/ Copyright^ . COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT THE GERMAN REPUBLIC THE GERMAN REPUBLIC BY WALTER WELLMAN NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE COPTKIGHT, 1916, BT E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY All Rights of Translation into Foreign Languages (including the Scandinavian) Reserved by the Publishers 4r. 6*L PBINTED IN THE TT. 8. A. JUN 23 1916 ©CI.A431613 tEfje German people WHOM THE WORLD HAS LOVED AND IN WHOM THE WORLD STILL HAS FAITH CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Teutonic Patriotism, Unity, Valor 9 II. The Tribe Unconquerable and Un- CONQUERING 22 III. The Mightiest Movement of the War 29 IV. Opened Eyes 39 V. The German Political Reformation 52 VI. A Place in the Sun ? — Or in a Mad- house? 70 VII. What Method in the Madness? . 84 VIII. German Manhood Speaks to the World 104 IX. A Special Word to America . . . 116 X. Founding the German Republic . 133 XI. The Great, Gentle Revolution . . 168 XII. The Treaty of Universal Peace . . 174 XIII. The Forward March of Civilization 181 XIV. Germany at Last Conquers the World 190 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC CHAPTER I TEUTONIC PATRIOTISM, UNITY, VALOR After the outbreak of the Great War, in 1914, the world saw the finest example of national patriotism and unity recorded in all the pages of history. For defense of Fatherland against a foe who nearly surrounded them the Ger- man people rose as one man with a single aim. Individualism at once became as noth- ing, the nation everything. Upon the al- tar of country all Germans were ready to lay their all. Every call of government for service and 9 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC sacrifice met with instant, hearty response. Millions of Germans went to the front. They went with joy, their fathers, moth- ers, wives, children, sent them with pride. As soldiers they roused the admiration of the world, including their enemies. Their valor, their efficiency, their disci- pline, their power to enclure, suffer, achieve, became a model for all mankind. Its like on so great a scale, such out- pouring of the spirit of national devotion on the part of seventy millions of people, was never before seen. Germans dwelling in other lands were swept along with the flood of nationalism. Not only were their sympathies naturally with Fatherland, but so deep and strong ran their feeling that many of them in spirit ceased to be citizens of the coun- tries in which they lived and in which their interests and future were centered, their hearts and souls were back beyond the 10 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC Rhine whence their blood had originally come. All German kind the world over gave to Fatherland loyalty that was complete, ab- solute, without mental reservation, ques- tion, criticism, analysis. To them Ger- many was infallible, could not err, could not blunder; everything of and for Ger- many was right, everything opposed to Germany was wrong. This unity of nationalism was unprece- dented among modern peoples in that it controlled not only all individual action and open expression but apparently all mentality. All Germans everywhere saw with the same eyes, heard with the same ears, thought the same thoughts, started with the same premises, followed the same logical path, arrived at the same conclu- sion. All people of German blood were typi- fied by one strong, stern, dominant but af- 11 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC f ectionate German father whose wife, sons, daughters reverently looked up to him for wisdom and guidance. The hundred mil- lions or more Germans scattered through- out the world were one German family. Mankind gazed, admired, praised, and marvelled, marvelled how, by what magic, what secret charm, mental miracle or psy- chological prestidigitation this amazing result had been produced. The Greatest Tribe in the World As the onlookers thought about this most impressive human phenomenon, and tried to analyze and understand it their conclusions in general were: More than any other highly developed people the Germans are pervaded by the tribal spirit. Their unit of organization is the family, supreme authority at the head, blind obedience below, one ruling because he was born to rule, the others 12 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC obeying because they were born to obey. The state is a great tribe, born and su- preme authority at its head, unquestion- ing obedience and submission by the mil- lions behind it. But individualism is not suppressed in either family or tribe. It would be impos- sible to suppress it and at the same time produce a people so virile, capable, effi- cient, energetic, educated, resourceful. Individualism is encouraged, developed — and then systematically limited. Every member of family or tribe is taught to de- velop himself, his character, his talents, to learn, work, achieve, think, attain excel- lence, if possible, usefulness almost always. But however successful he may be, how- ever strong he may make himself, no mat- ter how great his distinction and deserved fame and influence in his special field or circle of activity, he must never forget the fundamental tribal law of limitation, nor 13 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC seek to go beyond it — the limiting point being where individualism comes in con- tact with the high authority the system has placed over it. No other tribe in the world has acquired as the Germans have acquired and prac- tised this art of building up individualism with all that goes naturally with it — and then the dead-line of superior authority beyond which it must not dare. It, therefore, stands out alone and dis- tinctive among the tribes of earth with culture and discipline, character and sub- missiveness, genius and limitation, thriv- ing side by side. It is a tribe with discipline as its chief characteristic, its keynote— discipline in the blood, in the character, the habits of the people — inculcated, trained, inherent, innate, universal. It starts in the cradle, is in the nursery, the kindergarten, the smallest school, the greatest university, on 14 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the farm, in the small workshop, the great factory, on the railway, the sea, in com- merce and industry, the army, the navy, the government, everywhere. The sacredness of authority and the duty of submission thereto is a fetich in this tribe ; and the higher the authority the nearer it approaches to the divine and ab- solute. It is more than a fetich, almost a religion, almost a substitute for Infinity. And the members of the tribe, even those with the most perfectly developed individ- ualism, are content to have it so, they do not wish to change it, they love the order- liness, the efficiency, the machine-like fit- ting of parts, every unit in its place, and all the units working together with most effective synchronism, which have natural- ly sprung from it. 15 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC A Tribal Rule Just and Wise— A People Content It is a tribe in which there is not only this proficient individualism stopping short only at the deadline of high author- ity, born or established, but in authority there is proficiency, wisdom, justice, worth- iness of the respect and submission not only exacted but freely given. The paternal rule is strict, dominant, regulatory, disciplinary, rigorous, but it is at the same time highly intelligent, skill- ful, efficient, watchful, helpful, truly pa- ternal. It protects, nourishes, upbuilds, develops its subjects and their works. It is generally impartial. The weakest and least proficient of its children enjoy its alert care as well as the strongest and most successful. In this tribe there is little discontent, little cause therefor, few sullen or embit- 16 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tered ones, little envy of the luckier, few wolves even at the humblest doors, better care of the luckless and laggards than in any other of the world's great tribes. It is a tribe in which inevitably indi- vidualism has its most intensive develop- ment, because there the deadline of limita- tion rarely and only indirectly applies, in the arts, sciences, literature, philosophy, pedagogy, commerce, industrialism, and in these fields of endeavor the people pro- duce leaders who take high and often first rank in the world's lists. But it is a tribe in which inevitably the development of individualism in the field of political life is repressed, stunted, nar- rowed by the fixed and immovable limita- tions of the system, for here the deadline is indeed deadly. Excellent administra- tors, executives, large cogs in the com- plex, highly organized domestic machine, are produced by the thousands. Real 17 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC statesmen, moulders of policies, shapers of the nation, leaders of thought and action able to command a following and with this strength exert influence in the higher ac- tivities of the state, are not produced at all. The system does not want them, does not permit them. The few who reach eminence in the pop- ular eye may be able, adroit, strong in their character and genius, but they have no strength of statesmanship behind them, no real leadership, no power, because they are put forward merely as fingers of the hand of preeminence, the highest author- ity, which itself came into being not by talent, performance, tested, tried, recog- nized fitness, but by birth. A great if not fatal weakness of the tribal organization is here. It is a great tribe without great statesmen. Not since Bismarck have the German people produced a political leader of the 18 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC first rank, and he was pushed aside by the existing preeminence, which has taken good care he should never have a succes- sor. So intense and overwhelming is the fetich of the sacredness of high authority, the repression of systematized discipline, the German people have been quite content not to have any more Bismarcks, and to go on indefinitely with the divinely ap- pointed substitute. Genius of the first or- der they like and put high on the pedestal of their homage in every other field of human endeavor, but they do not care for it in their higher government, they are con- tent to have the ship of state sailed by mediocrity. The internal organization of the ship is well-nigh perfect. Discipline and efficiency reign there. Whither the ship is going, what is to happen to her in storm or stress, collision in darkness or running upon the rocks of a foreign shore, is no affair of the 19 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC workers down below. They simply obey orders. All else they leave to the high au- thority up on the bridge, in which their trust and confidence are supreme. Prosperous, growing rich, content, gath- ering self-assurance with augmenting af- fluence, no serious thought has entered the average German mind of changing his tribal system of obedience to the higher. When policies are framed, decisions tak- en, orders given, no matter what they are or what they involve, even the peace and life of the nation itself, the national habit and instinct at once respond with a loyal completeness which excludes from the mind all analysis, closes the mouth to all criticism, shuts the ears to all murmur- ings. Attack a great tribe like this, and what is to be expected? Just what the world saw, marvelled at, admired in the early days of the Great War — a hundred million 20 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC people standing together, shoulder to shoulder, with but one purpose, one pas- sion, one aim, all thinking alike, all know- ing they and their leaders were right, none questioning, all obeying, all ready to fight to death for land, tribe, and cause. Such was the tribe of Teutons when the war began. 21 CHAPTER II THE TRIBE UNCONQUERABLE — AND UNCON- QUERING At the outset of the great combat most neutral onlookers were inclined to ascribe the quality of invincibility to this, the world's greatest and most closely knit tribe. They seemed masterful. Along with their wonderful unity and unprece- dented spirit of patriotic devotion they had organization and preparation so much superior to those of their enemies that the latter appeared to be engaged in a hope- less struggle. The neutral world looked on with bated breath. Whatever opinions were held as to the justice of the German cause, as to the wisdom and morality of those who had 22 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC forced the war, as to the meaning of a German triumph to civilization, there ex- isted everywhere profound admiration for the spirit of the German people, for their valor as soldiers, for the skill and fore- sight of their military preparedness and organization, for their phenomenal energy and spectacular performance in the field of battle. No one would have been surprised to see the Teutons soon masters of Paris and much of France, with fair prospect of at- taining such power in Europe as to make them henceforth the foremost political power of the world. But the Battle of the Marne proved to be the turning point of the titanic combat. After that it was quite apparent Berlin was not to be a second Rome. The world was not to fall under Teutonic discipline. There remained only the questions, Can Germany be defeated? Is it to be a drawn battle 1 Shall the peace 23 THE GEEMAN EEPUBLIC be a mere truce or permanent? What can or should be done to those responsible for the catastrophe 1 What is likely to happen within Germany? The course of the war thenceforth was in line with this general conclusion. Gradu- ally the Teutonic forces became relatively weaker — weaker more in economic re- sources than in men and material for war- making — gradually the allied forces grew relatively stronger. When the high tide of German success had passed in 1915 without victories of a decisive character the ending became painfully apparent. It was only a question of time when the Teu- tonic hordes would be checkmated; when exclusion from the sea would have its in- evitable effect; when, instead of conquer- ing the world, they would have their backs against their frontiers in staunch, stub- born defense of Fatherland. It so happened. After violent, heroic 24 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC fighting at many points along the great fronts, after temporary success first for one side and then for the other, after am- ple demonstration on a thousand bloody fields that in our day brute force, valor, courage, sacrifice backed by modern or- ganization and wielding modern instru- ments of slaughter and destruction are fu- tile agents of human purpose — futile be- cause inevitably met and checked by other brute force, valor, organization, weapons, of equal strength; after half the human race had been plunged into prolonged an- guish to prove that mankind has developed to a stage where physical violence has lost all its former savage power to determine human rivalries — After all this had been made so pain- fully plain as to be clear even to the pas- sion-inflamed eyes of the rival chieftains, stubborn, savage fighting pride forced them to keep up the insensate shambles 25 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC along the Meuse, the Yser, elsewhere, till at length all mankind, filled with horrified disgust, could only cry "Shame!" After still more slaughter and shambles reaction finally came in exhaustion and despair. At last the weary warriors paused for breath and settled down to an- other period of grim, gripping deadlock, glaring at one another from their caves and trenches. Neither made attack, both realizing its futility. All this time there was much talk of peace. Again and again the Germans made informal overtures, announced that the door was open, they were ready to treat. But there was no peace. There were no formal negotiations or moves for peace. Disappointed, the world looked sadly forward to another winter of the bit- ter, desperate struggle of ruin and exhaus- tion. The end was not in sight, not to be seen upon the troubled surface. Were the 26 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC mad tribes determined to exterminate one another? An Armistice Suddenly, without warning or even rumor running ahead, to the world's great surprise and joy came official an- nouncement that a general armistice had been arranged between all the con- tending armies for a period of three months. Formal negotiation of peace was ex- pected to follow immediately. But it did not come. Week after week passed, with no sign of official overture from any of the capitals of the belligerent powers. Proffers of mediation were re- pelled by both sides. The troops were merely hibernating on all the long fronts. Paralysis seemed to have stricken the con- tenders. Why do they not do something? What is the meaning of this armistice? 27 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC How was it brought about, and why do they not make peace? These were the mysteries which plagued all mankind with prolonged, painful doubt and curiosity. 28 CHAPTER III THE MIGHTIEST MOVEMENT OP THE WAR All this time there was in motion the mightiest movement of the war. A mo- mentous, decisive battle was being fought, and won. An irresistible force, unherald- ed in official bulletins, undescribed in un- official reports, was bearing down upon the very center of the field of battle, coming from a mysterious source, moving in a mysterious way, advancing with the slow- ness of an avalanche, but, like the ava- lanche, crushing, crumbling everything that stood in its way. We know now what the impatient world did not then know, or at least only vaguely suspected, that this mighty movement had really started long before, had brought on 29 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the armistice, produced the prolonged pause, palsied the hand of slaughter and destruction, and was now bringing the end slowly but surely nearer. It had begun with faint, vague, misty murmurings in a few German minds. Slowly the whisperings had gained defi- niteness, resolved themselves into form, gradually the number of men to whom they came grew larger and larger. The growth and spread must have been slow indeed, for all habit and inherited and in- culcated posture of mind, all instinct, tra- dition, were against them. Loyalty to tribe, dominant sense of duty, long sup- pressed all outward expression of these in- ner murmurings. Passion to win, pride of race and tribe, dogged courage in adversity and disappointment, long kept tongues still. The mighty movement had begun its work silently within silent atoms. Multitudes of soldiers found sleep in the 30 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC trenches, the caves, the camps only after long hours of silent wrestling with their mysterious inner unrest, with the ill-de- fined stirrings of their spirit, rising in the morning with the irritating agitation still there, but not to be spoken of, not to be confessed as a weakness or spiritual sin, never knowing that the comrades who lay alongside were passing through a like ex- perience. At home multitudes of men and women, by day patriots as of old, devoted as always to the tribe, giving all they could give, enduring all that the circumstance and cruelty of war brought to them to en- dure, speaking no word of the specter of doubt that had unbidden found lodgment within them, went to bed, there long to wrestle with and try to understand or eject the unwelcome intruder. The mighty movement was under way, the law of gravitation was stirring within the atoms of the great mass. Still, all was 31 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC silence, no word was spoken. Discipline, habit, pride, duty, mass-mentality, and all the persistence and stubbornness of these, for a long time suppressed articulation, but no power on earth could suppress med- itation. The Irrepressible Inner Something For a brief interval of time artificial force may apparently turn the law of grav- itation upside down, but omnipotence can- not keep it there. It will right itself. The law of gravitation had begun its work within the German people. They did not consciously summon it, it summoned it- self. They did not welcome it, tried to put it out, but it stayed in spite of them. A highly developed, cultured, rational, intellectual people of modern times may retain if they wish an inherited organiza- tion of mediaeval tribalism, call themselves a tribe, be proud that they are a tribe, con- 32 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tent to stay a tribe, glory in the combined and unified physical prowess of their tribe — But they cannot be a tribe when trem- blings of the earth or shock or stress set in motion the internal law of gravitation and put them to the crucial test. Their revered and most high chief, given them by the heavens or through accident of nature, may command the person, the property, the life of the willing vassal, but he cannot command for all time the vas- sal's inner something which we know as mind and conscience. The vassal may with glad loyalty yield to the chief his prop- erty, his person, his life, but even he can- not yield the mysterious inner something, because though in and of him it is beyond his control and within the control of the law of gravitation. Modern culture and intellectual develop- ment have given modern man a strong 33 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC will, but it has also placed within him something stronger than his will. It is a mysterious but inextinguishable ferment of the intellect, an inexplicable, insistent, irrepressible, incessant hunger for knowl- edge, for truth, and for right in the light of that truth. This is Moral Force, the very essence of civilization. Nothing in earth or in the heavens, not imperial power nor military authority, nor tribal feeling and ingrained habit of thought and discipline however strong, nor passion, pride, hatred, selfishness, mass- obsession or the law of attraction and cor- relation among the mental units, could for- ever paralyze the German intellect, kill the German conscience, permanently reverse the magnetic needle of the German soul and keep it pointing to the negative pole of error against its fundamental gravitation to the positive pole of truth. 34 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC The great force, shocked into movement, roused by the crash of war, could never again be stopped. When New Life Budded Forth in the Land of the Tribe It did not come swiftly; it was not an earthquake ; not a violent, sudden upheav- al, not a furious storm rushing violently to its destination. Rather, it was the soil of a fair land. Now it is winter there. All is frozen, hard, harsh, austere, unhopeful, seemingly changeless. There is no softness, no green thing, no bud, or blossom, no warmth, no life. It is cold. Down in the soil, an inherent part of it, are mysterious little seeds. No one knows just what they are, how they got there. They do not know themselves, they are un- conscious of their glorious future. Over- head the cosmos, not more mysterious in, 35 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC all its eternal vastness, its infinitude in time and space, the cosmos with its mighty- procession of the seasons. The seeds wait. The winter is long and dreary. Will it never end? Can it be much longer en- dured? "We the people of this fair but frozen land are cold, we suffer, children are suffering, women are suffering and waiting in the land, all are hungry for warmth, all are weary, all are cold. Shall we never be warm again? Hour by hour and day by day the sun comes nearer. His approach is well-nigh imperceptible; hope itself remains blind, frozen. But he comes. He is inevitable. No power can stop him. We know not why he comes, or how, but he comes. He is already near. Now the earth gets warmer. First in favored spots, then everywhere. Now there is a little sunshine each day; later much more sunshine. The cold goes away. 36 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC A few of the small seeds send forth tiny, timid sprouts. More join them, then more and more. Humble plants, coy in lowly corners, are encouraged by finer, more de- veloped, richer, luxuriant flowers. Soon the country side is all green. With warmth come courage, buoyancy, fullness, expression. Majestic trees, the upstand- ing, strong characters of the fast changing landscape, clothe their bald limbs with color, action, life, saying to all smaller ad- venturers, "Be not afraid, the winter has passed, this is the summer of our content." Like this came the great awakening which changed the history of the human race. It was inevitable. It was in the soil, in the little insidious seeds, in the law of gravitation, in the soul of the German land, in the eternal sun of the heavens which panoply civilization. There was no power anywhere great 37 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC enough to stop the seasons and keep it always winter along the Rhine, the Elbe, the Weser, no power anywhere great enough to reverse the law of gravitation in the moral force of a highly developed people. 38 CHAPTER IV OPENED EYES Abtictjlation soon followed meditation. Courage came to individuals with the warmth of strengthening, insistent convic- tion. When German began speaking to German of his doubts and fears the sun crossed the equator — it was spring in the land. German began speaking openly to Ger- man early in the year 1916. All was not well in the military field. Physical vio- lence, formidable as it was, had not car- ried the tribe far along the road to glory or gain. German blood and German re- sources seemed to be pouring through a sieve; that could not go on forever. Val- orous as were the armies, they made small 39 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC definite and permanent headway. Russia was a huge elastic mass, not very hard, but immense, whose surface only Teuton skill and energy could dent here and there and then fall back in the rebound, as much hurt as hurting. France proved to be a stone wall of nationalism as courageous, valor- ous, stubborn, stolid, resistant, as Ger- many might have built with much the same material, and the wall bristled with thorns and was alive with vipers. England was a huge bulldog, slow, muddling, inefficient, stupid at times, but plucky, hanging on, a bulldog always, and always set square and stubborn in the Teuton path. Above all, England was master of the seas. With eyes a little ways opened by much painful thinking the sons of the tribe be- gan to get glimpses of the actual state of things. If their leaders had set out to con- quer the world that conquest must still be 40 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC far away. For the world that their lead- ers had promised was to be theirs seemed now a vast space outside an iron ring that shut them and Germany in by land and sea. Though they fought bravely on and pressed with all their might against the barrier, they used their perceptions as well as their brute strength, their eyes as well as their fists, and they could not see, much as they hoped to see, the ring receding or going to pieces. At times it seemed to them to be draw- ing closer in, getting thicker, tighter, stronger. Little Belgium, a part of France, a corner of elastic Russia, the pig pastures of Serbia, did not form a large part of the great world in the eyes of those who remembered their geography — one of the minor inconveniences of trying to make true mediaeval spearmen out of vassals who had all been to school. 41 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC And the eyes of the most thoughtful and long-visioned could see, at least with the mind's eye could sense, another ring out- side the one of iron and steel, intangible but immensely more significant, the outer ring supporting the inner one, making the inner unbreakable, impregnable, eternal. This dense, dark, ominous outer circle was the public opinion of mankind. Confinement within a relatively narrow space, steel-bordered, and beyond the steel a great frowning cloud composed of mil- lions on millions of people who have placed a judgment upon you and stand ready to apprehend you and send you back to your little narrow space if you are so lucky as to break through the wall of steel, is sure to stimulate reflection. Thus shut in one may fight, beat against the barriers, rush to and fro like a wild beast in his cage, claw, strike, bite, growl, show fangs, but in the inevitable pauses, in the stops for 42 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC breath and sleep, one thinks, and thinks — analyzes, inquires. To many Germans, by nature medita- tive, analytical, prone to face facts, seek truth, save when high authority forbade — and now even high authority could not in- terpose — to many who remembered the re- cent days in which all the lands and all the seas were open to them, all the world gave them welcome, when there were no bar- riers anywhere, no wall of steel or cloud of frowns, this small space they were now fighting in seemed more like a world prison than a world throne. The Inevitable Interrogation At length the men in field gray even while hurling themselves at the word of command upon the strongholds of the foe, facing futile slaughter where futile slaugh- ter had come to them so many times be- fore, began asking "Why?" 43 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Men and women at home, mourning their dead, tenderly caring the torn and rent wrecks of sons and fathers sent them by train loads from the righting fronts, be- gan asking "Why?" German intelligence, so long held in com- plete subordination to tribal loyalty and discipline, seeing and feeling the iron ring and the other band of frowning cloud round about the land, began asking "Why!" "Is this the conquest of the world we were promised?" "What has become of the invincibility of our arms we were taught to believe in as in Fatherland itself?" "Where is the infallible genius of our high command that was to make our task a short and easy one?" As had been inevitable from the very first, some time or other, the Germans were now ceasing to be mere tribesmen. Contentment with any sort of explana- tion of any sort of phenomena, or no ex- 44 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC planation at all, blind obedience without vision, brute strength thrown into the bludgeon without the brain asking ques- tions, is of the essence of pure tribalism — a real tribe cannot exist without it. The German people had begun their nec- essary and inevitable ask of learning that they are a highly civilized people and not a feudal tribe in their relations and respon- sibilities to the remainder of the world in which they live, had taken in hand the primer of the lesson they must learn that as a member of the human society they must conform to that society's moral law or suffer the penalty of revolt against it. They were awakening from the decep- tion they had put upon themselves that because they preferred tribalism in their housekeeping, and found it worked well there, they had a right to try to impose it upon other families, who wished it not. The awakening could not come as long 45 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC as they remained at home and busied them- selves with domestic affairs. It could not come now that they were out in the world trying to ram their system down the throats of their neighbors as long as all was going well with that rash adventure. "With success, with achievement, with tri- umph, action has its auto-intoxication. Masses of men like individuals rush for- ward like the racer, blood hot in the brain, muscles and nerves quivering, nothing in the spirit but feverish flashes of getting there, beating, winning. It is rather fine to race, to fight, to strug- gle, to feel the thrill of life, action, success. But when the check comes, defeat, dis- appointment, adversity, desperation, then comes meditation, the blood cools, the in- tellect resumes its normal function, not all of this body is muscle and sinew, there is something stronger than mere physical force, something better. 46 THE GEEMAN REPUBLIC It was a hot race, a fierce fight, but so costly, so ghastly, so many have fallen, we sacrifice so much, suffer so much; and the folk at home, and the future? "What are we racing and fighting and falling and suffering for? What could we have gained had we won! And what is the meaning of all those walls and rings about us out there? The inner one we can understand — that is jeal- ousy of Germany, that is the determination of our envious, wicked rivals to crush us, destroy us. But the other one, that great dark cloud outside which seems to shut the sun and the stars from our view and stand between us and the heavens ; say, comrade, what is the meaning of that? It soon became apparent that German civilization, morality, intellectuality, man- hood, German innate and inexorable search 47 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC for truth and right, were not of such stuff as a true mediseval tribe is made of. Slowly but surely, irresistibly, came the awakening. His obsession at an end, re- covered from the mass-hypnotic state his fervent patriotism had plunged him into, once more a human being of self-starting, self-steering reasoning faculties, again a true son of culture to whom the truth and the right are as indispensable as air for lungs and food for stomach, his feet once set by imperious inner command upon the path that must lead to ultimate solution and remedy, with characteristic thorough- ness and courage the German went to the end of the trail. Once aroused, he flinched at nothing, faced everything. He analyzed not only all the facts pertaining to the cause and origin of the great tragedy, but all the events, personages, principles, effects as- 48 THE GERMAN BEPUBLIC sociated with its progress. He dissected not only the catastrophe itself, but the sys- tem which had made the tragedy possible. And in the end he dissected himself, his relation to that system, and that system's relations to the great band of cloud out- side the ring of iron and steel surrounding him and his land and his people. The awakening had come; it was sum- mer again along the Rhine, the Elbe, the Weser. The best because most revealing chron- icles of this great movement of a truly great people in one of the greatest crises known to the history of mankind are found in the innumerable German writings, ad- dresses, publicly adopted resolutions, es- says, and, at the last, certain historic doc- uments and state papers of the pregnant period of the German Political Reforma- tion. 49 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Future historians will write many mas- sive and dignified volumes descriptive of the events of this period, ranking them in importance in the history of the human race with the dawn of Christianity, the discovery of America, the invention of printing, the religious Reformation, the French Revolution, the founding of the American Republic. But it is doubtful if any other narrative could be more eloquent of the process and spirit of the regeneration of the German people than the simple, earnest outpour- ings of the Germans themselves as they emerged from the trial of fire and suffer- ing and sacrifice, strengthened, purified, uplifted, asserted their manhood right to be a nation in all things and not a feudal tribe in anything, gave ample and freely accepted atonement for all error, and not only were able to resume their high full fellowship in the family of nations, but 50 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC led all the nations in conferring upon man- kind one of the greatest blessings since the creation. 51 CHAPTER V THE GEKMAN POLITICAL BEPOEMATION (Extracts from ivritings, addresses and documents published in Germany near the end of the Great War) We German people were told by you, our government, which we believed with all our souls, we could implicitly trust in all things, that the Great "War was forced upon us, that our enemies, jealous of our rising commercial and political power, had wickedly leagued together for the purpose of destroying us. We were told by you in high authority, upon whom we depended for all informa- tion and for all guidance in matters with- out our domestic circle, as children depend upon their fathers for tidings of the great 52 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC world beyond their home, that the enemy was prepared and massed for attack upon us, that Russian troops had already crossed our frontier, that France was springing to the blow, but that England, though contriving with secret intrigue to set the others upon us, was herself too craven to fight, and would stay smug and self-satisfied in peace and security. All this we believed, believed because you told us, because you had all sources of information, because we trusted you. In the little that we were permitted to know of the Serbian crisis we had been unable to see that the welfare of our nation was seriously involved, that any cause ex- isted for our intervention. As you well know, as all the world should know, we, the German people, had always looked upon our army and navy as mere protectors of the nation, and for that pur- pose we had always wished them to be 53 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC strong and efficient. We had been taught to believe, and did believe, that the surest way to avert attack was to be so strong that our enemies, if we had any, would not dare measure strength with us. For this reason, and no other, we were heart and soul for a strong military establishment, for this we paid our high taxes, gave our military service. A People of and for Peace "When outsiders criticized us as a mil- itaristic nation, led by war-lords, railed at our mailed fist and rattling of sabres, and predicted that some day we should start a war of conquest upon our neighbors, we only smiled and were serene in our knowl- edge that you, our leaders, and we, the people, were at one in holding that our military establishment was for defense only and was never to be used in wanton attack upon others. 54 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC The first of July, 1914, war was far from our thoughts. Not one in a thousand of us had even fear that we were soon to be in- volved in a mighty conflict in which the very life of the nation should be at stake. When you told us a few weeks later that we were about to be attacked and war was therefore upon us* your words came to us like thunderbolts from a clear sky. Surprised and amazed as we were, not one of us in all the land had a thought of questioning your wisdom, your sincerity, your accuracy of information and state- ment. We knew your devotion to the best and highest interests of the nation, we knew you would not yourselves bring on a war, we knew you would take good care never to plunge us into war as long as it was possible with honor to avert war. You summoned us to defense of Father- land, and you know, all the world knows, how with all our strength and all our souls 55 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC we responded to the call. We are proud of the confidence and loyalty we gave you. We are proud of our unity of feeling and action, of all the sacrifices we have made upon the altar of country, and we have reason to believe the neutral peoples, even our enemies, do not blame us German peo- ple for what we did. For a long time our patriotic spirit, our whole-hearted confidence in the fidelity of you who spoke and acted for the country, forbade us to harbor even the faintest thought that you might have erred. For us it was only to respond, to obey, to fight, follow, not to analyze, question, criticize. Those who looked on from afar, with vision clearer than ours could be in the midst of conflict, saw what we were blind to, that this state of mind could not forever continue among us ; that it is not in human nature, not in the natures of grown men, modern, cultured, self-reliant, endowed 56 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC with eyes to see and brains to reason, to accept indefinitely any dictum whatsoever without inquiry into its inherent truth. It so happened. After a long time doubts did creep unbidden into our minds. They came not from any information or explanation you were kind enough to give us, but through that which we as observ- ing and thinking men came to know of our- selves — when we saw that we were sur- rounded by an iron ring of enemies and outside that hard circle a still greater, stronger and more ominous one, the ad- verse opinion of civilization. Instinct then told us something was wrong. There must have been something connected with the cause of the war, the great question of moral responsibility therefor, which the outside world under- stood better than we did, perhaps because the outside world had access to informa- tion which had been withheld from us. 57 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC That is what the outer ring told us, in that way the outer ring started us thinking. By the inner ring and the outer together we knew the war was not won, as you had so often told us, the only trouble being, according to your version, that the foe was too stupid and stubborn to know when he was beaten. By all these signs we read that even if we were to win the war on its physical side there was something higher than that, something so far beyond we could never reach it or overcome it with our armies, however victorious, that the more we won in war the less we should have worth having when the peace came. Closing German Eyes with German Blood You in high authority must have discov- ered the presence among us of these spec- ters of doubt and mistrust almost as soon as we ourselves were conscious of their ex- istence. You did not wish to have our 58 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC minds work without orders from you, you did not want our eye-lids to lift of their own free motion. You must have reasoned that inasmuch as we at the front and the people at home had been quiet and pliant enough so long as all was going well in the field, the best way to expel these un- comfortable spectral visitors from our minds was to dazzle us with some sensa- tional military triumph. And so you ordered us to take the ene- my's greatest stronghold, his well-nigh im- pregnable positions. We see now that your aim could not have been based purely upon military considerations. If it had been you would have made your attack on positions less strong, where were better chances of success, less certainty of ghast- ly loss. You would have sought the ene- my's weakest, not his strongest point, where the odds were heavily against us, and where, if beaten, he could retire to 59 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC other positions now made almost as strong and invite us to come and take them, too, at his own bloody price of five to one. No, yon sought a spectacular success that should set the flags flying all through Fatherland, rouse anew the popular en- thusiasm, drown thinking in shouting, smother cerebration in celebration. You fed us by the hundreds of thousands to the hells along the Meuse. You flung great columns of us into the fire-swept open there to crumple up and lie seething and moaning on the red ground. Then you flung other columns after the first, to crum- ple in their turn. You smeared the ground for many miles about with the dismem- bered fragments of men and the unburied, rotting bodies of our sons and brothers. You filled long trains with maimed, blind- ed, broken, ruined men. You tried to close our eyes with our own blood. 60 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC But you did not succeed. We wiped away the blood, and the bitter, bitter tears, and then opened our eyes still wider. The Great, Fateful Deception If you could deceive us as to the course of the war, strive to continue the deception by stopping our eyes with our own blood, there must be something back of that which you are also keeping from us, about which you had deceived us. If you had told us the truth as to the cause of the war there would be no need of telling us anything but truth as to its course. If it were pure- ly a war of German defense, of keeping the invader out of Fatherland, Verdun, the shambles, would be unnecessary. Our fears and doubts stirred, we sought for ourselves the facts as to the cause of the war, the facts which you never gave us, which we never before sought because we were too busy killing and being killed 61 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC through our trust that you had reported the truth to us and therefore inquiry into the facts was not needed. And now, after thorough search for the truth for ourselves, we say to you our con- clusion is the war did not come because our enemies were about to attack us. We find no evidence in support of that. We find that not one of our enemies was pre- pared for war, or wanted war. No enemy had crossed our frontier. All the governments of the countries with which we are now at war tried to keep the peace. All sought adjustment of the Serbian dispute by the usual peaceful means. Even our Teutonic ally, whose quarrel it was, not ours, was willing to con- fer with Europe upon a question which had become European, much more than local. The only government that refused conference was the one which you con- trolled. 62 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC In the first account you gave us of the cause of the war you said it was Russia that must be held responsible, Russia was determined to attack, had crossed our frontier, we must rally to beat back the Slav peril. In your second account, given after England had joined the alliance against us, though at first you had said England would not fight, it was England who was responsible — England, jealous, wicked, determined to crush her rival, fo- menting and intriguing war upon us. We have reviewed the historical evi- dence of that episode, and we find, as all neutral students have found, that instead of wanting war, for which she was wholly unprepared save on the sea, England was doing all in her power to avert war, of- fered everything she could offer, proposed everything that gave promise, under her leadership Russia and Prance were eager to confer with all the powers to keep the 63 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC peace, Austria was not unwilling — you alone stood out. England said to you if you could not ap- prove the particular suggestion she had offered, propose something on your own account, some formula for keeping the peace, and pledged you that if that were upset by Russia and France, England would let them stand alone in the conse- quences. A word from you, a single word, involving no loss of pride or dignity, but adding greatly to your honor and prestige, would have brought conference and kept the peace. You did not speak that word. Peace or war rested with you — you chose war. If you were yourselves deceived, if you were self-misled despite your diplomacy, your spies, your secret service, all your sources of information; if you believed Russia was about to attack us and had crossed our frontier when she was not 64 THE GEBMAN REPUBLIC meditating attack and had not crossed our frontier; if you believed England was in- triguing for war despite all her efforts for peace which common sense and the judg- ment of the remainder of the world have found based upon sincerity, if you feared England was playing some trick upon you when she asked you to arrange the confer- ence in your own way and offered to stand with you against all who did not come in; if you were deceived as to all this, despite all this believed our enemies were forcing war upon us, your government was so grossly incompetent as to be unworthy re- sponsibility for the destiny of a great people. There are blunders worse than crimes. But you were not deceived. You knew why the war came. It came because you willed it, because you wanted it for purposes of your own, and not for the good of the German people, 65 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC wanted it for ends which you knew the German people would not approve and which if known could not command hearty and enthusiastic German support. And so you deceived us. You appealed to our patriotism in the one way that was sure to rouse our spirit to the highest pitch, for defense of Father- land. Words cannot tell the bitterness that is in us as we discover we have been shedding our blood and that of our neighbors, suf- fering and sacrificing and inflicting suffer- ing and sacrifice, plunging a continent into desolation, bringing down upon our heads the condemnation of all mankind — for a lie. As Empty and Fruitless as a Dream Why did you deceive us? What was to be gained for Germany? What accretion of real and lasting value 1 66 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Moral considerations for the moment aside, and assuming our complete military success, what did you think you could gain for Germany, and hold, that would be worth to us as a people, in promotion of our prosperity and happiness, a millionth part of the cost of getting it and holding it? Was it your plan to conquer other na- tions, subjugate or humble them, annex all or a part of their territory, extend our political power over all or a part of their people? If so, you had no right to embark upon such a venture, plunging into it all the strength and resources of the people, make us your co-partners furnishing all the cap- ital and all the service, without taking us into your confidence, without letting us know what we were doing, what struggling for, what profit was to be ours for our tre- mendous investment? 67 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC You failed to take us into your confi- dence, worked a deception upon us, be- cause you knew full well the German peo- ple would never give their approval to a war of conquest. You had no right to assume we would approve such a war if only it were suc- cessful, and that as it was to be success- ful, the deception would work no injustice upon us. You had no right to think, because we have been content with a paternal govern- ment, because we have been obedient as children, because we have given trust and loyalty without question and without re- serve, that you could treat us as if we were vassals, mere hewers of wood and carriers of water in the tribe, spear carriers, bludgeon bearers, cave men. We are the sons and daughters of civ- ilization and culture, of thought, philoso- phy, art, literature, science, history. While 68 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC we knew little or nothing of what was go- ing on in the foreign relations of our gov- ernment, we did know, and long have known, for our philosophy, our culture, our history have told us, and we presumed you knew also even better than we, that in modern civilization conquest of other peo- ples as a means of nation-building is as empty and fruitless as a dream. It belongs to an age which the world has left behind. It yields neither permanence nor profit, brings neither prosperity nor honor. Was it for such a nightmare as this that you deceived us into years of struggle with our neighbors, made us the victims of our patriotism, planted a million of our sons in fresh, futile graves, doomed countless more to live hereafter blind, torn, crippled, wrecked, tortured? 69 CHAPTER VI A PLACE IN THE SUN? OE IN A MADHOUSE? Ok, sought you Germany's "Place in the Sun?" her right to colonial and commer- cial expansion, to freedom of the seas? These jingling phrases have long rung in our ears. They were not unpleasant. We rather liked them, certainly did not reject them. At times we even echoed them, with- our knowing or caring much what they really signified, if anything. "We were prosperous, content, hard at work, happy. What harm was done if in the absence of actual political activities such as some of our neighbors enjoy we Germans made toys of catch-phrases and tossed them about for our passing amusement? They were not a serious part of the life and aspirations of a practical, hard-headed 70 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC people, they formed no national policy, they gave you no mandate. Our place in the sun? Is it for this chi- mera that we have been shedding our blood? Was it your will that we should club and kill, hack our way through to greater commercial activity abroad, redden the seas that more German ships might sail them, pound our way with great guns into more foreign markets, ram culture with bayonets down the throats of primitive peoples? If it is for these jingling catch-words, these shibboleths of emptiness, that we have been righting, tell us what they mean, for we do not know. We do know where we Germans stood in the great world when you willed this war upon us. We know only too well where we stand now. Then we had no enemies among man- kind. 71 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Now we have no friends. That is your achievement. Three years ago no other people were more respected throughout civilization than we. Wherever Germans went they carried with them the repute of a well- ordered household, friendly feeling at home toward all neighbors which found ready response abroad. They took with them dignity of character, sincerity, well trained and universally recognized effi- ciency. With these they found welcome, made way, won confidence, in many lands and a thousand fields of endeavor. In the great American continent thou- sands of our blood had found homes and happiness. No other imported stock was more welcome. No other citizens of alien descent were better liked. Notwithstand- ing ties of blood and sympathetic racial traits and tendencies not even the English found more, and possibly they found a lit- 72 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tie less, social and commercial hospitality. In France, despite prejudices growing out of relatively recent historical happen- ings, many thousands of our people were finding homes, prosperity, and if not the warmest social welcome, ample justice, fair dealing, protection, opportunity. For one Frenchman living and doing business in Germany a thousand Germans were living and thriving in France. In Russia our financial and commercial envoys found not only fair and fruitful fields, but they had built up there, even in the highest circles, a distinct and influen- tial factor in the national life. In England itself, in British possessions and colonies, in Italy, everywhere, like conditions prevailed. Nowhere were gates closed to us, no artificial obstacles were placed in our path, everywhere we were free to compete, to strive, to adventure, to achieve, to prosper. 73 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Freedom of the Seas? Three years ago smoke from German funnels darkened the skies over all the Seven Seas. German merchant marine were to be seen in all the ports of the earth. Nowhere were prohibitory or onerous duties laid against them. In the ports of England itself, and France, our ships plied their trade regularly and successfully in open, fair competition with ships English and French. Our great fleets of modern passenger vessels probably carried more American passengers to and from the ports of France and England than their French and English competitors. You have lately told us we could never have freedom of the seas till England's naval domination were stopped, that England's jealousy and malice are rocks in the course of our over-sea expan- 74 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC sion which we must blast out with the dynamite and gun-powder of physical force. But three years ago our merchant ma- rine were seen in all the ports of British possessions and colonies. Our flag was to be seen flying side by side with its Eng- lish rival in the harbors not only of Eng- land itself, but "of Egypt, other parts of Africa under British control, India, Cey- lon, Australia, Hongkong, New Zealand, British isles of the sea. If there had been but one great naval fleet in all the world, and that one Ger- man, under your supreme control, the seas could not have been more free to our mer- chant ships than they were when you willed this war upon us. Colonies? Territorial expansion over- sea 1 Is that what we fight for ? Extensive colonies we had. Where are they now? 75 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC And when we had them you know as well as we that our rule in them was not suc- cessful, brought us neither honor nor gain, they were to us a national burden, not a national blessing. And you know, and all the world knows, that as colonial administrators we have not been successful simply because there we have applied the spirit of Germany the military machine and not the spirit of the true Germany, the educator, builder, moral leader. Both our philosophy and our experience show that all our success out among the peoples of the world is won with service, gentleness, fairness, helpfulness, under- standing of human nature — characteristic Germanism — while all our failures, all our disappointments, all our disrepute, have come through too much of your cult of au- tocratic military dictatorship and mechan- ical rule of iron. 76 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC "We have learned our lesson, even if yon have not learned yours. The German smile, not the German sword, wins its way throughout the world. The best German philosopher, guide and friend is Kant, not Krupp. Germany's World-Empire That Was The supremely critical moment in the history of the German nation came three years ago when you refused all appeals from your equals to say the one word that meant peace, and unleashed the dogs of war. "Where did we stand then as a na- tion? WTiat was the most marked achievement of the genius of our people, worked out through the generations that had just passed? It is a simple, well-known, yet inspiring story of progress. 77 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC From a relatively primitive pastoral people, delving almost wholly in the soil and the forest, we had rapidly become in- dustrial. We acquired skill in the arts, in chemis- try, fabrication, fashioning, contriving. From dealing only as a raw tribe with raw materials we learned to transmute the crude into the finished in countless attrac- tive and useful forms and sell our handi- work to all the world. In forty years our exports multiplied seven-fold. We had become one of the world's great- est workshops. A large and vital part of all our activi- ties, employment of a large and well re- munerated part of our national energies, were here — making in our workshops all sorts of things the world wanted and car- rying them away to the world's markets in German ships. Here our prosperity, our 78 THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC growing wealth, our augmenting luxury, our future, were centered. Our empire consisted of the good opinion the remainder of the world held of us as makers, as merchants, its good opinion of our goods and wares, its confidence in us and them, our good relations with all man- kind. Everywhere our salesmen, merchants, bankers, were welcome. No discrimina- tions were made against them anywhere. They enjoyed world-wide confidence and respect. In the battle ground of human nature and the peaceful rivalry of open trade we Germans knew how to win friends and make our way. No port or market was closed to us. No political power was used to shut us out or impede our progress. Where imports and duties were levied we paid only what our rivals paid. Briton, perfidious Albion, which you had 79 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC taught us to believe was so jealous of our success that she had determined to destroy us, shut us out of the sea, crush us with a war intrigued upon us — this wicked rival not only threw open her ports everywhere in the world to our ships and our wares but permitted great quantities of German goods to enter her home territory without the payment of a farthing of impost though all English goods entering Ger- many must pay high duties. This is where we stood three years ago. In the great world game of producing, contriving, combining, adapting, fabricat- ing, selling, in that greatest of all human rivalries beside which your pompous or mysterious diplomatic intrigues for some vague advantage or for some new shading of the will-o'-the-wisp balance of power are as the blind-man's buff of children — man- kind's manly rivalry of Quality and Price — we Germans were free, unfettered, f avor- 80 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC getting friend-making, success-winning competitors. There were usefulness and prosperity, there permanence and growth, there a greater and greater future, for there the genius of our people was working along natural moral lines as a well-fitting and welcome factor in the evolution of society and the inter-play and correlation of hu- man endeavor. There we were going with the stream of civilization, not trying to make it go our way. That was an empire which required gen- erations of German industry and genius to build, a world-empire worth having, worth keeping. An Empire Won— and Lost Where stand we now since under your mediaeval leadership we have reverted to physical violence as the dominant factor in human affairs, tried with brute force to 81 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC make the stream run uphill, contrived with almost the cunning of suicidal mania to set civilization and ourselves as things inim- ical and apart? No more German ships upon the seas. Few German traders in the world's marts. Few or no products of the great Ger- man workshop in the world's markets. Our workmen, engineers, salesmen, mar- iners, merchants, bankers, artisans, chem- ists, inventors, our men of skill, industry, commerce, productivity, are by your or- ders out there across the border trying to kill our neighbors and customers. Our shops and factories are closed or engaged in the making of munitions and weapons of slaughter. Our skill as inventors, chemists, con- trivers, is used not in the service of man- kind or for progress in the arts but in the destruction of our fellow men not alone 82 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC by the conventional weapons but by means new and horrible and in too many in- stances beyond the pale even of war's none too scrupulous decencies. We have lost our markets, lost our cus- tomers, lost our friends, lost the good opin- ion of the world, lost all that we had striv- en for three generations to create. At one fell stroke you tumbled it all into ruins. You struck us down from the high place we had won among the world's peoples to the level of a barbaric, war-like tribe of the middle ages — to your own level. Was it a Place in the Sun you sought— or in a Madhouse 1 ? 83 CHAPTEE VII WHAT METHOD IN THE MADNESS f You whom we address are' the oligarchy of aristocrats and militarists who gath- ered about the sovereign and sought al- ways to be his chief councillors and through occupancy of that vantage ground gain power in the state. It being as plain as day that freedom of the seas, colonial expansion, a place in the sun, empire over the waters won by phys- ical force were mere nightmares, and since as more or less rational human beings you must have had some purpose in view when you willed the war, some definite objective, we are compelled to analyze your motives in the light of such evidence as we have been able to gather. Such analysis leads us to these conclusions: 84 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Your underlying aim was not to promote the welfare of the German people but to perpetuate the power you had acquired near the seat of highest authority. In pur- suance thereof you made the sovereign's heir the figurehead if not the center of your cabal, thereby exerting a peculiar in- fluence over the sovereign himself and as- suring that if success attended your in- trigue your power should carry over from one regime to its successor. A part of your plan was to check the growth of all liberalism among the Ger- man people, particularly social democracy or any other development that tended to make the nation less tribal, more modern, and thereby minimizing or destroying your power. We do not deny your right as a factor in the state to seek repression by proper means of any growth deemed by you hurt- ful to the country. We do not deny the 85 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC right of any political party to champion the policies in which it believes and to op- pose others. But we do deny the right of any party, caste, coterie, clique, oligarchy or author- ity whatsoever — and in this category we place the sovereign himself — to ruin Ger- many in order to make sure of absolute rule of what may be left of it. We deny the right of any power over us to seek repression of political discussion and political evolution within the country, by smothering them in the blood of the cit- izens shed in wanton attack upon their neighbors. There was no need of such desperate preventive. It is true that a nation is like an individual in that it cannot stand still. However well developed, highly organ- ized, it must go forward or backward, pro- gress or revert. We Germans were in the process of slow, cautious political growth, 86 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC so slow, so cautious that all change was well-nigh imperceptible, unthreatening, without menace to you or yours. To stop that little growth you who want none at all, want none at all not because you think a little may hurt Germany, but because you fear it may in time hurt you, hurled us headlong backward two cen- turies. We do not believe because it is incred- ible, too monstrous, that you knew what you were doing, knew that you were driv- ing the nation to the fate which now has overtaken it. Certain it is you did not foresee that instead of brushing aside all that might possibly and eventually de- tract a little from the completeness of your ascendancy you were making it impossible for the nation to leave any power what- ever in your hands. In your madness there must have been some method, some dream at least of 87 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC achieving something tangible that conld be made to pass as recompense to the people for the terrible price they had paid for it. We think we know what that was. Highwaymanry Hanged with Its Own Hemp While to us the people of Germany our military establishment was ever a means of defense, and nothing more, to you of the oligarchy it was always that, and much more. It was an instrument in your hands, in part a toy to play with, an ornament, a means to pomp and display, an adjunct and parade of titled dignity and epauletted self-importance, a trade fit for aristocracy, an open road to class superiority. To you it was more than toy or orna- ment, it was an instrument with which you could maintain the power of caste in the state. It was more than this, a weapon you 88 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC were fond of using in playing your game of diplomacy so mysterious to us humble laymen but dear to your more lofty souls, your game of shaking the mailed fist, rat- tling the sabre, displaying the shining ar- mor, frightening your timid neighbor, making yourselves the most important, most talked-of, most feared men in all Eu- rope — your idea of true greatness. And in the end, unfortunately, to you it became yet something more, a bludgeon with which you hoped to beat down the walls that stood between you and realiza- tion of your festering, cankering, finally all-consuming ambition to be masters of Europe, and through mastery of Europe the headmen of all the world. It is probably true that in the beginning no such madness was in your veins, that for a long time you stood square with us — we know our sovereign did — for defense alone. But as you went on shaking the 89 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC mailed fist in the face of Europe, playing the game you loved so well, success brought its fascination, lured you farther. In time the glitter of shining armor and glint from the bayonets of which all Europe stood afraid dazzled your eyes, affected your brain. Even the criticisms of those who played the game against you and did not love you because you so often beat them, that you were war-lords, that you fancied yourselves strong enough to conquer the world, in the fullness of time augmented your vanity, increased your obsession, add- ed fuel to the smouldering fires of your am- bition, led you to the final and fatuous con- clusion that perhaps after all it was true your divine mission on earth was conquest of mankind in the name of German culture, the world did indeed lie at your feet when- ever you cared to take bludgeon in hand and go forth seeking it. We know now there were various occa- 90 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC sions in recent crises of the diplomatic world politics game of frightening your neighbor into compliance with your will when you thought seriously of precipitat- ing the fateful day. One thing or another, chiefly the sovereign who long was true to his better self and his country, restrained and prevented you. But it was only a question of time when your fermenting fever of ambition and vanity would seize what to you looked like a favorable mo- ment, override all obstacles, precipitate the cataclysm. We wish to be just to you. Therefore, we say what seems to us to be true, that you had so long spent your energies and talents in perfecting the great military ma- chine under your control, had with such persistent skill studied the growth of rival military machines and with such care mapped out your programme in case of conflict between them, in time the inevita- 91 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC ble psychological effect upon you was a conviction that such conflict was sure to come, was inevitable, could not be averted. And with this conviction you deemed it your duty to seize a favorable moment, to precipitate what to you was the inevitable before your rivals could reach a state of better preparedness. It was thus you jus- tified yourselves, and with this you gath- ered closer and closer about the sovereign, pressing harder and harder upon his judg- ment and will, awaiting the hour when you might have your way. Sarajevo was to you the long-awaited signal. You were ready, you were eager, you lost little time. You made sure that in any event our Austrian ally would stand by. You thought you made sure that in no event would England enter the struggle — but for that colossal blunder and self-de- ception we cannot conceive that even mad- ness such as yours could have driven you 92 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC on, for with England among our foes, the oceans barred, Germany shut in, walls all about us on land and sea, the end must have been plain even to eyes like yours, reddened and distorted with ambition's fitful fever. During the absence of the sovereign in northern waters you skillfully prepared a purported state of facts to lay before him on his hurried return; Austria was ready, Italy would either join you or remain neu- tral, England would risk nothing, there were only Russia and France to beat, Rus- sia which was not only determined to make war to crush out internal revolution but had mobilized and actually crossed our frontier, France that was mad for revanche and rushing to the aid of her eastern ally. Was the Kaiser Also Deceived? All this we know came with painful shock and surprise to the sovereign. We 93 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC know that at first he put against you his old-time will for peace. But you convinced him the die was cast, that our enemy had left him no choice, the fault before man- kind and history would be that of Russia, it could not be laid at Germany's door. You deceived the Kaiser, who for a quarter of a century had stood with us of the peo- ple against you of the caste, just as a little later you deceived us and tried to deceive the world. With misgivings, with soul- harrowing doubts, and we are informed with tears in his eyes, the Emperor yield- ed, his resoluteness was broken down in the moment of supreme crisis, he failed to speak the one word which England had im- plored and which would have kept the peace — the die was indeed cast, the day had come. You had won. After all these years of preparation, planning, plotting, intriguing, you had at last your great chance. 94 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC You of the cabal had cajoled your mas- ter with cunning. You of the caste had with a coup made an empire your servant. You high well-born of the castle had hyp- notized us lowly ones beyond the moat with the legend that we who had made the empire were rallying to its defense, glad and proud to be your warriors. And now for your great triumph. To you it seemed an easy task. Behind you was a united, an enthusiastic people, in your hands the greatest army in the world, before you only the Russians and the French who you well knew were but ill-prepared. By crossing Belgium, which would not dare offer resistance, in sixty days Paris would be in your hands. "With France prostrate through loss of her nerve center and paralysis of her na- tional organization and communications, 95 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC she would be forced to early capitulation, make the best terms you would grant her, give up her coal and ore lands, yield her richest industrial section, pay an enor- mous indemnity, twice or thrice the whole cost of the expedition to Germany. With France humbled, put out of the fight, reduced to a second-rate power, there remained only ponderous, slow-mov- ing, inefficient, badly organized Russia. She could be easily disposed of, her inter- nal revolution would weaken her arm, our German intrigue well intrenched at her capital and ramifying within her govern- ment would help to bring about a speedy peace. By Christmas, you thought, it would all be over. With military campaigns but lit- tle more arduous than the usual autumn maneuvers Germany would be trium- phant; would gain territory; the treasury would again be filled to overflowing with 96 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC French gold; a joyful German people would give over for a long time if not for always all their vague notions of political progress; your importance and power at home and abroad would be immeasurably augmented; all Europe would tremble whenever you opened your mouth or stirred your sabre ever so lightly; timid, selfish, frightened England would come seeking favor with you the new leaders in world power, imploring you not to make it her turn next. The Road to Remorse and Retribution Verging upon madness as all this seems to us now and must seem to you in these our soberer hours, it is only fair to say we believe you really thought it all possible, thought the easy profits of the venture would loom so large on the credit side of the ledger that we the people would sup- press all thought of motive and morality in 97 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC our national pride and glory in national success. Of course you know, and all the world should know, that if you had frankly told us what your real purpose was, told us in time so that opportunity remained for us to speak our minds, all Germany would have done whatever it could, be that much or little, and we see now it must necessar- ily have been all too little, to stay your hands. We see now that when in that fate- ful moment you captured preeminent au- thority you captured us, our system made us children, our system changed us in a twinkling from men and women of mod- ern times to feudal tribesmen under the absolute command of warlike chiefs. You were supreme masters not only of our lives and property but of our morality. You made us your co-partners before the world in a venture of international high- waymanry, you made us a tribe of 98 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC modern, prepared, organized, efficient, formidable barbarians sallying forth to terrorize, subjugate, rob neighboring tribes. And what a price we who are Germany, we artisans and toilers and shopkeepers from beyond the moat, have paid for our obsession of faith in you of the princely castle, for your obsession of faith in physi- cal force as the dominant factor in mod- ern civilization, for your mad vanity and insane ambition, for your lack of even the rudiments of understanding of what mod- ern civilization is really made of, of the underlying moral forces of developed man which must rally with ever-increasing might and resoluteness to defeat and crush you. We who made Germany what it is, we of the farm, the shop, the machine, the factory, the school, the mart, the ships, we who had been out in the great world 99 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC beyond and learned to know something of that world's people and the deep currents, the foundation convictions, the self-re- liance, the manhood, the strength of will and resistance among them when those basic convictions are placed in jeopardy, we who had met and measured other men in the field of open commercial and indus- trial competition, we Germans who work and think and achieve in and of the age in which we live — We could have told you of the caste and the castle, you of the barracks and the bureaus, you who had mastered your mar- tial tactics but knew not human nature, you who were skilled in the art of destroy- ing life but did not know what life was, you titled diplomatists adroit in the super- ficial game of international intrigue who never comprehended the vast moral forces and indestructible convictions of the mil- lions of despised and lowly democracies 100 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC massed down near the soil of the lands they played the game with — We could have told you feudal knights in armor that even with modern armies and modern weapons and the valor and efficiency of a highly developed modern people in your hands how impossible was the venture you set out upon with such light hearts, we could have told you down what road to ruin and retribution you were plunging, pushing us before you. But you did not ask us — you told us what was not true. You staked us and our all in a gambler's cast without letting us know what we were playing for. Triumph of your plot might have brought to you something which to you might have seemed worth having, but could not have brought to us anything which would to us have seemed worth hav- ing after our blood had cooled. 101 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC For well do we know that the road along which civilization marches is under the rule of moral law, that enduring thrift in the game of highwaymanry, individual or international, is impossible upon it. A little loot the most desperate may tem- porarily gain, but at what a price, how hard to keep. You may be content to be outlaw, with a prize set on your heads, but we the peo- ple of Germany are not. Our system, our loyalty to that system, to our country, aided your deceit in mak- ing us your partners before the eyes of an outraged world. You cannot say we did not play fair with you. While the mad adventure was on we upheld your hands. A million graves of Germans are the monuments to our tribal fidelity. But you did not play fair with us. You made us fight for something which did not exist. You made us fight for things 102 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC we abhor. You made us fight for things which were not only ignoble, unworthy, but impossible. You made us victims of a cause which would have been a failure even if it had won. The co-partnership that existed between you and us must be eternally dissolved. 103 CHAPTER VIII GERMAN MANHOOD SPEAKS TO THE WORLD (Address Adopted by the Congress of Del- egates from Twenty-six German States Held at Berlin) To all the peoples of the civilized world, and to the pages of history, we the men and women of Germany in this bitter hour of our national defeat — nay, in this glor- ious hour of our regeneration and refor- mation through suffering and sacrifice — wish to speak: We seek to escape none of our just re- sponsibility for the disaster that has been inflicted upon the world. We are not blameless. We, too, have been mad. Too long we failed to open our eyes to what was being done in our name and with our strength, too long we permitted ourselves 104 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC to be victimized by our system, too long were we blindly passionate, irrational, bit- ter, unreasoning. Too long did we succumb to that pecul- iar epidemic of mental obsession which is one of the ills all excessive nationalism is heir to and which in the past has engulfed other masses of men and women — we are not alone in this weakness — that spiritual stampede which starts up in a people with some irritating cause and for a time is all- embracing, all-oompelling, mad-rushing, sweeping away all rational standards, de- stroying all logical landmarks, leaving in- tact no places of mental refuge or read- justment — nothing for anyone to do but rush on, shouting, gesticulating, cursing, striking, unable to pause if you wish be- cause all about you are doing the same, pushing, pulling, inflaming, carrying you along in the torrent, hating all that is not for and of you, loving only your own and 105 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC yourselves, seeing only with red eyes, hear- ing with but one ear, thinking only with a brain surcharged with heated blood, the will fierce with passion, all muscles, nerves, sinews quivering with fever, the soul itself drunk with the joyful, justifying faith that all this is patriotism, love of country, duty, devotion to the land of our fathers. But now the spiritual stampede is at an end. We the people of Germany are ourselves again. Gone are all the fever and passion. We think calmly and coolly, we see with wide open eyes. Believe us, fair-minded, just, generous peoples of the world, serene and judicial in your happiness and prosperity, un- scathed by the desperation of war and un- embittered by the falsity of your leaders — we pray that your national or tribal spirit may never suffer like access of the mass-madness from which we are just now 106 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC < recovered — it is with humility and contri- tion we ask pardon for our errors, and beg you to remember the great stress that was put upon us, the hard pressure of habit, tradition and long inculcated feeling that bore down upon us in a crisis, and be mer- ciful in your judgment of us. We regret that we did not betimes see the truth and force our leaders to aban- don their unrighteous adventure. We regret that having begun a war with criminal motive they prosecuted it with criminal methods. We regret that poor Belgium was in- vaded, violated, subjugated, stricken down. The crossing of Belgian territory by our troops we had justified on the ground of military necessity as long as we believed our war was solely one of self-defence, as long as we believed we were fighting for our right to exist. We justify it no more, and pledge ourselves that Belgium shall 107 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC have all the atonement in our power to give. We regret all wanton and unnecessary- destruction of Belgian and French cathe- drals and other works of art and monu- ments of history by our troops, or the part of our troops which were imbued more with the militaristic spirit of our leaders than with true German veneration for such works of man, and pledge that our gov- ernment will immediately join other gov- ernments in creating a commission to ad- judge the reparation due from us for these wrongs. The Crime of the Lusitania Our regret is great and deep for the crime of the sinking of the peaceful ship Lusitania, and for the sinking of other non- combatant ships with loss of human lives. We bitterly repent that in our feverish, passionate hours we justified that crime 108 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC and even fell to the depth of glorifying in it as a triumph for our navy. It is diffi- cult for us now in our present calmness to realize that we ever gloated over the deliberate murder of a thousand or more innocent men, women and children, and now we see only too clearly why you of civilization not only abhorred that crime but detested us for giving countenance and approval to it. Our madness must then have been at its climax. Then we tried to convince ourselves that our military leaders had a right to sink the Lusitania because she carried ammunition destined for use in killing our soldiers. Now that our vision has cleared we see the fallacy of that argument. No civilized mil- itary power destroys a city or town and all its non-combatant inhabitants, without warning or opportunity to seek safety, sim- ply to destroy munitions of war stored in those places. The Lusitania was a floating 109 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC city. By the laws of war we had the right to get the munitions out of her cargo and destroy them if we could do so without kill- ing the people who were her passengers, but not to kill the people in order to get the munitions. If the excuses which we formerly ap- plied to this crime and the principle in- volved therein are held to be sound guide in military operations, an invading army is at liberty, without warning, to destroy any city or town that lies in its path, beat down all the buildings, bury in the ruins all the inhabitants, in order to make sure military material in such towns shall not afterward be used by the enemy's troops. An invading army could go further: It could say that the people along its line of march were of the enemy, and whilst at the moment non-combatant would at the first opportunity give aid, succour, ma- terial, to the combative forces of their na- 110 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tive land, and therefore stand them up by the side of the line of march and shoot them down, men who might become enemy soldiers, women who might bear enemy soldiers, children who might live to be- come enemies. This is savagery pure and simple, a dis- grace to civilized war. The sinking of the Lusitania was sav- agery, pure and simple, a disgrace to the nation responsible for it. For that crime we feel bitter remorse. Direct and ample reparation from us to its victims and the families of its victims is impossible. But atonement of a higher and nobler sort we shall render before all the world. More Crimes— More Falsehoods We regret the Zeppelin raids on English towns and villages and the bombardment by our cruisers of English ports. "We were 111 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC told by our military authorities that these attacks were justified by the definite mili- tary damage inflicted upon our enemy. Now we know this was not true, that the definite military loss was trifling, and we see that it must have been so because bombs dropped in the night from ships high in the air above the vaguely discern- ible land below, and shells fired from cruis- ers well out to sea, were of necessity dropped or fired indiscriminately, and such indiscriminate random attack must inevi- tably inflict far more hurt upon peaceful civilians than upon military works, if any were there. Now that we have better information we repent that through such blind assaults innocent men, women and children were murdered. We German people called to war have made war as warriors upon war- riors, and we have waged it valiantly, we believe, against a valiant foe. But we have 112 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC not wished to make war upon women and children, for that is savagery, and we are not savages. Wherever our enemy has made like savage and indiscriminate as- saults — he is equally guilty and should fall under the same condemnation. We regret the use of poisonous gases and liquid fire by our armies because we do not regard such instruments a proper part of civilized warfare, regardless of the truth or falsity of what our leaders told us, that the enemy was the first to employ them. If the enemy first used them he also is guilty ; but even in such case it would bet- ter satisfy the conscience and the chivalry of our people if our leaders had protested against such crimes instead of imitating them. We regret that German ingenuity, in- ventiveness, skill in the arts and chemistry so often signally shown in the good works of mankind in saving life, curing disease, 113 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC preventing contagion, minimizing pain, in adaptation of mechanics and the utilization of physical forces and materials for man's benefit and comfort, on land and sea and in man's long dream of conquest of the air, should have been prostituted in the recent mad struggle to the development of new and hideous ways of slaughtering our fellow man. We regret that our military authorities fell so low in the scale of morality and decency as to give a traitor emissary from an enemy country access to our prison camps for the known purpose of bribing his fellow countrymen under our protection to turn traitor like himself; and that our authorities abetted this vile effort by in- flicting upon prisoners who refused to turn traitor the severe punishment of reduced rations. If our brave soldiers, by the ac- cident of war made prisoners in enemy country, were tempted to turn traitor to 114 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Germany and subjected to hunger as pun- ishment for loyalty to Germany, even our military authorities would denounce the enemy as guilty of shameful and dishon- orable conduct. 115 CHAPTER IX A SPECIAL WORD TO AMERICA We now regret that during the period of our blindness we were embittered to- ward America for selling munitions of war to our enemies. We know now, and ac- knowledge, as we should have seen and acknowledged then, that such sale of mu- nitions of war to any or all belligerents has been the established and legal practise of nations, including ourselves, for many gen- erations. We recognize now that such sale was free and fair under international law, and that to suspend the law and abandon sale in favor to a particular belligerent would have meant nothing but unneutral- ity. We freely confess that if Germany had 116 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC required munitions from America, and had enjoyed control of the seas and therefore ability not only to buy munitions but to carry them home, and if America had re- fused to sell to us because our rivals with- out control of the sea could not also buy and carry home, that we should have de- nounced as an act of unneutrality deliber- ately unfriendly to us. It would have been deliberately unneu- tral and unfriendly to us because a con- scious effort of the part of the United States to deprive us of the advantage over our enemies which was rightly ours under international law through our power on the sea. We see now what we should have seen long ago, and would have seen had not our eyes been blinded by passion, that the right to buy and the right to sell are both free, well established, indisputable, and that in the exercise of these rights all na- 117 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tions are equal before the law. If all the belligerents in a war are able to buy and carry home, the equality continues. But if some are able to carry home and others are not, that is a circumstance over which the seller has no control and no responsi- bility. The inequality of power to carry home is- an incident of the relative mili- tary or sea power of the belligerents, and if the seller changes the law and practise under the law at his own pecuniary loss and refuses to sell to those who have the power to carry away he violates law and neutrality by trying to help the weak on the sea and deprive the strong on the sea of the legitimate fruit of his naval enter- prise. He thereby makes himself the ally of one and the enemy of the other. All this now seems to us so obvious, simple, elementary, we are surprised that even in our most irrational hours we should have been so childish and unjust as to ac- 118 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC cuse America of wrong-doing in this con- nection. For now we see that instead of blaming America for her attitude toward us we should be grateful to her for her patience and forbearance with us. We regret that some of our blood broth- ers, citizens of the United States, infected with the same mental obsession that had engulfed us at home, turned against their own country in their mad passion for our German cause, insulted the marvelously patient head of their government, used their freedom of action and movement in their free country to foment disturbances, strikes, arsons, explosions, murders, which in their passing madness they thought might help us in our struggle. We thank the American people for their sublime patience amidst all this violation of their laws and offense against their dig- nity and neutrality. 119 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC America's Unprecedented Patience "When our authorities deliberately sank the Lusitania and murdered more than a hundred innocent American citizens, the American government at any other period of its career, if we have read aright our history, or any other self-respecting gov- ernment in the world in like case, would have demanded instant apology and repa- ration under penalty of war. "When our government met the moderate and not unfriendly demand the American government did make with evasion and in- sincerity, when we the people of Germany in our distrait state of mind, we say it in shame, supported our authorities, justified their crime, and said as the American citi- zens had been warned they took their lives in their own hands and brought on their own destruction — when all this was fol- lowed by more crimes and like fatuous 120 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC justification, by more evasion and insin- cerity and brutal indifference to the decen- cies of life, we now confess in all humility that the natural effect immediately fol- lowed among us : "We despised the Americans for their weakness, we had only contempt for their patience, and many of us urged our leaders to go on butchering Americans or any other neutrals who chanced to place themselves in the path of our policy of striking terror to the hearts of our enemies. But now that our minds have found equilibrium and our moral perceptions again work normally, we understand full well how all these crimes and all their at- tendant offenses must have horrified, sad- dened, angered all on-looking mankind and filled the hearts of good men everywhere in the world with inexpressible detestation of the criminals and of all who defended the crimes. 121 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC We see now that we Germans should fall upon our knees and humbly give thanks that all neutral mankind did not vent their natural and justifiable abhorrence by ris- ing together and declaring us outlaw of civilization, a wild beast afflicted with rab- ies running amuck whose extermination or incarceration was the first and foremost task of the world. Even now we marvel that if the great Christian peoples stopped short of employ- ing physical force in our suppression and chastisement, they did not at least compel their governments to break off all neigh- borly relations with our criminal leaders and thus put the stigma of civilization's condemnation and history's judgment upon our offenses against the laws of God and humanity. 122 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC The Great Crime Against Civilization We marvel the more that this just pun- ishment was not inflicted upon us because now, with sanity restored, we realize only too well the blackness of the crime which had been committed in our name against civilization of which the crime of the Lusi- tania, great as it was, was only sympto- matic. This greatest of crimes was the plot of our ruling caste to plunge the world back- ward two centuries and revert to physical force as the all-controlling factor in the relations of men. Not only to set up physical force as dom- inant as in the savage age of man's career, but with it the doctrine that it is right, de- fensible, necessary, moral, not only to make physical strength superior to moral strength, but to make it morality itself. And stopping not there, not only set- 123 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC ting up physical force as supreme in power and superior in right, but along with this the theory that physical force is best or- ganized, directed and applied by absolu- tism in government, resting not upon the popular will or public opinion or moral force as evolved and perfected by so- ciety, but upon hereditary or accidental chieftainship upheld by the legions of Might. The neutral world must indeed have looked upon our great war as a great crime, greater than a mere adventure in interna- tional brigandage — an effort to tear down all that civilization stands for and holds most precious, an effort to plunge man- kind back into the despotism and darkness of the middle ages. Hence our present amazement that man- kind did not seize upon the poignant and spectacular crime of the Lusitania, symp- tomatic of the whole spirit of the backward 124 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC movement, and do one or both of these things : Combine its armies and navies for our suppression as enemies of the race ; Banish us, at least so long as our mad- ness should rage, from the family of na- tions, denounce us as outlaw, renegade, out- oast. The World's Lack of a Great Moral Leader We further confess our belief that if mankind had thus risen and declared its ban upon us our sanity would the sooner have returned, the senseless war might the sooner have come to its end. If, after the crime of the Lusitania and the failure of our government to meet in good faith and fair response his just de- mands the official head of the greatest of all the neutral peoples had not only sev- ered all friendly relations with us, but in 125 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC words that could have burnt their way to our very souls had held the lamp of truth up to our deeds of darkness, at the same time inviting all the other peoples of earth to join with America in making us outlaw, we believe deep in our hearts that we the German people, shamed and shocked, after the first hours of bitter re- sentment had passed would have been roused into the processes of self-search which must quickly have led to emancipa- tion of our reason and assertion of our determination to be no longer criminal. For, despite all that we have done or per- mitted to be done in our name, despite all the crimes laid at our door, we the people of Germany are not savages, we are not cave-men, we do not wish to kill our neigh- bor or rob him of his land and goods, we are not bandits, we do not believe in the domination of Might over Right or of physical over moral force, we abhor the 126 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC butchery of innocent men, women and chil- dren, we are warm-hearted, generous, chivalrous, we are as just and peace-loving as the average of the world's peoples, we wish to be good citizens of the world and crave the esteem and confidence of our fellow men — but we had been tricked, and we were mad ! To rouse us from our madness we needed the shock of a rebuke that would have shiv- ered us to the soul. We needed an appeal to our manhood and our moral sense through pride and shame. Disciplinary physical force was not required; we were already facing so much of that we feared it not, and if more had been added might have put our backs to the wall and fought all the earth as long as breath was in us. But if the great and almost divinely pa- tient President of the United States, with the greatest of all the world's peoples be- hind him, had resolutely seized the finest 127 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC opportunity in all history to confront a world offender with the silent, resistless, overwhelming moral force of an aroused civilization — moral force, the very essence of civilization, more potent in the final test than all the armies and navies of embattled Europe, more effective and decisive than a score of defeats in the field ; If after our Kaiser had failed when fate brought him to the supreme moment, when he was implored to say the word the world was hoping for, the word peace, and in- stead brought on the crime against civili- zation ; if the American President had not likewise failed when opportunity knocked once at his door with bid to place his name high in the list of immortals by summon- ing forth the moral might of the world against a world crime; If we had been thus haled to the judg- ment seat and there confronted with the open, glassy, accusing eyes of the innocent 128 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC victims of the Lusitania floating out on the ocean current, grim example of all that we had been made to stand and fight for and try to force upon an unwilling world, Ger- man shame would quickly have shaken the German conscience, roused German man- hood, cleared German eyes. It might not have been necessary to wait till hundreds of thousands of graves of brave French, English and German soldiers dotted the landscape along the Meuse and the Yser. Though our eyes are now filled with tears of remorse, and of gratitude, we clearly see that neutral mankind withheld from us his heavy, punitive hand, spared us the ban of outlawry, not because we were undeserv- ing of both, but because in great under- standing and great generosity and more than human patience he made distinction between us the German people and the Ger- man military-autocracy, knew that we were victims not authors of the crime. 129 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Gratitude for this distinction and that forbearance does not take away from us our sense of responsibility. All that was done was done in our name, with our strength, with the system which we had permitted to survive and reign among us. This responsibility we, the German peo- ple, aroused, clear-eyed, strong, self-re- liant, free moral agents, accept and meet. We have found the cause of our ills, and now, as men grown, modern, master of our land and its destinies, we resolutely seek the remedy. It was during the period of the formal armistice that the great awakening came in Germany. The movement embraced nearly all of the people. Upon an ap- pointed day German men and women gath- ered in mass meetings in all the cities, towns and villages of the empire. They as- sembled by the millions, calm, determined, 130 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC unafraid. They met no opposition or in- terference. The meetings adopted resolu- tions declaring the oligarchical govern- ment had lost the confidence of the country and must be supplanted by a government truly representative of the nation's char- acter and will, at home and abroad. By order of the General Committee elec- tions were soon held, and all the states sent delegates to the National Congress called to meet at Berlin. After a few days of deliberation the Na- tional Congress adopted the report of a committee appointed to prepare an ad- dress to the peoples of the world, a transcript of which is given in the fore- going chapters. A little later the Congress proclaimed a new government and organized a provis- ional ministry which at once took posses- sion of all the offices and bureaus, and com- mand of the army and navy, and then pro- 131 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC ceeded to negotiate treaties of peace with all enemy nations. Meanwhile the armis- tice, arranged in the first place because the German awakening was known to be on the way, had been automatically extended by common consent, and for more than six months peace had everywhere prevailed. 132 CHAPTER X FOUNDING THE GERMAN REPUBLIC (Declaration of Self -Government Unani- mously Adopted by the Delegates from 26 German States in National Congress Assembled at Berlin) Whenever in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to dis- solve the government which they have hith- erto maintained and to set up another bet- ter suited to their aims, principles and as- pirations, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should de- clare the causes which impel them to the change and give pledge of their future con- duct as a member of the family of nations. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created with equal right 133 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happi- ness; That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving all their powers from the people governed and possessing no power derived from ances- try, inheritance, the heavens or any other source whatsoever than the will of the peo- ple who created them; That as governments are instituted and exist solely to render Service to the people all authority vested in the government must be used exclusively for service, for securing the right to life, protecting liberty, promoting happiness, and not for any other purpose whatsoever ; That all civilization is based upon Moral Force as distinguished from physical force ; that the essence of civilization, that which marks its upward progress from primitive society bordering on savagery, is the superiority of moral over physical 134 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC force, the utilization of all natural ele- ments, forces and materials in promoting the comfort, health, strength and happiness of mankind, while all organization of so- ciety, individual and social rules of con- duct, relation of neighbor with neighbor, community with community, state with state, nation with nation, all laws of or- ganized society and all governments and institutions for enforcing those laws are founded upon Moral Force alone ; That no government has the right to or- ganize physical force in the form of bodies of armed men or armed vessels and with it exert tyranny over the people, or the peo- ple 's rights to self-government and to free- dom of opinion, discussion and agitation without which self-government is impos- sible, or for the purpose of exercising re- straint upon neighboring nations through use or the fear of the use of physical vio- lence upon them ; 135 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC That German civilization has been long founded upon these rights of the people and these moral forces which alone control domestic affairs and must henceforth con- trol all foreign relations or dealings of the government with neighbors, physical forces being mere servitors, hand-maidens, or in- struments of moral purposes and polities. We repudiate and abandon the tradition that modern, civilized government can be successfully and permanently based upon high authority coming into being through some other agency or process than the will of the people, possessing attributes of ab- solutism or divinity, and because of this fictitious superiority being not of the peo- ple but a thing apart and above, not open to question of its infallibility or criticism of its acts, basing its practical power upon this fiction and wielding it with the weap- ons of physical force, thus setting physical force, directed by a power coming from 136 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC without, above and dominant over moral force coming from within the culture of the people. We repudiate and abandon the tradi- tion that neighboring nations are simply other highly developed tribes controlled by other chiefs, alike dominated by absolu- tism and physical force, and because for- eigners, not of us, probably or necessarily enemies, peace or war exists between us as our chiefs may direct through the chang- ing inter-play of their selfishness, whims, jealousies, quarrels or ambitions. We recognize the fact that whilst such traditions remain and have power in the regulation of the conduct of nations, how- ever polished or softened or disguised com- pared with their savage ante-types, the lives, liberty and happiness of a people are not secure within the guardianship of their own moral force, and civilization is far from reaching its ultimate ideal, the com- 137 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC plete domination of morality, justice in all human affairs. Toward this ideal we German people have striven, as other peoples have striven. We believe our intrinsic progress as a peo- ple has been as great as that of other peo- ples. Responsibility for survival to this day of middle-ages tradition, inconsistent with and harmful to modern social organi- zation, rests not upon us alone. We de- clare it the duty of every modern people to examine critically their own organiza- tion, take immediate steps to cast out all baneful survival, and to help not hinder their neighbors in like reformation. This we Germans are now doing. The System That Made the Crime Pos- sible We recognize the fact that civilization has made its greatest moral progress, its nearest approach to the ideal, in central 138 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC and western Europe and in the American continent; that a small group of nations of the first rank in population, resources, wealth, power, are virtually the leaders and moulders of modern civilization ; according as they go slowly or rapidly forward civi- lization in general moves slowly or rapidly ; if they take a backward step all civilization reverts or its progress is retarded. Upon these four or five great and advanced peo- ples rests responsibility for making civili- zation what it is. All of these world leaders have been lately at war, the American republic alone excepted. Those who should have led the march forward have reverted toward bar- barism and carried much of the world back- ward with them. They have involved man- kind in an agony of destruction and suffer- ing, much of the progress of a century ap- pears to have been lost at a single stroke. It is the judgment of neutral mankind, 139 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC and will doubtless be the judgment of His- tory, that this war broke upon the world in the complete absence of high or critical issue between the belligerents, no dispute between them of more than passing, small import to any, no quarrel involving vital principle or rights or even property or ad- vantage of real importance even when viewed with the narrowest selfishness, nothing at stake worth the sacrifice of even one human life. It is the judgment of neutral mankind, and will doubtless be the judgment of His- tory, that the war came because one or other or some group of the four or five nations of the first rank, virtual guardians of civilization, suffered an excess of tribal- ism and through blunder or crime of chief- tainship reverted to the ways of savagery and made war for purpose of robbery and subjugation. It is the further judgment of neutral 140 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC mankind, and will doubtless be the judg- ment of History, that once this reversion had taken place, the war once started, an issue of supreme importance was created. Begun over nothing, it now was a struggle for everything worth while — whether civi- lization was to go back toward barbarism with tribal chieftainship and physical force dominant in the organization of society and government, or whether it was to go for- ward toward the ultimate ideal of man- kind ruling itself through its developed moral forces scientifically organized. It was inevitable from the first, written in the book of fate, that the outcome, how- ever reached, however long and bloody was the road to it, must be the triumph of moral force. Any other verdict would have meant the collapse of civilization. Fixing of responsibility for this rever- sion is of the utmost importance to all mankind, because it is only in this way we 141 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC can know where the weakness of the former organization was, where the remedy must be applied and how, that the verdict may be made complete and permanent, that the world may not some day have to fight the ruinous fight all over again. Hence we German people are directly and earnestly concerned with the great question of re- sponsibility, hence our present action. Responsibility a Vital Question We are well aware it is the judgment of neutral mankind, and will doubtless be the judgment of History, that the German na- tion is chiefly responsible, that the rever- sion toward barbarism which engulfed in the struggle all but one of the four or five great nations, and many other nations, came from us. This judgment we the peo- ple of Germany, now that our eyes are self- opened, are forced to accept. We deem it the highest human quality to seek truth, 142 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC find it, face it even when it hurts self, man- fully admit fault, seek remedy, reparation, regeneration. It being human to err, this candid self-correction is of the essence of the process of moral progress, there can be no real moral progress, individual or national, without it. Responsibility for the war we the Ger- man people accept, with important quali- fications : First, that we Germans are not more to be blamed than the other great nations of central and western Europe for per- mitting survival of the spirit of tribalism, armed nationalism upon land and sea, physical force frowning and threatening behind all moral force in the relations of the nations ; Second, that a European power not of the advanced and most highly developed peoples but vast in area, population, po- tential strength, maintained much more 143 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC than any of the group of central and west- ern powers the tradition of tribe and abso- lutism, with great military prowess and autocratic authority to use it in attack upon others without the need of giving valid reason therefor to its myriad of vas- sal subjects; Third, that one of the highly developed nations, which had made signal progress in all other ways toward civilization's ideal, effected open alliance with this giant of absolutism with the avowed purpose of finding checkmate to Germany, one of the partners in this alliance being our neigh- bor on the west and the other our neigh- bor on the east, extensive frontiers be- tween our lands ; Fourth, that soon afterward a third member of the advanced group, a power which more than any other had maintained armed nationalism upon the high seas with the avowed and achieved purpose of mas- 144 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tery there, in spirit and effect if not in formal compact leagued itself with this al- liance of our eastern and western neigh- bors, also with the undisguised aim of find- ing checkmate to Germany. These facts show how those great na- tions who stood jointly responsible with Germany for maintenance of the forward march of civilization not only preserved the tribal tradition of physical force, with hostility to or fear of us as prime motive, but in hostility to or fear of us made open alliance with a power more mediaeval than any of us. These facts show how divided was re- sponsibility for survival of the system, how natural and inevitable was the conviction which spread in Germany that we were surrounded by a coalition of armed and powerful nations which some day soon or late we must contend against for our right to exist. 145 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC But having stated these qualifications of our responsibility, in our striving for the whole truth we reach and declare this as our belief : Morally advanced, democratic England and France leagued themselves with ill-de- veloped, autocratic Russia because they feared Germany; Their league inevitably convinced Ger- man authority, and to a large extent the German people, that we were surrounded by enemies; But we see now what we could not see before, that the purpose of England and France was not to attack Germany, but to prevent Germany attacking them by massing so much strength as to make Ger- man attack suicidal and therefore impos- sible ; The aim of England and France was not to break the peace of the world but to keep it. They would not themselves start war, 146 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Russia as their ally would not dare attack alone, they could restrain her, Germany would never rush against odds so heavy — peace was therefore assured in the check- mate of combined strength on land and sea. Such was the situation; such was the bulwark built to restrain the flood; it in- deed seemed impregnable ; confidence in the permanence of the armed peace was jus- tifiable. Then the war came — came to the con- sternation of the coalition, to the amaze- ment of the onlooking world, to the sur- prise of the German people. Where was the fatal weak spot in the ap- parently unbreakable barrier? "What gave way and let the torrent of barbarism sweep down upon all the lands I Who or what is responsible for the catastrophe 1 ? 147 THE GEKMAN EEPUBLIC The Fatefully Weak Spot in the Barrier We have sought that weak spot and found it : The true genius of our people lay in the realm of peace, not war. Our civilization had taken on high development, we had be- come a workshop for much of the world, our industrial empire lay out over the seas, the prosperity of all other peoples meant our prosperity, our highest interests de- manded only good relations with all man- kind. We had a government highly efficient at home, expressive there of the national character and will, setting a model which much of the world was glad to follow in municipal, community, common-social Ser- vice. With that government we were con- tent. Its minor imperfections we should remedy in our own time and way. Des- pite the tribal traditions it cherished, its 148 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC mediaeval outward form, its proud pre- tensions, some of the limitations it im- posed upon individualism and free citizen- ship, we had no fear that it contained an element of national danger. But we see now what for years our eyes could not see, that side by side with this shining exemplar of self-government for Service we were unsuspiciously maintain- ing the wholly inconsistent tribal tradition that the people exist only to serve the gov- ernment whenever the government elects to summon them; and this government not a creation of the people, evolved from their moral development, expressive of their character, responsible to their will, but a thing apart, superior, without the sense of direct responsibility, with a strong will of its own different in tendency and morality from the will of the people, adjusted to a different standard, moving in a different environment, affected by different tradi- 149 THF GERMAN REPUBLIC tions, at any moment likely to have differ- ent motive. We now see that our government was badly, inefficiently, inconsistently organ- ized. It was strong at home because evolved from the people, through the proc- esses of selection and perfection. It was weak and dangerous abroad be- cause all our foreign relations were left in the supreme control of this higher and dif- ferent authority. Of the actual state and significance of our political relations with our neighbors we the people knew little, only what the all-powerful higher agency permitted us to know, passed out to us with its own coloring or interpretation. Intel- ligent, forceful, effective public opinion in foreign affairs was an impossibility. We were psychologically and morally as well as physically and materially in the hollow of the hands of the mediaeval part of our national organization. 150 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC We see now that whilst we the people were laboriously building a great nation, among the foremost of the world's family, we negligently left in the hands of a caste, a small minority amongst us, the power to ruin all we had built. Looking inward we were a highly devel- oped, self-governing nation; looking out- ward we were a chief -ruled tribe of humble, ignorant vassals. The world-crisis, the pressure of events, came from without, caught Germany where German organization was weakest, most vulnerable, most dangerous, least expres- sive of the character and will of the na- tion, where the people, uninformed, child- like, were easily led to a spiritual stam- pede, easily made victims, dupes. Here was the weak point in the barrier against barbarism, here came the break that let in the deluge. We now see clearly why Europe was an 151 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC armed camp, why the coalition of advanced powers with a backward power was made, why the league was formed against Ger- many which led to the ghastly misunder- standing and blindness of our people and through that to the greatest earthly trag- edy. All Peoples for Peace— Yet War Came In Europe there were three highly devel- oped nations jointly responsible for the peace and progress of the world. In all three the peoples wanted peace, had no wish for conflict with their neigh- bors. In two of these nations the people re- tained government in their own hands, self- government, government of public opinion and public morality, government directly responsible to public opinion, existing and wielding power only so long as it expressed in policy and performance the will of its 152 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC creators, sure to be thrown out of office the moment it moved contrary to that will or in harm to the highest interests of the nation as judged by the people of the na- tion. In these two nations the people who wanted peace were able to have peace be- cause they retained in their own hands through such responsible and responsive government control of all relations with neighbors, control of all that might lead to war, control of the war-making power itself. But in the third of these sponsors for the world's peace and progress the people, though wanting peace as much as the oth- ers, were without ability to have peace be- cause they put out of their hands control of outer relations, placed supreme power in the hands of a higher and irresponsible agency, were without public opinion upon those relations or even adequate informa- 153 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC tion upon which to base opinion, public morality virtually abdicated as to all inter- national contact, and public feeling, trained to discipline and obedience, was itself a toy for the higher agency to manipulate and play with as it chose. In the third of these sponsors for the world's peace and progress the people through racial traits and tendencies had made themselves very many, had become great in energy and efficiency, powerful in wealth, resources, men. Though wanting peace for self-defense they had created the greatest, most highly organized, most for- midable army in the world. Mastery of this army like mastery of all dealings with other nations which might result in calling the mighty army to action, they turned over to the supreme agency. They turned themselves over, too, their opinions, their morality, all they possessed. They placed the power of life or death over themselves 154 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC and their land in an authority which was higher than themselves though not quite as high as God, somewhere between earth and sky, morally responsible to neither. When the peoples of the two nations saw all these things in the third, discussed, analyzed, understood them, they were afraid. They saw all this military prowess, all this practical potentiality of the popula- tion, all this blind obedience and subserv- ient devotion of the people, massed under the absolute domination of an authority, a caste, unmodern, mediaeval, militant, menacing, openly avowing the superiority of physical over moral force, gladly show- ing always to the outer world ill-concealed portent of will to translate that superiority into action. We see now why for a quarter of a cen- tury the predominant factor in the politi- 155 i THE GERMAN REPUBLIC cal life of Europe had been fear that Ger- many would break the world's peace. The World's Fear of Germany Germany was feared not because of the inner, actual essence of German culture, not because the German people of them- selves were internationally immoral and in danger of committing international crime, but because Germany was so strong, so efficient, so valorous, so prepared, so organized, so indomitable, for defense, plus because she had placed all this in the power of a system which had to be feared because it ever presented, through its inherent tendencies, the menace of changing defense to attack. We Germans did not fear because we were blind, because in the midst of rapid acquirement of wealth and influence and comfort and luxury we thought a system which made all this possible must be 156 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC strong and safe, because we knew we wanted only peace and could not bring ourselves even to the verge of fear that leaders enjoying our childlike trust could take such desperate hazard against such heavy odds and wantonly, heedlessly risk the fruits of generations of German prog- ress, play a million German lives in one wild cast for a bauble. We Germans now remember it was not England or France we feared in those long years of the armed peace ; we did not fear attack from them because we knew intui- tively that a self-governing people would not provoke an avoidable war. It was Russia we feared, with all her lack of mod- ern efficiency, and her we feared because we knew her rule was that of feudal ab- solutism. We do not forget that in the ex- planation of the war which our leaders first gave us it was Russia that bore down upon us in lust of conquest, France was 157 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC only her unwilling tool, England would not fight. "We are forced to reflect that if one au- tocracy feared another and did not fear democracy — if a highly efficient autocracy feared a poorly organized and inefficient autocracy simply because it was autocracy, not only must autocracy and militarism to- gether be the arch enemy of peace and civilization — But how much more natural that democ- racies, wishing peace, should fear a highly organized, compact, efficient autocracy like ours, tremendous national energy and com- plete national unity behind it, all under the high hand which had systematically rat- tled its sabre in the face of Europe, all un- der an oligarchy which had taught its obe- dient vassals that "war is a moral obliga- tion, and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization, ' ' that the German system is superior to all other systems and it is 158 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC a moral duty to spread it among other peo- ples with the sword. Placing the Guilt And it came to pass in this the twentieth century, in an age of culture and the sway of moral force, in a developed world so- ciety where all mankind mingles with all others and in all his contact, except through organized nationalism, demands and gives respect for life and property, in an era when distances are as nothing, oceans but narrow common highways, frontiers more theoretical than real, nations but conven- ient groups of humanity, tribes and chiefs, bludgeons and spears presumably known only to history and archaeology — All Europe armed through fear the tribe of Teutons may attack; All Germans armed for defense if Eu- rope attacks them; And then the Deluge of blood! 159 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Our devotion to our race and our land is great, but greater still is our love for truth. It is our sad duty to place the guilt, and we do it not for reproach, nor recrimina- tion, but to find the remedy, to seek regen- eration. Guilt falls upon him who broke the peace, who made the assault. Neighbors, long friendly, for some un- accountable reason grow mutually suspi- cious, each arms himself for defense in fear of the other, fear of attack, robbery, mur- der. Neither actually intends attack, each is sincere in preparing only for defense. If then in some fit of madness, some access of passion, one does take his weapon and go forth killing, burning, robbing, he is the criminal, the violator of law. He may not plead in justification his fear that his neighbor might attack him, for if both had waited till his neighbor turned 160 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC criminal there would have been no crime. If none of the European powers had abandoned the status of defense — which in the nature of things none could abandon without timely warning reaching the oth- ers — there would have been no war. All wanted peace, security for all lay in the status quo, the crime was his who broke it down. The war became because it was willed, because there was somewhere plot to profit at neighbor's cost, because somewhere high authority ceased to be protective of the vast interests entrusted to it and chose to turn predatory. Responsibility for this crime against civilization falls first upon those who broke the peace, it falls next upon those who through blindness or negligence main- tained a government in which such homi- cidal highwaymanry was possible, it falls last upon all the peoples who maintained 161 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the tribal system of armed peace with the inevitable danger that some time or other at one or another place the barrier would break and the catastrophe be precipitated. The Tribe That Was a Nation Must Be We see now that Germany is responsible at the judgment seat of Civilization and History because Germany alone of all the nations maintained in one mighty combina- tion: Irresponsible autocracy ; Government by caste with war its toy and weapon, superiority of physical force its philosophy and preachment; Formidable military prowess — ' ' the army the nation, the nation the army ; ' ' Vast industrial potentiality; A people great in numbers, proficiency, energy; Marvelous patriotic unity among them; This unity finding expression not in in- 162 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC telligent public opinion controlling the caste but in servilely permitting the caste to make public opinion to order, make war at will. Other nations contained some of these menaces, Germany alone had them all. All were required in combination to con- stitute menace of the first world magni- tude, Germany alone had the complete com- bination. We see now how civilization was inexor- ably forced to take its stand that this mighty menace could be permitted to ex- ist — Only in the midst of an armed defensive check-mate ; Only as long as it raised not its hand to strike. There was the fatal crime of our caste leadership, there the blunder worse than crime. It raised its hand to strike. 163 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Once it had struck the blow, it was then written in letters of fire that it must itself perish. It and modern civilization could exist only in armed truce ; now that it had broken the truce, now that conflict had come, one or the other must go down. While it is true that the armed strength of civilization was not great enough to de- stroy it — the valor of the German people has seen to that — it must and shall be de- stroyed nevertheless. The German people will attend to that also. We see now that a modern people must be masters of their own destinies; must have government by public opinion and public moral force abroad as well as at home; the public opinion of a grown peo- ple must be always well informed, free, self-acting, not made to order like the im- pressions of children; public opinion must be fed with truth, not with the husks from 164 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC which high authority has carefully ex- tracted the kernel ; the international moral- ity of a great people must not be at the mercy of a caste or minority with stand- ards lower than those of the people, am- bitions likely to run counter to the people's interests ; we no longer live in feudal days where the industrious millions from be- yond the moat may with safety place the power of life and death over them and their children in the hands of the warlike few of the castle. The authority in a nation to fix the in- ternational morality of a nation must be in the hands of those who made the na- tion. The power to make war must be wholly in the hands of those who are to bear the heat and burden of the war. The power to put a nation in peril of its life or its good repute must be wholly in the hands of those who are the nation. 165 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Our government of caste failed us. It betrayed and deceived the country. We German people had built up an empire of culture, good name, prosperity; our mili- tary oligarchy struck it down. If Germany is to rise again, regain her rightful place in the world, resume the true work of the genius of her people among human-kind, she must have a government representative at all points of German character, intelligence and will. Germany cannot exist half culture, half savage — half nation, half tribe. Germany cannot hold her rightful place in civilization and at the same time main- tain a system inimical and menacing to civ- ilization's peace and security — must go with the stream of human progress, not try to dam it up with the artificial barrier of brute strength. The German people, never hitherto be- lieving their organization contained such 166 THE GEEMAN EEPUBLIC menace, but now learning through bitter- ness the truth, would be unworthy to enjoy the blessings of modern civilization did they not arise and assert their manhood, awake and declare themselves their own masters. Therefore — We, Delegates feom the Twenty-six States op Germany, in National Con- gress Assembled at Berlin, Do Hereby Declare that the Existing Govern- ment, Having Lost the Confidence of the People, Shall No Longer Exist, and Is Hereby Deposed. In Its Place We Do Hereby Ordain that from and after this Day the Govern- ment of Germany Shall be Republican in Form, With a Constitution Adopted by the People, an Elected Chief Ex- ecutive, and a Representative Parlia- ment Chosen by Full Manhood and Womanhood Suffrage to Which the President and His Ministers Shall Ever Be Directly Responsible. 167 CHAPTER XI THE GREAT, GENTLE REVOLUTION" The German Revolution, like the Ger- man spiritual awakening which preceded it, came gently, softly. Not a drop of blood was shed, not a blow struck, no man was imprisoned, no punish- ment was inflicted on any one. During the whole period of the awaken- ing, the agitation, the self-assertion, no ar- rests were made. The police and military authorities were alike discreet, making no effort to interfere with the assemblages of the people. The movement was irresistible, over- whelming, in its massed intelligence, char- acter, resoluteness. Nothing could have stood before it, nothing tried to stand be- fore it. 168 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Softly as the succession of bright day- after a long, dark night came the Revolu- tion. The whole fabric of autocracy, di- vinely given power, military dominance, the rule of tradition, caste, clique, oli- garchy, the sway of physical force and hid- den intrigue, disappeared forever. All the artificial forms, all the relics of feudal days, all the pomp and trappings of regal power and military display, everything that was inconsistent with high-cultured modernism, faded quietly from view. The Provisional Government, established by the Congress, treated the Kaiser and all his family and entourage with the great- est respect and consideration. Public opinion would not have had it otherwise. There was general recognition of the fact that for a quarter of a century the Emperor had stood steadfast for peace, blocking in- numerable intrigues for war, and that he had at last succumbed only when the oli- 169 THE GERMAN EEPUBLIC garchy spun about him a net from which it was difficult for him to find his way. In many publicly adopted resolutions and ad- dresses the people expressed their appre- ciation of the character of the Kaiser, their gratitude for his signal services in aid of development of the industries and com- merce of the empire throughout his long reign. By order of the Provisional Government the Kaiser was appointed Prince of Heligo- land, with nominal powers, and when he and his family and suite, including the Crown Prince, were about to depart by special train for their future home on the rocky islet off the Frisian coast, half of Berlin gathered in the streets and at the railway station to bid him farewell. The German Emperor, but a short time before the most powerful monarch in the world, commander of millions of armed men, but now virtually a ward of his coun- 170 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC try, was touched by these demonstrations of the good will and magnanimity of the people, and left Berlin with tears in his eyes. No effort was made by the new govern- ment to punish the men who had plotted the war, deceived the German Emperor and the German people in furtherance of their unworthy ambitions. Many of these men were known, much evidence in detail con- cerning the deception which they had prac- tised became available, and if it had been desired they could have been brought to trial. But the aroused, clear-eyed men of Germany saw that these offenders had been but part of the unfortunate system which they themselves had permitted to exist, gave them benefit of doubt and assumed their fault was more blunder than crime, permitted them to disappear from public view unnamed, untouched, unpunished. In this way of dignity, generosity, for- 171 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC bearance, the German people effected one of the most momentous revolutions known to the pages of history. In a land where physical force had so long reigned supreme it seemed little could be done without its aid, where the doctrine of the superiority of might over right if only it be directed with discipline, skill, efficiency, had gath- ered vogue and pride till at last in sheer, mad excess of confidence in its own invin- cibility it had plunged a world into woe — In this land silent, unseeable, intangible, imponderable moral force had risen, scat- tered to the winds all the legions, all the great guns, all the bludgeons and swords of the rule of iron and blood, all the para- phernalia of the invincible armada of ab- solutism and brute strength accumulated through the generations and welded into the most nearly perfect, most powerful militant machine the world had ever seen — not only scattered them upon the winds 172 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC of oblivion, but did it without raising a hand in harshness, without vengeance, without punishment, with only gentleness. There was much sunshine in the land, the search for truth had found its prize, Germany was at last a nation. 173 CHAPTER XII THE TKEATY OF UNIVERSAL PEACE One of the first acts of the German Na- tional Congress was to issue formal invi- tation to all the belligerent nations to send delegates to a peace conference to be held at The Hague a fortnight later. This in- vitation was of course promptly accepted by all the governments, and their repre- sentatives met and began their work at the same time the German Congress was in session at Berlin. The first day of the treaty conference the representatives of France, England, Russia, Italy and their allies presented a formal declaration on behalf of their gov- ernments and their peoples, in substance as follows: 174 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC They had never been and were not now hostile to the German people; they bore no malice or hatred; they songht no pun- ishment, only the establishment of inter- national order and safety. They had never wished or sought the crushing of Germany, had never contem- plated break of the peace unless they were themselves attacked ; they had never wished and did not wish to take over any German territory, or to interfere in even the small- est degree with the right of the German people to work out their destiny in their own way at home and abroad. They had never sought and were not now seeking to place any restrictions whatso- ever upon German freedom of action with- in their inherent and equal rights as an equal member of the society of nations, either on land or sea. But they had sought, and now demanded that Germany should grant like freedom 175 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC and security to all other peoples, that Ger- man military aggression should no longer menace the peace of the world or the in- tegrity and security of neighboring states, that while the German people had full right to maintain at home any political system or government they chose they must aban- don forever all effort to force that system upon other peoples who were unwilling to accept it and preferred the system to which they were accustomed. The same day the German delegates pre- sented the Address to the World adopted by the Congress at Berlin a few days be- fore, and thus at the very outset of the con- ference it became apparent that the bellig- erents now stood for the same thing, that all had desired peace, that there never had been any rational cause of war, that all humanity were now as one for the sov- ereignty of moral law in all the relations of modern governments and peoples. 176 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC The following day the representatives of the new Germany proposed to restore all territory of other nations now held by Ger- man armies, to indemnify Belgium for all losses in accordance with the findings of an international commission to be created for that purpose, to indemnify all private losses in the war-swept areas of France and Poland also to be adjudged by other international commissions, and to give the people of Alsace and Lorraine opportunity to choose their future national allegiance, or to set up an independent principality under the protection of the signatory pow- ers, through a plebiscite. Within a week the Treaty of Peace was concluded and signed by the representa- tives of all the nations, and soon there- after was ratified by all the home gov- ernments. Its principal provisions, in ad- dition to the foregoing offered by Ger- many, were as follows : 177 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC No indemnities from nation to nation, excepting those provided in the German offer. Serbia restored to her former status with addition of certain areas inhabited by Ser- bians. All Poland, including the area formerly within Germany, made a self-governing state under the protection of the signatory powers. Turkish political power eliminated from Europe and confined to a part of Asia- Minor ; Constantinople and European Tur- key placed under an international govern- ment, with freedom of the straits to the shipping of all nations forever; the sur- viving Armenians segregated in a self- governing state under international protec- tion. Otherwise the status quo ante bellum was restored. The Treaty of Peace, received through- 178 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC out the world with warmest satisfaction, was followed by other events of such mo- mentous character that for a time man- kind was fairly bewildered. Greece, Roumania and Bulgaria deposed their kings in bloodless revolutions and set up democratic governments assuring full control by the people of all their affairs. The Czar of Russia issued an ukase in- creasing the powers of the Duma to such an extent that Russia became a self-govern- ing democracy, with a representative and responsible ministerial administration, an hereditary sovereign presiding, like Eng- land. The Duma was in session, and the first act of the Russian parliament was to re- lieve the Jews of all political disabilities and restrictions whatsoever. The English government at once gave Ireland full home rule with an inner local autonomy for Ulster. 179 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC The Turkish people reorganized their government along democratic lines, and the new government abolished all religious persecution or discrimination and offered adequate indemnification and succour to all Armenians who had suffered during the war. 180 CHAPTER XIII THE POEWABD MAECH OF CIVILIZATION Only a few days later, while the world was still rejoicing over the Peace and the German Political Reformation, there came another act of world statesmanship incom- parably greater in its effect upon the civil- ized peoples than the momentous events which had preceded it and prepared the way for it. The German National Congress unani- mously adopted, and the Provisional Gov- ernment immediately proclaimed to all the nations, the following epoch-making docu- ment : We, the Geeman People, denounce hu- man war as a relic of barbarism, incon- sistent with a modern civilization founded upon moral force, a calamity to mankind, 181 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC as unnecessary and insensate as it is sav- age and devastating. We declare the use or the fear of the use of physical violence in regulating the relations of one nation with another is as violative of morality as the use of like physical violence in the relations of indi- vidual man with his neighbor or business competitor. We denounce the system of intensely selfish nationalism, armed on land and sea, made formidable by hysteric tribalism called patriotism, inherently threatening neighbors with physical violence, forcing all neighbors to arm for self-defense but with inevitable danger that at any moment fear, misunderstanding, blunder, passion or crime may change defense to assault, as a survival of feudalism and the predatory rivalries of barbaric chieftains, a scourge to humanity and a disgrace to civilized mankind. 182 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC "We declare that in the present develop- ment of civilization, where morality reigns as the law of society within each of the ad- vanced nations, where justice rules, rights, life and property are protected by law and physical violence attack upon them is pun- ishable as crime, like morality must reign between nations, appeal to physical vio- lence in the name of nationalism must be treated as crime on a larger scale punish- able under society's international law, an armed peace portending possible criminal war must be made as unnecessary, unlaw- ful and impossible between neighboring nations as between neighboring individuals, families, villages or cities. We declare that in the present state of civilization where the killing of one man for selfish purpose within a frontier is murder in the eyes of society, the killing of a million men for selfish purpose beyond a frontier must be a million murders in 183 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the eyes of the society of all mankind — one people of the earth in their dnty to respect the moral law and their right to receive in return the protection of that law, moral- ity being universal, limited by no frontiers. We declare that while in the present as in the past status of human existence the inhabitants of the earth must be subdivided into groups for ethnical, geographical and social reasons, nations and nationalism must remain, all are mere families of the human race, all rivalries, jealousies, hatreds, animosities, hostilities between them, other than peaceful competition in the arts, sciences, industry, commerce, are relics of barbarism and must be abolished. It has been charged against us German people that we more than any other of earth's families were responsible for per- sistence of the traditional rivalry with threat of armed aggression in culmination thereof, because we were the most closely 184 THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC knit, most perfectly unified, most efficient and energetic of the great peoples who per- mitted the power of making war to remain within the control of a feudal system with standards less moral than those of the peo- ple, more to gain and less to lose than the people by resort to the desperate hazard of war, therefore more dangerous to the peace of the world. If German unity, strength, energy, in- tense nationalism, combined with the ar- chaic form of our government, have given us leadership among the peoples of earth in military prowess, made us the most feared and most dangerous members of the human family, compelled others to arm in fear of possible aggression from us and thus re- tained in the world the immoral and bar- baric system of physical violence as the ultimate tribunal of international dispute, that is a distinction, a leadership, a respon- sibility which we the German people never 185 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC sought, which was thrust upon us by cir- cumstances, which we would not keep if we could, which we now cast away, and re- nounce forever. We have corrected the defect in our or- ganization by establishing a German gov- ernment which shall henceforth conform to the universal moral law in dealing with other nations as we the people have always wished to conform and had been deceived into the belief that our government wished to conform. It shall never again be pos- sible for the world to hold Germany re- sponsible, directly or indirectly, in whole or in part, for reversion of civilization backward to the physical violence and criminality of man's savage era. Henceforth the German nation will never encroach, nor seek to encroach or threaten to encroach upon the rights of its neigh- bors. Maintenance of the system of preserving 186 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC international peace by international pre- paredness to make war is shown by the ex- perience of mankind to be senseless, sav- age, dangerous, ruinous. It is a senseless and savage system which every nation must of necessity preserve as long as it is preserved by its neighbors. It is a senseless and savage system which diverts a large part of the energies of man- kind from man's service to man's harm, which all mankind knows should be abol- ished, but which all mankind retains be- cause of the absence of intelligent co-opera- tive action by the nations. The absence of such co-operative action in suppression of a common plague is dis- graceful to the morality and the intelli- gence of modern civilization, is humiliat- ing confession of a truly barbaric impo- tency to act with others for the good of all. If ours is in whole or part the responsi- bility for survival of that system and for 187 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the great war which grew out of it, we wish to atone by taking action which shall forever abolish the system and forever make human war an impossibility. We, the German People, hereby propose to the world : We Stand Ready, Immediately, to Sign Tbeaties of Peepetual Peace and Aebi- tbation op all Intebnational Disputes Without Exception oe Reserve with all Othee Nations. We Stand Ready, Immediately, in Con- currence With Other Nations, to Dis- band Our Armies, Dismantle Our Navy, Raze Our Fortifications, Convert Our Munition Works, Melt Oue Guns, Stop all. Military Seevice. We Stand Ready to Join Other Na- tions in Creating a Supreme Coubt of the Woeld to Decide all Appeals fbom Tbi- BUNALS OF AbBITBATION, ThEIB DECISION TO be Final. We Stand Ready to Join Otheb Na- tions in Establishing Undeb the Abso- lute and Peepetual Conteol of the Su- peeme Coubt of the Woeld an Intebna- tional constabulaby fobce on land and 188 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Sea With Powee to Enfoece the De- cisions OF THE COUET IN CASE OF NEED, Punish oe Discipline Recalciteants oe Offendees Against Inteenational Law and moeality, police the woeld foe reg- ulation oe coeeection of ill-developed oe Peimitive Peoples oe Teibes. In Puesuance of This Oue Peoposal to Abolish Foeevee Human Wae and the Waste of Human Eneegy in Peepaeation foe War and to Set Up in Theie Place the Rule of Untveesal Moeal Law With Efficient Means of Peeseeving Inteena- tional Peace, Oedee and Secueity — We Heeeby Invite all the Nations of the Eaeth to Send Fully Empoweeed Delegates to an Inteenational Disarma- ment and Univeesal Peace Confeeence to be Held at The Hague, Decembee Twen- ty-Fifth, This Yeae. 189 CHAPTER XIV GERMANY AT LAST CONQUERS THE WORLD Promulgation of the foregoing produced a world effect which was one of the most wonderful things known to the history of mankind. It was as if the earth had been swept by a prolonged, furious storm, all nature stricken, all human spirit heavy, downcast. Suddenly the elements became still, the gloom lifted, brilliant sunshine illumined earth and sky, the world was once more fit and good to live in. Germany's self -regeneration and her leadership of the nations in the epoch- making upward leap of civilization were hailed from one end of Christendom to the other with indescribable joy. Meetings, parades, jubilations, divine 190 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC services with prayer and song of gratitude, were held in every country. For days half the human race ceased its normal activities and gave itself up wholly to expression of its new happiness. Untold millions of people caught up the thought that the German people, uncon- quering and unconquered in the arena of physical force, had now the glory of a com- plete and enduring conquest of the world through inspiring moral leadership. Germany was at once with loud acclaim restored to her former place in the esteem, the confidence, the affections of all the peo- ples of the earth. All reproaches, all bit- terness were wiped away in a moment. A mighty wave of fraternal feeling ran through humanity. The soldiers of France, Germany, Eng- land, Russia, Austria, Italy, all who had remained in peaceful contact throughout the period of the armistice along the former 191 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC lines of battle, now advanced weaponless beyond their fronts, met and commingled with their former foe, embraced one an- other, called one another brave brothers, and many grim warriors were not ashamed to be seen crying like women. For hundreds of miles along the fronts where fierce war had so lately raged, the soldiers of all the armies vied with another in making expeditions in force beyond their trenches, marching with flying flags and bands of music at their head across the shell-scarred space, carrying flowers and placing them reverently upon the graves of their fallen foemen. Along the frontiers the people of thou- sands of cities, towns and villages, in spon- taneous outburst of the long fettered hu- man impulse to look upon all others as kinsmen, gave fetes and feasts in honor of their invited guests from across the border. 192 THE GEKMAN KEPUBLIC In America, where dwell so many of the sons and daughters of all the lands late at war, international fraternization was universal. In few places of all Christendom could one walk upon the streets or highways where people were to be met without seeing, hearing, feeling or sensing the depth of the joy that had entered all hearts. . To hundreds of millions of war-worn men and women of the fighting lands, long heavy with the burden of pain, fear, doubt, loss, suffering, the long vigil of sickened soul and nerves strained near to the break- ing point, it was as if they had been through a prolonged, severe illness and now were well and strong again. For three years a German oligarchy had made all the world feel old; now the Ger- man people had made all the world feel young. 193 THE GEEMAN BEPUBLIC No such uplifting of the spiritual na- ture of man had ever happened. The few comparable events of the past — if any preceding event could be compared with it in effect upon the welfare and hap- piness of the human race — had become gen- erally known only after the lapse of weeks, months, or years. By modern means of world communi- cation and the millions-multiplied is- sues of the modern press, virtually all the peoples of all civilization were al- most instantly possessed of these glad tidings. Thus it came so much more dramatically. It was spectacular, convulsive. All man- kind felt at the same moment the same in- spiration of joy over a mighty blessing fall- ing suddenly out of the sky. The great momentum of mass psychology was never before illustrated on a scale so large and intense. Compared with it the mass unity 194 THE GEKMAN EEPUBLIC and enthusiasm of the Germans, the French, at the beginning of the war, im- pressive and splendid as they were, wore a narrower aspect. For now there were no clouds of cruel selfishness upon the bright scene, no specters of death and destruction lurking in shadows. Intuitively millions of men compared their present exaltation of spirit, their feel- ing of oneness and brotherhood with all mankind, with their mental state when na- tionalism, patriotism, duty to country had summoned them forth to effort and to sac- rifice. Fine, noble, human as they knew that was, worthy, uplifting, strengthening, purifying, in contrast with that which they now felt it seemed to many of them some- what petty, without vision or depth, the momentary joy of a child. This was the deep-running content of a fully developed, strong man proud of the race of which he was a part. 195 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC That other spelled something primitive in man's nature, rivalry of brnte strength, struggle, blow for blow, tribe against tribe, the weaker going down, the stronger gain- ing as prize for his prowess the little con- tent of the spearman's pride in a duty done and the greater discontent of civilized man's wonderment as to why he had struck the other down and why such striking and struggling were among the needs of his civilization. This was so much higher, so much nearer the skies and the infinite, took so much hatred, selfishness, violence, danger, an- guish out of life, opened up such possibili- ties of nobler things, that it seemed as if mankind had been born again, was a new race with a better organism, more perfect functioning, inhabiting a remade world in which good health and good feeling and good works instead of disease, suffering, hatred, evil, were contagious. 196 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC Instantly, too, all the world realized the true significance of the event. War at an end, armament at an end, navies at an end, all the taxation, the wealth, the energy, the resources these had ab- sorbed, all this heavy burden on the backs of the people, released for employ- ment in better ways. For it was already certain that universal disarmament and outlawry of war were at hand. Before Germany had proposed it her statesmen — for now that the people ruled their land the genius of the gifted race was bringing forth state leaders of the highest rank, vision and quality — knew that America, England, France, Austria, Italy, and other impor- tant nations would join. Their adherence, every one at once saw, meant universal ac- ceptance, meant that if any power, great or small, elected to stay without the pale, keep a national army or navy, and employ these physical forces in breaking the peace 197 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC or other violation of the moral law of uni- versal society, such armies and navies were sure to fall into the clutches of the inter- national police. In response to this unfettering of such vast resources hitherto squandered in in- struments for striking men down, there passed through all the peoples a wave of redoubled activity in all works for lifting men up. In education, charity, health, hy- giene, sanitation, housing, hospitals, homes, social co-operation, industrial training, teaching the prevention of disease, com- munity uplift, the social canker, ameliora- tion of the ills of the defective, unfortu- nate or perverted, in every field of human helpfulness there was renewed and en- larged activity, more money to use, more men and women to work for humanity. From the greater and more developed nations more energy went forth into the byways and remote places and out among 198 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC the lowlier, more backward peoples to help, to ward off contagion and disease, mini- mize suffering, abate poverty, educate the ignorant, save babies, save girls and women, fight vice and degradation, scour squalor, encourage mercifulness to man and beast, tear down the tyranny of custom, tradition, habit, to raise the average of hu- man worthiness and human happiness. Government vied with government in finding and putting in motion new agencies of service, new ways of promoting the wel- fare, prosperity and contentment of their peoples. The best of German organized efficiency and discipline, its staying of the hand of greed and insistence upon fair wage and decent life for all toilers, its pa- ternal helpfulness to the infirm, the hurt, the aged, the luckless who needed help, its skill in minimizing poverty and in making the humblest home and the poorest street of the slums brighter, cleaner, more livable, 199 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC its genius for well ordered housekeeping, for teaching, training, man-building, found imitators and followers everywhere. Ger- man culture did indeed spread over the earth, pushed by the helping hand and not forced by the mailed fist. The nations organized to fight and con- quer the white plague, gave to that noble effort a part of the energies they had for- merly employed in maintenance of the plague of physical violence and war. Ger- man science and chemistry, released from the task of compounding material for liquid fires and noxious gases to thrust at their neighbors, invented a specific for tubercu- losis which a grateful world received as manna with which to save untold millions of human lives and avert untold ages of human woe. There soon spread over the world reali- zation of the revolutionary and inspiring fact that now no man could have as enemy 200 THE GERMAN REPUBLIC anywhere in the world another man. Henceforth his only enemies wonld be those of nature's making, ill-health, dis- ease, contagion, poverty, plague, hurtful habit, moral and physical weakness, and that all mankind would be his friend and brother in fighting these. The millennium had not come. Nature's law of struggle, survival of the fittest, was not repealed. But mankind had reached the stage of spiritual growth where he was determined to soften as much as lay in his power the austerity of that fundamental law, play the game like a man not like a savage, be no longer parasite or wild beast, live but help to live, the strong to protect not prey upon the weak. There were even dreams, not unrealizable in this regener- ated race, of the quick coming of the day when individual like governmental energies would be consecrated to human service, when gluttony for needless and selfishly 201 THE GEBMAN EEPUBLIC used wealth would be as much taboo as swinish gluttony for excess of food and drink. Pain is not banished from the world, but pleasure predominates, and all society co- operates its activities in minimizing the one and augmenting the other. The millennium had not come. But the open, glassy, accusing eyes of women and children floating out to the Atlantic from the Lusitania's shattered hull, countless new graves dotting the European ravines and hillsides, myriads of human hearts sore with suffering, bereavement, wreck, ruin, throughout the years of man's mad- ness, had not after all been in vain. Out of the darkness, the travail, the agony, the crime, the seeming reversion of civilization to savagery, had come a much brighter and better world. THE END. 202 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: y»y 7f\Cti PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724) 779-2111