The thoroughness and efficiency of the Germans are admitted even by hostile critics. In the practical sphere they have excelled in military preparations, in the encouragement of industry, and in the organisation of finance. But they have achieved an even more remarkable success than any of these; for they have so arranged their educational system that it is drilled hardly less admirably than their army.[1] From the primary schools to the universities everything is ordered, so that the plastic mind of youth is forced into a political mould which suits the purposes of government. Patriotism of the pattern approved by the authorities is inculcated directly or indirectly in every class-room. While thought is left ostentatiously free in regard to private morals and religious foundations, the duties of the citizen to the state, the duties of the state to posterity, the relations of Germany to the outside world, are subjects upon which independent speculation is not tolerated.
Even schoolmasters and professors have their ambitions; but unless they contribute their quota to the support of imperial ideals, their careers are unlikely to prosper. It is not enough that a lecturer should not run counter to state policy; he must actively promote its ends before he can hope to be transferred to a sphere of greater dignity and influence. Pedagogy is a branch of the Civil Service just as much as the Treasury or the Public Health Department. Teachers from the lowest to the highest grades are the stipendiaries of the bureaucracy. If they render useful services they are promoted. If they fail to render useful services they are passed over. If they indulge in dangerous speculations they are sent adrift. Not merely the army, but the whole German nation, is disciplined, during the period of its impressionable youth, with the object of inclining its mind to support state policy through thick and thin.
The schools feed the universities; the universities feed the press, the learned professions, and the higher grades in industry and finance. Private conversation, as well as what is published in newspapers, magazines, and books, bears the impress of the official mint to a degree unthinkable in England or America, Russia or France. Theories of politics are devised by ingenious sophists, exactly as the machinery at Essen is contrived by engineers—for the express purpose of forwarding Prussian policy. History is twisted and distorted in order to prepare the way for imperial ambitions by justifying them in advance.
It is a signal triumph for the thoroughness of German methods that all the thinkers, dreamers,poets, and prophets, with but a few exceptions, should have been commandeered and set to work thinking, dreaming, poetising, and prophesying to the glory of the Kaiser, and his army, and his navy, and his counsellors, and his world policy, and the conquests and expansion which are entailed therein.
MOBILISATION OF INTELLECTUALS
It is somewhat startling, however, to find the intellectuals thus mobilised, and all but unanimous, on the official side; for hitherto in history they have rarely agreed among themselves, and the greater part have usually favoured the Opposition rather than the Government. Nor does this close alliance between learning and the bureaucracy seem altogether satisfactory. For thought loses its fine edge when it is set to cut millstones of state. It loses its fine temper in the red heat of political controversy. By turning utilitarian it ceases to be universal; and what is perhaps even worse, it ceases to be free. It tends more and more to become the mere inventor of things which will sell at a profit; less and less the discoverer of high principles which the gods have hidden out of sight. It would hardly be possible to imagine a more complete reversal of attitude than that which has occurred in Germany between the beginning of the nineteenth century and the present time; and though this change may serve admirably the immediate purposes of the state, it does not augur well for the future of German thought.
The similarities and contrasts of history are interesting to contemplate. In the ferment of thought and action which occurred in France during the generation preceding the battle of Valmy, and that other which has been going on in Germany in thegeneration preceding the battle of the Marne, there are various likenesses and unlikenesses. In France before the Revolution, as in Germany to-day, a bureaucracy, responsible solely to the monarch, directed policy and controlled administration. But in France this bureaucracy was incompetent, unpractical, and corrupt. Its machinery was clogged with dead matter of every kind, with prejudices, traditions, and statutes, many of which had outlived their original purposes. TheStruldbrugs, discovered by Gulliver during his voyages, were a race of men whose mortal souls were incased in immortal bodies. The French monarchy was of this nature, and the soul of it was long since dead. Inefficiency was everywhere apparent; and, as a natural consequence, the whole system had become a butt, at which each brilliant writer in turn levelled his darts of derision and contempt.
In Germany, although the political mechanism is the same, the conditions are diametrically the opposite. The bureaucracy and the monarchy which it supports, have proved themselves highly efficient and adaptive. The arrangement has worked with a marvellous success. It has cherished the material, if not the spiritual, well-being of the people. The wealth-producing and belly-filling activities of the race have been stimulated to an extent never yet attained by any form of government, either popular or despotic. Administration has been honest, thrifty, and singularly free from the usual dull negatives of officialdom and the pedantries of red tape. In all directions industrial prosperity has increased, under the fostering care of the state, by leaps and bounds. Anything more remote from the bankrupt empire ofLouis XVI. it would be impossible to conceive. And as a natural consequence, brilliant German writers have for the most part[2] spent their forces of rhetoric and fancy in idealising the grandeur and nobility of an order of things, under which resources, comfort, and luxury have expanded with such amazing strides.
IDEAS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
In the case of France the aim of the intellectuals was to pull down existing institutions, in that of Germany it has been to bolster them up, to extend and develop them to their logical conclusions. But the second were no less agents of destruction than the first. Each alike, as a condition of success, required that a new order of moral and political ideas should be set up; each attained a certain measure of success; and the results which followed were those which usually follow, when new wine is poured into old bottles.
The ideas of the French Revolution cast themselves into the mould of republicanism. A picture wholly imaginary and fictitious was drawn of the institutions of Greece and Rome in ancient days.Liberty,Equality, andFraternitywere believed to have been the foundations of these famous states. Patriots on the banks of the Seine conceived themselves to be re-incarnations of Aristides and the Gracchi, of Pericles, of one Brutus or the other—it mattered little which. Political idealism passed rapidly into a kind of religious fervour.
The German masquerade is very different from this, but it is no less a masquerade. What covers the new faith, indeed, is not plumage borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, but habiliments which are supposed to have clad the heroic forms of ancestral Teutons. The student on his way to doctor's degree—theintelligent clerk scanning the high-road to fortune from the eminence of office-stool—dream in their pensive leisure to emulate the heroes of Asgard, to merit and enjoy the glories of Valhalla. But the noble shapes and gorgeous colourings in which the modern young German of honest, sober, and industrious character has chosen to see his destiny prefigured, are no less imaginary and fictitious than those others, with which eloquent notaries'-clerks, and emancipated, unfrocked priests, decked themselves out for the admiration of the Paris mob. In Germany as in France political idealism passed into a kind of religious fervour, which inspired men to a mimicry of old-Wardour-Street shams, and led them to neglect the development of their own true natures.
During quiet times that stream of events, which we are wont to call human progress, is occupied incessantly in throwing up dams, of one sort or another, throughout the world. Tree-trunks and logs, which have been swept down by former floods of conquest and invasion, jam at some convenient rocky angle, as the river falls to its normal level. Against these obstacles the drift and silt of habit, custom, law, convention, prejudice, and tradition slowly collect, settle, and consolidate. An embankment is gradually formed, and the waters are held up behind it ever higher and higher. The tribal pool becomes a pond or nation; and this again, if conditions remain favourable—for so long, that is to say, as there are no more raging and destructive floods,—extends into a lake or inland sea of empire.... "See," cry the optimists, "see what a fine, smooth, silvery sheet of civilisation, culture, wealth, happiness, comfort, andwhat not besides, where formerly there was but an insignificant torrent brawling in the gorge!" ... But the pessimists, as is their nature, shake their heads, talk anxiously of the weight of waters which are banking up behind, and of the unreliable character of the materials out of which the dam has grown. "Some day," they warn us, "the embankment will burst under the heavy pressure; or, more likely still, some ignorant, heedless, or malicious person will begin to fiddle and tamper with the casual structure; and then what may we expect?"
RECENT ANXIETIES
There has been considerable nervousness of late among rulers of nations as to the soundness of their existing barrages. For the most part, however, they have concerned themselves with internal dangers—with watching propagandists of the socialist persuasion—with keeping these under a kind of benevolent police supervision, and in removing ostentatiously from time to time the more glaring of their alleged grievances. This procedure has been quite as noticeable in the case of autocracies, as in countries which enjoy popular institutions.
Treitschke and Bernhardi—even Nietzsche himself—valued themselves far more highly as builders-up than as pullers-down. It is always so with your inspired inaugurators of change. It was so with Rousseau and those other writers, whose thoughts, fermenting for a generation in the minds of Frenchmen, brought about the Revolution. The intellectuals of the eighteenth century, like those of the nineteenth, aimed at getting rid of a great accumulation of insanitary rubbish. But this was only a troublesome preliminary, to be hurried through with as quickly as possible, in order that the much greaterwork of construction might proceed upon the cleared site.
Treitschke made a hole in the German dam when he cut an ancient commonplace in two, and tore out the one half of it. Nietzsche turned the hole into a much vaster cavity by pulling out the other half. Bernhardi and the pedantocracy worked lustily at the business, with the result that a great part of the sticks, stones, and mud of tradition are now dancing, rumbling, and boiling famously in the flood. Whether they have injured our dam as well as their own, we are hardly as yet in a position to judge.
The profounder spirit of Nietzsche realised clearly enough the absurdity of supposing that the conflicting beliefs and aspirations of mankind could all be settled and squared in a few bustling decades—that the contradictions, paradoxes, and antinomies of national existence could be written off with a few bold strokes of the sword, and the world started off on the road to perfection, like a brisk debtor who has purged his insolvency in the Bankruptcy Court. But the enthusiasm of Treitschke and Bernhardi made them blind to these considerations. Had not the formula been discovered, which would overcome every obstacle—that stroke of genius, the famous bisection of the commonplace? For private conduct, the Sermon on the Mount; for high statecraft, Machiavelli'sPrince! Was ever anything simpler, except perhaps the way of Columbus with the egg?
When we push our examination further, into the means which Germany has been urged by her great thinkers to employ in preparing for this premeditated war, for provoking it when the season should be ripe,and for securing victory and spoils, we are struck more than ever by the gulf which separates the ideas of the German pedantocracy from those of the rest of the world. Nor can we fail to be impressed by the matter-of-fact and businesslike way in which the military and civil powers have set to work to translate those notions into practice.
A POLITICAL PRIESTHOOD
No kind of priesthood has ever yet exercised a great and direct influence upon national policy without producing calamity. And by an ill fate, it has always been the nature of these spiritual guides to clutch at political power whenever it has come within their reach.
Of all classes in the community who are intellectually capable of having ideas upon public affairs, a priesthood—or what is the same thing, a pedantocracy—is undoubtedly the most mischievous, if it succeeds in obtaining power. It matters not a whit whether they thunder forth their edicts and incitements from church pulpits or university chairs, whether they carry their sophistical projects up the back stairs of Catholic King or Lutheran Kaiser, whether, having shaved their heads and assumed vows of celibacy, they dwell in ancient cloisters, or, having taken unto themselves wives and begotten children, they keep house in commonplace villa residences. None of these differences is essential, or much worth considering. The one class is as much a priesthood as the other, and the evils which proceed from the predominance of the one, and the other, are hardly distinguishable.
They stand ostentatiously aloof from the sordid competitions of worldly business. They have forsworn, or at any rate forgone, the ordinary prizes ofwealth and position. And for these very reasons they are ill equipped for guiding practical affairs. Their abstinences are fatal impediments, and render them apt to leave human nature out of their reckoning. They are wanting in experience of the difficulties which beset ordinary men, and of the motives which influence them. Knowing less of such matters (for all their book learning) than any other class of articulately-speaking men, they find it by so much the easier to lay down rules and regulations for the government of the world.
To a priesthood, whether ecclesiastical or academic, problems of politics and war present themselves for consideration in an engaging simplicity. They evolve theories of how people live, of how they ought to live; and both sets of theories are mainly cobwebs. There is no place in their philosophy for anything which is illogical or untidy. Ideas of compromise and give-and-take, are abominations in priestly eyes—at any rate when they are engaged in contemplation of worldly affairs. And seeing that the priesthood aspires, nevertheless, to govern and direct a world which is illogical and needs humouring, there is nothing wonderful, if when it has achieved power, it should blunder on disaster in the name of principle, and incite men to cruelties in the name of humanity. 'Clericalism,' said a French statesman, and English statesmen have echoed his words—'Clericalism is the enemy.' And this is right, whether the priesthood be that of Rome or John Calvin, of economic professors expounding Adam Smith in the interests of Manchester, or history professors improving upon Treitschke in the interests of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
PRIESTS AND LAWYERS
Priests and professors when they meddle in politics are always the same. They sit in their studies or cells, inventing fundamental principles; building thereon great edifices of reasoned or sentimental brickwork which splits in the sun and crumbles in the storm. Throughout the ages, as often as they have left their proper sphere, they have been subject to the same angry enthusiasms and savage obstinacies. Their errors of judgment have been comparable only to their arrogance. Acts of cruelty and treachery, meanness and dishonour,[3] which would revolt the ordinary German or Englishman, commend themselves readily, on grounds of sophistry or logic, to these morbid ascetics, so soon as they begin busying themselves with the direction of public affairs.
It would be unfair to judge any country by its political professors. At the same time, if any country is so foolish as to follow such guides, there is a probability of mischief in national—still more in international—affairs. For they are as innocent as the lawyers themselves, of any knowledge of the real insides of things. They differ of course from the lawyers in many ways. They are ever for making changes for the sake of symmetry; while the man of law is for keeping as he is until the last moment; or at any rate until it is clearly his interest to budge. A priesthood has a burning faith in its own hand-wrought idols; the lawyer on the contrary, does not go readily to the stake, does not catch fire easily, being rather of the nature of asbestos. When lawyers monopolise political power—even when they merelypreponderate, as of late years they have seemed to do more and more in all democratic countries, whether of the monarchical or republican type—they invariably destroy by insensible gradations that which is most worth preserving in man or state, the soul. But they do not bring on sudden catastrophe as a priesthood does; their method is to strangle slowly like ivy.
In England, nowadays—indeed ever since the 'eighties, when professors of Political Economy became discredited as political guides—there are not many evidences of priestly influence. Certainly there is nothing of an organised kind. What exists is erratic and incalculable. There is much clamour; but it is contradictory, spasmodic, and inconstant, without any serious pretence, either of learning or science, to support it. Each of our prophets is in business for himself. There is no tinge of Erastianism about any of them. For the most part they are the grotesques andlions comiquesof the world of letters, who prophesy standing on their heads, or grinning through horse-collars, and mistaking always "the twinkling of their own sophisticated minds for wisdom."
Alliance between a priesthood and a bureaucracy tends gradually to produce, as in the case of China, an oppressive uniformity—not unlike that aimed at by the more advanced socialists—where every fresh innovation is a restriction hampering the natural bent. On the other hand an alliance between a priesthood and a military caste—especially when the bureaucracy is ready to act in sympathy—is one of the commonest causes of international convulsions.
PRIESTS AND SOLDIERS
Oddly enough, the soldier, who affects to despise men of words and make-believes, and who on this account has an instinctive dislike and distrust of the lawyer—so violent indeed that it often puts him in the wrong, and leaves him at the mercy of the object of his contempt—is dangerously apt to become the tool of anything which bears a likeness to Peter the Hermit. It is not really the lawyer's confidence in the efficacy of words which revolts the soldier, nearly so much as the kind of words used, the temperament of him who uses them, and the character of the make-believes which it is sought to establish. The unworldliness, simplicity, idealism, and fervour of the priesthood make strong appeals to a military caste, which on the contrary is repelled by what it conceives to be the cynicism, opportunism, and self-seeking of lawyer statecraft.
More especially is it difficult for the military caste to resist the influence of the priesthood when, as in Germany of recent years, they have insisted upon giving the warrior the most important niche in their temple, and on burning incense before him day and night. Working industriously in their studies and laboratories they have found moral justification for every course, however repugnant to established ideas, which may conceivably make it easier to attain victory and conquest. The soldier might have scruples about doing this or that; but when he is assured by inspired intellectuals, that what would best serve his military ends is also the most moral course of action, how can he—being a man of simple mind—presume to doubt it; though he may occasionally shudder as he proceeds to put it into execution?
German thoroughness is an admirable quality, but even thoroughness may be carried to extremes which are absurd, or something worse.
No nation has a right to complain if another chooses to drill armies, build fleets, accumulate stores of treasure, weapons, and material; nor is it incumbent upon any nation to wear its heart upon its sleeve, or to let the whole world into its secrets, military or political. In so far as Germany has acted upon these principles she was well within her rights. As a result we have suffered heavily; but we must blame ourselves for being ill-prepared; we have no justification for complaining because Germany was well-prepared.
There are some kinds of preparation, however, which it does not seem possible to justify, if the world is to consist as heretofore of a large number of independent states, between whose citizens it is desirable to maintain a certain friendliness and freedom of intercourse. German activities in various directions, for many years before war broke out, make one wonder what state of things was contemplated by German statesmen, as likely to prevail when war should be over. What, for instance, is to be the status of Germans visiting or residing in other countries—seeking to trade with them—to borrow money from them—to interchange with them the civilities of ordinary life, or those more solemn courtesies which are practised by societies of learning and letters? Will the announcementcivis Germanicus sumbe enough henceforth to secure the stranger a warm welcome and respect? Or will such revelation of his origin be more likely to lead to his speedy re-embarkation for the land of his nativity?
GERMAN AGENCIES
Spying has always been practised since the beginning of time; but it has rarely been conducted in such a manner as to produce general uneasiness, or any sensible restraint upon private relations. Logically, it would be unfair to condemn recent German enterprises in this direction, seeing that she has only extended an accepted nuisance on to a much vaster scale. But here again logic is a misleading guide. There is something in the very scale of German espionage which has changed the nature of this institution. It has grown into a huge organised industry for the debauching of vain, weak, and greedy natures; for turning such men—for the most part without their being aware of it—into German agents. The result of Teutonic thoroughness in this instance is a domestic intrusion which is odious, as well as a national menace which cannot be disregarded. Many of these hostile agencies may surely be termed treacherous, seeing that they have aimed, under the guise of friendly intercourse, at forwarding schemes of invasion and conquest.
We are familiar enough with the vain purse-proud fellow, who on the strength of a few civil speeches from the Kaiser—breathing friendship and the love of peace—has thenceforward flattered himself that his mission in life was to eradicate suspicion of German intentions from the minds of his British fellow-countrymen. This is the unconscious type of agent, useful especially in sophisticated circles, and among our more advanced politicians of anti-militarist sympathies.
Then we have the naturalised, or unnaturalised, magnate of finance or industry, to whom business prosperity is the great reality of life, politics andpatriotism being by comparison merely things of the illusory sort. It would cause him no very bitter anguish of heart to see England humiliated and her Empire dissolved, providing his own cosmopolitan undertakings continued to thrive undisturbed by horrid war. He, also, has very likely been the recipient of imperial suavities. In addition to this, however, he has been encouraged to imagine that he enjoys in a peculiar degree the confidence of the German Foreign Office. The difficulties which so shrewd a fellow must have in believing in the innocence of German intentions must be considerable at the outset; but they are worn away by the constant erosion of his private interests. Britain must not cross Germany:—that is his creed in a nutshell. This is the semi-conscious type of agent; and he carries great weight in business circles, and even sometimes in circles much higher than those frequented by the money-changers.
We may resent such influences as these, now that we have become more or less sensible of the effect which they have had during recent years in hindering our preparations for defence; but here we cannot fairly charge Germany with any breach of custom and tradition. We must blame ourselves for having given heed to their counsellors. But it is different when we come to such things as the wholesale corruption of the subjects of friendly nations—a network of careful intrigue for the promotion of rebellion—lavish subsidies and incitements for the purpose of fostering Indian unrest, Egyptian discontent, and South African treason—the supply of weapons and munitions of war on the shortest notice, and most favourable terms, to any one and every one whoseems inclined to engage in civil war in Ireland or elsewhere.
GERMAN METHODS AT WORK
The whole of this procedure has been justified in advance and advocated in detail by Bernhardi and the priesthood. Belgium, France, Russia, and Britain are doubtless peculiarly alive to the iniquity of these practices, for the reason that their moral judgment has been sharpened by personal suffering. But they do not denounce the system solely because they themselves have been injured by it, but also because it seems to them to be totally at variance with all recent notions regarding the comity of nations. If we may use such an old-fashioned term, it appears to us to be wrong.
If methods such as these are henceforth to be practised by the world in general, must not all international communion become impossible, as much in time of peace as during a war? Indeed must not human existence itself become almost intolerable? Friendliness, hospitality, courtesies of every sort, between men and women of one country and those of another, must cease absolutely, if the world should become a convert to these German doctrines. Travel must cease; for no one likes to be stripped naked and searched at every frontier. Trade and financial operations must also be restricted, one would imagine, to such an extent that ultimately they will wither and die.
And if the world in general after the war is ended does not become a convert to these German doctrines of treacherous preparation, made in friendly territories during time of peace, what then will be its attitude towards Germany and the Germans; for they presumably have no intention of abandoning thesepractices? It is an unpleasant problem, but it will have to be faced sooner or later.
For obviously, although every sensible man believes, and many of us know by actual experience, that the instincts of Germans, in all private relations, are as loyal and honourable as those of most other races which inhabit the earth, no nation can afford any longer to have dealings with them on equal terms, if they have decided to allow their instincts to be used and abused, over-ridden and perverted, by a bureaucracy whose ideal is thoroughness, and by a priesthood which has invented a new system of morals to serve a particular set of ends. Not only the allied nations which are at present at war with Germany, but any country whose interests may conceivably, at any future time, come into conflict with those of that far-sighted empire, will be forced in self-defence to take due precautions. It is clear enough that more efficacious means than mere scraps of naturalisation paper will be needed to secure mankind against the abuse of its hospitality by Teutonic theorists.
THE GERMAN CREED
The whole of this strange system, those methods which, even after somewhat painful experience of their effects, we are still inclined in our less reflective moments to regard as utterly incredible—is it possible to summarise them in a few sentences? What are the accepted maxims, the orthodox formulas of Prussian statecraft?
Power, more power, world-power; these according to German theory, as well as practice, should be the dominant principles of the state.
When a nation desires territories belonging to its neighbours, let it take them, if it is strong enough.No further justification is needed than mere appetite for possession, and the strength to satisfy it.
War is in itself a good thing and not a bad. Like a purge, or a course of the waters of Aix, it should be taken, every half-century or so, by all nations which aim at preserving the vigour of their constitutions.
During the intervening periods the chief duty of the state is to prepare for war, so that when it comes, victory, and with it benefits of the material, as well as of the spiritual sort, may be secured.
No means which will help to secure victory are immoral, whether in the years preceding the outbreak of hostilities, or afterwards, when the war is in full course. If the state, aided by its men of science, could find any safe and secret means of sending a plague, as an advance guard, to ravage the enemy, where is the objection? The soul of a Prussian soldier might revolt against this form of warfare, but at what point would it conflict with the teachings of the priesthood? Nor can we imagine, were the thing possible, that the bureaucracy would allow itself to be hampered by any scruples.
As to the declaration of war, let it be made when the state is in a strong position and its prey in a weak one. This is the all-important consideration. The actual pretext is only a secondary matter, though worthy of attention for the effect it may have on the action of neutrals. And as war is a game of chance, it is wise and right to 'correct fortune,' so far as this can be accomplished during years of peace and under the cloak of amity, by the aid of spies, secret agents, accomplices, traitors, rebels, and what not besides.
The state which has evolved this system and laiddown these rules, without the least attempt at secrecy or concealment, is the most efficient machine of the fighting and administrative kind at present existing in the world—perhaps which has ever existed in the world. But as you increase the size, power, and complexity of a machine there are obvious dangers unless you can also increase the calibre of the men who have to drive and direct it. This is a much more difficult problem than the other; and there is no evidence to show that it has been solved in the case of Germany. The more powerful the machine, the greater is apt to be the disaster if it is mishandled.
In history the blunders of bureaucracy are a by-word. They have been great and many, even when, as in Germany to-day, the bureaucracy is in the full vigour of its age, and in the first flower of uprightness; for a bureaucracy, in order to retain its efficiency, must remain incorruptible, and that is one of the hardest things to secure.
As for the priesthoods, if they are to be of any use, their faith must burn brightly. And the faith of a priesthood is very apt to burn itself out—very apt also to set fire to other things during the process; even to the edifice of popular virtue and the imperial purple itself, which things—unlike the Phoenix, the Salamander, and the Saint—are none the better or stronger for being burned.
We are constantly being told by high authorities that the moral objective of the present war is 'to put down militarism,' and 'abolish it' off the face of the earth. There are few of us who do not wish that this aim may be crowned with success; but militarism is a tough weed to kill, and somethingmore than the mere mowing of it down by some outside scythesman will be necessary, one imagines, in order to get rid of it.
MAIN OBJECT OF THE WAR
The true moral objective of the war is something much more important than this. A blacker evil than militarism is that violation of private trust and public honour which is known as the Prussian System, and which has recently been 'marching through rapine, to the disintegration,' not of a single nation, or group of nations, but of the whole fabric of human society, including its own. It is an elaborate contrivance of extreme artificiality, a strange perversion of the nature of man. These are its inherent weaknesses; and fortunately, by reason of them, it is more vulnerable to hard blows than militarism which, with all its vices, and extravagancies, is rooted in instincts which are neither depraved nor ignoble.
Militarism might continue to thrive under adversity, and after the heaviest defeat, as it has done in times past; but the life of the Prussian System—that joint invention of the most efficient bureaucracy in the world, and of a priesthood whose industry can only be matched by its sycophancy and conceit—hangs upon the thread of success. Like the South Sea Bubble, or any of those other impostures of the financial sort, which have temporarily beguiled the confidence of mankind, it must collapse utterly under the shock of failure. It depends entirely on credit, and its powers of recuperation are nil. When its assets are disclosed, the characters of its promoters will be understood. The need, therefore, is to bring it at all costs to a complete demonstration of failure.
We have been urged by our own anti-militarists not to inflict suffering and humiliation on Germany. But this is not a matter of the slightest importance one way or the other. It has but little to do with the issue which it is our business to settle, if we have the good fortune to come out victorious from the present struggle. To set up the suffering and humiliation of Germany as the object of high policy would cover the Allies with contempt; but to shrink from such things, if they should happen to stand between the Allies and the utter moral bankruptcy of the Prussian System, would overwhelm them with a burden far heavier and more shameful than contempt.
[1] "We may declare that the problem of training in arms and turning to real account the energies of the nation was first undertaken in thorough earnestness by Germany.We possess in our army a characteristic, necessary continuation of the school-system. For many men there is no better means of training; for them drilling, compulsory cleanliness, and severe discipline are physically and morally indispensable in a time like ours, which unchains all spirits."—Treitschke,Selections, pp. 106-107.
[2] Nietzsche is one of the rare exceptions.
[3] Cf. Professor Kuno Meyer,Times, December 24, 1914, and March 8, 1915.
A German might fairly contend that British criticism of his moral ideas and political system is tainted throughout by ignorance and prejudice, and that all our talk of autocracy, bureaucracy, pedantocracy, military caste, and sham constitutionalism is merely an attempt to avoid the real issue by calling things, which we happen to dislike, by bad names. Political institutions, he might insist, must be judged by their fruits. If this test were applied, Germany in his opinion would have nothing to fear in any comparison.
"We Germans," writes a correspondent, the Freiherr von Hexenküchen,[1] "are not inferior in intelligence or education to any other race. Had this been so, we could never have reached, in so short a period as four decades, the proud position which we now occupy in science, invention, manufacture, commerce, finance, and administration.[2]Consequently, if we are well content to live under the institutions we possess, this cannot be put down either to our want of enterprise or to the dulness of our understandings.
"Our people have already shown that they are willing to fight and die for these very institutions which you Englishmen affect to regard with so much contempt. Possibly your people are equally willing to fight and die for theirs. I do not deny this; but it is not yet proved; it remains to be proved.
"I do not assert that your people are inferior to mine in their readiness to fight and die when they are actually faced with a great national danger. But I do claim that mine are superior to yours in the constancy of their devotion to duty. For a hundred years past—not only in periods of stress and danger, which stirred the national imagination, but equally in times of peace and prosperity, which always tend to encourage the growth of comfort and the love of ease—each succeeding generation has been found willing to train itself in the use of arms, so as to be prepared, if occasion should arise, to defend the Fatherland.
"When the present war broke out was there a firmer loyalty or a more patriotic response to the call to arms among your people or among mine? Will your people fight and suffer more gladly for their 'democratic' ideals than mine will for their Kaiser and Fatherland? ... Surely, upon your own principles no comparison should be possible between the warmth of your devotion and the tepidity of ours.
"Is our system really so reactionary and mechanical as you imagine? In an age which has learnedas its special lesson the advantages, in ordinary business affairs of life, of organisation, thoroughness, long views, reticence, and combined effort, guided by a strong central control, is it reaction, or is it progress, to aim at applying the same principles to the greatest, most complex, and infinitely most important of all businesses—that of government itself? Can a nation hope to survive which refuses, in the name of freedom, to submit to control in these respects, if it should be faced by competition with another, which has been wise enough to employ quiet experts instead of loquacious amateurs—any more than a cotton mill could escape bankruptcy were it managed on a system of party government?
"Our civil service, which you are pleased to describe as a Bureaucracy, is distinguished among all others existing at the present time, by the calibre of its members, by its efficiency and honesty, by its poverty, and not less by the honour in which it is held notwithstanding its poverty. You laugh at our love for calling men, and also their wives, by the titles of their various offices—Herr this and Frau that, from the humblest inspector of drains to the Imperial Chancellor himself! And no doubt there is a ludicrous side to this practice. But it marks at least one important thing—that membership of our civil service is regarded as conferring honour. So far, we have succeeded in maintaining public officials of all grades in higher popular respect than men who devote their lives to building up private fortunes, and also to those others who delight and excel in interminable debate.
"You are used to boast, and I daresay rightlyof the personal honesty and pecuniary disinterestedness of your politicians; and you assume as a matter of course that your civil servants, with such high standards and examples ever before their eyes, are likewise incorruptible. We invert this order. With us the honour of our civil servants is the chief thing; we assume that our politicians must follow suit. They are probably as upright as your own, thanks partly to tradition, but also to the vigilance of their superiors, the professionals, who carry on the actual business of government. With you the fame of the showy amateur fills the mouths of the public. We, on the contrary, exalt the expert, the man who has been trained to the job he undertakes. In so doing we may be reactionaries and you may be progressives; but the progress of Germany since 1870—a progress in which we are everywhere either already in front of you, or else treading closely on your heels—does not seem to furnish you with a conclusive argument.
"As for what you call our Pedantocracy, meaning thereby our professors and men of letters, it is true that these exercise a great influence upon public opinion. We have always respected learning and thought. It is in the German nature so to do. I admit that our learned ones are rather too much inclined to imagine, that because they are students of theory, they are therefore qualified to engage in practice. They are apt to offer their advice and service officiously, and occasionally in a ridiculous manner. But, if my recollection of the English newspapers be correct, this is no more so with us than with you. There is apparently something in the professorial nature which impels men of thiscalling to the drafting of manifestoes and the signing of round-robins in times of excitement. They may be officious and absurd, but they are not wholly despicable, since they act thus quite as much from earnestness as from vanity. If our academicians on such occasions mislead more people than your own it is due to their virtues, to the greater zeal and success with which they have won the confidence of their former pupils.[3]
THE MILITARY CASTE
"You are fond of sneering at our Military Caste and attribute to it the most malign influence upon public affairs. But there again, believe me, you exaggerate. Our officers are undoubtedly held in great respect, even in some awe. And the reason is that they are known to be brave, and like those you call the bureaucracy, to have preferred comparative poverty in the public service to the pursuit of riches. To say that they have no influence upon policy would of course be absurd. It is inevitable that in the present state of the world, soldiers will always have great influence in certain departments of public affairs. This must be so in any countrywhich is not plunged in dreams. For it is their business to guarantee national security, and to keep watch over the growth of military strength among the neighbours and rivals of Germany. If the general staff foresees dangers, and can give reasonable grounds for its anticipations, it is clear that the military view must carry weight with the Kaiser and his ministers. And surely there can be no question that this is right.
"The officers of the German Army are a caste, if you like to put it that way. But in every form of government under the sun, unless conceivably in some tiny oriental despotism, the predominance of a certain caste, or the competition between different castes, is absolutely essential to the working of the machinery.
"It is not regrettable in our opinion if a caste, which has considerable weight in public affairs, is a manly one, contemptuous of wealth and sophistry, ready always to risk its own life for the faith which is in it. The influence of a military caste may have its drawbacks; but at any rate it has kept the peace in Germany for not far short of half a century—kept it successfully until, as some people have thought, the professors acquired too large a share of power.
"Is it so certain, moreover, that the lawyer caste, the self-advertising caste, and the financial caste are not all of them a great deal worse, even a great deal more dangerous to peace? Is a country any more likely to be safe, happy, and prosperous under the régime of a talking caste—of windbags resourcefully keeping their bellows full of air, and wheedling the most numerous with transparentfalsehoods—than where civil servants of tried wisdom and experience are responsible for carrying on affairs of state, aided at their high task by sober military opinion?[4]
"As for our Kaiser, whom you regard as a crafty and ambitious tyrant, he appears in our view as the incarnation of patriotic duty, burdened though not overwhelmed by care—a lover of peace, so long as peace may be had with honour and safety; but if this may not be, then a stern, though reluctant, drawer of the sword. It is true that the Kaiser's government is in many important respects a purely personal government. His is the ultimate responsibility for high policy. He fulfils the function in our system of that strong central power, without which the most ingeniously constructed organisation is but impotence.
GERMAN SELF-KNOWLEDGE
"The German people are ahead of the English and the Americans in self-knowledge; for they realise that there are many things appertaining to government, which cannot be discussed in the newspapers, or on the platform, any more than the policy and conduct of a great business can be made known in advance to the staff, and to trade competitors all over the world. And so, believing the Kaiser's government to be honest, capable, and devoted to the public weal, the German people trust it without reservation to decide when action shall be taken in a variety of spheres.
"This system of ours which is founded in reason, and in experience of modern conditions, and whichis upheld by the unfaltering confidence of a great people, you are wont to condemn as tyrannical and reactionary. But can democracy stand against it?—Democracy infirm of purpose, jealous, grudging, timid, changeable, unthorough, unready, without foresight, obscure in its aims, blundering along in an age of lucidity guided only by a faltering and confused instinct! Given anything like an equal contest, is it conceivable that such an undisciplined chaos can prevail against the Hohenzollern Empire?
"Of late your newspapers have been busily complaining of what they call 'German lies,' 'boastfulness,' and 'vulgar abuse.' They have taunted our government with not daring to trust the people. Our Headquarters bulletins have been vigorously taken to task by the Allies on these and other grounds.
"But all nations will acclaim their victories louder than they will trumpet their defeats. This is in human nature. No official communiqué will ever be a perfect mirror of truth. It will never give the whole picture, but only a part; and by giving only a part it will often mislead. Were we to believe literally what the various governments have hitherto given out as regards their respective advances, the Germans by this time might perhaps have been at Moscow in the East and somewhere about the Azores in the West. But by the same token the Russians should have been on the Rhine and the French and English Allies at Berlin.
"I read your newspapers, and I read our own. I do not think our journalists, though they do their best, can fairly claim to excel yours in the contestof boastfulness and vulgar abuse. And as regards the utterances of responsible public men in our two countries, can you really contend that we Germans are more open to the reproach of vainglorious and undignified speech than the British? Our Kaiser denies having used the words, so often attributed to him in your press, about 'General French's contemptible little army,' and in Germany we believe his denial. But even if he did in fact utter this expression, is it not quite as seemly and restrained as references to 'digging rats out of a hole'—as applied to our gallant navy—or to that later announcement from the same quarter which was recently addressed to the Mayor of Scarborough about 'baby-killers'? Such expressions are regrettable, no doubt, but not of the first importance. They are a matter of temperament. An ill-balanced, or even a very highly-strung nature, will be betrayed into blunders of this sort more readily than the phlegmatic person, or one whose upbringing has been in circles where self-control is the rule of manners.
TRUST IN THE PEOPLE
"But what puzzles us Germans perhaps more than any of your other charges against us is, when you say that our rulers do not trust the people as the British Government does.
"You accuse our War Office of publishing accounts of imaginary victories to revive our drooping confidence, and of concealing actual disasters lest our country should fall into a panic of despondency. There was surely nothing imaginary about the fall of Liège, Namur, Maubeuge, Laon, or La Fere. The engagements before Metz, at Mons, Charleroi, and Amiens, the battles of Lodz and Lyck, werenot inconsiderable successes for German arms, or at the very least for German generalship. The victory of Tannenberg was among the greatest in history, reckoning in numbers alone. Our government made no secret of the German retirement—retreat if you prefer the term—from the Marne to the Aisne, or of that other falling back after the first attempt on Warsaw. Naturally they laid less emphasis on reverses than on conquests, but what government has ever acted otherwise? Certainly not the French, or the Russian, or your own. And what actual disasters have we concealed? In what respect, as regards the conduct of this war, have we, the German people, been trusted less than yours?
"I am especially interested, I confess, as a student of British politics, in this matter of 'trusting the people.' All your great writers have led me to believe that here lies the essential difference between your system and ours, and that the great superiority of yours to ours is demonstrated in the confidence which your statesmen never hesitate to place in the wisdom, fortitude, and patriotism of the people. Frankly, I do not understand it. Trust must surely have some esoteric meaning when applied to your populace which foreigners are unable to apprehend. I can discover no other sense in your phrase about 'trusting the people,' than that they are trusted not to find out their politicians. It certainly cannot be believed that you trust your people to hear the truth; for if so why has your government practised so rigorous an economy of this virtue, doling it out very much as we have lately been doing with our wheat and potatoes?
THE BRITISH PRESS BUREAU
"Has your government not concealed actual disaster—concealed it from their own people, though from no one else; for all the world was on the broad grin? Everybody knew of your misfortune save a certain large portion of the British public. The motive of your government could not have been to hide it away from the Germans, or the Austrians, or from neutrals, for the illustrated papers all over the globe, even in your own colonies, contained pictures reproduced from photographs of the occurrence. It was only possible to muzzle the press and blindfold the people of the United Kingdom, and these things your government did; acting no doubt very wisely.
"Again after the great German victory over the Russians at Tannenberg in September last, an official bulletin of simple and conspicuous candour was published at Petrograd which confirmed in most of the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Why did your Press Bureau during the heavy fighting from the middle of October to the middle of November persist in maintaining that 'the British are still gaining ground.' The British resistance from the beginning to the end of the four weeks' battle round Ypres is not likely to be forgotten by our German soldiers, still less to be belittled by them.It was surely a great enough feat of arms to bear the light of truth. But. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"But is the same true of the British people? Can they be trusted to bear the light of truth?
"You cannot wonder if we Germans, and for that matter the whole world, have drawn certain conclusions from these and other incidents. We do not doubt that your ministers have acted wisely in suppressing bad tidings; but why should they have taken all those pains and endured the derision, while incurring the distrust, of foreign countries—a material injury, mind you, and not merely a sentimental one—unless they had known, only too well, that publication of this or that piece of news would have too painfully affected the nerves of your people? Concealment of checks, reverses, and disasters which had not already become known to the Austrians and ourselves might have served a useful military purpose; but what purpose except that of a sedative for British public opinion could be served by the concealment of such matters when we, your enemies, knew them already? Have you ever thought of asking your American friends in what order they would place the candour of the official communications which emanate from Berlin, Petrograd, Paris, and London?
"Shortly before Christmas one of your legal ministers, who, I understand, is specially responsible for looking after the Press Bureau, explained to the House of Commons the principles by which he had been guided in the suppression of news and comment. He should refuse, he said, to publish any criticismwhich might tend to disturb popular confidence in the Government, or which might cause the people of England to think that their affairs were in a really serious state. On practical grounds there is no doubt something to be said for such a policy; but (will you tell me?) has any autocratic government ever laid down a more drastic rule for blindfolding the people in order to preserve its own existence?[5]
BRITISH PATRIOTISM
"Pondering upon these things, I scratch my head and marvel what you can possibly have had in yours, when you used to assure us that the surpassing merit of the English political system was that it trusted the people, the inherent weakness of ours, the Austrian, and the Russian that they did not.
"Your Prime Minister, speaking in the early autumn, thus adjured the men of Wales:—'Be worthy of those who went before you, and leave to your children the richest of all inheritances, the memory of fathers who, in a great cause, put self-sacrifice before ease, and honour above life itself.' These are noble words, of Periclean grandeur. But have they met with a general response? Are these sentiments prevalent outside government circles, among those—the bulk of your people—who do not come under the direct influence of ministerial inspiration and example? If so, why thenhave your rulers not screwed up their courage to call for national service? Why do they still continue to depend for their recruits upon sensational advertisements, newspaper puffs, oratorical entreaties, and private influence of a singularly irregular sort?
"Is not this the reason?—Your government is afraid—even in this great struggle, where (as they put it) your future existence as a nation is at stake—that the English people—or at any rate so large a proportion of them, as if rendered uncomfortable could create a political disturbance—is not even yet prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. And so, to the amazement of us Germans, you let the older men, with families dependent on them, go forth to the war, urged on by a high sense of duty, while hundreds of thousands of young unmarried men are still allowed to stay at home.
COMPARISON OF RECRUITING
"You are still, it would appear, enamoured of your voluntary system. You have not yet abandoned your belief that it is the duty of the man, who possesses a sense of duty, to protect the skin, family, and property of the man who does not. To us this seems a topsy-turvy creed, and not more topsy-turvy than contemptible. In Germany and France—where for generations past the doctrine of private sacrifice for the public weal is ingrained, and has been approved in principle and applied in practice with unfaltering devotion—a 'voluntary' system might conceivably have some chance of providing such an army as you are in search of. But to the United Kingdom surely it is singularly inapplicable? Let me illustrate my meaning by a comparison.
"Our Kaiser in his New Year's message—which in Germany we all read with enthusiasm, and considered very noble and appropriate—summed up the military situation by saying that after five months' hard and hot fighting the war was still being waged almost everywhere off German soil, and on the enemies' territories. And he summed up the domestic situation by saying (and this, believe me, is true) that our nation stands in unexampled harmony, prepared to sacrifice its heart's blood for the defence of the Fatherland. Another three months have passed away, and these statements still hold good.
"The point to which I chiefly wish to call your attention is one of numbers, and I will take my estimates of numbers from your own most famous newspaper experts.
"Your claim, as I understand it, is that on New Year's Day 1915 you had—exclusive of Indian troops and Dominion contingents—between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 men training and in the field.
"Germany alone (here again I quote your English experts), without reckoning Austria, has actually put into the field during the past five months 5,000,000 men. Of these it is stated by your newspapers that she has lost in round figures 1,500,000, who have either been killed, or taken prisoners, or are too severely wounded to return as yet to the fighting line. But in spite of this depletion, your military statisticians tell us that Germany and her ally, at New Year's Day, still outnumbered the Allies on both the Eastern and the Western frontier.
"The same high authorities tell us further, thatduring this period of five months, the German Government has called upon the civil population, has appealed to able-bodied men who had previously been exempt from military service, and that by this means it has obtained, and has been engaged in training, arming, and equipping another 4,000,000 or 4,500,000 who, it is anticipated, will become available for war purposes in new formations, during the spring and summer of the present year.
"Our Government, therefore, according to your own account, has not been afraid to ask the civil population to serve, and this is the response. Does it look as if the national spirit had been quenched under our autocratic system?
"Out of our whole population of sixty-five millions we have apparently raised for military service on land and naval service at sea, between 9,000,000 and 11,000,000 men since this war began. Out of your whole population of forty-five millions you have succeeded in raising for these same purposes only something between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000 men. And in your case, be it observed, in order to attract recruits, you have offered good wages and munificent separation allowances; while in our case men serve without pay.
"This numerical comparison is worth carrying a stage further. Germany and her ally have between them a total population of 115,000,000. The United Kingdom (including the people of European stock who inhabit the various Dominions), France, Russia, Belgium, Servia, and Montenegro number in round figures about 280,000,000. Roughly speaking, these are odds of seven to three against us. And I am leaving out of account all the non-European races—theTurks on the one side, the Japanese and the Indians on the other. If these were included the odds would be much heavier.
"And yet our Kaiser spoke but the simple truth, when he told us on New Year's Day that, after five months of war, the German armies were almost everywhere on the territories of their enemies. We are not only keeping you back and defying all your efforts to invade us; but like the infant Hercules, we have gripped you by your throats, and were holding you out at arm's length!
METHODS OF RECRUITING
"I do not of course pretend to look at this matter except from the German standpoint; but is there any flaw in my reasoning, is there anything at all unfair, if I thus sum up my conclusions?—By Midsummer next—after stupendous efforts of the oratorical and journalistic kind—after an enormous amount of shouting, music-hall singing, cinema films, and showy advertising of every description—after making great play with the name and features of a popular field-marshal, in a manner which must have shocked both his natural modesty and soldierly pride—after all this you expect, or say you expect, that you will possess between two and two-and-a-half millions of men trained, armed, equipped, and ready to take the field.
"As against this, during the same period, and out of the less military half of our male population, without any shouting or advertising to speak of, we shall have provided approximately double that number. We have raised these new forces quietly, without any fuss, and without a word of protest from any of our people. We are training them without any serious difficulty. We are armingthem, equipping them, clothing them, and housing them without any difficulty at all.
"To conclude this interesting contrast, may I ask you—is it true, as the French newspapers allege, that you are about to invite, or have already invited, your Japanese Allies to send some portion of their Army to European battlefields? With what face can you make this appeal when you have not yet called upon your own people to do, what every other people engaged in the present struggle, has already done?
"After you have pondered upon this strange and startling contrast, will you still hold to the opinion that the German system—which you have affected to despise, on the ground that it does not rest upon what you are pleased to term 'a popular basis'—is at any point inferior to your own in its hold upon the hearts of the people?
"What is meant by the phrase—'a popular basis'? Is it something different from the support of the people, the will of the people, the devotion of the people? And if it is different, is it better—judging, that is, by its results in times of trouble—or is it worse?"
So the cultured Freiherr, watching democracy at work in Britain, its ancient home, concludes with this question—"Is this timid, jealous, and distracted thing possessed of any real faith in itself; and if so, will it fight for its faith to the bitter end? Is the British system one which even the utmost faith in it can succeed in propping up? Does it possess any inherent strength; or is it merely a thing of paste-board and make-believe, fore-ordained to perish?"
[1] This letter, which is dated April 1, 1915, arrived at its destination (via Christiania and Bergen) about ten days later. It had not the good fortune, however, to escape the attentions of the Censor, the ravages of whose blacking-brush will be noted in the abrupt termination of sundry paragraphs.
[2] "The empires which during the past forty years have made the greatest relative material progress are undoubtedly Germany and Japan—neither of them a democracy, but both military states."
[3] It is not quite clear to what incidents the Freiherr is referring. He may be thinking of a certain round-robin which appeared a few days before the war, giving a most handsome academic testimonial of humanity and probity to the German system; or he may have in mind a later manifestation in February last, when there suddenly flighted into the correspondence columns of theNationa 'gaggle' of university geese, headed appropriately enough by a Professor of Political Economy, by name Pigou, who may be taken as the type of that peculiarly British product, the unemotional sentimentalist. To this 'gaggle' of the heavier fowls there succeeded in due course a 'glory' of poetical and literary finches, twittering the same tune—the obligation on the Allies not to inflict suffering and humiliation on Germany—on Germany, be it remembered, as yet unbeaten, though this was rather slurred over in their spring-song of lovingkindness. The Freiherr, plunged in his heathen darkness, no doubt still believed Germany to be not only unbeaten but victorious, and likely to continue on the same course. He must therefore have been somewhat puzzled by so much tender concern on the part of our professors, etc. for sparing his feelings at the end of the war.
[4] Comment has already been made on the difficulty each nation has in understanding the spirit of the institutions of its neighbours. If this is borne in mind these depreciatory references of the Freiherr may be forgiven.
[5] I have had considerable difficulty in discovering the basis of this extraordinary charge. It seems to consist of the following passage from a speech by Sir Stanley Buckmaster, the Solicitor-General and Chairman of the Press Bureau on November 12, 1914. It is distressing to see how far national prejudice is apt to mislead a hostile critic like the Freiherr von Hexenküchen: "Criticism of the Government, or of members of the Government, is not that which I have ever stopped, except when such criticism is of such a character that it might destroy public confidence in the Government, which at this moment is charged with the conduct of the war, or might in any way weaken the confidence of the people in the administration of affairs, or otherwise cause distress or disturbance amongst people in thinking their affairs were in a really serious state."