Chapter VI: Pan-Germany’s Strength and Weakness

In April last, when it was generally believed in Paris that the Revolution at Petrograd made certain the end of German influence over the vast former Empire of the Tsars, I wrote the study referred to on page 81 and reprinted here as Chapters IV and V.[1] I then said, [In Russia] ‘Where conditions were ripe for idealistic extremists to guide the revolution toward pacifism or anarchy, there are alarming symptoms of the prevalence of the latter condition. The swarming agents of Germany are working there without respite. If their efforts succeed, the strength of Russia will swiftly dissolve.’

Unhappily, events have justified this word of caution in only too full measure. The efforts of the Allies to reorganize the forces of Russia have thus far met with small success. It is a task to which their duty and their interests alike make it imperative for them to devote themselves with their utmost strength. But we must cherish no illusions. The rebuilding of the forces of Russia must inevitably be a long, arduous, and doubtful undertaking. It is advisable, therefore, to consider, at the same time, if there is not some method of making up for the Russian default by bringing into play, to further the victory of the Entente, certain powerful forces which the Allies have not thus far even thought of employing.

Now, these forces and this method do exist; but in order to enforce clearly their reality, their importance, and the way to make use of them, I must, in the first place, call attention to a fundamental and enduring error of the Allies, set forth the extraordinary credulity with which they allow themselves to be ensnared in the never-ending intrigues of Berlin, and describe the principal shifts which Germany employs, with undeniable cleverness, to annul to an extraordinary degree the effect of the Allies’ efforts. These essential causes of mistaken judgment being eliminated, we shall then be able to understand what the existing forces are which will enable the Entente to make up with comparative rapidity for the Russian default, and to contribute with remarkable efficiency to the destruction of Pan-Germany.

I

THE FUNDAMENTAL AND ENDURING ERROR OF THE ALLIES

For three years past events have notoriously proved that the concrete Pangermanist scheme, developed between 1895 and 1911, has been followed strictly by the Germans since the outbreak of hostilities. Now, the diplomacy of the Entente is devised as if there were no Pangermanist scheme.

This is the source of all the vital strategical and diplomatic errors of the Entente—consequences of the failure to understand the German military and political manœuvring. Here is proof derived from recent events—one of many which it would be possible to allege.

When it was announced a few weeks ago that Austria would play an apparently preponderating part in the reconstitution of Poland, a very large number of newspapers in the Entente countries decided that ‘it is perfectly evident that the Austrian policy has carried the day in Poland.’ A similar deduction has led Allied readers to believe that Vienna has prevailed over Berlin. The result has been to strengthen the faith of those who deem it possible to impose terms on Berlin through the channel of Vienna, and even to induce Austria to conclude a separate peace. Now, to convey such an impression as this to Allied public opinion is to lead it completely astray. If the Hapsburgs are playing an apparently predominant part in Poland it is solely because that part, as we are about to prove, is assigned to them by the Pangermanist scheme.

In the pamphlet, _Pan-Germany and Central Europe about 1950_, published in Berlin in 1895, which contains the whole Pangermanist plan, we find the following:—

‘Poland and Little Russia [the kingdom to be established at Russia’s expense] will agree to have no armies of their own, and will receive in their fortresses German or Austrian garrisons. In Poland, as well as in Little Russia, the postal and telegraph services and the railways will be in German hands.’

For twenty-two years the Pangermanist scheme has been followed up. Tannenberg, in his book, _Greater Germany_, which appeared in 1911,—a work whose exceptional importance has been demonstrated by events, and which, in all probability, was inspired officially,—prophesies very distinctly,—

‘_The new kingdom of Poland is made up of the former Russian portion, of the basin of the Vistula, and of Galicia, and forms a part of the new Austria._’

These most unequivocal words appeared, it will be admitted, _three years before the war_. Now _Le Temps_ of September 7, 1917, said on the authority of the Polish agency at Berne, which is subsidized by Austria and publishes news communicated to it by the government of Vienna,—

‘Germany would take such portion of Russian Poland as she needs to rectify her “strategic frontiers.” This portion would include almost a tenth of Russian Poland. _The rest would be annexed to Austria. The Emperor Charles would thereupon issue a decree of annexation of Russian Poland to Galicia, under the title of Kingdom of Poland._... The dual monarchy would then become triple, and the first result of this readjustment would be to compel all Poles to undergo military service in the Austrian armies. All the deputies representing Galicia would automatically leave the Austrian Reichsrath, to enter the new Polish Parliament, which would give the German parties in the Austrian Parliament a certain absolute majority.’

This result of the present action of Vienna and Berlin, foreshadowed by the _Temps_ apparently for the near future, has been in view for twenty-two years. In fact, in the fundamental pamphlet of 1895, already quoted, it is said that ‘_Galicia and the Bukowina will be excluded from the Austrian monarchy. They will form the nucleus of the kingdoms of Poland and Little Russia ... which, however, may be united, by the personal link of the sovereign, to the reigning house of Hapsburg._’

So it is that, very far from having forced anything on Germany in relation to Poland, Charles I of Hapsburg has shown that he submits with docility to the Pangermanist decrees, since he gives his entire adhesion to the carrying into effect of the plan followed at Berlin from 1895 to 1914—for nineteen years before hostilities began! The actual fact, therefore, is the direct antithesis of what the conclusions of many Allied newspapers have, of course in absolute good faith, permitted their readers to believe. Now everything goes to show that this error arises solely from a technical ignorance of the Pangermanist scheme, of which the guiding spirits of the Entente seem to have no more conception than a considerable portion of the Allied press. However, if they wish for victory, the Allies must inevitably act in systematic opposition to the Pangermanist scheme. They cannot therefore dispense with the necessity of becoming thoroughly familiar with it.

Nor is there any more reliable guide, since the events that have taken place for three years past have demonstrated the absolute accuracy of the Pangermanist outgivings anterior to the war. Knowing what the Germans are going to do, we can deduce therefrom the best means of opposing it. If this method had been followed, no serious error would have been committed by the Allies. They would have understood that Germany was making war in behalf of the Hamburg-Persian Gulf enterprise,—which was intended to supply her with the instruments of world-domination; that, consequently, the Danube front, _which the Allies held_, must be retained at whatever cost, which would have been, comparatively speaking, very easy, if they had recognized in time this imperative necessity.

Now, if the Allies had retained their hold of the Danube front, the war would have been over nearly two years ago. It is, in fact, solely because they did not grasp the necessity of thus holding it, that the Germans have been able to carry out their Eastern plan and to constitute the Pan-Germany which must now be destroyed in order to avoid the defeat of civilization, and eventual slavery. To effect this destruction is infinitely easier than is generally believed, on the condition that the most is made of the causes tending to the internal dissolution of Pan-Germany. But, to understand these available causes, familiarity with the Pangermanist scheme is indispensable. It is urgently necessary, therefore, to put an end to this intolerable condition, namely, that, while the Allies have an extraordinary opportunity to become accurately acquainted with the whole programme of procedure at Berlin, as contained in a multitude of German documents,—that is to say, the real objects of Germany in the war,—while they have this opportunity, they go on acting and arguing as if that programme did not exist. It is this condition which proves most clearly the extraordinary and enduring credulity which the Allies exhibit in face of the endless German intrigues.

II

THE CREDULITY OF THE ALLIES

The heads of the Allied governments, moved by the best intentions but completely taken by surprise by the war, are carrying it on far too much in accordance with the ordinary procedure of times of peace—negotiations, declarations, speeches. Notably in the gigantic palaver into which Maximalist Russia has developed, men fancy that they have acted when they have talked. The events of three years of war prove conclusively that the Boches, turning to their profit the predilection of the Allied leaders for verbal negotiations and manifestations,—a predilection complicated by ignorance of the Pangermanist scheme,—have succeeded in nullifying to an extraordinary degree the effect of the sacrifices of the Entente.

Until the Russian Revolution, Berlin brought to bear on the diplomacy of the Entente those allies of Germany who were then regarded by the Entente as neutrals. Indeed, the declarations of Radoslavoff, confirmed by the recently published Greek _White Book_, have conclusively established the fact that the agreements between Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey, and King Constantine, _in contemplation of this war_, antedated the opening of hostilities—that certain ones of them go back as far as April, 1914. Now, it is known that the Entente diplomacy had no knowledge of this situation, and that it allowed itself to be hoodwinked for three months by the Turks, for thirteen months by the Bulgarians, for thirty months by the King of Greece, the Kaiser’s brother-in-law, and even, to a certain degree, down to a very recent period by Charles I of Hapsburg, certain Allied diplomatists having persisted in coddling the chimera of a peace with Austria against Germany.

Unhappily, to solve the present problems, which are, above all, technical, the best intentions, or even the most genuine natural intelligence, are insufficient. _It is necessary to know how_, and one cannot know how without having learned. The Allied Socialists who have placed themselves in the spotlight have shown themselves to be, generally speaking, utopists, entirely ignorant of Germany, of the German mind, of geography, ethnography, and political economy, pinning their faith, before all else, to formulas, and knowing even less than the official diplomats of the technique of the multifold problems imposed by war and peace. As the anti-Prussian German, Dr. Rosemeier, has stated it so fairly in the New York _Times_, these idealists, by reason of their radical failure to grasp the inflexible facts, are doing as much harm to the world in general as the Russian extremists and their German agents.

It is undeniable that Berlin has found it easy to profit by the state of mind of the idealistic Socialists of the Entente by causing its own Social Democrats to put forth the _soi-disant_ ‘democratic’ peace formulas, which for some months past have been infecting the Allied countries with ideas that are most pernicious because they are impossible of realization. Despite the efforts of realist Socialists, men like Plekhanoff, Kropotkin, Guesde, Compère-Morel, Gompers, and their like, the Stockholm lure, notwithstanding its clumsiness, has helped powerfully to lead Russia to the brink of the abyss, and hence to prolong the war and the sacrifices of the Allies. In France and England a few Socialists have been so genuinely insane as to say that the occupations of territory by Germany are of slight importance; that we can begin to think about peace; that Germany is already conquered _morally_, and so forth. In view of such results, due to the astounding credulity of the idealistic Socialists of the Entente, it is quite natural that Germany should pursue her so-called ‘pacifist’ manœuvres.

Late in 1916, the Frankfort _Gazette_ advised its readers of the spirit in which these intrigues were to be conducted by Berlin. ‘The point of view is as follows: to put forward precise demands in the East, and in the West to negotiate on bases _that may be modified. Negotiation is not synonymous with renunciation._’

This last sentence summarizes the whole of German tactics. All the proposals of Berlin have but a single object: to deceive and sow discord among the Allies by means of negotiations which would be followed by non-execution of the terms agreed upon, Germany retaining the essential positions of to-day’s war-map which would assure her, strategically and economically, the domination of Europe and the world.

Now, it is an astounding fact that the warnings given by the Germans themselves—the occupation of more than 500,000 square kilometres by the Kaiser’s troops, the burglarizing of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey by the government of Berlin—have not yet availed to prevent a considerable proportion of the Allies from continuing to be enormously deceived. At the very moment when the German General Staff is strengthening the fortifications of Belgium, especially about Antwerp, there are those among the Allies who seriously believe that, by opening negotiations, they will succeed in inducing Germany to evacuate that ill-fated country and to repair the immense damage that she has inflicted on her.

There are those who wonder what the objects of the war on Germany’s part can be, when the occupations of territory by Germany, corresponding exactly to the Pangermanist scheme dating back twenty-two years, make these objects as clear as day.

There are those who attach importance to such declarations as the German Chancellor may choose to make, when every day that passes forces us to take note of monumental and never-ending German lies and of the unwearying duplicity of Berlin.

There are those who are willing to listen to talk about a _peace by negotiation_, when the facts prove that Germany respects no agreement, that a treaty signed by Berlin is of no value, and that, furthermore, it is the Germans themselves who so declare. At the very outbreak of the war Maximilian Harden said, ‘_A single principle counts—Force._’ And the Frankfort _Gazette_ printed these words: ‘_Law has ceased to exist. Force alone reigns, and we still have forces at our disposal._’ To Mr. Gerard, United States Ambassador to Germany, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin said, ‘_We snap our fingers at treaties._’

After such facts and such declarations, the persistent credulity of a certain fraction of the Allies is a profoundly distressing thing, for which the remedy must be found in a popular documentary propaganda, thoroughly and powerfully prepared.

The pacifist German intrigues are manifest enough. We can particularize six leading examples, employed by Berlin, either separately or in combination.

III

THE SIX LEADING PACIFIST GERMAN INTRIGUES

1. _A separate peace between Germany and one of the Entente Allies. The Alsace-Lorraine coup_

It is evident that the defection of one of the principal Allies would inevitably place all the others in a situation infinitely more difficult for continuing the struggle. If we assume such a defection, the Germans might well hope to negotiate concerning peace on the basis of their present conquests.

That is why they have multiplied proposals for a separate peace with the Russians. At Berlin they are especially apprehensive of a continuance of the war by Russia because of the inexhaustible reserves of men possessed by the former Empire of the Tsars. The time will probably come when they will attempt also to lure Italy from the coalition by offering her the Trentino, and if necessary, Trieste, at Austria’s expense, this last-named cession, however, being destined, in the German plan, to be temporary only.

The desire to break up the coalition at any cost is so intense among the Germans, that we must anticipate that, at the psychological moment, they will even go so far as to offer to restore Alsace-Lorraine to France. As for the sincerity of such an offer, these words of Maximilian Harden, written early in 1916, enable us to estimate it:—

‘If people think in France that the reëstablishment of peace is possible only through the restitution of Alsace-Lorraine, and _if necessity compels us to sign such a peace, the seventy millions of Germans will soon tear it up_.’

Moreover, nothing would be less difficult for Germany, thanks to the effective forces of Central Pan-Germany, than to seize Alsace-Lorraine again, very shortly, having given it up momentarily as a tactical manœuvre.

2. _A separate peace between Turkey, Bulgaria, or Austria-Hungary, and the Entente_

A particularly astute manœuvre on the part of Berlin consists in favoring, under the rose, not perhaps a formally executed separate peace, but, at least (as has already taken place), semi-official negotiations for a separate peace between her own allies named above and the Entente.

The particular profit of this sort of manœuvre in relation to the definitive consummation of the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme, is readily seen if we imagine the Allies signing a treaty of peace with Turkey, for instance. In such a hypothesis the Allies could treat only with the liegemen of Berlin at Constantinople, for all the other Turkish parties having any political importance whatsoever have been suppressed. Now, if the Allies should treat with the Ottoman government, reeking with the blood of a million Armenians, Greeks, and Arabs, massacred _en masse_ as anti-Germans and friends of the Entente, the following results would follow from this negotiation: the Entente, agreeing not to punish the unheard-of crimes committed in Turkey, would renounce its moral platform: it could no longer claim to be fighting in the name of civilization. The Turkish government, which is notoriously composed of assassins, would be officially recognized; and thus the self-same group of men who sold the Ottoman Empire to Germany would be confirmed in power—the group whose leader, Talaat Pasha, declared in the Ottoman Chamber in February, 1917, ‘We are allied to the Central Powers for life and death!’ The control by Germany of the Dardanelles, a strategic position of vast and world-wide importance, guarded by her accomplices, would be confirmed; the numerous conventions signed at Berlin in January, 1917, which effectively establish the most unrestricted German protectorate over the whole of Turkey, would accomplish their full effect during a Pan-German peace.

The Bulgarian intrigues for a so-called separate peace with the Allies have been at least as numerous as those of the Turks of the same nature. In reality, the Bulgarian agents who were sent to Switzerland to inveigle certain semi-official agents of the Entente into negotiations, were there by arrangement with Berlin for the purpose of sounding the Allies, in order to determine to what degree they were weary of the war. The Bulgarians have never been really disposed to conclude peace with the Entente based on compromise upon equitable conditions. They desire a peace which will assure them immense acquisitions of territory at the expense of the Greeks, the Roumanians, and, especially, the Serbians, for at Sofia they crave, above all things, direct geographical contact with Hungary. Thus the great Allied Powers could treat with the Bulgarians only by being guilty of the monstrous infamy of sacrificing their small Balkan allies, and of assenting to a territorial arrangement which would permit Bulgaria to continue to be the Pangermanist bridge between Hungary and Turkey over the dead body of Serbia—an indispensable element in the functioning of the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme, and hence of Central Pan-Germany.

Now, this is precisely the one substantial result of the war to which Bulgaria clings above all else. So it is that a peace by negotiation—in reality a peace of lassitude—between the Allies and Bulgaria, would simply give sanction to this state of affairs.

In the same way, such a peace with Austria-Hungary could but give definitive shape to the Hamburg-Persian Gulf scheme. From the financial and military standpoint, the monarchy of the Hapsburgs, considered as a state, is to-day absolutely subservient to Germany. The reigning Hapsburg, whatever his private sentiments, can no longer do anything without the consent of the Hohenzollern. Any treaty of peace signed by Vienna would be, practically, only a treaty of which the conditions were authorized by Berlin. There must be no illusion. Nothing less than the decisive victory of the Allies will avail to make Germany loosen her grip upon Austria-Hungary, _for that grip is to Germany the substantial result of the war_. In truth it is that grip which, by its geographic, military, and economic consequences, assures Berlin the domination of the Balkans, and of the East, hence of Central Pan-Germany, hence of Hamburg-Persian Gulf, and the vast consequences which derive therefrom.

Let us make up our minds, therefore, that all the feelers toward a separate peace with Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary, which have been put forth and which will hereafter be put forth, have been and will be simply manœuvres aimed at a so-called peace by negotiation, which would cloak, not simply a German, but a Pan-German peace.

3. _The democratization of Germany_

Certain Allied groups having apparently made up their minds that the ‘democratization’ of Germany would suffice to put an end automatically to Prussian militarism and to German imperialism, it was concluded at Berlin that a considerable number, at least, of their adversaries, being weary of the war, might be willing to content themselves with a merely formal satisfaction of their demands, in order to have an ostensibly honorable excuse for bringing it to an end. That is why, with the aim of leading the Allies off the scent and inducing them to enter into negotiations, Berlin devoted herself during the first six months of 1917, with increasing energy, to the farce called ‘the democratization of Germany.’ Meanwhile the most bigoted Pangermanists put the mute on their demands. They ceased to utter the words ‘annexations’ or ‘war-indemnities.’ They talked of nothing but ‘special political arrangements’—a phrase which in their minds led to the same result but had the advantage of not embarrassing the peace-at-any-price men in the Allied countries. The device of democratization of Germany was complementary to the Stockholm trick, which, as we know, was intended to convince the Russian Socialists that Russia had no further advantage to expect from continuing the war, since Germany in her turn, was about to enter in all seriousness upon the path of democracy—and so forth.

We must acknowledge that many among the Allied peoples allowed themselves to be ensnared for the moment by this manœuvre, and honestly believed that Germany was about to reform, of her own motion and radically. But when the German tactics had achieved the immense result of setting anarchy loose in Russia,—a state of affairs which was instantly made the most of in a military sense by the Staff at Berlin,—the farce of the democratization of Germany was abandoned. Von Bethmann-Hollweg was sacrificed to the necessity of dropping a scheme which he had managed, and Michaelis—Hindenburg’s man, and therefore the man of the Prussian military party and of the Pangermanists—succeeded him.

As a matter of fact, the Germans have, for all time, had such an inveterate penchant for rapine that they are quite capable of setting up a great military republic and submitting readily enough to Prussian discipline, with a view to starting afresh upon wars for plunder.

We must bear this truth constantly in mind: if the Hohenzollerns have succeeded, in accordance with Mirabeau’s epigram, in making war ‘the national industry,’ it is because, ever since the dawn of history, the Germans have always subordinated everything to their passion for lucrative wars. The same is true of them to-day. Especially in the last twenty years the secret propaganda of the Berlin government has convinced the masses that the creation of Pan-Germany will assure them immense material benefits. It is because this conviction is so firmly rooted among them that substantially the entire body of Socialist workingmen are serving their Kaiser without flinching, and are willing to endure the horrors of the present conflict so long as it may be necessary and so long as they are not conquered in the field.

4. _Peace through the International_

This is another of the tricks conceived at Berlin. In reality the International, having always followed the direction of the German Marxists, has been the chief means employed for thirty years to deceive the Socialists of the countries now in alliance against Germany by inducing them to believe that war, thanks to the International alone, could never again break out. In a report on ‘the international relations of the German workingmen’s unions’ (1914), the Imperial Bureau of Statistics was able to proclaim as an undeniable truth: ‘In all the international organizations German influence predominates.’

The conference at Stockholm, initiated by German agents, and that at Berne, upon which they are now at work, are steps which German unionism is taking to reëstablish over the workingmen of all lands the German influence, which has vanished since the war began. The idea now is to force the proletariat of the whole world into subjection to the guiding hand of Germany. The object officially avowed is to rehabilitate the International in the interest of democracy. In reality, it is proposed, above all else, to replace in the front rank the struggle between classes in the Allied countries, in order to destroy the sacred unity that is indispensable to enable the most divergent parties to wage war vigorously against Pangermanist Germany. As the Berlin government is well aware that it has nothing to fear from its own Socialists, the vast majority of whom, even when they disown the title of Pangermanists, are partisans of Central Pan-Germany, the profit of the manœuvre based on the International would inure entirely to Germany, who would retain her power of moral resistance unimpaired, while the Allied states, once more in the grip of the bitterest social discord, would find their offensive powers so diminished by this means that peace would in the end be negotiated on the basis of the present territorial occupations of Germany.

5. _The armistice trick_

All the schemes hitherto discussed, whether employed singly or in combination, are intended, first and last, to assist in playing the armistice trick on the Allies. This is based upon an astute calculation, still founded on the weariness of the combatants, which is so easily understood after a war as exhausting as that now in progress. At Berlin they reason thus—and the reasoning is not without force: ‘If an armistice is agreed upon, the Allied troops will say, “They’re talking, so peace is coming, and, before long, demobilization.” Under these conditions our adversaries will undergo a relaxation of their moral fibre.’

The Germans would ask nothing more. They would enter upon peace negotiations with the following astute idea. If, hypothetically, the Allies should make the enormous blunder of discussing terms of peace on bases so craftily devised, Germany, being still intrenched behind her fronts which had been made almost impregnable, would end by saying, ‘I am not in accord with you. After all is said, you cannot demand that I evacuate territory from which you are powerless to expel me. If you are not satisfied, go on with the war.’

Inasmuch as, during the negotiations, everything essential would have been done by German agents to accentuate the moral relaxation of the country which was most exhausted by the conflict, as they succeeded in doing in Russia in the first months of the Revolution, the immense military machine of the Entente could not again be set in motion in all its parts. The result would be the breaking asunder of the anti-German coalition, and, finally, the conclusion of peace substantially on the basis of existing conquests. Thus Berlin’s object would be attained.

6. _The ‘status quo ante’ trick_

The last of the German schemes, and the most dangerous of all, is that concealed under the formula, ‘No annexations or indemnities’—a formidable trap, which, as I have pointed out in earlier chapters, has for its object to confirm Germany in the possession of the gigantic advantages which she has derived from the war, and which would assure her the domination of the world, leaving the Allies with their huge war-losses, whose inevitable economic after-effects would suffice to reduce them to a state of absolute servitude with respect to Berlin.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1917, p. 721.