CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library 119.U8S Pan-Germanism 3 1924 028 206 880 DATE DUE nvfsj^^ ' UC©Tt Br^e -*?9 JA-^ 1 •* r&i!^ M983 1 ) fMi@« ^Si'-' CAVLOIIO FRINTCOINU S.A Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028206880 PAN-GERMANISM PAN-GERMANISM BY ROLAND G. USHER, Ph.D. Associate Professor of History Washington University, St. Louis "The patriotism of nations ought to be selfish.'' Mahamic de Sia£i., OJ Germany. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ^t mibet^ibe J^xt0 Cambnbsc 5 COPYRIGHT, I913, BY ROLAND G. USHER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published February zqig TO THAT ENERGETIC, CAPABLE ADMINISTRATOR THAT ENTHUSIASTIC STUDENT OF CONDITIONS THAT BEST OP COMRADES THAT DEAREST OF FRIENDS MY WIFE CONTENTS I. The Causes of German Aggression . 1 II. The Myth op English Preponderance IN Europe 19 III. The Fatal Weakness of Imperial Eng- land . 37 rV. France and Russia as the German sees Them 48 V. The Strength of Imperial Germany 63 VI. England and France as They see Themselves 73 VII. The German View of the Economic Situation 88 VIII. Prerequisites of Success . . . 101 IX. First Steps 116 X. The Significant Position of the United States 139 XI. First Defeats 157 XII. Victory from Defeat: the Tripoli- tan War 174 XIII. The Aftermath of the Tripolitan War 187 vil CONTENTS XIV, The Gbeat Repxjlsb: the Balkan Cmsis -203 XV. The Justipiabilitt of Pan-Gebmanism 230 XVI. The Probability of the Success of Pan-Gebmanism. I. Internal Weak- nesses 251 XVII. The Pbobabilitt of the Success of Pan-Gebmanism. II. External Weak- nesses 271 APPENDIX The Speech of Premier Borden of Canada, advocating a New Naval Policy, with the Official Memoran- dum OF the English Admibalty on England's Naval Position . . . 285 BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 PAN-GERMANISM PAN-GERMANISM CHAPTER I THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION FOR some years those at all familiar with cur- rent international affairs have known that it was the custom in the German navy to drink a toast, "To the day." Many people have hugged to themselves with glee the "secret" in- formation that the ofl5cers were drinking to the day when war should be declared against Eng- land, but few indeed seem to have realized the splendor of the vision now before German eyes, or the ideas of the international situation which makes victory seem so near as to send German blood coursing swiftly in the anticipation of tri- umph. The Germans aim at nothing less than the domination of Europe and of the world by the Germanic race.^ One of the fundamental • "To Germany, a [fleet] is merely a means to an end, and that end — if the Pan-Germans may be believed — b the destruction of the British Empire, the disruption of the French Republic, and the domination of the world." Archibald Hurd in the Fortnightly Reoiew, xci. New Series, 785. Any one who will compare this article with the official Memorandum of the Admiralty prepared for the Dominion of Canada will have little doubt that it was "inspired." ~ 1 PAN-GERMANISM errors, of which idealists and advocates of peace have been often guilty, is to treat this vast pro- ject as an unreality. In fact, it is already half accomplished. An equally mistaken view declares it the oenception of an individual which chances to find for the moment a response in the German people, or a scheme which depends for its exist- ence upon the transient personal influence of a few men. No doubt, a few men only know the full details of the plans for the realization of this stu- pendous enterprise, but the whole nation is none the less fired by their spirit and is working as a unit in accordance with their directions. It is literally true that Germany has "become Bis- marckian. His heavy spirit has settled upon it. It wears his scowl. It has adopted his brutality, as it has his greatness. It has taken his criterion of truth, which is Germanic; his indiflference to justice, which is savage; his conception of a state, which is sublime." "This nation has forgotten God in its exaltation of the Germanic race." Bombastic as such phrases are, they do convey some notion of the militant spirit which has Mr. Hurd quotes the following sentences from the speech of the Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag on November 10, 1912: "For months past we have been living, and we are living now, in an atmos- phere of passion such as we have perhaps never before experienced in Germany. At the root of this feeling is the determination of Ger- many to make its strength and capability prevail in the world,". See also the note at the end of this chapter. THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION roused that nation. When Li Hung Chang first 'learned from Bismarck the magnitude of these .plans, he was skeptical. But before his brief stay- in Germany was over, he wrote in his diary: "From all that I have seen, I am more than ever conviAced that the Kaiser and Prince Bismarck meant what they said when they averred that the German Empire was destined to become a dom- inant factor in Europe." The magnitude of the conception, the degree of success already attained, the probability of its complete realization, the grave dangers which it involves to other nations, are most clearly demon- strated by the alarm manifested by the latter. England's foremost soldier, Lord Roberts, has publicly declared that she has never been in all her history in a position of greater peril. The leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons as solemnly aflBrmed the truth of his statement. Ten years ago, he said, England had command of every sea; now she held control only of the North Sea. Ten years ago her fleet was so strong that she could have confidently expected to emerge victorious from a struggle of the magnitude of the Napoleonic wars; to-day there was no such prob- ability. The ex-Premier of France, M. Clemen- ceau, said in public: "When I look towards the boimdary of a territory which was French when PAN-GERMANISM I was young, and when I see there the massing of lines of bayonets, I cannot dream of disarmmg. A crisis of the utmost gravity is thus facing Em-ope, and may at any moment result in a war whose consequences would be felt alike by the farmers in North Dakota, the operators in Lan- cashire cotton mills, and the savages in the heart of Africa. At the very least, it will overthrow political boundaries whose permanence has been thought assured; at the worst, it may involve the actual destruction of the prosperity and happiness of two or three of the largest countries in Europe and inflict untold misery upon the countless thou- sands dependent upon European rule in Africa and Asia. •"Tlie vital factor in the modem international /situation is the aggression of Germany, her deter- i mination to expand her territories, to increase her j wealth and power. Three centuries ago, Prussia \ was a tiny state whose many parts were separated from each other by the lands of her neighbors. Cut off from the sea on all sides, pushed hither by the oncoming Russian, dragged thither by the encroaching French, surrounded by tiny incom- petent states, her rulers saw in aggression the only possible method of preserving the national life. To prevent her absorption by her neighbors, she must grow faster than they; she must rob 4 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION them instead of waiting for them to rob her. By war, she Secured access to the Baltic; by war, she obtained the coveted Silesia; by war, she annexed much of Poland; by war, she spread her aegis over the whole of northern Germany. The humiliation of conquest she knew under Napoleon, and she has never forgotten nor ever will that no natural bar- riers stand between her and the invader. PovertyH stricken, still recovering from the ravages of the 1 wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries, 1 menaced on all sides by powerful enemies, her i only safety, Bismarck saw, lay in aggression, her | only chance of victory depended upon striking ' the first blow. By this policy, she has built up^ one of the most powerful states in the world and one of the most populous and prosperous. But she has reached the boundaries of Germany; fur- ther expansion means the acquisition of what other nations now own. The logic of facts, proving the necessity of expansion, is, to such Germans as General Bem- hardi, unanswerable. The population has in- creased so rapidly that it is already diflBcult for efficient, well-trained men to secure any employ- ment. Not only is the superficial area of the coimtry suitable for cultivation practically ex- hausted, but intensive scientific agriculture is speedily limiting the possibilities of the employ- 5 PAN-GERMANISM ment of more hands on the same acres or the fur- ther increase of the produce. Industry has grown at a stupendous rate, and the output from Ger- man factories is enormously in excess of the needs of even the growing population. Her exports per capita are $24 a year, as against England's $40, and France's $25, and she has not their ex- clusive colonial markets. Unless some outlet can be found for the surplus population, and a new and extensive market discovered for this enor- ihous surplus production, prosperity will be in- evitably succeeded by bankruptcy. There will be more hands than there is work for, more mouths than there is food, and Germany must either get rid of the surplus mouths and hands or swell the surplus product by employing them at home, which cannot be done without entailing national ruin. Expansion is, therefore, the only alterna- tive, for the German considers equivalent to ruin the reduction of the pressure of population by emigration,^ and the avoidance of overproduction ' In 1881, nearly five per cent of the total population emigrated, and in the two succeeding years the number was scarcely smaller. Most of them came to the United States. German emigration at present is almost negligible. The name Pan-Germanism at first denoted a movement for the creation of a greater national unit out of these emigrants and the Germans at home. It aimed at main- taining the emigrants' devotion to the Fatherland by preserving their language and German habits, and at preventing tieir amal- gamation, so far as possible, into the nation to which they had mi- grated. Its hope was eventually to draw them back to the Fathep. 6 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION by the proportionate reduction of output. For Germany to be thus forced to renaain static in population and in wealth, while her neighbors continue to expand, England in her colonies, France in Morocco, Russia in Siberia and Turkes- tan, means that the date of her annihilation will be fixed by the rate of their growth. And such action on her part would compel her in fact to be an accessory to her own destruction, for her emigrants must strengthen her rivals both in the field and in the factory. To ask a German, there- fore, whether the expansion of Germany is desir- able, is merely to ask him whether he believes it desirable from any point of view for the German nation to survive. Already the boundaries of Germany in Europe have been pushed to their furthest extent; more territory can be added only at the expense of other nations, either of her powerful rivals, France and Russia, or of her weaker neighbors, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Nor would the accession of such territory solve the difficulty. All European nations are already experiencing to knd or to provide for them new homes under the German flag elsewhere. The methods employed were mainly educational, by means of German newspapers, active German departments in American universities, German societies, frequent visits to the great German " colonies " by German authors and professors. This movement, however, was soon merged into and dwarfed by the greater scheme now known as Pan-Germanism. 7 PAN-GERMANISM some degree the necessity of an outlet for then' surplus population and manufactures. A war for expansion in Em-ope would be without purpose and could only be detrimental to all. Germany must flRad some territory suitable for development by her own people which is not already choked with men and women. She is seeking the coun- terpart of the fertile plains of western Canada, of the rich valleys of northern Africa, where her people may build a new Germany whose existence will strengthen her and not her rivals. But such a promised land, tenanted only by native races, Js not to be found. Every really available spot is keld by England, France, or Russia. Germany can, therefore, obtain colonies suitable for her purposes only at the expense of these last. This is what is meant by the oft-reiterated statements that England, France, and Russia are by their very existence inimical to Germany's welfare, that, if she is to escape ruin, she must fight them. The alternative to colonies is access to some new market for her products, so vast in extent and so unlimited in its capacity of continued ab- sorption, that her surplusage of population can be provided with work at home, and thus pro- sperity and the increase of the national strength indefinitely insured. The total annual imports into her own colonies she knows to be well under 8 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION ten millions of dollars; the exports from England to th^ English colonies alone she knows to total several hundred millions of dollars.^ Such a mar- ket she is determined to have, cost what it may. One other fact marks England as the greatest obstacle in the path of her legitimate growth. The English Channel is the only available safe passageway for her merchant fleets. The voyage round the British Isles is long and during the winter months positively dangerous even for steamships. Natural conditions, therefore, by compelling Germany to use the Channel, force her to expose her commerce to the assaults of the English fleet so long as the latter controls the Channel. Even if she should acquire colonies and a great market, she cannot really possess them until she acquires a highroad to them safe from the attacks of her enemies. Short of conquering England and France, she can never free her com- merce from actual danger; without a great fleet in the North Sea, strong enough to terrify England into inaction, she cannot even be assured of the continuance of her present freedom of passage.^ ^ The leading customers of England in 1910 were in millions of pounds: India, 45 millions; Germany, 37 millions; the United States, 31 millions; Australia, 27 millions; France, 11 millions; Canada, 19 millions. England's exports to these three colonies were 91 millions and her exports to the three nations were 90 milUons. 2 The preface of the German Naval Bill of 1900 stated: "For the protection of our oversea trade and our colonies, there is only one 9 PAN-GERMANISM Her fleet, therefore, seems to her merely the guarantee of her present position, and it will con- tinue to be a guarantee only as long as its size makes it formidable. Merely to retain what she now has, Germany is condemned to increase her navy at any pace the English see fit to set. Some- thing more will be absolutely essential if the dirp consequences of an economic crisis are not to im- poverish her and pave the way for her ultimate I destruction at the hands of her hereditary enemies, France and Russia. To secure a share of the world's trade in some fashion which will not expose her to the attacks of the English fleet, and which will create an empire less vulnerable in every way than she believes the British Empire to be, an overland route to the East must be found. The Germans consider perfectly feasible the construction of a great confederation of states including Germany, Austria, Hungary, means: a strong fleet. Under the present circumstances, the only means for protecting Germany's oversea trade and colonies is: Ger- many must possess a fleet of such strength that a war, even with the strongest naval power, would involve such risks as to jeopardize the position of lihat power. For that purpose, it is not absolutely neces- sary that the German fleet be as strong as the fleet of the greatest naval power, for a great naval power will not generally be in a posi- tion to concentrate all its forces against Germany. But, even if the greatest naval power should succeed in meeting us with a fleet of superior strength, the defeat of a strong German fleet would so greatly weaken its own power, that, notwithstanding its victory, its own position on the seas would no longer be secure." 10 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION the Balkan States, and Turkey, which would con- trol a great band of territory stretching southeast from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. A railway from Constantinople to Baghdad would eflFectually tie the great trunk lines, leading from the Rhine and Danube valleys, to Constantinople and the Persian Gulf, and so establish a shorter route to India than that via Suez. Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia, India herself, the mother of nations, would fall into German hands and be held safe from con- quest by this magnificent overland route to the Eastjf|Pan-Germanism is, therefore, in the firsf^* place, a defensive movement for self-preserva- j tion, for escaping the pressure of France and ' Russia, both bent on her destruction. It is, in the second place, an offensive movement directed against England, its object, the conquest of the English possessions in the Mediterranean and in Asia. She expects thus to obtain an outlet for her surplus population and manufactures and to create an empire as little vulnerable politically, economically, or strategically as any the world has yet seen. -— ' In reply to the outcries from other nations, de- nouncing these plans as unprovoked aggression and lacking in morality, as a reversion to the forc- ible methods of bygone centuries whose brutali- ties the world long ago outgrew, the Germans 11 PAN-GERMANISM derisively point to the presence of the English in India, of the French in Morocco, of the Russians in- Manchuria, of the United States in Panama. They insist that their aims and methods are ab- solutely identical with those their detractors have so long employed. Now that the latter's work is complete and their own futures assured, they are no doubt eager to establish "moral," "ethical," and "legal" precepts whose acceptance by other nations would insure them the undisturbed pos- session of all they now hold. This, the Germans admit, is but natural and not blameworthy; but they ought not to expect other nations to sub- scribe to such principles from motives of love or admiration.^ G ener. aL ^emhardi. a man whose undoubted attainments and learning compel the respect of his enemies, and whose following in Germany is large in numbers and influential in character, declares openly that might is right, and that right is decided by war. He scoffs at such ideas of ethics and morality as his critics repre- sent, and insinuates that, if war happened to * " That any one should act in politics out of complaisance or from a sentiment of justice, others may expect from us, but not we from them. . . . Every government takes solely its own interests as the standard of its actions, however it may drape them with deductions of justice or sentiment. . . . My belief is that no one does anything for ua, unless he can at the same time serve his own interests." Bis- marck, R^leclions and Reminiscences, English translation, A. J. Butler, New York and London, 1899, respectively, pp. 176, 173 jjog, 12 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION promise other nations at this moment as many advantages as it does Germany, they would hold views similar to his upon that subject. With him, the Germans as a whole refuse to \ admit the validity of any theoretical notions j whose application would in any way restrict or mterfere with Germany's "full share in the mas- tery of the world." Do they not see about them the splendidly tangible results of the investment ^ of the huge war indemnity paid by France to ransom her lands from the German army? Do they not know that the indemnity created modem Germany? As a prominent German manufacturer said to the writer two years ago, "Next time we will ask five times as much." In the face of the undeniable territorial gains, equal in amount to several times the area of Prussia and Branden- burg combined in 1640, in the face of that five billions of francs which they have invested and reinvested with such brilliant success for forty years, how can the Germans be expected to believe that the fruits of peace are greater than those ' The indemnity was nominally spent in defraying the cost of the war and in improving the aimy and fortifications. It was indirectly distributed to the nation and to individuals; for the army was the nation in arms, the debts were mostly owed to Germans, the labor and materials employed on the new works were German. However the transaction was recorded formally on the books of the state, the nation itself received the money either in wages or by the remission d( taxes. 13 PAN-GERMANISM "^of war? Is not the very existence of Imperial Germany due to war? Could it conceivably have been created by anything else? Will anythingless .preserve it? They deny the validity of any par- ticular set of ethical notions of right and wrong to decide issues vital to the continued existence of the Germanic race. If such considerations are to be dragged into the discussion, the notion of the relativity of truth, the doctrine that moral and ethical standards are not fixed but merely reflect the stage of progress each particular age has reached, the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest, all seem to them infinitely more satisfactory theoretical grounds for action than what Bismarck sneeringly called "the English phrases about humanity." The most significant question now before the Anglo-Saxon race, therefore, is the truth or fal- sity of those notions of strategical geography, of military and naval organization, of finance and commerce upon which these vast schemes are based. If the factors, on which the Germans rely, are what they think they are, the domination of the world by Germany and her allies can be only a question of time. If they are not valid, the world will certainly develop along different lines. So widely do the economic and political interests ramify, so completely are all sections of the globe 14 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION influenced by them, that nothing can happen, from this moment until the final decision of the issue, which will not vitally affect it or be vitally affected by it. The Boer War, Morocco, the strangling of Persia, the war in Tripoli, the Bal- kan crisis are only incidents in this gigantic strug- gle in which the very pawns are kingdoms and the control of the entire globe the stake. Indeed, the forces at the disposal of the combatants are so comprehensive that navies and armies might al- most be called incidental factors, which it may or may not be necessary to employ, and which might not indeed be decisive for victory or defeat. Naturally, even to sketch the history of the world in its relation to the modem crisis, even to enumerate the multifold phases, political, con- stitutional, economic, military, which it neces- sarily displays, is an impossibility in anything briefer than a series of volumes. An attempt to describe merely the features and factors essential to a comprehension of the most significant phases of Pan-Germanism alone will require the omission of much that is important and will make im- possible any account at all of the narrative of recent history. What has happened, what is hap- pening, is of infinitely less consequence than the scope and character of the German plans. The most vital fact for the Anglo-Saxon race to grasp 15 PAN-GERMANISM at present is the German view of European his- tory, of European life and ideals, their estima- tion of the comparative strength of political, eco- nomic, and ethical forces. From a grasp of these points, a^d from it alone, can we hope to under- stand the apparently inexplicable and inconsist- ent ideas upon which has been based the most audacious attempt yet made consciously to direct through a long term of years the evolution of a nation and the fate of the world.^ The following chapters, therefore, will attempt to describe Eu- rope and Germany, as the Germans see them, as the necessary prelude to a brief statement of the, progress Germany has made toward a realization of her scheme and a description of the attempts of her "victims" to frustrate it. Then, there will * The extent to which the German nation as a whole is conscious ot the existence of Pan-Germanism is not demonstrable. There can be no doubt that the Government has consistently attempted to shape public opinion in favor of it. Bismarck's notion of public opin- ion is enlightening. He said to Crispi : " Public opinion is but a great river formed by a quantity of small streams, one of which is the Govenunent stream. If the Government would but swell its waters suflSciently, it would have a determinative influence upon the great public current. If, on the contrary, the Government wants to meas- ure the strength of all the other streams, which, separately, are less powerful than its own, it must be overwhelmed by the union of their forces. A Government acting thus would be guilty of unpardonable neglect of precautions." Crispi, Memoira, n, 16S, London, 1912. In the Fortnightiy Renew, xoi. New Series, 785, Archibald Hurd states: "A section of powerful politicians and vested interests, with the support of the Emperor and the Marine Amt, under Grand- Admiral von Tirpitz, have obtained control of the Government and the most influential newspapers, and dominate German policy." 16 THE CAUSES OF GERMAN AGGRESSION I be an opportunity to weigh the scheme in the bal- ance, to point out its elements of strength and weakness, and thus to arrive at some approxima- tion of the probability of its success or failure NOTE The following testimony was given under oath in a court of law by the editor of the Rheinisch-WestfcUische Zdtung in a political libel suit instituted by him against the editor of the Grenzboten. It was printed only [so far as can be learned] by the Rheinisch-West- fiUische Zeitung and the Tdglische Rundschau, but was not denied by the gentlemen named in it, and seems to have been suppressed so far as was possible. The fol- lowing translation is taken from a semi-official article in the Fortnightly Review, xci. New Series, 462. Whether or not the words credited to the important personages quoted were ever used, they express sentiments which are widely believed to represent their views. After all, it is not so much the truth itself, but what intelligent and sincere men believe to be the truth, which influ- ences the trend of human events. "Mr. Class, the President of the Pan-Germanic League, is prepared to state upon oath before this court ^ that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Herr von Kiderlen WSchter, writing to him from Kissingen, requested Mr. Class to meet him at the Hotel Pfalzer Hof in Mannheim. During the interview, which occu- pied several hours, Herr von Kiderlen Wachter stated: 'The Pan-Germanic demand for the possession of Morocco is absolutely justified. You can absolutely * The italics are not in the original. 17 PAN-GERMANISM rely upon it that the Government wQl stick to Morocoo. Monsieur Cambon is wriggling before me like a worm. The German Government is in a splendid position. You can rely upon me and you will be very pleased with our Morocco policy. I am as good a Pan-German as you are.' ^ On the 1st of July, Mr. Class called at the German "Foreign Office, and, failing to find Herr von Kiderlen Wachter, was received by Herr Zimmermann, the Under-Secretary. Mr. Zimmermann told him: 'You come at an historic hour. To-day the Panther appears before Agadir and at this moment (12 o'clock mid-day) the Foreign Cabinets are being informed of its mission. The German Government has sent two agents provocateurs to Agadir and these have done their duty very well. German firms have been induced to make complaints and to call upon the Government in Berlin for protection. It is the Government's intention to seize the district and it will not give it up again. The German people require absolutely a settlement colony. Please prevent, wherever in the Press you have influence, the raising of claims for compensation else- where. Possibly France wiU oflfer us the Congo. How- ever, the German does not want compensation else- where, but a part of Morocco.' " ^ The italics are not in the originaL CHAPTER II THE MYTH OP ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE IN EUROPE ENGLAND, with all her bluster and show," said Bismarck to Li Hung Chang, "has a hundred weak points, and she knows that a con- flict with a power nearly her equal will mean her undoing." A vital part of the German scheme for the control of the world depends upon the belief that power is not absolute, but comparative. Not alone Germany's strength, but her rivals' weakness, will be significant factors for victory or defeat. To Germans it is an error to suppose that England is decadent. The fundamental mis- conception is to suppose that England ever was strong. She has been strong by reason of others' weakness, by the use of others' resources, by the spoils of conquest. She has not less cohesion than before, not fewer vital interests in common with her dependencies. The British Empire has never possessed cohesion; never has had a common, vital economic, or geographical interest; has al- ways been a sham, a figment of the imagination, a glittering generality whose unreality has re- 19 PAN-GERMANISM mained concealed only by reason of the inability of other nations to perceive it.^ England's naval power has been the result of accident, not of genius, think the Germans, and has reste4 chiefly upon the accidents of geography and geology. The formation of the British Isles, the meeting of strong oceanic currents to the north of them, made the narrow passageway between England and Europe the most important single bit of water in the world. The commerce of north- ern Eiirope was forced to pass through the Channel because it could not safely go round. The naviga- tion of this safer passage was made exceedingly diflScult for wooden sailing ships by the peculiar formation of the shores and by the treacherous tides, winds, and currents. Chance had, more* over, placed most of the natural harbors on th^ English side. There was, indeed, between Brest and Hamburg but one spot on the continental side which might serve as a base of operations for a great fleet, the district now known as the Neth- * The author begs his readers to bear carefully in mind that he is attempting in the following chapters to expound the German view of the situation rather than what he believes to be the truth. Natur rally, a view of the international situation, upon which a great nation of intelligent people is willing to base a policy on whose success maj depend their national future, will contain many factors whose trutii is not to be denied by any impartial student. The general conclu- sions, derived from considering these obviously true facts, may, how- ever, be vulnerable. 20 MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE elands. The constant use of the Channel neces- sarily involved, therefore, the use of English har- bors as a refuge from storms. Nor were the diffi- culties of navigation limited to the passage of ships through the Channel. To sail across that narrow way, especially with a fleet, was literally an almost impossible feat except from one or two points on the European shore, the more favorable of which was the Netherlands. The natural barriers to invasion thus furnished by the Channel so limited the possibilities of assault that its defense became comparatively simple. Invasion after invasion, decade after decade, was defeated because the unfavorable weather, continuing for weeks at a l^e, made it impossible for the enemy to leave Europe. These natural barriers are gone forever, destroyed by the steamship, which is not limited in the time of its departure nor in its course by winds and waves.^ Never again can an English * The German Navy League issued in 1912 a boojc entitled, DeuUchhmd Sei Waeh, in which this statement was made prominent: "The maintenance of Great Britain's naval supremacy which has bein kept unimpaired during the last century, has, through the rela- tive strength of the German fleet, become impossible in the future. That is the great historic process which we are seeing. It is no more to be imagined that England can destroy the German fleet without seriously compromising her own supremacy." At the end of the vol- ume in the very largest of type stands the following: "Germany must be strong on land, so strong that she can vanquish every oppo- nent, but she must also be so strong at sea that she need not fear any opponent, because the risk of a naval war would be so great that it would appear too great even to the strongest naval Power." 21 PAN-GERMANISM fleet adopt Nelson's tactics of allowing the weather to guard the Channel while he crushed the enemy elsewhere. Napoleon, waiting at Boulogne, once truly said that seven hours of darkness and a fair wind would change the fate of the world. In the next war the invader will not need to pray for eitheri The Germans also correctly appreciate the fact that the English control of the Baltic — the only considerable source of naval stores from which wooden fleets might be built or maintained — was a vital factor in their naval supremacy. Not only did they possess a superior fleet; they pos- sessed the chief supply of materials from which rival fleets could be built. Trafalgar gave England supremacy on the sea, not so much because she won the battle, as because her control of the sea prevented Napoleon from obtaining the ma- terials out of which alone he might rebuild his shattered fleet. This monopoly is gone forever. Ships are now built of a material of which no nation has a monopoly, and of which England does not even control one of the chief sources of supply. The peculiar strategical geography of northern Europe the Germans also hold responsible for England's power. The land on either side of the mouth of the Rhine is the key to northern Europe. MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE Belgium controls the shortest route to Paris; Holland is the only point of departure from which an invasion of England is likely to be successful; both countries hold between them the door of the Rhine valley, the gateway to the heart of Ger- many. Their possession by arly one of the three nations nearest them would give her immediately a most deadly offensive weapon against the other two. To possess them has been the dream of all; to secure them half the wars in European history have been fought. Those two tiny states are now independent because England, France, and Ger- many cannot permit each other to control them. To the east lies the gateway between France and Germany, Alsace-Lorraine, through whose fair fields pass the roads to Cologne and Berlin, to Frankfort, Leipzig, and Dresden, to Basel, Switzerland, and Italy, to the Danube valley and Vienna. Its possession permits France to enter the heart of Germany; its possession puts Ger- many at the very doors of France; it is a potent weapon of offense or defense and enables its holder to begin a war with tremendous advantages. For its possession, France and Germany have struggled for fifteen hundred years. The existence of these strategic points has made England important. If France assailed the Rhine from Lorraine, Ger- many would ally with England, who could assail PAN-GERMANISM Paris from the north through Belgium. If Ger- many threatened France from the east, the Eng- lish might be induced to invade Germany from the Netherlands. Should either country obtam the cobpqf ation of England against the other, the most disastrous results were probable. These conditions made England a factor in politics during the Middle Ages, out of all proportion to her actual strength as compared with France or Germany. She was in a position to deliver a deadly flank attack on either; the Channel effectually prevented retaliation; she could have consum- mated the dynastic ambitions of either; she pre- ferred to thwart the aims of both. When the Netherlands fell into Spanish hands in the six- teenth century and the power of the Hapsburgs threatened to absorb all Europe, the cooperation of the islanders, who controlled the stormy Chan- nel and who could so easily invade the Nether- lands, was seen by every one to be the controlling factor in a complex situation. Their assistance would almost certainly decide the war in favor of France or Spain. Not England's strength, but the fact that her position made her valuable to stronger nations, gave her a voice ra the days of Henry VIII and Elizabeth. Not her strength, but the evenness of the balance of power in Europe, the rivalry of Bourbon and Hapsburg, 24 MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE their fear of each other, gave her the casting vote.* Until the nineteenth century, France was the only strong, organic nation on the continent of Europe: Spain, Italy, and Germany were geo- graphical expressions, whose weakness and fear of France forced them to call on England for aid. No doubt immense significance ought to be at- tached to England's own condition during these same centuries. She attained in the days of William the Norman, in the eleventh century, a territorial unity which Spain did not attain until the fifteenth century, France until the six- teenth century, Germany and Italy until the nineteenth century. Her strong centralized mon- archy, certainly the most powerful feudal govern- ment in Europe, the strong Tudor monarchy in later years were able to throw into the European balance the whole force of a territorial and eco- nomic unit. England, united and ruled by a single king, easily able to suppress local uprisings, was ' "England has always caused one Power to destroy another Power. Herein lies England's profit." "The great Wars of Religion in Germany made it possible for England to become a sea power. During the time when Germany was torn and enfeebled, England could destroy the Hanseatic League. Prussia's Seven Years' War enabled England to oust the old Colonial Powers and to seize French Canada. . . . The final conquest of the New World succeeded only because Frederick the Great held down France in Europe." Eng- hnd'g WeUherrschaft und die Deutsche LuxusfloUe, von Lookout. Berlin, February, 1912. Fourteen editions were sold in a few weeks. 25 PAN-GERMANISM actually stronger than a vastly more populous and wealthy state, like France, Germany, or Spain, whose international strength was limited to such force as could be exerted by that one of her princes who had been able to secure the ascen- dency for the time being, and who was invariably hard pressed at home by ambitious rivals scarcely less powerful than he. The strategical position of the continental nations laid them open to inva- sion from so many quarters that they must be continually withholding from their oflfensive army in one place enough men to insure safety in others. Not so England, whom the Channel enabled to concentrate her forces at one point without fear of invasion elsewhere. England fought with her whole strength those who had not yet finished fighting among themselves. The number of years during which England has been the scene of actual warfare are astonishingly few. Since the days of Henry VIII, there has been domestic peace except for the civil wars of the seventeenth century. Such a record no other nation can show. Nor were the wars which did take place on English soil as disastrous or destructive as the wars on the Continent. When the Continent was almost laid waste, England could husband or utilize her full economic strength at will. Not alone, therefore, because of her position and the rivalries of others MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE has England played the controlling part in inter- national affairs. Compared to any individual nation, her strength has been great. The growth during the nineteenth century of Prussia, Austria, and Italy has given England as rivals, in place of the old decentralized, inefficient, quarreling federations of tiny states, strong cen- tralized governments, larger than she in area, with more numerous, populations, with greater re- sources. She has lost her old position, despite the fact that she was never more prosperous or better governed than she is at present, because of the proportionately more rapid development of her rivals. Nor can she longer claim a more efficient use of her resources than they. For a strong king, has been substituted a ministry; for the rapidity, vigor, and secrecy of the king's imhampered dis- cretion, has been substituted the less rapid and effi- cient direction of a many-headed executive whose actions are hampered and hindered by the House of Commons. However admirable the results of parliamentary government have been for the individual Englishman, it can scarcely be denied that the new democratic government is compara- tively less efficient than the old centralized mon- archy, and that, from the international point of view, England has lost immensely in offensive strength. 27 PAN-GERMANISM In the Government, too, exist the gravest dis- sensions. The assumption has always been that there would be a clear majority in the House of Commons in favor of one of two policies; that the Ministry would represent this majority, and from its unity and strength would derive support for the exercise of the discretiona,ry authority neces- sary for all emergencies. Yet, for twenty years, the English parties in the House of Commons have both remained almost constant in size, and the decision has usually rested with the Irish and labor members, who have entertained views highly inconsistent with policy as the great majority of the English people have conceived it. And these two parties, thus fortuitously placed in so com- manding a position, have more than once given clear expression to their determination to use the exigencies of the occasion to extort from the reluctant English the consent necessary for the attainment of their own aims. In fact, it is not Ireland but England that needs home rule. The constitutional development of the nineteenth century has, for the time beinig, made diflScult the efficient use of English resources. Lord Esher recently gave public expression to the opinion that the difficulty of coordinating the offensive and defensive forces of the nation made imprac- ticable the adoption by the military authorities, in 28 MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE England "of a plan, Napoleonic in scope and de- sign, and resting upon a centralized basis." During these same decades, precisely the op- posite type of development has taken place in Europe. The decentralized administration, which so long rendered impotent the great resources of Germany, Austria, and Italy in men and money, was replaced in each country by a centralized monarchy whose efficiency made the prompt utilization of every resource a certainty. Where in England the direction of policy passed from the hands of a few into the hands of many, in Germany, Austria, and Italy it passed, from the hands of many princes, with various antagonistic aims, into the hands of a few men whose ideas were essentially the same. The fact that such development could not be foreseen does not alter its significance. England no longer possesses as much strength as she used to have; relatively to her rivals, she has suffered even more seriously, for while she has gone backward, they have gone forward. Compared to what she used to be, she is actually administratively weaker; compared with her rivals, she is relatively not twice but four times less strong than she used to be. Her "control of the sea" has also been vitally dbanged by the development of Europe during the last three centuries. The offensive power of the 29 PAN-GERMANISM English fleet naturally must depend upon the pos- sibility of injuring the enemy, either by the de- struction of his warships or by the cutting of lines of communication vital to his commerce. In the old dajis, the absence of good roads compelled the transportation of bulky goods by water, and the extent of the facilities for water communication was the measure of the size of that country's trade. In northern Europe, merchandise necessarily traveled down a series of parallel rivers into the English Channel, the North Sea, and the Baltic, through which it proceeded to its destination. Goods could be shipped from Cologne to Ham- burg only through the Channel and the North Sea. Most of the internal trade between different parts of Germany or France was thus exposed in transit to the operations of the English fleet. All commerce by sea between northern Europe and the Mediterranean or the East was forced to go through the English Channel, exposed to the English fleet and the Channel weather.^ But the ' " On every one'of the world's trade routes, like an ancient robber knight in full armor, lance in hand, stands England. All nations must run the gauntlet of England. . . . The domination of the world on the sea enables the supreme naval Power to inflict the most terrible crises upon other nations. Every nation must combat thii predominance for the sake of its future. . . . All nations have be- come tributary to the city of London, some more, some less. "Ger- many would find existence at England's sufferance unbearable." England's Wettherrschaft und die Deutsche Luxusflotte. 30 MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE coming of the railway in the nineteenth century destroyed for all time this phase of England's sea power. The internal trade of Germany, and, in- deed, much of her international trade, goes over- land by rail and is thus entirely freed from the menace of English assault. Even with the Far East, trade is possible by rail, and the coming decade will undoubtedly see a further develop- ment of transcontinental trunk lines. The import- ance, therefore, of the Channel as the chief means of intercommunication in northern Europe has disappeared, and with it has gone England's control of the trade of northern Europe. Further, England's prosperity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due in no small de- gree to her control of the chief or only supplies of sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, cotton goods, and all those varied products supplied by the East and West Indies. For those the Continent depended upon her, as Napoleon discovered when the imposition of the Continental System excluded English goods from the European market. The men actually seemed to resent far more the loss of their tobacco, and the women the deprivation of their tea, than they had the destruction of the political units to which they had formerly owed allegiance. The Continental System failed to bankrupt England because Europe absolutely 31 PAN-GERMANISM refused to do without English goods. Another trade monopoly, far more fundamental, was due to England's industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. The smelting of iron with coal, the blast furnace, the steam hammer revolutionized the working of metals; the new spinning and weaving machinery, the stationary steam engine and the factory revolutionized all industry; the breeding of cattle, the use of the turnip, of manure, and of selected seeds revolutionized agriculture. Such significant economic changes had not been seen since man began to record his own doiogs. For more than a generation, England enjoyed the exclusive monopoly of these processes and the consequent benefits. English goods commanded higher prices because they were more imiform; English profits were again larger than European to the extent that machinery was cheaper than the old hand processes. England was, therefore, economically doubly more powerful than any other nation in Europe, because she alone con- trolled the supply of commodities which Europe insisted upon having, and because she alone pos- sessed the secret of the improved processes. But her advantage in these respects has disappeared. Sugar cane from Louisiana and Hawaii, Ameri- can cotton, Brazilian coffee, and the complete utilization by her chief rivals of all modem inven- 33 MYTH OF ENGLISH PREPONDERANCE tions has robbed her of the unique economic posi- tion she held in 1815. In fact, to the German, England's economic strength has been changed into fatal economic weakness. She no longer produces suflScient food to supply her population for a month; her supplies of coal and wood are diminishing at a rate which causes serious reflection; the raw material needed to supply her looms and factories she does not pro- duce; the raw material to build or maintain a fleet she cannot produce.^ The area of land imder cul- tivation has steadily diminished. Population on the soil is decreasing at a more rapid rate and is drifting into the cities, where it further compli- cates the serious economic and administrative problems which worry her rulers. Every family moved from the land into the factory means so many less individuals who supply themselves with the necessities of life, so many more dependent upon the perfect operation of a complicated eco- . nomic machinery for feeding them. Suppose now that the German fleet could secure control of the Channel for a brief time only, would not England ' "Were it possible to cut off Great Britain's supply of food, in less than six weeks the inhabitants would die of starvation. Britons are fully aware of the danger, and all, from the noble lord to the laborer, are convinced that it is the most important duty of the State to keep open and secure the broad highway of the ocean." Die Flotte the war is already in progress and is being fought and will continue to be fought, with those weapons, infin- itely more deadly than cannon and small arms, economic crises. They propose to destroy Eng- land and France, not in the field, but in the count- ing house and in the factory, annihilating the basis upon which in the long run armies must depend for maintenance. ^ The interdependence of the world is econo- mically profitable to England and France, so long as the existence of peace gives full scope to the 88 THE ECONOMIC SITUATION lay of economic forces which produces that I ;eady and uninterrupted interchange of goods | pon which they rely for their very existence^y 'he extent of modern economic development, the mount of produce they depend upon receiving •om abroad, the amount of manufactured goods lat they depend upon exporting yearly, is the leasure of their economic weakness at that mo- lent when a state of war makes the transporta- lon by sea of their necessities dangerous. In articular, England must be fed from oversea, ad must bring from a distance all the raw ma- ;rials which she needs to keep her factories in onstant operation, and which she must have to eep her great population steadily employed and ble to support itself. This dependence upon thers is not strength, but weakness of the most ital description, for it makes England's prosper- y contingent upon the continuance of certain con- itions which the Germans are by no means will- ig to agree are normal or natural. They deny trenuously that peace differs from war in any- iing except degree. There is a large school of iinkers in Germany who insist that all living is ar, and that upon the continuance of this battle le healthy life of the community absolutely de- ends, in support of which assertion they cite the octrine of evolution in its varied forms and 89 PAN-GERMANISM phases. If this be true, a nation which expects to survive in this normal struggle for existence must not depend upon fighting its battles with other nations imder what are really technical limita- tions. By depending upon the absence of any- thing like physical force in the struggle for ex- istence, England is building her house upon the sands. Take, too, the vast capital of whose existence England and France are so proud and upon whose operations they depend for the perpetuation of their predominance. The fact that they have in- vested it in every quarter of thie globe, intending, thereby, to protect themselves from too consider- able loss in case war should break out or countries become bankrupt, has actually forced them to part with the reality of their wealth and to substi- tute for it unreality. They have placed the tan- gible results of their investment the width of the globe distant from their shores, and therefore from their armies, and they have taken in ex- change a promise to pay, which they do not pos- sess the force to exact, and whose whole value depends upon the willingness of the debtors to con- sider it binding and to liquidate the debt of their own free will when it becomes due. They have in- vested their money everywhere except at home, and have therefore exposed themselves to its loss, 90 THE ECONOMIC SITUATION ecause their ownership of these debts and invest- lents depends on the continuance of the present otions of commercial morahty. This is not in- estment. This is speculation. The reality, — be railways, factories, mines, — which represents lie capital they have invested, belongs literally to lie borrower. He has the only tangible thing in xistence in the world, the only thing which pos- ibly can exist in the world, as the equivalent f that value. Whatever is written on paper is aper, and is not to be made into factories or ailways or tangible assets of any kind by any rocess of jugglery such as the mediaeval bishop lerformed when he baptized the roast and called t carp. Things are, and writing on paper does lot change the thing or its position. The real realth of England, the surplus of which she is so iroud, comes not from her soil nor from her own actories, — in other words, from those things jrhich no one can take away from her except by orce of arms and which she necessarily protects ,s long as she continues her national existence, — lut from her income from the accumulations of he past with whose actuality she has parted, and rom which she has received for decades the pay- aents represented by the excess of her imports ver her exports. The world has paid her tribute, lut the world need continue to pay that tribute 91 PAN-GERMANISM only so long as it wishes. The moment the bor- rowers refuse longer to recognize the validity of her claims upon their revenues and incomes, and begin to realize that they hold, with a clutch which she jannot loosen, the actual substance of wealth, then they will begin to see that her wealth is not real, but depends purely upon their willingness to continue to pay her revenue, which they may stop paying her at any moment with- out suffering any consequences. To be sure, such notions as these presume the violation of every notion of commercial morality and expediency at present existing in the world, but, as the Germans say, if they were violated, what could England and France possibly do to avert destruction. It is true, they admit, that such a wholesale repudiation of debts would undoubtedly make it diflBcult for nations to borrow from each other for some time to come, but, they retort, if such a repudiation took place, the debtor nations would not need to borrow money for generations to come.^ ' The author is anxious to state explicitly that these paragraphs are not to be understood to imply a reflection upon German national or individual morality, and he hopes that, in his desire to put this hypothetical case forcibly, he has not given it an immediate applicar tion, which, if believed, might be construed as a serious prediction of a nattu'e which no historian has a right to make. The point upon which the Germans insist is, what would happen to England under such circumstances, a statement which by no means argues their intention to attempt the repudiation of their debts to-morrow or at any other time. They do claim that it is a fundamental point in their favor. THE ECONOMIC SITUATION Now if we suppose that the German fleet lould secure control of the sea, either by defeat- ig the English or by securing predominance in umber, it might promptly cut England's com- lunications with the rest of the world and effec- vely bankrupt her by stopping the remittances f goods, in which alone the debts owed her by ther countries can be paid. Germany, to be ire, would not get the property England owns sewhere; she might not be able to secure the :pudiation of English debts by England's debt- rs; but she could quite as effectively compel ngland to lose the only tangible evidence of smership and forego the payment of the incomes f thousands of her private citizens who would ifallibly be ruined. In this connection, the Ger- lans eagerly claim that, if a nation's debts con- st of the national indebtedness plus the private idebtedness, it is not less true that the nation's isources are the national revenues plus private icomes. If the latter should suffer severely, lose upon whom the Government chiefly de- ends for the payment of taxes would be unable ) respond and the nation, as well as its citizens, ould be bankrupt. To secure so stupendous a !sult as this is well worth the expenditure of loney for building a fleet. That money so far 5 the German nation is concerned is merely in- 93 PAN-GERMANISM vested in an enterprise from which they (Confi- dently expect returns perhaps one hundred fold. As was said at the beginning of this account of Pan-Germanism, the Germans are acutely con- scious that their position in the world depends less upon the actual force they are prepared to exert and the actual wealth within their own borders than upon their ability to exert more than their rivals can. The existence throughout the world of a state of war they believe would effect- ively bankrupt England and France. Each na- tion which owed the latter money would be un- able to remit the usual sums, because they would be forced to spend the money, and more likely the goods already in existence, upon preparation for war. This would effectively rob England and France of their incomes, of the only tangible evi- dence they receive of their vast nominal wealth. Failing to receive the usual remittance either in money or in goods, they might themselves be unable, simply from the lack of materials, to prosecute the war with the vigor and dispatch they intended. Of course, should England retain control of the sea, she would be able even in time of war to protect the remittances to her; but the Germans depend upon their fleet to interfere, at least with the regularity of remittances to Eng- land, and depend upon their allies and upon the 94 THE ECONOMIC SITUATION necessities of various nations elsewhere to stop the remittances at their source. They thus hope to cripple England and France temporarily by the mere force of economic factors which could be put into operation by simply beginning a war. The Germans claim that those financial fac- tors, which seem to be weaknesses in time of peace, would be in case of war a tower of strength. Germany is almost, if not quite, self-supporting, and, with the trade between herself and other European nations overland in time of war, she could become entirely self-sufficing. Nor is she dependent upon her imports for the raw materials to keep her factories busy or to maintain her army and navy. Whatever the balance may be upon the books of the world, she is actually rich, actu- ally richer than England or France. So long as her army is unbeaten, no one can take away from her her factories, mines, and fields. Who- ever may own them on paper, she owns them in reality and will continue to own them so long as she is strong enough to keep them. Supposing now that she should repudiate the whole debt which she owes other nations, should seize the capital out of which her economic development was created, what then? Would she not actually possess her economic development for nothing? Could she ever be compelled to pay for it by 95 PAN-GERMANISM anything short of actual conquest, and is there in the world any nation strong enough to subdue her upon her own soil? Would not such an eco- nomic blow destroy her enemies with greater cer- tainty than^any conquest by sea or land? Indeed, has she not everything to gain from war and nothing to lose? So long as peace prevails and she continues to recognize the validity of present notions of commercial morality, she must con- tinue to pay huge sums, must continue yearly to part with actual wealth in goods until the debt is paid. The moment war breaks out, she need pay nothing. If she is defeated, she will merely be compelled to pay what she was already obligated to pay. If victorious, she need never pay interest or principal. Would that not be a stake many times worth playing for, compared to a war in- demnity of any size whatever, and, when such a manoeuvre might also not improbably compass the control of the world's commerce, what Ger- man would doubt that the chances of war are better than those of peace? Suppose, too, that the rest of the countries who owe money to Eng- land and France should adopt Germany's tactics and seize the occasion of the war as a signal for the repudiation of what they owed, and should therefore take possession of their own industries; would not England and France be literally de- THE ECONOMIC SITUATION stroyed, reduced to the acres within their own boundaries and to those few industries which they could proiSecute without cooperation from other nations? The securing of ready money with which to begin this war the Germans do not consider a vital diflSculty despite the fact that it must be in some way secured from their enemies.^ Nor do they consider it a vital diflSculty that they can in all probability procure only from the same source the sums of money necessary for the completion of the preparations for war. So long as the trust- ing citizens of England and France are willing to lend their private fortunes on no better secur- ity than the promise to pay interest and capital at some future day, there is every reason why she should continue to borrow every cent they are willing to lend, for by that measure will she in- crease the extent of the ruin which may in time overtake those nations, and by that extent will she increase the amount of wealth which she may get for nothing. She has, of course, continued to reinvest in her businesses the whole profits which she has derived from her skillful management, and she has not made as yet extensive prepara- ' There is a war reserve in gold in the Fortress of Spandau which the Government acknowledges contains 140 millions of marks. It is more than probable that this is to be kept as a last resort in case defeat should make the defense of Gtermany itself necessary. 97 PAN-GERMANISM tions for sinking funds to pay the principal of her (Jebts, because she may not need to pay that principal. Every debt makes her stronger, every loan makes her enemies weaker. She is well aware that^many of her private citizens have invested money in other countries, that she, too, is entangled in the network of international in- vestments, but she knows that the profits will still be enormous, even if her citizens lose every penny they have invested outside her borders. She will get the cash with which to begin the war by borrowing from her enemies, and she will this time either commandeer the money in the banks before war is declared, or she will make war too quickly to permit any repetition of the manoeuvre executed by the London and Paris bankers in the summer of 1911. She cares very little who claims title to that money, so long as she has it, so long as they can take it from her only by force. She is conscious that German securities will every- where fall in the foreign stock exchanges when war actually begins; she also knows that English and French stocks will tumble likewise, and, she be- lieves that when the reaction of economic forces is complete, the destruction of values in England and France will be too great to make the loss of value in her own securities of any significance. Besides, who own her securities? Who, there- OS THE ECONOMIC SITUATION fore, will bear the fall in value? Her securities are only paper. The factories and fields they actually represent are not changed in value by operations on the stock market. The foreign investor will lose money and will bear the only ostensible losses and will thus be dealt an addi- tional blow. Germany, in other words, can fight her enemies with their own money, and may ob- tain not only her industries for nothing, but her army and navy and the whole cost of the war as well. The foreigner may even provide her with the money necessary to begin the war. Once more the Germans hear around them outcries against the morality of this procedure. Once again the Germans insist that morals and ethics have nothing to do with this particular issue. The moral code of the financial world, like the moral code of the political world, is based upon the notions of England and France, upon ideas obviously themselves the result of a pecul- iar situation, on whose continuance the welfare of England and France depends. Their moral code is based on their ownership of the world and their desire to continue it in perpetuity, and their moral code, therefore, condemns Germany to in- significance. The Germans refuse to recognize as moral anything which jeopardizes their national existence. They claim the right to protect them- PAN-GERMANISM selves by any weapons which will secure the de- sired result, and they have no intention of fore-' going the use of these terrible economic weapons, simply from a supine acceptance of so-called ethical notions, whose very presumptions mill- tate against them. The international economic situation chances to press less heavily upon Ger- many than upon other states, and thus affords her a significant natural advantage over other states which it would be suicidal to forego. If worst comes to worst and all else fails, she can resort to weapons so powerful as to destroy her adversaries. CHAPTER VIII PEEEEQUISITES OF SUCCESS .' BEFORE so vast a scheme as Pan-Germanism can be actually put into operation many prerequisites will be necessary to insure its ulti- mate success, for Pan-Germanism aims at obtain- ing for Germany and her allies control of the world and at insuring their retention of that control for at least a generation. The absolute prerequisite ^ is necessarily the creation of a great fleet, large enojigh to insure freedom of passage of German commerce through the English Channel under any and all circumstances. The fleet must be large enough to make dubious the outcome of a battle with the English fleet, in order to prevent England from risking battle. Germany, in sooth, does not intend to use her fleet for war. It is a purely defensive weapon, intended to insure the continuance of the position she now holds and of that freedom of passage through the Channel, ffhich is the prerequisite of all expansion. Until that is assured the possession of colonies, the mtrance to markets, the ability to manufacture, ire all worthless. She must not permit herself to 101 PAN-GERMANISM remain in a position where the outlet for her com- merce depends upon England's good will. She intends to create so large a fleet that it will com- mand, as a matter of right, what Germany desires. Furthermore, unless her fleet is large she will not be able at the same time to intimidate England in the Channel and Russia in the Baltic. Unless she can maintain her control on the southern ^hore of the Baltic, all of the normal outlets for the commerce of North Germany might be closed by Russia, and it is almost as essential to insure their freedom from Russian interference as it is to make sure the English will not close the Chan- nel. Germany wishes nothing which she must hold on sufiEerance. Again, if the Germans do not succeed in building their fleet fast enough actually to endanger England's predominance in the Chan- nel, they may still compel her to concentrate her fleet in the North Sea, and leave necessarily ex- posed to the attacks of Germany's allies the long chain of forts and strategic places upon which England depends for the protection of her water routes to Asia and Africa. I No less necessary than a great navy is a great farmy, large enough and eflScient enough to pre- vent Russia and France by reason of its existence from thinking of war. The army is, as the Ger- mans claim, primarily defensive. It is the only 102 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS )arrier between Germany and her enemies. It ;akes the place of the English Channel, of the Ups, of the Pyrenees. The army, too, must be arge enough to enable Germany, in case of war, ;o invade England without so much exposing lerself to France and Russia as to invite assault tom either or both. Indeed, it is highly essential ;hat the army should be so efficient that there ;ould be no doubt of its repelling a combined ittack from both should they take the offensive. 5ut sufficient strength to discourage them from ighting is even more desirable from the German Joint of view, for the Germans do not wish to ight. They wish to secure the results of war vithout the concomitant disadvantages, and they lonsider as the only probable offensive use of the irmy the necessary invasion of England. Again, m army large enough to make possible such novements would also be large enough to put nto operation the economic factors, which Ger- nany expects will prove so advantageous to her md so fatal to England and France. Hence, jvery step in the development of such an army s a step toward the achievement of Germany's purposes by that type of offensive weapon eu- )hemistically known as peace. The seizure of Belgium and Holland will very ] X ' *^ ikely be the first German movement when the ' 103 PAN-GERMANISM actual accomplishment of Pan-Germanism seema fairly a,ssured. The position of these two coun- tries, their wealth, and the traditions of European policy have gained them so much prominence and have caused all nations to attach so much im- portance to them, that Germany will certainly not take possession of them until the last moment. Indeed, it has been so long held that an attack upon the autonomy of Belgium or Holland would be the equivalent of a declaration of war upon Europe that Germany will certainly avoid any such outspoken manifestation of her intentions. Notwithstanding, their position is an absolute prerequisite of the ultimate success of Pan- Germanism, and the railway lines for landing troops in the proper places are already built and the canals for supplying those troops with food are already being dug. When the German Em- peror recently visited Belgium a remark was made by a certain dignitary that Belgium was prepared, to which he is reported to have repUed, that they were wise to prepare. But Germany needs the strategic points which those two countries control. The Netherlands alone can furnish her a suitable naval base on the Channel from which to contest its possession with the English or from which to intimidate the Eng- lish fleet into permitting German ships complete 104 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS reedom of passage. So long as the German fleet operate from a base of supplies as far removed [iel from the naval base of the English in the ^hames, her position must be at the best anoma- )us. The occupation of Holland would make it reality. From Holland, too> the German army ould most advantageously invade England, "rom Belgium, it can most easily reach Paris. Vith both countries in their hands, an attack on ither capital would be equally feasible, and the apture of either would be equally fatal to the ["riple Entente. The commercial significance of the position of lelgium and Holland is no less striking. They ontrol the outlet of the Rhine, and therefore can revent Germany's complete utilization of the plendid natural highway, draining so large and rich a section of her land, a highway so easily onnected with her other river systems by a net- /■ork of canals. Plans are already being executed 3r a network of canals between the Rhine and the Vestphalian coal fields, by means of which they xpect to supply the fleet at its new base and ^hich promise largely to increase at once the icilities of transportation, and, above all, to educe its cost, for the every-day trade of the Impire. The possession of these two countries, loreover, would at once give Germany the great 105 PAN-GERMANISM colonial empire of which she dreams. Holland owns Java and the Celebes, admirably fitted for colonization, from whom for three centuries she has drawn a princely revenue; she owns a fertile section of Guiana and rich islands in the West Indies whose strategic value would also be great; Belgium owns the vast Congo Free State, one of the wealthiest of European dependencies. Here would be an outlet for German manufactures of the first importance. If their colonies alone could be retained, Germany could restore the autonomy of those states in Europe, pay a heavy war indem- nity, and yet find the war weU worth while. Another prerequisite of final success would be the seizure of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. With them in her hands, the Baltic would be to all intents and purposes hers. Russia would be squeezed into its furthermost corner. The Sund could be closed at will and all Russian access to the outside world effectually prevented. If such a catastrophe were not sufficient to detach her from the Triple Entente, it would certainly pre- vent the general financial panic, which would in all probability result in Europe on the outbreak of war, from expending its force upon Germany itself; for the Russians, once the Baltic was closed, would be compelled to sell their products to Ger- many in exchange for her manufactured goods. 106 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS I!onceivably there might thus be created a nexus )etween the two nations which might permanently )ring about some relationship freeing them both tom the spectre of war. The annexation of the Scandinavian countries would also put into Ger- nany's hands beyond a peradventure the great lupplies of iron, coal, and wood which the out- )reak of war would make far more valuable than ;heir intrinsic worth in time of peace. Nor does ihe forget that Denmark still owns a valuable ;olony or so in the West Indies, which would be vorth her while. Some arrangement with Swit- lerland would also be necessary, although its jxact nature could only be indicated by the exi- fencies of the moment. Napoleon's phrase that Switzerland was the key to Europe the Germans !onstantly bear in mind. Through Switzerland m attack could easily be delivered upon the Ger- nan rear by France in case of war. Germany or taly might profitably utilize it themselves for m attack upon the French rear, while the Austri- ms have not forgotten that a military road to i^ienna runs through Switzerland. However, Ger- aany's arrangements with Switzerland will prob- ibly be made rather to prevent the utilization of he Swiss passes by others than from an expecta- ion of utilizing them herself. A most essential part of the structure of Pan- 107 PAN-GERMANISM Germanism is a confederation of states in the Bal kans either outwardly independent and secretlj controlled by Germany or Austria or dependenl in some way upon Austria or Italy. The grea1 stretch of mountain, tableland, and valley, ex- tending from the heights of the Tyrolese anc Transylvanian Alps to the iEgean and the Medi terranean, has long been loosely designated, fron: political rather than geographical reasons, the Bal- kans. It boasts no real geographical unity and has been divided for political reasons into so manj different entities at so many different times that i1 is in reality from every point of view nothing bul a geographical expression. At the moment of the conception of Pan-Germanism, the states of this region were partly autonomous, partly in the hands of Austria, and partly controlled by Tur- key. The creation out of them in some way oi other of some kind of an entity or entities, whicl the Triple Alliance could keep under its control is absolutely essential to the success of the mosi striking part of Pan-Germanism. For in those defiles and valleys are the keys to Europe. Down along the coast of the Black Sea runs the greal road from Russia to Constantinople and the East; down the Danube valley, across the river at Bel- grade, through the Balkans by way of Sophia anc Adrianople, runs the great continental highway, 108 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS trodden for a thousand years by Roman, Barba- rian, Crusader, Infidel, leading from the Rhine and Danube valleys to Constantinople and the East. Round through Macedonia and Albania runs the perfectly practical road, used long ago by the Visigoths, leading from Constantinople to Trieste, Venice, and the valley of the Po. At Saloniki is a great port from which a fleet might control the iEgean. The western side of the Balkans is the east- em shore of the Adriatic, and its possession would insure to the Triple Alliance complete control of that important sea. Could they secure, there- fore, by controlling the Balkans, possession of the great roads between Europe and Asia and of the strategic positions necessary for controlling the ^gean and the Adriatic, the English position in the Mediterranean might be made untenable. At any rate, the English so-called Protectorate over Turkey and Greece would be at once terminated, and the possession by Italy and Austria of naval bases in the Adriatic and the ^Egean would prac- tically render useless all the English dispositions based upon Malta as a centre. Thus the Triple Alliance would secure a foothold and probable control of the eastern Mediterranean, and would throw back upon their base in the western Medi- terranean the English and French fleets, and might be enabled without practical interference 109 PAN-GERMANISM to take possession of Egypt and Suez. Even if so much were not accomplished, the trade route overland through Constantinople into the neutral territory of Turkey, and so by way of the Baghdad Railway to the Persian Gulf and India, would be a reality, and it would be unassailable by the English fleet, nor would it ever be exposed to those dangers which so constantly threaten the English Empire with dissolution. Chiefest of all, however, the existence of the Balkans, their geographical position, their racial and religious character, their traditions and his- tory, would furnish Germany with the necessarj/ prize to offer Austria as the price of her assistance in the execution of Pan-Germanism. The rulers of Austria have long seen that her expansion to the north and east was improbable and undesir- able; that her expansion to the west was perma- nently blocked by the Alps, and that she could only expand to the south along the great plains of the lower Danube and Black Sea, down through the valleys of Servia to the ^Egean, and to thti southwest to the Adriatic. Like all other nations, she sees the permanent assurances of her contin- ued national existence only in the possession of an outlet to the sea, and a possible share in the com- merce with the less developed parts of the world, from which her rivals are so rapidly obtaining 110 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS wealth and position. She early found in the Bal- kans no less powerful a rival than Russia, one as determined as she to secure similar opportunity for expansion, and one to whom that opportunity is not less essential than it is to her. Between the two no compromise is possible. Austria may keep Russia out of the Balkans, but in the face of Rus- sian opposition she cannot unaided take posses- sion. The necessary assistance, Germany and Italy proposed to afford her through the execu- tion of the great schemes for the aggrandizement of all three. With the Balkans in their hands, the reorgan- ization of Turkey would be the next essential step. Its undeniable importance is the result of the very factors which have kept the Turk so long in possession. In the past, Europe considered its many strategic points too valuable to be owned by any nation not so inefficient and weak as to render their use improbable. The incurable mal- ady of the Sick Man alone caused the doctors to allow him to live. First of all, Turkey holds the bridge between Europe and Asia, for whose pos- session throughout the centuries Roman and Barbarian, Christian and Infidel, had so vigorously fought. The Turk also holds Asia Minor, from whose rich fields Rome had drawn a vast revenue, whose roads lead into the great vales of the Tigris 111 \ PAN-GERMANISM and Euphrates, where in antiquity stood the greatest of the old empires. In Asia Minor, too, are marts of trade from which Phoenician and Greek cities almost without number had grown rich and pc^erful and cultured. The whole North African littoral owes allegiance to the Sultan; Tripoli was still nominally administered by him, and would furnish to the Turk's master a strategic point of the first consequence, flanking Egypt on the one hand and Tunis on the other, furnished with harbors whence a fleet might assail with con- fident expectation of success the English lines of communication with Suez. Above all, the Sultan is head of the Mohammedan religion, ruling still over the countless hordes of Moslems in the Eng- lish and French possessions in Africa and Asia, to whom they owe implicit obedience and for whose safety they have often evinced the utmost concern. Indeed, around him is already centering the great movement known as Pan-Islam, which contemplates nothing less than the expulsion of the unbeliever from the lands of the Prophet's followers by a great Jehad of unheard-of dimen- sions. Might not the Sultan, properly "inspired" in some way, be induced to instigate or proclaim such a war at a time when English and French authority in Africa and Asia might for all practical purposes be extinguished by it? An outbreak as 112 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS general and as powerful might conceivably compel them to send reinforcements from Europe to such an extent as to weaken them at home and permit Germany to begin the final stages of the war with every prospect of complete success. Naturally, Germany does not expect to receive everything and give nothing. She has undertaken the reor- ganization of Turkey, the building of an army and a navy adequate for the prosecution of such enter- prises, and she has, as a matter of course, provided the necessary financial backing to relieve the Turk of pressure from his old supporters, England and France, and from all future fears as to deficits. From the Turk could be secured the railway concession of vital commercial importance which should join Constantinople with the Persian Gulf, and whose existence would alone repay Germany and her allies for all their expenditures and risks. It would, of course, be adequately protected by the new Turkish army and fleet. To insure its safety from an attack by Russia, Persia would be reor- ganized as an independent nation under the Ger- man aegis. Thus also would be secured the coast road along the Persian Gulf to India which Alex- ander had followed, thus also would be insured to Germany the control of navigation in the Gulf itself. Both would put into her hands invaluable points. She would be led by the coast road into 113 PAN-GERMANISM the valley of the Indus behind the great defenses at Quetta; in the rear, therefore, of the British position. A fleet emerging from the Gulf would enter the Indian Ocean behind the English naval defenses, and see all India lying before her, unde- fended. The Germans do not fail to appreciate that, although they are the originators of Pan-German- ism and may perhaps not unreasonably expect to be the chief gainers by it, they cannot hope finally to achieve success without the hearty cooperation of Austria, of Italy, of Turkey, of Persia, and, above all, of the Balkans. They real- ize that these states will by no means enter a con- flict of this magnitude out of love for Germany; that they are not likely to be held to any agree- ments that they may make by a moral sense of obligation, which the Germans themselves frankly deny is of any validity in international agree- ments; that, unless they are fully satisfied with their own gains, they will themselves interfere at some awkward moment and perhaps prevent the completion of the scheme at all. Therefore, the ultimate success of Pan-Germanism will depend as much upon the division of the spoils when the victory is won, as upon any single factor, and upon the acceptance beforehand of such plans for the allotment of territory as to satisfy the ambi- 114 PREREQUISITES OF SUCCESS tions of the various parties without vitally oflf end- ing any other equally essential party. Divide et Impera. In all probability, Austria is to get the Adriatic, access to the sea through the Balkans, and Egypt and Palestine; Italy will certainly ex- pect the rest of the North African littoral, while the Balkan States, European Turkey, and Persia will insist upon a guarantee of their autonomy so far as their own local affairs are concerned. Ger- many, therefore, will surrender the Mediterra- nean to her allies in exchange for India, the rest of Africa, and the East and West India Islands. Spain might have to be paid with a slice of west- ern Morocco. Whether or not the coalition will be strong enough to lay its hands on South America in defiance of the United States will have to be determined by the circumstances of their victory. CHAPTER IX . FIRST STEPS WHEN the historian leaves the considera- tion of schemes and plans and undertakes even to sketch the course of events in current his- tory, he finds himself in the peculiar position for a historian of being overwhelmed with details of whose meaning he is by no means certain. Indeed, he is continually exposed to the danger of assum- ing that all events have some meaning and that particular events are of necessity those truly significant. While the archives remain closed and the diplomatic correspondence a sealed book, while the real answers to all those questions he most anxiously asks are known only to a few dis- tressingly discreet men, he can hardly do more than indicate the main features of current politics, which seem, after mature consideration, to have an absolutely unavoidable connection with the execution of this great scheme. Indeed, the his- torian is in that extraordinary position, true of no other epoch in history, of knowing the plans far more certainly than he does their execution. He must in matter of fact be constantly prepared, 116 FIRST STEPS always with due caution, to interpret facts, which he frequently does not understand, by means of the schemes which he definitely knows to be in the minds of statesmen. Nor is there possible in modern history anything like a clear demonstra- tion of the truth of any single proposition by the line and precept familiar to investigators in other fields. In the nature of things, final proof of the truth of any single assertion is impossible, and will continue to be impossible for certainly two gen- erations and perhaps a century. The historian, therefore, is forced to do the best he can, and must be more than chary of attempting to deal with anything except the broadest outlines of the story. Exactly what relation to its broad outline any single series of events may have, is impossible to indicate with accuracy, and the reader must be aware that the historian is not attempting to give him certainties, but is forced to give him state- ments which would be considered, in treating any period of past history, conjectures, but which are, in current history, literally the best we have. The authorship of the great scheme which we call Pan-Germanism is least of all a matter of certainty. There seems to be little doubt that it was the product of German thought and of German interests, but no student of current affairs can believe for a moment that important aspects of it 117 PAN-GERMANISM were not the result of the views and interests of Austria and Italy. Bismarck was the first states- man to see all its possibilities, though we are as yet unable to be certain how much of what is now called Pan-Germanism he is actually responsible for. Von Bieberstein, Von Tirpitz, and above all the present Emperor, are responsible for much, and certainly deserve the credit (or discredit) of bringing the scheme to its present state of per- fection. The date of its origin ^ is an even more perplexing question, and could be more definitely settled if we were sure that events of the past generation were all steps in the development or furtherance of the same scheme and not of two or three schemes, out of which the exigencies of times and occasions gradually developed the present Pan-Germanism. The historian, who wishes to be cautious, is inclined to take the latter view and to conclude that Pan-Germanism is an outgrowth of the various policies advocated by German states- men after the formation of the present empire. The creation of the fleet, whose existence at present is without doubt one of the definitive elements of Pan-Germanism, was probably, as the Germans claim, not as vital a part of it as we 1 Cecil Battine, in the Fortnightly Review, xci. New Series, 1056, 1057, places the begiiming of Fan-Germanism between 1893 and 1895. Article 4 of the Constitution of 1871 indicates that colonies were foreseen at the very beginning. 118 FIRST STEPS might easily suppose. As has already been said, the German looks upon the fleet as the only means of insuring to Germany the continuance of her present position, unfavorable as she con- siders that to be. The fleet is essential, not so much to assist her expansion as to make positive her existence. In all probability there have been three phases of German policy: the first, an at- tempt to secure colonies; the second, an attempt to obtain entrance into the markets of the East by the establishment of a trade route across the Balkans and Turkey, which formed by interna- tional agreement a neutral zone; and thirdly, the determinedly aggressive scheme for the actual forcible conquest of the world. Exactly when the one gave way to the other, exactly which of the many events in recent history belong to one and which to another, is difficult to indicate with anything approaching accuracy. During the decade between 1880 and 1890, an extended effort was made to obtain in various parts of the world suitable colonies for German expansion. The land not already occupied by European nations was inconsiderable in area, unfavorably located, thinly populated, and not possessed of obvious commercial advantages; but such as was available Germany occupied, not because she deemed it adequate provision for her 119 PAN-GERMANISM needs, but because, at the moment, she saw no other chances for meeting the exigencies which she knew were certain to arise within a decade. The colonies thus founded on either coast of Africa an^ in the South Seas speedily proved their unsuitability for colonization by white men, and the improbability of their affording before the lapse of a century anything like an adequate market for German manufactures. To be sure, these colonies were in area nearly a million square miles, but their products were not greatly in excess of five dollars value for each square mile, a sum too absurdly inconsequential to be men- tioned. The population of about fourteen mil- lions was too undeveloped and too sparse to make the creation of a state possible. All the desirable land for colonies, as a matter of fact, was already in the hands of other nations, and the Germans realized with bitterness that they had been able to secure what they held, simply because other nations had not considered it of value. It was clear that the execution of any schemes for Ger- man expansion would involve interference with other nations. The next attempt, probably only one of several, seems to have been a variation of the well-known European method of taking possession of other people's property, called peaceful penetration. FIRST STEPS The nation, proposing to absorb a district and make a colony out of it, loans money to the ruler and to as many of his subjects as possible; obtains as security for the money advanced, if it can, a part of the public revenue; builds railways in exchange for large grants of land, and, in gen- eral, "develops" the country. Then, when the available resources have been pretty completely hypothecated, the nation claims that its interests in the territory are so considerable that it must be conceded a share in the direction of adminis- tration and policy, in order to insure the safety of its investment. A little study of the situation soon convinced the Germans that the French influence in Morocco, the English influence in Egypt, the English and Russian influence in Persia, and the influence of the United States in Central America were due precisely to these methods, and the Germans saw no reason why they should not "peaceably" penetrate some one of the South American nations, by pleading the same highly moral purpose of developing the country for the use and behoof of its inhabitants, who were, of course, to be assumed incapable of developing it themselves. After some hesitation, they seemed to have pitched upon Venezuela as the most favorable scene of operations. They succeeded in placing some large loans, in buying 121 PAN-GERMANISM some mines, and in initiating a number of busi- ness enterprises, and, then, in most approved fashion, descended upon the Republic, anchored a warship in its harbor, and made the stereo- typed dejpand for some share in the control of its administration. Of course, the rest of the world promptly saw the trend of German policy, and, with equal promptitude, realized its objective; the United States, as the nearest country, in- voked against Germany a new variety of the Monroe Doctrine, and informed the disgusted Germans that they would not be permitted to interfere in the government of Venezuela. They certainly could not afford peaceably to penetrate countries unless they were to be allowed to enjoy the profits of the enterprise. Besides, they be- came aware, with rather painful force, of the fact, which they had no doubt always known, that they could obtain access to such a colony in the Gulf of Mexico, while England and the United States controlled the Atlantic Ocean, only by the per- mission of those two nations, both of whom in- dicated with considerable firmness their distinct dislike of Germany's proposed action. The Germans turned their eyes, therefore, to Africa, and in particular toward the great tem- perate district of South Africa as a zone becom- ingly fitted by nature for the use and behoof of 122 FIRST STEPS the white race. The temperate climate, the pre- sence of the great diamond mines, of deposits of gold in all probability huge in size, the certainty of the profitableness of agriculture and cattle- raising, offered enticing prospects for the success- ful development there of a great colony, which would provide a considerable market for German goods and would raise products of its own with which to pay for them. German Southwest Africa would afford a basis from which to act in case they should ever desire to take the offensive, but the existence of the Boer Republic made it probable that it would not be necessary for Ger- many herself to take the field; she could much more easily and profitably act through the hands of the Boers. The strained relations between the latter and the English simplified the problem of producing a casus belli for a war which might easily result in robbing England of a most valu- able colony, which Germany might succeed in annexing. In addition, the project boasted the double advantage of testing the strength of the British Empire, its defensive ability, the loyalty of its subjects, and, whatever the result might be, the information, which the war would certainly afford Germany, would be well worth the money and arms she would have to furnish the Boers to get them to begin it. Supposing that the war 123 PAN-GERMANISM should succeed, should reveal, as the Germans believed it would, the disloyalty of the English colonists in South Africa, should make clear to all Europe the weakness of Imperial England, the moral resjilts would be without question stupen- dous. Its success, even if it should result in creat« ing a Boer state too strong for Germany to inter- fere with, would cut the communications between the Cape Colony and the vast estate of Rhodesia, which lay adjacent to German East Africa, as well as to German West Africa, and which could then easily be annexed without danger and with- out cost. To be sure, it would be necessary to train the Boers in modern warfare and to equip them and furnish them with funds, and there was always the danger that England would discover the fact prematurely and take action before the Boers or Germany herself should be ready. How- ever, some risks were inevitable. The Boers took kindly to the idea. The immi- gration of Englishmen into their territory, the rapid expansion of the English colonies to the north and south of them, had shown them clearly that their own expansion was problematical, be- cause the Uitlanders were multiplying by immi- gration at a rate vastly in excess of the natural increase of the Boers and at a rate which made it a certainty that many years would not elapse FIRST STEPS before the Boers would be outnumbered to so great an extent that their real power would dis- appear. From their point of view, the preserva- tion of their autonomy depended upon action before a further increase of strength to the Uit- landers should make action impossible. Every year's delay only reduced their chances of victory. Moreover, they were promised bountiful assist- ance and all the supplies they should need. There is little doubt they fully intended in case of vic- tory to defy Germany as well as England, and, if possible, cheat her of all the advantages she had hoped for. Conscious of the issue, England ex- erted herself to the utmost and inflicted upon the Boers in the end a crushing defeat. Not so much the wealth of her South African domain excited her as the determination to make manifest to Germany and the world the strength of her im- perial bond. Her prestige she realized must be maintained at any cost, not only because of the conclusions which her subject peoples in India and Egypt would draw from a defeat, but because of the conclusions which European nations would draw. She simply could not afford to be defeated; the loss of the war might precipitate a general alliance of all Europe against her. To the amaze- ment of the Germans, England was able to finance the war without too much effort, maintain 125 PAN-GERMANISM an army in the field whose efficiency, even under new and adverse conditions, was astonishing, and which was supplied, equipped, and reinforced from England despite the distance between South- ampton and Cape Town. Every nation in Eu- rope knew that England had performed a feat which it could not perform, and had demonstrated a degree of executive and military efficiency for which no one had given her credit. The still more crushing defeat of Germany and her schemes for weakening the British Empire was accomplished by the formation of the South African Union, in whose federal bond are comprised all the varied peoples of South Africa, and in which the Boers have taken their place with singular success. So far as can be seen by foreign observers, so far as can be told from the statements of the inhabitants, the tact of the English administrators has pretty completely settled the grievances of the various elements of the European population, and has gone a long way toward solving the perplexing race issue, caused by the presence of so large a number of the natives. German statesmen, thus thwarted, gave up, so far as can be learned, for good and all their designs upon South Africa, and turned their attention to the much more feasible scheme of constructing an overland route to the Persian 126 FIRST STEPS Gulf. Germany and Austria very well knew that they did not own the territory stretching from their own borders to the Persian Gulf, and that they could not hope to take possession of it in the face of the international determination to pre- serve its neutrality. They counted upon this very neutrality as the basis for their scheme of building a railway from Constantinople to Baghdad. To relieve the fears of England and Russia, they did not propose to locate its terminus actually upon the Persian Gulf. After some difficulty and nego- tiation, the concession was secured from Turkey and the acquiescence of the international concert was obtained. It is not certain, but it is highly probable, that at this time the real purpose of the railway was not suspected in London or in St. Petersburg. However that may be, the loan for its construction was underwritten in Berlin and the building of the railway was begun in sections. The details of construction are hardly of conse- quence here, and it suflSces to say that the last sec- tion of the road is just about to be begun. After work was well under way, England and Russia realized its purport and began to consider opera- tions in Persia which should effectively prevent the railway from doing anything more than de- velop Asia Minor. Thwarted thus at every turn, German states- 127 PAN-GERMANISM men found themselves fairly driven to adopt the comprehensive aggressive scheme which we now call Pan-Germanism. They began its execution at the point of least resistance and by methods so far ^^ possible of a neutral nature. The fleet was already under construction; the railway was rapidly being built; the obvious step to take was the peaceful penetration of Turkey as the neces- sary preliminary for assuring Germany the con- tinuance of the concession. Turkey, as every one knew, was weak, disorganized in every way, and nothing could be more natural than an attempt by the Sultan himself at the proper administra- tion of his own country and the adoption of finan- cial measures which would insure the payment of his debts and his household revenue. The Sultan eagerly accepted the secret tender of German assistance in the accomplishment of such ex- tremely desirable ends, and began, apparently upon his own initiative but really under German direction, the reorganization of the army and navy, the reorganization of the finances of his empire, gradually introducing German officers into the important positions in the state. Men were appointed governors of provinces to intro- duce local reforms calculated to diminish the amount of racial warfare, the friction between the soldiery and the populace, and to minimize 128 FIRST STEPS the difficulties arising from the old struggle be- tween the Latin and Greek Churches. Gradually, Germany insinuated herself into the confidence of the Young Turk party, already long in exist- ence, and whose main aim was to cast off the foreign rule which had so long pressed hardly upon the Turk and had drained his country of (. its resources for the satisfaction of foreign debts for whose making the Turk himself was not re- sponsible. Eventually, by means of the agitation undertaken by the Young Turks, organized by the Committee of Union and Progress at Saloniki, a revolution was accomplished (probably with the connivance of the Sultan), a constitution was adopted, a new Sultan took office, responsible government began, and Turkey was thus freed from the treaty obligations made by the older rigime, which had given every nation except Ger- many some obvious interest to defend and there- fore some obvious right to interfere. If Germany was to base her scheme of Pan-Germanism upon the control of Turkey, she must certainly control it by means of a government owing its very exist- ence to her. The price of the support of the Turks was to be the autonomy of Turkey in local govern- ment, and protection from the interference of her old "friends." Meanwhile, the Germans diligently investi- 129 PAN-GERMANISM gated the condition of affairs in the Balkans, in Morocco, Persia, Egypt, and India. They found in all a native party of some considerable strength and vigor, which had already had continuous ex- istence »for a decade or more, and whose main object was the obtaining of autonomy and the exclusion of the foreigner. Those parties had been nourished upon the democratic literature of the Occidental nations, had been fired with enthu- siasm for self-government by the spectacle of par- liamentary and republican government in Europe and in the United States, and, in fact, had as- sumed that no small share of the prosperity of the Western nations and the greater part of their strength were due to their form of government. The natives saw that it would be profitable and pleasurable for them to govern themselves, or, as a cynic would be more inclined to put it, for them to govern their less progressive countrymen. In these subject countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the power so long in control had been alien in race and religion, had long systematic- ally sacrificed the interests of the people to the assumed exigencies of international politics, and had placed upon the country heavy financial burdens for the production of a revenue which the people themselves were not allowed to spend, and for which few natives considered that the 130 FIRST STEPS people even received an equivalent. In Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt the majority of the people were Mohammedans, who had long chafed under the control of the Infidel, and who were only too ready to enlist in a movement for a change of government, which would possess the sanction of a religious crusade. The ground, therefore, was ready for the Germans, and the tools to till it were at hand. In the Balkans, a peculiar admixture of races and religions had produced a singularly complex situation, in which the various forces reacted upon each other with continually surprising re- sults. At the same time, so far as the people them- selves were concerned, the two great issues were religious, — the survival of the crusade of the Christian against the Turk, and, on the other hand, of the still older quarrel between the Latin and Greek Churches. From both of these counts, as well as on many national and racial issues, dis- content was rife, and could in all probability be turned to political advantage by Germany and her ally, Austria. Above all was this probable because the most evident enemy, the oldest and the worst hated enemy of all the Balkan peoples, was the Turk, whose rule over them had long furnished them with practically the only senti- ment they had iu common, a vigorous hatred of 131 PAN-GERMANISM the Infidel. Now, when Germany should have reorganized Turkey and have gotten the Sultan, and the administration, to say nothing of the army and navy, well into her hands, what would be simpler than for her to permit the Balkan nations to begin this war imder her direction, and thus secure their gratitude by the realization of the ideals cherished for so many centuries? Would it not also be easy to satisfy in the most thoroughgoing manner their oft-repeated de- mands for the freedom from oppression of their co-religionists in Macedonia and Albania? It seemed highly probable to the Balkan nations that they could not fail to be gainers by an alli- ance of this sort, and, while they hesitated, like the man in the fable, to admit the camel to their tent, they fully realized that the German offers did not present them the alternative of rejection. Should they not see fit amicably to come to an agreement with Austria and Germany, they would not unlikely run the risk of absorption by force at some future time, when they would certainly not receive such favors as the terms suggested. Like the Trojans, they feared the Greeks even when they came bearing gifts ; but, if it was danger- ous to accept the presents, it was more dangerous to decline them. Under any circumstances, they did not see that money, munitions of war, mili- 132 FIRST STEPS tary instruction by German and Austrian officers, assistance in the fortification of their own coun- try could be so very undesirable, and it was as clear to them as it was to their new friends that such weapons would be susceptible of more than one use. Indeed, the weapons and instruction were of themselves a guarantee of their new allies' good faith. In Morocco, the Germans found an even more favorable scene of operations. They learned that the Sultan had governed regularly by forming alliances with part of the tribesmen against the rest. By clever diplomacy and the occasional use of money, he had managed to keep them jealous of one another and prevented their uniting against him. His main dependence, nevertheless, was the existence of an army of mercenaries whose size was distinctly limited by his own poverty. The French had come to his rescue and had provided him with a highly trained force of really remark- able soldiers, sufficiently numerous to keep him in the ascendency. The tribesmen looked upon the presence of the French, therefore, with any- thing but favor, for they saw that the latter were rapidly making it possible for the Sultan to defy the tribesmen even if united, an eventuality which certainly meant the coming of an era vastly diflfer- ent from the age of license and rapine to which 133 PAN-GERMANISM they had so long been accustomed. On general grounds, therefore, they welcomed the advances of the Germans, scentmg probably presents of money or arms, and suspectmg that the latter might^id them to restore the conditions to what they had been before the French interfered. The rapacity of the Sultan, his anxiety to collect the uttermost farthing due him, the imposition of new taxes from time to time, and, above all, the actual exercise of force for securing obedience gave the tribes only too ample evidence of the ex- cellent basis for their fears. The new French na- tive regiments, moreover, conducted themselves with a license unbecoming soldiers and aroused against themselves the hatred of the people. So considerable was the number of such cases that they formed one of the chief excuses for German interference. Nor did the Germans forget that an army as large and as extraordinary in quaUty as the French force in Morocco might become a distinct factor in a European war. They would therefore be making no mistake in providing this army with too much work in Morocco to permit its departure. In Persia also the Germans made good head- way. The opposition on national grounds to the encroachments of England and Russia was con- siderable, but lacked a definite aim and capable 134 fiKOi v5ir/ro organization, and the revolutionary party lacked the necessary money to finance a revolt. The money, the Germans were more than willing to provide in exchange for a reasonable prospect of success. The English and Russians speedily per- ceived the trend of the German plans, and, as the Baghdad Railway added mile after mile in the mountains of the Caucasus and the sentiment in favor of Persian independence grew more and more outspoken, they realized the necessity of some action. They therefore sent a commission to study the situation, who reported, with grave irony, that the Persians were incapable of self- government, and suggested that England and Russia should interfere to prevent the longer continuance of the existing state of anarchy. In 1907, England and Russia acted in accordance with the commission's recommendations, and two zones of influence were demarcated, one in the north in which Russia should predominate, and the second in the south along the Gulf where England was to be supreme, and a neutral zone between them whose affairs the Persians were to be allowed to direct with such interference as England and Russia combined might see fit to interpose. The Powers could certainly have taken no step which would have done more to strengthen 135 PAN-GERMANISM the German plans. The evident insult to the capacity of the Persians resulted in a national movement of the capable men in the country, who executed promptly, with German assist- ance, a coup d'Stat in 1909, by which Persia was entirely reorganized, a constitution adopted, a new Shah chosen, and the administration and finances of the country put into the hands of foreigners, whose experience in government and in business was expected to teach the Persians how to conduct their own affairs, and, what was equally important, to put the new government on its feet financially. The most important of these oflficials was the Treasurer, an American named Shuster, whose energy, ability, and firm belief in the expediency and desirability of Per- sian independence, accomplished wonders. To be sure, Germany had not quite looked for the es- tablishment of a firm, well-organized, and really independent national state in Persia; there can be little doubt that she had expected to supplant England and Russia in Persia by means of an ostensible revolution; still, the creation of a Persian government, really strong enough to ex- clude Russia and England, would be almost as advantageous to her as the exercise of control herself. Progress in sowing the wind in Egypt and India 136 FIRST STEPS was also considerable. In both, to be sure, she found a native movement among the Mohamme- dans favoring Pan-Islam and the exclusion of for- eigners, and which was therefore anxious to put an end to English influence and administration. It seems to be exceedingly doubtful whether Ger- many ever contemplated anything more in Egypt and India than the creation of trouble for Eng- land. Certainly, any promises of actual assistance to the malcontents could hardly have carried weight. The knowledge, which she certainly did impart to the leaders, that forces were at work in Europe tending to undermine the English posi- tion, that there were European states who be- lieved England weak and who sympathized with the peoples she ruled, that before a not too dis- tant day England might be racked by the torment of a great war in Europe, all seemed to the Hindus too good to be true. It certainly meant that Eng- land would be unable to devote all her atten- tion to suppressing revolts in India, and that it behooved them to prepare themselves for the dawnmg of the day, when they might practically obtain their independence for the asking. This news put vitality into the movement of Pan- Islam. It is not beyond the bounds of prob- ability that German money was an important factor in this vitality, money which she probably 137 PAN-GERMANISM borrowed with characteristic nonchalance in London. By the year 1910, therefore, the work was well under way in all directions for the creation of Pan-Qermanism. CHAPTER X THE SIGNIFICANT POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES ONCE the magnitude of Pan-Germanism dawned on the English and French diplo- mats, once they became aware of the lengths to which Germany was willing to go, they realized the necessity of strengthening their position, and therefore made overtures to the United States, which resulted, probably before the summer of the year 1897, in an understanding between the three countries. There seems to be no doubt whatever that no papers of any sort were signed, and that no pledges were given which circum- stances would not justify any one of the contract- ing parties in denying or possibly repudiating. Nevertheless, an understanding was reached that in case of a war begun by Germany or Austria for the purpose of executing Pan-Germanism, the United States would promptly declare in favor of England and France and would do her utmost to assist them. The mere fact that no open acknow- ledgment of this agreement was then made need not lessen its importance and significance. The 139 PAN-GERMANISM alliance, for it was nothing less, was based upon infinitely firmer ground than written words and sheets of parchment, than the promises of indi- viduals at that moment in office in any one of the threecountries; it found its efficient cause as well as the efficient reason for its continuance in the situation, geographical, economic, and political, of the contracting nations which made such an agreement mutually advantageous to them all. So long as this situation remains unchanged, there is little likelihood that the agreement will be altered, and there is no possibility whatever of its entire rejection by one of the three parties, least of all by the United States. The United States occupies a strategic position defensively strong, but offensively weak. She is beyond question invulnerable to the assaults of foreign fleets and armies. To be sure, her sea- coast is vast in extent and for the most part un- protected. It has been truly pointed out that the Japanese might successfully land an army upon the Pacific Coast, or the Germans land an army in New York or Boston practically without oppo- sition. Sed cui bono? The strategical and geo- graphical conditions of the country on either coast are such that a foreign army would occupy the ground it stood on and no more. The British discovered in the Revolutionary War that the 140 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES occupation of New York, Boston, and Philadel- phia put them no nearer the military possession of the continent than they were before, and that marching through provinces was not subduing them. However seriously the captiire of New York might cripple our commercial and railway interests, the difficulty, even at its worst, could be easily overcome by shifting the centre of busi- ness for the time being to Chicago, and the pos- session of New York would certainly not permit a foreign army to conquer the country, even if it were possible for any nation to maintain an army so far from its real base of supplies in Europe. The possibility of invasion is made of no conse- quence by the simple fact that no foreign na- tion possesses any inducement for attempting so eminently hazardous an enterprise. The United States possesses literally nothing which any for- eign nation wants that force would be necessary to obtain, while, by making war upon the United States, she would certainly expose herself to anni- hilation at the hands of her enemies in Europe, who have patiently waited for decades in the hope that somie one of them would commit so capital a blunder. But this very invulnerability of the United States prevents her from becoming a dominant or even an important factor in Euro- pean politics. If European nations caimot menace 141 PAN-GERMANISM , her with armed reprisal or with wars for conquest, she is equally incapable of menacing them. The fact, which has been from her own standpoint heretofore an unmixed blessing, which has flowed her people to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, becomes her greatest weakness, once she is filled with an ambition to play a part in the affairs of the world. Unpalatable as the fact may be, the interna- tional situation, the close balance of power be- tween the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente rather than the position of the United States has made her a factor in international politics. In- deed, if we would be truly accurate, we must ad- mit that the inter-relation of the various parts of the European situation, more even than its deli- cate balance, makes the United States a factor; for the complexity of the problems of no one group of states, whether in Europe, in the Middle East, or in the Far East, could possibly allow the United States to play a prominent part. In each, the natural antipathies counteract each other. Only the fact that every nation is anxious to maintain or win power or wealth in Europe and Africa and Asia makes the United States of any value to any of them. Indeed, it is only as Euro- pean questions become themselves factors in the 142 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES larger problems of India, Morocco, and the Medi- terranean that they can concern the United States at all. As soon as European politics became world politics and Asiatic and African problems became European, the United States began to be a factor in their solution. She has, to be sure, no vital stake in any one of these fields. She cannot, even if she would, risk in war the same stake European nations do, her independence; the Atlantic on the one side, the Pacific on the other, defend her more completely than could fleets and coalitions. Nothing short of the creation of world politics by other nations could make the position of the United States of consequence at all. The most vital fact, however, about the European situation is that no nation possesses the same natural allies in all parts of the world. England and France are one in opposing the extension of German author- ity in Europe; but nothing short of their extreme danger in the Mediterranean at the time of the Crimean War and the perils to which they have been exposed in Europe since the Franco-Prussian War has buried the enmity resulting from deadly strife in America and, especially, in India. Russia is the firm ally of both England and France in Europe; she is their deadliest foe in the Black Sea, in Persia, India, and China; yet, to oppose Germany, we see Russia and England amicably 143 PAN-GERMANISM enough uniting in the Near East. Germany musi seciu"e French and English aid to defend hersel permanently against Russia on the east, but findi her natural allies against Russia her greatesi competitor* in trade, and the most determined opponents to her expansion on the west. Never- theless, at the very moment that we find Germanj and England ready to spring at each other's throats in Europe, we see them guarding the rail- way to Pekin together and acting in concert about the Chinese loans. The variety of the interests of these nations makes it impossible for them permanently oi entirely to trust or distrust each other. England, who needs Russia's aid in Europe in theNeai East, cannot act too determinedly in opposition to Russian advance in Afghanistan and Manchu- ria. Germany, whose quarrels with Hapsburg and the Pope fill the history of the Middle Ages, must have their assistance to protect herself in Europe, t'ln all this the United States has unquestionably no part. Not her strategic position, not her mili- tary strength, but her economic position makes her an ally particularly indispensable to England and France. Not their economic position but hei desire for colonies, her ambition to play a pari in the politics of the world, makes an alliance with England and France indispensable to thie 144 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES United States. But she can enter world politics only with the consent of European nations. The economic position of the United States in the modern world is commanding. Her area is so vast and its productivity so great, her natural re- sources so nearly unlimited and so great in variety, that scarcely a country in the world, one had al- most said no continent in the world, can hope to rival her. While her population is not yet numer- ous enough to make her dangerous, it is none the less amply suflBcient to render her in potential military strength one of the greatest of civilized countries. She possesses, in fact, precisely what England and France lack — almost inexhaustible natural resources; arable land almost without limit; food sufficient to feed all Europe; great de- posits of gold; copper, iron, silver, coal; great sup- plies of cotton sufficient for the Lancashire cotton mills; in short, she possesses the very resources njeded to make the economic position of England and France fairly impregnable. Allied with her, they could not be starved into submission nor bankrupted by the lack of materials to keep their looms running. In addition, she possesses the second greatest steel manufactory in the world, which owns the patents and secret processes upon which Bessemer steel depends, a product surpassed for war materials only by the Krupp 145 PAN-GERMANISM steel. The width of the Atlantic effectively pre- vents any interference by European Powers with the continuance in time of war of her agricultural and industrial activities. Whatever happens ia Europe, she can continue to produce the raw ma- terials and finished products they need, and, what is more important, she will furnish them in time of war a huge market for the sale of such manu- factured goods as they can continue to make. The United States, furthermore, is the third financial power in the world. Not only is her wealth vast, not only is her surplus capital con- siderable, but the organization of business has, most fortunately from the point of view of inter- national politics, concentrated the control of the available capital for investment in the hands of comparatively few men. The trusts, the banks, and the insurance companies have made available for investment huge sums, only less in size than those controlled in London and Paris. It is highly essential that Germany should not be allowed to establish relations with any such capital. It would provide her with precisely that financial backing which she needs. At all costs the United States and Germany must be kept apart. England, too, is anxious to turn this capital into her own colonies, and is willing and anxious to invest her capital in the United States, for both would gain 146 rUSlllUJN U* ItilS UJMlJiU SlAlliS from this mutual dependence, and each would furnish the other fields for investment on whose reliability they could both depend. The English are naturally anxious to shift their investments from Germany to some country where they will not be exposed to destruction by war or to con- fiscation based upon war as an excuse. Fortunately for England and France, the United States, whose economic assistance is posi- tively imperative for them, finds their assistance equally imperative. In the first place, the United States depends upon the English merchant ma- rine to carry her huge volume of exports, and, should she not be able to use it, would suffer ser- iously, even if the inability to export continued only a few weeks. Again, a market as certain and as large as that of England and France for her raw materials and food is absolutely essential to her, and the outbreak of a war, which might close those markets to her, would precipitate unques- tionably a financial crisis, whose results could not fail to equal in destructiveness the effect upon private individuals of a great war. The United States has come to realize, as have other nations, that there are many ways in which a modem coimtry can be forced to suffer which are as deadly and, in many cases, more deadly than invasion. Furthermore, she needs a market in England and 147 PAN-GERMANISM France for her own manufactured goods, and I grown to depend upon receiving from them return many varieties of manufactured gooi She simply cannot afford to take any chances losing her markets in those two countries, nor 1: she ceased to hope for privileges of some sort the English and French dependencies, which otl nations do not have, and which, should woi come to worst, she could undoubtedly obtt from them as the price of her continued assistan It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the pi sperity of the United States so much depen upon the preservation of her relations with Er land and France that in time of war only an al ance with them would save her from alm( certain bankruptcy. England and France, however, expect to rets the alliance by permitting her to fulfill her ami tions for control of the Gulf of Mexico. E\ since the days when Louisiana was first purchase the men of the Mississippi Valley have dream of the extension of the sway of the United Sta1 over Central America and the Gulf. Aaron Bur expedition aimed probably at the creation of empire out of the Mississippi Valley and Mexi( The Mexican War was certainly fought in t expectation that valuable territory in the G might be acquired into which slaves might proi 148 ably be carried. When the war failed, a filibuster- ing expedition led by Walker, with connivance of the authorities at Washington, was intended to secure for the United States possession of one or more of the Central American countries. There was also the scheme, in whose existence the North believed previous to the war, for the conquest of the whole Gulf of Mexico and the creation there of a slaveocracy whose wealth and independence could easily be assured by the production of cotton, sugar, and tobacco. All these schemes met a determined resistance and interference from England and France which invariably proved decisive. Nor could the United States hope to take possession of lands separated from her coast by water, with which she could communicate only by sea, so long as the English fleet controlled the seas and she herself possessed no fleet at all. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was intended to prevent the acquisition of influence in Central America by the United States without England's consent, and mention was specifically made of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The inter- ference of Germany in Venezuela, the evident fact that the concentration of the English fleet in the Channel would make it impossible to keep a sizable fleet in the Gulf of Mexico, the absolute necessity from many points of view of preventing 149 PAN-GERMANISM the acquisition by Germany of land in South oi Central America, removed the objections Eng- land and France had hitherto possessed to the extension of the influence of the United States in the Western hemisphere. There was, furthermore, a likelihood that Ger- many would in some way attempt the annexatioB of the oldest of European colonial empires, held at this time by one of the weakest and most deca- dent of European states. The Spanish colonies ir the Gulf of Mexico and in the Philippine Islands possessed not only commercial but strategic im- portance. The wealth of Cuba and Porto Rice was proverbial, the products of the Philippines considerable, and, though not altogether suitable for colonization, they would afford Germany un- deniable opportunity for expansion. Moreover, Cuba in the hands of Germany would rob Jamaica of all naval importance and might actually permil Germany to overrun the whole Gulf. The Philip- pines as a matter of fact controlled one whole side bi the China Sea and contained valuable sea- ports, where a naval base could be established safe from assault by the Chinese or Europeai nations. The islands were thus ideally fitted tc become Germany's base of operations in the Fai East. To allow such places to fall into her hand: might entail consequences whose far-reachinj 150 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES effect no statesman could possibly imagine. Nor was there the slightest guarantee that by an un- provoked assault Germany would not attempt to take possession. At the same time, the general European situation and the position of Spain in the Mediterranean made it impossible for Eng- land or France to undertake a war with her, with- out setting fire to a train of circumstances whose eventual results might be even more fatal than those they were attempting to prevent. The colo- nial aspirations of the United States, her anxiety to share in the opening of China to European enterprise, her traditional hope of securing con- trol of Cuba, all pointed to her as the natural guardian of the interests of the coalition in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Far East. Whether or not it is true, as some assert, — a view to which certain events lend probability, — that the Span- ish-American War was created in order to permit the United States to take possession of Spain's colonial dominion, certainly such was the result of that war. To be sure, the relations between Spain and the United States were already strained ; popular sentiment was aroused by the conditions in Cuba, and, if the war was "created," it was not a difficult task. Certainly, Germany and her allies suspected that such was the purpose of the war, and attempted to secure a general agreement in 151 PAN-GERMANISM Europe to interfere in Spain's favor. England however, whether because she saw its advantag now the war was in existence, or because she ha( caused it to be begun, decisively vetoed the sug gestion q^ interference, and her control of the sej made action without her cooperation impossible The results of the war were all that could hav been hoped for. The Triple Entente saw the Gul of Mexico fall into friendly hands and the estab lishment in the Far East of a friendly power in th strategic point of greatest consequence. Fron Germany's point of view, the results of the alliano between England, France, and the United Statei were exceedingly discouraging, and the af termatl of the war proved even more decisive than th( war itself. The United States promptly undertool the peaceful penetration of Mexico and Centra America. Large loans were made to the govern ments and secured by a lien on the revenues American capital rushed thither, and the numbei of enterprises financed or owned by Americani increased so rapidly that at the present day th( United States, or its citizens, owns practically everything of importance in the Gulf, and is wait ing only for a favorable opportunity to foreclos its mortgages. The possibility of German inter ference has been reduced to nothing. The Unitec States also proceeded, not improbably by agree 152 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES ment, to create a fleet large enough to maintain control of the Gulf of Mexico and, what was of more consequence, to maintain control of the Atlantic highway between Europe and America in case of European war. The English had come to realize the improbability that enough of their fleet could be spared to patrol the seas in the event of an attack upon their forces in the Channel or in the Mediterranean. Above all, the United States undertook to create in the Philippines a naval base of sufficient size and importance to permit the maintenance there of a fleet large enough to be a factor in the Pacific. England and France obviously could not spare enough ships to maintain a fleet in the Far East; Japan would not tolerate the presence of a Russian fleet in those waters; the United States was the only member of the coalition who could, consistent with her own safety or that of other nations, undertake the creation and maintenance of such a fleet in the Far East. She became, in fact, the offensive arm of the coalition in the Pacific, and promptly strengthened her position by annexing the islands between her shores and Asia available for settle- ment or coaling-stations. She must not only pre- pare the way for the further extension of the coali- tion's power in the Far East, but she must prevent the acquisition by Germany of colonies, whose 153 PAN-GERMANISM location or development would interfere with th( control of Eastern commerce by herself and he: allies. One more thiag the United States undertook which Ei^land and France had hitherto denie( her permission to do, the digging of the Panami Canal. The canal would furnish the United Statei with a new waterway to the East, shorter thai the route she had hitherto been forced to emploj via Suez, and with a route which would literaDj put New York in actual number of miles nearei China, Australia, and New Zealand than wai London. Thus to admit the United States to th< trade of the Far East by a waterway exclusivelj in its control, England had not hitherto considerec expedient. The creation of Pan-Germanism, th< fear of an attack on the English route through th« Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, the possibilitj of the closing of that route temporarily or perma- nently by some naval disaster, reconciled Englanc to the creation of the Panama Canal, because sh( saw in that waterway a new military road whicl she could use to her own possessions in the Fai East, and which the Atlantic Ocean would effect- ually keep out of the hands of Germany. To b< sure, it would not be as short a road to India as that through the Mediterranean and Suez; but sc far as Australia and New Zealand were concerned i1 154 POSITION OF THE UNITED STATES would not be longer; and all such objections inevit- ably were reduced to insignificance by its incom- parable safety, so long as the English fleet could hold the seas at all. So long as the United States and England combined could maintain control of the Gulf of Mexico and of the islands in the Pacific, so long would this waterway be absolutely safe. If, then, Germany should succeed in executing the whole of her stupendous plan, England and her allies might still be able by means of the Panama Canal to contest with her the possession of the trade of the East. Especially would this be true if the United States should be able to maintain herself in the Philippines. Nor have the English lost sight of the incomparable importance of the Philippines for keeping Germany out of the Cele- bes. If Germany should move upon Holland, the coalition expects to take possession of the Celebes without further ceremony, and will then hold a position controlling the trade routes leading from India to China and Japan and to Europe in gen- eral, which would be as nearly impregnable as anything of the kind ever yet known in the world. The issues, therefore, with which the United States is actively concerned are vast; the import- ance of her adhesion to the side of England and Prance cannot be overestimated, and her possible part in the movements of the next two decades is 155 PAN-GERMANISM certainly one which ought to satisfy the most ambitious. She holds in the East already a posi- tion second only to that of England, and should the European nations succeed in their plans of final interference in China, the United States, as the offensive arm of the coalition, might be called upon for prompt action of the most aggressive sort. At the same time, after all has been said> it must be admitted that the United States is as yet only a potential factor in the international situation. Unless further aggression should be attempted in the Orient, or it should become necessary or ejcpedient to change the nominal contrlj Mexico and Central America to actual posse the United States will take no important share in hostilities, but will confine her efforts to the ex- ceedingly important work, both to her allies and to herself, of keeping open the Atlantic highway and of protecting the merchant marine of Eng- land. Nor need one underestimate the importance of this task, for, should she fail to do her share, destruction might result for all concerned. 3sary or r((HAer ss^Hk CHAPTER XI FIRST DEFEATS THE failure of their designs in South Africa and in South America turned German eyes to the nort;hern part of the former continent, to the great dominion which the French possessed in Morocco. The strategic value of Morocco was undeniable, for it flanked the whole southern shore of the Mediterranean at the entrance opposite Gibraltar and extended far down the African coast. Together with Algeria and Tunis, it prac- tically gave the French the whole of Africa east of the Libyan Desert, north of the Congo and of the Sahara Desert. Of this vast domain Mo- rocco proper is one of the richest and most valu- able parts. It is larger in area than Germany. Its exports and imports are considerable, each amoimting to about fifteen million dollars annu- ally. The climate is temperate, the soil fertile and varied, rich in minerals, and capable of almost indefinite development; the sparse population, amounting only to about five millions of people, most of them too barbarous and indolent either to use their country themselves or to oppose its 157 PAN-GERMANISM use by some one else, would aflford Germany an admirable field for colonization and the develop- ment of a market. As has already been said, the Germans had attempted to rouse the natives against the French, and, more especially in the southern part of Morocco, had attained conspicu- ous success. The actual outbreak, however, re- sulting from their influence was crushed with exceeding dispatch by the French, and the Ger- mans began to be aware that the peaceful pene- tration of Morocco with French consent was more than improbable. In the summer of 1911, there- fore, the Germans ventured upon a decisive step, and sent the warship Panther to anchor in the port of Agadir with the clear intention of interfer- ing somehow in the state of affairs in Morocco. The port chosen for this demonstration seemed, despite rather conflicting testimony, to possess great possibilities as a naval station; the hinter- land was reputed to be exceedingly rich in miner- als; the river, which enters the sea at this point, was of considerable size and drained a very fertile district. Furthermore, Agadir was far enough re- moved from Fez and the seat of French authority to make it possible for the Germans to hold it without rousing too much apprehension in the minds of the French of clashes in the future. The excuse for the German interference oflBcially put 153 • FIRST DEFEATS forward — the protection of the Europeans at Agadir — was an obvious pretext too slim to de- ceive any one. The number of Europeans in that part of Morocco was exceedingly few, and they were in absolutely no danger. The really logical ground which Germany took was that she could not recognize the validity of an agreement, per- mitting the French and English to monopolize Morocco, to which she had not been a party. She denied, in fact, the right of other European nations to make with each other contracts and agreements, concerning the disposition of the world in general, which should be binding upon any but themselves. She demanded, therefore, a new agreement which should recognize her obvious interests and to which she should be a party. As a possible equiva- lent, ia case England and France should be un- willing to make such dispositions in Morocco as her interests made desirable, she demanded the cession to her by France of a district adjoining the small territory she already possessed at Kamerim. This district was a part of the French Congo, the southernmost part nearest the river, and its value far exceeded its area. In fact, it did in all proba- bility equal in actual value at the moment the whole German colonial empire. In addition, it flanked the Congo, and also was situated adjacent to the little strip of territory along the river by 159 PAN-GERMANISM which Belgium obtained access to her great do- ma,in in the Congo valley. The strategic value of the spot was as undeniable as its commercial im- portance. Perhaps Germany might succeed in cutting pflE the Belgians from the sea and compel them either to pay tolls or cede a portion of their estate in order to regain access to it. The movement upon Morocco had a secret pur- pose quite as important as any other of its varied aspects. The Germans had long known of the existence of a secret understanding between Eng- land and France, but they had not been able to discover its exact terms, and it was of the utmost consequence for them to know whether or not the arrangement was solely defensive and applied to aggressive movements against either country in Europe, whether the agreement promised either country the other's assistance in case either should take the offensive, or whether it extended as an offensive and defensive alliance to the protec- tion of both French and English interests in every part of the world. To discover, therefore, its pre- cise limitations, the Germans proposed to raise an issue with France,, whom they did not fear, which would promptly bring to the fore the ques- tion whether England should aid France in ob- taining a decision favorable to her upon an issue in which England had no direct interest. Whatever 160 FIRST DEFEATS happened, the Germans could scarcely fail lo obtain some valuable indications of the strength and extent of the Anglo-French Entente, and might even succeed in compelling one or the other of them publicly to acknowledge its existence and perhaps its terms. There was, therefore, much that Germany might gain from this aggressive movement at Agadir, and she did not seem to be greatly in danger of losing anything. The event was eminently successful in drawing from England and France an acknowledgment of their hitherto secret understanding and an explicit statement of its extent. The English evidently considered that it amply covered the present case, which made clear to the Germans that the arrange- ment was by no means purely defensive, and that it certainly did not confine itself to encroach- ments upon the contracting countries in northern Europe, — information of the utmost importance. Supported thus by England and by the enthusi- asm of the French people, the French Ministry forced the issue upon Germany and practically ipresented to the latter the alternative of receding from her demands or of undertaking war. In Germany the popular feeling in favor of war ran high, and even the best and coolest advisers of the Emperor seem to have counseled the undertak- ing of at least a demonstration in force upon the 161 PAN-GERMANISM French frontier, more, perhaps, with the notion of discovering the possible rapidity with which the French army could be mobilized than with any intention of fighting. Whether the Imperial ad- visers merely intended to prepare for all event- ualities or were willing to yield to popular and military pressure and declare war, the Government certainly attempted to procure in Berlin the ready money necessary to finance the mobilization of the army. There then became evident the fact which probably astonished the Germans as much as it did every one else in the world outside of the few men in London and Paris who were responsible for it. It seems that German business was being transacted upon capital borrowed abroad, and that the German merchants had so extended their borrowing operations that more than ninety per cent of the current business transactions depended upon call loans or time loans secured in London and Paris. The moment the international situa- tion became tense, a concerted movement was undertaken by the few men who controlled finan- cial movements in those capitals for the recall of these loans. The result was as astonishing and as disastrous as it was intended to be. The ready cash ia Germany was promptly moved out of the country, and many merchants found them- selves compelled to sell securities to meet their, 162 FIRST DEFEATS pressing obligations. Not only, therefore, was the German nation for the moment seriously strained for gold, but the sale of securities was so consid- erable as to assume the proportions of a financial panic. The banks in Germany were on the verge of being compelled to suspend specie payments and were many of them almost bankrupt. There was no money to be had in Germany with which to begin the war. The Government, with unheard- of effrontery, appealed for loans to the great French and English banking houses, depending obviously upon the bankers' greed being stronger than their patriotism. The financial kings promptly informed the Emperor that they would be only too glad to furnish him such sums as he might require in exchange for proper securities and an engagement in his own handwriting not to use the loan for military purposes. The latter condition being obviously out of the question, the Emperor appealed to the American financiers and received from them a reply substantially the same. Thus unexpectedly was revealed the real financial strength of England and France and the value of the alliance with the United States. Germany had been defeated, for her enemies had it in their power to prevent her even from taking the field. Surely no defeat could have been more crushing or more humiliating. 163 PAN-GERMANISM The Germans made the best possible out of a bad business. They secured after long negotiations the addition of some territory to Kamerun, but they were compelled'to agree to the French con- trol of JMorocco/to recognize, moreover, a control far more considerable and exclusive than before and which placed in the hands of France much more authority in administration. Subsequently, France came to terms with Spain, who had shown a good deal of uneasiness in regard to the changed conditions in Morocco, and whose Premier had oflScially made statements, regarding the deter- mination of Spain to protect her interests in Africa, which were little short of defiance. That Spain was animated in this by direct suggestions from Berlin seemed eminently probable, and, even if it were not so, and she was acting purely upon her own initiative and in her own interests, it was not expedient to allow her to continue dis- satisfied at this juncture. France and England, therefore, took pains thoroughly to pacify the Spaniard. The victory in Morocco, the clear evidence that Germany's financial situation made war impos- sible for the moment, suggested to the Triple Entente the expediency of action in Persia, where matters were progressing in a direction favorable to Germany's designs, whether or not they were 164 the result of her suggestion. The strategic posi- tion of Persia is of great significance. Her terri- tory marches with the boundaries of Asia Minor and flanks the Baghdad Railway and the rich district of the Tigris and Euphrates upon which England has long had designs. It controls the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, the coast road to India, the most important harbors, and, from a military point of view, is absolutely essential to the safety of the English in India. On the other hand, the roads to the Black and Caspian Seas from India, the Persian Gulf, and southwestern Asia all pass through Persia, whose condition becomes therefore a matter of the utmost conse- quence to Russia. The railway has not yet pene- trated this section of the world, and the old cara- van routes are still of great commercial value. It is obvious that Persia is of vital importance to England and to Russia, neither of whom is will- ing to allow the other exclusive possession, and neither of whom can permit that territory to fall into the hands of people unwilling to recognize their interests. While less dangerous than pos- session by Germany, the creation in Persia of an independent state, with an efficient centralized government maintained by Persians in the inter- ests of Persia, proclaiming as its chief raison d'itre the exclusion of foreigners and the emanci- 165 PAN-GERMANISM pation of Persia at the earliest possible moment from the financial shackles binding her to Eng- land and Russia, would be, from every point of view, quite as objectionable to the latter nations as anj contingency they could imagine. The Shah had been continued upon the throne, the new constitution accepted by them because they had not expected the new government to be very diflferent from the old; but the ability of Mr. Shuster, the Treasurer, the integrity and energy of his assistants, their evident intention to admin- ister the state solely in the interests of Persia, and, above all, the enthusiastic response from the Persians, proved both to the English and the Russians that a state was in process of formation whose strength was growing daily and whose determination to accede to no more demands from them grew firmer month by month. Such a Persia might effectively stand in the way of their important interests. Moreover, neither of them considered the alternative for Persia to lie between her practical ownership by some European nation and her actual independence. The English feared, with probably good reason, that their recognition of the new state, followed by the withdrawal of their representatives, publicly or secretly, would be simply the signal for the absorption of Persia and the complete destruction of the newgovern- 166 FIRST DEFEATS ment by Russia or by Germany. The same appre- hensions were felt at St. Petersburg. Both Russia and England, therefore, agreed that, from the point of view of Persia herself, it would be better in the long run for them to retain possession than to permit the longer continuance of a state of affairs, which might, in a few years, make Persia the battle-ground of the two coalitions, with results to the Persians which could easily be imagined. Naturally, they did not expect the Persians to accept this view of the situation, and realized that the use of force would be indispens- able. A casus belli was easily found and could have been as easily created. Every step taken by the new Persian government was a tacit, if not an open, nullification of the treaty relations in exist- ence between Persia and the two countries. Mr. Shuster and his administrators, and, in the main, the more efficient and able of the Persians, were ejected from office, and the old, inefficient, cor- rupt administration was restored, in fact if not in name. The result upon politics in the Near East was a defeat for Germany. As in the case of Morocco, her interference resulted only in strengthening the hold her enemies already pos- sessed. Certainly, for the moment at any rate, the Baghdad Railway was outflanked and the 167 PAN-GERMANISM possible extension of the German commercial route to the rich markets of the East was ren- dered for the time being highly improbable. Until some considerable change takes place, the commercial value of the Baghdad Railway will be confined to the possibility of developing the district of Asia Minor which it traverses. The danger of ferment in Egypt among the native population and the military weakness of the English in that country did not escape the Ministry in London. Accordingly they sent to Egypt England's ablest soldier, Lord Kitchener. His mission was to improve the military disposi- tions of the force already available and the prepa- ration of adequate plans for efficient defense. For the nonce, however, his important work was con- fined to the counteracting of the effects produced in the natives' minds by the German agents. To the educated and the officials, he was to make clear the undoubted fact that for them the alter- native was, not the continuance of the present nominal relations between them and England, which left in their own hands a very extensive authority in local affairs, or their complete inde- pendence from interference by any one, but between the continuance of the status quo and their annexation by some member of the Triple Alliance, who would be forced by the exigencies 168 FIRST DEFEATS of military occupation, or by the necessities of the defense, to impose upon Egypt a good deal severer a regime than the English ever intended to create. For them to continue schemes for the expulsion of the English would simply mean that they were exposing themselves to the tender mercies of the Triple Alliance. The strategic position of Egypt, the extraordinary fertility of the Nile Valley and its great exports of cotton and grain, the existence of the Suez Canal, all made it impossible for Egypt to be governed solely in the interest of the Egyptians. The rest of the world was too intimately affected by conditions in Egypt to permit the Egyptians to disregard their claims. That such circumstances as these would mean nothing to the bulk of the population was only too apparent. Lord Kitchener, there- fore, inaugurated a series of enlightened judicial and agricultural reforms, intended to relieve the pressure of the Government upon the people themselves, and thus in an exceedingly practical maimer remove the only possible grievances which would appear vital to the great bulk of the population. According to apparently trustworthy reports, he has succeeded to a remarkable degree in rousing the enthusiasm of the fellaheen for English rule. He has certainly endeared himself to the population, and secured over them a per- 169 PAN-GERMANISM sonal influence which may conceivably be a fac- tor of importance at no distant date in the des- tinies of empire. Another great diplomatic victory seems to have been \^on by the English in India. The approach- ing coronation of George V as Emperor of India made possible the assemblage at Delhi of all the potentates of India and allied states. Their con- junction at one moment might conceivably result in the completion of plans for concerted revolt against the English, if any such were on foot, whether due to German, Russian, or native influ- ence, but their presence might also be utilized for the execution of a diplomatic coup of the very first consequence. It would depend, however, for its success upon the presence of the £ing. No English sovereign had ever set foot in India, and it was considered that the King would certainly expose himself to assassination by undertaking to be crowned in person at the approaching Durbar at Christmas, 1911. At the same time, unless the information regarding the state of affairs in India was entirely wrong, the danger of an attack would be confined solely to his being shot or destroyed by a bomb from the crowd during some public ceremony. The stake for which to play was un- doubtedly great, but the Ministers were not in favor of the King's assuming the necessary risks. 170 FIRST DEFEATS George, however, displayed a wholly admirable courage and an unexpected firmness of decision by insisting upon undertaking the diflScult task. His presence in India, his coronation and safe re- turn would be the most dramatic and conclusive possible refutation of the tales so rife in Europe about the disloyalty of the Hindus and the pre- carious condition of England in India. The event more than justified the expectations. The King rode through the streets as he might have ridden through London; he sat alone with the Queen upon a ^eat throne, fully exposed to thousands of people; he sat again alone with the Queen, with no guards in sight, upon a parapet near the road down which passed a great stream of Hindus of all conditions. The opportunities for his assas- sination were many. More than once the rumor spread that he had been killed. The tension dur- ing his stay was certainly extreme. But nothing happened. The moral effect of the Durbar in India and in Europe was great. The real purpose, however, of the King's pre- sence in India was far otherwise than the mere demonstration that he could be there for some weeks without being shot. He undertook the extremely diflScult task of explaining by word of mouth to the Indian potentates the intricacies of the international situation and their practical 171 PAN-GERMANISM relation to India. Coming from him by word of mouth such representations could not fail to have weight. They would certainly have never been believed had the rulers learned them from any subordinate, however exalted in station. Besides, there can be little question that the King con- fided to them many things which it is not con- sidered wise that most men should know. Un- doubtedly, he explained to them the fact that the alternative for the Hindus, as it is for the Egypt- ians and the Persians, is not 9,ctual independ- ence from English rule, but a choice between the rule of England, Russia, or Germany. He can have had no great diflSculty in demonstrating the honesty and excellence of English adminis- tration, and the great moderation of the English Government in never spending outside India a penny of the money collected in India; that the only benefit England has ever received directly has been the legitimate profits of trade; that Russia or Germany would offer more favorable terms is not likely; that the English were more than ready to meet the reasonable demands of the Hindus halfway; and that the English would consider reasonable anything which did not in- volve the loss of their trading monopoly or the weakening of the defensive strength of India against Russia and Germany. Naturally, these lt2 FIRST DEFEATS are purely conjectures of what the King must have said. The results are also purely conjec- tural, but certainly any statement at all of the realities of the situation cannot fail to have been convincing. It is hard for an impartial observer to see any possible advantage to the Hindu of an exchange of rulers. The year 1911, therefore, was one of pretty conspicuous success in all directions for England and France. Everywhere they seemed to have successfully met Germany, and everywhere to have disproved her prophecy that their colonial empires would fall to pieces of their own weight. However real the weakness might be, however possible the success of Germany's schemes, the weakness certainly was not apparent, and the probabiUty of Germany's success did not seem immediate. CHAPTER XII VICTORY FBOM DEFEAT: THE TEIPOLITAN WAR THE English and the French were by no means satisfied with the character of the measures which they had undertaken for thwarting the schemes of the Triple Alliance.^ Indeed, they had merely succeeded in holding their own, had in no sense placed any barrier in the way of the execu- tion of Pan-Germanism, nor could they do so by such measures as they had previously espoused. Something structural was necessary, basic, fun- damental in character, going to the root of the I German scheme, which they very well realized \ was not in the least touched by their successes in I Persia and Morocco. It was clear that Italy was ' for many reasons the least ardent member of the Triple Alliance and had the least to gain from the success of Pan-Germanism. Her hatred of Austria was still vigorous, and the necessary possession by Austria of the Balkans, her inevitable growth in naval power, the obvious advantage to the coalition of her securing control of the Adriatic * Individual sentences in chapters xn and xin and the conclud- ing paragraphs of chapter xiii have been taken from the authoi's article in the Forum for December, 1912. 174 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR and the Mgean, could not fail to rouse in the minds of the Italians certain eminently natural apprehensions. To strengthen Austria along the Dlyrian coast meant to increase her strength in that very quarter least acceptable to Italy,* for Trieste could not fail to become a rival of Ven- ice, and the increase of Austrian power in the Adriatic would necessarily interfere with Italy's ambitions to control the whole commerce of that sea. Nor was control of the Adriatic less essen- tial to her as an outlet for the commerce of the Po Valley than it was for Austria. To say that Italy could ship her goods to the western seaports along the Mediterranean, could easily be met by saying that Austria could also ship her goods by rail wherever she wished. Moreover, Italy had been steadily penetrating the eastern shores of the Adriatic by the familiar peaceful methods of loans and investments, and had already large mterests in Albania, Scutari, and Epirus, whose proximity to Italy made her interest in them natural. Nor could the fact that the present Queen of Italy is a Montenegrin princess fail to rouse concern at Rome for the future of that ' "Our Eastern fTontiers, I said [Crispi speaking to Bismarck], a« extremely exposed, and should Austria's position on the Adriatic be strengthened, we should be held as in a vice, and our safety would be threatened." Dispatch from Crispi to the King of Italy, 1877. Menwirs of Francesco Crispi, n, 64. London, 1912. 175 PAN-GERMANISM country. There were, therefore, vital reasons fop supposing that Italy was not bound to the Triple Alliance by chains of interest much stronger than those which made her position in it peculiar. The complete success of the scheme would not be likely to be thoroughly agreeable to the Italians because of the amount of strength it would neces- sarily give to their traditional foe. In addition, the existing dynasty was bound by strong ties of gratitude to France and England, without whose assistance the present kingdom of Italy could hardly have been created. Italy's iuterests would normally point in the same direction where her natural sympathies might be assumed to lie. Her ambitions were well known to England and France. As in Germany and Austria, the uni- fication of the country, the development of its resources, the benefits of centralized government, had resulted in an increase in the population and in production, which required colonies or markets to permit the continuance of national growth at its present rate. Like Germany, too, Italy found herself a debtor country, with heavy interest charges to meet, with the economic conditions unfavorable, and, consequently, with a national budget constantly in arrears. In one way and an- other, she had acquired along the Red Sea ter- ritories, large in area, limited in resources, with 176 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR a tiny nomadic population, and a climate and soil unsuited for colonization. These colonies had already cost her money out of all comparison to their value. She had long had designs upon the great district lying between the French domain m Tunis and the English boundary in Egypt, a vast area some four hundred thousand square miles in extent, sparsely populated, and in nearly every way admirably adapted to her needs. Unquestionably, the land was exceedingly fertile, for it had been perhaps the richest province of ancient Rome, and from its revenues innumerable governors had grown rich. The fact that the pop- ulation was scanty and the products small made it especially desirable as a field for development by Italian capital and labor. Indeed, the statesmen anticipated that the revenue from the customs, plus the indirect results of its trade with Italy herself, would not improbably suffice to produce a credit balance in the national exchequer. Long before the actual unification of Italy, the House of Savoy had made known to England and France its desires to annex this province, and had received from them at various times more or less vague promises to re- spect her claims to it or to further her designs upon it. It had, however, never been able to secure any more tangible evidences of their willingness to give it possession than vague oral diplomatic promises. 177 PAN-GERMANISM England and France, after studying carefully the situation in the Mediterranean, concluded from the fact of Italy's continued alliance with Germany and Austria and the certainty that Austria wquld claim, as her share of the plunder, the Balkans and the eastern coast of the Adriatic, that Italy's part could be nothing less, and was not improbably nothing more, than Tripoli. In any case, whatever she was promised, she would be compelled to wait for until the success of a scheme whose execution was barely begun and which might not succeed at all. They, therefore, approached Italy, offered to insure her possession of Tripoli at once without fighting, without ex- pense, and without delay; if she should put for- ward some technical casus belli and should make a vigorous show of force in Tripoli, she could then be accorded possession by a treaty with the Turk, whose terms the three conspirators would arrange to their mutual satisfaction. Incidentally they would test the efficiency of the new Turkish army. She would, of course, in return desert the Triple Alliance, and form an alliance with them, whose strength would secure them all possession of every- thing they desired in the Mediterranean for some decades. The Italian navy added to the French navy would so far preponderate over the Aus- trian and Turkish fleets that the English Medi- 178 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR terranean squadron could be practically with- dravm. Thus, without at all endangering the security of its control of the Mediterranean, the new alliance could make so immediate and consid- erable an increase of strength to its naval forces in the English Channel as to outnumber the Ger- man fleet for a good many years to come. Italy's position flanking the Adriatic would make Aus- tria's control of that sea improbable; the strength of the new alliance would make exceedingly diflS- cult any further accessions of territory by Austria in the Balkans; and thus Italy would be secure. By rendering impossible the effective use of the ^gean by Austria, the possibility of an attack by the latter's fleet from the rear of Malta upon the English lines of communication with Egypt and India, and upon the Italian lines of communica- tion with her new possession, would be eliminated; Sicily and Sardinia would strengthen the lines of advance already centering at Malta and would make the position of the allies in the western Med- iterranean literally impregnable. With Tripoli in Italy's hands, even the success of Germany and Austria in creating their proposed confederation, stretching from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf, would not be serious. Of course, while the Turk retaiaed even nominal control of Tripoli, the fact that he was only too obviously falling deeper and 179 PAN-GERMANISM deeper into the clutches of Germany and Austria would make the occupation of Tripoli by a strong Turkish army, directed by Germany, an emi- nent possibility. Germany by such means might place a mittary force in a place very dangerous to Egypt and Tunis. Once Italy was fairly in possession, Germany could occupy Tripoli only by force, and Italy's active participation in the struggle would be assured. Tripoli would bind Italy to the Anglo-French alliance by the solid chains of self-interest. /"The splendor of the scheme was too striking /not to impress the Italians; the Triple Alliance Was broken; Italy advanced upon Tripoli to the consternation of Germany and Austria, who feared for a time that all was lost. Stimulated by the messages from Berlin and Vienna, aroused as well by the new national spirit in Turkey, the Government at Constantinople vigorously de- clared that it would fight to the last gasp before it would consent to the dismembering of the national domain. The obstinacy of the Young Turks them- selves, the assiu-ances of support from Germany and Austria, made it impossible for England and France to give Italy possession of the new colony by the simple method of diplomatic and financial pressiu-e. The Turk, indeed, publicly called upon them to redeem the pledges of support in the 180 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR existing treaties and forced them officially to record their support of Italy. To every one's astonishment, it became clear that England and France were in no position to assist Italy openly. The hostility of the native races in Tripoli to the proposed arrangement was only too promptly shown; the flames of Moslem indignation ran high throughout North Africa, and for some weeks it seemed not improbable that a holy war against the Infidel might break out. Keen observers believed that a more open support of Italy by England or France would be the signal for the Jehad. Even to gain vastly more than either nation could pos- sibly lose by the delay of Italy's complete pos- session of Tripoli, such a contingency was not to be risked. In India, too, the Mohammedans, already excited by what they considered English treachery in crushing the new Mohammedan state in Persia, began actively to express their hostility and indignation at her treatment of the Sultan, the head of the Mohammedan religion. At all costs, England felt she must avoid giving further cause for offense. Italy, therefore, found herself committed to a war, which military critics agreed would be expensive, even if not prolonged, and whose result was by no means a foregone conclusion. The prospect was anything but allur- ing to a Ministry already tired of struggling with 181 PAN-GERMANISM an annual deficit, and was particularly bitter be- cause of the former expectation that possession of the new province would in one way or another lighten the financial burdens of the mother coun- try. Actuai conquest by the sword would certainly so embitter the natives as to make the govern- ment of Tripoli expensive and difficult for years to come. The Italians, in short, had been placed by their friends in a very real dilemma, from which their friends were unable to extricate them and from which, indeed, it was doubtful whether the Italians could successfully extricate themselves without paying a price greater than they were able to aflford. Under such circumstances, with such calami- ties expected and such hopes unfulfilled, the Ital- ians received from the Wilhelmstrasse whispered communications of cheering import. If Italy would return to the Triple Alliance, pointed out the Germans, her old friends would be able to secure for her without cost or difficulty the pos- session of Tripoli, and in time a great deal more. Indeed, said the Germans, the present dilemma in which Italy found herself proved conclusively the truth of the German assertions regarding the weakness of England and France. It proved no less astounding a proposition than that the Eng- lish control of the Mediterranean was a sham. 182 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR Italy, in fact, if she would return to the Triple AlUance, might practically reverse the situation in the Mediterranean and bring Tripoli with her for nothing; the strategic positions on which England and France had based their defense of the Medi- terranean would be vastly weakened, if not de- stroyed; the naval force, which they had believed virtually preponderant, would be reduced to a bare equality which would make offensive move- ments impossible and render the success of defen- sive movements problematical; not a lira need be spent, not a life sacrificed to make the conquest of the Mediterranean an eminently feasible opera- tion and to strike a more deadly blow at English naval supremacy than it had suffered since the Seven Years' War. Such substantial and probable achievements would have been themselves con- sidered the worthy fruits of a hard-fought and costly war, and here they could actually be had for nothing! The English had already changed their naval arrangements in the Mediterranean, counting upon the presence of the Italians to neutralize the Austrian navy for the time being, and the French had not yet executed their part of the agreement by concentrating their fleet in the Mediterranean. For the moment, the Italian and Austrian fleets, while not strong enough to take 183 PAN-GERMANISM the offensive, would be amply strong enough to prevent any offensive movement by the English or French fleets. Nothing, therefore, could be done to interfere with Italy's execution of the mancEuvre. Once Tripoli was in Italy's hands, the Trip]^ Alliance would be in a vastly more favorable position than it had occupied before the issue arose. They did not possess, to be sure, more power in the Adriatic than before, but they had secured what was infinitely more essential, a naval and military base from which to use it. The diflBculty of using the Adriatic as a base had been that its exit could be without great difficulty controlled by an English fleet at Malta. From the ports on the Tripolitan coast, on the other hand, a flank attack could be directed upon the English communications with Suez which it would be extremely difficult to meet from Malta. Under cover of the war, which Italy had come to regard as so unfortunate, the new position, already com- manding, could be greatly strengthened. Inas- much as England and France had lent public countenance to the prosecution of the war and had formally declined to assist the Turk, neither would be able to interfere with the seizure by Italy of every island and strategic point in the eastern Mediterranean which acknowledged nom- inal sovereignty to the Sultan; thus thp coveted 184 THE TRIPOLITAN WAR Rhodes, the islands of the iEgean, controlling the channels to Constantinople, could all be occupied under cover of this very war, and the strategic control of the eastern Mediterranean thus secured without danger and without cost, which, under other circumstances, could not even have been attempted without precipitating a general Euro- pean war. In Tripoli, under cover of the war with the Turk, the allies could fortify the coast, create naval stations, build railways into the interior and along the frontiers, and thus equip a base of mUitary operations in Africa from which they could threaten Suez and Tunis at the same time and with the same army. The execution of the schemes for the conquest of the Mediterranean itself had never been intended to precede the occupation of the Balkans and Turkey by the allies, but the chance was not one to be lost. The magnitude of the opportunity, the extraor- dinary prominence which it gave the Italians at the moment, was appreciated at Rome, and the Italian Government acted with promptitude. The results surpassed the most sanguine expecta- tions. The Italian navy bombarded a few ports, sank a'number of Turkish vessels, purely to main- tain the fiction of war, and then seized island after island in the ^Egean, announcing to the inhabitants that the occupation was no mere mili- 185 PAN-GERMANISM tary measure but would be permanent. So con- fident of success were the Italians. The existence of the new naval base in Tripoli, the possession of the strategic points of the eastern Mediterranean by a mgmber of the Triple Alliance, snatched from England the entire control of the eastern Mediterranean and threw her back upon Malta, whose position was instantly changed from that of the central position of England's defensive chain to that of an outpost. Italy's change of front of course promptly suspended active hos- tilities between herself and Turkey, though the Turk obstinately refused to remove the new Turk- ish army from Tripoli. After all, from the point of view of the Alliance, this was not altogether regrettable, for it gave a tinge of reality to the military di^ositions Italy proceeded to make with promptitude on the coast and along the caravan lines leading into Egypt. CHAPTER XIII THE AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR MEANWHILE, the Triple Alliance, thus reunited, proceeded with the complement- ary details of the scheme. The German, Aus- trian, and Italian naval programmes were at once enlarged, the proposed German fleet was made nearly equal in number to the proposed English Channel squadron and the Austro-Italian fleet was already the equal of the entire French battle fleet; an increased activity of building, therefore, was expected to give the allies in a couple of years something like equality, if not actual superiority, both in the Mediterranean and in the German Ocean. Indeed, the situation had been so changed as to make it difficult for England and France to meet the crisis merely by a rearrangement of the existing forces. The chief reason for their desire to detach Italy from the Triple Alliance was inter- preted in Berlin to be their realization that they had practically reached the limit of their resources and could no longer continue to build at the same rate as before. To strengthen the Mediterranean fleet by an alliance with Italy would have enabled 187 PAN-GERMANISM them to increase the Channel squadron without additional expense. The cowp d'Stat in the Medi- terranean changed the whole naval situation by strengthening the position of the Triple Alliance in that sfea, and rendered inadequate the previous dispositions of England and France. A large fleet, more naval stations, and very different equip- ment of certain stations would be necessary sat- isfactorily to meet the crisis. To strengthen the fleet in the Mediterranean meant the weaken- ing of the English fleet in the Atlantic and the considerable reduction of the number of vessels which Germany must build to change England's old predominance into something like equality. This, then, was the moment for which the allies had been waiting. There was now a fair chance of their creating within a reasonable time enough ships to compass that equality of armament which England had always declared would be so fatal to her welfare. The military dispositions of the allies, the facilities for prompt mobilization, the railway facilities along the Belgian and French and Russian frontiers, were all considered with a view to their adequacy for actual war. The work on the Baghdad Railway was pushed with the utmost energy; the little band of able men, whom Germany had so long kept in Constantinople, busied in reconstructing Turkey, were recalled to 188 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR Europe. The German Emperor began, with his usual energy, a round of visits to all the sovereigns of whom anything was expected or from whom anything was feared. To them all he explained, no doubt, the great advantage just secured and made, by word of mouth, promises, assurances, and explanations, which could not have been entrusted to subordinates. Unquestionably, the energy of Wilhelm II, his persuasive powers, and his faith in this gigantic scheme have been of vital importance in securing the cooperation of Germany's present allies and in bringing their plans to their present state of completion. The English and French, astonished and alarmed at the unexpected turn of affairs, strained every nerve to meet it by preparations which should be more than adequate for any emergency. Both have felt, however, that to avow publicly the ex- tent of the danger would produce an unfavorable effect on English and French public opinion, either by sapping popular confidence in the na- tional strength, or, more probably, by causing a demand for instant war which it would be diflScult to resist. In some way, without declaring imme- diate a danger which may after all be merely con- tingent, the people must be made to realize that a crisis is at hand of so serious a nature that it can be adequately met only by the immediate adop- 189 PAN-GERMANISM tion of the most extensive naval and military pre- parations either nation has yet undertaken. So extensive are the plans, so long is the time which will be required for their completion, so great will be the fii^ncial burden imposed upon the people, that the average individual, in nations which have systematically encouraged him to have opinions upon matters of national import, is more than likely to deem such plans justifiable only to avert an impending crisis, in which the very national existence would be at stake, and to demand at once financial sacrifices which he is likely to approve only when the danger is exceedingly tan- gible. The present condition, therefore, which the English and French Governments find it most diflScult to meet, is the fact that the time and 'expense for what they believe to be the necessary preparations are in themselves proof to the aver- age man that the emergency is contingent rather than immediate. They are hampered, as the Ger- mans have always claimed they would be under such circumstances, by the difficulty of convincing the ordinary individual of the expediency of spend- ing as much money in order to postpone or avert a war as would seem to him necessary to prosecute it. To tell the public that the war is already going on, that it is bdag fought with every variety of weapon, except armies and navies, that England 190 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR is really in danger, and at the same time to prove to him that the English navy largely outnumbers the navies of the Triple Alliance, is simply to de- monstrate the expediency of fighting now before the preparations of the Triple Alliance already announced destroy England's superiority. In England, too, the position of parties in the House of Commons is actually hampering the Government in its preparations to meet the crisis, as the Germans have always claimed it would. The Liberals, who are nominally in power, are absolutely dependent upon the support of the Irish Nationalists and of the Laborites. The for- mer group are exceedingly anxious to secure the final passage into law, without substantial amend- ment, of the Home Rule Bill just passed by the House of Commons. The most important clause of that bill provides for the payment out of the Im- perial Treasury to the new Irish Government of a subsidy annually sufficient in amount to pay for the construction of two or more battleships. The Irish Budget has so long shown an annual deficit, and it has so long been evident that the Irish people are paying more taxes than they can really afford, that the advocates of Home Rule know perfectly well that, without substantial assist- ance from England, Home Rule is impossible. The Irish people are incapable of paying their own 191 PAN-GERMANISM bills. But to secure such a subsidy at the mo- ment of moments when English naval supremacy is more nearly in danger than at any time in the last two centuries, when that amount of money annually expended might suffice to maintain England's supremacy, is, as they well know, ex- ceedingly questionable. The pressure of this very situation, however, the absolute necessity which English statesmen feel for directing the affairs of the Empire in accordance with their own concep- tion of its needs and without interference from the Irish Nationalists, convinces the latter that they have the best chance they have ever had to extort Home Rule from England even on these terms. They have pointed out to the disconsolate Min- istry the fact that they can hamper England's utilization of the resources she now possesses to an extent which might be fatal, and that the Ministry which is now in power can remain in power only so long as they are willing, and, con- comitantly, that the Ministry which will replace it can remain in power only on the same terms. The very fact that the alternative lies between using what England has and the increase of its force is to them the most important weapon in their arsenal. England must in self-defense come to terms with them. The Labor members are 192 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR opposed to war on any terms. They have not scrupled publicly to declare that they owned nothing in England which the conquest of Eng- land by Germany could possibly take away from them, neither land, nor houses, nor wealth. They have the clothes on their backs; they are promised, gjtiong as they work, enough food to keep them Bnve. This, they declare scornfully, is the sum total of their interest in the maintenance of the British Empire. Could the Germans offer them less? Whether because the Irish and the Labor- ites do not believe the danger great, or because they are determined to achieve their own objects, whatever the cost to England, is not clear; but the fact is certain that they have effectively pre- vented the adoption in the House of Commons of as large an increase of the naval appropriations as the Ministry desired to make, and have stoutly refused to af^rove conscription in any form. Knowing this, the Germans could not fail to consider a confession of weakness Mr. Churchill's public promise to decrease the English naval programme in proportion to any decrease in German plans, and his hint that England would be willing formally to guarantee the immunity of the Austrian seacoast from attack if the plans for the increase of the Austrian navy should be aban- doned; his scarcely veiled threat, to surpass in 193 PAN-GERMANISM number any increase they might attempt to make, they greeted with open derision. They believed that they had powerful allies in the English Ministry and in the English House of Commons, and, so confident were they that these allies would prevent him from executing his threat, that they announced a very substantial increase in the German and Austrian naval esti- mates. Such action was tantamount to a direct challenge to fulfill his threat, and the amazing fact is that he could not do it. The Laborites and the Home Rulers flatly refused to sanction Mr. Churchill's measures; they flatly declared they would oppose similar measures introduced by the opposite party, in case the Ministry should resign; and compelled the adoption of a compromise measure providing for so small an increase that, by the public admission of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Germany will have within two years twenty-nine ships in the North Sea to England's thirty-three. The Opposition both in the Com- mons and in the Lords, as well as the foremost naval and military authorities, are insisting in the frankest language that the Supplementary Esti- mates are utterly inadequate. Naturally, the knowledge of these facts has not diminished the confidence felt at Berlin, Vienna, and Rome, and it has so obviously weakened confidence at Paris, 194 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR that some of the influential journals have actually begun to question the value of England's support should she lose, not her control of. the Channel by actual fighting, but her naval preponderance. Indeed, the contrast is sufficiently striking be- tween the prompt passage of a considerable Sup- plementary Estimate without dissent by a Reich- stag utterly hostile to the administration, and the grudging passage of so slight an increase by the English House of Commons where the exist- ing Ministry nominally controlled so powerful a majority as to have overridden even strenuous opposition to other measures. The Ministry has done what it could to counteract these doubts by secret promises and assurances. The naval dis- positions in the Mediterranean have been care- fully examined; conferences held between the French and the English authorities; the English and French naval boards went over the ground in person in the summer of 1912, and no doubt ar- rived at important conclusions. Lord Kitchener's success in Egypt, the results of the King's visit to India, continued success in Persia, also gave the Triple Entente confidence.. The most encouraging aspect of the situation has been the prompt and enthusiastic response of the English self-governing colonies to the ap- peal of the mother country for assistance. Sev- 195 PAN-GERMANISM eral have adopted naval programmes; their ships are already under construction; they have pro- mised to add their vessels to the English navy and to leave their direction entirely in the hands of the Admiralty in London. The Canadian Min- istry Jias asked the Parliament to appropriate money for three first-class battleships, and will in all probability succeed in carrying the measure. This aid is so considerable in amount as to be of really substantial importance. The English also have reorganized the entire administration of their fleet, both for offense and defense; they have created a school for the train- ing in strategy of oflScers; and have instituted in addition a special board of experts, in whose hands will be placed, in time of action, the direction of operations. France has officially adopted the Two Power Standard in the Mediterranean, which is under- stood to mean that she will create and maintain a fleet sufficiently numerous easily to outweigh the combined Italian and Austrian navies. Spain's assistance or, perhaps, neutrality the allies have bought with concessions in Morocco. Russija, frightened at the prospect of the loss of the position in the Baltic she now possesses, has signed a naval convention with France, which pledges her to a rapid and really considerable 196 mMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR increase of her Baltic fleet and the creation of a new naval base almost on the Prussian frontier. The existence of a really powerful Russian fleet in the Baltic might interfere vitally with the further execution of Germany's present plans. Berlin and all North Germany would be exposed to its attack; the Kiel Canal might be destroyed; the rear of the Atlantic squadron would be ex- posed to its operations; and its strength might be sufficient to compel the division of the German North Sea fleet, an eventuality which would so weaken the forces available for an offensive war as to postpone its date by years, if it did not make its outcome so uncertain as to prevent it alto- gether. But the most significant movement is the pro- ject for the Trans-Persian Railway which Eng- land, France, and Russia have adopted. The line is to run southeast from Teheran to Bushire in the English zone of influence and to follow the coast of the Persian Gulf to Karachi. Unquestion- ably, a Russian army arriving in India by that route would turn the flank of Quetta and render useless all the fortifications and dispositions yet made to keep Russia out of India. For England to consent to it is to abandon the policy of isolat- ing India from Europe by preventing the estab- lishment of easy communication by land. Should 197 FAN-CiEKMAINlSM Russia attack from Herat and from the new rail- road line at the same moment, nothmg could prevent the overwhelming of the English army. Russia has three quarters of a million men en- rolled in her army who live within two thousand miles, of the Indian frontier. They may not be highly trained, but they will certainly outnumber the English army ten to one, and the combined native and English troops four to one. Lord Curzon voices the convictions of many Anglo- Indians when he declares that the construction of the Trans-Persian Railway is the death-knell of the British power in India. It means, further, the admission of Russia to the rich marts of India, and a recognition of her right to share directly in that trade; and whatever its eflPect may be on English retention of the sovereignty in India, it will at once end England's practical monopoly of Indian trade. To the British merchant and manufacturer there would seem to be little left worth struggling for, if that is renounced. Such, however, are not the purposes of that railway, and such will not necessarily be the results of its construction. The project is based upon the absolute necessity for an English military road to India in case Germany and her allies succeed in securing actual control of the Mediterranean. The new road would prevent the use by Germany 198 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR of the Baghdad Railway and the Persian Gulf as an approach to India. It would enable England, so long as her alliance with Russia lasted, to re- inforce the Indian army far more rapidly than would be possible by way of the Panama Canal and the Pacific. In fact, should the Triple Alli- ance secure control of the Mediterranean, nothing short of some such road would enable England and Russia combined to place enough troops in India to prevent its immediate conquest by Ger- many. England wishes to keep it; Russia has always dreamed of possessing it; but both would rather see it in the hands of the other than allow Germany to get it. Such an increase of German power would at once endanger the very exist- ence of England and the continued possession by Russia of any territories in the Baltic or in Poland. To the English Ministry, moreover, the danger of losing India because of the new rail- way's construction seems small beside the im- deniable military value of the road as an offensive measure against Germany. The road will run mainly through British territory; it will follow the coast of the Persian Gulf, and therefore can always be controlled by an English fleet; nor will it put Russia nearer the Indian defenses than she is already; the lookouts at Herat can almost see a Russian railway station, and Herat is the key to 199 PAN-GERMANISM India, scarcely a fourth as far from the frontier and Quetta as Teheran is from Karachi. In fact, say the English military experts, Russia already possesses quite as favorable a position for an assault as the railway would afford her; but cleal-ly she does not wish to use it, nor will she desire to do so as long as the assistance of Eng- land and France is necessary to prevent Germany from overrunning the Baltic. The feasibility of a military road to India through Russia and Persia has been many times declared. The route through Turkestan, across the Caspian and up the Russian rivers, was one of the commonest roads followed by invasion after invasion from Asia; it was one of the recog- nized trade routes of Europe during the Middle Ages, and was well worn by the feet of merchants. Upon its existence, the English Muscovy Com- pany depended, and from the trade grew wealthy. Until the construction of the Suez Canal, it was as practicable as any land route and more rapid, though more expensive and dangerous, than the voyage round the Cape of Good Hope. Through it Alexander invaded India, and no less a soldier than Napoleon himself conceived the idea of fol- lowing the precise route the English and Russians propose to employ in case of need. Napoleon had the whole route carefully surveyed and measured, 200 AFTERMATH OF THE TRIPOLITAN WAR and his engineers reported its entire practicabil- ity. In addition, if we suppose the existence of a general European war and an attempt by Ger- many on India at a time when England could spare neither men nor ships from European waters, the new railway would enable her to per- mit a suflBcient Russian force to enter India to defeat the Germans without actually delivering into Russia's hands the keys of the Himalayas, Herat and Quetta. Should Russia after defeating Germany tiu"n traitor, the English in India, with the possession of Quetta and the aid of the fleet set free by Germany's defeat, might still make a good fight. Should Germany decisively defeat the Channel fleet while her allies were overrun- ning the Mediterranean, the deluge would have already arrived, and India would be irretrievably lost, railway or no railway, and England would be glad to see a nation strengthened by the posses- sion of India which might do battle with the all- conquering German. The Trans-Persian Railway is not necessarily desirable; it seems to the Eng- lish merely the best of a number of extremely imdesirable and regrettable expedients of which unfortunately one must be chosen. So a deputa- tion of the members of the House of Commons and of London merchant princes visited Russia 201 PAN-GERMANISM and formally sanctioned the commercial aspects of the military agreement. The incident shows conclusively how dependent England is upon her allies and how much trust she is forced to repose in them. It indicates with even greater certainty the English belief in the feasibility of the German plans for securing possession of the Mediterranean and Suez Canal. CHAPTER XIV THE 6REAT KEPULSE: THE BALKAN CRISIS THE great success of the war in Tripoli, as a method of extorting territory from the Turk and of preventing the interference of England and France with the execution of the plans for the rearrangement of the Mediterranean without the employment of actual force, promptly sug- gested to the diplomats and statesmen in Berlin and Vienna the prosecution of war in the Balkans. The Turk was unexpectedly reluctant to resign to Italy, even at the instigation of his new mas- ters, the rich province of Tripoli. It seemed to the Young Turks the last straw, that, at just the moment when they were seeking to rouse in Turkey a national spirit, and to secure control of the government for a national party, whose policy should be based upon the interests of Turkey and not upon those of Europe, they should be forced at the very outset to consent to the dismember- ment of Turkey as the condition of their longer continuance in power. It seemed to them, in fact, that, if they must yield in Tripoli, autonomy would never be a reality in Turkey, and the PAN-GERMANISM visions they had long cherished, and the material privations they had endured for the last decade or more, would be all rendered futile. The Triple Alliance obviously needed some lever with which to pry Tri|)oli from the clutches of the Young Turk without the necessity of actually taking it. It was, furthermore, highly essential that the Young Turk should not execute a coup d'kat and desert them for the old alliance with England and France. That, above all, must not be risked. Some method must be found which would put pressure upon him without permitting him to desert and without allowing England or France ^n opportunity to interfere. The obvious method was war in the Balkans, where the military move- ments could be undertaken by the states, whose relations with the Turk were always tense, and whose private grievances were so familiar and so adequate in the eyes of Europe as fully to justify a resort to arms. The Turk would thus be between two fires. With war in Europe and war in Africa and only one army, he would be compelled to preserve Tripoli at the risk of defeat in Europe, or to renounce Tripoli and conclude peace with Italy on Italy's own terms, in order to insure the safety of his dominions in Europe. The mo- ment also was most opportune for an attempt to rearrange affairs in the Balkans, and to 204 THE BALKAN CRISIS attempt the realization of the Balkan Confeder- acy, on whose creation the final success of Pan-Germanism absolutely depended. The tense situation in Europe; the dangers to which the English and French were obviously exposed in the Mediterranean by the inability to use their previous naval dispositions for regaining control of the eastern Mediterranean; the time which must necessarily elapse before a force suflBcient to regain that control could be assembled in the Mediterranean, all these factors made their actual interference improbable. The Germans calculated that, the odds being against England, she would not dare risk action. Therefore, with the probability of a free hand, the opportunity seemed ripe for the prosecution of the schemes for the reorganization of southeastern Europe. The programme was practically made public by Austria, who advocated decentralization in Turkey along the lines already suggested, but never executed, in the Treaty of Berlin. The notion was to break up European Turkey by creating independent states in Albania and Mace- donia and to make a new state out of the remains of Turkey in Europe. These three states, with the older communities of Rumania, Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, and perhaps Greece, should form a new confederation, governing the whole 205 PAN-GERMANISM of the district between the Austrian and Russian frontiers and the ^gean and Mediterranean seas.^ Asia Minor would become the seat of the old Turkish Empire and should be bound tightly to Germaihy or Austria, and, if that were not possible, to the new confederation, by bonds which practically would compel the Turk to re- nounce control of policy and resources. In some way or other, by commercial agreements, if no more direct method was available, Austria was to secure Salomki as a naval base from which to control the ^gean and the whole eastern Medi- terranean, and either Austria or Italy was to secure the remainder of the eastern shore of the Adriatic. The allies calculated that a little show of force by the Balkan States would put enough pressure upon the Turks to compel the cession of Tripoli, and might also drive the Young Turks from power and reinstate the old bureaucracy, whom Austria and Germany already owned body and soul. Then the Treaty of Berlin could be interpreted in such a manner as to enable the allies to claim that the other Powers had already given their consent to the new scheme of reorgani- zation, would permit them to insist that no Euro- pean Congress was necessary, and that the execu- ' The notion of a Balkan confederation supported by the Triple Alliance seems to have originated in 1889. Crispi, Memoirs, n, S84- 885. S06 THE BALKAN CRISIS tion of the Treaty ought completely to satisfy all parties. The irony of the situation would be that they would thus possess the Turk's own consent to his own destruction before they conquered him. When these arrangements were finished, and it seemed hardly doubtful but that they could be completed, Pan-Germanism would be practically a reality. There would be much yet to do, but formally it would have come into existence. There were also vital reasons for attempting ac- tion in the fall of 1912. The death of the Emperor Franz Josef has been expected at any moment during the last few years and becomes more prob- able each month. Inasmuch as his death has been confidently expected to give the signal for a gen- eral revolt throughout the Dual Monarchy, it was highly essential to move before such a catastrophe deprived Austria of the possibility of action. Indeed, his death might force the allies to devote their time for some years to the reorganization of Austria-Hungary before they could proceed fur- ther with the scheme. Success in the Balkans and in Turkey, the actual creation of a Pan- Germanic chain, would not improbably so impress public opinion as to insure the continuance of the present arrangements and thwart the schemes of the irreconcilables. Should worst come to worst, a third monarchy could be created out of the 207 PAN-GERMANISM Croatian and Slavonic and Serbonian communi- ties in southwesternAustria which would" have the same relations to Austria as Hungary, would satisfy the most dangerous malcontents and en- able the Btnpire to deal effectively with Bohemia and Galicia. Such an eventuality, however, raised many possible questions and would be cer- tain to rouse suspicion in the Balkans. The adop- tion by England and Russia of the scheme for the Trans-Persian Railway, obviously a military road to circumvent the Baghdad Railway, to retain control of the Persian Gulf and render ineffectual the seizure of Suez, proved to the Germans that no time was to be lost, if the con- quest of India, as the ultimate aim of the great confederation, was not to become impossible. The loss of India, Germany could not consider calmly, for the creation and maintenance of the Pan-German Confederation would compel her to hand over to her allies practically all the gains in the Mediterranean and in Europe, and her own share was to be India. The Panama Canal, moreover, another military road to the East, was nearing completion, would probably be practical as early as January, 1914, and its completion is expected to render the control of the Mediter- ranean and Red Sea infinitely less important to England than before. The risks of immediate 208 THE BALKAN CRISIS action did not seem too great; the probable gains were undeniable; and the allies therefore decided upon action. The Balkan States, who received intimations of the desirability of war from Berlin and Vienna, were astounded to receive, almost simultaneously, suggestions of the desirability of war with Turkey from London, Paris, and St. Petersburg. The Triple Entente had made up its mind that the moment was opportune for an attempt to erect a barrier in the way of Pan-Germanism which should not improbably postpone its execution at least a decade. Only in the Balkans could they hope in the long run successfully to oppose the Triple Alliance, nor could there be, from their point of view, a more favorable spot for opposition. The Balkan peoples had long hated Austria for racial and religious reasons, were determined, if possible, to win their own national independence, and, presenting, therefore, unusual difficulties to the statesmen seeking to amalgamate them with the Triple Alliance, furnished the latter's ene- mies the most favorable field in which to work. The strategic position of the Balkans, controlling all the roads between Europe and Asia Minor, controlling the ^gean and the Adriatic, was so necessary to Pan-Germanism, that no more deadly blow could possibly be dealt that scheme 209 PAN-GERMANISM than the creation of a Balkan confederacy under the aegis of the Triple Entente, pledged to inde- pendence for the Balkan peoples of both coali- tions. The stronger the confederation, the more independent, the greater obstacle it would be in the path of Pan-Germanism. The very qualities and resources, which would lead the Balkans to desire freedom from entangling alliances with the Triple Entente itself, would be the very qualities which would render improbable any agreement with the Triple Alliance, and would animate them with a patriotism and a determination to resist which could not fail to work for the benefit of the Triple Entente. For it is not necessary that the latter should itself control them. Its dispositions in the Mediterranean will be equally benefited if their possession by the Triple Alliance is rendered improbable. From the point of view of England and France, moreover, who neces- sarily distrust somewhat their ally, Russia, be- cause of her ambitions in the Black Sea, the stronger the confederation, the more independent, the greater would be their own safety from pos- sible treachery on the part of Russia. At the same time both nations realized that the Tripolitan War had completely changed their own policies in regard to Turkey. Their objection to Russia at Constantinople had been based upon ^10 THE BALKAN CRISIS the desire to exclude from the Mediterranean all possible rivals; but the loss of Tripoli, the loss of Turkey, both of which had fallen into the hands of their enemies, and the fear of the creation of a confederacy of states in the Balkans under Ger- man or Austrian protection, thoroughly disposed of their objections to Russia's ownership of that same territory. If they must have a rival in those seas, a thousand times better that it should be Russia than the Triple Alliance. Russia's Black Sea fleet has still to be made powerful enough to be able to interfere in the Mediterranean; she is so dependent upon their assistance to preserve her present position in northeastern Europe that she is not likely to take action elsewhere which would be contrary enough to their interests to cause a rupture of the Entente. On the other hand, the mere possession of the Balkans by Russia would be as permanent a guarantee as could well be imagined of the failure of Pan-Germanism for all time, and would, more than any other one thing, render Morocco, India, and even England itself safe from aggression. In the Black Sea, Russia could create, safe from interference, a fleet which could issue forth from the Straits in time of need and fall upon the rear of the Austro-Italian fleet operating from the Adriatic or Tripoli. Should Russia be able to secure possession of all the 211 PAN-GERMANISM Balkans, she would also control the ^lEgean and the Adriatic, would occupy in Servia a post in the rear of Hungary, highly dangerous to the Dual Monarchy, from which an invasion, simul- taneous with an attack through Galicia, could hardly fail to have fatal consequences. Russia in the Balkans, in other words, would promptly compel Germany and Austria to take up the de- fensive and to do so under distinct disadvantages. Once Russia occupied such a position, England and France could promptly overrun the Mediter- ranean, take Trieste, conquer the Adriatic, isolate Italy, compel her at the very least to cede Tripoli. Thus they could secure a firmer hold upon the Mediterranean than ever before. From Russia's point of view, an independent confederation in the Balkans, coupled to the right of freedom of passage through the Straits and the permission to create a fleet in the Black Sea, would be prac- tically as advantageous a solution as she coidd ask. Aside from the plains of the Lower Danube, the Balkans themselves are of little value to her, and so vitally threaten Austria that war could hardly be avoided. Russia is more anxious to open the Black Sea and to obtain naval control than she is to force the issue with Austria at present. An independent Balkan confederation would protect the Straits from Austria, and would 212 THE BALKAN CRISIS in practice, whatever treaties and agreements might say, give her control. Should the war succeed, the Turk could cer- tainly be driven from Constantinople, and even if it were expedient to leave him there he might be compelled or induced to create a Khalifate in Egypt or Arabia to rule the Mohammedans in the English and French possessions. The latter are extremely desirous of qmeting the religious fer- ment which has so hampered their actions on more than one occasion, by substituting for a religious head of the Mohammedans, held in the clutches of Germany, a religious head in their own control. They wish to remove the excuse for a Holy War, or, at any rate, to prevent the declara- tion of a Holy War by the Sultan in Constanti- nople which Mohammedans throughout the world would feel bound to recognize. Pan-Islam is a spectre terrifying to them in the extreme. More- over, should the Germans achieve anything like further success in the reorganization, so-called, of southeastern Europe, it would become absolutely necessary for some member of the Triple Entente to take possession of Constantinople, to say the least, and, not improbably, to put an end to the nominal independence of Turkey. Such a blow at the Sultan would certainly be resented in India, Egypt, and Morocco, and the statesmen are ex- 213 PAN-GERMANISM tremely anxious either to remove the Sultan from the danger zone or to shear him of his religious headship. The Balkan States scarcely believed in the verity of these communications. The splendor of the opportunity fairly dazzled their eyes. It had long seemed to them that there was really a chance to free themselves from the shackles of both coalitions and of winning from the Turk, without much diflBculty, their freedom and that of their compatriots in the Turkish Empire, so long as the two coalitions did not actually sup- port Turkey. Of that fact they were apprehensive. While the Turk had been the Sick Man of Europe, maintained by the Powers because of the incur- able nature of his disease, the sovereignty of the Turk over the Macedonians and Albanians was purely nominal and the sufferings of the people under his rule practically confined to the reprisals of the soldiery upon the populace. As a neighbor of those Balkan States who had achieved nominal independence, the Sick Man was not very danger- ous. His very incompetence was a practical guar- antee of their own safety. The strengthening of Turkey, the organization of a really efficient ad- ministration and army, whether by the Young Turks or by the Germans, would certainly dimin- ish the probability of securing the actual auto- 214 THE BALKAN CRISIS nomy which the Balkan peoples had long ardently desired. As fast as Turkish government grew bet- ter, to that degree would disappear the grievances which made plausible the demands of the alien peoples for freedom from his rule. Indeed, if many more oflBcers were appointed of the stamp of Hussein Kiazim Bey, the people would have very little to complain about, and the Powers would certainly need some strong arguments to convince them of the expediency of permitting the Balkan States to change the existing dispositions. The continuance, therefore, of the present situa- tion meant that the probability of eventual inde- pendence diminished annually and might soon disappear. The moment, chosen by the two coalitions as opportune for war from their point of view, was singularly advantageous from the point of view of the Balkans themselves. Turkey was at war with Italy; the real Turkish army was in Africa and would stay there as long as the Italian fleet controlled the sea; moreover, they were assured by both coalitions of the nominal character of the rpsistance with which the Turk would oppose them; the war was to be a sham battle arranged for theatrical effect. The Turks themselves were gravely divided between the party willing to cooperate with the Germans and the Young 215 PAN-GERMANISM Turks, anxious to strike a blow for Turkish inde- pendence before it was too late. The Balkan States had, moreover, been most kindly supplied with arms, money, and instruction in tactics and in the "strategy of war by their "friends," and would therefore enter the struggle with literally every circumstance ia their favor. The ease, therefore, of playing the game for themselves, of rushing upon the Turk with all possible speed, of dealing him as many deadly blows as they could as soon after the beginning of war as possible, was so apparent that there was little doubt in Sofia and Athens that the Turk would be brought to his knees before the Powers could realize that they had been betrayed. Once victorious, once pos- sessed of the military control of Turkey, they would have their greatest chance of maintaining their independence that they ever hoped to have. If half a million men, natural soldiers, in a natu- ral fortress, weU equipped with other people's re- sources, could not maintain themselves against assault, independence for the Balkans was a vision which would never be attained. If they must fight to attain it, they could never have a better chance than this. But they were fully aware that the chances of their needing to fight were small. The existence of the two coalitions and the identity of their plans would convince them 216 THE BALKAN CRISIS both that the Balkans were acting in their in- terests, and neither was at all likely to interfere until too late; for, when the truth of the situation should dawn upon them, it was more than likely that they would both see it simultaneously, real- ize that they had been hoodwinked, and be too much afraid of each other to dare to interfere. At any rate, diplomacy could be depended upon to play off the Powers one against the other. If the Balkan States could only get into their hands the strategic places, their assistance would be too vital to the completion of the schemes of both co- alitions to make doubtful their ability to secure their own price. In any case, they would not be again subjected to the Turk. If they must resign themselves to the protection of one coalition or the other, they could undoubtedly secure for them- selves infinitely better terms than they could otherwise have had. Under these circumstances, the Balkan States began the war with a vigor and an energy which astounded Europe, began it, too, in the fall, con- trary to the advice of both coalitions, and pushed it to a successful conclusion within a few weeks. The first result was that anticipated by the Triple Alliance, peace between Turkey and Italy, and the cession to the latter of unconditional sover- eignty over Tripoli. The next results were unex- 217 PAN-GERMANISM pected. The war was too realistic. It was entirely undesirable for the Balkans to destroy the Turk- ish army which the Germans had created with so much difficulty and expense to control Constan- tinople and the Baghdad Railway. The Triple Entente by no means desired to hand over, even for a time, to the Balkan States Constantinople and the Straits. The first successes were probably due to the fact that the Turk was not prepared for that type of an attack, had been ordered to fall back upon Adrianople which was to be besieged. He accordingly fell back on Adrianople; the Bul- garians promptly marched round him, and fell upon the disorganized forces behind, who were as yet unprepared for operations of such magni- tude. Before the Turk had time to take breath, before Berlin and Vienna recovered from the first shock, the Bulgarians were almost within sight of Constantinople, and their allies were pushing the war in the west and south to a successful con- clusion with great rapidity. It now became clear to the Balkans that the moment had come to deal with the Powers. No doubt, before the war began, the confederates had a reasonably clear idea of the terms they could expect from both coalitions, and they did not need to contemplate them longer to see that the Triple Entente was prepared to offer them vastly 218 THE BALKAN CRISIS more satisfactory conditions. At the best, all they could hope from the Triple Alliance was the con- trol of their local aflFairs; the international rela- tions must be delivered over to the allies. The Triple Entente, on the other hand, while it would also expect to direct their international policy, found its own interests best suited by increasing the strength and independence of the Balkans themselves. Pan-Germanism, in fact, depended for its success upon their absorption by Germany and Austria, while the defeat of Pan-Germanism by the Triple Entente would depend upon the ex- tent to which Balkan independence of Germany and Austria could be made a reality. This was certainly as virtual independence as it was prob- able that the possessors of such important strate- gic points would ever be likely to secure from the Powers. The fact that Russia's right of free pas- sage through the Straits would in large measure satisfy her ambitions and put into her hands, without danger to the Balkan Confederation, what she chiefly valued, and what she would ex- pect to obtain from the conquest of the whole territory, nay, what she had believed could be ob- tained only after the conquest of the whole terri- tory, would give them a greater degree of assur- ance against aggression from her, than they could ever have from Austria. Money was another 219 PAN-GERMANISM desideratum. The supply from Berlin and Vienna would obviously cease; there was no money in the Balkans and no resources which could be turned into money. To get the money, therefore, necessary to finance their independence, and, in particular, the money with which to maintain it, should they have to fight longer for it, they must sell themselves to the Triple Entente. This, they proceeded to do with dispatch, and announced in consequence that they would deal only with Turkey and would deal with her only upon the unconditional acceptance of their maximum terms. The King of Greece was to become Presi- dent of the Federation, and the territory con- quered from the Turk — except for Constanti- nople and Saloniki — was to be divided among the existing states. The Bulgarians claimed Thrace; the Greeks, Macedonia; the Servians, Albania, including the seacoast on the Adriatic. Constan- tinople, Saloniki, and the Straits they expected to see internationalized, the Turkish Empire rele- gated to Asia Minor, a freedom of passage ac- corded every one through the Straits. That these terms could finally be obtained, neither the Bal- kans nor their new allies probably believed, but that was no reason why they should not be de- manded. Undoubtedly, the war has been a great victory @20 THE BALKAN CRISIS for the Balkans themselves in their long crusade against the Turk. They now hope to drive the Infidel out of Europe and thus permanently to res- cue their co-religionists from his clutches, both of which achievements would be supremely gratify- ing to them. For the present, at any rate, they are actually independent and, unless a renewal of the war should bring with it unexpected reverses, they are likely to remain so. The chief results of the war, however, have not accrued to them but to their new allies, who have thus eflfectively retrieved the disaster in Tri- poli. Not only will the Balkan Confederation be a stumbling-block in the path of Pan-Germanism, which is hardly likely to be moved for the pre- sent, but temporarily the alliance between the Balkans and the Triple Entente has restored the balance of power in the Mediterranean. The Greeks have driven the Italians out of most of the islands of the ^gean; Crete, which hitherto has had an anomalous existence, as an inter- national possession, has been united to Greece and will give the Triple Entente a powerful naval station east of Malta. Above all, the loss of the islands, the certain strengthening of the Eng- lish and French fleets in the Mediterranean, the improbability of Austria's taking possession of Saloniki for some time to come, have greatly 221 PAN-GERMANISM reduced the chances of the use of Tripoli as a military and naval base. Certainly, until the Austrians and Italians are prepared to contest the supremacy of the Mediterranean, the Italians will have only such relations with Tripoli as the English permit. The latter are not likely to bring the question of Italy's right to Tripoli to a test of force, but they wiU no doubt feel themselves jus- tified in preventing her from attempting any- thing beyond the commercial development of the country. The interposition of the Balkan Confederation between Austria and Turkey has for the time be- ing deprived the Germans of communication with Turkey and has jeopardized their control of the Baghdad Railway. The Turk, excluded from Europe, robbed of his most valuable possession, the Straits, would not be as available material from the German point of view as he was. The new Turkish army, if we suppose that it was safe and sound in Tripoli and was not shot to pieces in the war, would no longer be as valuable as when it could hope to guard the trade route from Constantinople well through the mountains, pro- tecting Constantinople itself and the Baghdad Railway. The importance of protecting the rail- way may still be great, but the commercial im- portance of its protection can amount to very 222 THE BALKAN CRISIS little so long as the trade route has been cut apart in the middle. Not improbably commercial treat- ies can be signed with the Balkans, but if the latter are abletomaintain then-present position either by extortmg favorable terms from the reluctant Turk or by a renewal of the war, such treaties will be subject to rupture at a moment's notice. The expediency may well be questioned of spending money in the development of Asia Minor by a power which can obtain access to the district only by the sufferance of states hostile to her ambitions. These significant changes of strategic position led both the Triple AUiance and the Turks to offer terms of peace so remote from the demands of the Balkan States as to evoke from the latters' representatives at the negotiations opened at London in December, 1912, the excited cry that the Turkish proposals did not even provide a basis for compromise and practically ignored the vic- tories of the allies. The Turkish proposals were in very truth nothing more nor less than the salient features of the plan of the Triple Alliance for the reorganization of south-eastern Europe which would have been executed had the Balkan States remained faithful and conquered Turkey as at first arranged. Such terms would, indeed, rob the victors of the spoils; would create new auto- nomous states out of the territory just conquered, 223 PAN-GERMANISM and, injury of injuries, would actually leave the new states under Turkish suzerainty. Such offers were rightly interpreted as defiance, as unwilling- ness to accept the most obvious facts of the mili- tary situation. In addition, the Albanians were persuaded by Austrian promises of support to declare them- selves independent, and Servia saw her access to the Adriatic, the dearest of her ambitions, her chief reason for joining in the war at all, snatched from her. At Vienna, however, it was felt that im- mediate war would be preferable to the surrender of Albania and the shores of the lower Adriatic to any such confederation supported by the Triple Entente. Vigorous diplomatic representa- tions were followed by the mobilization of Austrian army corps and of the Danube fleet. In the face of this determination, both the Triple Entente and Servia judged it best to agree to the inde- pendence of Albania, and for Servia to obtain access to the Adriatic by means of a railway whose neutrality would be secured by interna- tional agreement. But upon the destruction of the Turkish power in Europe, the Balkans insisted, and were secretly supported by the Triple Entente, which hoped thus to destroy one more link of the chain of Pan-Germanism. The Balkan States, therefore, 224 THE BALKAN CRISIS demanded the surrender of most of Thrace and in particularof the great fortress of Adrianople, whose possession would expose Constantinople to assault at any time and leave the Turk a bare foothold on the Bosphorus, of whichhecouldat any timebe de- prived. Besides, unless Thrace were obtained, there would be no territory to be won by the Bulgarians, who had done most of the fighting, for the Greeks obstinately declined to share Macedonia with them. If Adrianople could not be secured with- out further fighting, it was clearly to the interests of the Balkans and their allies to renew the war. On the other hand, for the Turks to yield Adrianople, without further fighting, would mean for Germany and Austria the unresisting acquies- cence in the virtual failure of Pan-Germanism by permitting the interposition of a permanent bar- rier between them and Asia Minor, which would compel them to relinquish Turkey, Constanti- nople, the control of the Straits, the Baghdad Rail- way, and the commercial route to the East at one fell swoop. To have lost the Balkans was disas- trous; to lose Constantinople as well would be the death-knell of Pan-Germanism. They are there- fore in favor of allowing the Turk to fight again. Nor is the Turk unwilling. The Young Turks are well aware that the new Turkish army, trained by Von der Goltz, has not yet been in 225 PAN-GERMANISM battle, and, until it has been defeated, they de- cline to surrender as much as they might lose if their whole army had been annihilated in a long, hard-fought war. Have they not already beaten the 6reeks? Have they not checked the Italian advance in Tripoli? Above all, these fresh troops, well equipped, will meet an army decimated by its recklessness in earlier battles, with resources seri- ously impaired by a long campaign and a long armistice, and with its lines of communication blocked by snow and ice. At the moment of writing, therefore, January 19, 1913, the renewal of the war seems more likely to further the interests of all concerned than the adoption of any terms yet proposed. The actual inability of Germany or Austria to finance the war for Turkey or to supply her with arms and ammunition may force the latter to yield, and will in all probability prevent pro- longed resistance. Certainly, Austria's inability to float a relatively small loan in Europe and the sale of the bonds in New York at an interest rate of seven per cent, demonstrates conclusively the financial stringency in Austria, Germany, and Italy. It really seems as if the control of the financial world by the Triple Entente had again defeated the Triple Alliance, for the latter, is recommending the Turks to cede Adrianople. 226 THE BALKAN CRISIS For all these reasons, it is highly unlikely that the Triple Alliance will attempt in the immediate future any movement to alter the situation by di- rect intervention in the Balkans. The Confedera- tion is too strong in men, too strongly entrenched to make military operations anything but hazard- ous, even had they no aid to expect from Russia. The whole of Europe is too well prepared to risk a general war at present. Modern warfare is of such character that the element of surprise in an attack is almost certain to conclude the war in the aggressor's favor, while an attack upon a nation fully prepared to receive it becomes under mod- ern conditions inevitably hazardous. Besides, it is by no means clear at the present moment that the Triple Alliance is strong enough in armies and navies to boast an even chance of victory in a contest with the Triple Entente. They will, therefore, if again defeated after the renewal of war, be likely to conceal their chagrin as best they can, accept such losses of strategic position as diplomacy cannot avoid, and hope that some opportunity will appear in the near future of dis- covering a price, which they can afford to pay the Balkans, and which the latter will consider a sufficient inducement, to make it worth their while to change sides. Indeed, the stronger the Balkan Confederation, the more independent, the greater 111 PAN-GERMANISM factor it will become in European affairs, the more difficult it will become for either coalition to act without its support, the more active will be- come their biddmg for its favor, the more diffi- cult'it will become for either of them to interfere in that district by force. The vital difficulty in perpetuating the new Balkan Confederacy is that the governmental lines as they are now drawn do not coincide with the most important racial and religious lines. Bosnia, Herzegovina, and the lUyrian coast, which are now part of Austria, belong racially, re- ligiously, and geographically with Servia. Much of Hungary similarly ought to be connected with Rumania, while Albania contains so many races and creeds that it does not really belong any- where. It must not be forgotten, too, in consid- ering the ease of separating the Balkan Confeder- ation into its component parts by the diplomacy of either coalition, that the Balkans have long been the scene of a blood feud between the Mo- hamiiiedans and Christians, many of whom will inevitably remain in their present positions, and that in the Balkans continues at present the active struggle for supremacy between the Greek and Latin branches of the Christian Church. The hatred of the Greeks in Servia and in Bul- garia was until recently intense, and, however 228 THE BALKAN CRISIS these varied states may have compromised at present their various jarring ambitions, or have buried for the time being their traditional hatreds, once the Turk is thoroughly disposed of, and they settle down to the difficult task of living with each other, they are more than likely to fall at logger- heads over the inevitable administrative and gov- ernmental questions involved in the institution of a permanent settlement. If the treaty of peace hands over Macedonia to Greece, it is hardly likely that the diplomats will succeed in demarcat- ing the limits of that hitherto elastic province in a fashion which will satisfy more than a frac- tion of those interested. There are so many quasi- logical and reasonable methods of separating it from Servia, Bulgaria, and Greece, that none of them are likely to meet the wishes of all concerned. The present Balkan unity is based upon their hatred of the Turk and their fears of European iaterference. When once their autonomy is defi- nitely assured, both of these bonds will disappear, and the lack of geographical, religious, racial, administrative, economic unity of any kind, sort, or description will inevitably begin to manifest itself in ways which cannot be foreseen, and which cannot fail to test to the utmost the sanity and ability of the native statesman. CHAPTER XV THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GEBMANISM ANY consideration, however slight or pasual, of the justifiability of so far-reaching a plan as Pan-Germanism must necessarily begin with the validity of the standard to be employed in judging it. Even a comparatively slight acquaint- ance with history will make sufficiently evident the existence in the world of politics and business of a different standard from that criterion of abso- lute truth which we ordinarily apply to the con- duct of individuals. We find, in fact, that same double standard in existence in international poli- tics which is so perplexing to the majority of men in connection with every-day business, where the usual conception of ethics declares it right for one man to best the other by any means he can, short of actual violence and the actual breach of the letter of the law. The majority of men, what- ever professions they are willing to make verbally, do not practice the Golden Rule or the Ser- mon on the Mount. If we apply to the situation in international politics the ethical and moral tenets, frankly professed by the community, and, 230 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM as frankly, disregarded in every-day life, we shall \ necessarily conclude that Pan-Germanism is not \l and never can be justifiable. If we proceed, too, ji in attempting to evaluate the moral and ethical aspects of Pan-Germanism, from the position in regard to war assumed by the numerous societies advocating international peace or arbitration, we shall also be in danger of assuming the truth of our conclusion as our premise. The advocates of peace declare that war is cruel, brutal, econo- mically wasteful, and, from every point of view, opposed to the true interests of the community as a whole and of the individuals who compose it. They declaim against it as foolish; who would really be so lacking in reason as to suppose that the truth and justice of great questions could be established by fighting? Such men must still be dwelling mentally in the darkness of remote antiquity. They insist that war is void of good result; who can be so lost to all sense of propor- tion and value as to suppose that destruction can be constructive ? To argue from any such premises as these will be necessarily to establish that any such scheme of aggression as that proposed by Germany is not only lacking in morality but in sanity. The candid student, however, who is not anx- ious to support a propaganda, and who seeks 231 C' PAN-GERMANISM rather to explain and expound the real reasons which have led men into such paths as they are ■how following than to cavil and blame, will recog- nize in Pan-Germanism the expression of a na- tional determination to preserve and strengthen the corporate life of a great people. Its basis is Agreed from one point of view, ambition from an- other, but its effective cause in both cases is the xpression of nationality. Germany, in fact, has ttained a national consciousness, a national in- jividuality, and seeks to insure the continued ex- tence of this corporate individual for all time. n-Germanism is merely self-preservation. This new individual, who entered the world through the travail of the nineteenth century, is conscious of his sturdy strength and of his growing needs, is ambitious to improve his own condition and to leave to those who come after him a solid guar- antee of immunity from the suJBFering and priva- tion that he has endured. Above all, he is filled with an uncontrollable determination to establish his economic well-being. With growth have come new economic wants, which have in turn revealed the existence of hitherto unexpected desires, clamoring for satisfaction and to be satisfied only by the increased wealth which depends in its own turn upon the possibility of national expansion, nquestionably, the creation of this corporate THE JUSTIFIABILITY OEPAN-GERMANISI indiviHiial is the result of tEeworking of natural forces, present in the life of every European com' mimity, and to whose operation every nation in Europe owes that degree of prosperity and cor porate consciousness which it possesses. To a greater or less degree, all are actuated by the motives which influence Germany. It is by no means clear that, if their circumstances were identical with hers, they would fail to employ all the methods of which she is ready to avail herself. Whether or not we are willing to admit that there are moral and ethical principles of permanent value, absolutely binding upon all individuals and communities from century to century, we cannot deny that the record of the past amply proves that no nation has yet refrained, because of moral scruples, from advancing its economic or national welfare by any means it could. If Germany is wrong, others too have been wrong; indeed, if her conduct is unjustifiable, no country in the world can establish its moral and ethical right to existence. At the same time that we"! recognize the recrudescence of certain factors 1 famUiar to all situations, we must not be blind to / the vastly more important fact that the present ( situation is literally without precedent m the ids- | tory of the world. ^ — ■' The present international situation is the result 233 PAN-GERMANISM of the economic progress of the last half -century. The improvements in agriculture, in manufactur- ing, in transportation, have for the first time since man began to write the record of his deeds made the world capable of more than keeping itself in existence. The increased production of food and clothes, entirely beyond any immediate needs of the existing community, has stimulated to an unprecedented degree the growth of population, while the progress of industry and agriculture has as constantly out-distanced the increasing popu- lation. The satiation of the old economic wants of the individual, for food, clothes, and shelter, produced inevitably new standards of well-being which declared subsistence to be something more than the ability to keep alive, and which insisted upon a certain excellence of quality in the food and clothes, a certain amount of leisure for amuse- ment and self -culture, a certain degree of educa- tion. The luxuries of preceding centuries became necessities. More economic wants appeared. Men whose ancestors had been well content with one good meal a day and a thatched cottage of one room are demanding a house with glass windows and three liberal meals a day, including fresh meat, beverages, sugar, and butter. While few will claim that the new standard is excessive, no candid student can deny the astonishing increase ^34 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM in the number of economic wants never before felt by so large a proportion of the community. To continue to feed and clothe the growing multitudes, to meet the demands imposed upon industry and agriculture by the new standards of living, an approximate utilization of all the re- sources of the community became necessary. In the past the vastness of the resources of the globe had never been suspected; agriculture had merely scratched the ground; mines had been worked only where large deposits of comparatively free metal lay near the surface; manufacturing, so far as the majority of the community was concerned, had been confined to the production of rough cloth and the absolute essentials of existence. The substitution of machines for the thousands of hands needed in the past for the performance of the same task, the utilization of the resources of the community in anything like an adequate way for the first time, enabled a part of the community to supply the whole with the necessities of life, even according to the new standard of living, and, therefore, enabled the remainder to devote their time to less essential tasks. Many of them turned their attention to meeting the new economic wants, others occupied their time by still further developing the economic possibilities of the com- munity. And for the first time in history, it be- 235 PAN-GERMANISM came possible for vast numbers of men to turn their attention solely to the furtherance of the community's ambitions. Hitherto no standing, army of considerable size could be maintained in Blirope, for the simple reason that so large a number of hands could not be spared from the fields from which the community derived its maintenance. Nor were the transportation facili- ties adequate to provide these men with a steady supply of food and clothes during the necessary period of training. A standing army of hundreds of thousands of men, who devote their whole time to learning the art of war, and who are maintained by the state during their apprenticeship, is a phe- nomenon which nothing short of the economic progress of the last half -century could have made possible. For the first time enough men can be spared from the task of keeping the community _g,live to devote themselves to the prosecution of a / war founded only in aggression. Pan-Germanism has been made possible by the economic growth YqI the nineteenth century. Paradoxical as it may sound, the internal peace of Europe since 1815, except for sporadic out- breaks here and there, has intensified in degree this new phase of national activity. Hitherto, the resources of every country, in men and in food, were periodically reduced by famine and pesti- 236 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM lence, and, above all, by the destructive nature of war as it was necessarily prosecuted before the modem railway made it possible to supply an army from a distance. T^e same lack of trans- portation, which forced the soldiers to forage on the country, also forced each district of the coun- try to depend, almost entirely, in time of peace upon its own efforts for its own subsistence. Floods, drought, blight, various diseases of cattle, produced famine and the inevitable reduction of the population, often in the same little community not less frequently than twice or thrice within a generation. Under these circumstances the abil- ity of a country to go to war, to put men into its army, to divert them from the fields, even during the continuance of the war, depended upon its comparative freedom from these artificial meth- ods of losing its strength. The comparative peace] of the last century/ and the progress of medical I science, as well a0;he advance in agriculture and industry, hav§x€normously strengthened the na- tioas-of-4he world by giving them a surplus of men and materials, which they can now devote to the prosecution of a war of aggression without endangering the lives of those already in existences^ Moreover, this same peace, which has greatly contributed to the unprecedented increase of population and of wealth, and which has per- 237 PAN-GERMANISM mitted the devotion of so much time and labor to the satisfaction of economic wants which past centuries would have considered supprficial, is in no small measure responsible for that very ecdhomic pressure of population, that need of an outlet for the swelling surplus of manufactures which is driving Germany, Austria, and Italy into this great scheme of aggression. Their present resources, their ability to support themselves by the labors of a fraction of the community, which permit them to undertake such aggression, are the very factors which make expansion inevit- able. The interaction and the interrelation of these varied economic factors have produced not (mly the impulse but the means of satisfying it. f The unprecedented growth of population in all countries of Europe, which has compelled them to utilize their resources as never before, has not ,,,-expanded their boundaries. Germany has sub- stantially no more arable land available than in 1815. The erasure of traditional boundaries, the disappearance of administrative and legal factors familiar to the past, does not alter the vital fact that the Germanic race still occupies to all intents and purposes the same territory it held in the year 1500. It is, in fact, in the feeling of limitation, engendered by the extent to which the present natural resources of Europe have been drawn THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM upon to maintain the economic life of the com- munity, that we find the effective explanation of the present frenzied desire for expansion. The benefits which have accrued both to the individual and to the community in well-being, mental as well as physical, from this development, are so vast that no nation can view, except with dismay, the / probability of the retardation of its present rate/ ; of growth. They realize not only that the pre^^ i sent rate of development cannot be continued in Europe, but that it must necessarily stop alto- gether unless the various European nations can extend their activities into other portions of the globe. It is far from improbable that, at the rate of growth during the last century, all land in the temperate zone suitable for the home of the pre- sent European races may be developed within the, next century to the point which Europe has already reached. Who would have imagined in the year 1700 that the continent of North Amer- ica could by any possibility have been brought within the succeeding two hundred years to prac- tically the same point of economic, political,, and social development which the European nations had attained in thousands of years.? In fact, it is pretty generally felt among the statesmen of the leading powers of the world that the present rate of expansion cannot continue, and that inevitably 239 PAN-GERMANISM some nation or nations must fall behind in the race for national and individual well-being. The progress of transportation, resulting in an interdependence of the world and an ease of com- munication between the various parts of it which has brought all countries into close relations with each other, made possible for the first time the clash of interests between nations whose territo- ries were not contiguous. In the old days a nation was intimately concerned only with the policies of its immediate neighbors. France, Germany, and England were vitally interested in the condi- tion of the Netherlands because there all three found their common meeting-point. Russia, how- ever, cared little for the fate of the Netherlands. Now the whole world is necessarily interested in the fate of Belgium and Holland, because its parts are interdependent and are related to each other by the mere fact that they exist on the same sphere. There is no limit to the number or loca- tion of one's rivals. The spread of national inter- * ests throughout the world, due to the fact that the flag has followed the nation's trade, has fur- ther increased the possibilities of disagreement; while the interdependence of the economic world has multiplied for each country the number of interests with which other nations may easily in- terfere. As soon as communication with distant 240- THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM parts of the world was perfected by means of the telegraph, every nation was able to extend its interests throughout the globe without losing that immediate contact upon which the eflScient control of dependencies rests. It is literally pos- sible for England to govern India, for France to rule Morocco, for Russia to direct affairs in Man- churia, with a degree of certainty which would have astounded Marcus Aurelius or Louis XIV. No country, even the smallest, was ever governed before the nineteenth century with the degree of certainty and efficiency now possible in regulating the affairs of the most distant dependencies. The steamship and the railway have made it a simple matter to reach these remote places, with an ex- penditure of time and effort less than used to be necessary for the prosecution of trade or war in Europe. England provisioned her army in South Africa with greater efficiency and dispatch than Napoleon fed his armies, operating in Germany, from the fields of southern France. Transporta- tion, therefore, has not only produced the ability of nations to quarrel, but it has allowed them to fight their battles in the uttermost parts of the world. From these same developments in communica- tion and in transportation has resulted a great increase in administrative efficiency in the home PAN-GERMANISM countries. The government is now able to locate with exactitude the whereabouts of all materials and men useful in any emergency. It can meas- ure with considerable accuracy the degree of the national progress, the amount of surplus strength which the nation can probably afford to expend; it can foresee with some certainty the probable resources of the country for a considerable num- ber of years in advance. Louis XIV, on the other hand, who is the stock example of an absolute monarch employed by most historians, never could tell when there would be any money in the treasury, nor knew with certainty what his oflB- cials were doing a hundred miles from Paris. It is this possibility of measuring and foreseeing that makes possible the formation and execution of plans like Pan-Germanism. Without the tele- graph, how could an army of a million men pos- sibly be summoned to a certain spot for a certain date a week distant; without the railway, how could they possibly be brought there, fed, shel- tered, and maintained during even the few days preceding action; how could they possibly be maintained without the services of the complex modern economic fabric? It is modern science, in fact, which makes modern international poli- tics a possibility. What is more, the telegraph, the printing-presa, U2 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM the newspaper, have created the modern nation of whose ambition and strength these schemes of aggression are merely the expression. The peoples j of the past centuries lived in isolation, never con- scious of what was happening at that same mo- ment elsewhere, rarely able to act in concert for lack of that knowledge. The great movements of history have been limited to small areas, to a few men, because of the impossibility of securing the cooperation of a greater number. Time used to he absolutely a prerequisite for any movement whatever, and there was no means of promptly communicating with every one, or of discovering, soon enough to be of practical value, the senti- ments of different sections of the community. The intensification of national feeling, — one might almost say the creation for the first time of a truly national feeling, — the possibility for the first time of so large an aggregation of individuals having anything resembling unity of thought and feeling, has created the present crisis and is its most salient feature. Each nation, thus more acutely conscious of itself and more keenly con- scious of the conditions which support it, has become more acutely conscious of others and has felt more keenly the differences in develop- ment, in economic status, in intellectual progress, in artistic achievement, which distinguish it from 243 PAN-GERMANISM its neighbors. The extent and possible variety of interests are dawning upon the national conscious- ness for perhaps the first time with anything like adequacy, and with it, also for the first time, there is dawning in the minds of all nations some faint adumbration of the glorious national future before a people capable, really and literally, of acting, thinking, and feeling as one. Indeed, the vision has toused men from the contemplation of their own petty doings and lifted them into a sphere broader and more impersonal. For a great people, who had become conscious of such a unity of feeling, of such a dependence upon each other, and of the possibilities of united action, nothing is more normal than to attempt, by the exercise of forethought, to increase the strength, capacity, and influence of this corporate body, to knit it more firmly together, to place it upon a still more solid basis of economic prosperity. Nor is it strange that the first ecstasy of national conscious- ness should have brought with it fears for its own continuance and a passionate desire to insure that continuance for all time. Indeed, it is probably no exaggeration to claim that the present aggressive schemes of most European nations are soberly intended to preserve what exists rather than to increase it, even though by preservation they mean no mere continued existence, but the abso- THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM lute assurance of the existence of a prosperous, enlightened nation for the rest of time. One trouble which most students seem to ex- perience in attempting to judge the present crisis arises from the tendency to assume that the great- est good is to be insured by the preservation of the conditions now in existence. One might almost say that the advocates of peace tend to regard the present status quo as the end and object of the process of evolution. They seem, in fact, to oppose, or at least to deprecate, the persistent attempts of mankind to accelerate the pace of civilization, and to desire to limit the tools which men are to use in the future to economic weapons. Probably this phase of contemporary thought is a part of the natural reaction from the logical consequences of the doctrine of evolution as expounded by Spencer. To their thinking, the relegation of the influence exerted by moral and ethical forces to the second rank proceeds from a failure to appreciate their real force, and they are consequently drawn into an aggressive assertion of the superiority of mind over matter, of the spiritual over the physical, among those varied forces to whose operation the development of society has been due. One can hardly study the modem situation, however, without becoming keenly aware that the difference between war and 245 PAN-GERMANISM peace, as the words are ordinarily used, is rather one of degree and of outward form than of pur- pose. The nations of the world have unquestion- ably been busy for the last half-century with the determined attempt to surpass each other, to get possession of things which they did not have already, by methods which rest certainly upon the same ethical foundation that war does, and whose results upon the individual, and even upon nations, are not necessarily different in kind from those of actual warfare. To be sure, the financial operations known as peaceful penetration are not exactly what we have been accustomed to consider methods of violent conquest; but by such means large numbers of the inhabitants of the smaller countries have just as certainly lost their land and the products of their labor as if an army had destroyed them. There is perhaps a nice discrimi- nation to be drawn by some logician between tak- ing a man's property away from him or stealing a nation's independence by means of an army and by means of high finance; but if the individual or the nation suffers the same loss from both pro- cesses, and if the intent is essentially the same, it is diflScult to see where the ethical grounds sup- porting them differ. If it would be wicked for Germany to enter Belgium with an army and take possession of the country, seizing the revenues and 246 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM compelling the Belgians to accept from them loans of money at such terms that the Belgians would practically lose possession of their own govern- ment for half a century to come, why is it more moral for France to obtain the same results in Morocco, or for the United States in a similar manner to secure possession of Mexico and Central America, so that the inhabitants have scarcely anything left to call their own but their very lives? Indeed, there are more ways of conquest than fighting, and more methods of robbery than the Middle Ages were familiar with. It must be admitted in all candor that the im- pulses behind Pan-Germanism exist at present in all nations, and that no nation is likely at pre- sent to forego the possibility of future develop- ment because of even the most plausible ethical or logical pleas. The three nations, who have entered into the promotion of Pan-Germanism, are not different from the others in morals or in aims. Their geographical position, their peculiar eco- nomic fabric, the traditions of their past, all force upon them the aggressive part and make imme- diate action desirable. England, France, Russia, and the United States already possess the choice places in the world; their position is already everything they could reasonably hope to have it; and they scarcely deserve to be praised for unsel- 247 PAN-GERMANISM fishness when they insist upon preserving a situa- tion which is so very much to their advantage. Obviously, their national existence and ambition will be best furthered by the continuance of the status gwo^ because they will thus be able to keep what they already hold. Nor is it proved that they have obtained it by the observance of the ethical precepts which they would now be glad to apply to Germany; they secured their empires, in fact, by precisely those methods which Ger- many wishes to use against them. It is as selfish for them to insist upon peace as it is for the Ger- mans to demand war. In reality, the difference of opinion as to the proper procedure for settling the difficulty is not based upon ethical concepts at all. It merely means that the Triple Entente prefers to employ in the struggle only the economic and financial weapons in whose use they are already ' adepts and of which they already possess so many more than their rivals as to make the outcome of the struggle, if fought on this basis, practically positive to be in their favor. The Triple Entente, in fact, like the good Doctor Franchard, have de- rived their philosophy from their desires, and have painted a picture of the millennium of peace whose lineaments are necessarily those of their present condition. Germany, Austria, and Italy, conscious of their disadvantage on the economic plane, are 248 THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF PAN-GERMANISM anxious to employ in the coming duel a diflPerent type of weapon, in whose use they believe them- selves more expert than are their enemies. One might almost compare the two coalitioni" with a trained swordsman and a countryman who have somehow gotten into a quarrel. The swords- man wishes to settle the point of honor by a duel with rapiers under limitations which require the combatants to employ only one arm and to use only the point, to attack only after due warning, and not to press the adversary to the utmost. These conditions condemn the countryman to defeat. He wishes to fight with his fists, to hit wherever he can and as often as possible, to give no quarter, and to continue the fight until one or \ the other is exhausted. The swordsman, gazing— upon the brawny figure of his opponent, is afraid that, in a struggle of that nature, he might not be, successful, and hesitates to stake his all upon a rough-and-tumble battle. He insists upon fight- ing like a gentleman, and talks about honor, and ethics, and the obligations of civilization. The countryman sees plainly enough that all this is in- tended to rob him of an advantage, and he, there- fore, declines to be bound by a variety of ethics or a code of morals which necessarily condemn him to defeat. So of the two coalitions; the Triple Entente, M9 PAN-GERMANISM with so much to lose, is most anxious to avoid an appeal to fisticuffs, and wishes, if possible, to limit the weapons, and thus the extent of defeat. The Triple Alliance, with little likelihood of succeed- ing, but with nearly everything to gain if it should succeed, is a great deal more willing to appeal to the ultimate arbitrament of war. As a matter of fact, they regard war as their last chance. They have fought the Triple Entente with economic weapons for a good deal more than a generation and are not yet within measurable distance of victory. If, then, we regard the truth as a concept which becomes gradually visible as we study the record of the past, if moral concepts are not those which men proclaim but those by which they live, we shall be forced to admit that the Triple Alliance is not morally worse than the Triple Entente. Certainly, the validity of such standards in such circumstances as their adver- saries wish to apply has never yet been admitted by any nation within the ken of history. The Germans refuse, therefore, to accept an adverse judgment based upon standards which cannot claim general acceptance by the Congress of Nations. CHAPTER XVI THE PROBABILITY OF THE SUCCESS OF PAN-GERMANISM I. Internal Weaknesses THE most interesting phase of the present international situation to the vast majority of people comprises those considerations which serve in one way or another as indications of the probable success or failure of the schemes at pre- sent advocated by the two great coalitions. As has already been said, the success of Pan-Ger- manism will depend upon the truth or falsity of the German notions of the situation in Europe, upon the verity of their ideas regarding the proportional strength of the various nations and the adequacy of the methods they have devised for taking ad- vantage of what they believe to be a superior position. In the chapters devoted to an exposition of the German view of the present situation, the factors in their favor were described as fully as is possible in so brief an account as this. Nor is there a great deal of doubt in the impartial stu- dent's mind regarding the substantial truth of the propositions there laid down. The strong points 251 PAN-GERMANISM of the German case are naturally those whose truth is not likely to be contested, and, in order to put the case forcibly enough to carry convic- tion to the ordinary Anglo-Saxon, it seemed bet- ter to group strong facts and to postpone for the time a discussion of weaknesses. While it is prob- able that the Germans exaggerate the degree of their own strength and the extent of England's weakness, while it is probable that they rely too much upon the assumed difference in eflEiciency between their administration and that of France and Russia, it cannot be gainsaid by a candid observer that on the whole the Germans' notion of the proportional supremacy of the various nations and in particular their ideas of English history are substantially correct. Indeed, no one has stated these propositions with greater force than Professor Seeley, whose "Expansion of England" appeared at just the time when Pan- Germanism was in the making. England is no longer defended by the Channel as she once was; she certainly never took possession of her depend- encies by actual conquest, nor does she retain possession by means of physical force; the self- governing colonies are manifestly without geo- graphical contiguity, and have been independent in all but name for the better part of a century. The weakness of England's long chain of strate- 252 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES gic points has always been apparent to its pos- sessor; but, so long as it served the purpose for which it was constructed, there was no reason for abandoning it simply because certain conditions might render it vulnerable. The Germans also correctly appreciate the fact that an English victory in a naval war will simply maiataia the position which she already holds; a defeat they also see will be fatal to her; in a naval war she has comparatively little to gain, while they may win everything. To their thinking this balances the scales very much in their favor. To reach them, the English must have recourse to land warfare for which they are not really fitted, and not well placed, since the true base of the English position against Germany, so far as the offensive is concerned, is the frontier between Germany and Belgium and Holland. From a military point of view, the seizure of these two countries by Ger- many at the moment of the outbreak of war wotild move the Germans intcf what is properly speaking English territory and demolish important obsta- cles in the way of an attack upon England's most vital spot. There seems to be some truth in the German view that Russia and France are not as capable as she of utilizing their full resources with promptitude. It is extremely probable that most nations in the world would be very glad to 253 PAN-GERMANISM assist in looting the British Empire. Certainly the German scheme for taking possession of her own lands and factories, which have been devel- oped with borrowed money, has been executed before in similar cases with undoubtedly disas- trous results to the borrowers. It has never been consciously attempted on so huge a scale. The potency of the economic weapons which she be- lieves can be brought to bear upon England and France is undoubted, but there seem to be a good many diflBculties in the way of putting such forces into effective operation. In short, on its face the German scheme is not only feasible but conclusive. Theoretically there are no flaws. In attempting to render judgment upon so stu- pendous an enterprise, we must not forget that, as students, we are really not in a position to render more than an approximate judgment, be- cause we cannot be at all certain that we know all the essential details, or that we know the truth about factors of such evident importance as the eflficiency of armies and navies, the real economic strength of the countries, the actual situation of forts and batteries. We cannot in the nature of things have more than an approximate idea of the scheme itself or of the conditions on which it is based, and we therefore must be content with a very approximate judgment. The really satisfac- 254> INTERNAL WEAKNESSES tory evidence in favor of the feasibility of Pan- Germanism is to be found in the obvious fact that the statesmen and diplomats of Europe, who know more about the situation than historians ever wUl, believe that its success is probable. There can be no doubt that the leaders in Germany, Austria, and Italy have believed in the certainty of its eventual success for more than a generation. The evident fears and public avowals of imminent danger threatening the members of the Triple Entente is conclusive proof that they too consider it feasible.^ Another earnest of its possibility is to be found in the degree of completion- already attained. In the fall of the year 1912 it looked for a week or two as if the Pan-German confed- eration had actually come into existence. It was certainly within measurable distance of comple- tion. Than this no better evidence is available. When, however, we write of the success of Pan- Germanism, we mean something more complex than at first may appear. Pan-Germanism in- volves the creation of the confederation of states which it intends to make the controlling factor in international politics; it involves, in the next place, the ability of this confederation to get con- ' See the speech of Premier Borden of Canada advocating a new naval policy and the Official Memorandum of the English Admiralty on England's present and future naval position, both of which are printed in the Appendix. 255 PAN-GERMANISM trol of the world or at least to defeat England; it further assumes the feasibility of maintaining control and of preserving its own existence against internal a^ well as external foes. The Germans are apparently ready to assume the ease of creat- ing the confederation and devote their attention chiefly to the possibility of securing control of the world, should they succeed in developing their own offensive strength in the manner proposed. All the conditions advanced about England's weak- ness and the inefficiency of France and Russia bear upon the second of these three propositions, and have little or nothing to do with the first and third. This is the real weakness of Pan-German^- ism. If we are not led astray by the fact that we probably are not permitted to know as much about the German plans for accomplishing the first and third of these objects as they are ready to tell us about the premises upon which the second depends, it is upon this rock that the scheme will probably be wrecked. It cannot be too often said, however, that the statements in regard to the weakness of her enemies have been promulgated with a frequency and decisiveness, which lends color to the assumption that they were made with official sanction for the sake of the moral effect that they would have in Germany and particularly in other parts of the world. Undoubtedly, the 256 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES difficulties of creating the confederation at all are better known in Berlin and Vienna than we can possibly envisage them; the certain difficulties of maintaining control of the world, once it is ob- tained, cannot fail to have caused the statesmen of the Triple Alliance many anxious hours. Natu- rally, they are less ready to call attention to such aspects of the plan than they are to the more obvi- ous factors where the verdict of history and the testimony of their own enemies prove them to be right. Pan-Germanism, in fact, is weakest at its centre. Its success is least probable at home. Without the cooperation of Austria and Italy, the scheme is impossible, and scarcely two generations ago the enmity between the three allies led them into war with each other. Austria and Prussia have hated each other throughout history with a vigor scarcely surpassed by the hatred which Prussia bears France. Indeed, when Bismarck was first in Vienna he doubted his own safety. The Italians have by no means lost their distrust of Austria, and it is really probable that the first successes gained by the alliance may result in such acces- sions of strength to one or more of the allies as to rouse the jealousies and apprehensions of the others. The notion of putting into Austria's hands the whole eastern coast of the Adriatic 267 PAN-GERMANISM is extremely distasteful to Italy, and certainly would place Austria in a strong position, from which the conquest of the Po Valley would be undoubtedly feasible. There are vital differences, therefore, between the three contracting countries. Moreover, Prussia and- Austria are thoroughly well hated in southern Germany. The comic papers of Munich are fond of printing scandal- ous cartoons and squibs about the emperors; it is popularly supposed that neither emperor would dare venture into southern Germany without a large bodyguard. It must not be forgotten that the German Constitution gives the southern states important military privileges, which could not fail to be of consequence in time of war. Furthermore, southern Germany controls import- ant approaches to Alsace, the passes through Switzerland, and the whole upper half of the Rhine and Danube valleys. In Alsace and Lor- raine public feeling against Prussia is exceedingly strong; at a recent public meeting, an official openly turned the Emperor's statue with its face to the wall amid pretty general and open expressions of approval. The recent erection and dedication of a German statue at Metz, commemorating battles of the Franco-Prussian War, was, to say the least, unfortunate in its effect upon public opinion. The incidents given by Stevenson in S5S INTERNAL WEAKNESSES his "Inland Voyage" are enlightening as to the sentiments of the people who occupy the strate- gic point of greatest importance to Prussia: "In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street at a foot pace singing to a very slow, lament- able music, 'O France,, mes amours.' It brought everybody to the door, and when our landlady called in the man to buy the words, he had not a copy of them left. ... I have watched a forester from Alsace, while some one was singing 'Les mal- heurs de la France,' at a baptismal party. . . . He arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where I was standing. 'Listen, listen,' he said, bearing on the boy's shoulder, 'and remember this, my son.' A little after he went out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in the darkness. In what other country will you find a patriotic ditty bring all the world into the street?" The eflSciency of Austria in the coming genera- tion, the possibility of maintaining its position in Europe and of contributing strength to the Triple Alliance, depend upon the ability of the present rulers to maintain the present relations between Austria and Hungary and between the various sections of the Austrian Empire. There is per- haps no part of Europe where racial feeling is so intense or where so many races are juxtaposited. 259 PAN-GERMANISM Their quarrels have filled the history of Europe with discord; the number of irreconcilables, who wish to overthrow the present government and to substitute for it anything else whatever, is extremely large, and seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Hungary hates Austria; Bo- hemia wishes to be independent; the Slavs and Croatians in the southwest have agitated inde- pendence for generations; the Ruthenes and the Poles in the northeast are equally determined to submit to Austrian rule no longer than they must. In Hungary, the struggle of the Magyars to retain their racial supremacy is of the keenest, and con- stantly results in violent outbreaks and riots.* So slight a thing as the posting of a sign in one language or another over a railway station has been known to result in a riot of nearly the pro- portions of a civil war. Recently when the Italian students at the University of Vienna undertook to celebrate one of their national holidays, the German and the Austrian students attempted to put a stop to it by force. The police interfered; were met by armed resistance from the students; and it was for some days doubtful whether peace could be preserved by the military in one of the greatest capitals in Europe. Surely a pitched ' "Even in quiet times the Magyar will get the gypsies to play him the song, 'The German is a blackguard.'" Bismarck, Beflee- iiont and ReminUcencea, ii, 257. INTERNAL WEAKNESSES battle between Italians, Austrians, and Germans arising out of racial and national feeling, fought in the streets of Vienna, is a sinister omen in the path of Pan-Germanism. It has been widely pro- claimed by both the initiated and the uninitiated that Austria-Hungary has been held together for more than a decade simply because the various warring elements have been waiting for the death of the present Emperor to give the signal for re- volt. Surely, when the student considers the re- lative international weakness or national strength of the countries of Europe, it will be difiScult for him to value Austria-Hungary at anything above the minimum figure. The great district known as the Balkans is an absolutely essential factor of the Pan-German confederation, yet there is no part of all Europe which lacks more conspicuously geographical, political, and racial unity. The Balkans include all the land stretching from the water parting of the Tyrolese and Transylvanian Alps to the Med- iterranean and the Mgean, — the rich plains of the Lower Danube, the tablelands and mountain valleys of Macedonia and Servia, the wild crags of Montenegro and Albania. The people range from stolid peasantry in the valleys to wild, scarcely civilized hillmen in the west and the in- telligent cultivated citizens of Sofia and Athens. 261 PAN-GERMANISM The racial admixture is extraordinary in ita variety and distribution. There are many dis- tricts where no single race can boast predomin- ance. For centuries the Balkans have been the seat of fhe most intense religious hatred in Eu- rope and are the only states where active war- fare still continues between the Christian and the Infidel and between the Latin and Greek Churches. There are not a few districts where, as in Albania, the Mohammedan, the Greek Christian, and the Catholic live so near one an- other as to result in constant reprisals which keep the community in a condition of alarm and anx- iety. The problem of creating amid such con- ditions, out of such varied races, whose religious and racial hatreds and antipathies are so intense, a strong series of states which will act in concert with the Triple Alliance in the execution of so complicated a scheme as Pan-Germanism, would seem to the observer to border upon impossibility. The Balkans hate each other so cordially, the states which have attained politicial existence contain within their own borders so many ele- ments of discord, that it might almost be claimed that the only elements of unity are the vigorous hatred that they all bear the Turk and the in- tense suspicion with which they all regard Austria and Russia. 262 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES Yet, through these defiles run the great roads connecting Europe and Asia, along which the trade of centuries has passed, and which must still continue to be the channels of overland commun- ication with the East. The Balkans hold the east- em side of the Adriatic, the western shore of the Black Sea, the whole lower course of the Danube, and two sides of the ^gean. If the Triple Alli- ance ever expects to obtain a position of import- ance in the Mediterranean, it must possess them. Yet the dream of the peoples in those valleys and plains is for autonomy, freedom from European interference, the exclusion of the religious, strate- gic, political interests of other nations, the recog- nition of their right to live for themselves. To use these peoples in the formation of the Pan- German confederation means and will continue to . mean their armament by Austria and Germany, the financing of their preparations for war, — in fact, the placing in their hands of weapons which will be exactly as useful against the Triple Alli- ance as against the Triple Entente. The creation in the Balkans of a confederation of states of the type desired by Austria and Germany is perhaps possible and may be, indeed, feasible; but the preservation of the control of the Triple Alliance over those states, once created, the ability of the statesmen in Berlin and Vienna to rouse in those PAN-GERMANISM peoples any enthusiasm for Pan-Germanism, seems highly improbable. At the present moment of writing, it looks as if a confederation hostile to the Triple Alliance had been formed, which is proWably strong enough to maintain itself for some decades. The conquest of the Balkans by Austria would be no easy matter. The land itself is a natural fortress, improved by Austrian and German engineers in all those varied ways which modern warfare has made possible, and the bat- teries have been erected on the borders between Austria and the Balkans as well as on the south. This was the price which the Balkan States de- manded in exchange for tike cooperation which they promised : they must be provided with wea- pons which would assure their independence even of Austria. The people are natural soldiers, care- fully drilled, well equipped, flushed at present with victory, and fired with the determination to maintain their independence against all comers. Nothing could possibly be more detrimental to the interests of Pan-Germanism, and it seems to be a difficulty which nothing short of years can remove. The position of the Balkans, should they maintain it, would be definitive in bringing about the failure of Pan-Germanism. The last link in the German chain, the first one they attempted to create, is Turkey. The natural 264 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES iieptitude of the Turkish Government has be- come a byword of statesmen; the Turks are alien in race and religion to the majority of the subject peoples; their hatred for the Christians is still in- tense; and the difficulty, therefore, of conducting operations through their hands is great. That, however, might be overcome had the Turk con- tinued supine. The real difficulty which at pre- sent stands in the way of the establishment of German control in Turkey is the rise among the Turks of a national party whose chief aim is the exclusion of the foreigner and the government of Turkey solely in the interest of the Turk. Under this banner have been enlisted the majority, at any rate, of the Turks intelligent enough to be en- trusted with the administration of their own coun- try. The mere fact that they are an insignificant minority of the population, that the rest of the Turks have no effective desire for self-govern- ment and are certainly not capable of it, does not in the least change the significant fact that the only Turks who might govern their coimtry, as the Germans wish it done, decline the task. In- deed, the Young Turks assisted ,j the German plans and created the present government, with the idea that Germany would allow them to rule the rest of their countrymen. Their disappoint- ment was exceedingly bitter when they learned 265 PAN-GERMANISM that the real direction of policy and the control of finance was to rest with the German officials in Constantinople. The probable disappearance of European Turkey as a result of the Balkan War will c^tainly increase the difficulty the Germans have already experienced. The problem of Pan-Germanism in Turkey is not as serious as it is in Austria, in Hungary, and in the Balkans. In fact, Pan-Germanism itself is a coalition of coalitions in the most literal sense of the word. Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Bal- kans, Turkey, are none of them states where the racial lines have been unified, the religious antipa- thies even minimized, and the state or adminis- tration able to rely upon the support and affec- tion of the whole people. Out of such material, Pan-Germanism proposes to create another con- federation, whose basis will be even more slender than that of any of the confederations out of which it is to be made, and whose continued exist- ence will necessarily be daily exposed to the as- saults of internal enemies. A vital change in any one of the confederations composing it would in all probability have fatal effect upon the greater entity. It is not too much to say that the success of the whole scheme depends absolutely upon the stability and efficiency of Germany and Austria. 266 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES Nay, the continuance even of the attempt to exe- cute the scheme is contingent upon the continu- ance in oflSce of those who are at present directing the policy of those states and upon their ability to dictate the disposition of the national resources. The continuity of policy is an absolutely indis- pensable part of Pan-Germanism; yet there are no countries in Europe where the forces strug- gling to effect fundamental alterations in consti- tutional, administrative, and political conditions, are more persistent and more powerful, and which possess greater chances of success. The number of irreconcilables, which means to the European the number of those who regard the very existence of the state as a fundamental grievance which nothing except its destruction can remedy, is very large, and comprises considerable sections of the population, who occupy important strategic posi- tions, and who elect without difficulty numerous representatives to the assemblies. The Socialists in Germany are exceedingly strong, are growing in numbers at a portentous rate, and are rapidly outstripping the other parties in the Prussian houses and in the Reichstag; they already practi- cally control the city of Berlin and comprise the numerical majority in many other cities. The Opposition in the Austrian and Hungarian Parlia- ments is so strong that the business of the session 267 PAN-GERMANISM frequently has to be suspended for days and weeks, and it has more than once been necessary to break the deadlock by calling in the military to remove the obstructionists, before any busi- ness could be done. The system of representa- tion, provided by the constitutions of these na- tions, permits most of the people to vote, but evaluates the individual vote on the basis of pro- perty and education. The adoption of universal suffrage of the English, French, or American pat- tern would promptly throw into a hopeless minor- ity the parties which now control those states and practically reverse their policies in every particu- lar. The official proclamation of the Socialist Party in Germany declares the present aggressive stand of Germany wrong. It is perhaps not with- out significance that the most popular party in Germany takes upon the question of Pan-Ger- manism the attitude of the irreconcilable, and, because it involves war, declares the very nature of the scheme inexpedient and undesirable. All of these influences may not actually be powerful enough to prevent the present rulers from making the nominal alliances which will put Pan-Ger- manism in the arena, but it is scarcely probable that they will not have an exceedingly important effect upon its stability and its continuity of pol- icy. That Pan-Germanism can be created is not S68 INTERNAL WEAKNESSES perhaps to be gainsaid; that such a confedera- tion could perhaps inflict a crushing blow upon the Triple Entente is quite within the bounds of probability; but that Pan-Germanism, resting upon such a basis, can long withstand the assault of its internal and external enemies seems utterly improbable. The greatest genius of the English has been their skill in diplomacy, the keenness with which they have ordinarily analyzed the situation, and the great ability they have shown in expounding its various possibilities to the disorderly elements in Europe. They have won their present position, as the English historians have forcibly pointed out, by taking advantage of the mutual jealousies and rivalries of Europe. Time and time again a great coalition has been actually put into the field against them, only to be rent apart by English diplomacy. The Germans assume that the pos- sibility of repeating such feats of diplomacy has been dissipated by the alterations in the politi- cal structure of Germany, Austria, and Italy, or by the reduction of England's relative strength. Yet, it is far from true that England is isolated in the world; she possesses three immensely pow- erful allies in France, Russia, and the United States; that coalition already holds in its hands the greater part of the habitable globe, and con- PAN-GERMANISM trols the oceans, the major part of the economic resources of the entu-e world, and practically its whole financial fabric. The fimdamental error Germany has committed has been to suppose, that befcause the position of England in the world is vitally altered, because England can no longer be maintained in her proud predominance by the factors which originally created it, that there are no factors of prime importance to maintain it. The truth seems to be that the English position has been changed in nature but not in essence. Because she does not rely upon factors to-day which were conclusive in their effect upon Euro- pean politics three centuries ago, their present worthlessness must not be construed as the total absence of all strength. In this particular, how- ever, nothing is changed. The condition of Eu- rope itself, in which English diplomacy has so invariably found weapons for the defense of the is- land kingdom, to-day presents to as great a degree as ever before a tangle of conflicting interests and traditional antipathies, in which the English are more than likely in their habitual manner to find the solution for their present difficulties. If it is true that England's strength has been due to the balance of power in Europe rather than to her own physical resources, the prime condition for the con- tinuance of her authority is still in existence. CHAPTER XVII THE PROBABILITY OF THE SUCCESS OF PAN-GERMANISM II. External Weaknesses WHEN the Germans prate of the willingness of the world to join them in the hope of looting the British Empire, they seem to suppose that the English and the French will tamely sit still and allow them to bring their plans to per- fection. Something has already been said in a previous chapter about Italy's position in the Mediterranean, her fear of Austria, and, in gen- eral, her lack of that same vital interest in Pan- Germanism which her two allies undoubtedly possess. While the great scheme is probably the most plausible and feasible ever suggested for the preservation and expansion of Germany and Austria, there are many other possibilities before Italy. She has already proved in the case of the Tripolitan War that she has her price and is by no means bound to the Triple Alliance with eternal chains. Suppose now that England and France should increase their offer to her and should be able to fulfill it, would she still cling to 371 PAN-GERMANISM Pan-Germanism, and could it be completed with- out her assistance and with her opposition? Sup- pose France offered Spain a ipart of Morocco; that England offered Italy Egypt in addition to Tripoli, reserving only the right of free passage through the Suez Canal and the control of the Red Sea; that the Triple Entente guaranteed the autonomy of Greece and the Balkan States, and secured from Russia the suspension at least of her claims to territorial expansion in that district, in exchange for at least the right of free passage through the Straits and the control of the Black Sea; suppose that they offered the Young Turks control of Asia Minor, with financial support for their government, in exchange for the commercial privileges of the Baghdad Railway and the right to irrigate Mesopotamia; suppose England and Russia offered the Persians autonomy in exchange for a monopoly of trade and the right to construct the Trans-Persian Railway; would not the situa- tion be materially altered? Would not the Triple Entente be more than likely to assure itself of the permanent support of these states whose adher- ence is absolutely essential to Pan-Germanism? Would the Pan-German Confederation, even if actually created, be proof against such offers, when the Triple Entente could without exaggera- tion promise to every one of those states such 272 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES privileges as the price of their support, with the certainty that their desertion would so completely destroy the confederation and weaken Germany and Austria as to make actual war impossible? Truth to tell, the Triple Entente would prefer to keep all it has; but is it not a purely gratuitous assumption to suppose that they will be so blind as not to see that by parting with some of it they might easily insure their possession of the re- mainder for another couple of generations? While the Germans have correctly read the his- tory of the British Empire and have appreciated to the full the importance of the assistance of the native races in creating the present position held by England, they seem to believe that the English power at present has no other ba,sis than that which it possessed in the beginning. They forget the ability with which the English have ruled India, the undeniable benefits which they have conferred upon the Hindu, the fact that the com- mon people have for the first time been treated with what we should call decency, accorded jus- tice, and allowed to retain a sufficient proportion of their produce to live upon. However true may be the tales of oppression in India that Germany and Russia have industriously collected and spread, they are certainly insignificant compared to the oppression and suffering visited upon that 273 PAN-GERMANISM unhappy land since before the time when history was. The wave of democracy, which is sweeping on into the Orient, has not escaped the Hindus; but a most careful investigation of the question by disinterested students has yet failed to re- veal any very considerable number of Hindus who believe the varied races huddled together in India capable of governing themselves. The Eng- lish have appreciated (and so far as we can tell with absolute justice) the fact that the democratic movement in India is the work of one race and one religion, which would be glad to rule over the other races and the other religions. It is not, therefore, difficult to demonstrate to the Hindu of the Brahmin caste the undesirability of being ruled by the Mohammedans, while the latter are by no means enthusiastic about being ruled by the Brahmin. Each is zealous about obtaining for his own sect the right to govern India; each is as unwilling to be ruled by other Hindu sects, who do not agree with him in religion, as he is to have the present English rule continued. When it is simple to demonstrate to them all that the departure of the English will certainly not result in the government of India by any native race or sect, but in its conquest by Russia or Germany, the desire of the Hindus and Mohammedans for the expulsion of the English is necessarily much 274 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES modified. So clear have the English made these facts to those natives who alone are capable, either from their ability or from their position, of under- taking such a movement, that the likelihood of any revolt against the English in India is small and the faithful support of the native princes firmly assured, at any rate, so long as the pre- sent international situation continues. Suppose that the international situation should suddenly change, that, for any one of fifty reasons, the expulsion of all foreigners from India should seem probable, would not the English then Ije in a position to offer the natives, in exchange for the trade monopoly they have always had and to which the native does not apparently seriously object, their assistance in securing and maintain- ing actual autonomy? Would not the Germans or the Russians be met by a very different sort of a force than the beggarly thousands of Englishmen whom they affect so to despise? In fact, to snatch India from a few thousand Englishmen with the assistance of the Hindu is one thing; to conquer India from the English and the Hindu combined, in the face of a century of admirable adminis- tration by England and the promise of practical autonomy for the native states in the future, would be a very different thing. If one is emi- nently feasible, the other is exceedingly improb- 275 PAN-GERMANISM able; and the facts of the situation, so far as they can be learned, seem to indicate with precision that the latter is the truth. The Germans have made much of the lack of commo^^ economic interests between England and her self-governing colonies because of the distances which sunder them. As a matter of fact, it is easier to-day to carry on trade with New Zealand at a distance of over twelve thousand miles — it is possible to send that distance com- modities that until the last half-century were never shipped at all — than it was before the year 1850 to carry on trade overland between Berlin and Munich. Nor are the freight charges in one case probably much in excess of those in the other. Certainly the time consumed does not so greatly differ. Most people forget with ease the common facts of history concerning the length of time consumed by journeys undertaken with- out the aid of the railway. While the analogy must not be too closely pressed, it is substantially true that the economic tie between England and her colonies is probably quite as close to-day as the economic ties between different parts of the German Empire previous to the Zollvereia. To be sure, this argument does not presage great strength for such relations, but it does show that the mere fact of the existence of the Atlantic 276 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES Ocean is not suflScient to prove that there is not and never can be a substantial identity of eco- nomic interests. But waiving that, assuming that the only bond there is or can be between England and her self-governing colonies is that of blood, it will be diflSicuIt for the student to deny that the racial tie is more than likely to be suflBcient to hold the Empire together, and to secure actual support from the colonies in ships and troops. Enthusiastic response to the recent appeal of the mother country for assistance shows conclusively that there is a good deal more likelihood of the tie between England and her colonies being suffi- cient to hold them together than that the present political tie will be sufficient to prevent the com- plete dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. If we take the most unfavorable statement possible of the British Empire and the most favorable state- ment of the actual situation in the Dual Mon- archy, it will be difficult to deny that the British Empire possesses all those qualities of unity of race, of language, of religion, of economic inter- est, of policy, of loyalty, which the Dual Monarchy conspicuously lacks. And the continued existence of the Dual Monarchy is a good .deal more im- portant to Pan-Germanism than the assistance of the English colonies is likely to be to the Triple Entente. 277 PAN-GERMANISM In regard to the econoinic weapons upon which Germany places so much reliance, the truth of the facts alleged is not possible of denial, but the inferences drawn from them seem to be enor- mously e3^ggerated. Unquestionably, Germany does possess the reality, and other nations pos- sess paper evidences of their investments, and if Germany should decline to pay her loans, and if she should be able to maintain herself in war, disastrous results might be produced. The possi- bility of the confiscation of the English invest- ments in other parts of the world does not seem to be probable. It has always been true that the strong man could rob the weaker, that the strong nation could rob the smaller; but the experience of men throughout the centuries seems to have demonstrated pretty effectively, that, even when the thief is not punished by the arm of justice, there are economic laws which somehow seem to prevent the attainment of the degree of benefit he expected to derive. So radical a disavowal of the strength of the feeling in favor of commer- cial and national honesty is far removed from the general opinion of the financial world, and it seems probable that the Germans have very much underestimated the strength of the moral obligation which binds , the commercial world together. 278 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES Above all, this talk of confiscation as a last resort, of taking possession for nothing of Ger- many's development, is all based upon the sup- position that it will be as easy to keep it as it is to get it, and upon the equally peculiar notion that the financial, situation will remain what it was some years ago when these notions were first promulgated. They are no longer secret, nor have the foreign investors failed to take account of the fact that, even should Germany take no steps to repudiate her debts, the coming of war would for the time being at any rate rob them of their incomes. They are not investing to-day at the rate they did before in German securities; they will no longer advance loans to the German and Austrian Governments without pledges in re- gard to the destination of the money of such a nature as to make treachery improbable; they have already been at work for some years ex- changing their investments in Germany for other securities. American investors are inclined to greet such a supposition as repudiation with in- credulity, and the small European investor, who is not informed in the details of current politics, is apt to suppose that the German or Austrian Government is necessarily trustworthy; but the great financial heads do not seem to be of that opinion. An Austrian war loan, offered in De- 279 PAN-GERMANISM cember, 1912, at 97, was not subscribed with alacrity. None of the Germans seem to remember that after the war is over, after they have suc- ceeded in destroying France and robbing England, they will J?e forced to have relations with the rest of the world and with each other. The effect of the wholesale repudiation of their debts, private and national, however crushing it might.be at the moment to their creditors, and whether or not it was intentional or ravoluntary, would almost certainly react upon themselves in the future so unfavorably as to render the whole operation scarcely to their advantage. With such a record, how could they expect to obtain the confidence of the Hindu and of the Chinese, to say nothing of maintaining that belief in each other's honesty and faithfulness upon which the whole structure of Pan-Germanism rests? Their economic weapons, about which the Germans talk so glibly, the starving of England, the depriving her factories of raw materials, the cutting-off of her supplies for the maintenance of a fleet, these depend one and all upon the ability of the German navy to outmanoeuvre the English and get possession of the Channel in such fashion that a pitched battle would be necessary to dis- lodge it, or upon its ability to defeat the English fleet in the first place in so decisive a manner that 280 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES assistance could not come from the Mediterra- nean and from America in time to avert the catastrophe. It is perhaps well to remember in this connection that the Germans are not a nation of sailors, and that their navy has thus far been used only for manoeuvres like those of the King of France when he marched up the hill and then marched down again. It is true, as the Germans say in defense, that the English have never used the present type of ship in actual warfare; but it is surely exceedingly important to remember that the English invented and designed the present type of ship, and in all probability know more about its use than the Germans are likely to. The latter seem to lay more stress upon the size of their fleet than they do upon its efficiency, and seem to suppose that, if it were more numerous than the English, victory would be assured. The Spanish Armada, to cite one familiar example from many, was reputed at the time to be so powerful, and certainly did so largely outnumber the English fleet, that Europeans supposed no resistance would be possible; yet in this action, as in many others, the English demonstrated con- clusively that knowledge of seamanship and the efficiency of the individual vessel was of vastly more consequence than numbers. While at the present day there is no great sailor of conspicuous 281 PAN-GERMANISM fame in the English navy, it is difficult to believe that the nation, which produced in moments of danger men like Drake, Blake, and Nelson, would be incapable in a similar crisis of producing as suddenly* from the ranks some man of equally conspicuous talent. It will be early enough to assume the defeat of the English on the sea when that event occurs. The German army is probably more efficient than the fleet, but is very likely not as efllcient as the Germans think it is. Military critics have declared it bound too tightly with red tape, filled with unintelligent officials, too stiff and mechan- ical in its evolutions to give much of an account of itself in battle. Certainly, it cannot compare in point of size with the army Russia could put in the field, and competent judges have declared it far inferior in quality to the French army. To be sure, none of these armies have recently been under fire except the Russian army, whose experi- ence was perhaps not a desirable preparation for another war. The condition of the English army in England is admitted on all sides to be bad, though the actual deficiencies have no doubt ' been exaggerated by the eager advocates of uni- versal conscription. But while the Anglo-Saxon race has invariably not shown to advantage in the field before the war, nor indeed during the first 282 EXTERNAL WEAKNESSES years of a long war, they have usually won. From the point of view of strategy, the Duke of Welling- ton was hopelessly beaten at Waterloo; according to all the rules of tacticians, his thin line of redcoats could never hold such a position; but the critics have since been compelled to admit that the English soldiers possessed some qualities, which other troops did not have, that enabled them to hold that position despite the odds and win one of the decisive battles of history. No doubt all Anglo-Saxons are prejudiced, but they will not credit the supposition that the descend- ants of the men who fought Napoleon and the men themselves who won the war in South Africa, when they meet an invader upon their own soil, will be unable to give a satisfactory account of themselves. The really dottbtful factor in the present situa- tion is Russia. She, far more than England, holds the scale. She is likely to gain in the long run whichever side wins. Should Germany overthrow England and France ia Europe and take pos- session of the Mediterranean, Russia would cer- tainly reach India first. If she should join Ger- many, the downfall of England and France would be assured, and the victors could divide the world at their leisure. But she could not join Germany without renouncing her ambitions in the Baltic, PAN-GERMANISM without permitting the Germans to overrun that sea and throwing herself back upon Asia and mak- ing it the centre of a new empire. The likelihood of such a renunciation of her position in Europe is exceedingly small. The probability that Ger- mans would believe in her sincerity, if she offered them an alliance on such a basis, is infinitely smaller. Germany is so eypnsed th fii. the t r gach- ery of Russia would be f atal, j ^s the situation looks at present, nothing short of the breaking of the alliance between England, France, the United States, and Russia can permit the Ger- man scheme to obtain anything more than a temporary and partial success. The first three of these allies cannot leave the alliance without endangering everything they hold dear. The fourth can do so only by the renunciation of am- bitions which have been the very backbone of Russian policy ever since Russia herself emerged upon the plane of European politics. THE END APPENDIX APPENDIX THE SPEECH OF PREMIER BORDEN OF CANADA ADVOCATING A NEW NAVAL POLICY WITH THE OFFICIAL MEMORANDUM OF THE ENG- LISH ADMIRALTY ON ENGLAND'S NAVAL POSITION The following speech was delivered by Premier Bor- den in the Canadian House of Commons on December 5, 1912, and was received with the utmost enthusiasm by a crowded assemblage. The House rose to its feet, cheering and waving handkerchiefs for many minutes, and sang "God save the King" at the conclusion of a very remarkable demonstration. This speech and the official memorandum communicated to the House prove the extent of the anxiety in England over the progress of Pan-Germanism. The text of the speech given here is that printed in the weekly edition of the London Times for December 6, 1912; the text of the Memorandum is that printed by the Times from the official Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 6513. Actual official copies could not be procured in time for publication : — During my recent visit to the British Islands I ven- tured on many public occasions to propound the prin- ciple that the great Dominions, sharing in the defence of the Empire upon the high seas, must necessarily be entitled to share also in the responsibility for and in 287 APPENDIX the control of foreign policy. No declaration I made was greeted more heartily and enthusiastically than this. It is satisfactory to know to-day that not only His Majesty's Ministers, but also the leaders of the oppo- site political party in Great Britain, have explicitly accepted this principle, and have affirmed the convic- tion that the means by which it can be constitutionally accomplished must be sought, discovered, and utilized without delay. The present Government assumed office on the 10th October, 1911, and met Parliament on the 17th day of November following. It is hardly necessary to point out that there was no opportunity until after the close of the Session to visit Great Britain, or consult the Admiralty in any effective way. Shortly after the Ses- sion closed I went to England, accompanied by some of my colleagues, and for several weeks we had the oppor- tunity from time to time of conferring with the British Government, and consulting with technical and expert advisers of the Admiralty, respecting the whole ques- tion of naval defence, and especially the conditions which confront the Empire at present and in the early future. I desire to express my warm appreciation of the manner in which we were received by His Majesty's Government, who took us most fully into their con- fidence regarding great questions of foreign policy and defence, and who accorded to us all the relevant information at their disposal. A portion of this is, necessarily, of a very confidential character which can- not be made public, but the important part will be communicated to the House in a document which" I shall lay on the table this afternoon. I now proceed to submit to the House the informa- tion which we have received from His Majesty's Gov- 288 APPENDIX eminent which, in the form of a memorandum, is as follows: — 1. The Prime Minister of the Domiiuon of Canada haa invited His Majesty's Government through the Board of Admiralty to prepare a statement of the present and imme- diately prospective requirements of the naval defence of the Empire for presentation to the Canadian Parliament if the Dominion Cabinet deem it necessary. The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty are prepared to comply and to supplement, in a form which can be made public, the confidential communications and conversations which have passed between the Admiralty and Ministers of the Dominion ParKament during the recent visit to the United Kingdom. The Admiralty set the greatest store by the important material, and stiU more important moral, assistance which it is within the power of Canada to give to maintaining British naval supremacy upon the high seas; but they think it neces- sary to disclaim any intention, however indirect, of putting pressure upon Canadian public opinion, or of seeking to influ- ence the Dominion Parliament in a decision which clearly belongs solely to Canada. The Admiralty therefore confine themselves in this state- ment exclusively to facts, and it is for the Dominion Govern- ment and ParUament to draw their own conclusions there- from. 2. The power of the British Empire to maintain the supe- riority on the sea, which is essential to its security, must obviously be measured from time to time by reference to the other naval forces of the world, and such a comparison does not imply anything unfriendly in intention or in spirit to any other Power or group of Powers. From this point of view the development of the German Fleet during the last fifteen years is the most striking feature of the naval situation to-day. That development has been authorized by five suc- cessive legislative enactments, viz., the Fleet Laws of 1898, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1912. These laws cover the period up to 1920. Whereas in 1898 the German Fleet consisted of: 9 battleships (excluding coast defence vessels), 289 APPENDIX 3 large cruisers, 28 small cruisers, 113 torpedo-boats, and 25,000 men, — maintained at an annual cost of £6,000,000, the full Fleet of 1920 will consist of: — 41 l)^ttleships, 20 large cruisers, 40 small cruisers, 144 torpedo-boats, 72 submarines, and 101,500 men, — estimateid to be maintained at an annual cost of £23,000,000. These figures, however, give no real idea of the advance, for the size and cost of ships has risen continually during the period, and, apart from increasing their total numbers, Grer- many has systematically replaced old and small ships, which counted as units in her earlier Fleet, by the most powerful and costly modern vessels. Neither does the money provided by the Estimates for the completed law represent the increase in cost properly attributable to the German Navy, for many charges borne on British naval funds are otherwise defrayed in Germany; and the German Navy comprises such a large proportion of new ships that the cost of maintenance and repair is considerably less than in navies which have been longer estabhshed. 3. The naval expansion of Germany has not been pro- voked by British naval increases. The German Government have repeatedly declared that their naval policy has not been influenced by British action, and the following figures speak for themselves: — In 1905 Great Britain was building four capital ships, and Germany two. In 1906 Great Britain reduced to three capital ships, and Germany increased to three. In 1907 Great Britain built three capital ships, and Ger- many built three. In 1908 Great Britain further reduced to two capital ships, and Germany further increased to four. It was not until the efforts of Great Britain to procure the abatement or retardation of naval rivalry had failed for three 290 APPENDIX successive years that the Adtniralty were forced in 1909, upon a general review of the naval situation, to ask Parliament to take exceptional measures to secure against all possible haz- ards the safety of the Empire. In that year eight capital ships were laid down in Great Britain, and two others were provided by the Commonwealth of Australia and the Do- minion of New Zealand respectively — a total of ten. 4. In the spring of the present year the fifth German Navy Law was assented to by the Reichstag. The main feature of that law is not the increase in the new construction of capital ships, though that is important, but rather the increase in the striking force of ships of all classes which will be imme- diately available at all seasons of the year. A third squadron of eight battleships will be created and maintained in full commission as part of the active battle fleet. Whereas, according to the unamended law, the active battle fleet consisted of seventeen battleships, four battle or large armoured cruisers, and twelve small cruisers, it will in the near future consist of twenty-five battleships, eight battle or large armoured cruisers, and eighteen small cruisers; and whereas at present, owing to the system of recruitment which prevails in Germany, the German Fleet is less fully mobile during the winter than during the summer months, it will, through the operation of this law, not only be increased in strength, but rendered much more readily available. Ninety- nine torpedo-boat destroyers, instead of sixty-six, will be maintained in full commission out of a total of one hundred and forty-four; seventy-two new submarines will be built within the currency of the new law, and of these it is appar- ently proposed to maintain fifty-four with full permanent crews. Taking a general view, the effect of the law will be that nearly four-fifths of the entire German Navy will be maintained in full permanent commission; that is to say, instantly and constantly ready for war. So great a change and development in the German Fleet mvolves, of course, important additions to their personnel. In 1898 the officers and men of the German Navy amounted to 25,000. To-day that figure has reached 66,000. The new law adds 15,000 officers and men, and makes a total in 1920 of 101,500. The new construction imder the law prescribes the build- 291 APPENDIX ing of three additional battleships — one to be begun next year, one in 1916 — and two small cruisers, of which the date has not yet been fixed. The date of the third battleship has not been fixed. It has been presumed to be later than the six years which are in view. The cost of these increases in men and in material during the next six years is estimated as £10,500^(000 spread over that period above the previous esti- mates. The facts set forth above were laid before the House of Commons on the 22d July, 1912, by the First Lord of the Admiralty. 5. The effect of the new German Navy Law is to produce a remarkable expansion of strength and readiness. The number of battleships and large armoured cruisers which will be kept constantly ready and in full commission will be raised by the law from twenty-one, the present figure, to thirty-three — an addition of twelve, or an iucrease of about fifty-seven per cent. The new fleet will, in the beginning, include about twenty battleships and large cruisers of the older type, but gradu- ally as new vessels are built the fighting power of the fleet will rise until in the end it will consist completely of modem vessels. The complete organization of the German Fleet, as de- scribed by the latest law, will be five battle squadrons and a fleet flagship, comprising forty-one battleships in all, each attended by a battle or armoured cruiser squadron, complete with smaU cruisers and auxiliaries of all kinds and accom- panied by numerous flotillas of destroyers and submarines. This full development will only be realized step by step; but already in 1914, two squadrons will, according to Admir- alty information, be entirely composed of what are called Dreadnoughts, and the third will be made up of good ships like the "Deutschlands" and the "Braunschweigs," together with five Dreadnought battle cruisers. This great fleet is not dispersed aU over the world for duties of commerce protection or in discharge of Colonial responsi- bilities; nor are its composition and character adapted to those purposes. It is concentrated and kept concentrated in close proximity to the German and British coasts. Attention must be drawn to the explicit declaration of the 292 APPENDIX tactical objects for which the German fleet exists as set forth in the preamble to the Naval Law of 1900 as follows: — "In order to protect German trade and commerce under existing conditions, only one thing will suffice, namely, Ger- many must possess a battle fleet of such a strength that even for the most powerful naval adversary a war would involve such risks as to make that Power's own supremacy doubtful. For this purpose it is not absolutely necessary that the Ger- man Fleet should be as strong as that of the greatest naval Power, for, as a rule, a great Naval Power will not be in a position to concentrate all its forces against us." 6. It is now necessary to look forward to the situation in 1915. In the spring of the year 1915 — Great Britain will have twenty-five "Dreadnought" bat- tleships and two " Lord Nelsons." Germany will have seventeen "Dreadnought" battle- Great Britain will have sii battle cruisers. Germany will have six battle cruisers. These margins in new ships are sober and moderate. They do not err on the side of excess. The reason they suffice for the present is that Great Britain possesses a good superiority in battleships, and especially armoured cruisers, of the pre- Dreadnought era. The reserve of strength will steadily diminish every year, actually because the ships of which it is composed grow old, and relatively because the new ships are more powerful. It will diminish more rapidly if new construction in Germany is increased or accelerated. As this process continues greater exertions will be required by the British Empire. Four battle cruisers and four armoured cruisers will be required to support British interests in the Mediterranean during the years 1913 and 1914. During those years the navies of Austria and Italy will gradually increase in strength, until in 1915 they will each possess a formidable fleet of four and six Dreadnought battleships respectively, together with strong battleships of the pre-Dreadnought types and other units, such as cruisers, torpedo-craft, etc. It is evident, therefore, that in the year 1915 our squadron of four battle cruisers and foar armoured cruisers will not suffice to fulfil 293 APPENDIX our requirements, and its whole composition must be recon* sidered. It has been necessary within the past decade to concen- trate the fleet mainly in home waters. In 1902 there were one hundred and sixty British vessels on the overseas stations against seventy-six to-day. 7. Nav|,I supremacy is of two kinds: general and local. General naval supremacy consists in the power to defeat in battle and drive from the seas the strongest hostile navy or combination of hostile navies wherever they may be found. Local superiority consists in the power to send in good time to, or maintain permanently in, some distant theatre forces adequate to defeat the enemy or hold him in check until the main decision has been obtained in the decisive theatre. It is the general naval supremacy of Great Britain which is the primary safeguard of the security and interests of the great Dominions of the Crown, and which for all these years has been the deterrent upon any possible designs prejudicial to or inconsiderate of their pohcy and safety. The rapid expansion of Canadian sea-borne trade, and the immense value of Canadian cargoes always afloat in British and Canadian bottoms, here require, consideration. On the basis of the figures supplied by the Board of Trade to the Imperial Conference of 1911, the annual value of the overseas trade of the Dominion of Canada in 1909-10 was not less than 72,000,0002., and the tonnage of Canadian vessels was 718,000 tons, and these proportions have already increased and are still increasing. For the whole of this trade wherever it may be about the distant waters of the world, as well as for the maintenance of her communications, both with Europe and Asia, Canada is dependent, and has always depended iipon the Imperial Navy, without corresponding contribution or cost. Further, at the present time and in the immediate future. Great Britain still has the power, by making special arrange- ments and mobilizing a portion of the reserves, to send, with- out courting disaster at home, an efiFective fleet of battle- ships and cruisers to unite with the Royal Australian Navy and the British squadrons in China and the Pacific for the defence of British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand. And these communities are also protected and their interests 294 APPENDIX lafeguarded by the power and authority of Great Britain so long as her naval strength is unbroken. 8. This power, both specific and general, wiU be dimin- ished with the growth not only of the German Navy, but by the simultaneous building by many Powers of great modem ships of war. Whereas, in the present year, Great Britain possesses eight- een battleships and battle cruisers of the Dreadnought class against nineteen of that class possessed by the other Powers of Europe, and will possess in 1913 twenty-four to twenty- one, the figures in 1914 will be thirty-one to thirty-three; and in the year 1915, thirty-five to fifty-one. The existence of a number of navies, all comprising ships of high quality, must be considered in so far as it affects the possibilities of adverse combinations being suddenly formed. Larger margins of superiority at home would, among other things, restore a greater freedom to the movements of the British squadrons in every sea, and directly promote the security of the Dominions. Anything which Increases our margin in the newest ships diminishes the strain, and aug- ments our security and our chances of being left unmolested. 9. Whatever may be the decision of Canada at the present juncture. Great Britain will not in any circumstances fail in her duty to the Oversea Dominions of the Crown. She has before now successfully made head alone and un- aided against the most formidable combinations, and she has not lost her capacity by a wise policy and strenuous ex- ertions to watch over and preserve the vital interests of the Empire. The Admiralty are assured that His Majesty's Govern- ment will not hesitate to ask the House of Commons for what- ever provision the circumstances of each year may require. But the aid which Canada could give at the present tim^ is not to be measured only in ships or money. Any action on the part of Canada to increase the power and mobility of the Imperial Navy, and thus widen the margin of our common safety, would be recognized everywhere as a most signifi- cant witness to the united strength of the Empire, and to the renewed resolve of the Overseas Dominions to take their part in maintaining its integrity. 10. The Prime Minister of the Dominion having enquired 295 APPENDIX in what form any immediate aid that Canada might give would be most eflfective, we have no hesitation in answering, after a prolonged consideration of all the circumstances, that it is desirable that such aid should include the provision of a certain number of the largest and strongest ships of war which science can build or money supply. Mr. Borden continued: — Do Canadians sufficiently realize the disparity be- tween the naval risks of our Empire and those of any other nation ? The armies of Continental Europe number their men by the milUon, not by the thousand. They are highly equipped and organized, the whole population have undergone military training, and any one of the countries is absolutely secure against inva- sion from Great Britain, which could not send an expe- ditionary force of more than one hundred and fifty thousand men at the highest estimate. Such a force would be outnumbered by twenty to one by any of the great European Powers. This Empire is not a great military Power, and it has based its security in the past, as in the present, almost entirely on the strength of, its Navy. A crushing defeat upon the high seas would render the British Islands, or any Dominion, subject to invasion by any great military Power; loss of such a decisive battle by Great Britain would prac- tically destroy the United Kingdom, shatter the British Empire to its foundation, and change profoundly the destiny of its component parts. The advantages which Great Britain could gain from defeating the naval forces of any other Power would be non-existent except in so far as the result would insure the safety of the Empire. On the other hand, there are practically no limits to the ambitions which might be indulged in by other Powers if the British Navy were once destroyed or disabled. There is, therefore, grave cause for concern 396 APPENDIX when once the naval supremacy of the Empire seems on the point of being successfully challenged. The great outstanding fact which arrests our atten- tion in considering the existing conditions of naval power is this : Twelve years ago the British Navy and the British Flag were predominant in every ocean of the world and along the shores of every continent. To-day they are predominant nowhere except in the North Sea. ^ The para- mount duty of insuring safety in home waters has been fulfilled by withdrawing or reducing squadrons in every part of the world, and by concentrating nearly all the effective naval forces in close proximity to the British Islands. In 1902 there were fifty-five British warships on the Mediterranean station; to-day there are nine- teen. There were fourteen on the North American and West Indies station; to-day there are three. There were three on the southeast Coast of South America; to-day there is one. There were sixteen on the Cape of Good Hope station; to-day there are three. There were eight on the Pacific station; to-day there are two. There were forty-two on the China station; to-day there are thirty-one. There were twelve on the Austra- lian station; to-day there are eight. There were ten on the East Indies station, to-day there are nine. To simi up, in 1902 there were one hundred and sixty ships on foreign and Colonial stations against seventy -six to-day. Do not imagine that this result has been brought about by any reduction in expenditure, for the case is practically the reverse. Great Britain's total naval expenditure in 1902 was less than $152,000,000 (£30,400,000). For the present fiscal year it exceeds $220,000,000 (£44,000,000). Why, then, has the naval force of the Empire been so enormously reduced 1 \Fhe italics are not in the original. 297 APPENDIX t]iroughout the world while at the same time the ex- penditure has increased nearly fifty per cent? For the simple reason that the increasing strength of other navies, and especially of the German Navy, has com- pelled Great Britain not only to increase her Fleet, but to concentrate it in the vicinity of the British Islands, and there has been, of course, a substantial increase in the strength in home waters. In short, the strain of meeting changed conditions has been so heavy and unceasing that, in spite of the largely-increased expen- diture and every possible exertion, the Admiralty has been compelled by the pressure of circumstances to withdraw or diminish the forces throughout the world which, in time of peril, safeguarded the security and integrity of the King's Dominions, and, in time of peace, were the living and visible symbol of the tie that unites all the subjects of the Crown. It is neither necessary nor desirable in this place to debate or discuss the probability or imminence of war. The real test of our action is the existence or non-exist- ence of absolute security. We cannot afiFord to be sat- isfied with anything less than that, for the risk is too great. It should never be forgotten that voithmd war, vnih- out firing a shot or striking a blow, our naval supremacy may disappear, and with it the sole guarantee of the Em- pire's continued existence. I especially desire to empha- size this consideration,^ for all history, and especially modem history, conveys to us many grave warnings that the issue of great events may be determined, and often is determined, not by adual war resulting in vic- tory or defeat, but by the mere existence of an unmistak- able and pronounced naval or military superiority on either side.^ * The italics are not in the ori^nal. 298 APPENDIX The fact that trade routes, vital to the Empire's con- tinued existence, are inadequately defended and pro- tected by reason of the necessary concentration in home waters is exceedingly impressive, and even start- ling. Even during the present year the battleships of the British Mediterranean Fleet, based on Malta, have been withdrawn and based on Gibraltar, in order that they might become more easily available for necessary aid in home waters. The Atlantic Fleet, based on Gibraltar, has been withdrawn to the vicinity of the British Islands for the same reason. Under such condi- tions the British Flag is not predominant in the Mediter- ranean, and vrith every available exertion of the whole Em- pire it may be impossible to regain the necessary position of strength in that great highway before 1915 or 1916.^ Austria-Hungary, with only one hundred and forty miles of seacoast and absolutely no colonial possessions, is building in the Mediterranean a formidable fleet of Dreadnoughts which will attain its full strength in about three years, and which will be supported by strong battleships of the pre-Dreadnought type, and by cruisers, torpedo-craft, and other necessary auxil- iaries. The fleet of Italy in the same theatre will be even more powerful and more formidable. The withdrawal of the British Flag and the British Navy from so many parts of the world for the purpose of concentration in home waters has been necessary, but unfortunate. Our Navy was once dominant every- where, and the White Ensign was the token of naval supremacy in all seas. Is it not time that the former conditions should, in some measure, be restored? Upon our own coasts, both Atlantic and Pacific, powerful squadrons were maintained twelve years ago. To-day > The italics are not in the original. «99 APPENDIX the Flag is not shown on either seaboard. I am assured that the aid which we propose will enable such specia] arrangements to be consummated that, without court- ing disaster at home, an effective fleet of battleships and cruisers can be established in the Pacific, and a powerful squadron can periodically visit our Atlantic seaboard and assert once more the naval strength of the Empire along these coasts. I do not forget, how- ever, that it is the general naval supremacy of the Em- pire which primarily safeguards the Oversea Domin- ions. New Zealand's battleship is ranged in line with the other British battleships in the North Sea, because there New Zealand's interests may best be guarded by protecting the very heart of the Empire. In presenting our proposals it must be borne in mind that we are not undertaking or beginning a system of regular and periodical contributions. I agree with the resolution of this House in 1909 that the payment of such contributions would not be the most satisfactory solution of the question of defence. Upon the information which I have disclosed to the House, the situation is, in my opinion, sufficiently grave to demand immediate action. We have asked His Majesty's Government what form of temporary and immediate aid can best be given by Canada at this juncture. The answer has been unhesitating and unequivocal. Let me again quote it: — We have no hesitation in answering, after a prolonged consideration of all the circumstances, that it is desirable that such aid should include the provision of a certain num- ber of the largest and strongest ships of war which science can build or money supply. Upon iuquiry as to the cost of such a battleship we were informed by the Admiralty that it is approxi- 300 APPENDIX ■mately £2,350,000, including armament and the first outfit of ordnance, stores, and ammunition. The total cost of three such battleships, which when launched would be the most powerful in the world, would be, approximately, $35,000,000, and we ask the people of Canada, through their Parliament, to grant that sum to His Majesty the King of Great Britain and Ireland and of the Oversea Dominions, in order to increase the effective naval forces of the Empire, to safeguard our shores and our sea-borne commerce, and to make secure the common heritage of all who owe allegiance to the King. Those ships will be at the disposal of His Majesty the King for the common defence of the Empire. They will be maintained and controlled as part of the Royal Navy, and we have the assurance that, if at any time in the future it be the will of the Canadian people to establish a Canadian unit of the British Navy, these vessels can be called by the Canadian Government to form part of the Navy, in which case, of course, they will be maintained by Canada and not by Great Britain. In that event, there will, necessarily, be reasonable notice, and, indeed, Canada would not desire or suggest the sudden withdrawal of so powerful a contingent from any important theatre in which the naval forces of the Empire might be exposed to severe and sudden attack. In the mean time, I am assured that special arrange- ments will be made to give Canadians an opportunity of serving as officers in these ships. There have been proposals, to which I shall no more than allude, that we should build up a great naval organization in Canada. In my humble opinion nothing of an effective character could be built up in this coun- try within a quarter or, perhaps, half a century. Even 301 APPENDIX then it would be but a poor and weak substitute for that splendid organization which the Empire already possesses, and which has been evolved and built up by centuries of the most searching experience and the high- est endeavour. Is there really any need that we should undertake the hazardous and costly experiment of building up a naval organization especially restricted to Canada when upon just and self-respecting terms we can take such part as we desire in naval defence through the existing naval organization of the Empire, and in that way can fully and effectively avail ourselves of the men and the resources at the command of Canada ? Where shall these ships be built? They will be built under Admiralty supervision in the United Kingdom for the reason that, at present, there are no adequate facilities for constructing them in Canada. The addi- tional cost of construction in Canada would be about twelve million dollars for three, and it would be impos- sible to estimate the delay. No one is more eager than myself for the development of the shipbuilding indus- tries in Canada, but we cannot, upon any business or economic considerations, begin with the construction of Dreadnoughts, and especially we could not do so when these ships are urgently required within two or three years at the outside for rendering aid upon which may depend the Empire's future existence.^ According to my conception, the effective development of the shipbuild- ing industries in Canada must commence with small beginnings and in a businesslike way. I have discussed the subject with the Admiralty, and they thoroughly realize that it is not to the Empire's advantage that all shipbuilding facilities should be concentrated in the ^ The italics are not in the original. 302 APPENDIX United Kingdom. I am assured, therefore, that the Admiralty are prepared in the early future to give orders for the construction in Canada of small cruisers, oil tank vessels, and auxiliary craft of various kinds. The plant required is relatively small as compared with that which is necessary for Dreadnought battle- ships, and such an undertaking will have a much more secure and permanent basis from the business stand- point. For the purpose of stimulating so important and necessary an industry we have expressed our willing- ness to bear a portion of the increased cost for a time at least. I see no reason why all the vessels required in future for our Government service should not be built in Canada, even at some additional cost. These ships will constitute an aid brought by the Canadian people to His Majesty the King as a token of their determination to maintain the integrity of the Empire and assist in repelling any danger which may threaten its security. It is most appropriate that the opportunity should have come when the Crown is represented in Canada by His Royal Highness the Governor-General, who has rendered such valuable and eminent service to the State, and who takes so deep and splendid an interest in all that concerns the welfare and safety of every portion of His Majesty's Dominions. Canada is sending these ships to range themselves in the battle-line of the Empire with those of the Mother Country, Australia, and New Zealand. They will be three of the most powerful battleships in the world, and they will bear historic names associated with this country. But if we should neglect the duty which I conceive we owe to ourselves, and if irreparable disaster should ensue, what will be our future destiny? Obviously as APPENDIX an independent nation or as an important part of th great neighbouring Republic. What then would be ou responsibilities, and what would be the burden upon u for a protection on the high seas much less powerfu and less eflFective than that which we enjoy to-day Take the case of one nation whose territory, resources population, and wealth may fairly be compared wit] those in Canada. The naval estimates of Argentin; for the four years from 1909 to 1912 inclusive amountei to $35,000,000 (£7,000,000). No information is avail able as to the exact proportion of the last-mentione( sum which has been appropriated for naval purposes but it is understood that the far greater portion is fo naval construction. It is safe, therefore, to estimat that during the past four years Argentina has expendei for naval purposes not less than from $65,000,000 t $70,000,000 (£13,000,000 to £14,000,000). The Fed eral and State expenditure of the United States com prises a total outlay for armaments of betweei $250,000,000 and $300,000,000 (£50,000,000 an. £60,000,000), or at the rate of $2.75 per head. Simila expenditure by Canada would mean an annual out lay of some $20,000,000 to $25,000,000, or betwee: $80,000,000 and $100,000,000 during the same period From 1853 to 1903 Great Britain's expenditure oi military defence in Canada runs closely to $100,000,00C Has the protection of the Flag and the prestige o the Empire meant anything for us during all tha period? Hundreds of illustrations are at hand, but le me give just two. During a period of disorder in distant country a Canadian citizen was unjustifiabl; arrested and fifty lashes were laid on his back. An ap peal was made to Great Britain, and with what result A public apology was made to him and £50 were pai 304 APPENDIX for every lash. In a time of dangerous riot and wild terror in a foreign city the Canadian religious com- munity remained unafraid. " Why did you not fear? " they were asked, and unhesitatingly came the answer: "The Union Jack floated above us." I have alluded to the diflSculty of finding an accept- able basis upon which the great Dominions cooperat- ing with the Mother Country in defence can receive and assert an adequate voice in the control and mould- ing of foreign policy. We were brought closely in touch with both subjects when we met the British Ministers in the Committee of Imperial Defence. That com- mittee is peculiarly constituted, but in my judgment is very effective. It consists of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and such persons as he may summon to attend it. Practically all the members of the Cabinet from time to time attend its deliberations, and usu- ally the more important members of the Cabinet are present. In addition, naval and military experts and the technical officers of the various departments con- cerned are in attendance. While the committee does not control policy in any way and could not be undertaken to do so as it is not responsible to Parliament, it is necessarily and con- stantly obliged to consider foreign policy and foreign relations for the obvious reason that defence, and especially naval defence, is inseparably connected with such considerations. I am assured by His Majesty's Government that pending a final solution of the question of voice and influence they would welcome the presence in London of a Canadian Minister during the whole or a portion of each year. Such Minister would be regularly sum- moned to all meetings of the Committee of Imperial 305 APPENDIX Defence and be regarded as one of its permanent mem- bers. No important step in foreign policy would be undertaken without consultation with such represent- ative of Canada. This means a very marked advance both from our standpoint and from that of the United Kingdom. It would give us the opportunity of con- sultation and therefore influence which hitherto we have not possessed. The conclusions and declarations of Great Britain in respect of foreign relations could not fail to be strengthened by the knowledge that such consultation and cooperation with the Overseas Dominions had become an accomplished fact. No thoughtful man can fail to realize the very com- plex and difficult questions that confront those who believe that we must find a basis for permanent coop- eration in naval defence and that any such basis must afford the Overseas Dominions an adequate voice in the moulding and control of foreign policy. It would have been idle to expect, and indeed we did not expect, to reach in the few weeks at our disposal during the past summer a final solution of that problem, which is not less interesting than difficult, which touches most closely the future destiny of the Empire, and which is fraught with even graver signfficance for the British Islands than for Canada. But I conceive that its solu- tion is not impossible, and however difficult the task may be it is not the part of wisdom or statesmanship to evade it. So we invite the statesmen of Great Britain to study with us this real problem of Imperial existence. The next ten or twenty years will be pregnant with great results for this Empire, and it is of infinite import- ance that questions of purely domestic concern, how- ever urgent, shall not prevent any of us from rising "to the height of this great argument." But to-day, while 306 APPENDIX the clouds are heavy and we hear the booming of dis- tant thunder and see lightning flashes above the hori- zon, we cannot and will not wait and deliberate until the impending storm shall have burst upon us in fury and with disaster. Almost unaided, the Motherland, not for herself alone, but for us as well, is sustaining the burden of a vital Imperial duty and confronting an overmastering necessity of national existence. Bring- ing the best assistance we may in the urgency of the moment we come thus to her aid in token of our deter- mination to protect and insure the safety and integrity of this Empire and our resolve to defend on sea as well as on land our Flag, our honour, and our heritage. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY The daily output of books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers upon the present international crisis is appalling; most of it is concerned more or less directly with Pan-Gier- manism; the great bulk of it is pretty clearly of no permanent value, for such of it as has not been written with a purpose is obviously not based upon a full knowledge of the facts. This, indeed, is inevitable, and is partly a result of the popular demand for "timely" articles and partly a consequence of the very proper determination of statesmen and generals to keep their plans secret. Articles written long enough after the event to contain a careful sifting of trustworthy evidence are rarely printed in the more popular magazines, and never appear in the newspapers and weekly journals, because the lapse of time necessary to write and publish them makes it impossible to get them before the public while the war is still happening or the event fresh in mind, and hence robs them of that immediacy in which "timeliness" chiefly consists. Not only do we know that the war correspondents in Tripoli and the Balkans saw little, and that little of no importance, but the undoubted exaggeration of the brutality and cruelty of the Italian army in Tripoli and the numerous bitter contro- versies over many details of the campaigns will warn the reader to attach little importance to whatever he sees in such dispatches, either in the newspapers or in book form, until they have been confirmed and generally accepted. Nor has the average citizen yet learned that travelers, foreign army officers, and natives of the coxmtry concerned are not ipso faeto satisfactory authorities for the policy of European Powers and the strategy of campaigns. A moment's consid- eration will show the reader the futility of assuming that, because he has always lived in the United States, he is cor- rectly informed about the future policy of the National Government in regard to intervention in Mexico, and will therefore prove to him the absurdity of supposing that Grer- mans necessarily understand Fan-Germanism or that Eng- 311 BIBLIOGRAPHY lishmen are informed upon naval equipment. In fact, there are in every nation many groups of individuals holding very diverse views of policies and conditions, all of which have readily found voice in the press. In Germany, there are administrative, diplomatic, naval, and military views; lit- erary, historical, and philosophical notions; industrial and socialistic pro^ganda; Ultramontane, moderate Catholic, and Protestant ideas, all held by groups which possess few premises in common, and which therefore reach the most diverse conclusions in regard to the present situation. Of all this literature, the student must beware, for most of it was written to influence his opinions, and very little of it was meant simply to inform him of the sober truth.. The publications of the German Navy League, the naval monthly, Uberall, Harden 's magazine, Die Zukunft, are filled with the propaganda of Pan-Germanism, and all have a semi-ofiScial status. Undoubtedly, the baldest and frankest statement of Germany's "fights" is to be found in General Bemhardi's Devtschland und der Nachste Krieg, of which a good English translation has just appeared. More compre- hensive statements are England's Weltherrschaft und die Deutsche Luxiisflotte and DeiUscMand Set Wach. The former appeared in February, 1912, rumored to be from the pen of a distinguished Admiral, was extravagantly praised by the press, and reached the fourteenth edition within a few weeks; the latter was issued somewhat later by the Navy League. The best statements in English seem to be the articles pub- lished during the last two or three years in the Fortnightly Review, some of which are certainly semi-official. There seems to have been, however, as yet no systematic attempt in Germany or in England to treat the issue comprehensively from the objective and historical point of view assumed in this volume. The American, who has not grown up in the atmosphere of European politics, finds that the writers of books and arti- cles assume a familiarity with the basic facts of national policy which he does not possess, and often do not even allude to the important premises on which their arguments and descriptions rest. The ordinary compendious accounts of the history of the nineteenth century fail to lay enough stress upon the broader aspects of the situation to render him 312 BIBLIOGKAFHY much assistance. Indeed, he will find indispensable to an intelligent perusal of the European literature on the subject a careful study of the secret correspondence of the last three centuries, in particular that of Napoleon, Metternich, Bis- marck,Cavour, Crispi.Gladstone, Beaconsfield, and Salisbury. The following books comprise those most valuable for the study of conditions and events: — " Vemtas," The German Empire of To-day. London, 1902. Clearly semi-official; a recognized authority. G. Blondel, Les Embarras de I'Allemagne. Paris, 1912. A serious study based upon personal investigation of economic and social conditions. Colonel Abthur Boucher, La France Victorieuse dans la Guerre de Demain. Paris, 1911. A detailed study of military strategy and tactics. Sidney Whitman, German Memories. London, 1912. Db. Ludwig Stein, Editor, England and Germany. London, 1912. The English translation of the series of essays, written by leading English and German statesmen for the magazine, Nord und Svd. They give authoritative expression to the official view, but do not afford much information. C. Sarolea, The Anglo-German Problem. London, 1912. The author is a Belgian, a wide traveler, and close student; he declares the German plans unreasonable and impractical. Lord Roberts's Message to the Nation. London, 1912. An authoritative statement of the bad condition of the English army in England. R. W. Seton- Watson, The Southern Slav Question. Lon- don, 1911. AuBiN, Maroc. Paris, 1903. A descriptive work, based upon thorough personal in- vestigation. It was crowned by the French Academy. There is a good English translation. M. Shtjster, The Strangling of Persia. New York, 1911. Chaillbt, Administrative Problems of British India. Lon- don, 1910. The result of years of investigation. 313 BIBLIOGRAPHY The most accurate statistics and the most recent record of events will be foimd in the Encychpcedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, in the Statesman's Year-Booh, in the Annual Register, and in the official publications of the various governments. The American Review of Reviews prints each month a reason- ably accurate detailed chronology of the month just past. Its permaneq{ value is lessened by the fact that it is neces- sarily based upon the newspaper reports. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A