.N35 
 Copy 1 
 
 °„^' THE 
 
 ,EW GERMAN 
 EMPIRE 
 
 A STUDY OF GERMAN WAR AIMS 
 FROM GERMAN SOURCES 
 
 Reprinted from 
 
 THE ROUND TABLE 
 
 For March, 1917 
 
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 THE NEW GERMAN 
 EMPIRE 
 
 I. The Spirit of German Policy 
 
 What sort of a peace does Germany still hope to 
 secure ? The question can be answered in a sentence : 
 a peace which will enable her to fulfill in the next war 
 the aims she has failed to fulfill in this. This can best 
 be illustrated by a brief survey of the policies and war 
 aims pursued by Germany's rulers since 1914. Those 
 aims and policies are perfectly definite, and can be set 
 forth and analyzed with precision. They have been 
 too little studied in this country, where there has been 
 a disposition to regard Germany as though she were 
 simply a "mad dog" and her rulers as though they were 
 suffering from a megalomania which obscured their 
 powers of reasoning and reflection. It is true that 
 Germany's rulers have been blind, but only to forces 
 and considerations which they regard as irrelevant or 
 are unconstitutionally incapable of understanding — ^to 
 the claims of moral feeling, of international right, of 
 human decency and chivalry. But within the narrow 
 and non-moral limits which they have prescribed for 
 their study their thinking has not been confused or 
 neglectful, but as clear-cut, as well-informed, and as 
 conscientious as that of their masters, Bismarck and 
 Macchiavelli. The Germans of to-day pride themselves 
 on not being romanticists like their ancestors, on hav- 
 ing abandoned "the kingdom of the clouds" which Vol- 
 taire assigned to them, and having acquired in its stead 
 sobriety of thought and judgment, backed up by a 
 wealth of technical and scientific knowledge. It is in 
 this spirit that they approach the study of political 
 quMttions. 
 
2 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 The Chancellor*s speech to the Main Committee of 
 the Reichstag outlining the course of the submarine 
 controversy and proclaiming the decision to embark 
 upon unrestricted warfare was a perfect example of 
 the German scientific method in politics. So is the dis- 
 cussion of German foreign policy in Prince Bulow's 
 book. Both treat politics as though it were a vast game 
 of chess. Force is marshaled against force ; estimates 
 are made of the various chances and probabilities in- 
 volved; and the issue is decided purely on considera- 
 tions of power. This is what is called Realpolitik or 
 Machtpolitik, It is a phenomenon that is strange and 
 confusing to the British public, unaccustomed as it is 
 to this cold, clear, intellectual analysis of facts and 
 forces with every element of feeling and moral value 
 left out. But once it is understood that this is the 
 method which is being followed it is not difficult to 
 detect the different steps by which it proceeds : for the 
 very fact that it is so strictly logical and methodical 
 betrays it. Once grasp the essentials of the problem 
 as the German statesman sees them, and it is compara- 
 tively simple to follow out the argument to its conclu- 
 sion, especially as German writers and speakers in their 
 naive boastfulness and overconfidence are constantly 
 giving us the opportunity of verifying our hypotheses 
 as to the drift of their ideas. The German method, in 
 fact, by leaving out all the great essential human inter- 
 ests which lend nobility to the study and art of govern- 
 ment, has reduced problems of State policy to a naked 
 and transparent simplicity. Just as Macchiavelli's 
 Prince is an easier textbook to follow and to under- 
 stand to the depths than Plato's Republic, or the New 
 Testament, so the policies of Bismarck and Bethmann- 
 Hollweg are more easily defined and analyzed than 
 those of Lincoln and Mazzini or of President Wilson 
 and Viscount Grey. 
 
 Let us try, then, to see the history of the war through 
 German eyes. It will be necessary to make large use 
 
THE SPIRIT OF GERMAN POLICY 3 
 
 of German sources and to accustom the reader to the 
 language of militarism ; for without extensive quota- 
 tion, not from extremists, but from moderate and rep- 
 resentative spokesmen, it is impossible to give British 
 readers an adequate sense of the abyss which still sepa- 
 rates the thought and feeling of the general public in 
 the two countries. Only one thing can bridge that abyss 
 —the rediscovery of moral values by the great mass of 
 the German people, so that they may once more enter 
 into intelligible intercourse with the civilized world. 
 How is that to be brought about? There are not many 
 present-day Germans endowed at once with sufficient 
 insight to see their own countrymen as others see 
 them, and with courage enough to proclaim what they 
 see. One such man, Eduard Bernstein, the well-known 
 member of the Socialist minority in the Reichstag, has 
 lately answered that very question in the pages of an 
 American review, and his answer is the same as that 
 of our own Prime Minister. 
 
 The war (he says) is in a high degree the trial of German 
 militarism. Shall it be maintained with its present features or 
 not? For the parties of the middle-class the question is almost 
 settled already. Unless the war ends for Germany in a down- 
 right defeat they will maintain it by hook or by crook.* 
 
 This estimate is borne out by Professor Hans Del- 
 bruck, Treitschke's successor in the Chair of History 
 in Berlin University, who, writing early in 1914, says, 
 in words that cannot be too often quoted : "Anyone 
 who has any familiarity at all with our officers and 
 generals knows that it would take another Sedan, in- 
 flicted on us instead of by us, before they would acqui- 
 esce in the control of the Army by the German Parlia- 
 ment.*'! 
 
 Thus for the sake of the Germans themselves, whom 
 it has terrorized, no less than for that of the world, 
 Prussian militarism, with its strutting arrogance, its 
 
 •Article in the New Repuhlic, September 23, 1916. 
 1[Begierung und Volkswille, 1914, p. 136. 
 
4 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 cold brutality, its immense and not undeserved prestige 
 for evil, must be "wholly and finally destroyed" as a 
 political and social force in the life of the German 
 people. Then and then only can we hope to see "in 
 Germany as well as in Europe one great emancipated 
 land from the Urals to the Atlantic shores." If there 
 are any other means under heaven to the same end, 
 save victory in the field over the military rulers of 
 Prussia, those means have still to be revealed to us." 
 
 II. Germany's War Aims 
 
 What has been the general aim of the Kaiser's policy 
 since he expelled Bismarck from the seat of power in 
 1889 and seized the reins himself? It can be summed 
 up in a few words. Bismarck was unprincipled, but 
 he was prudent. He left Germany the most important 
 single Power on the Continent of Europe. She had 
 won three wars : she had attached to herself in a net- 
 work of alliances, open and secret, Austria-Hungary, 
 Italy, Russia and Roumania. Her one inveterate 
 enemy, France, she had driven into isolation. With 
 Britain, who did not cross her path and had many 
 points of friction with France, she was on terms of 
 friendship, almost of alliance.* She was, in his own 
 words, a "satiated Power." f Under the Kaiser she 
 became a hungry Power. His object was to make her 
 a "world-Power" — ^to transform her from the dominant 
 State in Europe into the dominant State throughout 
 the globe. This sounds like a dream or a vague aspira- 
 tion. But its practical implications were worked out 
 
 •On January 26, 1889, shortly before his retirement, Bismarck said 
 in the Reichstag: "I regard England as our old traditional ally, with 
 whom we have no conflicts of interest. When I say 'ally' I do not use 
 the word in its diplomatic sense ; we have no treaty with England ; but 
 I wish to preserve the close relationship with England which we have 
 had now for over 150 years, even in colonial questions. And if I waa 
 satisfied that we were in danger of losing it, I should be careful to try 
 and prevent that happening." 
 
 t Speech on February 6, 1888. 
 
GERMANY'S WAR AIMS 5 
 
 by his advisers with German care and thoroughness, in 
 full appreciation of the almost inevitable contingency 
 of war. It is true that there was before the war a 
 school of "moderate" opinion in Germany, dominant 
 among the Social Democrats (whose political power 
 by no means corresponded with their numerical 
 strength) and represented even in high governing cir- 
 cles, which did not desire a war with Britain, and, 
 indeed, hoped to avoid the arbitrament of war alto- 
 gether. But no one who reads Prince Billow's book or 
 the present Imperial Chancellor's review of his policy 
 in his speeches can doubt that both these "moderate" 
 men looked forward to a time when Germany, with 
 or without war, would have elbowed her way to the 
 front. Since the outbreak of war the party of rela- 
 tive moderation has ceased to exist, the majority of 
 the Socialists have accepted the official program, and 
 the imperialists reign supreme. Leaving out of ac- 
 count the Socialist minority, which, so far as numbers 
 go, is insignificant in its public representation, con- 
 troversy has raged, not between "moderates" and ex- 
 tremists, but between different schools of Imperialism. 
 This was inevitable as soon as the military machine 
 assumed uncontrolled command, and will continue until 
 it has been discredited by defeat. 
 
 German imperialists have had two separate and dis- 
 tinct aims in view — one in the West, the other in the 
 East. No doubt their distinctness is more apparent 
 now, both to us and the Germans, than it was before 
 the war, for it has been brought out into sharp relief 
 by the unexpected course of the campaign. But, looked 
 at closely, the two aims always were distinct both in 
 the policy which they involved and in the appeal they 
 made to different sections of the German population. 
 They are distinct, but they are not mutually incom- 
 patible. Rather they are complementary. Yet the at- 
 tainment of either without the other would involve a 
 great advance on the Bismarckian position and the 
 
6 JHE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 achievbment of a very substantial measure of "world- 
 dominion." 
 
 Let us examine each of them in turn. 
 
 Germany's Western aims, as German imperialists 
 conceived them before the war, can be summed up as 
 follows : . To decoy or to intimidate Great Britain or 
 (if needs must) to defeat her; to crush France once 
 and for all ; to overawe Holland, Belgium and Portugal ; 
 to extend her power, in one form or another, over Rot- 
 terdam, Antwerp, Calais, and the mineral deposits of 
 French Lorraine; to break up the extra-European 
 dominions of her victims, including, in the end, the 
 British Commonwealth, and to build up on their ruins 
 a greater Germany beyond the seas. 
 
 There is no space here to go into these various points 
 in detail. So far as the proposed European annexa- 
 tions are concerned, it is only necessary to refer to the 
 speech by the second personage in the Empire, the King 
 of Bavaria, on Germany's need to control the mouth 
 of the Rhine; to the Imperial Chancellor's remarks 
 bearing on the same subject during the negotiations; 
 to the economic aspects of the General Staff's care- 
 fully designed plan of campaign in France and Bel- 
 gium ; and to the manifesto of the Six Economic Asso- 
 ciations,* representing every class in the Empire, peas- 
 ants included, with the exception of the town workmen. 
 It is in its extra-European aspects that the program 
 chiefly concerns us. 
 
 There it found itself faced at the outset with one in- 
 superable obstacle — ^the British Navy. "With regard 
 to extra-European politics," says Prince BUlow, in his 
 frank and revealing book, "England is the only country 
 with which Germany has an account to settle." The 
 challenge could hardly be more plainly stated. The 
 same theme runs through speech after speech by the 
 Kaiser and his representatives in their campaign for 
 the growth of the German Navy, from the Kruger tele- 
 
 • Reprinted In The Issue, by J. W. Headlam, Appendix L 
 
GERMANY'S WAR AIMS 7 
 
 gram onward. Germany, already predominant in 
 Europe as the first military Power, was to become an 
 extra-European or a "World-Power," with a "place 
 in the sun" beyond the ocean, enjoying "the freedom of 
 the seas" which has been defined on different occasions 
 as "the Empire of the Atlantic," the command of the 
 Suez Canal, or a balance of naval power with Great 
 Britain, but which, closely examined, really means, or 
 meant, a substitution of German for British suprem- 
 acy. It was in this spirit that Seeley's Expansion of 
 England was studied and (thanks to its misleading 
 Prussian title) misinterpreted in German schools. It 
 was in this spirit that Germany looked forward to the 
 inevitable Day. 
 
 What sort of a Colonial Empire did Germany hope 
 to attain after winning the freedom of the seas? The 
 ordinary middle-class and working-class voter who sup- 
 ported the Government on the Colonial issue in the 
 Herrero election of 1907 (when the Socialist represen- 
 tation was cut down from 81 to 43) had probably only 
 a very hazy answer to this question. He would most 
 likely have said that he wanted something big and rich 
 and full of good fighting material : generally speaking, 
 in fact, an Empire after what was considered the 
 English style. But the statesmen and the professors 
 had their projects worked out in detail. It is worth 
 while quoting one statement of Germany's Colonial 
 demands, not only because it conforms so closely to the 
 childish popular canons, but because it is from the pen 
 of a man who has more than once endangered his 
 academic position by the moderation of his views. 
 
 The first and most important of all the national demands [says 
 Professor Delbriick*] which we shall have to make when the 
 time comes for the signing of peace must be a demand for a 
 very large Colonial Empire, a German India. The Empire must 
 be so big that it is capable of conducting its own defence in case 
 of war. A very large territory cannot be completely occupied 
 by any enemy. A very large territory will maintain its own 
 
 * Bismarck's Erie, 1915, p. 202. 
 
8 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 army and provide numerous reservists and second line troops. 
 If its main centers are connected by rail its different districts 
 will be in a position to support one another in case of need. A 
 very large territory can have its own munition and arms fac- 
 tories. A very large territory will also have harbors and coal- 
 ing stations. 
 
 And he adds in a footnote, "in order to prevent mis- 
 understandings," and to explain what he means by 
 "very large," that 
 
 the Belgian and French Congo by themselves cannot suffice for 
 the German India which we must try to secure and have a right 
 to demand after our victories. Tms equatorial territory may 
 provide us with unsuspected treasures in the future, but so far 
 as the next generation is concerned its extraordinarily thin 
 population will prevent it from being profitable to us : indeed, it 
 would cost money. Only when the rich districts lying around it, 
 which are now in English hands, are added on shall we have in 
 sufficient measure the practical pre-requisites for a German 
 India. 
 
 These are not the day-dreams of peace. These words 
 were written in April, 1915, after the big check in the 
 West and before the Eastern drive. The views ex- 
 pressed in them are even now not abandoned. Writing 
 in the February issue of a Berlin monthly review,* 
 an ex-governor of East Africa crosses the "t's" and 
 dots the "i's" of Delbruck's statement. "If Belgium," 
 he says, 
 
 as We hope and as the Belgians hope, is to be divided after the 
 war between Germany and France, vast portions of the Belgian 
 and French Congo will have to be included in Germany's colonial 
 Empire, which we would then complete by the acquisition of 
 British East Africa and Uganda, in exchange for Kiau Chau, 
 New Guinea, and Australasian islands. Such an Empire could 
 easily be defended from the sea, and it would have to be con- 
 sidered whether we could not exchange Togoland, which is 
 isolated, for Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Germany would 
 then have a colonial Empire worthy of her enterprising spirit, 
 and it would yield us all the raw material we need. 
 
 Similarly, the Frankfurter Zeitung, a conspicuously 
 
 moderate paper, was still two months ago demanding 
 
 "a compact Colonial Empire in place of our present 
 
 haphazard acquisitions."! 
 
 * Baron Albrecht von Rechenberg, in Nord v/nd Stid, summarized In 
 the Westminster Gazette, January 27, 1917. 
 
 t Frankfurter Zeitung, in an article criticising the immoderate de- 
 mands of the German Oolonial League. Quoted in the Manchester. 
 Guardian, January 10, 1917. 
 
GERMANY'S WAR AIMS 9 
 
 Nor is this attitude confined to the official and bour- 
 geois classes. The Socialist majority, though shy about 
 annexations in Western Europe, have from the begin- 
 ning associated themselves with "imperialist" projects 
 overseas. In an article dated January 17, 1917, one of 
 their leading members, writing on terms of peace, de- 
 mands for Germany "an extensive Colonial territory 
 which will enable her to import from within her own 
 sphere of government the tropical products which can- 
 not be grown on her own soil."* 
 
 It remains to be seen whether these expectations will 
 be realized. They can now only be fulfilled on one 
 hypothesis — ^the checkmating of British sea power. 
 This is the logic of the introduction of what the Ger- 
 mans call their "sharpest weapon," unrestricted sub- 
 marine warfare. For it is certain that the great Ger- 
 man Colonial Empire is not attainable by military 
 victories in the present war, German public opinion 
 in general is, it appears, still far from recognizing 
 this. But the German Government knows better. It 
 knows that whether or not it recovers its lost colonies, 
 it has, if things remain as they are, no hope of estal> 
 lishing the great self-sufficient German Empire of its 
 dreams, for such an Empire, even if it could be won 
 through exchanges of territory in a negotiated peace, 
 would be useless for its purpose as a fighting organism 
 without "the freedom of the seas"; and the British 
 Navy still stands undefeated in the way. Moreover, 
 if the territorial arrangements at the peace are settled, 
 as we may hope, on the principle of government by 
 consent of the governed, it is not likely that Germany 
 will recoveV even the "haphazard acquisitions" she has 
 lost, still less that peoples living in the tropical zone 
 will be handed about "as if they were property" to 
 meet the needs of a self-sufficient German Empire. 
 That being so, short of a naval victory or a successful 
 
 * Article by Robert Schmidt, a member of the Socialist party in the 
 Reichstag:, in the leading socialist monthly, Sozialistische Monatshefte, 
 January 17, 1917. 
 
10 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 submarine blockade, Germany is thrown back upon 
 thinking out an alternative overseas policy until she 
 is ready to resume the struggle against British sea- 
 power, armed by the experience of the present war and 
 under more favorable conditions. We shall see what 
 that policy is. 
 
 It is worth while dwelling for a moment on the reason 
 for the failure of Germany's original Western design, 
 for it throws an interesting light on her future plans. 
 She failed because when "the Day" came, after all her 
 talk, it caught her napping. In July, 1914, Germany 
 did not intend to raise the Western issue in its full 
 scope. Her Western plans, carefully cherished as they 
 were, and loudly proclaimed as they had to be in order 
 to secure popular support for the Navy, were to be 
 reserved for a future war, which was to be the sequel 
 of 1914, as 1870 succeeded 1866. It was not antici- 
 pated that the violation of Belgian neutrality would 
 bring Great Britain into the war. This was unmistak- 
 ably confessed by the demeanor ot the Kaiser and the 
 Imperial Chancellor on August 4 and 5, 1914. Still 
 less was it anticipated that the victorious resistance 
 of France would give Britain time to bring her full 
 naval and military power into play. This has become 
 abundantly clear in the course of the controversy in 
 Germany about the effects of the British blockade. 
 We know now from the statements of responsible per- 
 sons* that the German War Staff had not reckoned out 
 the economic implications of a long-drawn war with 
 Great Britain and that, if we had disregarded interna- 
 tional law and neutral opinion, as the Germans, judging 
 us, as always, by themselves, naturally expected us to 
 dot and instituted the blockade from the first in its 
 
 • E.g., Dr. Walter Rathenau, the originator of the Raw Materials 
 Department of the German War Office, in a lecture delivered in De- 
 cember, 1915, and since published. 
 
 t A composite book under the title German Food Supply and the 
 English Starvation Plan, was published in Germany early in 1915. 
 Its preface bears the date December 12, 1914. The entry of food-stuffs 
 into Germany was, of course, not stopped until early in 1915, after the 
 German Government had assumed control of the whole food supply 
 and proclaimed its intention of starving out Great Britain by sub- 
 marine blockade. 
 
GERMANY'S WAR AIMS 11 
 
 present rigor, Germany would before now have been 
 completely denuded of essential raw materials. 
 
 It is for this reason that one of the subjects most 
 discussed in the German Press since the blockade be- 
 came acute is the best method of economic mobilization 
 for the next war — ^that "Second Punic War'* against 
 Great Britain which if Prussian militarism retains its 
 hold over the peoples of Central Europe, will follow in- 
 evitably from the present conflict. That this design 
 is cherished — and not unnaturally cherished — in re- 
 sponsible quarters could easily be proved at length. It 
 is best illustrated by the practical arrangements for 
 the storage of raw material and the conscription of 
 industrial workers in the next war suggested by Dr. 
 Rathenau in the lecture already referred to as a result 
 of his administrative experience at the German War 
 Office and by the following extract from the official 
 Government paper, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zei- 
 tung for October 15, 1916 : 
 
 The Reichstag Committee for Trade and Industry discussed 
 on Saturday, as already briefly reported, the questions connected 
 with the Economic Transition from War to Peace. The proceed- 
 ings were confidential. ... A representative of the Centre 
 (the Roman Catholic party) summarized the main problems to 
 be dealt with as follows: (1) The transition from war to peace; 
 (2) The organization of economic life on a peace-basis; (3) 
 The setting up and carrying through of a plan for placing 
 economic life on a war-basis. The two latter subjects (adds 
 the journal) , are of course matters for the future. 
 
 The bearing of plans of this kind on Germany's pres- 
 ent policy may be left aside for the moment. They 
 provide, however, an interesting testimony both to 
 Germany's relative unpreparedness for the full tide 
 of the Western war and to her anxiety to face the logic 
 of the situation which will arise when, as Germany's 
 rulers still hope, the dominant military Power of the 
 world, having emerged from the war with its prestige 
 enormously enhanced and its military strength sub- 
 stantially increased by its Eastern conquests, stands 
 face to face in the East as in the West, in the Persian 
 Gulf as in the North Sea, with the dominant sea Power. 
 
12 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 III. The Eastern Plan 
 
 For though Germany has failed or partially failed 
 up to the present in the West she has succeeded in the 
 East ; and it must never be forgotten that it was with 
 Eastern not with Western plans immediately in view 
 that she sped the Serbian ultimatum on its way and 
 backed it up by declaring war on Russia. 
 
 In this Eastern adventure Germany's aims can be 
 simply stated. They are as usual twofold — partly mil- 
 itary and partly economic. Her military object was, 
 and is, to secure a military preponderance in the Old 
 World by establishing the supremacy of her arms over 
 Central and Eastern Europe and Nearer Asia. Her 
 economic object is clearly stated in the following sen- 
 tences from the opening essay in an authoritative work 
 recently issued on "The Economic Rapprochement Be- 
 tween Germany and her Allies."* 
 
 The establishment of a sphere of economic influence from the 
 North Sea to the Persian Gulf has been for nearly two decades 
 the silent unspoken aim of German foreign policy. Our diplo- 
 macy in recent years, which has seemed to the great mass of 
 all t Germans vacillating and little conscious of its aim, only be- 
 comes intelligible when regarded as part of a consistent Eastern 
 design. It is to the credit of Rohrbach to have shown in his 
 writings how the single incidents fit into the general scheme of 
 our policy. It is indeed in this region, and in this region alone, 
 that Germany can break out of her isolation in the center of 
 Europe into the fresh air beyond and win a compact sphere of 
 economic activity which will remain open to lier independently 
 of the favor and jealousy of the Great Powers. Apart from the 
 defence of hearth and home, no other success could compensate 
 Germany for the enormous sacrifices of the war if she did not 
 secure a really free hand, politically speaking, to pursue this 
 economic goal. It is true that critical observers who have gone 
 carefully into the details of the plan profess themselves scep- 
 tical of great economic results and emphasize the fact that the 
 improvement of our relations with these regions cannot com- 
 pensate us for the loss of our vitally important connections with 
 the Great Powers and other States. They may very well be 
 
 ♦ Die wirtscJiafliche Annaherunff swisohen dem Deutschen Reiche 
 vnd seinen Verhiindetenj issued at the request of the Verein fiir Sozial- 
 politik, edited by Professor Herkner, of Berlin, 2 vols., 1916. The 
 quotation is taken from the opening essay, by Dr. Spiethoff, Professor 
 of Political Economy at the German University at Prague, vol. I, p. 24. 
 
 f/.e., including the Germans of Austria, of whom the writer is one. 
 
THE EASTERN PLAN 13 
 
 right Nevertheless it remains true that a secure future for 
 Germany is to be reached along this road and no other, and that 
 Germany would be missing the greatest opportunity ever offered 
 or likely to be offered her in the history of her foreign relations 
 if she were not now to go forward with vigor and decision to 
 its realization. 
 
 Here it is clearly shown that the Eastern aims in 
 themselves will not at present meet Germany's economic 
 needs. If she is no longer to be "dependent on the 
 favor and the jealousy of the World-Powers" she re- 
 quires a Colonial Empire in the tropics as well. Never- 
 theless, the Eastern prize was well worth following 
 up, and with good fortune it might even yield "West- 
 em" results. After Great Britain and Turkey had 
 entered the lists and the Moslem Holy War had been 
 proclaimed, sanguine spirits dreamed dreams of an 
 African Empire to be won and kept without com- 
 mand of the sea, and influential scholars and writers 
 spoke openly of the conquest of Egypt and the Soudan, 
 and a Berlin-Cairo-Central-African railway. Here 
 again, expectation has so far outrun performance. 
 Nevertheless, Germany's main object has been achieved 
 with amazing success. She has overrun Poland, Cour- 
 land, Lithuania, Serbia, and Montenegro, most of Rou- 
 mania and part of Volhynia, and she has won more 
 signal conquests still over her own allies and the ad- 
 joining neutrals. Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and 
 Turkey are no longer free agents. They could not if 
 they would cut themselves loose from the German con- 
 trol, which first pushed them into the war and then 
 saved them from disaster; and the longer the war con- 
 tinues the tighter must that control become. Turkey, 
 in particular, has become in fact, if not in name, a 
 German annex. Meanwhile, the smaller European neu- 
 trals have been impressed and intimidated by the dis- 
 play of German efficiency and "frightfulness." Thus 
 Germany, cut off from the sea and from the New 
 World, robbed of the overseas Empire of her dreams, 
 has established a new Empire in its stead in the very 
 
14 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 heart of the Old World. Stretching from Strassburg 
 to Riga, from Schleswig to the Persian Gulf and to 
 Arabia, it has been driven like a wedge through the 
 Continent, pushing Russia away from the warm sea 
 into the northern ice and gloom, and leaving the West- 
 ern Powers isolated in the peninsula of Europe, cut 
 off from land communication with Russia, India, and 
 the rest of Asia, 
 
 IV. The New German Empire 
 
 What is the character of this new Empire? What 
 does it portend? And, in particular, what is its bear- 
 ing on the future of the British Commonwealth and of 
 the causes of which it is trustee? 
 
 It may be well to take the last question first, for it 
 can be simply answered. This new German Empire, 
 if it survives, would be regarded as a disaster by all its 
 neighbors, by Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France, 
 Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and Russia; but it would 
 be most disastrous of all to Great Britain at whom it 
 would be chiefly aimed. If Germany succeeds, at the 
 Peace, in retaining possession of her Eastern conquests, 
 then Britain will have lost the war. The point need 
 not be argued at length, for it is regarded by German 
 writers as a self-evident proposition. It will be suffi- 
 cient to give two representative German statements of 
 the position of Britain in the event of the permanent 
 establishment of the New Empire. In the course of 
 the book already quoted written in April, 1915, Pro- 
 fessor Delbriick remarks : 
 
 Whether this war drives the English out of Egypt or not, 
 what becomes of the English supremacy in Egypt if Turkey now 
 maintains her existence, rejuvenates and reorganizes herself 
 militarily and economically, and establishes a railway system 
 which will permit her to put great armies and all that pertains 
 to them right onto the Egyptian frontier? Hitherto England 
 has been able, in time of peace, to maintain her hold on Egypt 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 15 
 
 with a garrison of 6000 Europeans. Whatever the conditions of 
 peace at the end of the war, this idyll of British supremacy has 
 passed away beyond recall.* 
 
 The same argument is still more clearly put by Paul 
 Rohrbach, the semi-official writer who has done so much 
 to further Germany's Eastern designs. Writing in his 
 own paper, Deutsche Politik, on November 24, 1916, 
 he remarks : 
 
 There was a period of the war between the great miscarriage 
 at the Dardanelles and the successful Russian summer offen- 
 sive, when here and there, in the English Press, the phrase 
 cropped up that there were "two victors" in the war — England 
 and Germany. Behind this lay the idea that English policy 
 might rest content, in case of need, with a "drawn" war. From 
 the English point of view, however, this was a piece of lazy 
 and confused thinking. They know better to-day: and they are 
 perfectly right when they say that if the game between them 
 and us ends in an apparent "draw" it is we who will be the 
 victors and they the vanquished. ... In point of fact, if the 
 Central Powers, with Bulgaria and the Turkish East, form a 
 solid political block across the Balkans, then, for obvious political 
 and geographical reasons, it is no longer possible for England 
 in the future to conduct her world-policy on its traditional lines. 
 English foreign policy, in contrast to that of all other European 
 Powers, has hitherto rested on the fact that not only England, 
 but also every vital part of her Empire, was unassailable. This 
 was a very pronounced advantage possessed by England as 
 against all other Powers, although the English have for over 
 a century been accustomed to treat it as a self-evident necessity 
 and as a matter of course. . . . But if the English wish Eg'ypt 
 and India to remain unassailable in the future, and if they wish 
 to secure themselves against the German submarine danger, 
 they must defeat us to such an extent so as to sever our 
 connection with the East, to render us powerless to prevent the 
 break-up of Turkey in favor of England and her Allies, and to 
 force us to submit to permanent restrictions as regards the con- 
 struction and use of submarines. When England has achieved 
 all this, and not one moment sooner, she has won the war. If she 
 has not attained these aims when peace is concluded, then 
 she has, according to her own confession, lost the war. Here, 
 and nowhere else, lies the root of the English fighting spirit. 
 It took an astonishingly long time before the whole of or, at 
 least, the greater part of the English people realized this 
 situation. But now it is realized, and, hence, we may be sure 
 that England will not stop the war, however great her own 
 sacrifices may be, until she admits defeat. 
 
 *Delbruck, Bismarck's Erhe, Berlin, 1915, pp. 211-12, written in 
 April, 1915. The point here made in print about the defences of Egypt 
 is no new one for the Professor. It was made in his university lectures 
 at least as early as 1902. The Kaiser's visit to Palestine was in 1898, 
 
16 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 It is characteristic of the German writer that he 
 should attribute the obstinacy of the British fighting 
 spirit to intellectual calculation rather than to inten- 
 sity of moral purpose. But his reasoning is perfectly 
 sound. The establishment of the Berlin-Bagdad Em- 
 pire as a spearhead against Egypt and India would 
 strike a fatal blow at British security and would in- 
 volve a complete transformation in our military and 
 defensive system, with the consequent reactions upon 
 domestic and social policy. So far as purely British 
 interests are concerned the case is unanswerable, as 
 the neutral world is well aware. And if Britain were 
 Germany, and British ideals were Prussian ideals, 
 there would be no more to be said. It is natural that 
 a Great Power, especially a great Naval Power, should 
 have a traditional bent toward the policy of Divide et 
 Impera and should prefer to have small or weak States 
 as its neighbors rather than a first-class highly organ- 
 ized military Power. That is the light in which the 
 German writer, accustomed to weighing strength and 
 weakness rather than right and wrong, in the balances, 
 regards the issue. All that he sees are two great non- 
 moral World-Powers ranged against one another for 
 mastery, and all the "right" that he expects to emerge 
 from the contest is the "right" of the stronger. But 
 there is, of course, a higher point of view than that of 
 purely British interests — ^the point of view set forth 
 in the Allied Notes and in President Wilson's Mes- 
 sage. We have no right to condemn the new German 
 Empire till we have examined the principle on which 
 it is based, the policy which its rulers mean to pursue, 
 and the bearing which its definitive establishment and 
 consolidation in the treaty of peace would have on 
 the future history of the Old Continent and of the 
 world. 
 
 What, then, is the character of this new Empire? 
 On what principle of government is it based? Is it 
 a benevolent autocracy based on the desire of the dom- 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 17 
 
 inant German rulers to promote the welfare of their 
 subjects? Or is it a Commonwealth based upon the 
 exercise of political responsibility by all who are fitted 
 to bear it? Is it based upon the rule of law, or upon 
 the assent of the governed? Will it contribute to the 
 comity of nations and form a corner stone in the new 
 league of Peace? Judged by the touchstone of Presi- 
 dent Wilson's Message, how does it stand the test? 
 Men of liberal tendencies in neutral countries, ignorant 
 of the local circumstances and safe in the detachment 
 of the New World, have been tempted to welcome it as 
 a large-scale international experiment and to discern 
 in it an element of stability and order — or at least to 
 demand for it a fair trial. "The Allies," says a writer 
 in an American weekly paper, well-known for its pro- 
 gressive tendencies,* 
 
 are resolved not to accept a Germanized Central Europe, even 
 though it rests on the acquiescence of the minor Slav peoples; 
 but inasmuch as they may be forced to consent, it is worth while 
 to consider possible compensations. Germany would have ac- 
 quired more or less political control over a large region whose 
 economic resources are undeveloped and whose inhabitants pos- 
 sess an inefficient political and social organization. German 
 control would not rest on military conquest. . . . The Germans 
 could not treat such peoples as they have in the past treated the 
 Prussian Poles or the Alsatians. The different groups of non- 
 Germans in the Central European system would insist on a 
 substantial measure of self-control. Some kind of federal sys- 
 tem would have to be forged, and the making of it would be a 
 slow, delicate and dangerous operation. . . . These non-German 
 peoples will never be politically content unless they can be 
 wrought into an international commonwealth, analogous to that 
 which is needed for British Imperial federation. 
 
 In any event the Germans would cease for the time being to 
 threaten British and French sea power. 
 
 And the article closes with the suggestion that the es- 
 tablishment of the new Empire and the consequent in- 
 crease of Germany's prestige "might place fewer im- 
 pediments in the way of the ultimate creation of a 
 system of supernational law" than would a decisive 
 victory for either side. 
 
 ^The New BepuhUc, December 16, 1916. See an article on the same 
 subject in the issue for January 27, 1917. 
 
18 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Can speculations of this kind be brought to the test 
 of fact? Is there any likelihood or even possibility 
 that the new German Empire can develop, through the 
 free union of its constituent peoples, into a common- 
 wealth analogous to that of Britain? 
 
 It would be easy to suggest an answer to this ques- 
 tion from the past history of the four partners in the 
 Alliance which has crystallized into the new Empire, 
 or from the past record of the alliances and conflicts 
 between them. Prussian ruthlessness in Alsace-Lor- 
 raine, in Schleswig and in Poland, the relentless per- 
 secution and matchless hypocrisy of the Magyars in 
 the government of their "national" State* the sup- 
 pression of every symbol and vestige of Serbian na- 
 tionality in their occupied territory by the Bulgars, 
 the simple, cold-blooded Turkish expedient of whole- 
 sale massacre, are not promising foundations for a 
 stable edifice of empire. Nor does the alliance between 
 Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, which was first mani- 
 fested to the world by the open breach of the Treaty 
 of Berlin, supported by Germany in "shining armor" 
 and then confirmed at the treacherous outbreak of the 
 Second Balkan War, nor the alliance between Germany 
 and Turkey, cemented by the blood of the Armenians, 
 suggest that the new dominion will stand forth as a 
 champion of international right. But these things, 
 after all, are in the past, important and suggestive as 
 they are. It will be fairer, in the space at our disposal, 
 to test the new Empire rather by the future program 
 set before it by its promoters and sponsors. Let us 
 judge it, not by what it is, but by what those who have 
 brought it into being hope and believe it may become. 
 
 So much has been written in Germany on the subject 
 of "Berlin-Bagdad," and there is such unanimity and, 
 indeed, monotony about the views expressed, that it is 
 
 ♦"The whole of public opinion in Hungary holds the principle of 
 rationalities in honor," was Count Tisza's comment on President Wil- 
 son's message. Far more respectable was the German comment which 
 advised President Wilson never to mention tho subject of Prussian 
 Poland again. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 19 
 
 not difficult to summarize them. This will best be done, 
 not by isolated quotations, which could be multiplied 
 indefinitely, but by reproducing a few connected state- 
 ments from representative sources. These may make it 
 clear how widely the new German Empire diverges 
 from the ideals and practice of the British Common- 
 wealth as regards both its external relations and its 
 internal policy and organization. 
 
 To take first the question of external relations. "In 
 every discussion on the peace that must follow this 
 war," says President Wilson, "it is taken for granted 
 that peace must be followed by a definite concert of 
 the Powers. The question upon which the whole future 
 peace and policy of the world depend is this : Is the 
 present a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only 
 for a new Balance of Power?" How is this question 
 answered by the prophets of the new German Empire? 
 There is only room for one statement of their creed: 
 but it must be given at some length : 
 
 The great lesson which the German people has had to learn 
 is to think in terms of power (machtpolitisch denken) ; and the 
 present war has taught us more in this regard than all the four 
 centuries of European diplomacy and development that preceded 
 it. For all who have eyes to see and a mind alive to the world 
 around them the Great War has made clear our true situation. 
 We must insist on being a World-Power, or we cease to be a 
 Great Power at all. There is no other alternative. . . . Let no 
 one here say that small States, too, can have a national life of 
 their own. True, so long as the great States around them allow 
 them to exist. But any day may see the end of their existence, 
 in spite of all treaties to the contrary, and every day brings us 
 fresh evidence how little assured is the existence of small States. 
 For neither alliances nor treaties provide the least security for 
 the existence of the Great Powers, still less of small States. 
 Anyone who still retains belief in such things is past all argu- 
 ment. A man who has not learnt wisdom from the events of 
 the last two years is incapable of learning anything. Of course 
 every Great Power will always do its best to form alliances with 
 other Powers, great and small, in order to assure its existence 
 against hostile coalitions. But no one of them can feel any 
 security that these alliances will be observed, Germany least of 
 all. . . . We cannot do without alliances, but we can only reckon 
 upon them as promoting our own security so long as they are 
 cemented by the greatest possible sense of common interest. 
 Alliances by themselves are worthless. . . . 
 
20 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 Let us sum up the argument. Germany needs, quite inde- 
 pendently of her Allies, to be large, strong and powerfully 
 organized; in order to secure herself against the possibility of 
 being deserted by the small Powers and being treacherously 
 attacked by the Great. 
 
 What does she need as a guarantee of this? The answer is: 
 an extensive Empire, with highly developed agriculture and 
 industry, the best possible strategic frontiers against sudden 
 attacks and the best possible allies — alliances based not upon 
 scraps of paper (papierene Vertrage) but upon the elementary 
 and vital needs of the allies as regards both defence and 
 economic development. It is unnecessary, nay, harmful, to rely 
 upon the affection and loyalty of a/ny ally unless the material 
 basis of the alliance has been soundly laid. If the war has done 
 no more than awake the German people out of love's young 
 dream — that is, out of its reliance on the goodwill and honest 
 dealing of peoples and States — it will have done us a great 
 service. There are no ethical friendships between States in our 
 day. There are only friendships of convenience. And friend- 
 ships of convenience last just so long as the convenience itself. 
 
 That is the sheet-anchor of all foreign policy. What we 
 desire for our future therefore is a strong, self-dependent Ger- 
 many, strong enough to secure that Austria, Bulgaria and 
 Turkey shall find their greatest safety and prosperity through 
 the German connection — and only through Germany. 
 
 There is nothing new in sentiments such as these. 
 The temper, the argument, even the very turns of 
 phrase, are as old as history. Macchiavelli, in his lore 
 for princes, preached upon the self -same text ; and two 
 thousand years before him the greatest of Greek his- 
 torians noted how war, "the most compelling of teach- 
 ers," upset all the established conventions of morality 
 and taught men a new code of mutual dealing. "What 
 an intending ally trusts to is not the goodwill of those 
 who ask his aid, but a decided superiority of power for 
 action." "The strong do what they can, while the 
 weak suffer what they must."* So ran the writ of 
 blood and iron, in the ancient world, as it runs to-day. 
 What is new, and what must give us pause, even after 
 all we have witnessed of German methods, is the source 
 from which this monstrous doctrine is proclaimed. 
 This new prophet of ascendancy, who lisps in the ac- 
 cents of Macchiavelli and pours scorn on the ideals 
 
 •Thucydldes. Book ili., ch. S2, Book v., chs. 89 and 109. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 21 
 
 which, as we are told on high authority, "every lover of 
 mankind, every sane and thoughtful man must take 
 for granted," is no politician or diplomatist, no Prus- 
 sian soldier, like Bernhardi, familiar from the tradi- 
 tions of his service with the philosophy of the jungle, 
 no h7.red scribbler paid to dip his pen in poison, but a 
 man known through two hemispheres as a moral edu- 
 cator of the young. Few German writers, indeed, are 
 better known and more esteemed in this country than 
 Dr. Kerschensteiner, of Munich, whose name is insep- 
 arably associated with the Day Continuation School 
 system in that city and elsewhere in Germany, and it 
 is with a sense of cruel irony that his English admirers 
 will find his name associated with this solemn and delib- 
 erate denial of the very possibility of international 
 right and of a comity of nations. There is no need for 
 further witnesses as to the part the new German Em- 
 pire is likely to play in the "creation of a system of 
 international law." Ex hoc uno disce omnes — and 
 their name is legion.* 
 
 Let us now turn to the internal policy and organiza- 
 tion of the new Empire. No subject has been more 
 discussed in Germany and among her Allies in recent 
 months ; but a brief summary of the general upshot of 
 the debate must suffice. Germany's objects with re- 
 gard to her new Eastern Empire are two-fold: mili- 
 
 *Die Zukunft Deutschlands, by Oberstudienrat Dr. Georg Kerschen- 
 steiner, Member of the Reichstag, Munich, in the Europaische Staat 
 sund Wirtschafts-zeitung, December 16, 1916. Italics as in the orig- 
 inal. Dr. Kerschensteiner is the author of Education for Citizenship, 
 English translation, Chicago, 1912 and 1915, and The Schools and the 
 Nation, English translation, 1914. As regards other literature, the 
 German learned periodicals are filled with articles and reviews of books 
 and pamphlets on current social and political questions, among which 
 Mitteleuropa predominates. Diligent search of the available liter- 
 ature has revealed one single pamphlet which departs from the prev- 
 alent materialist philosophy and imports moral considerations into the 
 argument. And of this the expert reviewer sternly remarks : "The 
 author seems to be quite unaware that he is being guilty of an un- 
 pardonable confusion of thought. All ethical considerations are com- 
 pletely alien to the State and the State must therefore resolutely keep 
 them at arm's length," adding that it is to be hoped that such "pointless 
 ethical reasonings" will not find imitators. (Archiv fur Sozialwissen- 
 schaft und SoziaVpolitih, July, 1916, p. 317. Review by Professor 
 Eulenberg, of Leipzig, of The War in the Light of Social Theory, by 
 William Jerusalem. Stuttgart, 1915.) 
 
22 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 tary and economic. It was the Military General Staff 
 who made the present war. Circumstances, and not 
 least the British blockade, have set at their side, as no 
 less important for the carrying out of Prussian designs, 
 an Economic General Staff. Together they have 
 worked out the possibilities of the new Empire in terms 
 of men and things— of cannon-fodder and material 
 products. 
 
 The military question is always regarded as a mere 
 matter of arithmetic. Having waged one war with 
 I>erhaps a majority of unwilling soldiers in their ranks 
 — Poles, Alsatians, Schleswickers, Tchechs, Italians, 
 Rumanians and Jugoslavs among the regiments of the 
 Central Powers, not to speak of the composite Turkish 
 army — ^the General Staff is justified in laying its plans 
 on the hypothesis that the same thing can be done again 
 on a larger scale. Moreover, the effect of a uniform 
 system of military training upon the populations con- 
 cerned must not be overlooked. The unity of modem 
 Germany, as Germans are never tired of telling us, is 
 largely the result of compulsory military service. As 
 Germany was unified in the generation after 1871, so 
 Mitteleuropa, they hope, in spite of its composite and 
 refractory material, will be welded into a military, 
 if not an intellectual, unity in the generation after 
 1914. The process has already been carried far in the 
 present war. The German military system is domi- 
 nant throughout the armies of the Allies and Germans 
 are almost everywhere in command, in fact if not in 
 name. The very protestations of military indepen- 
 dence issued at intervals by the various allied Govern- 
 ments testify to the helplessness of their position. This 
 unified military control is convenient in many ways to 
 the German Government. It enables it to dispose of 
 doubtful units by sending them to fronts where they 
 will be out of harm's way, and to employ them to keep 
 the civil population in order by the use of foreign 
 troops. Turks, we learn, have already been employed 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 23 
 
 to quell a civil disturbance at Munich.* This is, in- 
 deed, a new use for "colonial" troops, but under the 
 militarist regime it is too convenient not to be resorted 
 to. 
 
 There is another element in the German military sys- 
 tem which must be remembered. Its foundations are 
 laid, as everyone knows, in the national school. It is 
 inevitable, therefore, that Germany should seek to con- 
 trol the educational system of her allies — ^more espe- 
 cially of Turkey and Bulgaria, who are more amenable 
 to such treatment. The influence of German universi- 
 ties and university professors in this direction of recent 
 years has been very great, not only in Europe but in 
 America, and it will, of course, be extended wherever 
 possible after the war. Already a university has been 
 established in Constantinople, and although it has made 
 itself ridiculous by proposing the Kaiser for the Nobel 
 Peace Prize it is likely to be more successful in its 
 main object — ^the spread of German ideas in Turkey. 
 This policy is already put forward under the specious 
 plea of promoting Turkish independence. Everyone 
 who knows Turkey is familiar with the work of the 
 mission schools, a very large number of them Ameri- 
 can, which have carried on their civilizing labors with- 
 out attempting to use their influence for political pur- 
 poses. These "alien schools," we are now told,t 
 
 must be turned into true Turkish institutions. This will be a 
 favorable moment ... to see that German methods are appre- 
 ciated. . . . The foundations of our power will be stronger 
 and broader if — ^in harmony with Turkish wishes — ^we secure 
 our influence, not by the establishment of new schools of our 
 own, but by gradually introducing the German language as the 
 most important second language in the Turkish schools, and 
 thus by the active and increasing collaboration of German 
 teachers implanting a deep respect for the achievements of 
 German culture. 
 
 ♦Statement from a well-informed — ^seemingly official — source in the 
 daily papers on February 5. 
 
 t The Economic Reapprochment "between Germany and Her Allies, 
 Vol. ii, p. 450, article on German-Turkish Econonxic relations. It is 
 the standard book on the subject and in its general cautious treatment 
 marks a reaction against Naumann's Mitteleuropa, 
 
24 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 But the economic side of Germany's program is no 
 less important than the military, and it is round this 
 that controversy most centers. It is best set forth in a 
 series of quotations. 
 
 The following extract is taken from the chapter on 
 Turkey in the large, composite and obviously semi- 
 official book on Germany and the World War to which 
 most of the best-known "political" professors have con- 
 tributed* 
 
 The great problem of German-Turkish relations is commonly 
 summed up in the watchword "Berlin-Bagdad." Enemy states- 
 men have discerned in this the idea of a German political domi- 
 nation. They have spoken of Turkey as a German province, or 
 at least contemplated a German "Protectorate" over the Turks. 
 And yet the problem is not one of politics at all but of economics. 
 . . . Berlin and Bagdad are linked together as the termini of a 
 mighty railroad that is now nearly completed — a line that will 
 link up lands of widely different economic conditions and render 
 possible an exchange between them which will make them 
 independent of hostile competition, hostile attacks and, above 
 all, the command of the sea. What we have to deal with, then, 
 is a great closed econoTnic terHtory as the basis of political 
 friendship. All the States astride the line — ^the German indus- 
 trial States in the North, the great Turkish agrarian States in 
 the South-East, the Balkan States in the center — ^will remain 
 free to carry on their own national affairs, but they all have 
 the same interest in exchanging their goods along this artery 
 of communication. Granted that in peace time heavy goods will 
 be mainly transported by sea to save expense, yet the existing 
 crisis has shown us the immeasurable value of a secure line of 
 communication by land, a line which is comparable with the 
 great overland railways of the United States. 
 
 There speaks the voice of the bourgeoisie and the 
 official classes. Let us add some representative testi- 
 monies from the working class. In the article already 
 quoted Robert Schmidt, a well-known Socialist mem- 
 ber of the Reichstag and writer, remarks : 
 
 The peace which seems possible to us to-day will leave Ger- 
 many and her allies in the eyes of Europe as a group of Powers 
 whose sphere of economic control extends from the marshes of 
 
 • Deutachland und der Weltkrieg, Berlin, 1916, p. 305, chapter by 
 Professor Dr. Carl H. Becker of Bonn. The preface to the second edi- 
 tion states that "the book has been received at home and abroad as an 
 unprejudiced scientific treatment of the events brought about by the 
 war." Italics, as in all subsequent quotations, are reproduced from 
 the original. 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 25 
 
 the Elbe to the waters of the Persian Gulf. Thus Germany, in 
 close union with her allies, will have won by her arms the kernel 
 of a great sphere of economic control worthy to be set as a 
 closed economic system {geschlossenea Wirtschaftsgebiet) by 
 the side of those of the other world-Empires. 
 
 In 1915, before the entry of Bulgaria, a number of 
 leading German trade unionists representing the chief 
 industries of the country published a book entitled 
 Working Class Interests and the Issue of the War. It 
 was a naked appeal to sectional self-interest, in har- 
 mony with the dominant philosophy of the country. 
 Trade by trade the German workman is told that defeat 
 means ruin and victory more work and higher wages. 
 But whenever the question of peace terms crops up the 
 familiar exposition of Eastern policy reappears : 
 
 A German commercial policy which met the needs of the 
 Balkan States and, above all, of Turkey would bring with it 
 invaluable consequences. It would bind those peoples more 
 closely to Germany, because it would offer them mutual advan- 
 tages and the possibility of cultural progress. It would suit 
 the Interests of the German consumer, because it would assure 
 him of the import of foodstuffs independently of the sea and of 
 England. ... It would also be of advantag:e to our industries. 
 The procuring of ivdtistrial raw materials is extremely impor- 
 tant for the trade unionist as for the manufacturer. Already 
 to-day we are importing wool from those regions. With the 
 improvement of methods of communication cotton-production 
 would assume a greater importance for Turkey, to the great 
 advantage of the Central Powers. There is no reason to rely 
 forever on the American supply or to be dependent on the 
 development of Africa. Both these sources can be cut off from 
 the sea. The straight road to Asia is, however, open if only 
 these peoples can be interested in the prosperity of Germany,* 
 
 The same point of view is dominant in the most in- 
 teresting Socialist document which has as yet come to 
 hand on the subject, the published report of the pro- 
 ceedings at a meeting between the official representa- 
 tives of the German and Austrian Socialist and Trade 
 Union movements, held at Berlin early in 1916. From 
 the purely intellectual point of view the discussion was 
 on an extraordinarily high level, and the various con- 
 
 * Arheiterintereasen und Krieffsergehniss: a Trade Union war book, 
 edited by William Jansson (editor of the official organ of the Oerman 
 Trade Union Movement), p. 159, from the closing essay of the editor. 
 
26 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 nicting factors and interests in the complicated eco- 
 nomic situation were analyzed with a wealth of prac- 
 tical and theoretical knowledge seldom found at politi- 
 cal gatherings in this country. But the whole discus- 
 sion is dominated by the materialist philosophy of 
 Marx, which has proved so sinister a bond of union 
 between Prussian militarism and German and Austrian 
 socialism. The moral standpoint is simply non-exist- 
 ent. "Central Europe" is judged, not from the point 
 of view of justice or moral values, but by whether it is 
 the predestined next step in the economic evolution 
 of the world ; and from this standpoint there has been 
 no difficulty in bringing round the great majority of 
 Socialists to the policy of co-operating with the Govern- 
 ments and the bourgeois parties in promoting the closer 
 economic union of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the 
 Near East. The general attitude of those present on 
 the question of the rights of small nations may be 
 judged by the follovnng extract from the report of the 
 remarks of the one courageous minority speaker (Ernst 
 Meyer), who ventured to touch on the subject of the 
 wishes of the non-German nationalities concerned:* 
 
 From the Socialist point of view, we ought not only to ask 
 what are the interests of the German working-class; we ought 
 also to take into account the interests of the workers in the 
 Balkan countries. . . . Very likely our comrades in the Balkans 
 have other wishes in preference to the rapprochement with the 
 Central Powers. . . . We cannot demand that without further 
 ado the wishes of the German workers should ride roughshod 
 over theirs. (Interruption: "Absurd!") Regard for the work- 
 ing-class interests of other countries has not hitherto been re- 
 garded by us as absurd (Interruption: "Parish Pump politics!") 
 
 Let us complete the picture by an extract from the 
 most widely read, as it is also by far the best written, 
 of all the books that have appeared in Germany on this 
 subject — a very oasis in a desert of sand — Naumann's 
 
 • Verbatim report of proceedings on January 9, 1916, Issued by the 
 Executive of the German Social-Democratic Party, Berlin Vorwarts 
 Publishing Office, 1916, p. 49. The words translated "Parish Pump 
 politics" above are "Montenegrrische Kirchturmspolltik" — i.e., "Monte- 
 negrin church steeple politics." 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 27 
 
 Central Europe. Attention has already been drawn in 
 The Round Table* to the significance of Naumann's 
 book in connection with German domestic policy; his 
 exposition of the underlying meaning and philosophy of 
 Germany's Eastern policy is equally striking : 
 
 We have reached the heart of the constitutional problem of 
 Central Europe.! It consists in the marking off of National 
 Government from Economic Government and Military Govern- 
 ment. The distinction is fundamental. We started, it will be 
 remembered, with the idea of large-scale economic areas {Welt- 
 wirtschaftsgebiete). The large-scale economic area of Central 
 Europe must be larger than the existing States of Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary. We have refrained, for obvious reasons, 
 from mentioning the names of neighboring States to be brought 
 in, merely stating in general terms that further accessions are 
 necessary. But into what sort of a union shall they be brought 
 in? The answer is: a military union and an economic union. 
 Anything over and above this would be superfluous and posi- 
 tively harmful. In all other matters there must be no derogation 
 of political independence. It is therefore vital to delimit the 
 military and economic functions as so to work them into a new 
 central government. Let us take first the latter side of this 
 new union, or, if the expression be preferred, the new Economic 
 State. . , . This Economic State will have its own customs 
 frontiers just as the military State will have its trench defences. 
 Within these frontiers it will promote a wide and active inter- 
 change of commodities. For this a central Economic Govern- 
 ment will be required, which will be directly responsible for 
 part of the economic arrangements concerned and will advise 
 the national Governments as to the remainder. Customs, the 
 control of syndicates or trusts, organizations for promoting 
 exports, patents, trade marks, etc., will be under central control. 
 Commercial law, traffic policy, social poBcy and similar matters 
 will only be indirectly within its purview. But the super- 
 I national Economic State, once established, will steadily increase 
 tits powers and will gradually evolve an administrative and 
 representative system of its own.J 
 
 Here, then, we have the program. The new German 
 Empire, we now see, is not, and is not intended to be, 
 
 m 
 
 Wmmmmmmmamimmmmmmt 
 
 • See the article on the Labor Movement and the Future of British 
 Industry, June. 1916. 
 
 t Central Europe is habitually now used by German writers to include 
 the Turkish Empire, though Naumann is more directly concerned with 
 Austria-Hungary. 
 
 t Mitteleuropa, by Friedrich Naumann. Berlin, 1915 ; p. 249. The 
 passage quoted will be found on p. 272 of the English translation (P. S. 
 King & Co., 1916). 
 
28 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 a political unit in the ordinary sense of the term. It is 
 ostensibly an alliance — an association of militarized 
 partners, each pursuing objects of their own, but bent 
 on preserving a closed system against the jealousy of 
 the outer world, and submitting to the general direc- 
 tion of the most powerful member of the group. The 
 guiding motive is self-interest, and the terms of alli- 
 ance are a business contract.* The four Powers are 
 in league for what they can get out of it : and Germany, 
 who holds the others to her by a characteristic blend- 
 ing of cajolery and terrorism, maintains the alliance, 
 with the definite material object of eventually render- 
 ing herself independent of British sea-power as re- 
 gards the import of food-stuffs and essential raw ma- 
 terials, such as cotton and wool. She conceives the 
 world as divided up among a few great World Powers 
 with mutually exclusive economic spheres, and she is 
 determined to carve out her own area of exploitation. 
 
 It is hardly worth while to point out to British read- 
 ers how this conception conflicts at every point with the 
 principles and practice of our own "free, tolerant and 
 unaggressive" Commonwealth, which has kept clear the 
 seas for the trade of the whole world and maintained 
 throughout its dependencies the principle of the open 
 door for all comers. That a system which is based 
 merely on self-interest and repudiates the very suspi- 
 cion of any deeper unity is built upon shifting sand is 
 a proposition which need not be argued in the pages 
 of The Round Table. Yet it is interesting to recall 
 that this strange, new ambitious German scheme is in 
 its general conception not a novelty but an anachron- 
 
 ns is brought out most clearly of all in the manifesto, unique In 
 its combination of peasant cunning and naivete, which was issued by 
 the Bulgarian Government previous to its entry into the war. It is 
 reprinted in Herkner, Vol. ii. It is perhaps the first time in history 
 that a call to arms has been backed up by statistics. The following 
 extract is typical of the whole : "Germany and Austria-Hungary are 
 cut off from American and Russian imports of corn. If, therefore, we 
 can get our corn to their markets we can sell it free of duty and at 
 the price of 60 to 80 francs per 100 kilogrammes. Bulgaria would be 
 guilty of the greatest of crimes if she did not make arrangements (i.e., 
 by attacking Serbia) to enable our corn to be sold at these high prices" 
 (p. 470). 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 29 
 
 ism. There was a time in British history when we, 
 too, pursued the phantom of the "self-sufficient Em- 
 pire" and regarded every neighboring State as an in- 
 tending highwayman. "Berlin-Bagdad," for all its 
 parade of modern science, is little more than an adap- 
 tation to modem conditions of the ideas and policy of 
 the "Old Colonial System," which led to such friction 
 between the Colonies and the Mother Country and ulti- 
 mately to the disruption of the Commonwealth.* 
 
 That friction is inevitable, and is already plentifully 
 in evidence. Germany's allies do not relish the pros- 
 pect of being treated as the colonial plantations of a 
 modern industrial State. The Turkish Government, for 
 instance, has recently announced a complete revision of 
 the Turkish tariff and German authorities are already 
 complaining of the "industrial fanaticism" by which 
 it is inspired. The Hungarians, whose country is de- 
 scribed by Naumann in glowing periods as the "gra- 
 nary" of Germany, protest that their manufactures 
 only need an influx of German capital to develop on 
 prosperous lines. Austrian industrial interests have 
 been so much alarmed at the prospect of Austria be- 
 coming the dumping ground of German goodsf that 
 
 • "Anxiety to make England independent of continental Europe in 
 respect of shipping and of certain raw materials . . . was the 
 motive which prompted English statesmen to favor projects of Amer- 
 ican colonization. . . . 
 
 The policy of British statesmen toward the colonies was moulded 
 by the conceptions of their commercial system. They left the colonists 
 to concentrate their attention on the local affairs of their several com- 
 munities, in the belief that Britain could bind them to herself by under- 
 taking to defend them against foreign aggression, and by offering a 
 preference to their raw products, in return for which she was to con- 
 fine the market for those products to herself. . . . 
 
 The inherent defect of the system lay in the fact that it was one 
 which could not exist without control, and that control lay in the 
 hands of only one of the parties to the bargain. Each side was so 
 situated as to think mainly or exclusively of its own interests, which 
 was but a part of the whole. There was no common control in which 
 all shared, such as might compel them to think of the interests of all 
 — of the interests, that is to say, of the Commonwealth as a whole." 
 
 The Commonwealth of Nations, edited by L. Curtis, pp. 245, 307, 309. 
 
 fNot all Austrian manufacturers share this view. At a conference 
 of the Lower Austrian Union of Trades, on May 14, 1915, a glove 
 manufacturer remarked in all innocence: "In trades like ours taste 
 Is the most important factor involved, and we shall all readily admit 
 ttiat we have nothing to fear from German competition in this respect." 
 Berkner, Vol. ii., p. 161. 
 
30 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 
 
 the idea of a Customs Union has already been aban- 
 doned for the milder formula of an "economic rap- 
 prochement." The disputes which always break out 
 in a partnership where self-interest is the only tie are 
 already in full swing. 
 
 But we need not conclude too hastily that these con- 
 flicts of interest will undermine the foundations of the 
 new project of Empire. That can be done, and must 
 be done, by the Allies alone. For there are two great 
 outstanding differences between the old Colonial sys- 
 tem of Britain and the new Colonial system of Ger- 
 many, which insure to the latter, if secure from with- 
 out, at least a temporary stability. In the first place, 
 Germany has and will retain the undisputed military 
 control over her allies, so that of the two alternatives, 
 tyranny or disruption, the former is the more likely. 
 Secondly, each of her allies is itself a tyrant, practising 
 ascendancy over lesser peoples, so that a sense of com- 
 mon interest and common guilt is always at hand, in 
 case of need, to hold the system together. Berlin-Bagdad 
 represents the ascendancy of Germans, Magyars, Bul- 
 garians and Turks over Alsatians, Poles, Danes, Czechs, 
 Jugoslavs, Roumanians, Italians, Slovaks, Greeks, 
 Arabs, Armenians and other races. In the last analysis, 
 as they know already to their cost, the lesser partners 
 have little voice in the higher direction of the system, 
 just as the German people themselves have little voice in 
 the decisions of their own Government. But they re- 
 alize that the alternative before them is not the trans- 
 ference of their allegiance to another camp, but in the 
 case of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, at any rate, a 
 drastic alteration both in the boundaries and in the 
 character of their governments. So they acquiesce 
 perforce in the control of Berlin, a control over the 
 lives of some 150 million people — one-tenth of the popu- 
 lation of the world — exercised, directly or indirectly, 
 by the same methods — ^the combination of prestige and 
 terrorism — ^by which the old Empires of the East re- 
 
THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 31 
 
 tained their temporary dominion over some of the same 
 unhappy lands; at the best, organization, discipline, 
 efficiency, science, material well-being; at the worst, 
 forced labor, deportation, slavery, massacre. 
 
 Such an Empire is not a commonwealth or commu- 
 nity of citizens. It is not even an autocracy of the 
 familiar type. It is something different and more sin- 
 ister: a military and economic unit, a barracks and a 
 plantation, an area in which the normal concerns and 
 functions of government and social life are subordi- 
 nated to the demands and requirements of an economic 
 and military General Staff. In peace its inhabitants 
 are no more than a "labor-force"; in war they are 
 simply "man-power." If it survives the present war 
 and is allowed to be consolidated in the future peace, 
 it will rivet tyranny for yet another generation upon 
 the peoples of Central Europe and Nearer Asia, and 
 make ready, slowly perhaps, but inevitably, as its re- 
 sources develop and a new crop of soldiers grows to 
 manhood, for yet another trial of strength between 
 militarism and the forces of liberty and justice. 
 
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