Class 
 Book. 
 
 JLi 
 
 CopyrigM 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 
 
 
ENGLAND AND 
 GERMANY 
 
 IN THE WAR 
 
 Letters to the 
 Department of State 
 
 ROBERT ^THOMPSON 
 
 American Consul, Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany 
 {Resigned) 
 
 CHAPPLE PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD. 
 BOSTON 
 
y* 
 
 n* 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 Robeet J. Thompson 
 
 Published simultaneously in the 
 
 United States, Great Britain, Canada 
 
 and the British possessions 
 
 A lie rechte vor behalten 
 All rights of translation reserved 
 
 SEP 27 1915 
 
 ©CLA410675 
 
Dedicated to 
 
 Those Who Hold principle 
 Above Position 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PUBLISHERS' PREFACE 5 
 
 I INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 II ORIGINAL LETTER TO SECRETARY OF STATE 21 
 
 IH RESIGNATION 27 
 
 IV GERMANY'S RISE AND ENGLAND'S DECLINE 33 
 
 V DIPLOMACY'S ISOLATION OF GERMANY 47 
 
 VI SEA tw. LAND MILITARISM 63 
 
 VII CERTAIN ASPECTS OF GERMAN CULTURE ... 79 
 
 VIII ATROCITIES ON THE FIELD AND IN THE 
 
 PRESS 93 
 
 IX THE BLOOD OF AMERICA 107 
 
 X THE ATTITUDE AND DUTY OF AMERICA .... 115 
 
PUBLISHERS' PREFACE 
 
 THIS book comprises a series of letters addressed 
 to the Secretary of State by Mr. Robert J. 
 Thompson, recently American consul at Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, Germany, who resigned from his post, as the 
 letters explain, purposely to be free from official 
 restrictions in reporting facts of the European war 
 situation as he has found them.* 
 
 Mr. Thompson is a citizen of Chicago. He has spent 
 close to ten years in the consular service in Germany 
 and England, and has also spent much time in France, 
 the beautiful Lafayette monument in Paris being the 
 result of his suggestion and effort. 
 
 He entered the foreign service upon the recom- 
 mendation of friends among the business men of the 
 country for the purpose of demonstrating what a 
 successful business man might accomplish in the 
 direction of extending American foreign trade. The 
 character of his reports and observations reveal an 
 independent point of view somewhat out of, if not 
 above the ordinary. 
 
 The letters set forth that their author is not pro- 
 German, by predilection or inclination; rather that 
 ties of blood, friendship, sentiment and intimate 
 
 ♦["Thompson's Letters" were first printed serially in the Chicago Tribune, 
 from February 14 to February 21, 1915. This great newspaper claimed for 
 that period the largest circulation it had had since the beginning of the war, 
 attributing this gain to Mr. Thompson's letters. They created a sensation 
 and much comment. 
 
 It is due largely to the demand of the Tribune readers that these semi- 
 official despatches extended and elaborated are now produced in book 
 form.] — Publishers. 
 
 (5) 
 
Publishers' Preface 
 
 personal relation bind him to England and France; 
 in view of which he submits that his conclusions in 
 favor of Germany were forced upon him directly against 
 his personal inclination. 
 
 Of straight English descent, also bearing the high 
 decoration of officer of the Legion of Honor of France, 
 these facts would suggest that he has brought to the 
 study of the situation in Europe an unbiased mind 
 free from all racial prejudice. His interpretation of 
 Germany's position in the war and in the world is 
 from a source not German, but purely American. 
 
 The actuating cause of Mr. Thompson's withdrawal 
 from the service was the receipt from the Department 
 of State, on November 5, 1914, of an official instruction 
 ordering him to discontinue certain investigations 
 which he had begun, more particularly in respect to 
 reported acts of cruelty and reprisal, credited to Bel- 
 gians, Germans and French, upon the scene of war. 
 The official instruction referred to came to him as the 
 response of the government to a letter which he 
 had addressed to the Department of State on Sep- 
 tember 17, 1914, and which is included in this series 
 of notable letters. 
 
 *As a sidelight on the character of the author and his 
 activities at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), the western 
 center of German war operations, we reproduce here a 
 tribute from the pen of Mr. James O'Donnell Bennett, 
 staff correspondent of the Chicago Tribune: 
 
 Aachen, Germany, Jan. 1. — Who is the best friend of the 
 troubled alien, moneyless and all at sea, in northern Germany, 
 these days? 
 
 Thompson, from Chicago. 
 
 Who deals in the course of one day with the affairs of Germans, 
 Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians, Swiss, and Japanese, and 
 (6) 
 
Publishers* Preface 
 
 at the end of the day has them all looking to him as a kind of 
 international arbiter of individual troubles? 
 
 Thompson, from Chicago. 
 
 Who escorts a distracted Englishwoman wa;> up to Crefeld 
 that she may visit her relatives, who are prisoners of war there? 
 And who sends her back over the Holland border with tears of 
 gratitude in her eyes for his zeal and for the courtesy of the 
 German officers? 
 
 Thompson, from Chicago. 
 
 Who gets American correspondents invited to spend a week 
 on the German battlefront in France or at the great headquarters 
 of the German armies? 
 
 Thompson, from Chicago. 
 
 Who has taken over the work of half a dozen other consuls 
 who have been banished from Germany? 
 
 Thompson, from Chicago. 
 
 Whether his own country appreciates it or not, the truth is 
 that Robert J. Thompson, American consul at Aachen, has been 
 of more help to more people than any other official American 
 stationed in Germany since the outbreak of the war. 
 
 The position of this border city is partly the cause of that; 
 his own willing spirit is the other half of the explanation. 
 
 Aachen commands the roads leading into Holland and Bel- 
 gium and to the great German cities of Cologne and Dusseldorf. 
 It is the headquarters for perplexity and the rallying point for 
 aliens who want to get out of Germany or further into Germany. 
 
 Dealing directly with the laconic German authorities, they 
 are likely to receive terse answers or to encounter wearing delays. 
 
 Then they turn to Mr. Thompson, and it is Mr. Thompson 
 who alleviates suspicion, smooths away difficulties, and turns 
 rancor into a good understanding. 
 
 He can ask much of Germany because the Germans trust him 
 and because they know he never will ask too much. 
 
 In fact, he has ceased to be an individual and has become a 
 kind of institution — combination of post office, bank, bureau of 
 inquiry and domestic adviser. 
 
 He calms hysterical women and reunites husbands and wives 
 whom the chances of war have widely separated. He telephones 
 and telegraphs until he has got the unsound passports of rattle- 
 brained aliens visaed into some kind of order and authenticity. 
 (7) 
 
Publisher {>' Preface 
 
 He stakes the penniless, seldom with any assurance that he will 
 ever see the color of hi3 money again. 
 
 He extricates incompetents and busybodies from troubles into 
 which there was not the slightest excuse for their getting them- 
 selves, and at parting he gently impresses upon them that war 
 is war and that the curious American seeking "a bit of adven- 
 ture" by going into Belgium, would more wisely transfer his 
 operations to Alaska or the Sandwich islands. 
 
 He negotiates the checks of persons who placidly wonder why 
 a German hotel keeper will not accept a check on an English 
 bank when the two nations are in a life and death struggle. 
 
 He hunts for and finds American correspondents with whom 
 their papers are ^everishly trying to get in touch. And he receipts 
 for and forwards batches of letters which come to him halfway 
 across the empire from correspondents in Berlin who cannot 
 otherwise be sure that their papers ever will hear from them. 
 
 He gets stuck for cable tolls and he grins. 
 
 He reaches the affections of German officers when he goes 
 for automobile benzol, which civilians are not supposed to have, 
 by saying, "It is for the fatherland." Then they choke up and 
 fill the tanks to overflowing. 
 
 He forwards gifts sent from foreign lands to prisoners of war 
 in Germany, and to loquacious aliens he says things which cause 
 it to dawn on them that fluency in slander of Germany is no 
 proof of courage. 
 
 It is marvelous how he carries water on both shoulders with- 
 out truckling. Yet the explanation seems to be the simple 
 one that he is patient and on the square. He is tactful with- 
 out deviousness, and he can be agreeable without recourse to 
 flattery. 
 
 Twenty-two years ago Mr. Thompson was a newspaper re- 
 porter in Chicago. That was just before the world's fair, and he 
 was working on the old Times. There were rumors of dissensions 
 among the fair directors, and the Times knew that Thompson, 
 who had been assigned to the world's fair beat, knew the 
 facts. 
 
 He acknowledged that he did, but he refused to write the story 
 on the grounds that it would work harm to the whole exposition 
 project. He was discharged. 
 
 He says now that no dismissal could have been luckier for 
 (8) 
 
Publishers* Preface 
 
 him, for it brought him into relations with many important 
 men and led him into a larger career than newspaper reporting. 
 
 Years later he became the father of the project for the pres- 
 entation of a statue of Lafayette to France by America. 
 
 That is why Robert J. Thompson wears in his lapel today 
 the red button of an officer of the Legion of Honor. 
 
 In connection with his career as an American consul, 
 the following London dispatch, written by Frederic 
 William Wile of the London Times, further empha- 
 sizes that the broad life activities of Mr. Thompson 
 are not prescribed by national boundaries. 
 
 London, Jan. 9. — Robert J. Thompson, a former Chicago 
 newspaper man, now American consul at Aachen, Germany, 
 while touring the French battlefields recently with members of 
 the German staff, ran across the grave of a French soldier. The 
 marking at the head of the grave bore the name, August Hen- 
 nocque de Lafayette. The fallen soldier was a direct descendant 
 of the Marquis de Lafayette, who aided the soldiers of the 
 colonies in the American Revolution. 
 
 The descendant of Lafayette was the second lieu tenant of the 
 Thirteenth French Dragoons, and his body lay buried in a garden 
 near the town of Conflans. The grave of young Lafayette was 
 not discovered by Thompson until four months after he had been 
 slain in battle with the Germans. 
 
 Young Lafayette, together with Mr. Thompson's son, Paul, 
 who then was a school boy of Chicago, unveiled the Lafayette 
 monument given to the French republic by the school children 
 of America in 1900. 
 
 The father of the slain Lafayette is attached to the general 
 staff of the French army. 
 
 Consul Thompson sailed from London today on the liner 
 Transylvania for a sixty days' leave of absence from his post at 
 Aachen. Aachen has been Germany's principal military gateway 
 to the west since the war started. 
 
 "Four million troops have passed my door since the war 
 started," Consul Thompson said today. 
 
 (9) 
 
Publishers' Preface 
 
 At no time in the history of civilization have the 
 people of the world, individually, been so intensely 
 absorbed from every angle on any subject as in the 
 causes and progress of the European war. 
 
 In spite of racial prejudices, there is a universal and 
 growing demand for fair play, and a desire to get at all 
 the facts from all sides. When the war blaze burst 
 forth on July 31, 1914, Mr. Robert J. Thompson was 
 stationed as American consul at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 Germany. This was the center around which occurred 
 the initial stirring incidents of military operations. 
 When hostilities opened, every correspondent, and 
 many prominent Americans who were there felt the 
 shock of the war thunderbolt, and insist that Consul 
 Thompson in his work typified the ideal diplomat and 
 American consul. The manner in which he pulled on 
 and off his white gloves in the midst of a group of ex- 
 cited people, while deliberating on this or that question, 
 remaining absolutely neutral and cool-headed, keeping 
 both ears open to the sympathetic appeals of citizens 
 of the nations at war, as well as to the appeal of Ameri- 
 cans and other aliens, was an experience that tested 
 his perfect poise. He was master of the situation. 
 
 Years of public service and careful observation had 
 prepared him for this very exigency for which he has 
 received the unstinted appreciation of all concerned, 
 including our own state department and other foreign 
 offices. The mere description of his work was praise 
 indeed, dear to an American. He was doing so much 
 and saying so little that a record of those eventful days 
 at Aix-la-Chapelle remains an important chapter in 
 American consular history of international importance. 
 
 However much readers may disagree with Mr. 
 Thompson in some of his conclusions, he has a pro- 
 
 (10) 
 
Publishers* Preface 
 
 found and thorough way of presenting his views which 
 are not the result of mere affirmation, but an analysis 
 of cause and effect, and concrete facts and conditions. 
 The powerful and predominant note in these letters, 
 is the practical plan which the author offers for the 
 solution of international problems and the permanent 
 abolishment of war, the one thought uppermost in 
 the mind of all the world today. 
 
 In his epistolary discussions there is always apparent 
 an incisive grasp of those vital and essential points 
 that at least modify emotional prejudices if not change 
 convictions. His work impresses readers with the 
 feeling that he is a thinker and that his point of view 
 is based upon personal observations made with pains- 
 taking carefulness which recognizes that the most 
 logical conclusion upon any subject must come after 
 a comparative and thorough analysis of events and 
 things clear to the physical vision as well as to academic 
 research. 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS. 
 
 (ii) 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir: — 
 
 I have the honor to state that, having 
 been accustomed during the years I have 
 spent in the Consular Service, to address the 
 reports of my investigations to the Secretary 
 of State, I purpose now to continue that 
 practice and present herewith the first of a 
 series of open letters, addressed to you, 
 which will contain facts which I have gathered 
 and conclusions which I have reached in 
 relation to Germany and England and the 
 present war. 
 
 I feel that I am warranted in following 
 this course for the reason that the facts 
 which I have gathered, and which I shall 
 submit, have been acquired during my long 
 service — practically a decade — as American 
 Consul in the two countries named, including 
 five months' presence at the practical seat of 
 war. d3) 
 
14 England and Germany 
 
 Because of the department's instruction 
 to make neither investigations nor reports 
 on the serious — and at that time acute — 
 subject of military reprisals, I have withheld 
 all of my observations and reports, until my 
 resignation would give me freedom to speak 
 fully and in direct accordance with the facts. 
 
 A sense of duty is involved in my action, 
 as I feel that the atmosphere should be 
 cleared, and that our fitness to sit at the 
 great conciliation and arbitration board, 
 which shall eventually adjudicate the claims 
 of the contending nations, and shape the 
 future policy of the world, depends upon .our 
 true understanding of the whole subject — 
 which can come only through knowledge of 
 all of the facts of the case. 
 
 Having entered the Consular service for 
 the sole purpose of serving, and not of filling 
 a soft political job, I sincerely regard my 
 present action as a continuation of service, 
 the value of which, I feel, will be enhanced 
 by the procedure of addressing these letters 
 to you. They are, as you will note, of a 
 character supplementary to those already 
 forwarded to you, from Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 where the entire series was prepared, in the 
 line of my duty (as I saw it) as a representative 
 of the American people on the ground. 
 
Introduction 15 
 
 My desire is to give testimony in as 
 formal, impartial form as I may be able to 
 submit it — such testimony as history will 
 demand, and sound statesmanship will 
 require. 
 
 The modern world is at war. An appalling 
 social cataclysm is enveloping its leading 
 peoples, destroying the lives of hundreds of 
 thousands of them, the most vigorous repre- 
 sentatives of the main races of the world, 
 whose loss means a vital subtraction of 
 virility from the whole human race. 
 
 To be a witness of this phenomenon — this 
 orgasm of destruction — and to fail to realize 
 its significance, or to apprehend its conse- 
 quences, and, especially, to fail to investigate 
 and analyze its precedents, would be to fail 
 in my duty — that larger duty which every 
 man owes to his fellows — to society — and 
 which is greater than his duty to himself. 
 
 We, who are living at the present time, 
 have a great responsibility, which rests 
 directly upon us — the responsibility of ascer- 
 taining the facts behind the great catastrophe 
 that has overwhelmed Europe; and our first 
 need and duty, in this direction, is to lay 
 aside both favoritism and prejudice. 
 
 We must be loyal to facts, or we are traitors 
 to life. 
 
16 England and Germany 
 
 The pressure of facts is the real cause of 
 my action in resigning from the Consular 
 service. No other impulse has directed me. 
 I have not been moved to this decision in 
 order to take up my pen in behalf or in defense 
 of Germany. What I shall state will be 
 evidence in behalf of civilization, for sound 
 civilization is what we must have if we are 
 to be rid of war and the causes of war, both 
 desultory and direct. 
 
 If what I say of Germany and England 
 may savor of admiration for one and criticism 
 of the other, let me say that my statements 
 will be the result of conviction — of facts 
 which have been impressed upon me and 
 conclusions which have been forced upon 
 me, as a result of years of observation and 
 study, and in spite of an unsympathetic 
 attitude and adverse conclusions previously 
 formed. 
 
 Also, if my phrase, at times, may seem 
 extreme or partisan, it is because my convic- 
 tions having been formed slowly, if not 
 grudgingly, have at last become deep and 
 positive, and thus may color and shape my 
 expression. 
 
 It will be my endeavor to interpret, in 
 part, the German people, their motives and 
 achievements, to the American people; to 
 
Introduction 17 
 
 portray them as I have found them actually 
 to be, and in this portrayal to show, at least 
 in a small degree, the part they more recently 
 have taken in the progress of the world, and 
 why the success of their institutions and the 
 potentiality of their national life lead them 
 to wish to perpetuate both and extend them 
 as they grow. 
 
 If in my report of the conduct of Germany, 
 leading up to and during the present war, 
 I submit facts which may be in contradiction 
 of statements made by others, I do this, not 
 in a spirit of contention, but in the cause of 
 justice and progress — to clear away the 
 accumulation of exaggeration and misrepre- 
 sentation that now hides the foundation of 
 truth, upon which all conclusion and action 
 must be based. 
 
 Few will say that Germany has had equal 
 access with its opponents to the great court 
 of the sympathy and support of the world. 
 Especially at the beginning of hostilities, 
 when all stood aghast, stunned by the stu- 
 pendous convulsion, instinctively and impul- 
 sively seeking its cause and source — the 
 nation to be blamed — more especially at this 
 crucial time, during these critical first days, 
 when public opinion was being framed largely 
 upon the proclamations and representations 
 
18 England and Germany 
 
 of her enemies, was Germany deprived, 
 utterly, of approach to the public ear. 
 
 This fact should not be lost sight of in 
 estimating the causes of the present state of 
 public opinion in the United States; and it 
 affords a reason for those who know Germany 
 to be different in act and in motive from what 
 she has been represented to be, to come 
 forward and state it, and to present and dis- 
 cuss the moving facts of the situation. 
 
 But the presentation of Germany's position 
 in the present war and the revelation of its 
 aspirations and life are not my ultimate 
 object in preparing these letters — and es- 
 pecially in addressing them to you. I have 
 a larger motive than that. In my concluding 
 letter I shall presume to suggest a line of 
 action that is open to the United States in 
 her present unique position, by following which 
 we may take advantage of our leadership 
 among nations to effect national disarmament 
 and forever banish war from the world. 
 
 In conclusion, I wish to state that it is 
 not part of the purpose of these letters to 
 take direct issue with the attitude of our 
 government and its administration; not in- 
 tentionally, at least. I have no personal 
 quarrel with the Department of State; and 
 I do not propose to discuss or question the 
 
Introduction 19 
 
 sincerity of its position or that of President 
 Wilson, who announces his purpose to main- 
 tain a strict neutrality. 
 
 If the stand of the United States be not 
 impartial in the present desperate inter- 
 national situation, and if your interpretation 
 of the accepted rules of war be unfair, a 
 more definite criticism will be applied to 
 your position and action than any I might 
 assume to make. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
ORIGINAL LETTER TO SECRETARY 
 OF STATE 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany, 
 September 17th, 1914. 
 
 Hon. W. J. Bryan, 
 
 Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 Dear Mr. Bryan: — 
 
 Events have developed so rapidly since 
 August 3rd, and so continuously, that I 
 no more than find time to write of them 
 before they seem trivial and ancient in com- 
 parison with the more recent and important 
 occurrences. 
 
 I wish to report to the Department, however, 
 my efforts and their results in the direction 
 of assisting representatives of the American 
 Press to forward important statements to 
 their respective papers and the people of the 
 United States. 
 
 On August 29th, John T. McCutcheon and 
 James O'Donnell Bennett, of the Chicago 
 Tribune; Irvin S. Cobb of the Saturday 
 
22 England and Germany 
 
 Evening Post and Philadelphia Public Ledger; 
 Roger Lewis of the Associated Press; and 
 Harry Hansen of the Chicago Daily News, 
 came upon the consulate, having been con- 
 ducted by the German military authorities 
 to Aix-la-Chapelle from the battlefields 
 along the Belgian-French frontier. The com- 
 manding officer here declined to issue them 
 passes to go into Holland or to return to 
 Belgium, but placed no restrictions upon their 
 passing further into Germany in the direc- 
 tion of Cologne and Berlin. They elected 
 to remain in Aix-la-Chapelle, from which 
 point they could mail articles to their pub- 
 lishers through the nearby frontier-town of 
 Vaals, Holland. 
 
 Their experiences and observations with 
 and in the rear of the German army in 
 Belgium, from Brussels to Beaumont, and 
 from there to Aix-la-Chapelle, covered a 
 period of ten days and will, before this reaches 
 you, be published in their respective papers. 
 
 Dn arriving at Aix-la-Chapelle, where the 
 English and American papers were to be 
 seen, they were shocked to note the innumer- 
 able reports of atrocities and brutalities 
 alleged to have been committed by the 
 German troops in the territory which they 
 had just traversed. 
 
Original Letter to Secretary of State 23 
 
 These gentlemen, who at the time of 
 their arrival in Europe were decidedly 
 anti-German in sentiment and convictions, 
 at once prepared a joint statement which 
 I advised them I would use my best 
 efforts to have forwarded by wireless to 
 the Western Union Telegraph Company in 
 New York for transmission to their several 
 papers. 
 
 Evidently these well-known American jour- 
 nalists were not so much concerned by 
 their desire to send exclusive and startling 
 stories to their papers as they were moved 
 by a sense of fair play for their fellow country- 
 men, who were entitled at least to a clearer 
 picture of things than they were receiving 
 from an interested source, controlling the sole 
 means of communication between Germany 
 and America. It seemed to me, likewise, 
 most important that the American people 
 have as much of the truth as it is pos- 
 sible to convey to them on the one most 
 terrifying feature of this present war; hence 
 I had their statement telegraphed to Berlin 
 for forwarding by wireless telegraphy to 
 America, if possible. 
 
 I have observed that various appeals are 
 being made to America to break its neutrality 
 and join the opponents of Germany on account 
 
24 England and Germany 
 
 of the alleged inhuman conduct of the German 
 military, its cruelty and drunkenness. I am 
 here on the frontier where the Belgian 
 reprisals began and am to some extent 
 personally familiar with the circumstances 
 leading to the commencement of these acts. 
 In a broad sense, it may be said that the 
 German, and especially the German soldier, 
 does not get drunk. There are, of course, 
 exceptions to this rule; but in support of 
 the military law against supplying soldiers 
 with alcoholic drinks, the Government has 
 issued a decree fixing a severe penalty for 
 soldiers drinking intoxicants as well as for 
 persons giving intoxicants to them. 
 
 There has been a terrific outcry in Germany 
 against the unexpected participation of the 
 Belgian civil populace in the war. This 
 outcry did not arise without definite cause. 
 On requesting a pass from the Garrison 
 Commander at Aachen, then General von 
 Korpff, to send a messenger into a nearby 
 Belgian village to investigate the shooting 
 of a British subject, this gentleman related 
 to me, under great mental stress, instance 
 after instance of German officers and men 
 being shot and killed while at rest, by 
 farmers, even by young girls, whom he 
 stated fired upon them while passing a 
 
Original Letter to Secretary of State 25 
 
 glass of milk or water. He gave me these 
 details at the moment in order to impress 
 me with the danger of sending a messenger 
 into those districts, Baelen-Dolhain, at that 
 time, August 17th, and his inability to guaran- 
 tee protection for my messenger. 
 
 The reprisals made by the German military 
 have been severe and possibly beyond modern 
 precedent, but I am convinced that when the 
 facts are brought out they will expose causes, 
 which, under the circumstances, may have 
 extenuated, if not justified, their conduct, 
 as the Germans claim. 
 
 In Liege I spent the night as guest at the 
 "Duesseldorfer Lazarett," a temporary war- 
 hospital, opened August 17th in the main 
 University building there, by three prominent 
 ladies of Dusseldorf . 
 
 The hospital referred to was attacked on 
 the 20th of August, three days after it was 
 opened and thirteen days after the entry of 
 the German troops into Liege. According to my 
 examination the building was the object of 
 rifle volleys from two sides, the effect of the 
 bullets showing in the broken windows. As 
 a result of this attack thirteen men, principally 
 Russian, English and Belgian students, were 
 caught and executed in the University Square, 
 and twenty buildings, principally lodging 
 
26 England and Germany 
 
 houses, from whence the shooting came, 
 destroyed. 
 
 I hope to be able, if time permits, to in- 
 vestigate certain charges of the murder of 
 sleeping, wounded and defenseless German 
 soldiers, made against the Belgian villagers 
 and farmers just over the frontier between 
 here and Liege. 
 
 I will send you, from time to time, some 
 illustrated German papers. 
 
 You will pardon this semi-personal letter. 
 I can write more freely in this manner. 
 
 With great respects and regards, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 
 American Consul. 
 
RESIGNATION 
 
 [Publishers' Note: In response to the foregoing letter an 
 instruction was received from the department directing Consul 
 Thompson to cease all investigations and discontinue all reports 
 as suggested — the result of which was the resignation of Mr. 
 Thompson as shown in the following despatch.] 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany, 
 New York, January 20, 1915. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to tender herewith my 
 resignation as consul at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 "Great stress of work in connection with 
 my position as Consul at Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 both official and of a semi-official nature, 
 has prevented my disposing of the question 
 raised by the Department instruction, order- 
 ing me to discontinue investigations and to 
 make no reports on the subject of war reprisals. 
 
 "I come now to this matter and if it appear 
 that I have delayed my action, the more 
 important duty of aiding distress and attend- 
 ing to the heart-breaking demands of scores 
 
 (27) 
 
28 England and Germany 
 
 of applicants of every nationality must be 
 my excuse. 
 
 "A truly neutral person or state can have 
 neither fear nor favor for the truth, and under 
 such unparalleled circumstances as those 
 brought about by the war, a consular officer 
 who might be stationed at the center of this 
 great war vortex, will either tighten up on 
 the technique and formalities of his position, 
 or go outside of them, to meet in every way 
 and as best he can, the new conditions and the 
 pressing demands made upon him. In the 
 midst of such extraordinary circumstances 
 no call of duty appeared more definite to me 
 than that of the keenest observation and 
 accurate report as to the motives and acts 
 of the combatants. If a neutral state cannot 
 separate its belligerent friends and bring 
 peace between them, it must, I feel, auto- 
 matically take the position of referee, or 
 umpire, or sink into obscurity as unequal to 
 its role as a World Power and an influencing 
 force upon the wider welfare of mankind. 
 
 "There should be no German, French, 
 Belgian, or English in America at such a 
 moment as this. There should not be, but 
 unfortunately there are. We have over 
 twenty millions of citizens of German blood 
 in our country, even though their consan- 
 
Resignation 29 
 
 guinity dates from the days of the colonization 
 of Pennsylvania, at a time when the English 
 language was known in that territory only 
 in official circles. Germanic source or blood 
 constitutes more than one-fifth of the present 
 composite body of America, almost one- 
 fourth against one-eighth or less of English. 
 
 "Must the accident of blood and of language 
 bar these people, with their undying memories 
 for the Fatherland, from a square deal? 
 There is no German blood in my veins and 
 I thank God I am an American, but I 
 should lose my pride of race if I thought the 
 American national spirit of fair play were 
 dead. Even if the operation of international 
 law, which indicates the rights and duties of 
 belligerents and neutrals, permit or force us 
 to become allies of the Allies in the matter of 
 supplying them with men and vast supplies 
 of munitions of war; (to say nothing of 
 reservists, I am advised that some three 
 thousand of the Canadian troops in England 
 now are American boys); even if this be 
 true, which is not denied, it is no less the 
 duty of the United States to umpire the 
 game, standing out fearlessly for the exposi- 
 tion of the truth and the administration of 
 justice. 
 
 "In withdrawing from the service at this 
 
30 England and Germany 
 
 time, and under the circumstances, I may 
 be permitted to state once more and specifi- 
 cally that I regard it as the special duty and 
 privilege of a neutral country, t. ough its 
 representatives and otherwise, in ary manner 
 fairly open to it, to ascertain the truth and 
 facts in a great human epoch-making event 
 like the present war; not alone to ascertain 
 the truth, but to record it for the benefit of 
 history and the final accounting which must 
 be rendered to mankind — an accounting 
 which in all probability must eventually be 
 made through the mediation of that same 
 neutral country, conferring upon it the great- 
 est privilege and moral responsibility, per- 
 haps, in the history of nations. 
 
 "The instruction seems gratuitous and 
 trivial in view of the importance of the sub- 
 ject, and the opportunity afforded you, of 
 having a disinterested bystander on the spot, 
 who might learn, if not the truth, at least 
 certain aspects of the truth, concerning the 
 extreme and appalling charges laid at the 
 door of a people so intimately and senti- 
 mentally connected with America as are the 
 Germans, by others of equal intimate rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 "I cannot be alone in the thought that the 
 most important consideration in our present 
 
Resignation 31 
 
 national life is to know the truth, and as 
 much of the truth as we can possibly learn 
 on the subject of this war, and first and 
 primarily of its causes and beginnings. If 
 I may be the instrument, even in the smallest 
 degree, of supplying or setting into proper 
 alignment only a few phases of this vast and 
 chaotic panorama in which the hearts and 
 souls of millions of our fellow countrymen 
 are involved, almost equally with the actual 
 participants, my withdrawal from the service 
 for such purpose will indeed be a small 
 sacrifice." 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
GERMANY'S RISE AND ENGLAND'S 
 DECLINE 
 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany, 
 October 29, 1914. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir: — 
 
 I have the honor to present the following 
 for your consideration. 
 
 I think it the duty of every person who feels 
 he can throw light upon the ethics and 
 meaning of the present great war to come 
 forward and speak; and I hope that my ob- 
 servations may be of help to the government 
 in determining its attitude in the future. 
 
 For my part I am a great lover of France — 
 the Lafayette monument in Paris, erected 
 upon my initiative, and the high order of the 
 Legion of Honor decoration which has been 
 conferred upon me will attest to that. My 
 blood and ancestry are English. I have lived 
 in France, in England and in Germany. I 
 think my viewpoint is clear and that I am fair 
 and unprejudiced. I suppose it is of little 
 
 (33) 
 
34 England and Germany 
 
 importance how I may look at this titanic 
 human convulsion ; but I have seen the thing 
 coming on for years, events to which mankind 
 runs forward but which occasion surprise and 
 wonder when they are realized. 
 
 You may recall my interview in the Houston 
 Chronicle of July 23, 1912, sent to the Depart- 
 ment at that time and resulting in my transfer 
 from Germany to Sheffield, England. I 
 repeat it in part, here: — 
 
 "Germany is today the most efficient 
 nation, economically, on the globe. Today 
 Germany is second only to England as an 
 exporter of manufactured goods, the United 
 States ranking third. Within five years 
 Germany will pass Great Britain in this 
 respect and lead the nations of the world. 
 The German policy is one of peaceful develop- 
 ment of domestic and foreign trade; Germany 
 does not seek offense nor seek occasion to 
 give offense. But Germany is determined 
 henceforth to take a leading position among 
 the world powers in the adjustment of all 
 international issues, and is determined, es- 
 pecially, to press her industrial and commercial 
 development to first rank among the nations, 
 regardless of any opposition which may be 
 aroused by this course in any quarter of the 
 globe. 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 35 
 
 "When the day comes that Germany 
 passes Great Britain in the exportation of 
 manufactured products, British resentment 
 will perhaps precipitate an armed conflict 
 between these two great nations. The only 
 factor which, in my opinion, may prevent 
 it, is the rapidly increasing socialistic senti- 
 ment of both peoples. Socialism stands 
 opposed to war. Great Britain, during the 
 next few years, is going to be socialized to 
 an extent that will virtually revolutionize 
 the British government. The socialists are 
 very numerous and influential in Germany. 
 It is possible, perhaps probable, that the 
 doctrinal opposition to war of the socialists 
 in Germany and Great Britain may prevent 
 the armed conflict toward which so many 
 observers in both countries, and elsewhere 
 throughout the world, have been looking 
 forward fearfully during recent years. 
 
 "There is no general wish for war in 
 Germany; war discussion there is confined 
 almost wholly to army officers, who naturally 
 consider a survey of what is ahead as in line 
 with their calling, just as they do in France, 
 Russia, Japan, and other countries. Foreign 
 brokers indulge in some war talk, but the 
 substantial interests of Germany — manu- 
 facturing, educational, professional — do not 
 
36 England and Germany 
 
 want war; they deplore the possibility of it, 
 but will not on that account be deterred 
 from pressing Germany's claim for pre- 
 eminence in the peaceful competitions of the 
 world as rapidly as her people can make 
 that claim good. Most of the talk of war I 
 hear in Germany is developed by the war 
 speculations of newspapers from across the 
 English Channel." 
 
 I have thought that- Germany's unchecked 
 and gradual commercial conquest of England 
 might in some way affect a revolution of the 
 industrial classes of England and thus bring 
 on war, rather than that it would come as 
 it has. I believe the broad statement may 
 be made now, in full truth, that Germany, 
 the youngest nation amongst the great powers, 
 and even still in infancy — at the commence- 
 ment of its career — has, to all practical pur- 
 poses, attained the position of conqueror and 
 leader of the world from the standpoint of 
 the present economic ideals and standards of 
 mankind. I do not think there is the slightest 
 doubt of this. I have been in one of the great- 
 est typical industrial centers of England for 
 two years and I have been in the same com- 
 parative centers in Germany for six years, and 
 one would need to be blind, indeed, to fail to 
 see conclusive evidence of what I state. 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 37 
 
 In my judgment, Germany has fairly and 
 definitely won her laurels; and the least 
 important of her national institutions, in 
 this respect, is her military establishment, 
 the thing by which, I think, we falsely judge 
 her at this moment, when she finds herself 
 compelled to test its efficiency, to put 
 it to performance, in holding that which 
 she has gained through the arts of peace, 
 and maintaining and preserving it for civil- 
 ization. 
 
 It may be illuminating to take the recent 
 explanations of the British manufacturing 
 world for the placing of English orders for 
 locomotives in Berlin; viz., that their fac- 
 tories, or works, were filled with orders and 
 they could not, therefore, make delivery in 
 the time necessary to meet the requirements. 
 That was the claim. I happen to know the 
 facts and they are that many of these factories 
 were not at all fully occupied, at the time. 
 More particularly, however, all of them were 
 suffering from arrested development. In 
 other words, they were operating on the 
 basis of several decades back, and had not 
 the initiative to keep abreast of their German 
 competitors in the way of expansion, as, 
 according to my observation, is the case with 
 the English manufacturer generally. The 
 
38 England and Germany 
 
 grandfather's method of doing business there 
 and of meeting the demands of the world 
 
 i is no fiction, but a deadening reality. 
 
 During the years 1912 and 1913, in many 
 respects the most prosperous England has 
 
 i ever experienced, commercially, her emigra- 
 tion was the most pronounced and extensive 
 in her history. To a very large extent the 
 y English workman had abandoned hope of 
 any betterment in his own country; and the 
 continuous desertion of the mother country 
 by high class mechanics, going to Canada 
 and the colonies, was growing daily more 
 and more embarrassing in the way of main- 
 taining efficiency of workmanship. In the 
 period of Germany's phenomenal advance- 
 ment in manufacturing and agriculture in 
 the past thirty years, many millions of acres 
 of agricultural land in England have reverted 
 to the sheep range and hunting park. Eng- 
 land, who had become dependent upon the 
 outside world for food, was becoming also 
 more and more dependent upon Germany 
 for the manufactured necessities of her com- 
 plicated and effete civilization — for sugar, 
 almost exclusively, for chemical products and 
 dyestuffs used in her great textile industries, 
 for steel and iron products, and for hundreds 
 of different kinds of manufactured articles, 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 39 
 
 which Germany was making better and 
 cheaper than any nation in the world. 
 
 Furthermore, England was looking to Ger- 
 many as an example for her hoped-for rejuve- 
 nation and renaissance, even to the extent of 
 seriously discussing copying her financial 
 policy, customs tariff, and her army establish- 
 ment with the introduction of enforced 
 military service. She had already taken 
 Germany's industrial insurance laws as a 
 model for her own, she was slowly awakening 
 to the wisdom of copying her scheme of 
 technical education. A great movement was 
 afoot to introduce a net work of waterways, 
 similar to that of Germany; and scores of 
 municipal delegations were visiting Germany 
 annually with the view of improving the 
 English cities. The wise men of England 
 saw in all this, and in the rapidly approaching 
 world leadership of Germany in the manu- 
 facture and sale of those goods, which, in 
 their production pay wages to workers, an 
 inevitable shift and transfer of the financial 
 center of the world from London to Berlin; 
 and, with the realization of this stupendous 
 fact, came the forecast of the automatic loss, 
 as well, of her place as the political and 
 ethical center of Caucasian civilization. 
 
 By the same token that Germany had 
 
40 England and Germany 
 
 fashioned for herself a "big stick," in the 
 way of her army, to defend herself against 
 the weed-like growth and threatened expan- 
 sion of Russia, resulting in her being regarded 
 as the very apotheosis of militarism, England, 
 for her own purposes, had also built her 
 "Big Stick" — her navy — a far greater exhibi- 
 tion of armament than the German war 
 machine. 
 
 One is in as bad a position as the other 
 from the standpoint of militarism — excepting 
 that with Germany we have militarism at 
 home and efficiency, while with England, it 
 is militarism of the sea, imperialism and 
 growing inefficiency. 
 
 No people have felt this more keenly than 
 the English statesmen. They have gravely 
 realized that the last and only possible 
 chance for England to retain her position 
 before the world, politically and economically, 
 for another generation, lay in the checking of 
 Germany's progress in the arts of peace. To 
 meet and pass her in the legitimate operations 
 of industrial competition was impossible; 
 they saw plainly that England was hopelessly 
 outclassed in this field. A way out was found 
 in the combination with Russia and France, 
 who were racial antagonists and military 
 competitors of Germany, and not serious 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 41 
 
 commercial rivals. By joining these states 
 in the enterprise of war, England has moved 
 to regain her position as manufacturer and 
 banker for the world. 
 
 In my judgment, the violation of Belgian 
 neutrality by Germany as the reason for 
 England's declaration of war is a sentimental 
 i subterfuge, sounding well for English chivalry 
 I before the world, but meaning, from the 
 beginning, suicide and death to poor Belgium. 
 The whole Belgian situation has proved a 
 fortuitous circumstance for England, the 
 moral value of which has counted enormously 
 for her and her allies. 
 
 The German, however, is too naive to 
 resort to this sort of politics, too direct and 
 simple to lie. He has much to learn, in 
 diplomacy. Nevertheless, honesty is some- 
 thing, and, in the end, sometimes prevails. 
 
 I would not assert that England has will- 
 fully sought the present favorable moment 
 for her cause. It came, nevertheless, and 
 found her as well prepared as she could ever 
 be, with the combined armies of France and 
 Russia on her side; and, because of a con- 
 scious or subconscious knowledge that here 
 was her final opportunity, it became inevitable 
 that she should declare war on Germany. I 
 do not think there was any more possibility 
 
42 England and Germany 
 
 of avoiding this than to prevent a collision 
 between two locomotives headed for each 
 other under full speed on the same track. 
 
 The merits of the case will rest finally 
 upon the question as to which is the superior 
 civilization, that of Germany or that of 
 England — or better, which offers the most to 
 mankind. To the American, who judges 
 modern Germany by the immigrant who 
 settled in Illinois or Iowa forty or fifty years 
 ago and did the cobbling and blacksmithing 
 for the town, the matter is quickly deter- 
 mined, but for those who have witnessed the 
 phenomenal development of the German 
 people and nation during the last twenty 
 years, the thing presents itself in an altogether 
 different light. And to him who has had the 
 opportunity to study the conditions in Eng- 
 land today in comparison with the conditions 
 in Germany — economic, moral and political — 
 as I have had, the question passes out of the 
 field of academic discussion. The one is 
 moribund and self-sufficient, the other filled 
 with the energy of youth, confidence and 
 hope. A thousand years of English civiliza : 
 tion and social endeavor, with perhaps the 
 best and ablest men in the world at the helm, 
 arrays an almshouse, pauper-fed spirit against 
 the highest expression of socialistic co-opera- 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 43 
 
 tion the world has heretofore known. I will 
 say, too, that as there is more prosperity, 
 order, sanitation, and contentment in Ger- 
 many than there is in England, there is 
 likewise more liberty and individual freedom 
 than critics of Germany admit. Men of 
 sense soon learn that police regulations in- 
 tended for the comfort and protection of the 
 citizen are no more an abridgment of one's 
 liberty than is the rule of the camp that each 
 man shall fold his own blanket. 
 
 By sheer force in numbers of her opponents, 
 coupled with the unparalleled Navyism of 
 England, Germany may temporarily lose in 
 this struggle for her existence and a place in 
 the sun. But if she does lose, it will be the 
 same old conquest of conservatism and reac- 
 tion against the demonstrated progress and 
 betterment of the world. Sad and unhappy 
 as the surrender of her position as leader 
 amongst the organized states of the world 
 might be for England and to us, it would 
 come as the result of administrative impotence 
 and lack of initiative in her adjustment to 
 the economic and sociological ideals of the 
 day. By her diplomacy, which has tied her 
 up with forces passe, on the one hand, and 
 interests undeveloped and unplumbed, on the 
 other, she is endeavoring to hold that which, 
 
44 England and Germany 
 
 according to those rules of the game appealing 
 to fair men, she has truly and fairly lost. 
 
 I believe that I am right, and while the 
 appearances seem to be against Germany at 
 present, her success, in my judgment, will 
 sound a great advance in the world of progress 
 and the enlightenment of mankind. 
 
 It is my purpose to send you from time 
 to time, as I have opportunity to put my 
 observations into shape, reports on the phases 
 of Germany's diplomatic encirclement and 
 isolation, the international crime of surround- 
 ing this state, and organizing against her a 
 combination of hostile forces that spelled 
 war from its very inception. I shall report 
 on the much misunderstood subject of German 
 Culture, of its real significance and importance, 
 to the world; on the matter of German 
 militarism as against a form of armament far 
 more dangerous to international peaces — a 
 navyism that demands a standard equal to 
 that of the two next greatest naval powers of 
 the world. 
 
 It is an easy thing for the American, with 
 his sporting instinct, to say of England: "I 
 should like to see her whipped for once." 
 But this would mean a new and violent shift 
 in the political status of the world. It would 
 be like an excision of the vermiform appendix 
 
Germany's Rise and England's Decline 45 
 
 of civilization, so to speak, which might 
 easily threaten the life of the patient. For 
 with the downfall of this age-long leader of 
 human thought and action the knell of the 
 Saxon would indeed be sounded. We occupy- 
 no light position. Truth, intellect, science, 
 progress, and justice, perhaps, in the abstract, 
 are on the side of Germany, yet, sentiment, 
 tradition and ethics seem to be with the 
 Saxon. What I may say or write is not done 
 with a view to exercising an influence on your 
 neutrality, it is done in a spirit of full justice, 
 and, in large degree, against my feelings and 
 sentimental inclinations. 
 
 I see in German dominance a phenomenon 
 of the great inscrutable Infinite, which, with 
 the clanking juggernaut wheels of Change 
 and Progress, advances toward freedom and 
 light through death and pain and travail. 
 The compensation to mankind must be salu- 
 tary, and may be, beyond anything that has 
 occurred since the crucifixion. I will close 
 this dispatch by quoting a letter from the 
 great English historian, Carlyle, written in 
 1870: 
 
 "I believe the Prussians will certainly keep 
 for Germany what of Elsass and Lorraine is 
 still German, or can be expected to re-become 
 such, and withal that the whole world cannot 
 
46 England and Germany 
 
 forbid them to do it and that Heaven will 
 not (nor I). Alone of nations Prussia seems 
 still to understand something of the art of 
 governing and of fighting enemies to said art. 
 Germany, from of old, has been the peace- 
 ablest, most pious, and in the end most 
 valiant and terrible of nations. Germany 
 ought to be president of Europe, and will 
 again, it seems, be tried with that office for 
 another five centuries or so." 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
DIPLOMACY'S ISOLATION OF 
 GERMANY 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 The Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to present the following 
 brief analysis of the enforced diplomatic 
 isolation of Germany and her encirclement by 
 a combined military establishment four times 
 greater in magnitude than her own : 
 
 When Kaiser Wilhelm sent his famous 
 telegram to President Kruger of the Boer 
 republic, I believe the present war was fore- 
 cast, if not assured. This is the telegram: 
 "I express my sincere congratulations that, 
 supported by your people, and without appeal- 
 ing for the help of friendly Powers, you have 
 succeeded, by your own energetic action, 
 against armed bands which invaded your 
 country as disturbers of the peace, and have 
 thus been enabled to restore peace and safe- 
 
48 England and Germany 
 
 guard the independence of the country from 
 attack from outside." That was in 1896. 
 When the Boer War came on shortly after, 
 j King Edward found the French crying, "Vive 
 Kruger!" "To death with the English!" 
 "A mort and a bas l'Edouard!" and the same 
 sentiment more or less in Germany, more, 
 in fact, as Germany was growing and France 
 was marking time. These conditions con- 
 vinced Edward that the "Splendid Isolation" 
 policy of Salisbury might be surrendered for 
 a while, and he chose the Kaiser as his 
 successor in this role. England's isolation, 
 however, was voluntary. The present isola- 
 tion of Germany was forced upon her through 
 diplomatic strategy, designated by the Ger- 
 mans, conspiracy. 
 
 England's mastery of the diplomatic world 
 is historic. It is confirmed by the present 
 line-up of the European powers against Ger- 
 many — accomplished, as leading Englishmen 
 assert, at some sacrifice of soul and future 
 serenity. The English do not close their eyes 
 to the incongruity of their strange compact 
 with Russia, nor to their unique alliance with 
 France — both nations her ancient and classic 
 enemies. The formation of this alien com- 
 bination by the emissaries of Edward VII — 
 the consummation of this unprecedented 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 49 
 
 diplomatic trade — really precipitated what 
 it was intended to guard against, for the 
 antagonistic impulse created by it led directly 
 to the opening of hostilities in the Armageddon 
 raging the world today, and which threatens 
 to destroy civilization before it is finished. 
 
 What was the direct and inevitable result 
 of the combination? To check the growth, 
 by minimizing the power, of a vigorous and 
 successful commercial rival. To encompass 
 Germany from two sides, and patrol it from 
 the offing. How does England expect to 
 close the account with Russia, Japan and 
 France in case she is victorious? Suppose 
 Japan demands the further reward for her 
 participation in this affair, of Hong Kong, 
 and Russia lays her hands on Persia and 
 India. Germany's defeat, as well as her 
 success, is likely to spell disaster for England. 
 
 It is not the militarism of Germany that 
 is the cause of the war. On the contrary, it 
 is the diplomacy of Lord Lansdowne and 
 Delcasse in operation, the working out of 
 their compact to put the lid on and check a \ 
 great and progressive rival — a people whose 
 success, whose marvelous development and 
 unparalleled advancement, is due to plodding, 
 industrious effort, to new and up-to-date 
 adaptations of their social forces to the present 
 
50 England and Germany 
 
 day economic ideals of mankind. To mislead 
 the world, to deceive herself, in fact, England 
 has brought into the premise of this possibly- 
 last chapter of her greatness the justification 
 of militarism, autocracy and the violation of 
 Belgian neutrality . She would present a nobler 
 figure to the world if she would tell the truth. 
 
 It is a peculiar philosophy that will con- 
 demn efficiency, be it either in the making of 
 cotton goods or cannon. If the German 
 army is accredited with being the best in the 
 world, it must be charged to those Teutonic 
 qualities which have also counted for so 
 much of the world's progress in the pursuits 
 of peace, and not in any sense to a military 
 spirit. 
 
 Germany is said to have led in the prepara- 
 tion for war. This is hardly true. Russia's 
 standing army in times of peace is more than 
 double that of Germany's in numbers; that 
 is, 1,500,000 men against 672,000.* Her an- 
 nual military budget exceeds Germany's by 
 $36,000,000. But that is not all. Menacing 
 her on the front, or, at least, if not menac- 
 ing her, existing just the same, stood France 
 with an army of 620,000 men, and an army 
 of 620,000 for France, with her population of 
 40,000,000 souls, is equivalent to an army of 
 
 '"Data in this chapter is all taken from Whitaker's Almanac, London, 1915. 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 51 
 
 1,085,000 men for Germany. In other words, 
 the military establishment of France alone, 
 population for population, is quite 40 per 
 cent greater than that of Germany. 
 
 We neutrals should try to be fair, and not 
 be governed by our prejudices and senti- 
 ments. We cannot close our eyes to facts. 
 Russia, with a peace footing army more than 
 100 per cent larger than that of the Kaiser's, 
 on the one hand, and France with a peace 
 footing army 40 per cent (in proportion to 
 population) greater on the other, both avowed 
 racial and military competitors of the German, 
 made it the duty of the Kaiser, and undoubt- 
 edly his very highest duty, to prepare, and 
 hold himself always prepared for the impend- 
 ing, if not inevitable assault. 
 
 I can see it in no other light than that this 
 was Germany's contract to civilization, to 
 preserve herself, her nationality and her 
 culture against the combination of Russia 
 and France, and a big enough contract it 
 was. She was in a most heroic position before 
 the war, facing front and back the combined 
 peace footing armies of Russia and France of 
 2,100,000 men — three to one against her 
 672,000 men. It will be seen that with one- 
 third the number of men and half the money 
 she has succeeded in maintaining the peace 
 
52 England and Germany 
 
 of central Europe for a period of forty-five 
 years. 
 
 So there you have the situation — the big 
 and simple analysis of the German militarism, 
 "mailed fist" and "war lordism," which we 
 have heard so much about. I give peace 
 footing figures only, here, as all others are 
 speculative and uncertain. I have already, 
 in a previous connection, directed attention 
 to the fact that the American regular army, 
 which is one-tenth the size of Germany's, 
 costs us to maintain it just an even one-half 
 the amount that Germany spends on her 
 whole army establishment. While the Ameri- 
 can people have neither sympathy nor much 
 respect for militarism, at home or abroad, 
 they will, nevertheless, agree that Germany 
 would have presented the aspect of a poltroon 
 had she not done exactly what she has done, 
 or even more. 
 
 It is probable, judging from the past forty- 
 five years, that Germany, of all the great 
 powers, the only one to keep the peace — 
 the only nation that has not been at war — 
 would have been able to maintain this condi- 
 tion indefinitely and pursue her destiny in 
 comparative quietude and neighborliness with 
 France and Russia, had continental Europe 
 been left alone. But along about 1898, 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 53 
 
 English diplomacy, in the form of "Balance 
 of Power," "Sphere of Influence," "Holding 
 His Own," appears in Paris and Petersburg, 
 and the isolation of Germany is underwritten 
 and sealed — fixed and financed. Shortly, the 
 Kaiser sees this vast encircling force, this 
 formidable and hostile coalescence, taking 
 on another 160,000 men of arms and an ad- 
 ditional annual war fund against him of 
 $150,000,000. It has seemed to men like 
 myself, and to American army officers who 
 have spent a year or two at such places as 
 Hanover and Berlin, that whatever might 
 happen, Germany could, after all, defend 
 herself, against the whole of Europe. Neither 
 Italy nor Austria count for much in this great 
 line-up of forces. Austria has her hands full 
 with the Balkans and Italy has, so far, stayed 
 out of it. 
 
 Now why this isolation and smothering 
 policy of England against Germany? Wars 
 don't begin with the firing of the first gun; 
 murder is not committed on the spot. Both 
 must have their causes, their premeditations 
 and preparations. They spring from and 
 course along psychological grounds. When 
 this entente had been adjusted by the diplo- 
 matic cabinets of London, Paris and St. 
 Petersburg, against the German Michael, 
 
54 England and Germany 
 
 and a standing peace footing army of 
 2,260,000 men in Russia, France and England 
 surrounded him, English diplomacy returned 
 to its island home and awaited results. 
 
 Right, here, I think, is where it was in- 
 cumbent upon England to fling out a declara- 
 tion to the world that she would be no party 
 to the protection of Servia from what many 
 people consider to be a just and proper 
 punishment or, if her underwriting with 
 the Czar made this impossible, then the 
 contrary, that she would fight, too, if Ger- 
 many went to war with her continental 
 partners. Unfortunately, she did neither. 
 Russia and France knew that England must 
 fight and that she had dickered with them 
 for this very occasion. It is my belief that 
 time and history will place the blame for the 
 war right here, on the English alliance with 
 Russia. England refused — she could not 
 give the assurance to Germany that she 
 would keep out of the war if the neutrality 
 of Belgium was respected. In his dispatch 
 to Ambassador Goshen, at Berlin, August 1st, 
 Sir Edward Grey said he could not give 
 Germany the promise that England would 
 remain neutral on that condition alone — and 
 on August 4th, to Sir Francis Villiers, his 
 British Majesty's minister to Brussels, a 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 55 
 
 peremptory order was communicated to the 
 Belgian government in which England de- 
 manded (expected) that Belgium would resist 
 by any means in its power the demand of 
 Germany to cross her frontiers, and that his 
 British Majesty's government would support 
 it in such resistance. 
 
 So we have poor Belgium between the 
 devil and the deep sea; facing a dilemma 
 which could be solved only by her sympathies 
 and prejudices. Belgium is an abomination 
 of desolation. From the points where the 
 promised support of England and France 
 met the German advance — say at Dinant and 
 in Flanders — it is a nauseating nothingness. 
 Where the support was not in evidence she 
 still breathes, where it was given there is 
 death. And still the Belgians wait daily in 
 Brussels and the villages for the coming of the 
 English — for the entry of the French and 
 Russians. But I do not think, even while 
 we weep for Belgium, and stand aghast over 
 her condition, the two and a quarter millions 
 of armed and trained soldiers, the bristling 
 circle of steel, placed around the frontiers of 
 Germany as the result of the supposedly 
 clever work of Lord Lansdowne and his 
 diplomatic confreres, Delcasse and Cambon, 
 should be forgotten. That was the monster 
 
56 England and Germany 
 
 blunder of modern diplomacy. Poor France, 
 once again her sons bleed and die for the 
 ambitions of little men. 
 
 Here you have four great powers of Europe 
 fighting for world leadership, to which they 
 think they are all entitled. Russia should 
 wait — her time will come. France must be 
 satisfied, for her day is past. But for England, 
 still the able and clever diplomatic leader of 
 the nations, the fight is hers. Her instruments 
 are the mythical "Balance of Power," "Spheres 
 of Influence," and "Isolation" of her com- 
 petitor. 
 
 It would take seventy years for Germany 
 to become as thickly settled as Belgium, 
 with her normal increase of population, and 
 several decades to reach the same ratio as 
 Holland. The assumption that she needs 
 additional territory for her sons and daughters 
 is an error. Her increase in population, as a 
 matter of fact, does not keep pace with her 
 progress in industry, by nearly 100 per cent. 
 It is a punishable offense to preach emigra- 
 tion in Germany. (Our American Mormon 
 missionaries will testify to this.) Furthermore, 
 she herself, under official control, assists the 
 temporary annual immigration to her fields, 
 mines and public works, of not less than a mil- 
 lion laborers — from the provinces of Russia 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 57 
 
 and from Italy. In addition to this, three mil- 
 lion female German workers are engaged in her 
 fields and gardens during the summer months. 
 With her intensive agriculture, her tremendous 
 industrial demands, she could absorb the 
 entire population of England, and then be 
 no more thickly populated than Holland; 
 and if she took, in addition to this, the 
 population of France, she would have but 
 about the same number of inhabitants to 
 the square mile as Belgium. Let the legend 
 that Germany requires, must have, more 
 room for her increasing people, be dismissed. 
 That is buncombe and belongs to the Balance 
 of Power series of unfounded assumptions. 
 Statistics prove that Germany requires im- 
 migrants not emigrants. She was isolated by 
 her neighbors, not because of a fear of her 
 ambition for physical expansion, but because 
 her new spirit of nationalism compelled her 
 to take a political position as a World Power, 
 in accordance with her undisputed champion- 
 ship in the real pursuits of modern life: 
 science, economics, education and social and 
 civic progress; and right here is where it 
 seems to me the miscalculation of Germany's 
 opponents has been made, and where they 
 will fail, even as the church failed to suppress 
 and isolate Martin Luther, and the slavery 
 
58 England and Germany 
 
 sentiment of America miscarried in its efforts to 
 bottle the abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The misconception of the real movement 
 in Germany is astonishing. The thought has 
 grown up throughout the world that the 
 Kaiser, with a standing army of little more 
 \J than a quarter the size of that of those 
 cordialled against him, has been dreaming of 
 going out to annex the rest of Europe. Ger- 
 many's dreams of conquest were in the 
 humanitarian fields of commerce, of applied 
 sciences and beautiful cities, of transportation 
 and the liberal arts; and if she is to be beaten 
 down, the real spoliation of the war will be 
 here, and not over the face of Belgium, nor 
 in France, nor in Poland, nor even in Sussex, 
 Surrey or the West Riding of Yorkshire. 
 Whatever happens in these places can have 
 no final effect upon the result, because Ger- 
 many's chief progress is an intellectual one, 
 and something that is impossible of isolation, 
 blockade or bayonet charge. 
 
 Germany turns out the biggest ocean liner, 
 two, three, of them. England builds the 
 biggest battleship — dreadnaught. The policy 
 of German isolation must extend to the sea 
 as well as the land. Germany's foreign trade 
 increases and approaches that of England at 
 terrific speed. She controls the markets of 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 59 
 
 South America, of the near and far East. 
 She competes successfully with England in 
 Sheffield, Manchester and London; and as 
 her foreign trade assumes a magnitude certain 
 soon to surpass that of her island rival she 
 rushes her naval construction, also, corres- 
 pondingly. Now, who was really prepared 
 for this war? England, with the combined 
 navies of France, Russia, Japan, and a peace 
 footing army of 2,260,000 men at her com- 
 mand, or Germany, with her regular army of 
 672,000 men, her untried navy and her obli- 
 gations to hard-pressed Austria on her hands? 
 Here you have what we may call the diplo- 
 matic layout of the war game, its actual 
 frame-up. But I think the combination will 
 fail because of its miscalculation of the spirit 
 of the German people. Truly there is but 
 one thing that would precipitate a revolution 
 or uprising in Germany — one thing only — 
 and that would be a weakening of the Emperor 
 or government in the matter of defense or 
 prosecution of the war. Let there be no 
 mistake, Germany certainly will not grow 
 weary. If the world ever witnessed an 
 example of the spirit of all for one and one 
 for all in action, it may see it now in the 
 people of the imperial, confederated states of 
 the German nation. 
 
60 England and Germany 
 
 The cause of the war then, might justly be 
 laid at the feet of Lord Lansdowne, Edward 
 VII, Paul Cambon and M. Delcasse, with 
 Sir Edward Grey, that astute and masterly 
 head of the British Foreign Office and diplo- 
 matic leader of the world, as regisseur of the 
 performance. Isolation, that was the plan. 
 To place Germany by herself. To keep her in 
 the shade — out of the sun of international 
 politics. To turn the world loose upon her, 
 through manufactured alarm and misdirected 
 hatred. This arrangement to either suppress 
 or destroy the one nation which has become 
 a model of civic and social advancement, 
 should be exposed and understood, and if it 
 is, the American people will not hesitate to 
 level the finger of admonition at England 
 and France for their part in it. 
 
 I say all of this with reluctance and morti- 
 fication, for I love both England and France. 
 I believe they are engaged in a hopeless, 
 if not, indeed, a wicked cause, measured 
 both by the sacrifice and woes they bring 
 upon themselves, and their effort to check 
 the progress of the world by laying low its 
 chief and most brilliant exponent. 
 
 I have wept with the mothers and wives 
 of the best young blood of England. I have 
 searched the battlefields for the torn bodies 
 
Diplomacy's Isolation of Germany 61 
 
 of cultured and beloved scions of the first 
 families of France, even to the descendant 
 of our beloved Lafayette. I have aided in 
 the recovery of the wrecked remains of lost 
 and killed sons of the Fatherland, and with 
 all my love of France, my attachments to 
 England, I must confess I could only see in 
 it all the fruition of the diplomatic scheme of 
 enforced German isolation, which could only 
 be likened to an imbecile undertaking to con- 
 trol the tides of the sea or the lightning 
 flashes of the firmament. 
 
 I regard the endeavor to isolate Germany, 
 effectually, to be as futile as an attempt to 
 place the lid upon Vesuvius. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
SEA VS. LAND MILITARISM 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to submit the following 
 facts and comments upon the subject of 
 militarism of the sea and land, as expressed 
 in the respective armaments of England and 
 Germany : 
 
 Over six million acres of our cotton lands 
 are put out of commission as a first material 
 tribute to "militarism" — but militarism of the 
 sea — which has closed the market for some 
 three million bales of our standard southern 
 crop. Our second tribute is a matter of 
 $70,000,000 worth of copper, $25,000,000 
 worth of lard, and a score of other things 
 which our good people raise or coax from the 
 earth, to exchange for German chemicals, dye 
 stuffs, toys, cloths, paper, glass, etc. Our 
 export trade to Germany, Austria and Russia, 
 now practically cut off from our markets 
 
 (63) 
 
64 England and Germany 
 
 through militarism — of the sea principally — 
 is a matter of some seven hundred million 
 dollars. 
 
 England, the chief exponent of militarism 
 of the sea, had ready and building, at the 
 commencement of the war, six hundred and 
 seven ty-eight war vessels. Her expenditures 
 for 1914-15 were to amount to $257,750,000, 
 as a militarist-naval tax on the people of 
 Great Britain, required for the maintenance 
 of the Royal Navy. The guns of the Queen 
 Elizabeth super-dreadnaught fire a projectile 
 of 1,950 pounds, and a broadside is a mere 
 matter of eight tons of solid steel. The 
 personnel of the British Navy is 151,000 men. 
 It was this form of militarism that tore 
 Copenhagen and Alexandria to pieces — that 
 bombarded and burned our own Capitol and 
 Congressional Library, at Washington. It 
 is the Royal British Navy that made the 
 subjugation of neutral and smaller states 
 and peoples, all over the world, a fact. Eng- 
 land's greatness is synonymous with the 
 supremacy of her navy; and its greatness and 
 efficiency, no doubt, have saved her many a 
 war. It is a fighting machine pure and 
 simple. It was created for the purpose of 
 attack, essentially. It is not what one would 
 designate as the sword of defense of the 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 65 
 
 gentleman, but the weapon of the aggressor 
 and super-power. 
 
 I know that the personnel of the navies of 
 the world, and that of England, especially, 
 combine the finest, bravest, and most honor- 
 able men in existence. But, as between mili- 
 tarism of the sea and militarism of the land, 
 the least formidable and dangerous to peace, 
 if not the most romantic, is the latter. The 
 one is an away-from-home, interfering, intimi- \ 
 dating and marauding affair, the other is a 
 hearthstone, home defense institution. 
 
 Being, like yourself, Mr. Secretary, neither 
 a military man nor a naval expert, it seems 
 to me this is a fair, unprejudiced view of the 
 matter. There has always been as great an 
 activity amongst the arms and armament 
 makers of Birmingham and Sheffield, as there 
 has at Essen, or Liege. In this respect there 
 has been no difference excepting that a slab 
 of armour plate or a 15 -inch naval gun never 
 looks as dangerous as a Liege pistol, a Colt's 
 revolver, or a machine gun. 
 
 I am convinced that the objection of the 
 American people to the so-called German 
 militarism is not to the thing itself, but to 
 its earnestness and efficiency, the undoubted 
 business-like aspect of the German army 
 in times of peace, to say nothing of it when 
 
66 England and Germany 
 
 the nation is armed. But the German army, 
 like the German transatlantic liners, Ger- 
 man chemical works, German technical 
 schools, German science, German industrial 
 insurance, German municipal government, 
 or German anything, excepting diplomacy, 
 would not be the German army at all 
 if it did not take itself seriously and 
 strive for perfection there as well as else- 
 where. Thoroughness is the one prime 
 German characteristic, and though these 
 people might have the best of everything 
 else in the world and not excite fear and 
 distrust, so soon as the world realizes or 
 thinks the German excels in its war installa- 
 tion, it cries militarism, mailed fist, autocracy, 
 and indulges in a lot of other epithets which 
 mean nothing at all more than that it is 
 willing to be beaten in all the genuinely big 
 things of life, but in this it doesn't want to 
 play. 
 
 America has regarded the German regular 
 army from the only standpoint it could judge 
 any standing army, that is, from a compara- 
 tive point of view, from the troops at Fort 
 Sheridan, Fort Leavenworth, or the Texas 
 frontier — a group of outcasts, half criminals, 
 and ne'er-do-wells. This is wrong. The 
 German army is nothing more than a per- 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 67 
 
 fected militia — the soldiers are citizen soldiers. 
 Instead of serving two weeks a year in the 
 field, and one or two nights a week in the 
 army, they serve one or two years, as the case 
 may be, and then return to their civil occu- 
 pations, their places being filled by new men 
 from year to year, as the youth of Germany 
 comes to military age. 
 
 In a previous letter I stated that the 
 German military establishment was one of 
 the least important expressions of its national 
 life. This is not quite true, because its army 
 is essentially its Sandow, jiu-jitsu, morning 
 exercise scheme, It was old Friedrich Ludwig 
 Jahn, the father of the Turners, to whom a 
 statue stands in the city of Freiburg, who 
 met the German spirit for regimented physical 
 exercise sixty or seventy years ago, and 
 organized the great Turner Bund. Von 
 Moltke, Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I 
 used that spirit out of which to create the 
 German army. It was originally figured out 
 as a plan to bring forth a superior physical 
 race. In the present utilitarian age this 
 necessity for co-operated effort in the German 
 character, even in the most excellent practice 
 of physical culture, became the soul and 
 spirit of the imperial German army. So, 
 as you yourself have seen, the youth of 
 
68 England and Germany 
 
 Germany, sons of the idle rich as well as the 
 unidle rich, princes of the royal families 
 as well as the yokels of the field, all but 
 criminals (who automatically lose their rights 
 to enter the army) and inefficients, have been 
 regimented and trained to march, to sing, 
 to play, to put the shot, to do the Marathon 
 and goose step, to rise in the morning at six 
 o'clock and get to bed at ten, to get off into 
 the fields and sunshine, and dig in the sand, 
 to swim, to jump, to ride, to eat wholesome 
 food, to keep clean, and to obey, to work 
 together as one man, and incidentally learn 
 to shoot. This has been the Kaiser's crime, 
 that is the militarism you have been afraid 
 of; and do you know that this splendid and 
 effective school of German manhood and 
 efficiency, of health and virility, has cost the 
 German nation just once again the price of 
 maintaining our American army, which con- 
 tains but one-tenth the number of men 
 enrolled in the peace footing army of Ger- 
 many? (See Whitaker's Almanac, 1915, 
 page 105). 
 
 During my seven and a half years of 
 service as consul, in Germany, I have been 
 a butt for inquiry from hundreds of pros- 
 pective emigrants to America, Canada and 
 Brazil. In this time I have never known 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 69 
 
 personally, nor have I ever heard of a single 
 instance of a young German wishing to leave 
 his country to avoid military service. I 
 have personally known hundreds who have 
 striven to pass their gymnasium or high 
 school examinations in order to limit their 
 period of service to one year. Military 
 service has accomplished this for Germany, 
 in addition to improving its health and 
 efficiency: it has implanted into the minds 
 of its citizens a sense of duty to the state 
 quite inconceivable to the American or 
 British mind — it has made a living reality 
 of the motto of the Prince of Wales: "Ich 
 dien" This, of course, is the modern Ger- 
 many you have heard of. What it was prior 
 to 1870, when it was composed of a score or 
 more of fusty sleepy kingdoms and princi- 
 palities, and what I believe the Allies think 
 it should be now, is quite a different thing. 
 "I serve," is the spirit of Germany today, 
 in peace, and it is more than that in war — it 
 is a fetish. And the greatest servant of all 
 is the Kaiser, typifying in his character, 
 more than all else he has been charged or 
 accredited with, the spirit and ideals of the 
 nation. This is the mysterious spirit of the 
 Hive, the Zeitgeist, and national tran- 
 scendentalism of the German people. Call it 
 
70 England and Germany 
 
 militarism, humanism, barbarism or what 
 not, in my judgment it is and has been for 
 the past twenty years the one great and 
 promising phenomenon of civilization, the 
 shining hope and assurance of progress of 
 mankind. 
 
 England has set herself the task of crushing 
 German militarism, of redeeming Christianity 
 and Russianizing Eastern Europe. Associa- 
 tion with the German individual or with a 
 detached group of German individuals would 
 make it seem possible, if not easy. But I am 
 afraid England does not fully appreciate the 
 contract she has taken on. Her militarism 
 of the sea should protect her great foreign 
 trade and make her secure in her colonies, 
 barring, of course, the possibility of her 
 eventual defeat by the Germans at sea. A 
 full and complete victory of German arms in 
 Europe, and even in England, would leave 
 the naval question unsettled, because the 
 British Empire would still be at home in 
 Canada, in Australia or in India, and it 
 could raid the commerce of the conqueror 
 from the various bases, for an indefinite 
 period. Thus would be brought home to 
 the world the real importance and fatal 
 significance of militarism of the sea, an 
 instrument infinitely more opposed to inter- 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 71 
 
 national peace than any strictly military 
 organization could be. 
 
 But Germany did not purpose remaining 
 at home, either. One of her new national 
 expressions was that of international in- 
 dustrial and economic supremacy. A few 
 years only would have seen her the mistress 
 of the world in the matter of foreign trade 
 and merchant marine. This was an inevitable 
 fact and it was this that forced the rushing 
 of her naval construction program — to be 
 in a position to protect her enormous and 
 preponderating commerce against her defeated 
 commercial rivals. England has looked with 
 contempt, distrust and indignation upon Ger- 
 many for her seeming effort to compete with 
 her for the position of policeman of the sea, 
 and every new German battleship has raised 
 the war scare in England and fixed the 
 determination there, faster than ever, to 
 "Hold Her Own." She would surrender the 
 palm to Germany in industrial, economic and 
 civic rivalry, but she would not part with 
 the trident. That, like the Church of 
 England, had been given by Henry VIII, 
 and was as sacred as her money system, her 
 weights and measures and her atrocious land 
 ownership scheme. 
 
 This purpose to remain the master of the 
 
72 England and Germany 
 
 sea, is all very well and noble enough. It 
 has been the one great saving ambition of 
 Britain, but it is not for her to cry "Mailed 
 Fist," "Militarism," and all those fearful 
 sounding things to the good reason and fair 
 play sentiment of the world. If we agree with 
 the claim that England and her supreme mili- 
 tarism of the sea stand for the restoration of 
 Christianity, the suppression of vandalism, 
 the crushing of Germany, very well — but as 
 neutrals in this terrific cyclone of horror, 
 we must get our proper bearings and render 
 justice, so far as it comes to us to do so, to 
 all sides. 
 
 Militarism of the sea means suppression 
 of commerce in time of war. It means the 
 suppression of our commerce. It means 
 millions of suffering workers in the south. 
 It means unemployment for hundreds of 
 thousands of non-combatants all over the 
 world. It is a part of war and it is fair, the 
 least cruel of all forms of warfare, perhaps, 
 because the widest in its effect. Whether we 
 will or no, it forces the co-operation of every 
 neutral in the world. It makes us allies of 
 the big tonnage, right or wrong. It is the 
 real big stick Mr. Roosevelt was wont to 
 talk about so much. If America sees war 
 ahead with Japan, England or Germany, let 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 73 
 
 her go to the navy program. No nation can 
 fight and upset the world without a navy, 
 but it is a certainty, if the present war results 
 in disarmament, and that is another moral 
 obligation England has taken on, the dread- 
 naughts and submarines, the sea mines and 
 torpedoes, will assuredly be the first to go to 
 the scrap heap. Then what will become of 
 India, of Egypt, of South Africa, and the 
 new Cyprus? What will become of our 
 own imperialism, the Philippines? Militarism 
 from the Teutonic standpoint subjugates no 
 people. Nor would the militarism of France 
 or Russia have brought on the war had it 
 not been for the big tonnage of England. 
 Even with their vastly superior forces they 
 would never have undertaken it, and Ger- 
 many, having everything to lose, and not 
 so much as the value of a single man to gain 
 on the continent of Europe, would have 
 certainly avoided it. 
 
 This is the situation, as I see it. The 
 Kaiser worked always with the idea that with 
 the best, if not the biggest, "big stick" in 
 the arena of European military rivalry, he 
 could maintain the peace, and for twenty- 
 five years he succeeded in doing so, and now 
 the glove is on the floor and the German 
 nation is battling to save and prove the 
 
74 England and Germany 
 
 efficiency of her wonderful culture to the 
 world. Success or failure for her means 
 international political leadership on the one 
 hand, or practical destruction on the other. 
 It means advance or stagnation. It means 
 that Russian, French or English civilization, 
 statecraft, shall be the standard of intra- 
 social ideals and human welfare for the next 
 hundred years, or so. It means that and 
 nothing else. The atrocity business, "baby 
 killing," "militarism," "navyism," "the 
 Kaiser," "scraps of paper," and all the other 
 cries of the Powers, do not enter into the 
 merits of the contest in the slightest degree. 
 They are mere incidents of something so 
 vastly more important to us that they will 
 be forgotten in the great onrush of events to 
 the goal toward which mankind is inevitably 
 and irresistibly driven. Let us get beyond 
 the diverting incidentals to the main issue. 
 
 England would make this our fight as well 
 as hers. In fact, with her control of the sea, 
 we automatically become one of her principal 
 allies. She would make us a party to the 
 attempted isolation of Germany. She would 
 have us commit ourselves to militarism of the 
 sea as against militarism of the land; she 
 would have us join her in her effort to turn 
 back the clock of destiny, and aid her in 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 75 
 
 retaining the pennant of leadership which is 
 slipping from her mast. We have no naval 
 competition with England; ours would be 
 with Japan, if with any power, and, besides, 
 we have a goodly hostage both for her respect 
 of the Monroe Doctrine and for her general 
 good behavior in Canada. But the mysteries 
 of the foreign office of England are wide and 
 deep. Supposing they disclosed an alliance 
 with the sons of the Mikado against us in 
 case of war with Japan? 
 
 We witnessed a year ago a combination of 
 the British and German governments to the 
 disadvantage of our Exposition at San Fran- 
 cisco, much to our surprise and chagrin. 
 Just now this is a very sore point with the 
 German foreign office. For they were told 
 by England: "stay with us in this matter and 
 we will bring about a readjustment of the 
 Panama Canal tolls." Perhaps the Hay- 
 Pauncefote scrap of paper would be patched 
 together. And it was so, much to our credit. 
 But the militarism of Japan, the militarism 
 of England, or of the Kaiser, could no more 
 affect us than the militarism of Russia, with- 
 out the introduction of militarism of the sea. 
 Germany and England were much more 
 intimately connected before the war than is 
 the United States and England. England 
 
76 England and Germany 
 
 was Germany's best customer, and Germany 
 was England's best customer, in trade. They 
 are connected by ties of blood relationship, 
 marriage, quick transportation and a thousand 
 industrial interests, and yet England turned 
 her naval ally, Japan, loose upon Germany 
 in the Pacific. 
 
 So, in this moral support and sympathy 
 business — and God forbid we should go any 
 further — it behooves the American people 
 not to be carried away by every clap trap, 
 holier than thou talk, on the part of any one 
 of the belligerents, of England, Germany, 
 France or Russia. None of them wanted the 
 war — unless it was Austria in her purpose to 
 punish the assassins of her Archduke, and 
 Russia, in her thousand year ambition to 
 expand to the south and west, finding 
 her opportunity in a powerful combination 
 with France and England against Europe's 
 one bulwark against her encroachment — 
 Germany. 
 
 Let us give the Kaiser and so-called German 
 militarism a square deal. If we are to umpire 
 the game, let us, at least, balance our preju- 
 dices and sympathies and keep an open mind. 
 Militarism is militarism, whether on land or 
 sea. If part goes all must go. And in the 
 great world family of nations, secret or open, 
 
Sea vs. Land Militarism 77 
 
 offensive and defensive, alliances should be 
 regarded as an international crime. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
CERTAIN ASPECTS OF GERMAN 
 CULTURE 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to submit the following 
 observations on certain points and phases of 
 the present somewhat mooted question of 
 German culture: 
 
 The hard sound of C does not exist in the 
 German language. Its letters have only one 
 sound and words are pronounced as they are 
 spelled. A spade is called a spade in Ger- 
 many — a thimble is a hat for the finger, or 
 Fingerhut, and a telephone is a far-speaker, 
 or Fernsprecher. So, very naturally, in this 
 land of fiction, fable and song, and above all, 
 of truth, culture could be nothing else than 
 Kultur. It is not likely that the world will 
 lapse into complete forgetfulness of the inven- 
 tion of printing at Mainz by Gutenberg, a 
 
 (79) 
 
80 England and Germany 
 
 science which is at once the foundation and 
 sub-structure of all permanent culture of 
 the modern world, and so essential to the 
 moral campaign now waging against the sons 
 of Teuton — "the baby killers," as Mr. 
 Churchill has so facetiously dubbed them. 
 I think that gentleman must have forgotten 
 his kindergarten, a bit of German "Kultur." 
 He forgot, or did not know that the children 
 of England were crying for German toys this 
 Christmastide — that they were missing Little 
 Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hop o' My 
 Thumb, Santa Claus, and the German Christ- 
 mas tree. Every town of any size in Germany 
 possesses, among other institutions of "Kul- 
 tur," a doll hospital. All the cradle songs and 
 lullabies, which have more than an ephemeral 
 life, are born, too, in Germany; also sung 
 there. It is the paradise on earth of children, 
 Germany. No child or boy is ever flogged 
 in a German school. She has no David 
 Copperfields, no begging children, nor "news- 
 boys." She has no slums, and her submerged 
 world is a negligible and diminishing quotient. 
 A defense of German culture would be 
 about as senseless an undertaking as an 
 argument on the advantages of food as a 
 nutriment. Nevertheless, it will be interest- 
 ing to contemplate certain features of it at 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 81 
 
 this time, in their bearing on the war and the 
 present and future state of human evolution. 
 Viewing Culture from a certain angle I 
 suppose God has produced no finer product 
 on this earth than the English gentleman. 
 He is no myth, but a splendid, shining reality, 
 and certainly a model for mankind. The 
 Germans have been the first people of the 
 world to recognize this and endeavor to copy 
 him. There can be no doubt that a large 
 majority of the young British officers who 
 have gone to the front were induced to do so 
 by a chivalrous sense of duty toward their 
 sacrificed ally, Belgium. The spiritual refine- 
 ment and moral culture of the English gentle- 
 man is without equal in this world, in my 
 judgment. This is natural, however, and the 
 logical result of individualism, the spirit of 
 England. Nevertheless, this is a utilitarian 
 age, an economic-bread-and-butter-day, where 
 suppression of self and surrender and im- 
 molation to the general good is proved to 
 be the best, not only for the individual, but 
 for the state and for mankind. And this 
 proof exists today in the so-called German 
 "Kultur"; a thing which must be judged or 
 measured by its expression and results. 
 
 For example, of 1,000 Russian soldiers in 
 the field, 617 can neither read nor write; 
 
1/ 
 
 82 England and Germany 
 
 of a like number of Servians, the number of 
 illiterate is 434; for Belgium, 93 out of 1,000 
 are illiterate; for France, 30; for England, 
 10, and for Germany, in order to find an 
 illiterate soldier there must be 2,000 to draw 
 from; that is, of the so-called "Huns and 
 Barbarians," the percentage of illiteracy is 
 one-fiftieth of one per cent. Illiteracy is 
 also one of the things verboten in Germany; 
 and its opposite, literacy, is ueber alles. No 
 one has ever heard about the "cultured 
 classes" in Germany. It is this self -named 
 group in America and England which is very 
 worthily seeking to reform and uplift those 
 not in their order. In Germany the vast 
 industrial class attends to this itself. The 
 effective temperance movements spring from 
 the trade and labor organizations. They 
 make their own night schools. They claim 
 and forward the legislation calculated for the 
 good of the workers in all classes. 
 
 The socialists of Germany, composed largely 
 of the foregoing group, have a matter of 5,000 
 local societies in the various centers of the 
 Empire. They publish ninety daily, and 
 several weekly newspapers, as well as a 
 number of monthly magazines. The com- 
 bined circulation of these socialist papers 
 numbers nearly 2,000,000 daily, with advertis- 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 83 
 
 ing and subscription returns of nearly 
 $5,000,000 a year. The principal organ of the 
 socialists, "Vorwaerts," has a circulation of 
 200,000 daily. 
 
 Now, whether we have any interest in 
 socialism or not, or whether we understand 
 or believe in it, makes no difference. Every 
 intelligent person knows that any political 
 doctrine, be it socialism, republicanism, de- 
 mocracy or progressivism, is a philosophy, or 
 set of principles worked out for state or 
 government administration, and that socialism 
 is peculiarly a proposition embracing modern 
 and reform ideas. So, in this manner, we 
 arrive at a fair conception of one of the 
 principal aspects of German Kultur — the 
 solid reading and economic studies of the 
 great majority of the German industrial 
 classes. 
 
 The German government has a Minister 
 of Culture. He is the head of the schools of 
 the country, the state and the municipal 
 theatres, as well as the experimental branches 
 of the government mines and research institu- 
 tions. There are a dozen cities in Germany 
 owning and supporting finer, more artistic, 
 opera houses and theatres than anything that 
 may be found in New York or London. The 
 recently built Opera House at Cassel, a town 
 
84 England and Germany 
 
 of 150,000 people, cost $1,250,000, and has 
 been pronounced a much more beautiful and 
 suitable structure for the purpose than the 
 Opera House at Paris. It is certainly ahead 
 of anything in the United States or England. 
 Small towns of twenty -five or fifty thousand 
 inhabitants possess municipal theatres that 
 would put the playhouses of New York and 
 Chicago to shame. These state and municipal 
 theatres are a part of the Kultur and educa- 
 tional system of Germany. They are con- 
 trolled to a certain extent by the Minister 
 of Culture. Shakespeare for the classic, 
 Ibsen and Maeterlinck for the modern, are 
 played more often, and consequently find 
 greater appreciation in Germany than in 
 England, or Scandinavia, or elsewhere. In 
 fact, there will be more Shakespearian repro- 
 duction in a town like Hanover than in the 
 city of London. The scheme, of course, of 
 state and municipal theatres is to keep the 
 taste of the people on a bit higher plane than 
 our vaudevilles and the music halls of Eng- 
 land afford, and the best plays and grand 
 operas may be seen and heard for from ten 
 cents to two dollars, according to the purse 
 of the attendant. 
 
 It surely is superfluous to touch upon the 
 subject of music as an evidence of German 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 85 
 
 culture. Nearly all the great composers and 
 masters of history were German. They have 
 embraced the whole field of music with but 
 one exception, and that has been our synco- 
 pated American rag. The superiority of the 
 Salvation Army street music in England must 
 be acknowledged, likewise. It is undoubtedly 
 the best of its kind in the world. In Sheffield, 
 the center of the British musical world, the 
 Citadel Band competes with the Coldstream 
 Guards for public concerts. 
 
 The merest outline of German culture, that 
 is to say, culture of a German origin, would 
 alone require many volumes. That she reigns 
 supreme in the intellectual world is a universal 
 acknowledgment, and this credit cannot now 
 be taken from her, even though she is engaged 
 with those same intellectual forces in the 
 most terrific and disastrous war any one has 
 ever dreamed of. 
 
 Indeed, the solidarity of the German people, 
 apparent in the present war, is an evidence of 
 how thoroughly their institutions have im- 
 pressed them. All of her forces, intellectual, 
 spiritual, financial and physical, are formed 
 into the most absolute unity at this time. 
 Her seventy million people are as one, let 
 there be no mistake, as One individual, in 
 the war. Her scientists, philosophers and 
 
86 England and Germany 
 
 teachers are for it to a man. Her musicians, 
 artists, authors and composers are in the 
 trenches. Her priests and churches have 
 unanimously blessed it. Her money is back 
 of it to the final Pfennig. They regard the 
 war as a struggle for the promotion of their 
 civilization and culture, and to them, more 
 than ever to Islam, their war is a holy 
 one. 
 
 Every child in the German schools was 
 requested by their teacher to prepare a 
 Christmas box for the soldiers just before the 
 holidays. These boxes were to contain a few 
 sweets, some cakes, cigars and cigarettes — 
 but particularly a letter from the donor to 
 the unknown warrior who might receive it 
 in the trenches. There is a bit of German 
 system serving at once to render a senti- 
 mental moral encouragement to the men at 
 the front and at the same time open an 
 opportunity for even the children to partici- 
 pate in the war of the Fatherland. While 
 America was sending Christmas ships to the 
 children of Europe, including Germany, of 
 course, literally millions of Hansels and 
 Gretels, of Fritzes and Irmas, were preparing 
 their gifts fur die tapfere Soldalen in the field. 
 And when the German arms are more than 
 usually successful the church bells peal from 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 87 
 
 one end of the empire to the other, the cities 
 and villages are decorated with flags, and the 
 schools are given a half holiday, after — 
 always after — the children have sung their 
 national songs, "Die Wacht Am Rhein" 
 and "Deutschland, Deutschland, Ueber 
 Alles." 
 
 These are the children, indeed, of Guten- 
 berg, Kepler and Kant, the future Beethovens, 
 Mozarts and Wagners of the world. They are 
 the young Haeckels, Hegels, Fichtes, Goethes, 
 Schillers and Hauptmanns of science, philoso- 
 phy and music. They are the Paul Ehrlichs 
 and Robert Koches, the Mergenthalers, Froe- 
 bels and Frauenhoefers (who brought the sun 
 down to the earth through the spectrum) of 
 tomorrow. German culture is not confined 
 to the universities, the laboratories, nor to 
 Weimar, Dresden and Beyreuth. It is every- 
 where evident in her beautiful and model 
 cities, in her forests and fields, her modernized 
 and sanitary workshops and factories — in the 
 fitness of her people for labor and usefulness. 
 The Kaiser is a bookbinder by trade, the ^ 
 crown prince is a carpenter. 
 
 According to Professor Cooley of Chicago, 
 the Kingdom of Prussia contains approxi- 
 mately three million boys between the ages 
 of fourteen and sixteen. Some two millions 
 
88 England and Germany 
 
 of these are at work. They quit school and 
 go to work for the same reason that the 
 American boy leaves his school books on the 
 completion of his grammar grade — to become 
 a breadwinner and get a start in life. But 
 when the American boy leaves school that 
 is pretty much the end of it. The state gives 
 his education no further thought. German 
 culture demands a different system than this 
 for its boys. When a boy between the ages 
 of fourteen and eighteen leaves school to 
 take a job, or learn a trade, he still has 
 open to him a large number of vocational 
 schools where he spends one or two days 
 a week continuing his culture or general 
 education in the technique of his chosen 
 trade. The city of Munich, with a pop- 
 ulation of say half a million, supports 
 over fifty such vocational or continuation 
 schools. 
 
 Much has been said of an absence of 
 initiative in the German owing to his sur- 
 render to the state. Nothing is less true than 
 this. Perhaps one of the most distinct 
 evidences of initiative is that of invention. 
 In my career as Consul, at Hanover, a city 
 of some industrial importance in Germany, 
 and at Sheffield, an English industrial center 
 of world-wide importance, the consular records 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 89 
 
 will show not less than five American patent 
 applications submitted by German inventors 
 in the Hanover district, as against one in the 
 Sheffield district. My remembrance is that 
 the ratio was as ten to one. I place it con- 
 servatively at five to one. Every man of 
 the thousands of German soldiers today 
 bearing the Iron Cross has a story of indi- 
 vidual initiative to tell. The Germans possess 
 initiative plus, more than any people I have 
 ever seen. Frank Putnam, a brilliant student 
 of sociology, says: 
 
 "Their initiative and culture has lifted 
 them irresistibly upward through an adaman- 
 tine crust of political officialdom toward a 
 full measure of workable, personal liberty. 
 It has substituted for the age-old scholastic 
 servitude of modern minds to Greek and 
 Latin classics, the universal, shrewd and 
 thorough study of the earth we live on and 
 the life of the present and tomorrow. It is 
 giving effect, in the equitable distribution of 
 material wealth and all that stands for, to the 
 mighty visions of the poets and philosophers 
 of the classic age of the German people. It 
 has produced a people who stand and walk 
 erect, almost without exception, who breathe 
 deeply, who dress neatly, work long and 
 steadily, and live with wise economy, and 
 
90 England and Germany 
 
 who front life with supreme confidence in the 
 future of their nation." 
 
 It is German initiative and culture that 
 has made her cities wonders of artistic and 
 cleanly beauty, which attract increasing mul- 
 titudes of visitors, residents and students 
 from every part of the world. It has given 
 the city of Berlin more square yards of 
 asphalt than any other civic center on the 
 earth. It has excited thousands of inventions 
 and improvements in applied science. It 
 has placed Germany to the forefront of the 
 nations of the earth, in the solution of those 
 intra-social problems which seem to be the 
 special purpose and object of organized so- 
 ciety. It has brought her away from and 
 above the entanglements of political govern- 
 ment, as understood by the American mind. 
 It has accepted the solution of the questions 
 of human and political rights, and gone on 
 to the practical problems of learning how to 
 live and make the most of life. While the 
 American and English politician and leader 
 is fighting the windmills of the Rights of 
 Man, the Crosses of Gold, and Crowns of 
 Thorns, the German, with really as great a 
 degree of personal liberty as any of us, has 
 turned his face to the sun and is lifting, 
 lifting himself and his state higher and 
 
Certain Aspects of German Culture 91 
 
 higher among the galaxy of successful 
 peoples of the world to the position of 
 Supernation. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
ATROCITIES ON THE FIELD AND 
 IN THE PRESS 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C. 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to submit the following 
 report touching on the subject of reprisals 
 in the war zone of Western Europe: 
 
 One of the most remarkable things about 
 the present war is the fact that practically 
 every disinterested, thinking neutral, who has 
 come into contact with the German military, 
 either in Germany, Belgium, or France, even 
 though ignorant of German ideals or institu- 
 tions, and prejudiced against her through 
 this ignorance, has needed but a few hours, 
 or at most, a few days, to reverse his judg- 
 ment and conviction more or less completely. 
 Undoubtedly there are exceptions to this 
 statement, but I myself know not a single 
 one and I have had the privilege of meeting 
 
 (93) 
 
94 England and Germany 
 
 many persons under these circumstances. 
 Calumny, even though permissible on the 
 part of a belligerent, is the meanest, and one 
 of the most effective, weapons in warfare. 
 
 Strange enough the neutral commission 
 which goes out to report on alleged brutalities 
 and atrocities on the termination of a war, 
 never or seldom sends a report. There were 
 a number of such commissions sent from 
 Europe to investigate the charges made 
 against the Bulgars and the Turks at the 
 close of the Balkan War. Their reports are 
 still uncompleted. The same may be said 
 of South Africa and the Boer War, and, to a 
 very large extent, you may be sure this will 
 be the case with respect to the conduct of 
 the German troops, and, I dare say, the 
 Russians and French as well. 
 
 Many of my friends in England have asked 
 me to explain to them the origin of the 
 reported bitterness and hatred of the Germans 
 for England. It is this — the facility with 
 which England has smirched the German 
 character, from that of the Kaiser to the 
 meanest trooper, in the eyes of the world, 
 and especially in the eyes of those who would 
 normally be in sympathy with him, by 
 its prolific atrocity, brutality and bestiality 
 stories. I am convinced that the fiery resent- 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 95 
 
 ment of the German toward England is more 
 the result of this systematic, all-embracing 
 world-campaign of mendacity and calumny, 
 even than the awful fact of her rushing in to 
 brain and destroy him at the moment when 
 he is engaged in a life and death struggle 
 with the Russian colossus straining to gar- 
 rote him from the rear, with France, keen, 
 purposeful and expert, seeking to rapier him 
 from the front. Indeed, it cannot be long 
 before the world, before America, will see and 
 appreciate the heroic, if not superhuman, 
 effort Germany is making for its life against 
 this deluge and hurricane of foes. 
 
 I suppose no two journalists in America are 
 more respected and trusted than John T. 
 McCutcheon and Irving S. Cobb. These two 
 gentlemen, in company with James O'Donnell 
 Bennett, Roger Lewis and Harry Hansen, 
 representing, respectively, the Chicago 
 Tribune, Associated Press and the Chicago 
 Daily News, were pushed into Germany 
 rather unceremoniously, and as semi-suspects, 
 along about the end of August. They all had 
 a grievance against Germany, more or less, 
 for the treatment they have experienced at 
 the hands of the German military authorities 
 in Belgium. Their complaint, however, was 
 professional and not personal. They felt 
 
96 England and Germany 
 
 that they were bottled and were afraid they 
 could neither get out of Germany themselves, 
 nor be able to send reports off to their papers. 
 Cobb appeared in Aix-la-Chapelle in a 
 butcher's leather jumper, and a pair of felt 
 slippers. He is not a handsome man even 
 when seen on Fifth Avenue; but when he 
 came into the Consulate, unshaved and 
 unwashed, for a period of ten days, he was 
 cursing everything German from the Kaiser 
 to the ordinary "Kannonenfutter," and he 
 looked like a Bavarian charcoal burner. 
 Lewis had left $900 in gold in an open suit 
 case in the Palais Hotel in Brussels. Hansen 
 had been on his honeymoon trip and did not 
 know if his wife was in England or Germany.* 
 Bennett and McCutcheon were feverish in 
 their desire to get to London. They had all 
 left England some three weeks before to 
 strike the trail of the Red Terror, and were 
 on the scent of the "mad dog" of Europe. 
 
 If these colorful details seem rather paltry 
 and trivial to introduce here, I present them 
 as a simple preface to the very rapid convic- 
 tion these gentlemen arrived at respecting 
 Germany and her military activities — in Bel- 
 gium particularly, after witnessing them, 
 individually. Notwithstanding personal griev- 
 ance, because of deprivation, discomfort and 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 97 
 
 interference by German army authorities, 
 they retained their birthright, as real, open- 
 minded, fair-play Americans; and, as soon 
 as they compared notes and found all of their 
 experience alike, they got together, alone in 
 their room at their hotel, and wrote as briefly 
 and as tersely as they could a joint statement 
 refuting the English, French and Belgian 
 circulated atrocity stories that were filling 
 the columns of the press of the world. You 
 will recall that I reported their experiences 
 in some detail to you in a previous despatch. 
 Their statement follows: 
 
 "Western Union, New York, for Associated 
 Press, signed Lewis; Ledger, Philadelphia, 
 Cobb; News, Chicago, Hansen; Tribune, 
 Chicago, Bennett, McCutcheon. In spirit 
 fairness we unite in declaring German atroci- 
 ties groundless as far as we are able to observe. 
 After spending two weeks with the German 
 army, accompanying troops upward hundred 
 miles, we unable to report single instance 
 unprovoked reprisal. Also unable confirm 
 rumors mistreatment prisoners or non-com- 
 batants. With German columns: Lande, 
 JLouvain, Brussels, Nivelles, Binche, Buissiere, 
 Hautes-W T iherie, Merbes-le- Chateau, Solre- 
 sur-Sambre, Beaumont, without substantiat- 
 ing single case wanton brutality. 
 
98 England and Germany 
 
 "Numerous investigated rumors proved 
 groundless. Everywhere have seen German 
 paying for purchases, respecting property- 
 rights of individuals, according civilians con- 
 sideration. 
 
 "After battle Buissiere found Belgian 
 women, children moving comfortably about, 
 day after Germans captured town. 
 
 "In Merbes-le-Chateau we found one citizen 
 killed, but unable confirm lack provocation. 
 
 "Refugees with tales atrocities unable sup- 
 ply direct evidence. 
 
 "Belgian Burgomaster Solre-sur-Sambre 
 voluntarily discounted reports cruelty in sur- 
 rounding country. 
 
 "Discipline German soldiers excellent as 
 observed. No drunkenness. 
 
 "To truth these statements we pledge 
 professional, personal word. Please repeat 
 back last three words, care American Consul, 
 Vaals, Holland." 
 
 These gentlemen were not of the refugee 
 crowd that rushed out of Belgium into Eng- 
 land and France and Holland ahead of the 
 invading forces of Germany. They were left 
 behind; and none of those neutrals who 
 remained on the field, at least none I have 
 met, have, as yet, been able to confirm the 
 hysterical and irresponsible stories of atroci- 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 99 
 
 ties sent out of London. Donald Thompson, 
 the Kansas war photographer of the New 
 York World, who was arrested a dozen times 
 by the German military authorities, wounded 
 once by shrapnel, and present in thirty odd 
 engagements, covering pretty much all of 
 Western Belgium, said to me that he learned 
 of no single case of brutality or unprovoked 
 reprisal on the part of the German troops. 
 This man was being paid a large sum of 
 money, both by the New York World and the 
 London Daily Mail for war photographs, and 
 atrocity stories, as well as pictures, were at 
 a premium. The baby with its hands cut 
 off, and the nurse with amputated breasts 
 were always in the town or villages just 
 ahead of him, until, finally, these two particu- 
 lar atrocities reached London, in violation of 
 all pathological laws of strangulation and 
 bleeding to death. They have been sought 
 for religiously by many and Bernard Shaw, 
 who spent much time endeavoring to locate 
 them, says that when he was finally told 
 they had gone on to Archangel by way of the 
 
 Note. — Since arriving in America I have met a wide-eyed guileless 
 English lady, with the very truth shining from her face, who has 
 assured me that this particular atrocity — the baby with its hands 
 cut off — was living with her own mother near Blackpool, England; 
 and a French friend with whom I have even had business^ relations 
 for a period of three years tells me the child is with his aunt in Winni- 
 peg. I am certain they both believe what they say. 
 
100 England and Germany 
 
 Arctic Sea, he was compelled to abandon the 
 search. 
 
 I have spent much time myself in seeking 
 for German soldiers alleged to have been 
 mutilated, and atrocitied by the Belgian 
 populace. They, too, were not to be found, 
 certainly not by me, and of the members of 
 the Medical Association of the West Rhine 
 Province, which met in Aix-la-Chapelle in 
 October, I could find none who had personal 
 knowledge of such cases. Undoubtedly most 
 savage severities were applied on both sides 
 and all sides, but these things cannot enter 
 into the merits of this great struggle as a 
 determining factor in the judgment of neutral 
 people. War itself is the great atrocity and 
 that is enough, God knows. The man, or 
 men, whom history will make responsible 
 for this war will also be responsible for 
 Belgium. Lord Roberts raised the one sane 
 voice against the atrocity campaign in Eng- 
 land. He said: "Let us not forget our con- 
 centration camps and raids of fire in South 
 Africa and what the world said about that. 
 We have only to fight the Germans in such a 
 way that, win or lose, they will respect us 
 when the war is over." 
 
 The nurse-with-her-breast-cut-off-by-Ger- 
 man-soldiers' story originated in Edinboro, 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 101 
 
 and the girl who concocted it has since been 
 convicted by the courts of that good town. 
 The sentence should have included a goodly 
 number of London editors and American 
 correspondents; but, unfortunately for the 
 peace of mind of the world, the court fell 
 short of convicting, for libel, of the perpe- 
 trators of the alleged crime, but rendered 
 judgment because of the grief the girl had 
 caused the parents of the mistreated nurse, 
 who, strange enough, was her own sister. 
 
 England is the home of melodrama, and 
 in view of this, and the demands of the 
 newspaper reading public, the cheap theatre, 
 music hall, and football millions for that 
 kind of matter, which, to the shame of the 
 British censor, was allowed to go uncut, the 
 judging world must look elsewhere for the 
 truth. 
 
 I repeat, the blue-eyed Saxon, the proud 
 Prussian and the German people, all hate the 
 English more for this campaign than if they 
 were to whip them back across Belgium and 
 the Rhine. The German officers and soldiers 
 at the front, have only praise for the English 
 troops for their bravery and fairness on the 
 field of battle. 
 
 My friend, Mr. C. H. Wheeler, of the 
 Chicago Tribune, came to Europe for the 
 
102 England and Germany 
 
 purpose of fetching a thousand Belgian 
 orphans, the harvest of the German invasion, 
 back to open homes in America. The number 
 was fairly modest, considering the tales of 
 the London press and correspondents. That 
 there were no orphans to be had, makes no 
 difference. The world keeps merrily on 
 devouring these noble tales of the sensation 
 mongers of newspaper row in London. Had 
 Mr. Wheeler gone to the East End of London, 
 to Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, and a few 
 other places in England he could have 
 brought back 10,000 waifs, victims of what 
 may more rightly be considered the present 
 real atrocity of the world — British industrial 
 conditions. I proposed this to Mr. Wheeler 
 at the time, but he said the American people 
 would be satisfied only with war orphans — 
 from Belgium. 
 
 Even now you see neither hungry nor 
 freezing children in Belgium — you see many 
 of them in Britain. There is no German 
 Landwehr man who would not divide his 
 last crust and ration with a Belgian woman 
 or child. Under the German social system 
 hunger and unclothed children do not exist. 
 That also is verboten. But if there were 
 starving and suffering children in Belgium 
 the condition might fairly be attributed to a 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 103 
 
 state of war. In England that condition is \ 
 the regular, unnoticed horror of Peace. Cal- 
 loused against her own inability to correct 
 these evils, deaf to the cries of those who 
 wish to draw her out of the awful slough 
 of administrative impotence, she points her 
 finger toward the Germans and prints, in 
 her great illustrated papers, faked pictures 
 of them carrying Belgian babies on bloody 
 lances. 
 
 This is the moral warfare of England, with 
 her world cables, her world mails, and her 
 practically universal language. This is the 
 chivalry of warfare her Conan Doyles, Arnold 
 Bennetts and H. G. Wells' write about, on 
 which they make plea for American sympathy. 
 And it is disgusting and unworthy of a great 
 people. It is because of the foregoing facts, i 
 partly, that I feel that the American people j 
 have been stampeded in their conviction and | 
 sympathies. The war will continue long 
 enough for the world to cool off and anathe- 
 matize the real offenders — long enough for a 
 readjustment of sympathies and sentiment — 
 at least such as may have been based upon 
 the "Atrocities." 
 
 It was as sure and easy for England and 
 the Allies to capture the favorable sentiment 
 of the world, they having the cables, mails 
 
104 England and Germany 
 
 and press for the moment, as it was for 
 Germany, with her military preparedness to 
 throw the sphere of operations into the 
 territory of her opponents. The "Atrocity" 
 guns and "Militarism" mortars of the Allies' 
 press have been more effective, indeed, on 
 this side of the Atlantic, than the Krupp 42's 
 in Belgium and France. 
 
 Some weeks ago the London Graphic 
 printed a double page picture of a score or 
 more of bridges destroyed along the river 
 Meuse, with the caption: "The work of the 
 German army in Belgium." The facts were 
 that the Belgian and French pioneers had 
 blown up every bridge from near Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, on the German frontier, clear up 
 the river as far as Verdun, in France, and 
 not less than a hundred of them have been 
 partially, if not completely, restored, already, 
 by the German army. Military necessity 
 
 Editor's Note. — Mr. Thompson writes us: "Since arriving in 
 America I have listened to one of Mr. Elmendorf's travel lectures, 
 during which that gentleman threw several pictures of Liege on the 
 screen. Amongst them was a view of the University building. Mr. 
 Elmendorf remarked that this, along with the other buildings shown 
 were totally destroyed. This is not at all true. They are untouched 
 excepting for a few window panes which were broken by bullets in 
 the University building. I slept in that building on the twenty- 
 eighth of August, and visited it later, the fourth of October, 1914. 
 The destruction of buildings in Liege would not equal in loss the 
 amount of a fair-sized fire in Chicago, such as causes public comment 
 for two or three days only. This is mentioned merely to indicate 
 the unconscious dissemination of exaggerated and false statements 
 by presumed authorities. 
 
Atrocities on the Field and in the Press 105 
 
 constructs as well as destroys, but such 
 statements make good moral shrapnel against 
 the sons of the Kaiser, and so we have to take 
 it, requiring as we do, news and war pictures. 
 
 The moral responsibility for the desecration 
 and destruction of churches would be difficult 
 to place. It is certain that where engagements 
 or battles did not take place the churches are 
 intact, and in good shape. I have photo- 
 graphed German soldiers at prayer in these 
 same churches, and witnessed the Kaiser 
 participating in the services. But where they 
 did take place in towns or cities the place at 
 once and automatically became a citadel and 
 fort under military law and the highest point 
 of vantage for observation and signaling was 
 invariably the church, whether it was a 
 thousand years old, and decorated with 
 masterpieces of Rubens and Van Dyke, or 
 six months old, and plastered with machine- 
 made statuary from Neuilly, Paris. 
 
 Obviously, if a people purposed to save its 
 churches from an attacking army, they should 
 exercise as much intelligence, at least, as the 
 partridge, which instinctively seeks to beguile 
 the hound away from its nest. France took 
 her churches away from God some few years 
 ago and added them to the list of government 
 property; and, anyway, God doesn't seem to 
 
10G England and Germany 
 
 be much concerned with the present war; 
 for the good people of Belgium, France, 
 England, Russia, Germany and Austria, and, 
 I doubt not, Servia and Turkey, are holding 
 simultaneous intercessionals to Him for suc- 
 cess in killing their Christian neighbors. 
 I am sure, if what General Von Zweel, com- 
 manding the German forces before Rheims, 
 told me was true, that the French were 
 observed signaling their artillery from the 
 cathedral tower, and that he sent several 
 parley emissaries to warn them, without 
 effect, then the desecration was first com- 
 mitted by our French friends, and they were 
 alone responsible for forcing the bombard- 
 ment. I think it is fair to say they were the 
 inciting cause. My observation during the 
 past several years has been that the "Hun" 
 has as much respect for churches, generally, 
 as the "Frank." 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
THE BLOOD OF AMERICA 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to submit the following 
 studies on the subject of the * 'Blood of 
 America," and the part contributed thereto 
 by the German: 
 
 The contribution of Germany to that 
 marvelous composite which forms the Ameri- 
 can has been great almost beyond calculation, 
 but not of modern Germany, that Germany 
 we see today fighting for the results of her 
 new national life. The hordes of German 
 immigrants that passed through the broad 
 and open gateways of America in the earlier 
 days have long since dwindled to trickling 
 streams of relatives of the composite American 
 and to artists, scientists, and commercial 
 representatives. Out of that older supply 
 of German blood, and running into the 
 
 (107) 
 
108 England and Germany 
 
 second, third, fourth generation, etc., there 
 should be no less than twenty-five million 
 souls in the United States, who spring through 
 direct, or indirect descent, from full or mixed 
 German parentage. It may be truthfully 
 said that this enormous and much mixed 
 element in our blood has never, heretofore, 
 had occasion to express itself as a solidarity 
 with but a few local and insignificant excep- 
 tions. The German immigrant to America 
 sprang almost entirely from the humbler, 
 more ignorant peasant population of the 
 various kingdoms, principalities, etc., of the 
 old defunct German confederation. They 
 came as refugees from apparently hopeless 
 political and economic conditions, and they 
 were absorbed by millions into this composite 
 body. Beyond the second generation little 
 is left to distinguish their origin besides the 
 name and possibly present harking back in 
 sentiment to the vine and fig tree of the 
 Fatherland. 
 
 In the year 1750 there were, in the colony 
 of Pennsylvania, over fifty thousand German 
 residents and settlers. Now, according to 
 the rule used by statisticians, in estimating 
 the growth of population, in a new and 
 progressive country, these figures may be 
 doubled for each twenty-five years. On this 
 
The Blood of America 109 
 
 basis there would be, at the present time, 
 over five million Germans, or persons of full 
 German blood in or coming from the state 
 of Pennsylvania alone. It happens that in 
 this instance we have figures of an early date. 
 The question was at that time discussed in 
 the Pennsylvania colonial assembly as to 
 whether the proceedings of that body should 
 not be conducted in the German language. 
 It was shortly after this that the Mecklenburg 
 declaration of independence was issued by 
 German patriots, at Charlotte, North Caro- 
 lina. This antedated the Philadelphia decla- 
 ration by one year. Up to 1871, no proper 
 record was kept by the United States Govern- 
 ment of immigration, but the largest immigra- 
 tion we have ever had came to us from 
 Germany. And based upon more or less 
 actual figures, a fair estimate is reached of 
 the astounding fact that nearly one-third of 
 the white blood of America is today purely 
 Germanic; one -quarter Celtic, one -eighth 
 Scandinavian, a considerable percentage of 
 Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Russian, 
 and finally about one-eighth of what we call, 
 in the commonly accepted sense of the term, 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 It is true, and possibly fortunate, for us, 
 that we are possessed today of English laws, 
 
110 England and Germany 
 
 language and institutions, generally, a fact 
 due to the control of the colonial govern- 
 ments, courts, schools and other institutions, 
 by England. Interwoven into the history 
 and growth of the country, like threads of 
 gold, are the names of Washington, Jefferson, 
 Hamilton, the Adamses, Jackson, Fremont.. 
 Lincoln, Lee, etc. But when the tie between 
 England and the colonies was finally severed 
 in 1790, a new race and blood product was 
 born into the world. It is a myth, a legend 
 and a mistake to look upon England as the 
 mother country. The American people are, 
 in the matter of purely blood relationship to 
 Europe, less English than they are Scandi- 
 navian, and more German than anything else. 
 Nevertheless, our impetus, or progress and 
 civic development, was received from this, 
 at the time, leading nation of the world, 
 England, and what we have of good, as well 
 as evil, we have largely from her. Our much 
 praised political freedom, along with our 
 unemployed; our opportunities for success 
 and advantage as an individual, parallel with 
 the muddling, inefficient effort to advance 
 the general welfare; our immense success in 
 spots, and lamentable failures in other direc- 
 tions; these are the results of national ideals 
 inherited from England. There is something 
 
The Blood of America 111 
 
 new in this respect, however, in the world, 
 and if we, like England, close our eyes to it, 
 much the worse for us, as it may be for her. 
 
 It seems for Germany that God endowed 
 this particular part of the world with an 
 indigenous atmosphere of human fecundity, 
 a fact which has enabled the Germans to 
 send out streams of life to all parts of the 
 earth, and to increase their population, even 
 now at home, more rapidly than any similar 
 number of people anywhere. This, of course, 
 refers only to increase by native birth. In 
 those primitive days, when, according to 
 Gibbon, the German forests were teeming 
 with barbarians, the Angles occupied Briton, 
 the Franks and Burgundians, Gaul, the Lom- 
 bards, Upper Italy, and later the millions to 
 America, to Brazil, Australia, Africa and 
 Asia; all proving that one of the charac- 
 teristics of the Germans has ever been the 
 so-called "Wanderlust." "Aus aus in die 
 weite, weite Welt, dort wo du nicht bist, dort 
 ist das Gluck." 
 
 Up to 1870 the German had no real nation- 
 ality. He was a poet, a philosopher, or a 
 soldier, peculiarly adapted to absorption 
 wherever he might find himself. But today 
 all is changed under the inspiration and 
 guidance of one of the dominating great 
 
112 England and Germany 
 
 masters of men, and by one of those phe- 
 nomenally rare processes of nature, he arises 
 a rejuvenated race. The gods have given 
 Germany a new youth. That great Drang 
 nach Aussen, that age old, pathetic and never 
 dying Wanderlust, which for centuries resulted 
 only in the building up of other lands, has at 
 last been dammed, and from this great and 
 inexhaustible reservoir of enterprise slie has 
 launched a thousand ships and forces, directed 
 to the uttermost parts of the earth for the 
 occupation thereof, as a World Power and 
 economic entity. 
 
 With a scientific and purely business-like 
 administration of the affairs of the people, 
 where duty is the first consideration of citizen- 
 ship and "rights" a proper second, she stands 
 today, after a brief career of forty years, the 
 most brilliant and unparalleled example of 
 the effectiveness of government, so-called, 
 perhaps in the history of man. 
 
 It appears to me that Germany is organized 
 on the principle of the people being the stock- 
 holders, and the government the board of 
 directors, of a great industrial concern. The 
 question of government, in its ethical sense, 
 resolving itself into a matter of the direction 
 and control of the natural resources and 
 productive forces of the country for the 
 
Tke Blood of America 113 
 
 greatest good of all, with the overworked 
 shibboleth of the rights of man, solved, 
 practically a century ago, being left to the 
 academician and demagogue, while real Ger- 
 many, with her modern team-work and 
 practical applications of socialism — not to 
 forget her administration by trained and 
 specialized experts — has quietly and surely 
 1 into the lead amongst the nations of 
 earth. 
 The ideals of man today are economic, and 
 ermany is astride, armed cap-a-pie, of this 
 supreme fact of modern life. Her savings, 
 through the investments of industrial in- 
 surance funds, already form the treasure of a 
 nation. Over twenty million workers stand 
 under the mantel of this protection with 
 resources of more than three billion of dollars. 
 If her canals and navigable rivers were given 
 to the United States in like proportion, as 
 regards length of water courses and area of 
 land, they would extend in twenty parallel 
 lines across the continent from the Atlantic 
 to the Pacific and in forty parallel lines from 
 Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. There is a 
 greater freight tonnage on the river Rhine 
 alone than on all our great lake system. Her 
 prosperity and material progress are such 
 that she must employ some three millions 
 
114 England and Germany 
 
 of female workers in the fields to garner the 
 harvests, so plentiful through intensive and 
 scientific cultivation, an element in her life 
 that contributes enormously to the health 
 and virility of the race. I might enumerate 
 a hundred of things, like the German marine, 
 education, chambers of commerce, railroads, 
 municipal improvements — I could speak of 
 these things and many others, and they would 
 show but the modern and up-to-date organiza- 
 tion as a really new force in the world — a 
 state administered on business principles, and 
 a state, not old, but one just entering upon 
 and at the commencement of the fruition of 
 successful achievement. Germany may be 
 defeated in war but she is already the victor 
 in the real rivalry of the states of the world 
 in peaceful competition. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
THE ATTITUDE AND DUTY OF 
 AMERICA 
 
 American Consulate, 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. 
 
 To the Honorable, 
 
 The Secretary of State, 
 Washington, D. C 
 Sir:— 
 
 I have the honor to suggest for the con- 
 sideration of the Department the following 
 proposals respecting the attitude and duty 
 of our government in relation to the present 
 war in Europe. 
 
 A suspended judgment on the war is the 
 important thing for America. Difficult as 
 this may be, under the circumstances, it is 
 the one great desideratum for the United 
 States. The coincidental fact that coupled 
 with a preponderating sentiment of the Ameri- 
 can people against the German, there exists 
 likewise a condition which makes us a large 
 and powerful contributor to the forces of his 
 opponents, possibly even to becoming the 
 determining factor in the outcome of the 
 
 (115) 
 
116 England and German]/ 
 
 conflict, makes it doubly incumbent upon us 
 to exercise great caution in taking a positive 
 position, lest we be unfair. 
 
 The various Foreign Offices of Europe make 
 out their cases under the published title of 
 the White, Yellow, or some other Book of 
 this or that country. Each proves its own 
 contention, that the immediate, if not entire, 
 responsibility for the opening of hostilities 
 rests upon the other party. We take our 
 choice, perhaps, according to our instincts, 
 sympathies, prejudices, or, if possessed of 
 average fairness of mind, following such 
 information as we may obtain, be it interested, 
 or disinterested. The following expression is 
 cited as illustrating the American's attitude 
 of neutrality: "Sure I'm perfectly neutral, 
 I don't care which nation licks Germany!" 
 Now the fact that the German, as an in- 
 dividual, is more of a personal favorite with 
 the American than is the Englishman, would 
 indicate that our position is not predicated 
 on favoritism or purely sentimental inclina- 
 tion. 
 
 The thought exists very generally through- 
 out America that Germany precipitated the 
 war, or that, if she did not do that, she, at 
 least, was in a position to prevent it. That 
 may be true or not, but the same claim may 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 117 
 
 be made of Austria, Russia, France or Eng- 
 land. There is little doubt that any of those 
 five powers could have checked hostilities, if, 
 indeed, not even prevented them, altogether. 
 It seems that both Germany and England 
 did try this. My conviction is that neither 
 of these powers desired war, though a success- 
 ful war offered advantages to both of them — 
 to England in the maintenance of her fore- 
 most place as a World Power, and to Germany 
 as a release from the pressure and restrictions 
 being put upon her by the Entente. 
 
 However, the chief question now for the 
 United States is what we can do to prepare 
 ourselves for and to aid in bringing about 
 peace, and a peace that cannot again be 
 easily disturbed. It is not impossible that 
 the eventual decision of this war may lie 
 with us. Owing to our wealth, power, and 
 advanced place as a world force, we should 
 automatically come to the position of final 
 peacemaker and arbiter of the nations at 
 war. If this be true, it is of transcendant 
 importance that we have a clear national 
 vision and comprehension of the fundamental 
 causes and events of the war, unaffected by 
 prejudices, sympathies or misinformation. 
 
 It will be of no avail, nor lead to any real 
 solution to point to Servia's assassination of 
 
118 England and Germany 
 
 the head of a neighboring state, nor to 
 Austria's peremptory demands on Servia. It 
 will not answer to point to the hostile and 
 threatening mobilization of Russia against 
 Austria and Germany, and the latter's swift 
 movement across Belgium to the North Sea, 
 and France seeking to balance, in a measure, 
 the tremendous odds forming against her, 
 by her mobility and preparedness. 
 
 All these things will be of no avail. Each 
 nation is justified in its own conscience for 
 its action. We must not overlook this. 
 These people are very highly civilized. They 
 are all firmly convinced that God and Right 
 are on their side. Their hearts are full of 
 human love and honor. They are the victims 
 of a vast and fatal miscalculation, a system 
 of international rivalry, and a soulless Machia- 
 vellian foreign office — of intrigue and barter. 
 A long, educational, political campaign and 
 eventual plebiscite must be had for the most 
 insignificant change in the internal policy 
 of a nation. Its foreign relations and power 
 to make war are as much in the hands of one 
 man, or a small group of men, today, as they 
 were in the time of Caesar or Peter the Great. 
 And this is likewise true, though in less 
 degree, perhaps, of us. 
 
 What, then, are we to learn from the war? 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 119 
 
 What are we to gain? Will the end fix forever 
 the solution of the question of national 
 armament or disarmament? 
 
 Shall we be able to learn whether, or no, 
 we must become a part of a great world 
 contest for military power, on sea or land? 
 Whether the gauge of greatness of a people 
 shall really be in their dreadnaughts and land 
 military establishments — whether, in fact, 
 the determination of England to maintain 
 her place as mistress of the sea, or Germany's 
 purpose to remain the chief continental 
 political force have justified, in any way, the 
 great expenditures the world has witnessed, 
 or the enormous loss of life now taking place. 
 If we shall be able to predicate our own 
 future from these present events, that may be 
 worth while to us. 
 
 But greater than all may be our oppor- 
 tunity, at this moment, to direct the future 
 course of international ambition and inter- 
 national ideals. In this respect we still 
 occupy the favored position, and should make 
 the most of it. We have a supreme and 
 magnificent duty and work before us; and, 
 according to our real nobleness of mind and 
 foresight, we can perform this duty. How 
 insignificant and paltry, then, must be the 
 attitude of small partisanship. We must, 
 
120 England and Germany 
 
 if necessary, rise above the trammeling level 
 of so-called international laws, which bind 
 us, as an unwilling, though neutral, partici- 
 pant in the war, and drags us along, with- 
 out voice or power, toward the tremendous 
 solution of this final problem of the relation- 
 ship of the nations of the world. 
 
 I am told that in the State Department 
 there was great agitation and apparent con- 
 fusion on the third and fourth of August of 
 last year, that the one ray of light and 
 satisfaction existing there in those fatal 
 hours was the vista of a great opening for 
 American business and export trade. Be 
 this as it may, what an opportunity there 
 was for Mr. Wilson to then and there have 
 placed the United States on a plane that 
 would have made these belligerent friends of 
 ours to pause and realize there was a force 
 in the world greater even than their dread- 
 naughts or Krupp mortars. 
 
 The declaration of American neutrality 
 should have taken the form of an act of 
 Congress, and it should have been of a charac- 
 ter comporting with the bigness of the war 
 and the issues which may come out of it. 
 We should have announced, not from the 
 State Department, but as an expression of 
 all the people, a super-neutrality. We should 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 121 
 
 have protested against the war to every 
 nation, and as fast as they became involved, 
 no matter what their Yellow, White, or Blue 
 Books might say, we should have withdrawn 
 our representatives from those countries and 
 closed our ports entirely to their commerce, 
 ships and cables. That would have been a 
 neutrality which would have allowed us to 
 formulate the future great Peace Pact of the 
 world. To introduce, when the moment 
 arrived, the proposal for an international 
 constitution, or world contract, out of which 
 would naturally evolve those world courts of 
 Law and Equity and Arbitration, of which 
 we have dreamed, and endeavored to promote, 
 without the foundation — necessary for any 
 competent court — an existing statutory, in- 
 ternational law. The great biological decree 
 and law of nature, that might is right, is but 
 another name for International Law, or the 
 Law of Nations — gloss it over as we may. 
 The principles and precepts of these hazy 
 international regulations must ever have, 
 under present conditions, their final adjudica- 
 tion at the cannon's mouth. And this is 
 because each nation interprets the so-called 
 rules of international law according to its 
 own particular traditions, prejudices and 
 interests. A high international court, supreme 
 
122 England and Germany 
 
 in the matter of the relations of one nation 
 to another, could only be founded upon a 
 genuine international law, and such inter- 
 national law is not now a fixed institution. 
 Statutory law is as necessary a precedent to 
 the formation of a competent court as city 
 ordinances are to a police court. We can 
 never, therefore, have such international tri- 
 bunals as we have been endeavoring to pro- 
 mote at the Hague and elsewhere, until we 
 first create a real international law, and such 
 a law must eventually take the form of an 
 international constitution, or world contract. 
 Such a contract embodying even the very 
 first and most primitive rules of international 
 law, which presumably would be acceptable 
 to all nations, would be sufficient to auto- 
 matically create the great need for an inter- 
 pretation of such rules, in their application 
 to questions of facts and equity arising be- 
 tween the nations. With such a beginning 
 the development of an international statute 
 to meet the problems of relations between 
 the nations might be assured. 
 
 However, we did not rise to the occasion. 
 We looked backwards fifty, one hundred, a 
 thousand years for precedents and rules for 
 a stand that would serve to eliminate us 
 from a part in this upheaval and readjustment 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 123 
 
 of the relationship of nations. Mr. Wilson 
 and you, Mr. Bryan, threw away the op- 
 portunity, in this first instance, to lay the 
 foundation for the much dreamed of and 
 hoped for federation of the world. 
 
 But is it too late, even now, to strive for 
 this end? I do not think so. In the articles 
 I have written on the causes and merits of the 
 controversy, between England and Germany 
 especially, I have been moved, particularly, 
 by the wish to show the equities of the situa- 
 tion from the German side, not with the wish 
 to excite a reversal of American sentiment, 
 per se, but to prepare the public mind for a 
 clearer and fairer judgment than it can now 
 render. 
 
 So far as the end of the war is concerned, 
 there is no indication of it anywhere. Italy 
 and Roumania are not the solution. Ger- 
 many is impregnable on her own territory, 
 and impregnable against the world. Against 
 her, on the other hand, stands a force ap- 
 parently impossible of destruction or defeat. 
 It resolves, itself, therefore, into a proposi- 
 tion in physics — the collision of two irre- 
 sistible bodies. Now, these are our own 
 people. What can we do to save them from 
 themselves and one another? If we wait 
 until one or the other cries "Enough," we 
 
124 England and Germany 
 
 will wait too long. Dreadnaughts, aeroplanes, 
 submarines and Zeppelins are new elements in 
 warfare. Their great power for destruction 
 demands also new and unusual methods 
 toward peace. Are we to wait until two thou- 
 sand pound cargoes of nitro-glycerine are 
 dropped on the city of London? I shall be 
 frank and say I am convinced that the 
 Germans hold the trump card in the fight, 
 not in a general way, but through specific 
 knowledge — applied to the means of war, 
 and that, through the demonstration of a 
 superior and more rational civilization than 
 any other state has so far shown, the merits 
 of the contest, so far as this goes, are on her 
 side. But if this, or any other superiority 
 in offence, results in the destruction of Eng- 
 land, or France, or of Germany, and we 
 might be the means of preventing it, and did 
 not do all in our power to do so, the fault of 
 omission on our part would be great, if not 
 so great as the crime of commission on the 
 part of any one of the belligerents. 
 
 Therefore, I propose that a peace commis- 
 sion he at once formed by Congress, to be com- 
 posed of our two ex-presidents and three others, 
 who shall be authorized to confer at once ivith 
 the powers at war with the view of bringing 
 about a cessation of hostilities, and that they 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 125 
 
 be further delegated to propose the complete 
 disarmament at sea and on the land of the 
 several powers of the world. It will come to this 
 eventually. Why not rise to the occasion and 
 prepare for it now? 
 
 In view of this duty, existing now, or ahead 
 of the United States, it is of supreme im- 
 portance that, whatever our reason tells us, 
 as to the virtues of the great controversy, we 
 check and suppress our sympathies and 
 prejudices, and refrain from weakening our 
 position, or making ourselves impossible as 
 the final forces which shall determine the 
 direction and course to be taken at the 
 settlement of the war. 
 
 We cannot go back to the ententes and 
 alliances, to the annexation of Herzegovina 
 and Bosnia, the assassination of Ferdinand, 
 the ultimatum of Austria, the mobilization of 
 Russia, the breach of Belgian neutrality — 
 we must look solely to the future, and that 
 future must be an assurance to mankind that 
 neither Foreign Secretaries, Kings, nor Presi- 
 dents, may ever again upset the peace of the 
 world, either through ententes and alliances, 
 or superiority in armament, on the land, at 
 sea, or in the air. 
 
 There are several conditions in Europe, at 
 present, we should understand: First, neither 
 
126 England and Germany 
 
 of the chief belligerents are thinking of peace, 
 and would probably repel any ordinary effort 
 to introduce the subject. In Germany there 
 is a supreme and exalted confidence in the 
 favorable outcome of the war to them. The 
 same may be said also of the feeling in Eng- 
 land. Each one regards it its duty to defeat 
 the other and does not, as yet, question the 
 final issue. These conditions we would have 
 to face. So much greater might be the success 
 of our efforts. 
 
 As to the feeling of the belligerents toward 
 us, it is simple enough. The Allies know 
 they have the sympathy at present of the 
 American people, generally, and they con- 
 sider this as a great moral, if not material 
 asset. Germany witnesses the matter with 
 stoicism, and a recognition of the technical 
 justification of our position. She has full 
 confidence in our fairness, and feels only that 
 she has been misrepresented and misunder- 
 stood, and that time will set her right. 
 
 Germany does not, nor did she ever wish 
 to make Belgium a part of German territory. 
 A treaty of peace such as Germany may dic- 
 tate to England will probably result in the 
 restoration to Belgium of her sovereignty — 
 the repayment to Liege, Brussels and Ant- 
 werp and her other cities and provinces, of 
 
The Attitude and Duty of America 127 
 
 the war tributes exacted from them, and when 
 the final accounting is made, Germany will 
 not disappoint the world in her generosity 
 to this crushed and unhappy state. She 
 wants no more from Belgium, even now, than 
 she asked of her, as a life and death necessity, 
 on the third of August, at the commencement 
 of the war. 
 
 The moral, practical and Christian forces 
 of the United States of America are now 
 being weighed in the balance. Shall we be 
 found wanting? Or shall we rise to this 
 occasion, supreme in our history, and which 
 shall never pass our way again? 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 Robert J. Thompson, 
 American Consul (Resigned). 
 
Neutralizing agent. Magnesiun 
 Treatment Date: ^ 2001 
 
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