufactories, and strikes were organized by Germans and Austrians on a scale which attracted the serious attention of the Washington Government.

But the last month of that fateful year was further darkened by the most dangerous and ominous event recorded in the United Kingdom since the war began. Over 200,000 coal miners of South Wales deliberately, obstinately and criminally withheld their labour from their own nation, whose existence at that moment was dependent on its bestowal. The coal pits of South Wales remained idle for over a week. The miners crossed their arms and turned deaf ears to the voice of reason and interest calling on them not to sacrifice the lives of their kith and kin who were fighting for them. This act of black treason to the country had been foreseen and foretold months before, but out of consideration for the rights of individuals was allowed to take place. The Germans and Austrians were exultant, for another couple of weeks’ strike would have given them the victory. Already the collapse of our defence was become a definite eventuality. The tact and statesmanship of Mr. Lloyd George exorcised the redoubtable spectre, but the spirit which that piece of treason revealed filled the most sanguine with dread and set those of little faith asking themselves whether this lamentable phenomenon was not one of certain ill-boding symptoms which seemed to reveal the smoothly moving current that bears doomed nations onward to their fate.

Certainly nothing could put in a clearer light than that strike has done the peremptorynecessity of national discipline, at any rate in war-time. The State that is unable to command the service of all its citizens when beset by ruthless foreign enemies has lost its lease of life and its right to live. It must be recognized that patriotism is still an unknown sentiment among millions of those who are citizens of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Patriotism has never been systematically inculcated among us as in Germany, France and Russia. Parochial or at most party interests still mark the loftiest heights to which certain sections of the population can soar above the dead level of individual egotism. In Germany and Austria strikes during war are unthinkable. Every railway official, every tram-conductor, every artisan there is a soldier subject to military discipline and is expected to give the fullest measure of his productive powers to the nation. And it is fair to add that they all regard this duty as a signal honour and a source of pleasure. For to them patriotism is a religion and their country a divinity.

The depth and fervour of this self-denying spirit among them as contrasted with the “healthy individual egotism” of the Allies constitutes one of the most disquieting phenomena of the struggle. Austria has been scoffed at for her abject submissiveness to Germany. But there is another way of looking at her attitude. She has courageously effaced her individuality more completely even than Turkey for the sake of the common cause. And she has lost nothing by the painful effort. Her various peoples who were expected to be tearing each other to pieces have given us a splendid example of discipline and self-abnegation. In the Skoda works at Pilsen, wheremachine guns are made, fifteen thousand workmen are cheerfully toiling and moiling every day of the week, Sundays and holidays not excepted. Since the war began Germany has accomplished as great things at home as on foreign battlefields. She built and launched a Dreadnought of 25,600 tons, a line-of-battle ship of 26,200 tons. And while the latter vessel was on the stocks, the reports published in the British press of the splendid results obtained by the 15-inch guns of theQueen Elizabethmoved the German Admiralty to substitute these for the 12-inch guns already adopted. Two swift cruisers, 12 small submarines and 24 larger ones of 1200 tons displacement, with a speed of 16 knots under water, 20 on the surface and a radius of action of 3000 miles—were among the results of a single year’s activity.

FOOTNOTES:[100]Giornale d’Italia, June 19, 1915.Corriere della Sera, June 20, 1915.[101]La Roumanie, July 26, 1915.[102]Gazette de Lausanne, July 6, 1915, andCorriere della Sera, July 8, 1915.[103]July 22, 1915.[104]Cf.Daily Telegraph, March 14, 1916, in telegram from Athens.[105]Novoye Vremya, July 22, 1915.

[100]Giornale d’Italia, June 19, 1915.Corriere della Sera, June 20, 1915.

[101]La Roumanie, July 26, 1915.

[102]Gazette de Lausanne, July 6, 1915, andCorriere della Sera, July 8, 1915.

[103]July 22, 1915.

[104]Cf.Daily Telegraph, March 14, 1916, in telegram from Athens.

[105]Novoye Vremya, July 22, 1915.

Andour enemies’ resourcefulness and power of adaptation is of a piece with their capacity for work. When war was declared and foreign trade arrested, numerous German factories underwent a quick transformation. Silk-works began to turn out bandages and lint; velvet works produced materials for tents; umbrella makers took to manufacturing rain-proof cloth; the output of sewing-machine factories was changed to shrapnel; piano manufacturers became makers of cartridges. Paper producers supplied the War Office with paper-made blankets. For copper, when the supply began to grow short, nickelled iron was quickly substituted. Sugar was employed to obtain the spirit which had to take the place of benzine. And the upshot of these transformations is that the orders received for military needs exceed those which would in normal conditions of exportation have been placed by foreign customers with German industry. The goods traffic on German railways, which had fallen to 41 per cent. during the first month of the war, has since gone up to 96 per cent. Those achievements are not merely noteworthy in themselves, they are ominously symptomatic.

A German professor, writing to a friend imprisoned in France, commented in passingupon these qualifications of his countrymen in a letter which M. Joseph Reinach soon afterwards gave to the public. One passage in that document is worth quoting. The professor holds that even if the worst comes to the worst, Germany can always conclude a “white peace” which will leave her the formidable glory of having held the whole world in check, will consolidate her prestige in Europe and enable her, twenty years hence, when she has made good her losses, to establish permanently her dominion. “My confidence is based on German patriotism, on German sense of discipline, on German genius for organization. But it is founded above all else on our enemies’ incapacity for organization. Ah, if our adversaries could enhance the worth of their resources by acquiring our gifts of initiative and method, we should be lost! I am thrilled by the picture of what we could accomplish if we were in the places of the English and the French and by the thought of the danger that would confront us if they but knew how to utilize the force of their allies as we have availed ourselves of those of Austria and Turkey.”

Those reflections find their fairest comment in the events of the twenty months that have passed since the opening of the campaign.

Our enemies’ reading of those events is instructive. The Austrian Press hails them as satisfactory. Even the Socialist organ[106]declares that, in the qualities that go to the attainment of success, “Austria holds the first place.” The Austrian General Staff wrote eight months ago: “Our troops have now been fighting for a twelvemonth.... A whole worldof enemies rose up against the Central Empires, and more than once our army had to bear the brunt of their formidable onslaught. To-day, they hold but small tracts of territory in western Galicia and Alsatia, whereas Germany’s hand is closed in a tight grasp on Belgium and the richest provinces of France, and in the north-east the allied forces of Austria and Germany have penetrated well into Russian Poland. The cannons’ muzzles are turned against the most powerful fortresses of the Tsar, and in the Dardanelles our third ally keeps watch and ward imperturbably.”

The War Lord himself has recorded his estimate of the results of the first year’s campaign. “Germany,” he stated in a speech delivered at Lemberg, “is an impregnable fortress. In her forward march she is irresistible. She will prove to the world that she can overcome all her enemies and will dictate to them the peace terms that please herself.” And in a discourse pronounced at Beuthen he recorded his view of the Allies’ outlook in these words: “Our enemies are floundering in confusion. Among themselves they are not united. They are disorganized by the struggle, disheartened by the knowledge that they are powerless to conquer Germany. German valour, German organization, German science have emerged with honour from this ordeal, the most terrible that a nation has ever undergone. Germany is greater and mightier than ever before.”

It behoves us to learn from our enemies, and, abstraction made from the monstrosities which are indelibly associated with the German name, there is much which the Teutons can still teach us. That the secret of success liesin a comprehensive system of organization is self-evident. But that organization must utilize all the resources of the Allies and include permanent arrangements, economic and other, for a future which shall not be a continuation of the past. Many of the advantages which the old ordering of things assured us are gone beyond recall. Conscription is become inevitable. Free trade is an institution of the past. The control of armies in the field by delegates of a democratic parliament such as is now demanded by the French Chamber is a dangerous craving for the fleshpots of Egypt. Whether Germany wins or loses, her rebellion against European civilization will effect substantial and durable changes in the methods of that civilization from which even the United States will not be exempted.

Thus between the old order of things and the new yawns an abyss which has to be crossed before we can worst our enemies even in the military campaign which is but one phase of the world-struggle. Our resources for the purpose of bridging it are ample, but our first difficulty is the circumstance that we are chained to the old system and are still unwilling to burst the bonds that hold us. And until efficacious means of effecting this are adopted the end must remain unattainable. Victory will not descend on our camp like a manna from on high. The Allied Armies do not resemble the mulberry tree which, having long lagged behind its rivals, suddenly bursts into fruit as well as flower.

During the past twenty months the Allies in general, and the British in particular, have achieved feats of which they have reason to be proud—feats which two years ago seemedbeyond the compass of human effort. But, much as we have done, we have not reached, nor indeed attempted to reach, the limits of our capacities, and the story of these memorable twenty months of struggle is dimmed by the shadow of the vaster exploits from which we have unaccountably shrunk.

The old-world social conceptions still prevalent in Great Britain afford no standard by which to gauge the significance of the crisis through which Europe is passing, nor do they provide efficacious means of satisfying the pressing needs which it has created. Yet the nation’s guides perceive nothing to change in those conceptions; on the contrary, they uphold them zealously. No event has occurred in modern times of greater concern to Europe than the unleashing of disruptive forces which threaten when the war is over to break up the politico-social fabric. Now, the mere prospect of this tremendous upheaval and of its sequel is, one would fancy, calculated to arouse the spirited interest of all the nations affected. Yet in Great Britain, whose very existence it menaces, it was at first received with such unmeaning comments as “business as usual.” The alertness of the people’s sensations—always inconsiderable—for volcanic outbursts which have their centre abroad, has never been quite so blunted as to-day.

Germany cultivates force not for its own sake but because it happens to suit her particular purpose. For this reason she preaches the doctrines that right and might are identical, that the end hallows the means, that military and political necessity overrule treaties and laws. For as violence and cunning may still gain triumphs, under the conditions that oncerendered them the only weapons of man, Germany’s first step is to bring about such conditions and to spread faith in the teachings of the new gospel. What the success of these efforts would involve is evident. All the ground slowly and painfully reclaimed from the primitive state of nature, transmuted into social order, and moralized by the altruistic accord of progressive humanity, would be submerged by the tidal wave of Teutonism.

The first clash of the two forces which took place a generation ago was hardly noticed. Germany stretched out her feelers tenderly, and even when she was draining nation after nation of its life juices, she took care to lull the patient while sucking his blood. Accordingly her attack provoked no counter-attack, nay, there was no serious attempt at defence. Those who directed the forces of the civilized communities were unconscious of the counter-force that was steadily undermining these—so unconscious that in lieu of isolating and paralysing it, the tendency of their endeavours was to further and to strengthen it. For they hastily assumed that it, too, was a great moral force in an uncouth guise and should also be tended and cultivated. Their duty, had they hearkened to its promptings, would have been to employ towards the criminal plotters against Europe’s civilized communities coercion of the same drastic description that once enabled mankind to substitute for the barbarous usages of savage tribes the habits of social relationship and moral self-surrender to the weal of all. Among the mainstays of Germany’s type of society and the instruments by which it was built up are heavy artillery, mighty armies, the gallows, bribery and guile. With some ofthose arms she had opened the campaign of conquest a quarter of a century ago, and of that campaign the present war, unexampled though it be, is but an acute and transient episode. This would appear to be the only true reading of contemporary events.

Few careful students of European politics will now deny that the struggle between the forces for which Teutonism stands and those on which the social ordering of the rest of Europe is based was inaugurated long ago, that the ground was then cleared for the new politico-social structure, or that the dissolution of our “effete, drowsy States, saturated with wealth and honeycombed with hypocrisies,” was carefully planned and taken in hand with scientific precision. It is equally clear, to those who have eyes to see, that the present clash of nations, despite its appalling effects on civilization, is but an acuter phase of that campaign, a series of incidents in a mighty struggle which neither began in July 1914 nor will end with the close of hostilities, but will rage on for years to come in less sanguinary but more decisive forms. For the future peace—whatever its terms—which will silence the cannon’s boom, will but transfer the war theatre without ending the war. The methods will be changed from military to economic. But only the weapons will be different; the military discipline, the callous indifference to the dictates of human and divine law, the utter absence of scruple will continue to characterize the tactics of our enemy, who will then have a wider scope for his activities than the battlefield can offer. The German has no match among the allied nations in the regions of the new diplomacy, trade, industry, appliedscience, insidious journalism and vast organization. He is incomparably better equipped than they, and owing to his amorality has none of those obstacles to contend with which so often confront them with scruples and check their advance.

And during the progress of the present war the Teutons are making ready for that economico-political duel which will, they hope, give them the decisive superiority for which they had vainly hoped from the war. That hope, if their experience of the past thirty years be a fair indication, is by no means groundless.

Not to realize these facts to-day is to play into the hands of our enemies, as we have been steadfastly doing during the past thirty years. The British and their allies are being overcome less by German skill and cleverness than by their own sluggishness, narrowness of outlook and love of ease. As the German professor, whose utterances I have already quoted, tersely put it: “My confidence is founded above all else on our enemies’ incapacity for organization.” In truth, it is not inborn incapacity to which we owe our unquestioned inferiority, but to the atrophy of will-power which is one of the consequences of years of egotism, overweening confidence, self-indulgence and the loss of an inspiring social faith.

Now, there is every reason to assume that these master facts are not yet recognized by our rulers, who seem perfectly contented that the nation should go on living as before from hand to mouth, with no far-reaching views for the future. This insular narrow-mindedness is natural. For the Ministers in power are the same who obstinately refused to credit the evidence of their senses, which went to provethat Germany was bending all her energies to the successful prosecution of a formidable campaign against us and our presumptive allies for a whole generation. The frank recognition of this state of masked hostility would have imposed on the Government the correlate duty of taking up the challenge, readjusting our public life to the altered conditions, urging the nation to make heavy sacrifices and dissatisfying radical constituencies, whose one ideal is to devote themselves exclusively to parochial policy and domestic legislation. And the chiefs of the party in power lacked the mental and moral strength to throw off their deep-rooted apprehension of the consequences to party prospects, of increased taxation and other burdens of citizenship. They never grasped the situation as a whole, but restricted their survey to each fragmentary question as it was thrust into the foreground of actualities and eliminated every other.

FOOTNOTES:[106]Arbeiter Zeitung.

[106]Arbeiter Zeitung.

Nobold, broad, stable policy, therefore, was ever conceived by those party politicians. The vast organization which was destined to destroy the old order of things in Europe, and whose manifestations were an open book to all observers who brought acuteness and patience to the study, was not merely ignored by them—its very existence was denied, and those who refused to join the ranks of the deniers were brand-marked as mischief-makers. The nation’s responsible trustees, by way of justifying this singular attitude, accepted implicitly our enemy’s account of his unfriendly acts and enterprises. Thus it was the chief of His Majesty’s Government who, from his place in the House of Commons, emphatically asserted that it behoved the British nation to welcome the Baghdad railway enterprise as a precious cultural undertaking devoid of political objects and, therefore, well worthy of our support. In vain the writer of these lines laid bare the real designs of the German Government, and adduced cogent proofs that the seemingly cultural scheme was but an integral part of a vast campaign, of which one object was the ousting of Britons from the Near and Middle East and the substitution of German overlordship there. They shut their eyes and stopped their ears, andbade us rejoice that Britain is not as other countries and can afford to welcome and even further Germany’s “cultural” projects.

It was our party politicians who, when the ground-swell of international anger and the premonitory rumble of volcanic forces became audible, diverted public attention from the symptoms and solemnly assured their countrymen that Germany had no intention of going to war. To the author of these pages, who was at the pains of unfolding in private his information and conclusions on this subject to one of those leaders, the answer given ran thus: “Your intentions are patriotic and your accuracy of observation is probably scientific. But your conclusions are wholly erroneous. You must admit that you are a pessimist. Nor can you deny that we members of the Cabinet dispose of fuller and more decisive data for a judgment than you, with all your opportunities, can muster. After all, we do know something of the temper of the German Government. And we have cogent grounds for holding that neither the Kaiser nor his Ministers want war. Bethmann Hollweg is the most pacific chancellor Germany has ever had. And the German people, bellicose though you think them, are to the full as peace-loving as our own. Their one desire is to be allowed to vie with us in commercial and industrial pursuits. So true is this, that if we suppose the improbable, that the Kaiser’s Government should feel disposed to bring about a European war, that design would be thwarted by the Reichstag backed by the bulk of the population.”

Thus the men who presided over the destinies of the British Empire either had no eye forthe triumphant progress of the German campaign that had been going forward for years unchecked, or, if they discerned any of its episodes, saw them only through the softening and distorting medium of deceptive assurances and explanations emanating from Berlin. And on the strength of these illusive phrases they kept the country in a state of unpreparedness for the military form of the struggle for which our enemy was making ready, and if they had had their way our navy—which was our anchor of salvation—would also perhaps have been shorn of its strength.

When at last the war broke out, it was our party politicians, the men to whom we still look up for light and guidance, who misinterpreted its nature and underestimated the urgent needs of the Empire. It was they who conceived the campaign as though it were one of our occasional colonial expeditions, and would fain base the strength of our land army abroad on the small number of troops which the Government had conditionally undertaken to provide. And throughout the first sixteen months of the war, it was they who went on doling out contingents with Troy weights and measures like Mrs. Partington beating back the tidal waves with a mop. It was they, too, who were at extraordinary pains and risked their prestige, to throw away the splendid privileged position which, at the outset of the struggle, we chanced to occupy in South-Eastern Europe. Every blunder into which petty municipal minds could fall when confronted with a wild revolutionary welter, marked the hesitant policy of the British Government. This aimless chaos of soul was the main cause of the woeful waste of ourpolitical advantages and enormous resources in the accomplishment of secondary ends which generally led nowhere. It was thus that they forfeited the active support of Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, foolishly stood by applauding every step those nations took towards the camp of our enemies, and then felt constrained to turn to their own people whom they had unwittingly misled and call upon it for the sacrifice of the flower of its manhood.

It was they who sacrificed, through sheer administrative incapacity, the decided superiority over the Teutons which we enjoyed in the air at the outset of the war. It is now admitted that our mastery in that region was then complete. All that the country demanded of them was that they should hold it. But what with divided control, restricted views, and the policy of insufficient means—petits paquets—as the French term it, they allowed our enemies to outstrip us. And to-day in the air as on land it is the Germans who have the initiative and the Allies who are condemned to the defensive. Yet experts had pointed out over and over again what should be done and what avoided. Their advice was obviously sound and their criticism obviously irrefutable. But the men in power fumbled and floundered on until we had forfeited our mastery in the air to our enemies. And ever since then the nation has been paying the penalty. Yet it is to the men responsible for these costly blunders that the nation still looks for salvation!

It was the same men who conceived or sanctioned the plan of an expedition to Mesopotamia. Whether this was a wise or a foolish project, when once decided upon it should have been carried out with might and main.All the means requisite to success should have been taken; all the resources possessed by the Empire should have been drawn upon and nothing needlessly left to chance. Above all things else, the views of the man charged with the execution of the plan should have been elicited and carefully weighed. As a matter of fact, General Townshend’s judgment was decidedly adverse to the expedition under the conditions in which it was planned. For the forces assigned to him, amounting to far less than a division, were absurdly inadequate, and their inadequacy was easily demonstrable. He ought to have had at least two divisions more. But once again the game of divided control and diluted responsibility was played, with consequences which would in any other country suffice to wreck the Government chargeable with the blunder.

Yet it is to the men who committed that and all the other blunders that the nation still looks confidently for salvation!

If the British people finally obtain it under those leaders they may fairly claim to have abrogated the law of cause and effect.

These same men are still the mentors and the spokesmen of a free nation which can choose its leaders. It is they to whom the people has entrusted the conduct of the most critical phase of the whole campaign in which the recurrence of similar errors may foredoom the Empire to disruption. And it is, humanly speaking, inconceivable that miscalculations of that kind should be eliminated, in view of the crucial fact that the Ministers at present in power, if we may judge by their utterances and their acts, entertain a fundamentally false conception of the relations between the Teutonsand the allied nations. Among the elements of that conception there would seem to be no room for the historic past. The present stands by itself with a history that goes no further back than the month of July 1914, and will convulsively come to an end with the truce that ushers in the future treaty of peace. For that diplomatic instrument will put an end to the struggle and inaugurate an era of international tranquillity. Such is the theory on which their entire policy is based.

We must fight on now to afinish, but the upshot is sure to be a finish. Their anticipations of an unclouded dawn, when the present night has worn itself into the streaky greyness of morning, are certain to come to pass. The ordeal which we are undergoing is tremendous, but at any rate the nation and its allies will emerge from it rejuvenated under the spell of the present magicians, as the old ram emerged lamb-like and frisky from Medea’s cauldron. That, in brief, would seem to be the picture in the mind’s eye of the British Government, and to that conception all their plans are being accommodated.

As a matter of ascertainable fact, neither we nor our Allies have anything of the kind to hope for. In the near future the present campaign will have come to a close, but not the struggle between ourselves and our Teuton aggressors. For this war, far from ending the tragic duel between the two types of community life in Europe, is but one of its transient episodes. The trial of strength began many years ago and will not be decided for many years to come, how satisfactory so ever the terms of the future peace may be to ourselves and our Allies. This is a fundamental truthwhich has not yet penetrated the consciousness of either rulers or people. And for that reason the problem awaiting them is mis-stated, belittled. According to the received version it is to beat back German aggression and render it impossible in the future. Now, however successfully the first part of the task may be discharged—and it is still very uphill work—the second is a sheer impossibility, and to lay our plans as though it were feasible and soon to be realized, is to embark on the body of a sleeping whale in the belief that it is an island in the sea. And to negotiate peace abroad and give an impulse to politics at home, with that comforting prospect in mind, is to lead the nation into a Serbonian bog whence no escape is possible. The leaders of Great Britain are so permeated with the duties, the rights, the hopes and the strivings of parliamentary parties, that they involuntarily think in terms of home politics and have no chord in their being responsive to the emotions that sway the German soul and nerve the German arm.

To the average mind it is clear that the terms on which peace might be negotiated, if the end of the war were also to be the end of the struggle, might differ considerably from those on which a statesman would properly insist, were he convinced that the sheathing of the sword marked but the opening of a new phase of the duel. And it is this alternative which it behoves us to lay at the foundation of our peace treaty, if it should rest with the Allies to impose their terms. The problem, therefore, which a Government that governs has to tackle, is twofold: the conclusion of such a peace as will confer on the EntenteStates, individually and collectively, all possible advantages, not for contemplating such a tranquil state of things as the ministerial conception postulates, but for the prosecution of the struggle with the greatest chances of success, and for the reconstruction of the social fabric at home with a view to harmonizing it with the new requirements, and, in particular, with the needs created by the constant state of economic, financial, diplomatic and journalistic warfare in which we shall be engaged. The social ordering of Great Britain must be not merely modified but remodelled and rebuilt from the groundwork to the coping-stone. One of the first needs of the nation is the education, physical and spiritual, of the new generation. Patriotic sentiment must be engrafted on the receptive soul of the child, and its range of sympathy widened and deepened. The duty of self-abnegation for the welfare of the community must be inculcated, together with new conceptions of personal dignity and worth. To the domestic sentiment in those cramped and distorted forms in which it still survives in Britain, where we cling tenaciously to so many institutions devoid of life and utility, a less commanding part must be assigned in the future than heretofore. Above all, it behoves us to encourage the scientific spirit with its correlates, patient thought and study, as opposed to the arrogant amateurism which, without rudimentary qualifications, claims to have a voice in the solution of every problem under the sun. It is largely to this dilettante temperament of the nation and its rulers that we owe the disasters we have sustained and the dangers with which we are threatened.

Looking back, then, dispassionately upon the movement, deliberately organized over thirty years ago by the restless German mind and pushed steadily forward ever since over diplomatic barriers, financial hindrances, economic obstacles and international laws, one is struck less by the unparalleled magnitude of the enterprise than by the blindness and sluggishness of its destined victims. And it is largely in these and kindred negative qualities that we have to seek for the clue to the astonishing sequence of successes scored by our enemies in their military and naval, as well as their politico-economic, campaigns. Moreover, these same defects, deep-rooted and widespread among the allied peoples, constitute their main source of weakness during the economic and decisive tug-of-war which will be ushered in by the treaty of peace. For the temperament, traditions and strivings of each of these nations are so many obstacles to the gathering of their scattered moral energies and wasted spiritual forces in one fertilizing stream. They are bent on joining incompatible elements in a political synthesis. In the name of national independence and by way of a telling protest against the vassalage which binds Austria to Germany, the Entente nations spurn the notion of any common accord which requires the practice of self-surrender as a base, and are resolved under the strain of circumstance to present such a loosely-joined front to the enemy as will not involve their foregoing one iota of their freedom or one tittle of their national claims. How, in these conditions, they expect ever to rise to that height of moral fervour without which the quasi-ascetic effort demanded of them isinconceivable, has not yet been explained. As usual, they count upon effects without causes, upon an ingathering of the harvest with no preceding seedtime. Now, interdependence and compromise are the indispensable conditions of that cohesion which alone can engender the force required. A condition approaching organic coherency must be attained before a smooth working system can be created among the Allies. But as each of them is still rooted to the past, permeated by its own interests and aspirations, and jealous not only of the substance of its liberty but also of the shadow, the distance yet to be traversed before the goal can be reached is enormous, and the road rugged and beset with pitfalls.

A glance at the past and present may enable us to gauge aright the nature of some of the difficulties that have to be surmounted in the future.

Letus begin with the present, in view of the circumstance that the war has brought the allied peoples into a much nearer approach to union and has more fully systematized their efforts than can ever be the case in peace time. We find, then, two groups of belligerents pitted against each other, whose resources in men, money and economic supplies are strikingly unequal. The Teutons are by far the weaker side, and even in spite of their long preparations ought to have been thoroughly beaten long ago. So evident and encouraging was the comparison that the Entente nations themselves boldly grounded their calculations on it, and anticipated a brief spell of warfare and a decisive victory. And this forecast seemed reasonable enough when the material elements were weighed and contrasted. The Entente communities occupy 68,031,000 square kilometres of territory, which are inhabited by a population of 770,060,000, or say 46 per cent. of the entire land on the globe and 47 per cent. of the entire human race. The Central Empires, on the other hand, possess no more than 5,921,000 square kilometres with 150,199,000 inhabitants, which amounts to only 4 per cent. of dry land on the globe and 9.1 per cent. of mankind. Add to that the circumstance that in the air our superiority over ourenemies was undisputed, and that the odds in favour of our enlisting the active support of the Balkan States were overwhelming. The chances in favour of the Allies, therefore, were and are enormous. That being so, why, it may well be asked, has the course of the military, naval and air campaign so uniformly favoured the weaker side? It is no answer to point out that Germany and Austria had been organizing the war for over thirty years, or had contrived to mobilize all their resources when the first shot was fired. That explanation would account for their progress during the first few months, but not for the victories they scored down to the beginning of April 1916. It was loudly proclaimed by British journalists that the Berlin General Staff had based its plan on the assumption that the struggle would be decided in a few months and certainly by the end of 1914. And the inference was drawn that as this time-table was upset, Germany was so bewildered that she could hardly draw up another plan and adjust her forces to that. She had shot her bolt, we were assured, had missed the target, and it was beyond her power to put forth another effort. But events refuted these false prophets, without, however, greatly impairing their credit with the multitude. They still continue to describe Germany’s dire straits and foretell her speedy collapse. And they are listened to with eagerness and trust.

In truth the root of the matter lies deeper. One of the most telling factors, in every armed conflict between peoples, consists of the sum total of imponderabilia which elude analysis. Intellectual and moral equipment, as I ventured to write when the war began, sometimes countsfor more than battalions. And I instanced the Russo-Japanese campaign as a case in point. One belligerent may regard the campaign as a temporary calamity to be endured until it can be conveniently got rid of, while another may gird his loins and go forth to battle exultant like the fanaticized warriors of Cromwell. The former will contemplate the struggle and regulate the conduct of it in the light of immediate expediency, while the latter will treat the war as a life-task and boldly throw the weight of everything he has, and is, and hopes for into the blows he deals his adversary. Now in this struggle the Teuton is the fanaticized warrior. He is fighting for an ideal, which, whether or no he understands it, he caresses and deems his very own. The hopes and dreams of the leaders of the nation have been communicated to the individual citizen, who, having lived for them, is ready to die for them. Our people, on the other hand, have never enjoyed that education in patriotism which is bestowed on every Teuton, and they are wanting in the strength of imagination, the spirit of cohesion and the energizing social faith which might have made up for the deficiency.

Then, again, over against the Allies’ inexhaustible resources we must put the marvellous capacity for organization which intensifies those of our enemy. The nearest known approach to it is found in the Japanese, who, there is little doubt, if pressed by circumstance, would match the Teuton in resourcefulness and even outdo him in the spirit of self-sacrifice. To this precious asset in Germany’s leaders corresponds a superlative degree of docility and self-surrender in her people which offera striking contrast to the strongly marked individualist tendencies of the British, French and Russian races. Nay, one may go farther and assert that the central streams of national life in each of these countries flows in channels of party politics, which no influential leader has ever attempted to deepen or widen. The German, on the contrary, as we saw, associates his every work and undertaking with ideas of almost cosmic breadth and is actuated by interests to which all the larger problems of humanity are akin. And he took timely possession of every lever that might contribute to the success of his revolt against Europeanism, when his far-reaching scheme was yet in the early phases of execution.

Everything that human foresight could think of was carefully studied, everything that human ingenuity could provide for was thoroughly effected and systematized. Royal dynasties were founded abroad by German princes. German colonies settled in Russia, Poland, Palestine and Brazil. German schools were opened in Roumania, Spain, Asia Minor, the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom. Foreign newspapers were bought or subsidized. Protestant sects with pro-German tendencies were encouraged. Banks were founded with Entente capital and employed to ruin the trade of the nations that subscribed it. Colonies of mechanics, clerks, middlemen were settled in every European country and colony and obtained control of the nation’s industries and trade. Special legislation was enacted in Berlin to enable the German to become a foreign subject in externals while bound by all the duties of a citizen of his own country.

As the hour for the military and navalstruggle was drawing near intestine strife was industriously stirred up in all those countries whose rivalry the Germans had reason to apprehend. Emissaries were despatched to Egypt who made common cause with the disaffected and restless elements of the population, cultivated friendship with the Senussi and smuggled in arms to would-be African rebels. In India German “scientific explorers” hobnobbed with the natives, criticized the state of “serfage” to which British rule had reduced one of the most highly civilized races of mankind, and made overtures to the Afghans. To Abyssinia another “scientific expedition” was despatched, which consisted of a number of German officers and one explorer. After a circuitous and difficult journey it arrived at Massaua in March 1915, and requested the authorization of the Italian Governor of Erithea, the Marquess Salvago-Raggi, to push on to Adis Abeba, in order to re-establish communications between the German Legation there and the Berlin Foreign Office. The real object of the expedition, as the Italian Government well knew, was to incite the young Negus to attack the British in the Sudan and the French in Djibuti. But Italy, although still neutral, understood too well how difficult it would have been for her to limit Abyssinia’s warlike operations to the French and British possessions and ward them off from her own colonies. Baron Sonnino accordingly declined to accord the permission asked for, and consented only to allow a large consignment of “correspondence” to be sent on.[107]

Later on Turkish officers were sent to Libya to egg on the Arabs to harass the Italians there. The Kaiser himself despatched a letter in Arabic to the Senussi which was intercepted on a Greek sailing vessel near Tripoli. It is said to have been enclosed in an embossed casket, and was found on board together with £4000 in gold and a number of oriental gifts. The letter, if genuine, is worth recording. Wilhelm II., the Supreme Head of the Protestant Church in Germany, gives himself therein, among other high sounding titles, those of Allah’s Envoy and Islam’s Protector, and states explicitly that it is his will that the Senussi’s doughty warriors should drive the “infidels” from the land which is the heritage of the true believers and their chief. This, from the “supreme Bishop” of one of the Christian Churches, is characteristic.

In Asia Minor Germany’s machinations were carried on with a much greater measure of success. Her former opponents had withdrawn their opposition and undertaken to lend her positive assistance to attain ends which were directed against themselves. This chapter of Entente diplomacy is marked by broad streaks of farcical comedy calculated to bewilder the serious student. France was converted to political orthodoxy on the subject of the Baghdad Railway and its cultural significance. Some of her publicists frankly repented that she had so long looked upon it with disfavour, and threw the blame on Russia, for whose sake they had kept aloof. At Potsdam the Tsar’s Minister abandoned his objections to the Baghdad enterprise and undertook to build a railway line from Persia, which would allow another stretch of countryto be tapped by the German Railway Company. Great Britain, acknowledging the error of her ways, agreed that Koweit should not be the terminus and made valuable concessions to the Teuton, the realization of which was hindered by the outbreak of the war. Turkey, through Enver, who had imported from the Fatherland a band of military “instructors” under Liman von Sanders, became theâme damnéeof Germany. In Persia every warlike and predatory tribe was courted by the Teuton intruder, and the German mission at Teheran, as well as the Consulates in the chief towns of the Shahdom, became centres of agitation against Britain and Russia and branches of the German General Staff.

In the Tsar’s dominions German agents organized a series of strikes in the various works belonging to their countrymen, paid the strikers and fostered a subversive political movement which bade fair to culminate in a real revolution. In Belgium the Flemings, who had for years been protesting against the refusal of their Government to give them a Flemish University in Ghent, were incited against the Walloons, whose dialect is of French origin and whose sympathizers were the entire French people. And one of the joint acts of the German administration in Brussels has been to appoint a commission to submit a scheme for the creation of a Flemish high school in Ghent and accentuate the differences between the two elements of the population.[108]

Meanwhile, in Germany the work of organizationwent steadily forward. While British Ministers were on the look-out for reasons or pretexts for diminishing expenditure on shipbuilding, Germany, under von Tirpitz, was stealing a march on us and increasing hers. And over and above this, she was arranging a surprise in the shape of submarines and aircraft which, had the war been deferred for another couple of years, might have not only removed the odds in our favour but given her a decided superiority over us. And, by way of intensifying the value of her fleet, she set to work to deepen the Kiel Canal and thus to confer a sort of ubiquity on her battleships, which can now concentrate in the North Sea or the Baltic without let or hindrance from the enemy. When the epoch of the Dreadnoughts was opened German armoured ships had a displacement of no more than 13,000 tons. The larger type of battleship, which was afterwards constructed, could not pass through the Canal, which had to be deepened. The necessary work was so thoughtfully and opportunely taken in hand that it was terminated in July 1914, just when the harvest for that year was also ingathered. Asphyxiating gas had been manufactured in the year 1911, as the Russians have discovered on certain of the machines. Thus when the fatal hour struck, everything was ready.

In the financial sphere, too, we find the same comprehensive survey, the same eye for detail, the same forethought and combination. When hostilities broke out British banks held about £1,100,000,000 of their depositors’ money. A large percentage of this had been employed to discount foreign, and in especial German bills, so that the paper remained in Great Britainand the gold was transferred to Germany, where it plays its part against us. But those marvellous efforts put forth with such effect by our enemies made no appeal to our rulers. Nowhere in the British Empire was there any man of mark thinking and acting for the community. The political pilots who had charge of the state-ship possessed neither chart nor compass nor rudder. Neither did they feel the need of these things. The Government disbelieved in war and was minded, if a struggle should be precipitated, to keep out of it. Nobody envisaged the needs and interests of the Empire as aspects of a single problem. Nobody had any clear-cut plan for the working out of the destinies of the British people. The interests of party, the expediency of local reforms, the squabbles between this faction and that, constituted the burning topics of the hour, and there were none other. And it was while we were thus wrangling with and threatening each other that the blast of the clarion ushered in the day of doom.

The secrets of nature, revealed by science to a nation which acknowledges no restraints, then became weapons of wholesale destruction to be used to subjugate all civilization. Now, there are some reasons for assuming that civilization will escape the thraldom, but there are unhappily equally cogent grounds for apprehending that some of its most precious achievements will be irrecoverably lost and others greatly impaired. Had there been a master mind at the helm of the British state-ship before the war or at its opening, we might have been spared the necessity of signing one day a temporary peace amid the ruins of European culture.

But no puissant genius in any of the allied countries towered above the dead level of mediocrity. Great Frenchmen, Britons and Russians were said to be available, but there was no great man in evidence. And this want proved disastrous. In Germany, on the other hand, it was hardly felt. For it was compensated by the existence of a vast human machine, adaptable to every change of circumstance, capable of assuming countless Protean forms simultaneously, ready with a solution for the most unexpected problems, provided with organs suited to the discharge of every conceivable function, all directed to the same end. It was the same organism that had worked with such brilliant success for over thirty years, growing and perfecting itself steadily until it became the concrete manifestation of a whole system of thought, sentiment and co-ordinated action. Germany had developed into a powerful national State in which the spirit of self-surrender for the good of the community animates all sections alike, all of which co-operate effectively, through the organizations which they spontaneously created, for the realization of their common objects. And therein lay her force.

On the outbreak of war Germany was faced with a group of the most arduous and intricate problems any Government has ever yet had to tackle. For most of them she had had the time and the forethought to prepare. But others arose which had been neither provided for nor foreseen, in consequence of her mistaken assumption that Great Britain would hold aloof from the war. The total value of her exports and imports in the year 1913 was computed at 1,000,000,000 sterling, and an infinity of fine threads bound her industrialactivity with foreign countries. By Great Britain’s declaration of war, for which Germany was unprepared until the last days of July, nearly all these threads were snapped asunder, and the industrial and economic life of the Empire had to be swiftly readjusted to the new conditions. And here it was that the nation rose as one man to the unparalleled occasion, faced the tremendous ordeal, and, contrary to the expectations of its adversaries—ever prone to judge others by themselves—has continued not merely to exist, but to extend its conquests ever since.

It was in the financial sphere that the first strain was felt. But perilous though it actually was, it would have been intolerable but for the precautionary measures adopted in July and the ingenious devices applied by the Reichsbank immediately after. The first step taken was to substitute short-terms credit for long. The gold in the Reichsbank increased steadily, and from 1,009,000,000 marks on July 7, 1913, it rose to 1,356,000,000 by July 7, 1914. The war treasure hoarded in the Julius-Tower was doubled, so as to enable the Imperial Bank to issue 720,000,000 marks on the strength of it, whereby its gold cover was augmented from 1,253,000,000 to 1,447,000,000. A further considerable reserve of silver was laid by, which proved extremely useful later on. One result of this policy was that on the fatal 31st July, no less than 4,500,000,000 marks in banknotes could be issued without exceeding the limits prescribed by the law.[109]A network of Loan Banks was also created throughout the country in whichevery one, possessed of property of any description, could obtain credit to any amount, provided the pledges warranted the advance.

Nor were the large groups of business men neglected who had no pledges to offer yet sorely needed credit. For their behoof War Credit Banks were instituted, which transacted business on curious lines. A city or town subscribed a third or even more of the shares of the borrowing company, and the Imperial Bank conferred the right of rediscounting bills of exchange up to an amount equal to three times the value of the capital, and sometimes even more. Institutions were opened for advancing money on house property, and for assisting special branches of industry. The Hansa-Bund, for instance, founded a War Credit Bank for “the Middle Classes” which, with the authorization of the Reichsbank, rediscounts bills of exchange drawn by individuals for whom the Commune vouches. Associations were constituted in the country and in towns, and the nature of their work is evidenced by the 18,000 rural Savings and Credit Banks and 16,000 urban and trade associations.[110]For farmers and struggling landowners, a Central Board, for the purchase of machines, was created, which also superintended the equitable distribution of orders among industrial firms.

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