I. All the great political questions of the old world are raised and must be solved.II. As the war is made by Germany in order to achieve a gigantic scheme of slavery, it follows that it is waged by her in flagrant violation of international law.III. A struggle of tenacity and of duplicity on the side of Berlinversusconstancy and solidarity on the side of the Allies.
I. All the great political questions of the old world are raised and must be solved.II. As the war is made by Germany in order to achieve a gigantic scheme of slavery, it follows that it is waged by her in flagrant violation of international law.III. A struggle of tenacity and of duplicity on the side of Berlinversusconstancy and solidarity on the side of the Allies.
I. All the great political questions of the old world are raised and must be solved.
II. As the war is made by Germany in order to achieve a gigantic scheme of slavery, it follows that it is waged by her in flagrant violation of international law.
III. A struggle of tenacity and of duplicity on the side of Berlinversusconstancy and solidarity on the side of the Allies.
The Diplomatic Corps, having ignored the Pangerman plan for reasons already shown (pp. 19et seq.), it is quite natural that the General Staffs and the public opinion of Allied countries should have been equally ignorant. From this general absence of knowledge there has resulted a vagueness and inadequacy in the view taken of the ultimate aims of Germany in the war; and in consequence the co-ordination of the Allied efforts has remained for a long while very imperfect. Each of the Allied nations, in fact, was at first so taken up with its own interests that they all lost sight of what ought to have been the common object of their common action.
The Russians entered into the struggle against the Germans especially to prevent Serbia from being crushed, and at the same time to put an end to those veiled but profoundly humiliating ultimatums which Berlin for some years has delivered to Petrograd. The Italians, specially fascinated by Trent and Trieste, have long thought that they could limit their war to a conflict with the house of Hapsburg, when in reality the only and true enemy of the Italian people—as now the latter is more andmore clearly aware—is Prussian Pangermanism. As for the English, they entered the lists for two fundamental reasons: the violation of Belgium’s neutrality aroused their indignation, and a just sense of their own interests has convinced them that they could not allow France to be crushed without at the same time acquiescing in the ultimate disappearance of Great Britain. Completely unprepared for Continental war, England has very well understood from the beginning of hostilities that these might be very much prolonged, but she had not the slightest notion that British interests would be as completely threatened as they have been in Central Europe, in Turkey, in Egypt, and in India. As to the French, the German aggression immediately raised in their minds and in their hearts the question of Alsace-Lorraine. This has hypnotized them to such a degree, to their own loss, that they have too long considered the fight merely a Franco-German war, whereas they ought to have viewed the European conflagration in its full dimensions.
This piece-meal way of looking at the facts has been of the greatest disservice to all the Allies. Indeed it has had the effect of preventing them from discerning at the right time the special character which the extraordinary extent of the Pangerman plan must necessarily give to the war.
The very vastness of the Pangerman plan of 1911, demonstrated beyond dispute by the facts that have come to light, suffices to prove that Berlin meant to solve for her own profit, at one single blow, all the great political questions latent in the old world.
THE GREAT POLITICAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE WAR.
THE GREAT POLITICAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE WAR.
The claims of Germany on the East, shown on the accompanying map by the thinner black line, raised the question of Poland in its immense extentand in all its complexity. The claims of Germany towards the West, also shown on the map by the thinner black line, involved the independence of Holland, of Belgium, of Luxemburg, of France, threatened with the loss of vital territories. Further, towards the West the German aggression has brought forward the question of Alsace-Lorraine from the French point of view. Moreover, since Germany aims at establishing her absolute supremacy from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, in order to stretch her political tentacles to the Far East and to the whole world by means which will be shown in Chapter V. the present war compels the powers to face the whole Eastern question (Balkans and Turkey, shown on the map by similar black lines), and also the whole question of Austria. (Used in this sense the expression Austria indicates the whole of the Hapsburg Dominion, that is,the territory enclosed by a thick black line.) In short, the whole of the great foreign questions are raised at one blow before the world by the aggression of the Berlin Government.
The Germans, having studied thoroughly for a very long time all these problems, have also provided for each of them a solution in accordance with their most cynical interests. The result is that all these political problems, raised simultaneously, form a tangled skein, and that the Allies will never be really victorious till they can compel the Germans to accept those solutions of the great problems which by the nature of things must be the direct contrary of those foreshadowed by Berlin. The Eastern question which is now raised in Europe is no longer the old orthodox question but a Prussianized Eastern question coloured in all its aspects by the present and future ambitions of the Hohenzollerns. In the same way the question of modern Austria is no longer the old Austrian question which consisted in the traditional struggle of the Hapsburgs with their various nationalities. What the Allies have now to consider in Central Europe is the question of Austria Prussianized by means of two essential facts: the covert but exclusive influence which Berlin has increasingly exercised over Vienna, especially for the last fifteen years, and the hold which the Hohenzollerns have got by means of the war over the whole of the Hapsburg Monarchy, which includes 28 millions of Slav and Latin populations bowed under the yoke, with no hope of deliverance except through the crushing of Prussian militarism.
The Pangerman plan finally gives to the struggle which it has initiated a character of sanguinary horror without parallel in history.
In short, William II., after having roused by means of Pangerman propaganda amongst his people violent desires of conquest and plunder, has declared war with the fixed idea that it will lead in Europe and in Turkey to the supremacy of 77 millions of Germans, over 127 millions of non-Germans. The small but violent Prussophile Camarilla of Vienna, a group of Magyar aristocrats in league with Count Tisza, a handful of pseudo young Turks bought by Berlin, have been the Kaiser’s accomplices. Finally, it is these few men alone who have drawn into war 50 million Austro-Hungarians and 20 million Ottomans, that is, 70 million belligerents, the vast majority of whom certainly did not wish for a sanguinary conflict. From all this it is clear that these peoples were betrayed into the war by their Kings or their Turco-Magyar governments.
The origin as well as the object of the war make it therefore the most cruelly reactionary enterprise conceivable. It is so to such a degree that those who in France are called reactionaries and who compared to the PrussianJunkersare great Liberals, find themselves in close agreement with the most ardent Socialists in desiring the total ruin of an enterprise which, if successful, would put the modern world back into the Middle Ages in the most odious fashion. But this time it would be a mediæval state of things made immutable through the force of the most modern science, which would stop the clock of progress. The death-dealing electric current which runs in the metallic wires actually forming an impassable barrier between Belgium and Holland forms a perfect symbol of what the Pangerman prison would be for those who do not belong to the German nationality.
On the other hand, the very fact that they pursue a plan of gigantic and unheard of slavery haslogically led the Germans, first cynically to violate all the laws of war between belligerents, and then systematically to commit abominable crimes against common law, whether at the expense of neutrals whom they would terrorize, such as the factory hands of the United States, or at the expense of the unhappy civil populations of the “burglared” regions, populations whose sufferings are indescribable. The events resulting from Pangerman terrorism are so numerous and so unutterably atrocious that historians will find the greatest difficulty in painting the Dantesque picture of all these crimes in their colossal horror. Undoubtedly the Germans wage war in a manner which assimilates them to vulgar burglars and assassins, and therefore to common criminals. They have thus placed themselves beyond the pale of humanity, and those who outside of Germany knowingly help them in their task of enslaving Europe are nothing more or less than accomplices and should be dealt with as such.
On January 19th, 1916, in the Reichstag, Deputy Martin stated that “The German nation would be very ill-pleased if Germany were to restore the territories she now occupies” (Le Temps, 21st January, 1916). This sentence summarizes the opinion prevalent beyond the Rhine.
In their endeavours to retain the greater part of the territories occupied by them at the beginning of 1916 the Germans have combined military measures with political manœuvres.
THE GERMAN FORTRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
THE GERMAN FORTRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
They have entrenched themselves tremendously on all fronts which the Allies could possibly attack. By the accumulation everywhere of defensive works, machine-guns and heavy artillery, the Germans hope to counter-balance the lossesof their troops and thus to persevere in their resistance to the allied attacks, till the enemy grow weary of the dreadful struggle. The experience of the war having proved how extremely difficult it is to pierce strongly fortified lines, the German Headquarters Staff appears to have taken this knowledge as the base of the following calculation:
“We have achieved nine-tenths of the annexations on which we counted; only Calais, Verdun, Belfort, Riga and Salonika are wanting. We will try to obtain possession of these places if opportunity offers; if not, in order to avoid excessive risks, we shall remain everywhere in Europe on a keen defensive, but we will pretend, all the time, to wish to take the offensive, so as to mislead our adversaries. If the Franco-English insist on concentrating their efforts, above all against our lines of the Western front, as these lines are manifold and very strong, the enemy losses will be such, that even if they succeed in throwing us back, they will finally be so utterly exhausted as to be unable to cross the Rhine. Therefore, they will be powerless to dictate peace to Germany.”
Surely the Allies, taught by experience, can foil this probable calculation of their antagonists by well managed, simultaneous attacks on the whole accessible circuit of the German fortress. In fact this is what the Allies seem more and more inclined to do.
The indented line on the map (p. 72) shows what a strange shape is assumed by the enormous territories which build up that fortress. For alimentary purposes it is victualled, firstly, by the resources of non-German countries which are occupied and most thoroughly drained, and secondly by importations; which come through the channel of neutral countries—Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Roumania, and Switzerland—which have responded, more or less liberally, whether voluntarily or not, to the pressing applications of Germany.
On the other hand, thanks to the passage through the Balkans, the German fortress, early in 1916, had a wide open door on Persia, the Caucasus, Central-Russian Asia, Afghanistan, India and Egypt. After having armed all the Moslems on whom they could lay hands, and who were able to shoulder a gun, the German Staff reckoned on striking at Great Britain and Russia in all these directions. The successes obtained by the Tsar’s troops in Eastern Turkey have, since then, baffled these projects.
On the other hand, as Germany has nothing whatever to gain by a prolongation of the war, she will continue to aim at a rupture of the Coalition by means of every possible political manœuvre. It is clear that the defection of one of the principal Allies would necessarily place all the others in vastly more difficult positions for continuing the struggle.Assuming that such a thing were to happen, the Germans could, indeed, hope to discuss peace on the base of the territories which they actually occupy. They will therefore repeat and increase their bids for a separate peace with one or other of their adversaries. When once their position becomes very difficult the Germans, so as to shatter at all cost the Coalition, will make propositions of separate peace to one of the Allies, offering that one country almost complete satisfaction in the hope that, swayed perhaps by a section of their people who have grown weary of war, that Allied country will lay down her arms.
The Allied State which, contrary to its plighted faith, should separately treat with Berlin, would soon be punished for its infamy. By allowing Germany to conclude peace more or less on the basis of the territories she at present holds, the traitor State would find itself afterwards confronted by a formidable German Empire, and would inevitably become one of its first victims.
The Germans will perhaps try to play on the Allies the “armistice trick.” Here, again, we should have a cunning calculation founded once more on the weariness of the combatants. It is, indeed, conceivable that a simple armistice might end in allowing Germany to hold finally most of her actual territorial acquisitions; but it could so end only by means of a manœuvre which we must now expose.
No doubt they must make at Berlin the following calculation, which theoretically has something to be said for it: “If an armistice were signed, the Allied soldiers would think: ‘They are talking, therefore it means peace, and demobilization will soon follow.’ Under these conditions the effect will be the moral slackening of our adversaries.” The Germans could not ask for anything better. Theywould open peace negotiations with the following astute idea. To understand the manœuvre we must remember the proposals of peace which that active agent, Dr. Alfred Hermann Fried, of Vienna, was charged to throw out as a sounding-lead on the 27th December, 1915, in an article of theNouvelle Gazette de Zurich, which made a great stir. These proposals were mixed up with provisoes, which would allow the discussion to be opened or broken off at any moment desired. For example, Belgium would preserve her independence, but “on condition of treaties, perhaps also of guarantees, which would render impossible a repetition of the events of 1914.” The occupied departments of France would be restored unconditionally to France, but “some small rectifications of frontiers might perhaps be desired in the interests of both parties” (Journal de Genève, 29th December, 1915). Assuming that the Allies committed the enormous mistake of discussing peace on such treacherous terms, Germany still entrenched behind her fronts, which would have been rendered almost impregnable, would say to the Allies, “I don’t agree with you. After all you cannot require of me that I should evacuate territories from which you are powerless to drive me. If you are not satisfied, continue the war.” As, while the negotiations were pending, all needful steps would have been taken by the German agents to aggravate the moral slackening of the soldiers of such Allied countries as might be most weary of the struggle, the huge military machine of the Entente could not again be put in motion as a whole. The real result would be, in fact, the rupture of the Anti-Germanic Coalition, and finally the conclusion of a peace more or less based on actual occupation. Berlin’s goal would thus have been reached.
Finally, when the “armistice trick” shall havealso failed, and the situation of Germany shall have grown still worse, we shall see Berlin play her last trump. Petitions against territorial annexations will be multiplied on the other side of the Rhine. In an underhand way they will be favoured by the Government of Berlin, which will end by saying to the Allies: “Let us stop killing each other. I am perfectly reasonable. I give up my claims on such of your territories as are occupied by my armies. Let us negotiate peace on the basis of the ‘drawn game.’”
The day when this proposal will be made, the Allies will have to face the most astute of the Berlin tricks, the most alarming German trap. At that moment the tenacity, the clearsightedness, and the solidarity of the Allies must be put forth to the utmost. To show the extreme necessity of this, in the case supposed, I must baffle the German manœuvre in advance by proving clearly in the following chapter that the dodge of the drawn game, if it succeeded, would mask in reality a formidable success for Germany and an irreparable catastrophe for the Allies and for the freedom of the world.