Part 2 (2/2)
What else have they lived for, what else prepared for, what else have they inculcated in the mind of youth than the sureness of the conflict and the great glory of offering themselves to this Moloch in sacrifice?
”No Power involved can cover up the stain. It is indelible, the sin of all Europe. It could have been prevented by common agreement. There was no wish to prevent it. Munition manufacturers were not alone in urging the race to destruction, physical and financial. The leaders were for it. It was policy. A boiling pot will boil, a nurtured seed will grow. There was no escape from the avowed goal. A slow drift to the inevitable, a thunderbolt forged, the awful push toward the vortex! What men and nations want they get.”
GERMANY'S STAKE IN THE WAR
What had Germany to gain in the war in the instigation of which she is charged with being so deeply involved? Territorial aggrandizement may have been one of her purposes. Belgium and Holland lay between her and the open Atlantic, and the possession of these countries, with their splendid ports, would pay her well for a reasonable degree of risk and cost. The invasion of Belgium as her first move in the war game may have had an ulterior purpose in the acquisition of that country, one likely to be as distasteful to France as the taking over of Alsace-Lorraine.
Perhaps the neutral position taken by Holland, with her seeming inclination in favor of Germany, may have had more than racial relations behind it. Considerations of ultimate safety from annexation may have had its share in this att.i.tude of neutrality.
The general impression has been that Germany went to war with the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng beyond question her political and military supremacy on the European continent. Military despotism in Germany was the decisive factor in making inevitable the general war. The Emperor of Germany stood as the incarnation and exponent of the Prussian policy of military autocracy. He had ruled all German States in unwavering obedience to the militarist maxim: ”In times of peace prepare for war.” He had used to the full his autocratic power in building up the German Empire and in making it not only a marvel of industrial efficiency, but also a stupendous military machine. In this effort he had burdened the people of Germany with an ever-increasing war budget. The limit in this direction was reached with the war budget of the year 1912 when the revenues of the princes and of all citizens of wealth were specially taxed. No new sources of revenue remained.
A crisis had come.
That crisis, as sometimes claimed, was not any menace from Britain or any fear of the British power. It was rather the very real and very rapidly rising menace of the new great Slav power on Germany's border, including, as it did, the Russian Empire and the entire line of Slav countries that encircled Germanic Austria from the Adriatic to Bohemia. These Slav peoples are separated from the governing Teutonic race in the Austrian Empire by the gulfs of blood, language, and religion. And in Europe the Slav population very largely outnumbers the Teuton population and is growing much more rapidly.
Recent events, especially in the Balkan wars, had made it plain, not to the German Emperor alone, but to all the world, that the growth into an organized power of more than two hundred millions of Slav peoples along nearly three thousand miles of international frontier was a menace to the preservation of Teuton supremacy in Europe. That Teuton supremacy was based on the sword. The German Emperor's appeal was to ”My sword.” But when the new sword of the united Slav power was allowed to be unsheathed, German supremacy was threatened on its own ground and by the weapon of its own choosing.
However all this be, and it must be admitted that it is to a degree speculative, there were in 1914 conditions existing that appeared to render the time a suitable one for the seemingly inevitable continental war. Revelations pointing to defects in the French army, deficiencies of equipment and weaknesses in artillery, had been made in the French Parliament. The debate that occurred was fully dwelt upon in the German papers. And on July 16th the organ of Berlin radicalism, the VOSSICHE ZEITUNG, published a leading article to show that Russia was not prepared for war, and never had been. As for France, it said: ”A Gallic c.o.c.k with a lame wing is not the ideal set up by the Russians.
And when the Russian eagle boasts of being in the best of health who is to believe him? Why should the French place greater confidence in the inveterate Russian disorganization than in their own defective organization?”
As regards the Kaiser's own estimate of his preparedness for war, and the views of national polity he entertained, we shall let him speak for himself in the following extracts from former utterances:
”We will be everywhere victorious even if we are surrounded by enemies on all sides and even if we have to fight superior numbers, for our most powerful ally is G.o.d above, who, since the time of the Great Elector and Great King, has always been on our side.” - At Berlin, March 29, 1901.
”I vowed never to strike for world mastery. The world empire that I then dreamed of was to create for the German empire on all sides the most absolute confidence as a quiet, honest and peaceable neighbor. I have vowed that if ever the time came when history should speak of a German world power or a Hohenzollern world power this should not be based on conquest, but come through a mutual striving of nations after a common purpose.
”After much has been done internally in a military way, the next thing must be the arming ourselves at sea. Every German battles.h.i.+p is a new guarantee for the peace of the world. We are the salt of the earth, but must prove worthy of being so.
Therefore, our youth must learn to deny what is not good for them.
”With all my heart I hope that golden peace will continue to be present with us.” - At Bremen, March 22, 1905.
”My final and last care is for my fighting forces on land and sea. May G.o.d grant that war may not come, but should the cloud descend, I am firmly convinced that the army will acquit itself as it did so n.o.bly thirty-five years ago.” - At Berlin, February 25, 1906.
In the early days of the reign of William II war was prominent in his utterances. He was the War Lord in full feather, and the world at that time looked with dread upon this new and somewhat blatant apostle of militarism. Yet year after year pa.s.sed until the toll of almost three decades was achieved, without his drawing the sword, and the world began to regard him as an apostle of peace, a wise and capable ruler who could gain his ends without the shedding of blood. What are we to believe now?
Had he been wearing a mast for all these years, biding his time, hiding from view a deeply cherished purpose? Or did he really believe that a mission awaited him, that regeneration of the world through the sanguinary path of the battle-field was his duty, and that by the aid of a successful war he could inaugurate a safer and sounder era of peace?
We throw out these ideas as suggestions only. What the Kaiser purposed, what deep-laid schemes of international policy he entertained, will, perhaps, never be known. But if he was really responsible for the great war, as he was so widely accused of being, the responsibility he a.s.sumed was an awful one. If he was not responsible, as he declared and as some who claim to have been behind the scenes maintain, the world will be ready to absolve him when his innocence has been made evident.
WHY RUSSIA ENTERED THE FIELD
In this survey of the causes of the great war under consideration the position of Russia comes next. That country was the first to follow Austria and begin the threatening work of mobilization.
Germany's first open partic.i.p.ation consisted in a warming to Russia that this work must cease. Only when her warning was disregarded did Germany begin mobilization and declare war. All this was the work of a very few days, but in this era of active military preparedness it needs only days, only hours in some instances, to change from a state of peace into a state of war and hurl great armed hosts against the borders of hostile nations.
The general impression was that it was the Slavic race sentiment that inspired Russia's quick action. Servia, a country of Slavs, brothers in race to a large section of the people of Russia, was threatened with national annihilation and her great kinsman sprang to her rescue, determined that she should not be absorbed by her land-hungry neighbor. This seemed to many a sufficient cause for Russia's action. Not many years before, when Austria annexed her wards, Bosnia and Herzegovina, both Slavic countries, Russia protested against the act. She would doubtless have done more than protest but for her financial and military weakness arising from the then recent Russo-j.a.panese War. In 1914 she was much stronger in both these elements of national power and lost not a day in preparing to march to Servia's aid.
But was this the whole, or indeed the chief, moving impulse in Russia's action? Was she so eager an advocate of Pan-Slavism as such a fact would indicate? Had she not some other purpose in view, some fish of her own to fry, some object of moment to obtain? Many thought so. They were not willing to credit the Russian bear with an act of pure international benevolence. Wars of pure charity are rarely among the virtuous acts of nations. As it had been suggested that Germany saw in the war a possible opportunity to gain a frontier on the Atlantic, so it was hinted that Russia had in mind a similar frontier on the Mediterranean.
Time and again she had sought to wring Constantinople from the hands of the Turks. In 1877 she was on the point of achieving this purpose when she was halted and turned back by the Congress of Berlin and the bellicose att.i.tude of the nations that stood behind it.
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