ii J> wm &S-lP.:H Book ^A/^t— WAR BOOK OF THE UNIVERSITY' OF WISCONSIN PAPERS ON THE CAUSES AND ISSUES OF THE WAR BY MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON 19m o5 1^^'> COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION WiLLARD G. BlEYER Professor of Journalism G. C. FlSKE Associate Professor of Latin Edward H. Gardner Assistant Professor of English Grant M. Hyde Assistant Professor of Journalism Frederic A. Ogg Professor of Political Science Frederic L. Paxson Professor of History F. C. Sharp, Chairman Professor of Philosophy The material in this volume is not copyrighted and may be used without the permission of the authors or of the University of Wisconsin. Approved by the Committee on Public Information, Washing- ton, D. C. D. of D« AUG 5 1918 PREFACE This book brings together articles on the war written by members of the faculty of the University of Wisconsin and published week by week during the academic year 1917-18, as the University of Wisconsin War Pamphlets. An edi- tion of 20,000 copies of each pamphlet was distributed in Wisconsin, upon request, to individuals, public libraries, traveling libraries, high schools, and county councils of de- fense. Since the number of requests for these pamphlets greatly exceeded the size of the edition authorized, it has been thought desirable to reprint them in permanent form. In addition to the pamphlets a series of shorter news- paper articles on the same subjects was prepared by the writers for publication each week in Wisconsin daily and weekly papers. These newspaper articles, which were also translated into German by members of the German De- partment of the University, were sent out in stereotype I)lates by the Wisconsin State Council of Defense to four hundred AViseonsin papers printed in English and to forty papers printed in German. These articles discuss the causes of the war, the methods pursued by Germany in carrying it on, the conditions under which the United States entered the conflict, and the sig- nificance of the war as a world-wide struggle between autoc- racy and democracy. The aim in preparing the longer articles which are here brought together has been to present in concise form the most important material bearing on the questions at issue, for readers who have not had the opportunity of exam- ining for themselves the documentary evidence. For per- 4 PREFACE sons who desire to make a further study of various phases of the subjects discussed, carefully selected bibliographies have been supplied. The newspaper articles and the pamphlets, as well as this volume, have been prepared and published under the direction of the Committee on War Publications of the Uni- versity Faculty. The writers have had access to all of the available material relative to the war, much of which was especially collected and sifted by the committee. The arti- cles are not the product of casual impressions, committed to paper in the intervals of professional work. Each one represents a serious study on the part of the author, and was written in cooperation with the committee and with the other contributors to the series. This book is thus literally the joint product of the work of a considerable number of persons, many of whom have given a large amount of time to its production. CONTENTS PART I WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WAR? PAGE INTRODUCTIOX H I. Germany's Secret War Council 0". J. Campbell, Jr., Assistant Professor of Englisli Direct evidence of the meeting — Diplomats prepare a trap — An imitation of Bismarck's strategy — Ger- many provokes Russian mobilization — Germany long determined to force war — 1914 Germany's moment to strike — The Lichnowsky and Miihlon revelations. ... 15 II. Germany's A:.:mTioN for World Power Frederic A. Ogg, Professor of Political Science The mania for conquest — The army and navy as instru- ments — The Berlin government blocks armament re- duction — Stirring up war fever — Arbitration propos- als and treaties of no avail — Was Germany a guar- dian of peace? 30 III. Why Germany Wanted War G. C. CoMSTOCK, Dean of the Graduate School German thought and will — Pan-Germanism — Pan-German dreams — Pan-Germany today — Our danger and our duty — Supplementary note from a recent German Chancellor 45 IV. How Germany Explains Her Acts Charles E. Allen, Professor of Botany A wrong confessed — Not so wrong after all — Dernburg explains the violation of Belgium — Yet another offi- cial explanation — "Necessity" fails to justify the crime — The case of Russia — The conclusion of the whole matter Gl CONTENTS PAGE V, Why Russia, F'RA^CE and Britain Entered the War G. C. Sellery, Professor of History Russia protects Servia against Austria — The Russian mobilization — France as an ally of Russia — Britain's policy with respect to Belgium — ^Britain and Ger- many ' 75 PART II HOW- GERMANY MAKES WAR VI. Did Germany Wrong Belgium? G. C. FiSKE, Associate Professor of Latin Belgium a neutralized state — August 2, 1914 — Belgium forced into war — Germany's charges — The Belgian "secret documents" — Germany's duplicity — What the attack on Belgium means to us 89 VII. How Germany Makes War M. S. Slaughter, Professor of Latin Civilians as screens — Hostages — The policy of extermina- tion — Deportations — The accused advertises his crimes 101 VIIL What "FrigHtfulness" Means E. B. McGiLVARY, Professor of Philosophy Germany's obligations under the Hague Agreement — The spirit of the German War Manual — Germany's de- nial of laws of war — ^Germany's instructions contrary to the Hague Agreement — Germany supports Hague Agreement only when to her interest — The policy of f rightfulness was adopted in time of peace 119 IX, Germany's War on Neutrals W. H. Page, Professor of Law Organized piracy — Picking a quarrel with Denmark — "No ministers abroad, only spies" — Disease germs for Roumania — Bombs for Norwegian ships — "Spurlos versenkt" — Running amuck 131 CONTENTS X. How Germany Overthrew International Law John Bradley Winslow, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin Definition of international law — Barbarian warfare knew no law — Growth of international law— Germany's violations of international law — The Prussian phil- osophy of war-^What a victory of Prussianism means PAGE 141 PART III MILITARISM IN GERMAN LIFE AND THOUGHT XL German Autocracy and Militarism W. F. Giese, Professor of Romance Languages The old and the new Kultur in Germany— Nature of the German state — Excesses of militarism — Militarism in German education— Militarism and the soldier- Militarism and the civilian— Subordination of the lower classes ^^^ XIL Some Moral and Religious Ideas of Modern Ger- many F. C. Sharp, Professor of Philosophy Friedrich Nietzsche— Heinrich von Treitschke— The Ev- olutionists ^^^ PART IV THE UNITED STATES AND GERMANY XIII. Our Right to Ship Munitions Edward B. Van Vleck, Professor of Mathe- matics Was the sale of munitions legal?— Was it neutral?— Was it moral?— Was it wise? ^^^ CONTENTS Pas^e XIV. Germany's War on Us in Time of Peace William A. Scott, Director of the Course in Commerce Germany the foe of democracy — Twenty years of in- trigue — ^Sowing the seeds of domestic dissension — A campaign of corruption — The resort to violence — Hiding behind lies — America's response 193 XV. German Submarines and the British Blockade Carl Russell Fish, Professor of History What freedom of the seas means — British blockade meth- ods — German submarine methods — The United States and the British blockade — The United States and the German submarines — The German pleas — The Brit- ish case versus the German 203 PART V THE ISSUES AT STAKE XVI. Germany's Gain from Germany's Defeat Charles S. Slighter, Professor of Applied Mathematics, and George Wagner, As- sistant Professor of Zoology The government of Germany — The Prussian system — The power of the war-lord — Manufacturing public opin- ion — ^The caste system — Germany's gain from Ger- many's defeat 213 XVII. Why Workingmen Support the War ^ John R. Commons, Professor of Economics American industrial democracy — The German menace to American labor — German socialistic imperialism — True international democracy — What we are doing for the soldiers — Who are paying the taxes — ^Who are determining prices — The war and the workingman. . 225 CONTENTS 9 Page XVIII. If Germany Wins William H. Kiekhofer, Associate Professor of Economics The price of defeat — The perpetuation of Pan-Germany — Militarism and the certainty of another war — The death of democracy — A staggering indemnity 241 XIX. "The World Must be Made Safe for Democracy" W. L. Westermann, Professor of History The Servian democracy and its fate — The fate of the Bel- gian people — Germany and the Baltic states — Rus- sia betrayed — Why we must fight for democracy in Europe 253 INTRODUCTION The following papers trace the steps by which the United States has been transformed in less than three years from a peaceful nation to a democracy in arms, fighting for its very existence. The papers in Part I discuss the question, Who is re- sponsible for the war? In Germany's Secret War Council we see the guiding spirits of the German autocracy gather- ing at Potsdam on July 5, 1914 and deliberately deciding to use the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince as a pre- text for starting a world war. In Germany's Ambition for World Power is supplied the evidence that the decision for war was no sudden impulse but the culmination of the am- bitions, plans, and policies of at least two decades. Why Germany Wanted War shows what were the prizes which tempted the German ruling classes to thrust aside alike the claims of honor and humanity and the counsels of prudence in order to play the role of conquerors. How Germany Explains Her Acts attempts to put the finishing touch upon the proof of Germany 's responsibility for the war by show- ing through the study of a particular instance (Belgium) that the German official apologists in defending their case argue as no one ever argues who has a good cause to de- fend. Incidentally it also shows how much reliance can be placed alike upon the statements and promises of the Ger- man Government. WJiy Russia, France, and Britain En- tered the War explains why Russia defended Servia against the aggressive designs of Austria and exhibits Russia as re- quiring from Servia a conciliatory attitude toward the de- mands of the Austrian government. It further points out 12 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK that France was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, and that Britain was bound alike by ties of honor and self-interest to defend Belgium. It also reveals these countries working desperately to avert a catastrophe which (as they could not know at the time) had been fully de- termined upon by their opponents in advance. Part II exhibits Germany at war. In the first paper, Bid Germany Wrong Belgium, we find Germany starting her career of European conquest by violating the neutral- ity of Belgium. This is shown to have been a crime against civilization and to threaten the very existence of all small states. How Germany Makes War presents the German army in action in Belgium, northern France, and Poland. It is adjudged guilty of systematic atrocities, ordered by the German High Command to break the spirit of Germany's enemies. The paper entitled What Fright- fulness Means describes the German War Manual compiled by the General Staff for the guidance of its officers in war. It proves that f rightfulness, or ' ' Schrecklichkeit ", was a policy not adopted hastily under the stress of circum- stances after the outbreak of hostilities, but was a part of the general war policy deliberately devised by the military authorities years before in time of peace. In Germany's War on Neutrals may be seen the successful extension of the same system of Frightfulness to all neutrals whose rights stand in the way of Germany's success. How Germany Overthrew International Law completes and summarizes the indictment. It presents the alternative, the Law of Frightfulness or the Law of Nations, and shows that the latter must triumph if civilization is to endure. Part III discusses the nature and some of the causes of the German militaristic spirit. German Autocracy and Mil- itarism describes this spirit as it finds expression in the words of German leaders, and as it and its twin brother, INTRODUCTION 13 the spirit of autocracy, manifest themselves in German life. In so doing it offers a suggestion as to the fate in store for the United States if this spirit through victory should gain the power to shape American social and polit- ical institutions. Sojne Moral and Religious Ideas of Mod- ern Germany is a study of certain writers who have con- tributed much to the more repulsive forms of militaristic ideals and have done more than their share in arousing in their fellow-countrymen a feeling of the necessity, the beauty, and the glory of war. Part IV deals with America's entrance into the war. Our Right to Ship Munitions considers Germany 's earliest cause of hostility toward us and proves it to be entirely without justification, since it represents a right recognized by international law, — a right, indeed, indispensable to a peace-loving democracy. Germany 's War on Us in Time of Peace exhibits Germany making war against us on our own soil from the autumn of 1914. Finally, the paper German Submarines and the British Blockade tells how Germany tried to force us off the seas, the open highway of the nations. Part V presents the fundamental issues of the war. It shows what difference it makes to us and the world whether we win or lose. In Germany's Gain from Germany's De- feat the destruction of the German military system, which exploits the German common people for its own ends, is proved to be the only hope for the true well-being of Ger- many itself. Why Workingmen Support the War shows the stake of American workingmen in the war and the ex- tent to which they share in its conduct. If Germany Wins brings home the consequences to us of a German victory. Such a victory would mean that hereafter the people of America would live their lives under the menacing shadow of Greater Germany. Face to face with the alternative, 14 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK be prepared to fight or to perish, we should be compelled to introduce the abhorred militaristic system of Europe; and we should always have to reckon with the danger of the ultimate extinction of our democratic form of govern- ment, and even of the submergence of our separate national existence into a new World Empire, as despotic and all- embracing as was that of Rome. The last paper of the series, "The Woi'ld Must Be Made Safe for Democracy," leads by a different road to the same conclusion. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey are showing — in Belgium, in Servia, in Armenia, and in the states but yesterday freed from the grip of Russian autocracy — what enormities they are capable of committing where they have secured the power to follow their own will. They are serving notice upon us that our sympathies and our concern for our own future alike call us to make common cause with the world's democracies. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 By 0. J. CAMPBELL. JR. Assistant Professor of English The world at last knows just how and when Germany- decided to launch this stupendous war. On July 5, 1914, the Kaiser presided at a meeting of German and Austrian military leaders, diplomats, and big business men in Ber- lin or at his palace at Potsdam. There this irresponsible group determined to use the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince at Serajevo on June 29 as an opportunity to pro- voke the great war which Germany had long been prepar- ing. The truth of this assertion can now be established by evidence which is overwhelming. DIRECT EVEDENOE OF THE MEETING The most direct evidence of this meeting comes from Constantinople. Early in July, 1914, Herr Wangenheim, the German Ambassador to Turkey, was hastily summoned to Berlin. When he returned to his post on July 15, he told the Italian Ambassador, Signor Garroni, the purpose of his journey. The two men were intimate friends; be- sides, a confidential communication to the representative of one of Germany's supposed allies was natural. At any rate, he told Signor Garroni that he had been summoned to Berlin to attend a meeting of German diplomats, mili- tary men and financiers. He had been called to report on 16 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK the Turkish situation. The conference, he said, had de- cided upon a European war. Signor Garroni asked him in some surprise what the provocation was to be. He re- plied that an Austrian note to Servia on the Serajevo mur- ders was to make demands of a sort that would surely lead to war. All this Signor Garroni reported officially to his government.^ These circumstances are corroborated inci- dentally by Mr. Einstein, at that time member of our le- gation in Constantinople. He asserts in a letter to The London Times'^ that Signor Garroni reported to him the conversation with Herr Wangenheim and that the revela- tion made so great an impression on him that he wrote it down in his diary. Our own ambassador to Turkey, Mr. Henry L. Morgen- thau, received an even more detailed account of this meet- ing from Herr Wangenheim.^ In an outburst of enthusi- asm at the arrival in the Dardanelles of the Goehen and Breslau — vessels whose escape from the British fleet Herr Wangenheim had directed by wireless — he became confi- dential. He told Mr. Morganthau that he had attended a conference in Berlin at which the date for beginning the war had been positively fixed. The Kaiser had presided. Von Moltke, the chief of staff, was present ; so was the sin- ister Admiral von Tirpitz. The leaders of industry, the di- rectors of railways, the bankers were present, — everyone, in fact, whose aid would be necessary for carrying on the war. The representative of each interest was asked in turn if he was ready for war. All answered in the affirmative, except the financiers. They asked for two weeks in which ^New York Nation, Sept. 6, 1917. 2 London Times, Aug. 4, 1917. 3 The New York World, October 14, 1917. A fuller statement by Mr. Morganthau is to be published in The World's Work for June, 1918. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5. 1914 17 to arrange their loans and to unload their foreign securi- ties. This is picturesque and circumstantial evidence from an eye-witness. Direct corroborative evidence of the authenticity of this meeting comes from the Reichstag itself. Herr Haase, the Socialist deputy, on replying to the Chancellor's state- ment about the origins of the war, said, ' ' We do not forget the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, nor the conference in Berlin, on July 5, 1914, and the activity of von Tirpitz and Falkenhayn in those days. ' '* This statement fixes the date of the meeting, the proceedings of which Herr Wan- genheim has described. We have, moreover, abundant additional evidence to confirm the truth of his description. From July 10 to July 25, 1914, all the great stock markets in the world ex- perienced an acute and mysterious depression. For ex- ample, on the New York stock exchange in that interval Union-Pacific slumped from 1543^ to 125l^; B. and 0. from 901/4 to 78%. At that time financial experts were completely baffled by the decline. Now we can see that German bankers were making use of the time given them to unload their foreign securities. German owned stocks were quietly pushed into the market in such quantities that prices were forced down violently. Then the bankers, too, were ready and on July 25 the provocative Austrian ulti- matum to Servia was sent. * London Times, July 23, 1917, quoted from the Leipziger Volkszeitung of July 20, 1917. 2— W. B. 18 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK DIPLOMATS PREPAKE A TRAP From July 5 to July 25, German and Austrian diplomats acted like men about to spring a trap. Count Tisza, later Austrian premier, confesses in an interview with Col. S. S. McClure^ that Austria thought when it sent its note to Servia that the chances of Eussia 's interference were about fifty-fifty. Such interference they knew meant a general European war. Yet Berchtold, the Austrian foreign min- ister, at the very moment at which he was composing the provocative note to Servia, assured the Italian ambassador to Vienna that the situation was not grave.® Viviani, the French Premier, in a speech in the Chamber of Deputies, Aug. 4, 1914, said that the Austro-Hungarian government had repeatedly given assurance that its demands upon Servia would be ''extremely moderate".'^ If Austria had been sincere in her desire to settle a local quarrel with Servia, would she deliberately have concealed her intention from the nations of the world, including her ally — Italy? By no means. Her actions are preeminently those of a nation about to spring a carefully set trap. GERMANY IMITATES BISMARCK'S STRATEGY Germany, too, deliberately lulled the world into a sense of false security. The Kaiser went in his yacht to Norway. The Chancellor left Berlin for a rest. The diplomats, al- most without exception, went on their accustomed summer vacations. In this respect the German officials were imitat- ing Bismarck's strategy. In fact, the resemblance between ^Obstacles to Peace, p. 56. « English White Papers, No. 1. ''^ Beck, James M., The Evidence in the Case, p. 32. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 19 their actions in 1914 and Prussia's in 1870 are too great to be accidental. Bismarck sought to provoke France through Spain by putting forward Prince Leopold of Ho- henzollern as a candidate for the Spanish throne. He struck at what he knew to be a cardinal principle in French foreign policy. Yet he could maintain the fiction that the question was one that concerned Spain alone, — this in spite of the fact that the Prince himself accepted the throne against his will at a war council presided over by the King of Prussia and attended by army chiefs, ' ' to ren- der a great service to the fatherland".*^ In the same way Germany sought to provoke Russia and France through Austria's quarrel with Servia. This, too, she maintained persistently was a local matter in which Germany and the rest of Europe had no vital interest. Yet a Prussian war- council, as formidable as that which imposed the Spanish candidature upon Prince Leopold, determined that a pro- vocative Austrian note be sent to Servia. After this step had been taken, Germany prepared an alibi just as she had in 1870. In 1870, as in 1914, it was the holiday season when diplomats were not at their posts. The German offi- cials in 1870, too, left Berlin. The old emperor went to take the cure at Ems. Bismarck went to his country seat nominally iU, after he had instructed his underlings to say that the Spanish candidature was a purely Spanish af- fair. Germany's contradictory and misleading statements about her foreknowledge of the Austrian ultimatum prove that in 1914, toO; she was attempting to create the false impression that Austria's attitude toward Servia con- cerned only those two countries. The diplomatic repre- " Cf . King- of Roumania's Memoirs; quoted in Fortnightly Review, October, 1917, p. 517. 20 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK sentatives of Germany at first denied that their govern- ment had any foreknowledge of the contents of the Aus- trian note, and yet these categorical denials were soon modified. In her White Book Germany states positively that she assured Austria that any action which that coun- try might consider it necessary to take toward Servia would meet her approval. That Germany should give her ally carte hlancJie in a situation so fraught with danger is in- credible. We no longer need to believe so absurd a state- ment. Both Count Tisza and von Jagow have admitted in conversation^ that Germany did know in advance of the Austrian note. The German Ambassador to the United States, moreover, has written in The Independent^^ that Germany did approve of the ultimatum in advance. This fact she tried at first to conceal in order to keep up the fiction that the quarrel between Servia and Austria was purely local. GERMANY PROVOKES RUSSIAN MOBILIZATION In one other respect Germany's action was an imitation of that of 1870. After Bismarck had carefully staged the Spanish candidature. Prince Leopold suddenly withdrew^ as a candidate. Bismarck returned to Berlin in despair. His plot seemed about to fail. Then chance put a new in- strument of deceit into his hands. Benedetti, the French Ambassador, was instructed to ask the King of Prussia to bind himself never again to support Hohenzollern candi- dates for the Spanish throne. Abeken, a councillor in the King's entourage, sent Bismarck a telegram reporting the King's final conversation with Benedetti. The tele- gram in its original form was a description of a friendly ^Philadelphia Ledger, Avig. 6, 1917. i» September 7, 1914. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5. 1914 21 parley. Bismarck in the presence of von Moltke deliber- ately condensed and mutilated it until the latter said it was made to sound ' ' like a flourish to a challenge ' '.^^ The form was meant to be provocative and it was. Then Bismarck had his will and was able to say that war was forced upon Germany by martial France. On July 31, 1914, Austria for the first time agreed to discuss with Kussia the merits of her note to Servia.^- Again Germany saAv her carefully staged provocation of the war disappearing. At this crisis either the government or the war party surrounding the Crown Prince imitated in a clumsy way Bismarck's forgery of the Ems telegram. On July 30 at 2 :25 p. m." newspaper vendors began to cry an extra edition of the Lokal Anzeiger which announced the mobilization of the German army. This paper, be it re- membered, had prior right to army dispatches and is known as the Crown Prince's organ. The hawking of the papers was confined to one small district of Berlin, in which Wolff's Press Bureau had its office. There the representative of the Russian telegraph agency sat and worked. As soon as he heard the news, he sent word immediately to the Russian Minister in Berlin, who in turn telegraphed the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs post-haste. This mes- sage went through immediately and caused the Czar to give the order for a general mobilization. One half hour after the paper had appeared the German Minister of For- eign Affairs telephoned the Wolff Bureau that the news was false and the edition was suppressed. Then the Rus- sian Ambassador sent a second telegram correcting the information he had just given. This telegram was mys- ^-^ BismarcTc, the Man cmd the Statesman,, By Himself. " English White Paper No. 133. ri Russian Orange Book, Nos. 61 and 62; French Yelloio Book, No. 10.5 ; and Dillon. E. J., Ourselves and Germany. 21 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK teriously delayed in transmission for several hours, al- though the first one had been sent with speed and accu- racy. Therefore, it arrived too late to halt the Russian order for mobilization. The Lokal Anzeiger explains this incident by saying the papers announcing the mobilization had been printed and that the vendors found them in the office and sold them by mistake. This explanation, absurd in itself, is the more unconvincing when it is remembered that the papers were sold only in that small district in which the office of the Wolff Bureau was situated. The edition was as clearly intended to provoke the enemy to warlike measures as was the Ems telegram. It was, too, as successful. Bethmann Hollweg, it ought to be said, has admitted in their essentials the above facts and given as official the explanation of the Lokal Anzeiger. These facts brand as false Germany's reiterated statement that the pre- mature mobilization of the Russian army caused the war. GERMANY LONG DETERMINED TO FORCE WAR Germany never intended to permit diplomatic exchanges to thwart her determination of bringing on war. On July 31 the Kronprinzessin Cecelie received the following wire- less message : ' ' War has broken out with England, France and Russia. Return to New York. ' ' That is, one whole day before war was declared on Russia, four days before Eng- land entered the conflict, while Germany was still osten- sibly making every effort to avoid war, she could warn a valuable cargo to prepare for a war she knew would come. That the Serajevo murder was a mere pretext for start- ing war against Servia and through her upon Russia is now well understood by everyone. Austria had long been hostile to Servia and had wished to crush her in 1913. Ac- cordingly in the autumn of that year she suggested to Italy GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 23 that the latter power join her in an attack upon Servia.^* Italy declined and Austrian statesmen were compelled to wait for such an excuse as the murder gave them. Other facts prove that long before the Serajevo murders Germany had decided that "the day" should come some- time in 1914. In the year before one-half of the copper export of the United States was taken by Germany. The gold purchase of the German Imperial Bank in 1913 had made an extra-ordinary increase. In 1911 it was 174 million marks ; in 1912, 173 million marks ; but in 1913, 317 million marks. ^^ In May, 1914, she had called back her reservists from the Far East, in June, those from Natal. In the same month arms for cruisers were sent to Buenos Aires. On June 15, contracts were let in America for coal- ing cruisers at sea on specified dates in August and Sep- tember. Yet the Austrian Prince was not murdered until the 29th of June. 1914 GERMANY'S MOMENT TO STRIKE There are many reasons why Germany should have cho- sen the summer of 1914 as the time in which to stage her long planned war. In the first place, the ruling classes had been made un- easy by the growth in power of the Social Democrats. The new army estimates passed in 1913 would run out in 1915. That budget had been passed in the Reichstag by a majo- rity of two votes. The Kaiser feared that never again could he muster a majority for his militaristic program. The temper of the country toward militarism had showai itself too clearly in December, 1913, in the remarkable vote of censure against the Chancellor in his defense of the Za- " Speech of Foreign Minister Giolitti in Italian ChaniTDer. Dec. 5, 1911. 1^ Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 100. 24 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK bern affair.^^ When the Reichstag adjourned in May, 1914, moreover, the Social Democrats for the first time remained in their seats and tried to drown the customary cheers for the Kaiser with hoots and jeers. This seemed particu- larly ominous to William II and apparently did much to win his consent to the war.^'' Moreover, Germany's military position in comparison with that of its enemies seemd to be at its zenith. In June, 1914, the enlarged Kiel Canal was opened, through which the greatest battle-ships could pass from the Baltic to the North Sea. In Zeppelins, poison gas, flame throw- ers and heavy artillery, the military leaders thought they had irresistible weapons unmatched by the enemies. Never again could Germany expect to find the military situation of her antagonists so favorable for her. France had voted a law for three years ' military service, but it had not yet gone into effect ; the same was true of the universal military service law voted in Belgium. The military shortcomings of France revealed in a speech by M. Charles Humbert delivered in the Senate on July 13, had long been known in Germany. The forts were said to be defective in structure, the guns to be without ammunition, the men without boots.^^ Russia was about to improve her military position. France had made a loan to her on condition that strategic railways be built in Poland, but construction had not been started. Until these lines were completed Germany had i^Zabern is a town in Alsace. There friction between the populace and the military garrison in 1913 reached a climax when a young Prussian officer struck with his sword a Tame shoemaker who had laughed at him. Popular indignation became so great that martial law was declared. Despite violent criticism in the Reichstag, the mili- tary authorities were upheld by the Government and the officer com- mended. " Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, p. 91. IS London Times, July 14, 1914. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 25 seventeen strategic railways running to the German-Rus- sian frontier, the Russians but five. Revolts by working- men in Russia during 1914 were supposed by Germany to be the beginning of a revolution. England, too, was thought to be on the verge of an Irish revolution. Sir Edward Carson's Ulster army was re- ported by German spies to be the instrument of a civil war. The King himself had used the term civil war in his proc- lamation summoning the futile conference to meet at Buck- ingham Palace. The German ambassador in London had reported to his government that England did not wish to enter the war. The United States was threatened by tur- moil in Mexico. The summer of 1914 for all these reasons offered Germany a world situation immensely favorable for her. Therefore, the moment that the Serajevo murders were committed, the Kaiser knew that his opportunity had come. He summoned, therefore, a small group of men, who sat down together and planned how the deed of a mad assassin could be made to embroil Europe. So dire an exercise of autocratic power the modern world had never seen. That group of men cynically decreeing disaster and death to millions of human beings is autocracy at work. Against that we are fighting. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE THE LICHNOWSKY AND MUEHLON REVELATIONS The main facts which the above narrative has attempted to establish have been confirmed by three documents which have appeared in Germany since the publication of the paper. The first is a Memorandums^ of Prince Lichnow- 19 For a complete text, see New York Times, April 21, 1918. The Memorandum is printed with practical completeness in the Chicago Tribune, April 20, and following. 26 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK sky, who was the German Ambassador to England at the outbreak of the war. It was written in the summer of 1916 and intended as a defense of his diplomatic policies for his family archives. These private notes were given a wider circulation by what he terms an ' ' unprecedented breach of confidence ' '. The second document is the official answer to Prince Lichnowsky's memorandum made by Herr von Jagow,^*^ German foreign minister during the closing days of the former's career at London. The third is a mem- orandum written by Dr. Miihlon^^i a former member of the Krupp Directorate, now living in Switzerland and re- cently engaged in diplomatic negotiation for Germany with Roumania. Disregarding the larger aspects of these docu- ments, I shall consider only their bearing on the existence and purpose of the Potsdam Council of July 5, 1914. Lichnowsky refers to the meeting casually as to a fact well known to the readers of his memorandum. His story is substantially as follows. At the time of the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince, Lichnowsky was on the Kaiser's yacht. A few days later when he passed through Berlin, he found that officials there believed that the murder had precipitated a serious international situation. They ail took an uncompromising attitude and one of unmistakable hostility towards Russia. He heard that the German Am- bassador to Austria had been rebuked for advising modera- tion in Vienna toward Servia. A little later, on his way back to London, he learned that Austria intended to pro- ceed against Servia with the utmost vigor in order to put an end to an intolerable state of affairs. Then follows a significant sentence which I quote in fuU. 20 For a complete text, see New York Times, April 28, 1918 ; Chicacjo Tribune April 28 and 29. It was originally published in the semi-offi- cial Norddeutsc'he Allgemeine Zeitung on March 23, 1918. 21 For the text, see the New York Times, April 21, 1918. The letter was written before the resig-nation of Dr. Helfferich as Vice Chancellor, last November, and was printed in the Berliner Tagehlatt. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 27 ''Subsequently I learned that at the decisive conversa- tion at Potsdum on July 5 [the italics are mine] the in- quiry addressed to us by Vienna found absolute assent among all the personages in authority ; indeed they added that there would he no harm if a war with Russia were to result. So, at any rate, it is stated in the Austrian protocol which Count Mensdorf, Austrian Ambassador, received in London. ' ' This is new evidence of startling force. A protocol sent to Count Mensdorf, which Lichnowsky must have seen or heard of, establishes the existence of the sinister Potsdam Council. The deliberations of this body, Lichnowsky de- clares decisive, — decisive for war. Vienna's inquiries as to whether she could count on Germany's support of her punishment of Servia received emphatic assent. It might, indeed, precipitate war; but a wai' with Russia would ''do no harm". Von Jagow makes no attempt to deny these assertions. He contents himself with saying obscurely, "On July 5 I was absent from Berlin". Dr. Miihlon makes a definite reference to the same council. In the middle of July, 1914, he had a conversation with Dr. Helfferich of the Deutsche Bank. From him he learned that the Austrians had just been with the Kaiser, that in a week's time Vienna would send a very severe ultimatum to Servia. Dr. Helfferich added that the Kaiser had expressed his decided approval of this course. To Dr. Miihlon 's protest that such action would provoke a world war, Dr. Helfferich replied that it certainly looked like it. It looked like it obviously to the men who carried on the "decisive conversation at Pots- dam". The plan of Germany after July 5 on the one hand to quiet possible suspicions of her warlike aims and on the other to resist all attempts to prevent their realization, finds 28 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK fresh confirmation in these three documents. Dr. Miihlon learned from Helfferich that the Kaiser had gone on his northern cruise only as a "blind"; that he had not ar- ranged the cruise on the usual extensive scale, but was re- maining close at hand and keeping in constant touch. Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the head of the great Krupp works, reported to Dr. Miihlon that in an in- terview with the Kaiser early in July he had found him determined upon war. I quote from Dr. Miihlon 's mem- orandum: "The Kaiser had told him that he would de- clare war immediately, if Russia mobilized, and that this time people would see that he did not turn about. The Kaiser's repeated insistence that this time nobody would be able to accuse him of indecision had, he said, been al- most comic in its effect". Germany 's first claim that in sending her ultimatum Aus- tria had acted without Germany's previous knowledge, Dr. Miihlon brands as false. It could only mean that Ger- many had not seen the text of the ultimatum. Herr Krupp von Bohlen learned from von Jagow that he as a diplomat would never have made any such demands as appeared in the ultimatum. When he was called in the affair, however, the Kaiser had so far committed himself that it was too late for any procedure according to diplomatic custom. In other words, during von Jagow 's absence from Berlin on July 5, the Potsdam Council had bound Germany so ir- revocably to the mad course which was to lead to war that the foreign minister found himself powerless to modify Austria's demands. Lichnowsky reports that to his protests against this pol- icy von Jagow said, in effect, that the time was favorable to Germany. Russia was not ready, he said ; Austria was al- ready accusing Germany of lack of spirit ; and, on the other hand, Russia was becoming more and more anti-German. GERMANY'S SECRET WAR COUNCIL, JULY 5, 1914 29 ''Therefore/' he said, ''we must risk it." To diplomats thus committed to war the conference of ambassadors, pro- posed b.y England to find a way of avoiding war, could not be considered "because," as von Jagow says, "it would doubtless have led to a serious diplomatic defeat." He continues, "A fresh diminution of our prestige was not en- durable for our position in Europe and the world. The prosperity of states, their political and economic successes, are based upon the prestige that they enjoy in the world." War was invoked to build up this German prestige. In these statements the program of the military autocracy stands revealed and condemned. In the light of these three documents the German plot for the provocation of the war stands more clearly revealed than ever. At Potsdam on July 5 a number of autocrats committed Germany and Austria to a policy of war. Events subsequent to that date were arranged to blind the world and to make the conflict inevitable. Thus were prestige and power to be won for the ruling classes in Germany while mankind was crucified. GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER By FREDERIC A. OGG Professor of Political Science What is Germany fighting for? She was attacked by no one of the nations now in arms against her. In the closing days of July, 1914, when the peace of Europe hung by a hair, England and France begged her to throw her influence against war; and without a doubt she could have prevented a blow from being struck if she had cared to do so. She was big, rich, strong, prosperous, influential, safe. Why did she want war ? The Kaiser himself answered the question when, in 1915, he said: ''The triumph of the greater Germany, which some day must dominate all Europe, is the single end for which we are fighting." Nothing could be more definite than that ! And no one can dispute the Kaiser 's right to say what the war is for ; after all, it is Tiis war. But it must not be supposed that the purpose to dominate Europe, and therefore the world, w^s formed after the war began. Had it been, some excuse might be found; for in the heat of conflict rulers and peoples sometimes lose their heads and cry out for things that they cannot and should not have. The German policy of domination was formulated long ago, in times of profound peace, and in the most cold- blooded manner. In proof of this one could cite state- ments by the score, coming from the Kaiser, from the im- GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD I'OWER 31 perial chancellors and other high administrative officials, from members of the imperial and state legislatures, from university professors, from historians, from poets, from journalists. There was little effort at concealment. It now seems remarkable that so much could have been said so openly without throwing the rest of the world into panic. As eveiybody knows, the growth of modern Germany in all that goes to make up national prosperity and power is nothing short of marvelous. Only our own country and Japan can furnish parallels to it. No nation, ivJien the present ivar began, had a more favored position in the trade, finance, and politics of the world; none teas forging ahead at a swifter pace. There was, of course, no fault in this. Every nation has a right to build up its prosperity and strength in all hon- orable ways. The great difficulty with Germany is that, having prospered so magnificently, she allowed her head to be turned by her successes. If she had developed thus fast, why not make the pace yet faster? Need there be any limit to her growth in wealth, numbers, size? Why not elbow other nations out of the way and seize the dominance of Europe, of the oceans, of the eastern hemisphere — yes, of the world? There was no lack of enthusiasts to urge her on, nor of prophets to predict her easy and complete triumph. And so it came about that in the midst of their building of factories, extending of trade, and accumulating of riches, the German people yielded gradually to the insidious idea of world dominion — a world dominion which could be se- cured, too, only by riding roughly over the rights of other peoples, by craft, and by sheer conquest. It is not fair to say that everybody in Germany fell in enthusiastically with this program. Some openly opposed it and many 32 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK doubted its wisdom. But the elements that determine pub- lie policy, under the Empire's undemocratic scheme of gov- ernment, adopted it wholeheartedly and rammed it down the nation 's throat. THE MANIA FOR CONQUEST The contention with which the new imperialistic creed started was that the German people is the ''chosen of God", superior to all other peoples, and therefore fittest to rule. Closely related was the notion that this people, and especially its sovereign, the Kaiser, is favored in a peculiar degree with divine guidance. ''We are the salt of the earth," declared the Emperor in a speech at Bremen in 1905. "The Teutons are the aristocracy of humanity," writes the anthropologist Woltmann, "the Latins, on the contrary, belong to the degenerate mob. " " The world owes its civilization to Germany alone," asserts Wirth, "and the time is near when the earth must inevitably be con- quered by the Germans." "We are morally and intellec- tually superior to all, without peers," writes Professor Lasson of the University of Berlin; "it is the same with our organizations and with our institutions." A book widely used in the schools says that the Russians are slaves and the French monkeys. "God has called us to civilize the world," affirmed the Kaiser in the Bremen speech above mentioned; "we are the missionaries of human progress." "We shall conquer everywhere," he declared again, "even though we be sur- rounded by enemies on all sides ; for their lives a powerful ally, the good old God in heaven, who . . . has always been on our side." A small volume could be filled with expressions of this sort. The ambition to dominate has developed rapidly since GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER 33 1900. In that year the Kaiser expressed the hope that Germany would become "as closely united, as powerful, and as authoritative as once the Roman Empire was"; and two years later he confessed, in a speech at Aix-la-Chapelle, that "it is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." On another occasion he defined Ger- many's aim to be to win for herself "a place in the sun." "That the German Empire is not the end, but the begin- ning, of our national development, ' ' wrote the editor of the Berlin Zeit-Fragen in 1897, "is an obvious truth." In his Germany and (lie Next War (published in English translation in 1911) Friedrich von Bernhardi, a Prussian cavalry general and former member of the general staff, wrote: "An intense longing for a foremost place among the powers and for manly action fills our nation;" also, "in the next war, world power or downfall will be our rallying cry. ' ' ' ' Room ; they must make room, ' ' exclaimed Tanneberg in his Greater Germany in 1911; "the western and south- ern Slavs — or we. Since we are the stronger, the choice will not be difficult. "We must quit our modest waiting at the door." "The German people is so situated in Eu- rope," the same author rejoices, "that it needs only to run and take whatever it desires. ' ' Moreover, the advocates of imperial aggrandizement left no doubt that the method was to be war. "We Germans," wrote von Bernhardi in the book mentioned, "have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to per- form than the great Asiatic power. We, like the Japan- ese, can fulfill it only by the sword. ' ' In the introduction to a book which he wrote in 1913 entitled Germany in Arms the Crown Prince spoke to the same effect. "It is only, ' ' he says, ' ' by relying on our good German sword 3— W. B. 34 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK that we can hope to conquer that place in the sun which rightly belongs to us, and which no one will yield to us voluntarily. . . . Till the world comes to an end the ultimate decision must rest with the sword." One recalls in this connection the Kaiser's address to the army at his accession wherein he said, "So we are bound together — I and the army — so we are born for one another, and so we shall hold together indissolubly. ' ' One cannot forget, too, the toast which was long a favorite on the Imperial ships of war, Auf den Tag — "To the day" — i. e., the day on which the German men-of-war should be let loose against the British navy. These, then, are the ideas that of late have dominated the Empire's governing classes. The Germans are superior to all other peoples. They are fittest to rule. God intended that they should rule. Therefore they will rule. Their rule is to he established hy the sword. And it is to he world-wide. These doctrines were proclaimed by the government. They were set forth, with ingenious argument, by writers and scholars. They were taught in the schools. They were made the theme of sermons. They were brought close home to the people through the newspapers, the labor unions, the chambers of commerce, and a dozen other agencies. The nation, as a whole, was made to believe them. The effects long ago became apparent upon Germany's conduct as a nation. The Empire began to meddle with matters that did not properly concern it. "Nothing must go on anywhere," the Kaiser once remarked, "in which Germany does not play a part." More than once — as when the Kaiser's government tried to form a coalition of European nations against us in 1898 to prevent our going GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER 35 to the rescue of Cuba-our own country has found out what this German purpose to have a hand in everj^hing means in practice. THE ARMY AND NAVY AS INSTRUMENTS The projects of conquest successively unfolded as the imperialistic purpose sank deeper into the national mind will be described in a later paper in this series. For the present we are concerned only with establishing the fact that such an imperialistic purpose existed and controlled. A proof that at once suggests itself is the building up in Germany of the gi^test army, and especially of the greatest military system, in the world. Like all nations, Germany had a right to maintain an army. Her exposed frontiers may be regarded as entitling her to keep an army somewhat larger than a nation differently situated. But the Empire was founded by the sword; and the whole theory of the government ever since 1871 has been that it . IS by the sword that the nation is to be maintained and extended. Universal military service, huge military budg- ets, subordination of every indi-vddual and social interest to the ends of military efficiency— all spoke eloquently of the German purpose to have an army for something more than the ordinary uses of defense. The armed forces were intended for aggression, when the time for aggression should come. How otherwise account for their sudden increase on a peace footing, in 1913, by 140,000 officers and men? _ Likewise the navj^. When the Empire was established m 1871, It had only a few ships. About 1885 a small navy began to be created for the protection of the Empire's growing overseas commerce. Then came the present Kaiser with his plans for German maritime supremacy 36 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK In 1898 an epoch-marking navy bill passed the Reichstag, providing at one stroke for the construction of a fleet of nineteen battleships and forty-two cruisers, and asserting in its preamble that the Empire required a navy not only to protect her commerce, but chiefly in order that her strength ''might be such that even the greatest sea-power [England] must hesitate to attack Germany unless she were willing to risk her whole position as a great power/' Later the purpose was officially stated to be to make the navy so strong that "Germany may be able to compel respect for her wishes in any international complication or development in any part of the world." Between 1900 and 1912 the building program was repeatedly revised so as to meet this larger end. THE BERLIN GOVERNMENT BLOCKS ARJMAMENT REDUCTION Still more significant was the German government's at- titude toward proposals for a reduction of armaments. In 1898 the Czar of Russia invited the nations having diplo- mats at his capital to send representatives to a conference to consider whether some scheme might not be adopted for limiting the present staggering outlays upon the in- struments of war. The conference was held at The Hague. Some things were accomplished for the cause of peace. But practical proposals on disarmament had to be dropped on account of the inflexible opposition of Ger- many, whose delegates took the position that armaments were ''not a burden but a privilege". A second confer- ence was held at The Hague in 1907. In the meantime the Kaiser declared to King Edward VII of England that he would go to war rather than allow the question of dis- armament to be discussed; and by reason of Germany *s GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER 87 Stand the conference could do nothing but pass a useless resolution to the effect that the governments should ''re- sume the serious examination of the question". Less bel- ligerent states, including England, were keenly disap- pointed. After 1907 Germany persistently wrecked every proposal on the subject of armament restriction, eitJier by flat re- fusals or by imposing impossible conditions. Here are two instances. In 1912 the British govern- ment sent Lord Haldane to Berlin, unofficially, to ''sound out" the Emperor and Chancellor and find whether it would not now be possible to get the long sought agree- ment to limit naval armaments. Germany offered to agree to a rather indefinite slowing-up of naval construction, provided Great Britain should bind herself uncondition- ally to remain neutral in any European conflict in which Germany might be involved! Germany was to be free to attack France, Russia, Holland, perchance Belgium, and to terrorize the continent, while Great Britain stood idly by. The monstrous offer was properly rejected; although in his reply the British foreign minister magnanimously said to the German ambassador that Great Britain would neither make nor join in any unprovoked attack on Ger- many, and that she was not, and would not become, party to any international agreement having aggression on Ger- many as its object. Suggestions in 1912 and 1913 by Win- ston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, that the two powers agree on a cessation of naval-construction— a sort of "naval holiday"— for one year drew from Berlin no response. "Any agitation in Germany in favor of disarmament," wrote Professor Hans Delbriick of the University of Ber- lin in 1914, just before the war, "is absolutely unpardon- g§ UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK able. Germany is, among all the powers, the only one which possesses not only sufficient men but sufficient gold to increase armaments on land and sea to an extraordinary degree. . . . We stand, not at the end, but at the be- ginning, of a great development." STIRRING UP WAR FEVER Not only were the German ruling classes bending every energy in the years before the war to bring up the army and navy to the maximum of strength ; they were systemat- ically cultivating a feeling among the people that war was both inevitable and desirable. We have this from thor- oughly reputable German sources. Here is one bit of testimony. At the close of 1913 Otfried Nippold, professor of church history at the University of Jena, returned home from an extended residence in Japan. Shocked by the ex- traordinary growth of the war spirit in Germany during his absence, he brought together a collection of statements advocating war and conquest emanating, simply during the years 1912 and 1913, from representative German citi- zens, organizations, and publications. These expressions made up a volume of over one hundred pages. Concerning them Nippold writes: ''The evidence submitted in this book amounts to an irrefutable proof that a systematic stimulation of the war spirit is going on. . . . These men do not only occasionally incite people to war, but they systematically inculcate a desire for war in the minds of the German people. Not only in the sense that they ought to be prepared for war and ready for all eventualities, but in the much more far-reaching sense that they want war. War is represented not merely as a possibility that might arise, but as a necessity that must come about, and the sooner the better. ' ' GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER 39 ARBITRATION PROPOSALS AND TREATIES OF NO AVAIL Americans have of late taken a deep interest in arbitra- tion as a means of settling international disputes, and in the past ten years our government has signed scores of arbitration treaties. International arbitration was coupled with the limitation of armaments as a topic for considera- tion at the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907, and on both occasions the subject was discussed at length. In 1899 the German representatives declared that their gov- ernment was not in a position to accept obligatory arbitra- tion and felt that it had already conceded much in agree- ing to the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitra- tion. Again in 1907 the Germans, seconded by the Aus- trians, declared emphatically that they would vote against every proposal to establish obligatory arbitration by means of a world treaty such as the United States was then ad- vocating. The attitude of the Berlin government obviously sprang from the Imperial purpose to uphold the rule of might, and it blocked effective action. Only one more evidence of Germany's imperialistic pur- poses can be mentioned. In 1914 — but a few months be- fore the outbreak of the present war — representatives of Great Britain and Germany signed a treaty settling the many territorial disputes between the two nations in a manner surprisingly favorable to Germany. Paul Rohr- bach, an imperialist whose books and pamphlets on public affairs were for years more widely read in Germany than those of any other writer, himself pronounced the British concessions ''astonishing" and declared that they ''met every reasonable demand ' '. That in the face of such terms Germany wanted war indicates that what she was really 40 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK aiming at was world dominion — a dominion of such char- acter that no nation could be made to accept it until brought to its knees by force. WAS GERMANY A GUARDIAN OF PEACE? In reply to this whole indictment persons of pro-German inclination will raise the hackneyed cry: Germany kept the peace for forty-three years, while England, Russia, Italy, Spain, Japan, the United States, and lesser powers were waging a dreary succession of bloody and costly wars. The statement of fact is true and the explanation simple, Bismarck had no scruples about using war or any other means to attain his ends. But he believed that the stabil- ity and growth of the new German Empire demanded peace. As long as the Iron Chancellor remained at the helm the aims of German diplomacy, therefore, excluded every movement of aggression that could precipitate a conflict. But in 1890 the old and trusted pilot was dropped and William II, at the age of thirty-one became (in effect) his own chancellor. In a few years a different spirit began to show itself. The attempt to form a coalition against us in 1898 has been mentioned. ^'If I had had a navy," the Kaiser is reported to have declared, ''I should have taken Uncle Sam by the scruff of the neck. ' ' The reason for the failure to make war on us then and there was not want of will, but want of ships. In his Imperial Germany, ex- Chancellor von Billow tells why Germany did not attack England at the time of the Boer war. The explanation is the same — too small a navy. But — as was evidenced by the annexation of the Chinese territory of Kiao-chow in 1897 — when the Empire could seize without risk, it did not scruple GERMANY'S AMBITION FOR WORLD POWER 41 to do SO. Furthermore, the Kaiser saw to it that every resource was employed to remedy the fatal lack of a navy. In the earlier twentieth century Germany twice just missed coming to blows with France, in both cases about Morocco. In the first instance (1905) France backed down; in the second (1911), Germany. In government circles at Berlin it has been confessed that the demonstra- tion of 1911 was intended, not to precipitate war — the Empire was not ready for that — but to ''feel out" the situation and ascertain precisely where France, England, and other nations stood in relation to one another. It is known, too, that French investors began drawing their money out of Germany by the hundred millions and in a few days would have brought about a financial panic which would foredoom a war to failure. In 1908 Germany's ally, Austria-Hungary, in violation of a solemn agreement, annexed the two Slavic provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russia, as the guardian of Slavic interests, threatened war. But Germany leapt ''in shining armor" to the side of its ally and terrorized the aggrieved peoples into submission. True, Germany went for four decades without a war in Europe! But during the last two of them she was mixed up in more disputes and conflicts than any other great power. Germany's declaration of war in 1914 was but the cul- minating expression of a long-growing spirit of aggression and ruthlessness. People who have talked in an intimate way with representatives of the Empire's influential classes have heard this acknowledged without hesitation. "What such spokesmen tell you in private one man has had the courage to say in public — the Empire's one thoroughly in- dependent and fearless journalist, Maximilian Harden. "Not as weak-willed blunderers have we undertaken the 42 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK fearful risk of this war," he writes. ''We wanted it. . . . May the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience. We do not stand, and shall not place our- selves, before the court of Europe. . . . Germany strikes. If it conquers new realms for its genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the good war. . . . Now strikes the hour for Germany's rising power." GER:\rAXY's a:\ibi^iox for world power 43 Bibliography Anon. J 'Accuse! By a German; trans, by A. Gray. Lon- don. 1915. A powerful indictment of Germany's ag- gressive policies. Bang, J. P. Hurrah and HaUelujah; the Teaching of Ger- many's Poets y Prophets, Professors, and Preacliers. New York. Doran. 1917. Bernhardi. Friedricli von. Germany ancl the Next IVar. Trans, by A. H. Powles. New York. Longmans. 1914. Germany's mission as a nation discussed by a Prussian cavalry officer. Billow, Bernard von. Imperial Germany. Trans, by Marie A. LcAvenz. New York. Dodd Mead. 1914. Pt. I. By an ex-chancellor of the German Empire. Conquest and Kidtur; Aims of the Germans in their own Woixls. Issued by L^. S. Committee on Public In- formation. "Washington. 1917. Frobenius, H. Germany's Hour of Destiny. New York. McBride Nast. 1914. Hurd, A., and Castle, H. German Sea Power. New York. Scribner. 1913. McLaren, A. D. Peaceful Penetration. New York. But- ton. 1917. Describes Germany's methods of extend- ing her control in countries outside Europe. Perris, H. Germany and the German Emperor. New York. Holt. 1912. Chap. 9. Rohrbach, Paul. German World Policies. Trans, by Ed- mund von Mach. New York. Macmillan. 1915. A very influential book by an ardent German imperialist. 44 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Saunders, George. Builder and Blunderer. New York. Button. 1914. Chaps. 4-5. Schierbrand, Wolf von, [ed.] The Kaiser's Speeches, New York. Harper. 1903. Thayer, W. R. [ed.] Out of their Oivn Mouths. Utterances of German Rulers, Statesmen, etc. New York. Ap- pleton. 1917. WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR By G. C. COMSTOCK Dean of the Graduate School Germany and Austria-Hungary profess that they were forced into the Avorld war. War at some time was inevitable, they say, because of the hostile jealousy of their neighbors, England in particular ; and they declare that the event was forced at the beginning of August, 1914, by mobilization of the Russian army against them. Rightly to appreciate these claims and the purpose that lies behind them one needs to know something about the workings of the Teuton mind, and this is not an alto- gether easy matter; for as that brilliant journalist, Max- imilian Harden, assures us ''foreigners do not think as we Germans do/' GERMAN THOUGHT AND WILL We cannot doubt, however, that Germans want much the same things that other men want, wealth, power, prestige. We cannot criticise them for such desires without at the same time condemning ourselves. But we may fairly ask how much wealth and whose wealth do they want ? How do they seek power and prestige ? Does Germany want more than her fair share of good things, or does her thought differ from ours as to what is a fair share, and as to the means by which she may justly obtain that share? 46 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK We turn to German words and acts for answer to these questions and in doing so we find a Babel of dis- cordant voices each telling what it wants for Germany. Out of this Babel we have to pick the things that are really significant of Germany's thought and purpose, and we have two principal aids toward a wise choice. One of these is their highly developed class system, un- der which the opinion of Michel the peasant, or Hans the wage earner, counts for nothing unless there are mil- lions who share it ; while the ambition of one man higher up, a kaiser or a crown prince, may mean much to the land and to the outside world. But no opinion, from Michel up to William Hohenzollern is significant of what Germany really seeks unless it squares with what Germany does, and here is our second clue to the German purpose. What kind of purpose best fits into these years of German war? The voice that here runs counter to deeds does not tell Germany's united purpose. When, for example, Professor Wundt calls, ''sheer lunacy, the idea that Germany would do violence to a neutral state that was itself willing to keep the peace", must it not be said in all candor that Germany did such violence to Belgium and to the United States. Germany's act re- pudiates the professor 's word. The Prussian organization places in the hands of a ruling class the power to determine Germany's relations with the outside world, the power of war and peace, with scant regard to the wishes of the German people. Equally it places in the same hands, through control of army, church and school, power to shape the ideas of young Germany to suit its own purpose. Through control of the universities, the press, the opportunities for public meeting and public speech, those same hands have power to keep the Teuton tree bent the way its WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 47 twig was inclined; and they use that power. In large measure the mind and will of the German people have been standardized from above, by implanting in them certain common ideas and fears, to which strong appeal may be made by the rulers in executing any plan for which the public has been trained. Among these inspired ideas we count: That Germany is surrounded by enemies jealous of her greatness and resolved at least to check her growth, perhaps to stamp out her existence : That Germany must always be pre- pared to defend herself by force of arms, for no reliance can be placed upon treaties of peace or agreements to respect her rights : That war is sure to come from time to time and in it Germany must always strike first: That Germany needs to expand; she needs more land and in particular she needs under her own control lands that will supply the raw material required in her great manufacturing industries: That foreign trade is Ger- many's life blood and for its protection she needs 'Hhe freedom of the seas"; that is, in the words of Ger- many's chief naval critic, Count Reventlow, ''com- mand of the seas". ''We want such a jumping off place for our navy as would give us a fair chance of dominating the seas and of being free of the seas daring a war." : : i'l^rj*!- This is in part the foundation upon which a great vol- untary organization, The Navy League, has for nearly twenty years urged upon the German people the need for a great fleet. It has won its campaign and produced both a great German navy and a great foreign suspic- ion of that navy's purpose. For the foreigner knows the German doctrine that since war is sure to come some time, its dangers may best be met in advance by a " pre- ventive war" which shall crush the prospective enemy 48 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK before he is ready to strike, or even before he knows he is a threatening foe. For defense, either real or of the "preventive" kind, the German army has for many years been maintained as the strongest military force in the world, and in the three years immediately pre- ceding the war, the German people submitted to an ex- traordinary burden of new taxation to make that army still greater and stronger. It is hard to believe that the authors and backers of the army and navy campaign did not intend to use the w^eapons thus created at crushing cost. Underlying these popular German fears and prepara- tions for impending need was a feeling that the world has been unjustly parcelled out among Germany's rivals. Russia and the United States hold great continental domains fit for the support of nations a thousand mil- lions strong. France and England have colonial pos- sessions of comparable extent, while Germany, shut in by political boundaries of an artificial kind, her Junkers said, cannot hope to compete with these powers in the future unless she, too, can have a larger place in the sun. Expand or suffocate is the alternative presented to the German mind, not chosen but thrust upon it ; and an ardent belief that the German people and the Ger- man civilization are the best and highest that the world has yet produced puts into that alternative a peculiar sting. While not complete I believe these lines contain a fair statement of popular belief and feeling at hand for use by the German ruling class. But these beliefs and feel- ings were not universally held. A large body of Ger- man Socialists professed to reject many of these ideas. It professed to be in closer sympathy with the laboring WHY GERIklANY WANTED WAR 49 class of other lands than with the wealth and power of its own home. It professed to seek the welfare of men rather than of a nation. Much larger groups of alien race, French, Bohemian, Pole, Slav, bitterly resenting Grerman rule and Austrian oppression, lived under them, sullen and hopeless. And there were other centers of opposition or hostility to the ruling class. But when war came all these were silent and the German people seemed to rally to its rulers with confident enthusiasm, willing to give itself to German need and German profit as expounded from above. This instinctive loyalty is a fact of great importance in our enforced struggle with the German power, since it is at some dividing line in German thought and sentiment, a possible rift between government and people, that President Wilson has di- rected his famous appeal from the one to the other; from a governing class in whose honor and honesty he can place no further trust, to a people that may still be sound at heart and worthy to hold a great place in the civilized world. If that rift does not exist and manifest itself, the appeal will fail. If, however, the unanimity of 1914 was in large part a craze and panic in which German thought and alien feeling were alike swamped for a time in the mob mind, then the President's appeal may prove to be a great factor in determining world history. PAN-GERMANISM So long as government and people stand together in Germany their common purpose will run along the lines of hope and fear already sketched, and their immediate aim is most plainly shown by the faction that calls itself Pan-German. In the years preceding the war this fac- tion grew prodigiously among the upper and middle 50 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK classes, in the army, in ''big business", and among the office holders. Since the war's outbreak its propaganda literature has been so widely distributed through mili- tary channels as to call forth sharp Socialist criticism in the Reichstag, and official reply to this criticism con- tains more of confession and justification than denial of the charge that the government is actively Pan-German. The Pan-German seeks expansion for the fatherland, for its purse as well as its Kultur. He proclaims that no German should be lost to it. Even though he makes a new home across the seas he should cherish and serve the old home, even against the new, as he has sometimes done in America during the past four years. The Ger- man power, they say, should acquire new lands in which to plant its people and their Kultur and from which to draw trade and profit for Germany. Since the most de- sirable parts of the world are already occupied and strongly held by other people, German expansion must be by force at their expense, unless they willingly yield, as the rulers of Turkey and Austria have done. The Pan-German sees that wisdom must be exercised in choosing the right places for expansion, but he holds that no German should hesitate to sacrifice himself, or should scruple about the rights of others, where the interests of Germany are at stake. Deutschland is ueher alles in the German mind; and by virtue of her superiority she may take what she will in the world. In the end all men will profit by it and Germans will gain a speedier reward. But let no man think that this purpose was any new or hastily concocted scheme of a few ambitious leaders, Germany has long believed that her growth and great prosperity during the past forty years are based on the victorious French war of 1871, and the huge indemnity WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 51 exacted from its victim. It hopes and believes that a like success may be had again, and a popular poet of forty years ago has put the idea into picturesque verse in honor of their old war god: Thor stood at the midnight end of the world, His battle-mace flew from his hand: "So far as my clangorous hammer I've hurled Mine are the sea and the land!" And onward hurtled the mighty sledge O'er the wide, wide earth, to fall At last on the Southland's furthest edge In token that His was all. Since then 'tis the joyous German right With the hammer lands to win; We mean to inherit world-wide might As the Hammer-God's kith and kin. PAN-GERMAN DREAMS But there are difficulties in the way of such a pro- gram, and jealous neighbors oppose German expansion at their expense. Germany must be wise as well as bold in dealing with them, and the world, therefore, has been ransacked during the past twenty years for openings in which the cost of expansion should not exceed the profit. A demonstration made by the Kaiser against the north coast of South America, in 1902, was stopped only by vigorous interference from Washington. Twice within the last decade the northwest coast of Africa has been tried, with only partial success. A murder of two Ger- man missionaries in China was followed by the seizure, on the western shore of the Pacific, of a colony which had been selected prior to the murder, as a desirable center of German civilization. The southern hemi- sphere and the islands of the sea have similar stories, 52 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK but all of these are minor incidents. The great Pan- German dream was for a Central European Empire. Prussia, organizing and controlling all German speaking peoples between the Alps and the Baltic sea, is to be the nucleus of this power, which shall in good time spread in every direction. Holland, Belgium and nor- thern France are needed for it, not only for their land and wealth, but to give fuller access to the sea and to those distant colonies that Germany had commenced to acquire and to which the Central Empire must greatly add. Political control of these lands is not enough, for their native peoples might, and probably would, remain hostile to the conqueror and be a source of annoyance to him, as has been painfully true among the subject peo- ples of Poland and Alsace. Belgian, Slav and French must therefore be forced off their land and Germans put in their place to supplant old ideas and the old speech and to establish in their stead German thought and lan- guage. Pan-Germanism calls this "expropriation"; in plain English it is wholesale robbery. To north and south and east of Central Europe lie other opportunities, some of which, in Russia, have been realized, probably beyond anticipation. Others are re- served for the future, and Denmark, Norway, Sweden know their danger and live in fear of it. But bigger than any of these and of more immediate promise in the days before the war, was that great backward region that for 3000 miles stretches away from Austria, past Constantinople and Persia, to the gates of India. Here are lands, once the richest and most cultured part of the world, that now are fallen into ruin and are feebly held by decadent races, who are unwilling or unable to real- ize their possibilities. Here lay the Pan-German vision WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 53 of a half -empty part of the earth into which a great or- ganizing power like Germany might come, bringing or- der, civilization, even welfare to the native races, with power and profit for itself. And just to one side of this region is Egypt, the neck of the British Empire. To seize it would at one stroke paralyze Germany's most hated rival, open to trade and colonization the heart of Africa and add to Germany's army millions of black recruits. To many a Pan-German the road from Berlin to Bagdad and Cairo seemed the place in the sun where might be made good that unfair distribution of the world in which dependencies and colonies had been denied to the fatherland and their wealth squandered on less worthy peoples. Even Germany's alleged ''hos- tile" neighbors had in the days before the war recog- nized that among the Moslem peoples of the near east there was a legitimate field for her ambition, if carried out by fair and humane methods, with justice toward the rights of others. The Kaiser, William II, appears to have realized very early in his reign the possibilities of German expansion toward the southeast. In ostentatious tours he pro- claimed himself at Jerusalem as the friend and protector of Moslems, not in these lands alone but throughout the world. At Constantinople he personally built up the traditions of German friendship and aid that have been carefully developed for thirty years, until in her gov- ernment, her army and her commerce, Turkey became first a tool and then a bondsman to Germany, unable to escape from servitude. The Balkan states were provided with German royalty and the Austrian Empire firmly bound in a German alliance. The ''peaceful penetration" of the Orient, the ''Drang nacli Osten", went on apace and rough shod over unwilling peoples until the Balkan 54 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK wars of 1912 threatened for a time to raise up a barrier between the Teuton and Turk. Servia, a petty Slav state, long harrassed by Austria and long hostile to her, was the front if not the head of a group of small allied nations that stood firmly astride that main artery of German push, the Berlin-Constantinople railway, and for a time they seemed to block the Pan-German scheme. But these allies quarrelled bitterly among themselves until Austria, seizing upon the murder of a prince as an opportune moment, with German aid and against Rus- sian opposition, crushed Servia, won over Bulgaria and reopened the road to the East. Today the German power stretches unbroken from the North Sea to the heart of Asia. The goal has been reached and the begin- nings of the Pan-German dream have been brilliantly realized, although they are not yet completely assured. PAN-GERMANY TODAY The Pan-German vision of before the war squares with the German acts and achievements in the war and together they show WHAT GERMANY DID WANT in 1914. What does she want now? Germany seeks peace in 1918, and seeks it with good reason and entire sincerity, since she has achieved her purpose. True, her war balance sheet as of to-day would show formidable entries on the debit side; her industries disorganized, her foreign trade wiped out, international good will shifted from an asset into a huge liability of suspicion and hatred, her colonies lost, her people half starved, the number of her fighting men seriously reduced, and pop- ular morale shaken. But on the other side of the ac- count are credits well worth while. Booty, alone, is no mean item. In live stock and merchandise and machin- WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 55 ery, seized in the enemy country, sent home and appro- priated to her own use, there is plunder running into huge sums. Fines, assessments, taxes, and forced labor exacted from conquered peoples, are probably an even greater asset. Crime has bound Germany's allies to her in a dependent union from which the vassal can find no escape. The Central European Empire, Mittel Europa, is an accomplished fact, and it has suffered no greater war damage than have its rivals. The population under German rule has been increased three-fold, and if it can have a generation in which to rest and recuperate, under Prussian training it will furnish a military power as ready for another onslaught, bye and bye, as was the Germany of 1914, and one far more formidable to the world. Even though something in Belgium and France should have to be given up and written off the account, what remains is an ample first installment of Pan-Ger- manism. Germany wants now to strike a balance and close the account on a basis of no annexations (save hers in the east and south) and no indemnity to others for the outrage, plunder, and f rightfulness that she has in- flicted upon the world. One simple people listened to the German voice, promising them such a peace without penalties, and their folly has delivered both Russia and Roumania into the hands of a cruel master. Contrary to her express stipulation Germany is to-day demanding from disorganized Russia the permanent cession of great provinces inhabited by millions who abhor her yoke. If one may trust the reports that come from both Russian and German sources, she is also demanding a great mone- tary indemnity that she promised not to require. But ''Not kennt kein Gehot" and German ''big business" claims that an indemnity must be had to make good 56 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK the losses it has suffered in the war. "Real Politik consists in a cool and clear marshalling of forces regard- less of moral and other irrelevant considerations.'' Germany seeks to repeat her Eussian fraud, and on such a basis she continues to urge upon the world that she now wants peace. But the world has said, and continues to say, that such a peace would be worse than war, and more unrighteous. It would be an unjust and unstable peace, covering up instead of cutting out the fatal can- cer of German arrogance, greed and lust for world dominion. OUR DANGER AND OUR DUTY Our war balance sheet, like Germany's, has lost one great credit item. Our ideals have been shattered. We believed before the war that men were growing better and we cherished the vision of a world in which nations as well as men had learned justice and had found that respect for their neighbor's rights is wise and profitable as well as just. We have dreamed of a union of nations that should maintain, even among backward peoples, the new and better moral standard of equal rights aiid equal justice for all, whether they be big or little, weak or strong. That item of good will finds scant place in to-day's account. Germany's own explanation of her aims and methods, her practice of mingled intrigue and violence, mark her as unfit for such a league of peace, morally incompetent, and a major obstacle to its success. We who have believed that ''through the ages some in- creasing purpose runs ' ' seek in vain for that increase in the modern German spirit. It is the same spirit that in- spired their predecessors of two thousand years ago whom Julius Caesar drove back across the Rhine in de- fense of the civilization of his day. Indeed, how much WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 57 of human uplift is shown in that still longer roll of cen- turies that separates Pan-Germany from another pred- atory horde that took as from the mouth of its God the command : When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee an- swer of peace and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And if it make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege It. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women and the little ones, and the cattle and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Who can better describe the present German war, with its blasphemous appeal to God as partner in its barbarisms? We and the children that shall take our place, dwell in such a threatened city and must share its fate or ward off the impending doom. A common peril rests upon everyone within our gates regardless of the land from which he came or the language spoken in his daily life. Teuton and Slav, Latin and Irish are Amer- icans and share in the American life and burden equally with those of other stock. As Americans we all face a common duty to repel the threatening hordes of cen- tral Europe, fortunate in that we may fight our battles across the sea rather than in our own dooryards. Tavo alternatives lie before us and before the outside world that shares our peril: Either, let every nation borrow the German idea and build for itself a military organi- zation that shall make the world a group of hostile camps, each devoting its main effort and its best thought 58 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK to arms, believing and intending that war shall come from time to time, bringing booty to the winner and ruin to the vanquished, world without end. Or, let us break now the power of that impending barbarism. Who can hesitate before such a choice, or who can doubt that civilization outside of central Europe must hold its shoulder to the present task and push it through to vic- tory? In Lloyd-George's pregnant phrase ''we must go on or go under" and America has chosen to go on. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE FROM A RECENT GERMAN CHANCELLOR The preceding paper was based upon a study of G-er- man acts and plans, but without knowledge of a secret exposition of those plans made by the former German Chancellor, Michaelis, to his Austrian confederates. This exposition, as recently read to the main committee of the Reichstag by the socialist deputy Haase, and printed in the New York Times for March 18, 1918, is given below. It furnishes a striking confirmation of the substantial correctness of interpretation reached in the foregoing article. The motive of all of Germany's acts is the lack of terri- tory, both for the development of commerce and colonization. Germany has to solve two problems — the freedom of the seas and the opening of a route to the Southeast. And these two problems can only be solved through the destruction of England. Our object is the permanent securing of the German Empire in Central Europe and the extension of its territory. No one who understands the significance of this war can doubt that, in spite of our wish to be moderate, we shall not allow ourselves to be deterred from extending the borders of the empire and from, under all circumstances, annexing such WHY GERMANY WANTED WAR 59 territories as are fitted for colonization and are subjected to the influence of the sea power. We can weaken her (Russia) materially by taking away her border territories, the Baltic provinces. By using skill- ful policies the Baltic provinces can easily be Germanized. They will be settled with Germans and their population will double itself.. That is the reason why they must be annexed. The frontier between the German Empire and Poland must be materially altered. ... The lakes, which we shall not leave in the hands of the Russians at any price, will be in- cluded within our borders. In the Vosges the boundary line must be improved by the annexation of some. valleys, so that the German frontier troops can no longer be fired upon from French territory. France will lose Briey and a strip of land west of Luxemburg. The value of Briey in an economic and military sense is evident from the fact that 16,000,000 tons of iron ore are produced there. For the safeguarding of the German and Luxemburg iron industry Longwy must remain in our hands. 60 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Cheradame, Andre. The Pan-Gernian Plot Unmasked. New York. Seribner. 1918. A forceful presenta- tion of the Prussian scheme for world-wide dominion. Chirol, V. The Middle Eastern Question. New York. Button. 1903. Chaps. 17-19. On Germany's rail- road invasion of Asiatic Turkey. Fullerton, William M. Problems of Power. New York. Seribner. 1913. Bk. Ill, Chap. 3. Jastrow, Morris. The War and the Bagdad Railway. Philadelphia. Lippincott. 1917. Chaps. 3^. Lewin, Evans. The German Road to the East; an Ac- count of the "Brang nxich Osten" and of Teutonic Aims in the Near and Middle East. London. Heinemann. 1917. Marriott, J. A. R. The Eastern Question; a Study in European Diplomacy. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1917. Muir, Ramsay. The Expansion of Europe. Boston. Houghton Mifflin. 1917. Chap. 9. Naumann, Friedrich. Central Europe. Trans, by C. M. Meredith. London. King. 1916. Germany's po- litical and economic aims in central Europe ex- plained by a well-known member of the Reichstag. Seton-Watson, R. W. German^ Slav, and Magyar. London. Williams and Norgate. 1916. Chaps. 6-8. Good brief account of the Pan-German plans. Usher, Roland G. Pan-Germanism. Boston. Hough- ton Mifflin. 1913. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS By CHARLES E. ALLEN Professor of Botany Americans have tried hard to understand the German point of vieAV in the Great War. Germans have tried hard to help us— and the rest of the world— to understand. For our enlightenment they have poured out torrents of written matter. They have sent special emissaries to instruct us, men like Dernburg— and Bolo Pasha. Yet we have been unable to sympathize with the German cause. Why? Is the difference between Germany's world outlook and ours so great that only the ''iron fist and shining sword" can bring accord? Or is it possible that Germany has been forced by her leaders into a course not defensible by arguments that will convince the world outside or even, in their saner moments, the German people themselves ? We may be helped in our attempts to answer such ques- tions as these if we examine briefly the explanations that Germans of high official position have offered for those German deeds which have seemed most repugnant to us of other lands. A WRONG CONFESSED Of Germany's belligerent acts, none has been more often explained— and none has more needed explanation— than the invasion of Belgium. We are familiar with the first 62 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK public explanation — that of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg on August 4, 1914 : We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, have possibly already sntered Belgian territory. Gentlemen, that is a breach of inter- aational law. It is true that the French Government has de- clared at Brussels that France would respect Belgian neutrality IS long as her adversary respected it. We knew, however, that France stood ready for an invasion. France could wait, we could aot. A French invasion in our flank on the lower Rhine might lave been disastrous. Thus we were forced to ignore the right- :ul protest €f the governments of Luxemburg and Belgium. The ivrong — I speak openly — the wrong we thereby commit we shall :ry to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. He who is menaced as we are and is fighting for his highest possession can consider only how he is to hack his way through. To the same effect were various official statements of von Jagow, head of the German Foreign Office, on August 4 md the days immediately preceding. The Kaiser's cablegram of August 10 to President Wil- son referred to '' Belgian neutrality, which had to be dolated by Germany on strategical grounds, news having been received that France was already preparing to enter Belgium.'* And Dr. Dernburg, the Kaiser's personal spokesman in this country, said:^ Our invasion of Belgium was an act necessary to the preserva- tion of our national existence, and, while we have regrets to i^oice, we have no apologies to make for it. The same attitude toward international obligations was manifest in Bethmann Hollweg 's classic remark to the departing British Ambassador: Just for a word — "neutrality," a word M'"hich in war time had 50 often been disregarded — ^just for a scrap of paper Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation. Nexo York Times^ September 6, 1914. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 63 All who were authorized to speak for Germany thus admitted in the early weeks of the war that the invasion of Belgium was contrary to international law and treaty obligations, and excused the wrong by the necessity of gaining a strategical advantage in the coming struggle. Even in those days it seemed well to mitigate somewhat the baldness of this justification, and the necessity was made to appear more urgent by the claim that France was about to strike at Germany through Belgium. Later the further plea was made that France had actually violated Belgian neutrality. At first no proof was offered ; Dernburg admitted that the only evidence was contained in private letters. Finally several affidavits were pub- lished^ to demonstrate that French soldiers had been seen in Belgium before the war. These affidavits were at once shown to rest partly on rumor, partly upon a confusion of Belgian and French uniforms, and partly upon the fre- quent visits to Belgium in time of peace of French soldiers on leave — just as visiting German soldiers were always to be seen in neighboring countries. Any infringement of Belgian neutrality by France in contemplation or in fact has been denied by the French and Belgian governments. It is negatived by the proven disposition of French troops at the outbreak of the war. And the events following the German invasion demon- strated that France not only had not prepared to attack Germany through Belgium, but that she had not even made ready to defend herself against a German attack from that quarter. The justification that ''France would have done it if we hadn't" thus disappeared; and the sole German defense for the wrongful act remained that stated by the Chancel- lor: ''Necessity knows no law.'* 2 Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Novem'ber, 1914. 64 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK NOT SO WRONG AFTER ALL But as the war dragged on and Germany's military goal was not reached, it appeared that the necessity of winning does not, to impartial minds, justify a gross breach of faith. Then new explanations began to appear. First came the finding of certain ''secret documents" in Brussels. Now the official apologists pointed out that the Chancellor had been quite mistaken when he spoke of the wrong done Belgium. On the contrary, Belgium had basely plotted the undoing of peace-loving Germany. In presenting to Americans the awfulness of Belgium's crime, Dernburg said : While Belgium pretended neutrality and friendship toward Germany, it was secretly planning for her defeat in the war which was considered unavoidable. Dernburg 's discussion of this subject^ illustrates the difficulties that confront the explainer of German acts. "Only the prompt action at Liege,." he says " . . . prevented the English landing and invading Belgium." Dr. Dernburg has never told us how the capture of a fortress on the eastern border of Belgium could keep troops from crossing the western and southern borders ; nor why the English so perversely proceeded (and have proceeded to the present day) to send troops into Belgium when such an ''invasion" was effectually "prevented." Belgium's abandonment of her own neutrality, Dern- burg points out, was ' ' evidenced also by the placing of all Belgium's fortresses on the eastern frontier." Now before the war there were just three fortresses of importance in Belgium: Liege, Antwerp, and Namur. Liege alone is near the eastern frontier ; Antwerp, on the north, guarded * New York Times Current History of tM War, 1 : 1101. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 65 against possible attack from Holland; and Namur, in the south, could defend only against French invasion. It is inconceivable that a former colonial secretary, a man of learning and affairs, should expect a statement so plainly absurd to deceive intelligent readers. Perhaps he did not ; he was writing for us Americans. "What are the documents adduced to prove the guilt of Belgium? Simply the memoranda of two conversations between the Chief of the Belgian General Staff and the Military Attache of the British Legation, in which were discussed the measures that might be taken to defend Bel- gian neutrality in case of a German invasion. There is nothing in these conversations that can possibly be construed as committing the respective governments; had there been, it would have been merely an agreement to defend the provisions of a treaty to which Germany was herself a party. But the new insistence upon Beldum 's guilt embarrassed Bethmann Hollweg. He had confessed the commission of a wrong; now his champions insisted there had been no wrong. He sought to relieve his embarrassment by a new confession which he put in the following words :^ When, on the 4th of August, I spoke of the wrong we were committing by marching into Belgium, it was not yet certain whether the Brussels government would not in the hour of need decide to save the country and withdraw to Antwerp under protest. . . . For military reasons it was imperative on August 4 under all circumstances to maintain the possibility of such a development. Even at that time there were many indications of the Belgian government's guilt. Positive written proofs were not then at my disposal. * Speech in the Reichstag-, December 2, 1914. 5— W. B, 66 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Similar in substance was Bctlimaim Ilollweg's state- ment a few weeks later :^ Wlien I spoke [on August 4] I already had certain indications, but no absolute proof upon which to base a public accusation, that Belgium long before had abandoned its neutrality in its relations with England. Nevertheless, I took Germany's responsi- bilities toward the neutral states so seriously that I spoke frankly of the wrong committed by Germany. Thus, in confessing ' ' frankly " to a ' ' wrong ' ' on August 4, Bethmann HoUweg, it now appears, knew that the inva- sion of Belgium was not a wrong. He had falsely sub- jected his nation to everlasting reproach. This new con- fession should, it would seem, settle the moral status of the government of which he was the head. But it was not quite satisfactory to von Jagow, next to the Chancellor the leading member of that government. So, to make matters perfectly clear, von Jagow offers this additional explana- tion :^ When the Imperial Chancellor made his declaration on August 4, 1914, he could not know that Belgium had already at heart taken up her attitude. Since then this has been abundantly proved. This is most puzzling. Did the Chancellor tell the truth in December and January when he admitted that he had prevaricated in August? Or did von Jagow tell the truth in 1916, and was the Chancellor untruthful in con- fessing to a falsehood ? The confusion is partly relieved by the statement from King Albert of Belgium^ that the conversations embodied in the "secret documents" had been promptly com- municated to the German Military Attache at Brussels. •A United Press interview published January 25, 1915. » Reichstag debate. April 6, 1916. ^ New York World, March 22, 1915. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 67 Therefore, on August 4, 1914, Bethmann Hollweg and von Jagow really knew all that was to be known of Belgium's ''guilt." Not the later discovery of that guilt, but the need of a new excuse for their conduct, was the reason for their wabbling. In Bethmann Hollweg 's interview of January, 1915, he had not only the ''frank" confession of wrong on August 4 to explain away; there was also his unlucky "scrap of paper" remark. By this also, it seems, he had not meant what he said. In that last interview with the British Ambassador, the Chancellor now explains, he had said "that among the reasons which had impelled England to go into the war the Belgian neutrality treaty had for her only the value of a scrap of paper." Then, telling of the hopes he had entertained of bring- ing about an understanding with England and the United States which should guarantee world peace, "In comparison with such momentous consequences," he exclaims, "was the treaty not a scrap of paper?" Here, in adjacent paragraphs, are two quite different explanations of this famous remark — one, what Bethmann Hollweg meant it to mean to the British Ambassador ; the other, what in retrospect it seemed to have meant to himself. Unfortunately, neither version jibes with what he actu- ally said on August 4. DERNBURG EXPLAINS THE VIOLATION OF BELGIUM Meanwhile Dr. Dernburg, in his capacity of official explainer, was having his own troubles. They led him to publish^ a revised and elaborated explanation. Saturday Evening Post, November 21, 1914. 68 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK He now argues, first, that treaties are closed on tKe basis of circumstances existing when they are made, and are not binding when circumstances change. Since no conceivable set of conditions could fail to change materially within a few months, this remarkable plea amounts to maintaining that no treaty is ever made (by Germany at least) with the intention of living up to its terms. Second, ''when the war broke out there was no enforce- able treaty in existence to which Germany was a party." By the treaty concluded between England and the North German Confederation in 1870, Dernburg says (the italics are his) : Both countries guaranteed Belgium's neutrality for the dura- tion of the [Franco-Prussian] loar and for one year thereafter. The war came tO' an end with the Frankfurt Peace in 1871, and the treaty between Belgium [England?] and the North German Federation expired in May, 1872. To make this argument, Dernburg stopped his reading of the treaty at a semicolon. Here is the provision in the treaty of 1870 itself: This treaty shall be binding on the high contracting parties during the continuance of the present war between the North German Confederation and France, and for twelve months after the ratification of any treaty of peace concluded between these parties [here the Doctor preferred to stop]; and on the expira- tion of that time the independence and neutrality of Belgium will, so far as the high contracting parties are respectively con- cerned, continue to rest as heretofore on Article I of the quintu- ple treaty of the 19th of April, 1839. Article I of the treaty of 1839, thus reaffirmed in 1870, and publicly admitted by von JagOAv in 1913 to be still in force, guaranteed the independence and perpetual neutral- ity of Belgium. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 69 Dernburg's third point is that, as shown by the "secret documents," Belgium had forfeited her own neutrality. Thus his argument sums up like this: First, there was a treaty, but Germany never intended to live up to it. Second, there was no treaty. Third, there was a treaty, but Belgium's action had invalidated it. YET ANOTHER OFFICIALi EXPLANATION Interesting for comparison with Dernburg's methods are those of Professor Walther Schoenborn, who discusses Bel- gian neutrality in Germany and tJie World War. This book, prepared under government auspices by a group of German educators and statesmen, is probably the most au- thentic statement of the official conception of the nature, purposes, and mission of the German Empire. Schoenborn admits that the neutrality of Belgium was guaranteed by international law as formulated in the Hague convention of 1907, so long as she (Belgium) was ' ' actually neutral in a given war. ' ' However, he says, the moment a neutral state becomes involved in a war, the provisions of the Hague convention cease to apply to it. Such a state may become involved either by its own act or through an attack by another state. Now, by the ultimatum of August 2, Germany threatened Belgium with war in case Belgium resisted, as the Hague convention required her to resist, an invasion of her neutrality. Schoenborn says : By the presentation of the ultimatum Belgium was already, at least conditionally, involved in the war. As soon as that condition arose the fifth Hague convention automatically ceased to apply to Belgium, and disregard of its provisions did not signify a break of international law. 70 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK To this eminent lawyer, then, the whole structure of international law seems rather less than a scrap of paper. Neutrality, as Bethmann HoUweg declared, is only a word — a word that vanishes when an international bully issues an ultimatum. An ultimatum is the one really important scrap of paper. But Schoenborn is compelled to confess that the treaties concerning Belgian neutrality constituted a legal guaranty to which Germany was a party. This barrier to Ger- many's ambition is to be overcome only by resorting to the doctrine of necessity; as he puts it: A further observance of the neutralization treaties of 1839 was incompatible with the vital interests of Germany; conse- quently the treaties ceased to have any binding force upon her. The treaties, too, became scraps of paper when Ger- many's interest so ruled! The list of explanations might be extended indefinitely — of explanations that contradict not only one another but too often also the established facts. "What then, shall we conclude, was the real reason for the invasion of Belgium? The only possible answer to this question is of course the answer given at the moment of the act — a wrong, known to be a wrong, was committed that Germany might win. The necessity of winning the game excused all treachery, revoked all obligations. The principle upon which the professional gambler deals from the bottom of the deck is the principle upon which Imperial Germany wages war. "NECESSITY" FAILS TO JUSTIFY THE CRIME At the outset the doctrine of necessity seemed unques- tionable to the German leaders. They had no thought that it would shock their people. As for the rest of the HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 71 world, no matter. When, in the course of a few weeks, Germany should master Europe, who would care what the subjected or the neutral nations might think? But the weeks passed, and Germany was not supreme. She found herself opposed, not by the armies of a powerful coalition only, but by the conscience of a world. The good will of neutral nations is important to a state engaged in a life-and-death struggle. A moral justification must be found for the acts whose criminal nature had at first been cynically admitted. But this task was too great. How great, is shown by the bungling way in which it was undertaken. No con- vincing new explanation could be offered, because the only possible explanation had already been given. Other ruthless acts of Germany and her allies — the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, the declaration of war on Russia and France, the Armenian massacres, the sub- marine warfare on non-combatants and neutrals — these and many more have been defended by explanations that explain as little as do those offered for the invasion of Belgium. By explanations that contradict one the other — as when the German government defends the submarine horrors by appeals to international law, while cabling in cipher to Luxburg in Buenos Aires (August 25, 1917) : ''Block- aded area rests on the principle of retaliation, not on in- ternational law." By explanations that seek to shift the responsibility — like blaming the loss of the Lusitania first to the actions of England, then to the callousness of the Cunard officials, then to the recklessness of the American government, and finally to the criminal heedlessness of the murdered vic- tims. By explanations coupled with pledges made only to be 72 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK broken, like those following the sinking of the Lusitania, renewed after the destruction of the Sussex. By downright falsehoods — like the claim that the Lusi- tania was armed, a claim based, it has been legally proved, upon perjury secured by German agents. THE CASE OF RUSSIA As the fate of Belgium, so that of Russia demonstrates the value of German promises and protestations. Believ- ing the assurances conveyed in the acceptance by the Reichstag of the principle of ''no annexations and no in- demnities," Russia laid down her arms. Von Kiihlmann, Germany's latest Foreign Minister and happiest juggler with words, opened the peace conference with the promise that ' ' our negotiations will be guided by the spirit of peace- able humanity and mutual esteem." Then followed the German terms — concrete embodiment of ' ' the spirit of peaceable humanity. ' ' Russia was to give up an immense territory, because, while under Ger- man martial law, the "people" of Lithuania, Poland, and the Baltic provinces had demanded "independence and separation from the Russian Empire." Next it appeared that German armies were to continue in occupation of the provinces thus "freed," under which conditions, as von Kiihlmami beautifully expressed it, "we have . . . confidence in the attractive force of the great German State for these peoples." Then came the conclusion of a peace between the Central Powers and the made-in-Germany government of Ukrainia, detaching another generous slice from Russia. After some further weeks of hesitation, the German conditions now having grown to the point of robbing Russia of most of Caucasia, the Russian representatives, lest still worse mio^ht follow, sio^ned a treaty of peace. HOW GERMANY EXPLAINS HER ACTS 73 And now, this scrap of paper being safely stowed in its proper pigeon-hole, the German armies continue their devastation of Russian territory while German intrigue extends its pollution to the shores of the Pacific. THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER We have seen how German promises are kept ; how Ger- many explains the breaking of her promises. We are offered protestations innumerable of German sincerity, a whole literature that extols German faith. When Ger- man sincerity and German faith are put to the test, how are the protestations borne out? A man or a nation conscious of having acted honorably, explains the past, should explanations be needed, simply, straightforwardly, consistently. One conscious of deceit and treachery offers explanations wavering, apologetic, self-contradictory. Into which category do German official explanations fall? None can doubt that Dernburg, Beth- mann Hollweg, von Jagow, men each and all of command- ing ability, have made the most of Germany's case. If what they have given us is the best that can be said, what will be history's verdict upon the Germany of the early twentieth century? Tannenberg says: "The German people is always right, because it is the German people, and because it numbers eighty-seven millions." In these words are summed Mp the theory of the German State, the excuse for German aggression, the basis upon which German power will henceforth rest, should German power be allowed to survive the present struggle. 74 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography The reader who wishes to make further excursions in the field of German apologetics will find the following books useful — and, in spots, entertaining. Dernburg, Bernhard. Germany and tJie War. New York. 1914. The Fatherland Corporation. SearcJiligJits on the War. New York. 1915. The Father- land Corporation. Modern Germany in Relation to the Great War. Trans, by W. W. Whitelock. New York. 1916. The most seri- ous attempt made by Germans to defend their case. Written by a group of very eminent men in the politi- cal and university world. The Truth about Germany. New York. 1914. A semi- official piece of apologetics, written primarily for American consumption. WHY RUSSIA, FRANCE, AND BRITAIN ENTERED THE WAR By G. C. SELLERY Professor of History Who caused the war? That question must be examined again and again, as new evidence is disclosed and as old evidence is subjected to ever closer scrutiny. RUSSIA The protecting friendship of Russia for Servia has been an A B C of European politics for many years. Russia has felt bound by ties of race and religion, and by self- interest, to protect her small sister state, Servia. For two centuries it has been Russia's ambition to get access to the Mediterranean, either by conquering European Turkey or by having it fall into the hands of friendly Balkan States. It was therefore as certain in 1914 that Russia would try to protect Servia as that the United States, under the Monroe Doctrine, would try to protect a South- American republic. The great rival of Russia in the Balkans has been Aus- tria, who has long desired to annex or control the Balkan States, especially since Prussia ''threw her out of Ger- many," in 1866. In 1878, after Russia's successful war against Turkey, the great powers awarded to Austria, who had taken no part in the war, the control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkish provinces inhabited by Serbs and located between Servia and the Austrian dominions. In 76 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK 1908, when Russia was weak from the Russo-Japanese war and from revolution, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herze- govina, and Servia and Russia protested in vain, for Ger- many stood beside Austria ' ' in shining armor. ' ' Austria's attack upon Servia in July, 1914, was a re- newed and bolder advance to the Southeast, and it was doubly perilous to Servia and to Russia, because Germany was by this time deep in intrigue for the domination of Turkey. For this attack the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince was merely a pretext. This fact, widely suspected in 1914, has since been placed beyond all doubt by con- vincing . evidence. For example, Austria asked her ally Italy for aid in an invasion of Servia in 1913.^ Every government in Europe understood perfectly that an attack by Austria on Servia was likely to cause a widespread war. Germany and all the other powers con- cerned clearly showed recognition of this danger in their diplomatic documents. For example, on July 23, before he knew what was in the Austrian ultimatum, Grey, the British foreign minister, expressed to the Austrian ambas- sador the hope that ''if there were difficulties, Austria and Russia would be able in the first instance to discuss them directly with each other" (B 3). On July 24 the Belgian government sent to its diplomatic agents a circular letter, to be used if the international sky grew darker, stating that ''Belgium confidently expects that her territory will remain free from any attack, should hostilities break out upon her frontiers."^ The Austrian attack began with the terrific ultimatum of July 23, 1914 (B 4), whose terms, as Professor Del- ^ Collected Diplomatic Documents (I^ondon, 1915), p. 401. The ex- hibits in the Austrian, British, French, German, and Russian looks of documents, republished in this volume, will be cited by initial and number. Thus. G 23 means Exhibit 23 in the German White Book. ' Collected Diplomatic Documents, pp. 300-301. WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 77 briick has admitted, would have placed Servia ''under her [Austria's] permanent control."^ Servia appealed to the Czar for aid, saying: ''We are prepared to accept those of the Austro-Hungarian conditions which are com- patible with the position of an independent State, as well as those to which your Majesty may advise us to agree . . ." (R 6). The Czar advised Servia to make all possible concessions and, to the surprise of the world, Servia agreed to all the demands except two, which required her to accept the "cooperation" of Austrian officials and police in her in- ternal affairs, and these Servia offered to submit to the Hague Tribunal or the great powers (B 39). But Austria, sure of German support, treated Servia 's reply as a refusal, and hastened preparations for war. Thereupon Russia (July 25) formally announced to the world that she would not permit Servia to be crushed (R 10). The efforts of Russia, France, Britain, and Italy to induce Austria (and her principal, Germany) to settle the Servian problem with Russia, or to permit the great powers to work out a satisfactory solution, were too numerous to be listed in this short paper.-* In all of them Russia was conciliatory: she would accept any settlement safeguard- ing the territory and independence of Servia. On July 29 the Czar proposed to Emperor William that the dispute should be referred to the Hague Tribunal.^ This proposal for arbitration, which was in harmony with the enlightened opinion of the world, met with no response. All these proposals, in fact, were refused, evaded, or ignored by Austria and Germany. With wearisome monotony they 'Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1915, p. 234. * See index to Collected Diplomatic Documents, under "Mediation Proposals." 'Collected Diplomatic Documents, p. 542. 78 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK repeated the refrain, Austria's quarrel with Servia is no one else's business. On July 29 Eussia strengthened her diplomatic hand by calling out thirteen army corps in southern Russia. The step was proper, for on the preceding day Austria had begun war on Servia and had mobilized troops against Russia.^ Germany was notified by Russia that her par- tial mobilization against Austria had no aggressive purpose behind it (B 93, B 96). Convincing proof that this was the truth is found in the Russian offer of July 30: ''If Austria, recognizing that the Austro-Servian question has assumed the character of a question of European interest, declares herself ready to eliminate from her ultimatum points which violate the sovereign rights of Servia, Russia engages to stop her military preparations" (R 60). Let any reader who may once have taken stock in the German argument, that Russia "spoiled everything" by her general mobilization order of July 31, carefully con- sider this offer of July 30. The first half of it asked Austria to admit that Europe was involved in the Austro- Servian dispute, and surely the desperate efforts of the diplomats had made that clear enough. The second half merely asked Austria to give practical effect to her re- peated assertion (which was in contradiction with part of her ultimatum) that she did not intend to encroach upon Servian sovereignty. Now, if Germany and Austria ac- cepted the Russian offer of July 30, then the peace of Europe would be assured, and there would be no Russian order for general mobilization on the morrow, for even the « This partial mobilization against Russia is repeatedly denied in the Austrian and German hooks, but there is no doubt about it. Bethmann Hollweg himself, in his speech of Aug. 4, 1914, admits that Austria had mobilized two corps "to the north," i e., against Russia. Col- lected Diplomatic Documents, p. 437. WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 79 order of July 29 would be cancelled. If, on the contrary, the offer of July 30 were rejected, then Eussia would have to prepare for the worst. The answer of Germany was a flat refusal. Von Jagow did not reply that the proposal while inaccep table might serve as the basis for negotiations. Not at all. He slammed the door by saying brusquely that ' ' he considered it impossible for Austria to accept" the Russian proposal (R 63). Early on July 31— at 1 a. m., the French ambassador at Vienna reported (F 115)— Austria replied to Russia's partial mobilization by ordering a general mobilization, and within three hours Russia followed suit.^ Russia's general mobilization was, of course, made inevitable by Germany's refusal of the offer of July 30, unless Russia was prepared to surrender Servia. On the other hand, Russia's continued offers of a peaceful settlement, July 31 and August 1, show that her order for general mobilization had not lessened her zeal for peace. Indeed the prospects for peace seemed to brighten as July 31 wore on. Austria, acting probably on a hint from Bethmann Hollweg,^ now expressed a lame willingness to take up matters with Russia (A 53). Both Russia and Austria declared that their orders for general mobiliza- tion were no barriers to a peaceful settlement (B 120, A 53).^ Russia, acting on Grey's suggestion (B 103), bettered her offer of July 30 and telegraphed Austria and the other powers that if Austria would consent to stop the ■^The proof that Austria's general mobilization preceded Russia's is now complete. See J. W. Headlam, History of Twelve Days (New York. 1915), p. 218, note; The Crime, by a German (New York [19171 ). chap. VI. »Was the Chancellor now anxious for peace, but the Kaiser deter- mined on war? It appears so. See J. W. Headlam, The German Chancellor and the Outbreak of the War (London [1917] ). » Collected Diplomatic Documents, p. 411. 80 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK advance of her troops in Servia and permit the great powers to ''examine the satisfaction which Servia can accord to the Austro-Hungarian government without in- jury to her rights as a sovereign State or her independence, Russia undertakes to maintain her waiting attitude" (B 132, R 67) . Later in the day (July 31) , when the language of the Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburgh made it appear that Austria now favored a peaceful settlement, Russia went still further, and actually abandoned her re- quirement that Austria should halt the advance of her troops in Servia (B 133, F 120, R 73). Unfortunately, Berlin had other ideas. At midnight (July 31-August 1) Germany sent her fateful ultimatum, demanding that Russia cancel her mobilization within twelve hours or Germany would mobilize her forces (G 24, B 121, R 70, F 117). This was a threat of war and was so understood everywhere. For Russia to obey this ultimatum would have been madness. Germany did not order Austria to cancel her mobilization or to stop her invasion of Servia, nor did Germany offer to give up her own preparations, which, under the screen of a declaration of "State of danger of war" (July 31), were now nearing the point of complete mobilization.^** There was still a chance that Germany would recoil from the final step. Austria was now carrying on cordial ''con- versations" with Russia. Russia assured the British am- bassador (August 1) that her offer of July 31 still held good and that "in no case would Russia begin hostilities first" (B 139). The Czar telegraphed the Kaiser (August 10 This is shown by the Kaiser's telegram to King George, August 1, in which he says that his troops "are at this moment being kept back by telegraph and telephone from crossing the French frontier" (Col- lected Diplotnatic Documents, p. 540). WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 81 1) : ''I comprehend that you are forced to mobilize, but I should like to have from you the same guarantee which I have given you, viz., that these measures do not mean war, and that we shall continue to negotiate for . . . the universal peace which is so dear to our hearts . . . ."^^ This moving telegram of the Czar was Russians dignified answer to the German ultimatum. Now, if Ger- many at the last moment repented, the way was open; she could construe her ultimatum literally, i. e., could mobilize — and negotiate. Germany, however, was resolved to substitute the sword for peaceful negotiation, and August 1, at 7 :10 p. m., declared war on Russia (R 76). FRANCE If Germany attacked Russia, France was bound to sup- port her. This was the duty of France under the terms of the Dual Alliance, formed in 1891 and serving as an answer of France and Russia to the Triple Alliance, or- ganized in 1882 by Germany and Austria with Italy. Each alliance provided for mutual assistance by its members in a defensive war. In 1914 Italy declared that as her allies were the aggressors she was absolved from supporting them (F 124). France, however, was convinced that Russia was not the aggressor, and therefore was resolved to help her if war broke out (B 6, R 55, F 101). The important question, then, is this : Did France strive sincerely, intelligently, and vigorously, July 24- August 1, to prevent the threatening war? The answer is an em- phatic yes, written large in the Collected Diplomatic Docu- ments. Moreover, France herself abstained from any word or " Collected Diplomatic Documents, p. 413. 82 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK act which might provoke Germany. France did not order the mobilization of her forces until the afternoon of August 1, more than a day later than the veiled German mobiliza- tion (''State of danger of war"), and she at the same time formally declared that this precautionary measure did not mean war, and that she would redouble her efforts to se- cure a peaceful settlement (F 125, F 127, B 136, R 74). Moreover, to avoid the possibility of any clash with Ger- man troops, France drew her forces back six miles from the eastern frontier, and thus left the inhabitants of a strip of France unprotected, in order to demonstrate her devo- tion to peace (F 106, F 136, B 40). On July 31, Germany instructed her ambassador at Paris to ask France to state whether she Would remain neutral in the event of a Eusso-German war (G 25) . In case France's answer to this question was yes, the German ambassador was told to demand that France hand over her fortresses Toul and Verdun to Germany as a pledge of neutrality. These instructions, admitted by Bethmann Hollweg to be genuine,^^ indicate that Germany had no real grievance to charge against France, and therefore felt it might be nec- essary to goad her to war or use her refusal to surrender her great fortresses as an excuse to attack her. The same conclusion, — ^that France's behavior had been studiously correct, — is to be drawn from Germany 's declar- ation of war, August 3 (F 147). The declaration is based on charges that French airmen had bombed German rail- roads, etc. The charges are absurd, as is now generally admitted, for would France expose a strip of eastern France in order to avoid giving Germany an excuse for war and at the same time send over airmen to bring on war? And did not von Jagow, the German foreign secretary, tell ^Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1918. WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 83 the British ambassador on July 30 that ''he knew France did not desire war" (B 98) ? The testimony of Jaures, the great French Socialist, given in the last speech he made (July 29) before his death, is to the same effect. While the Socialists of Ger- many and the other countries were denouncing Austria and her accomplice Germany for bringing Europe to the verge of war, Jaures said: I, who have never shrunk from bringing on my head the hatred of our jingoes by my stubborn and incessant efforts to bring Germany and France closer together, I am entitled to declare that at the present moment the French government de- sires peace and is laboring for its maintenance. The F^rench government is the best peace-ally of this ad- mirable English government, which has taken the initiative with a view to mediation. And it is influencing Russia by its coun- sels in the sense of wisdom and patience.^^ BRITAIN Great Britain's efforts to prevent the outbreak of the Great War have been touched upon. The British foreign secretary. Grey, led in devising plans for preserving the peace by delay, conciliation, conference, and mediation {e. g., B 36). He foresaw that an attack by Austria on Servia would threaten the peace of Europe, and, July 24, he proposed mediation between Austria and Servia by the disinterested powers (B 11) . When Germany blocked this, Grey asked her, July 29, to suggest any form of mediation that would be acceptable to her, and France, Italy, and Britain were ready to accept it (B 84). Germany did not suggest any plan. On July 31 Grey informed the German government that if it would make any reasonable proposal which would show that Germany and Austria desired peace, Britain ^ArcMv f. Sozialw. u. Sozialp. XL (1915), p. 290. 84 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK would support it in St. Petersburgh and Paris, and if Rus- sia and France did not accept it Britain would wash, her hands of the whole affair (B 111). Germany made no proposal. On August 1, when the time limit of Germany's ulti- matum to Russia was still running, Grey, through his am- bassador (B 131), urged Germany to hold back from war and work for peace, now that Austria was willing to diy- cuss matters with Russia. The appeal was in vain (B 138) . It is necessary now to examine Britain's own grievance against Germany. For over 200 years it has been a basic principle of British foreign policy, familiar to all Europe, not to allow the region now called Belgium to fall into the hands of a strong continental power. Britain fought Louis XIV and Na- poleon to protect this region. In the treaty of London, 1839, the great powers established the independence and neutrality of Belgium and each of them promised to defend the same. Britain's interest and honor therefore required her to protect the neutrality of Belgium in 1914. Germany, however, planned to violate the neutrality she had promised to defend (treaties of 1839, 1870) in order to be able to strike France ' ' below the belt. ' ' On July 29 Germany made her notorious bid for British neutrality, asking Britain to condone the proposed violation of Bel- gium (B 85). Grey.'s answer, July 30, was a firm refusal and an earnest appeal to Germany to work with Britain for the peace of Europe (B 101). The force of this ap- peal was strengthened the same day by a warning that Germany must not count on Britain's standing aside in all circumstances (B 102, B 111). On July 31 Britain asked France and Germany if they were prepared to respect the neutrality of Belgium (B 114). France answered yes (B 125); Germany de- WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 85 clined to answer (B 122). On August 1 Grey told the German Ambassador that if the neutrality of Belgium were violated '4t would be very difficult to restrain public opinion" in Britain (B 123). On August 4 Britain twice requested Germany to respect Belgian neutrality, asking, the second time, for an answer within twelve hours (B 153, B 159) . The conversation of the British Ambassador with von Jagow, August 4 (B 160) makes it clear that Britain would have declared her neutrality if Germany had agreed to abandon her treacherous attack on Belgium, although it is undoubted that Britain would have been compelled to enter later, when Germany's sinister purposes were fully revealed. The attack on Belgium was construed by Britain, a guarantor of Belgium, as an attack upon herself, and her declaration of a state of war with Germany, August 4, was only a recognition of the facts. The Triple Entente of Britain with France (1904) and Russia (1907) was not formed to ''hem in" Germany or ''encircle" her. It was not an alliance, but a relation of cordial friendship, based upon the removal of concrete causes of friction, which had led to "a settled temper of confidence and good will." No doubt the wiping out of causes of friction with France and with Russia was in- spired, in part, by Britain's desire to make it impossible for Germany to induce either France or Russia to jom Ger- many in attacking her; no doubt, from this angle, the En- tente was an answer to Germany's threatening increase m her navy and German toasts to "The Day" when Britain s fleet would be destroyed. But the Entente did not imply British hostility to Germany, and Britain made repeated efforts, from 1906 on, to establish friendly relations with Germany. , . . i, i? The negotiations of July 24-August 4 show that the J^n- tente contained no threat a-ainst a peaceful Germany. 86 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK From the very start Britain refused to take her stand by the side of France and Russia (B 6), and even President Poincare's touching appeal to King George to the same effect (July 31) was declined.^* Britain used her friendly relations with France and Eussia to impress upon them the urgency of doing everything to preserve the peace, and France's moving appeals to Britain for support are a com- plete proof that Britain was not bound by the Entente to support France in a war with Germany {e. g., F 127). Grey's offer to Germany on July 31 (above) is proof piled upon proof. The idea that in spite of her efforts for peace Britain really wanted the war as a means for striking down a trade rival is contrary to all the evidence. German trade was increasing before the war, but so was Britain's. Britain had never been so prosperous, and Germany was Britain's best customer. Some years before the war, when business was poor, Chamberlain had made a great political campaign to persuade the British people to hamper Ger- man competition by giving up free trade for a protective tariff. The people voted down his proposal decisively. Is it reasonable to believe that a shrewd commercial people like the British would refuse to employ a protective tariff, the well-known device for checking foreign com -petition. and would resort to the risky and expensive method of war? The idea that Britain was everlastingly blocking Ger- many's efforts toward colonial expansion can not bear ex- amination. In 1913 the two powers amicably agreed as to spheres of economic interest in Portuguese Africa and future division of it when Portugal should be ready to sell. In 1914 likewise the two powers were agreed (the papers being ready for final signature when the war came") that Germanv should control the Oonsta-ntinople-Basrdad ^* (Tollected Diplomatic Documents, p. f)43. WHY THE ALLIES ENTERED THE WAR 87 railway and have spheres of influence which, so far as Britain was concerned, would have given to Germany the commercial exploitation of the best parts of Asiatic Tur- key.^^ Since 1906 the government of Britain had been in the hands of the Liberals, latterly supported by the Laborites. They were absorbed in social reform, ''curbing the Lords", working out ''Home Rule", etc. They begrudged the money required for the navy, and repeatedly tried to get Germany to agree to reduce naval rivalry and expense. When Lord Roberts, the military idol, dinned into the ears of the British that Germany was planning to strike them down and that their only chance for salvation was universal military service, people and government paid no attention to his cries. When the Great War broke out the British army was a mere handful, — a "contemptible little army" the Kaiser dubbed it,— and Kitchener was at once called upon to train millions of recruits, for the country realized that war against Germany reouired such a force. Does that support the idea that the British had conspired with France and Russia to "encircle peace-loving Germany?" Prince Lichnowsky, German Ambassador to Britain, 1912-14, wrote for the eyes of confidential friends a mem- orandum on the origins of the great war, which has re- cently been published. The Prince places the responsibil- ity for the war squarely on his own government, and ex- onerates the other powers.^^ Von Jagow, foreign secre- tary in 1914, was put forward by the German government to answer Lichnowsky 's damning indictment, but the ef- fect of his reply is to confirm Lichnowsky on all essential points. "McClure, S. S., Obstacles to Peace (Boston, 1917), pp. 40-43. MJVetu York Times, April 21, 1918; Chicago Tribune, April 20, 1918, and following. For the reply of von .Tagow see Neio York Times for April 28 and Chicago Tribune for April 28 and 29. 88 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Four Books on the Origins of the War Beck, J. M. TJie Evidence in tJie Case. New York. Put- nam. 1915. Headlam, J. W. History of Twelve Days, July 24 to Au- gust 4, 1914. New York. Scribner. [1915]. J ^accuse! By a German. New York. Hodder. 1915. Seymour, Charles. Tlie Diplomatic Background of the War. New Haven. Yale Univ. Press. 1916. DID GERMANY WEONG BELGIUM? By G. C. FISKE Associate Professor of Latin BELGIUM A NEfUTRAIilZED STATE Germany's violation of the neutrality of Belgium was a crime against the civilized world. You have heard this statement a hundred times, but do you know the cold, brutal facts that prove it absolutely? A neutralized state is one which has been guaranteed freedom from invasion upon condition that it wage no wars beyond its borders. Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Belgium are such states. Belgium was created a neutralized nation on the 19th of April, 1839, by a treaty signed by the great powers. Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria. These powers were tired of having this centrally located country used as ''the cockpit of Europe". Therefore, they agreed that Belgium should form an independent and per- petually neutral state, and bound themselves to intervene in the defense of Belgium against any power attempting to invade Belgian territory. On the other hand, Belgium was bound to defend her frontiers against invasion. In case Belgium was not strong enough to offer effective op- position to the violation of her neutrality, the guaranteeing states were in honor bound to intervene to maintain that neutrality, even without a request from Belgium.^ *Bluntschli, Droit international codifiS, livre VI, No. 432. 90 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK This treaty was reaffirmed in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian war. At that time France and Prussia signed identical treaties by which each, with the aid of Great Britain, agreed to defend the neutrality of Belgium against viola- tion by the other. In the Franco-Prussian war, therefore both parties respected the neutrality of Belgium. This fact was of great aid to the Germans in annihilating the French army at Sedan. But besides these earlier contracts, Belgium, like every other neutral state, had the protection of the Hague Con- vention of 1907. That Convention, signed by the United States and all the other great powers, says that the terri- tory of neutral powers shall not be invaded; that troops or supplies of belligerents shall not move across it ; that if a foreign power invades a neutral country, the neutral country has the right to resist. AUGUST 2, 1914 Thus protected by the Hague Convention and by the contract creating them independent and neutral states. Belgium and Luxemburg had every right to expect that, like Switzerland, their neutrality would be respected by all the belligerents. Nevertheless at 7 :00 p. m. on Sunday, August 2, 1914, Belgium received an ultimatum from Ger- many to which a reply was to be given in twelve hours. In this ultimatum, Germany charged that France was going to cross the Belgian frontiers against her, and de- manded the right to pass troops through Belgian territory. She promised at the conclusion of peace to guarantee the possession and independence of the Belgian kingdom in full. If Belgium resisted, Germany would consider her an enemy, in which case she made no promises about the future fate of Belgium. Arms would decide. DID GERMANY WRONG BELGIUM 91 It is interesting to note that on tlie -itli of August, the very day on which her armies actually were crossing the borders of Belgium, Germany received from the govern- ment of the neutralized state of Switzerland a notification that Switzerland would maintain her neutrality. What did Germany reply? The Imperial Government has taken cognizance of this declara- tion with sincere satisfaction and is convinced that the Confed- eration with the support of its strong army, and the indomitable will of the entire Swiss people, will repel every attempt to violate its neutrality. Thus Germany counted upon Switzerland doing exactly what she was ashing Belgium not to do. Why? Military necessity! It is hard to invade France through Switzer- land, but easy through Belgium. BELGIUM FORCED INTO WAR It is evident that in view of the treaty of 1839 and of the Hague Convention, this brutal ultimatum forced an industrious, peace-loving, and absolutely innocent people into the war. Let me make this perfectly clear. Suppose that Belgium had accepted Germany 's proposal. Belgium would then have forfeited all right to be treated as a neutral and independent state by Great Britain and France. In the event of their final victory over Germany, they would have been justified in destroying her independ- ence. But if Germany should win, what guarantee would Belgium have had that a victorious Germany, after having ruthlessly broken the agreement to respect her neutrality, would keep the other agreement to restore her territory to her at the end of the war? Therefore, the determination to maintain her independence as well as regard for her 92 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK honor as a nation inevitably forced Belgium to refuse the German demand. Belgium was forced into the war by Germany. Accordingly the Belgian government replied^ : If we accept the proposals submitted to us, we would sacrifice the honor of the nation, and betray our duty towards Europe. . The Belgian Government refuse to believe that the in- dependence of Belgium can only be preserved at the price of the violation of her neutrality. The Belgian Government are firmly resolved to repel by all means in their power, every attack upon their rights. GERMANY'S CHARGES At first Germany made no charges against the loyalty of Belgium. Such charges came later when Germany faced the condemnation of the whole world. When Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister in Berlin, on the morning of August 4, 1914, requested an interview with Herr von Jagow, German Secretary of State, Herr von Jagow said: "What is it we are asking you? Simply to allow us a free passage . . ." "There is," replied the Belgian minister, "at once a very easy way of formulating the only reply which such a question admits, and that is to imagine that France had addressed to us the same invitation, and we had accepted it. Would not Germany have said that we had betrayed her in a cowardly manner?" As the Secretary of State gave no reply to this very direct question, Baron Beyens continued: "At least," he asked, "have you anything with which to re- proach us . . ." "Germany," said Herr von Jagow, "has nothing with which to reproach Belgium, and the attitude of Belgium has always been perfectly correct." 2 Qrey Book No. 1, No. 22. DID GERMANY WRONG BELGIUM 93 "You must recognize, then," said Baron Beyens, "that Belgium cannot give you any other reply than that which she has now given you, without losing her honor. It is with nations as with individuals." "As a private person I do recognize it, but as Secretary of State, I have nothing to say." On the same day Bethmann Hollweg, the German Chan- cellor, gave public recognition to the same effect in his famous speech to the German Reichstag. The doctrine of necessity figuring there is Military Necessity. Surely Beth- mann Hollweg is an authority upon the case of Germany. The Chancellor said : We are now in a state of necessity, and necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg, and are perhaps al- ready on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, this is contrary to the dic- tates of international law. ... So we were compelled to override the just protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Govern- ments, The wrong— I speak openly— that we are committing we will endeavor to make good as soon as our military goal has been reached. Out of the mouths of her two highest officials, von Jagow and Bethmann Hollweg, Germany thus condemns herself. But was Germany's fear justified that either France or Great Britain intended to violate Belgian neutrality, and attack her along the lower Rhine? There is not a shred of evidence that France intended to invade Belgium. The French government mobilized its army 10 kilometers from the frontier everywhere, and made its first offensive through Alsace and Lorraine, not through Belgium. When asked by Great Britain, July 31, 1914, France at once replied that she intended to respect the neutrality of Belgium and so informed the Belgian gov- ernment.3 Great Britain had told the Belgian govern- ' British Blue Book No. 114; French Yellow Book, No. 122. 94 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK ment as early as 1913, "that she (Great Britain) would not be the first to violate the neutrality of Belgium, nor would public opinion ever approve of it."* And what of Germany ? When asked by Great Britain, she declined to make any promised Why? Because she considered military advantage of more importance than her honor as a nation. Belgium herself, even when confronted with the immi- nent prospect of invasion, was still careful to maintain scrupulous neutrality. On August 3, noon, 17 hours after Belgium had received the German ultimatum and five hours after Belgium had dispatched her refusal to accept the dishonorable German proposal, Belgium declined France's offer of military assistance.*' Why? Because no overt act of war had at that time been committed and be- cause Germany's answer to Belgium's brave note was not received until 6 p. m., August 4.' So we see that like the United States, Belgium did not rest her case on her legal rights, but waited for the ''overt act." These facts prove that France, Great Britain, and Bel- gium have a clean slate. Germany is a self-confessed crim- inal in the court of civilization. THE BEIXJIAN "SECRET DOCUMENTS" The foregoing facts completely refute the absurd charges, made as an afterthought by the German government, that in the years before the war Belgium made a secret military convention with Great Britain against Germany. What * Letter of Sir Edward Grey of April 7, 1913, made pubUc Dec. 7, 1914. 'British Bine Book No. 122. « Grey Book I, No. 24. ''Grey Book I, Nos. 27 and 38. DID GERMANY WRONG BELGIUM 95 were the so-called secret documents on which Germany- based these charges? On October 13, 1914, the NorddeutscTie Allgemeine Zei- tung announced that there had been discovered in the archives of the Belgian war office at Brussels, a record of "a military convention between Belgium and Great Britain." This refers to conversations which were con- eluded in 1906 and 1912 between two successive military attaches and two successive Belgian Chiefs of StafP. The documents have since been published in this country under the title The Case of Belgium, with an introduction by Dr. Bernard Dernburg. What shall we say about these documents 1 In the first place, the documents are not a treaty against Germany. Military attaches. Chiefs of Staff, and Secre- taries of War cannot make treaties. The documents ex- pressly state that they do not bind the governments. They are simply measures of military preparedness such as it is the duty of every military staff to prepare. Similar plans, of course, exist in the secret files of our war office at Wash- ington. But that fact does not mean we are plotting war. Great Britain consulted with Belgium because the Ger- man invasion of Belgium was a commonplace in such mili- tary writers as von Bernhardi, von Schliefenbach, and von der Goltz. As a guarantor, in fact the main guarantor of the neutrality of Belgium, Great Britain had to take these writings into consideration. But besides these, by the time of the second conversation the two governments had to face some very hard and menacing facts— for in- stance the growth of German strategic railways along the eastern frontier of Belgium. For five years prior to the war, Germany began in an area adjacent to the eastern frontier of Belgium and about half the size of New Jersey, a series, of strategic railways. 96 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK At the beginning of this period there were in this little corner of Prussia 15.10 miles of railroad to every 100 square miles of territory. New Jersey, twice as large, had 30.23 miles. In the five-year period this little corner of Prussia had increased its* mileage to 28.30, while New Jersey had only increased from 30.23 to 30.25. The dis- trict is unimportant, and there was no commercial or eco- nomic reason for such an expansion. In the May before the war, three of these railroads led to blind terminals less than a day's march from the Belgian frontier. At many tiny stations they were provided with sidings and long platforms for troops^. But we do not need to fall back upon the menace of these strategic railways to defend the loyalty of Belgium, be- cause the conversations expressly provide that the entry of Great Britain into Belgium would take place only after tJie violation of the neutrality of Belgium hy Germany, that is, only at the time when Great Britain was in honor bound to interfere in the defense of Belgium, the ward of the guaranteeing nations. Why did not Belgium make a sim- ilar conversation with Germany in anticipation of a pos- sible invasion by France and Great Britain? "Well, we live in a practical world. You know the fable of the fox who wouldn 't go into the wolf 's cave, where all the tracks of the smaller animals pointed inward and none outward. Would you have gone into that cave if you had been Bel- gium and had seen those tracks, some large, some small, all leading into the German cave? What were those tracks? Silesia, German Poland, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lor- raine. The Belgians, themselves, have given a completely eon- *On the strategic railways, see the article by Mr. Walter Littlefleld in the New York Times Current History, Vol. I, pp. 1004 ff. DID GERMANY WRONG BELGIUM 97 vincing refutation of these revelations in the letter of King Albert to the New York World on March 22, 1915. In this letter King Albert says: No honest man could have acted otherwise than I did. Bel- gium never departed for an instant nor in the slightest degree from the strictest neutrality. ... I was so desirous af avoiding even the semblance of anything unneutral that I had the matter [the fact of the conversations] communicated to the German military attache in Brussels. When the Germans went through our archives they knew exactly what they would find, and all their present surprise and indignation is assumed. It is evident, therefore, that Belgium was absolutely loyal and neutral as regards her relations with all the guar- anteeing powers, Germany included. This is precisely what we should expect. For quite apart from all considerations of honor and good faith, Belgium had not the slightest motive for plotting with Great Britain or France against Germany. Her sole in- terest was to maintain her neutrality and her good rela- tions with all the guaranteeing powers, for her remarkable industrial development was due to the freedom from war which she had enjoyed for seventy-five years. GERMANY'S DUPLICITY The attitude of Germany, on the other hand, was double- faced. On paper and by word of mouth she tried to spread the idea that she would observe the neutrality of Belgium. This Bernstorff-like attitude was maintained by the Ger- man ambassador at Brussels on August 2 up to the very minute he delivered the German ultimatum, not by excus- able reticence, but by assiduously circulating false state- ments. Also a few years before the war in 1911 and 1913 the German government had twice asserted its intention 7— W. B, 98 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK to keep its word, and respect Belgian rights. On the first occasion Bethmann Hollweg gave the Belgian minister a semi-official assurance. The second was an announcement by von Jagow in open debate in the Reichstag on April 29, 1913.^ Clearly then Germany wanted to gain the advan- tage of treacherous surprise by appearing to keep her word, while her military staff had the complete plans ready for the invasion of Belgium. WHAT THE ATTACK ON BELGIUM MEANS TO US What has the crime against Belgium to do with our en- trance into the war? In the first place Germany "put over'* the same mean and brutal attack on us. Just as Germany violated her solemn compact with Belgium to gain a military advantage against France so she violated the rights of the neutral United States and every other nation to trade and travel on the high seas, and killed our citizens in order to strike a foul blow at the military power of the Allies. On sea or land Germany is willing to shoot the innocent bystander ''full of holes," if she can thereby bring down her enemy. She must ''hack her way through" the prostrate rights of neutrals, through our highest rights, because it is a state of necessity for her to dominate the world. How about the rights of small nations ? Is not the very heart of the Monroe doctrine the policy that the smaller nations of the western hemisphere shall have the untram- meled right to life, liberty, and independence ? Do you sup- pose that if a victorious Germany keeps Belgium after the war she will respect the rights of any small nation in the western hemisphere! If the case of Belgium seems far •Belgian Grey Book, No. 12. DID GERMANY WRONG BELGIUM 99 away, substitute one of these nations. Do you know the story of German intrigue in Mexico, Central and South America? Suppose Germany should have said to any one of these nations after a victorious European war: "You must give us naval bases. ' ' Count von Reventlow has said that was part of Germany's idea of the freedom of the seas. Could we afford to have the policy of Prussianization begin with these little nations ? Would not our own national in- terest and honor impel us in such a case to fight German aggression ? So many nations of Central and South Amer- ica would not give their material and moral support to the United States to-day if they did not fear the German men- ace. A victorious Germany is a danger to the prosperity, the moral rights, and the very existence of all nations, small and great, because Germany wishes by her might to destroy the right of the world. Finally, we Americans see in the violation of Belgium's neutrality and the whole course of Germany 's dealing with ravished Belgium, a concrete and bitter proof of just what the successful realization of the ideas of the German mili- tary autocracy means to the world, means to us. The German Government says that necessity knows no law, that might makes right, that a solemn contract is a scrap of paper. We Americans and our Allies mean to win this war, mean to establish before the bar of civilization the equality of big states and little, to help build up a higher, broader, and more effective international law, which shall make the necessity of national honor more binding than the necessity of military strategy. In the very center of our demands at the council table which shall settle the issues of the war must stand the restoration of Belgium with complete indemnification for all her losses. 100 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Belgian Grey Book. British Blue Book. French Yellow Book. German White Book. Beck, James M. The Evidence in the Case. Chapter 9. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York. The best brief treatment of the subject. Modern Germany. Book III, Chapter 3; Book IV, Chapter 3. Mitchell Kennerley. New York. Repre- sents the German point of vicAV. Stowell, Ellery C. The Diplomacy of the ^yar of 1914. Chapter 9. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston. The most convenient discussion of the subject of Belgian neutrality from the point of view of International I.aw and the history of diplomacy. The Case of Belginm.. With an introduction by Bern- ard Dernburg. Waxweiler, Emile. Belgium Neutral and Loyal. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York. The best defense of Belgium by a Belgian. HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR By M. S. .SLAUGHTER Professor of Latin War is Jlcll, but men have sought to lessen the hor- rors of war by formulating from time to time certain laws and conventions to Ijc obsi'i-vcd by all Ix'llij^erents. The last of these amercements were the llaj^nic Conven- tions of 1801) and 11)07, adoi)ted l)y (Jcrmany as by all the other leading nations of the world. It was supposed this was done by all i)arties in good faith, but the world did not understand Germany. When the time came, in the summer of 1914, she had laid her i)lans and was ready to revive all the worst phases of warfare which men have sought to eliminate, especially those concern- ing the treatment of civilians and non-combatants in invaded countries. She chose to disregard her signed agreements and to substitute a system of terrorism on the pretext of the mercifulness of greater efficiency. For forty-five months we have had an exhibition of how soldiers, surrendered ''body and soul" to a war- lord and trained in the precepts of a war-lord's Manual, conduct w^ar. When the stories of German atrocities in Belgium first reached the United States many men rejected them as excited exaggerations of the ordinary happenings of war. Some men still profess unbelief, and brand as "English lies" all the evidence that is forthcoming. Unable to believe that civilized men of this dav could do the things the Germans are said to 102 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN VVAR BOOK have done, they continue to affirm their total unbelief in the happenings. And they question the fairness and tolerance of those whose minds have been convinced and whose souls have revolted at practices that disgrace humankind. Yet we must face the facts in order to keep our minds alive to the real nature of the conflict into which we have entered. To rehearse the story of German war atrocities since August, 1914, would be a task as impossible as it is un- grateful. The evidence is accessible to all in the reports of numerous commissions, French, Belgian, English, and American, in the testimony of Cardinal Mercier and other foreigners of undisputed standing, and in the reports of our own accredited ministers and ambassadors to the countries affected by the war. This testimony is supported by diaries of captured German soldiers and ine proclamations of German high officials. These documents have Deen subjected to the closest scrutiny at the hands of experts trained to deal with testimony of this kind. There can be no doubt as to their truth and authenticity. The more the Germans have sought to justify themselves the more they have convicted themselves, by the acknowledgment of deeds which they excuse under the pretext of self-protection. This is notoriously true of the German White Book, The Bel- gian People's War. An occasional franctireur (sniper), or the fear of one, is no excuse for the total destruc- tion of a ^ town and the wholesale shooting of the in- habitants, men, women and children, practically all of whom must have been innocent. No, the publication of this pamphlet by the German Imperial Foreign Office was a blunder and a boomerang. The claim of the German government that the Ger- man soldiers in Belgium acted with humanity, restraint HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 103 and Christian fortitude is only an added offense in the face of the long and all too familiar list of her crimes against hiamanity, not only in Belgium but in Poland and Servia and Roumania and on the high seas. The sea raids and air raids on unfortified towns, from the butch- ery at Scarborough in December, 1914, to that of last week, the deliberate and premeditated attacks on hospi- tals and hospital ships, the sinking of neutral ships with- out warning and without leaving a trace, the use of poi- sonous gases, the poisoning of wells, the secret use of an- thrax and typhus germs to destroy Roumania, a nation still at peace with Germany, the recent arrest and im- prisonment of Professor Nicolai, the foremost physician of the German Empire, who refused to listen to the sin- ister suggestion that he use his scientific knowledge to fix shells with cholera germs and plague bacilli to be sent back of the front firing line, — this roll of dishonor is a sufficient refutation of any claim of the German govern- ment to have observed the precepts of humanity. The world has been subjected to a long continued and extremely successful propaganda in favor of Ger- man Kultur at the same time that all countries, ours as well as others, friendly and unfriendly, have been honeycombed with a merciless spy system before the war as well as during the war. Bernstorff's activities in Washington and German diplomatic conspiracies in other neutral countries prove conclusively that the dictum of Frederick the Great, ''No ministers abroad, only spies" is a working principle of the Kaiser's gov- ernment. This deserves to be classed among the atro- cities committed by Germany — a wholesale weaving of lies, a deliberate and well calculated plot for grasping world power by ruthlessly trampling upon human rights. Her hope to rewrite international law according 104 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK to a plan made in Germany and to dictate even the verdict of history shows how far she has gone on the road to national insanity. ''Whom fortune would destroy she first makes mad. ' ' How far this system of frightfulness in action is ac- cepted by the German people we can only surmise, but there seems to be no general and open protest, and no answer has yet come to the many overtures that our government has made to the German people seeking to lessen their confidence in the German government. Ger- many may have been transformed by the war, but years of training in the German philosophy of war and years of experience of the material comforts of an astonishing- ly efficient government would naturally make conviction difficult. The possession of the minds of an entire people by a system conceived in sin and born into dis- honor is of all atrocities the greatest atrocity, and the only kind interpretation of Germany is that she is mad. It will be enough now to consider specifically a few of the worst crimes of the Germans against civilians to show conclusively that the spirit of a German army of invasion is one of ruthless cruelty and intimidation. 1. CIVILIANS AS SCREENS The use of civilians as screens to protect German soldiers is an undeniable fact and the evidence comes from all of the invaded countries. Cardinal Mercier testifies : At the time of the invasion of Belgium, civilians in twenty places were made to take part in the operations of war against their own country. At Termonde, Lebbeke, Dinant and else- where in many places peaceable citizens, women and chil- dren, were forced to march in front of German regiments to make a screen before them. (An Appeal to Truth, November 24, 1915). HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 105 Lieutenant Eberlein, a Bavarian, describes the use of civilians as a screen to protect German soldiers in the occupation of St. Die: We had arrested three civilians and suddenly a good idea struck me. We placed them on chairs and made them sit on them in the middle of the street. On one side entreaties, on the other hlows from the butt end of a gun. At last they were seated outside in the street. I do not know how many prayers of anguish they said, but they kept their hands tightly clasped all the time. I pitied them, but the device worked immediately. {Muenchener Neuestc Nachrichten, October 7, 1914.) A recent visitor in Madison, Professor Baldensperger, whose home is in St. Die, told me that he knew this incident to be a fact and that one of the three civilians was an invalid. Always there are children, even little babies, and old men and priests in these screens. Prussians and Ba- varians and Austrians are all equally guilty of this cowardly cruelty. The tales are sickening : ' ' They (the Germans) were in close formation and had a line of women and children in front of their front rank" ....'' The Germans had their bayonets fixed and pointed to the backs of the women and children to make them advance" . . . . ''One man was very old and bent" . . . . "In other cases the children were carried by the women, ' ' and so on page after page these descriptions run. The screens and the other brutal treatment of the civilian population, rape and pillage and burnings, are all of a pattern and it is the pattern of a government calling itself civilized and boasting of its Kultur. The burning and pillaging of towns and villages and the wholesale murder of the inhabitants because of the acts of individuals is a common occurrence in the invaded 106 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK sections. To cite an instance from the diary of an officer in a Saxon regiment: The pretty little village of Gue d'Hossus was apparently- set on fire without cause. It is said that a cyclist fell off his machine and his rifle went off; and that he was immediately shot at. They just threw a lot of the male inhabitants into the flames. I hope there will he no more such horrors. That the responsibility belongs to the government is proved by this proclamation of General von Biilow: The population of Andenne after manifesting peaceful in- tentions toward our troops attacked them in the most treach- erous manner. With my authorization the general who com- manded these troops has reduced the town to ashes and has shot 110 persons I bring this fact to the knowl- edge of the city of Liege so that its people may understand the fate which awaits them if they assume a like attitude. (Gibson, A Journal of our Legation in Belgium, p. 324.) Compare this picture with the following. In the spring of 1914, American soldiers, treacherously at- tacked by snipers at Vera Cruz, Mexico, responded by hunting out the snipers and making them prisoners. They did not ^'reduce the town to ashes," nor shoot innocent persons. Such is the difference between the German and the American conduct of war. From a German soldier's diary: In the night the inhabitants of Liege became mutinous. Forty persons were shot and fifteen houses were demolished, ten soldiers shot. The sights here make you cry. On the 23rd of August everything quiet. The Inhabitants have so far given in. Seventy students were shot, 200 kept prisoners .... Our occupation, apart from bathing, is eating and drinking. We live like God in Belgium. (German War Practices, issued by the Committee on Public Informa- tion, Washington, D. C, p. 30.) HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 107 The Bishop of Namur testifies : One scene surpasses in horror all others; it is the fusillade of the Rock of Bayard, near Dinant. It appears to have heen ordered by Colonel Meister. This fusillade caused the death of nearly 90 persons, without distinction of age or sex. Among the victims were babies in arms, boys and girls, fathers and mothers of families, even old men. It was there that 12 children under the age of six perished from the fire of the executioners, six of them as they lay in their mother's arms. (German War Practices, p. 34.) 2. HOSTAGES Germany claims and practices without mercy the right of the invading army to take hostages in order to protect itself against attack at the hands of the civilian population. Numerous proclamations of German high officials give proof of their method. In order to insure sufficiently the safety of our troops and the tranquillity of the population of Rheims the persons named below (81 in number) have been seized as hostages by the commander of the German army. These hostages will be shot if there is the least disorder. (Proclamation of the Commanding General, Rheims, Sept. 12, 1914). The following proclamation has been called ' 'typical " because it illustrates what the German officers consider a punishable offence. (Cited and photographically re- produced by Gibson, p. 266.) PROCLAMATION In future the villages situated near the places where there has been any destruction of railway or telegraph lines shall be punished without pity, whether they are guilty or not of these acts. To this end, hostages have been taken in all lo- calities near the railroads which are liable to such attacks; 108 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK and at the first attempt to destroy the railroads or telephone or telegraph lines, these hostages shall be immediately shot. The Governor, Brussels, October 5, 1914. Von der Goltz. As a part of this system of terrorism hostages have been repeatedly maltreated by German officials. The fifth edition of Wheaton's International Law (p. 544), a standard American authority on the subject, referring to events of 1914—15 in the occupied territory of France and Belgium, says: Many hostages were shot, many were held in oppressive and humiliating confinement, many were carried off to Ger- many. They were treated far worse than prisoners of war. The Hague Rules do not include innocent citizens among the persons liable to be captured as prisoners of war. The Hague Regulations, it is true, have no specific provisions with regard to hostages, but their seizure and the presump- tion of vicarious responsibility as well as the principle of terrorism and application of psychological pressure are con- trary to the fundamental conceptions of humanity, conscience, fairness, and justice that are frequently appealed to in the international conventions of the Hague. The practice is akin to that of brigandage and blackmail, and is repugnant to all honorable men. International law does not sanction the ab- negation of honor even in the severest warfare. Priests and burgomasters, university professors and members of town councils are regularly in the number of the hostages, and their abuse at the hands of the sol- diers is frequently mentioned in the reports. It is thus that the Kaiser's men make merry, and their imcon- trolled humor leads to savagery and often to murder. Verily, in the creed of this army, ' ' A policy of sentiment is folly; enthusiasm for humanity is idiocy." (Von Tannenberg, in Greater Germany). HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 109 3. THE POLICY OF EXTERMINATION a) The Hague Conventions expressly stipulate that any fines or levies laid upon towns and cities and coun- tries invaded shall be in proportion to their ability to pay. Germany has repeatedly broken this stipulation in France, Belgium, and Poland, until it is obvious that her object is to impoverish the invaded country. The New York Times Current History for December, 1917, page 512, gives an estimate of Gerinany's total plunder in fines and levies from Belgium and sets it at more than one billion dollars. The sum is staggering and was paid only because Germany's ''knife was at their throats. ' ' b) The deliberate destruction of industry and agriculture is a part of the same plan of impoverish- ment and extermination. The cattle and swine of Bel- gium, her famous draft horses, have been systematically driven off to Germany. Farm machinery has been col- lected in great piles and burned in order to destroy the wooden parts and to warp and bend the metal parts. General von Bissing, late military governor of Belgium, in his ''Political Testament," points with pride to the annual theft of twenty-three million tons of coal from the Belgian mines (quoted in New York Times Current History, Dec, 1917, p. 512). From the factories not only all the goods have been taken, but the very machin- ery has been stripped and sent to Germany. The sugar mills have been burned. Nothing has been left undone to make it impossible for the devastated land to rise from her ashes. The pillage of Belgium is still going on for the benefit of German industry and German war- fare. The existence of a "German Industrial Bureau" for the exploitation and enslavement of Belgian labor 110 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK and the sale of the mechanical equipment of Belgian factories is proved by advertisements in German news- papers (Ibid. p. 511). c) In spite' of isolated declarations to the contrary, Germany deliberately plans to impoverish Poland and Belgium and to starve the inhabitants in order that she may come in and occupy the lands and make her domina- tion easy. No method is too cruel if only Germany is aggrandized. "Starvation is here" (Poland), said General von Kries to F. C. Walcott, an American sent by our government to investi- gate conditions in Belgium and Poland, "so we set it to work for Germany. By starvation we can accomplish in two or three years in East Poland more than we have in West Poland in the last hundred years." (The Prussian System, issued by U. S. Food Administration, Sept., 1917). But how came starvation to Poland? The answer is to be found in When the Prussians Came to Poland (page 244), a book written by Laura (Blackwell) de Turezynowicz, an American woman resident in Poland. Notices were posted by the Commandant regarding the harvests "that anyone touching or using any grain, potatoes or vegetables from his own garden or fields would be punished to the full extent of the law" — military law! The Germans took the crops to the last bean and potato. The story of the evacuated regions of France and Belgium — the starved and diseased inhabitants, the devastated fields and burned villages, the mute testimony of ruined orchards and broken ploughs — about these atrocities we know from scores of Americans, Red Cross workers and others, who are now making heroic efforts to undo the work of the Germans — endeavoring in reality to ^' dress the wounds of stricken Belgium." All the ''peculiar mental processes of the Prussian torturer" HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 111 and his "merciless ill usage of human beings" are illustrated a thousand times in the reports that come to us from the evacuated sections. There are no children in Poland. In Belgium it would be vastly better if there were none. All the inhumanities, all the bestialities that no paper can possibly publish — they are not only true but the worst of them cannot be told. I have been in a hospital in the Depart- ment of the Meuse where there are nearly a thousand girls. Not one is eighteen years of age and all will be mothers. Eleven percent in addition are stark mad. This is the statement of Dr. Le©n Dabo, member of an American Commission to France. {New York Times Current History, December, 1917, p. 515.) 4. DEPORTATIONS The logic of the system of frightfulness, as well as its cruelty and mendacity, is seen most clearly in the deportations. In Poland and Belgium and northern France, after first wrecking factories and foundries and carrying off the machinery to Germany, where they had already carried the materials used in manufacture, the Germans made complaints of idleness against the work- men who had been thus forcibly deprived of employment. In need of workmen at home and wishing to free Ger- mans to fight the French and Belgians, the officials in control of the occupied territory announced that all of the unemployed would be deported to Germany. The offer of the Belgian government to find employment for the Belgians was refused. And in spite of promises to deport none but the unemployed, when the time came to make the choice of those to be deported, German cupidity refused to make distinctions between employed and un- employed. Men and women and young girls of all 112 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK classes, promiscuously herded together, were carried off on a few hours' notice to unknown districts where they were compelled to perform all kinds of hard labor in mines and fields and factories, to undergo vile abuses, and to submit — especially the women — to the foulest treatment. Documentary evidence is abundant and easily accessible to prove these facts. Satan in Hell could think of no more refined cruelty than was prac- ticed in Lille and Bruges and a hundred other places when, on a few hours ' notice, in the middle of the night German officers went from house to house choosing arbitrarily daughters and fathers and servants and car- rying them off into slavery. The victims were usually denied any kind of help, even gifts of food or clothing, from their families, and they were not allowed to com- municate with them from Germany. ''As far as we can ascertain, ' ' said Brand Whitlock, American Minister to Belgium, ''100,000 Belgians were taken off and less than 2000 were returned," and these were worn out or diseased. In spite of protests from all sides, the de- portations still continue. Every week we hear of some new exploitation of Belgium's material resources and the enslavement of her people. Protesting against the deportations. Cardinal Mercier declared in October, 1916 : Two years ago it was death, pillage, fire, but it was war. To-day it is no longer war; it is cold calculation, intentional destruction, the victory of force over right, the debasement of human personality, a cry of defiance to humanity. In Poland General von Kries declared : We propose to remove the able-bodied working Poles from this country and leave it open for the inflow of German working people as fast as we can spare them ... By and by we shall give back freedom to Poland. When that HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 113 happens Poland will appear automatically as a German prov- ince. In Belgium, General von Bissing said the same thing. If the relief of Belgium breaks down, we can force the in- dustrial population into Germany through starvation and colonize other Belgians in Mesopotamia. . . . Germans will then overrun Belgium. Then when the war is over and freedom is given back to Belgium, it will be a German Bel- gium that is restored. (P. C. Walcott, The Prussian Sys- tem, page 6, issued by U. S. Food Administration). In September, 1917, Herbert Hoover, resident in Bel- gium for two years and a half with the Belgian Relief Commission, thus characterizes the German rule in Bel- gium and Northern France {German War Practices, p. 81) : The sight of the destroyed homes and cities, the widowed and fatherless, the destitute, the physical misery of a people but partially nourished at best, the deportation of men by tens of thousands to slavery in German mines and factories, the execution of men and women for paltry effusions of their loyalty to their country, the sacking of every resource through financial robbery, the battening of armies on the slender pro- duce of the country, the denudation of the country of cattle, horses, and textiles; all these things we had to witness, dumb to help other than by protest and sympathy, during this long and terrible time — and still these are not the events of battle heat, but the effects of a grinding heel of a race demanding the mastership of the world. All these things are well known to the world — but what can never be known is the dumb agony of the people, the ex- pressionless faces of millions whose souls have passed the whole gamut of emotions. And why? Because these, a free and democratic people, dared plunge their bodies before the march of autocracy. 8— W. B. 114 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE THE ACCUSED ADVERTISES HIS CRIMES The point of view adopted in this paper, that the German atrocities are a part of the system of ''Fright- fulness", directly ordered by the German High Com- mand, is strikingly confirmed by the publication by pur Department of State, under date of May 9, 1918, of a document now being circulated in Spain by the agents of the German government. The purpose of this document, as is frankly stated, is to deter, neutral Spain from joining America and her al- lies in the war. The document is a brazen recital of the accomplishments of the German armies in their illegal warfare against non-combatant civilians, and against all the economic and spiritual resources of the enemy coun- tries. With the characteristic thoroughness of the mil- itarized German official, it summarizes the booty taken from private citizens in France and Belgium as follows : High grade watches 147 Average watches 5 , 016 Underwear 18 , 073 Embroideries and women's handkerchiefs... 15,312 Umbrellas and parasols 3, 705 Silver spoons 1 , 876 Bottles of champagne 523 , 000 What does civilized Christendom think of the announce- ment that in Belgium, besides many art treasures, the Germans have confiscated old paintings valued at $600,000; that *'as a result of the treachery of Cardinal Mercier and other priests ... the good-hearted German soldiers were forced to teach a severe lesson to HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 115 the Belgian and French Catholics." This statement is illustrated by a list of forty-two cathedrals and churches rendered unserviceable and thirty-one destroyed. Then follows a list of fines, securities, reprisals and forced contributions, amounting to approximately $32,000,000. ''These statistics," we are blandly informed — the Ger- man government is a past master in winning friends — "are a most useful tvarning to neutral countries. If there are any still thinking of siding with the allies let them take warning from the fate of others. ' ' But the sum of all these villainies is reached in the frank avowal of systematic severity towards British prisoners . . . "it must be remembered that the English treat their prisoners with notable kindness, while the regime imposed on the English prisoners by the Germans is one of extreme rigor; so that tJie Ger- mans with a smaller number of prisoners have secured a much superior moral effect.'^ 116 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography THE BE/LiGMiUM ATRjO'OITiriES Bedier, Joseph, professor at the College de France. Ger- man Atrocities from German Evidence. Translated by Bernhard Harrison. Paris, Armand Colin. 1915. Contains photographic facsimiles of the accounts of German atrocities as recorded in the letters of Ger- man soldiers, accompanied by translations. How Germany Seeks to Justify Her Atrocities. Translated by J. S. Same publishers. 1915. A complete refutation of the German effort to dis- credit these diaries. German War Practices, Part I. The Treatment of Civil- ians. Edited by Dana C. Munro, G. C. Sellery, and August C. Krey. Issued by the Committee on Pub- lic Information. Washington, D. C. 1918. States the facts on the basis of German and American evi- dence only. Gibson, Hugh, Secretary of the American Legation in Brussels. A Journal from our Legation in Belgium. New York. Doubleday Page and Company. 1918. (First published serially in the World's Work), Morgan, J. H. German Atrocities, An Official Investi- gation. New York. E. P. Button & Company. 1916. Contains a critical analysis of the German White Book, Germany's official defense against the charge of atrocities, a discussion of the method of HOW GERMANY MAKES WAR 117 the British enquiry in Belgium and France, and new documentary evidence. Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, appointed by the British government and presided over by the Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, formerly British Ambassador at Washington. Part I, Sum- mary of Findings; Part II, Evidence and Docu- ments. New York. The Maemillan Co. 1915. This, the so-called Bryce Report, is the fullest and most authoritative presentation of the Belgian atro- cities. The investigation was made by a commis- sion of legal and historical experts. Stiirmer, Harry. Two War Years in Constantinople; SketcJies of German and Young-Turkish EtJiics and Politics. Translated from the German by E. Allen and the author. New York. George H. Doran Company. 1917. Dr. Stiirmer was the Constanti- nople correspondent of one of the leading German papers. The Cologne Gazette. Describing what he himself saw, he lays the responsibility for the atroci- ties in Armenia squarely upon the shoulders of the German government. The Belgian People's War, A Violation of International Law. Translation from the official German White Book, published by the Imperial Foreign Office. American Edition, New York, 1915. An unsuc- cessful effort to show that the Belgians waged war as *' snipers" on the German armies. The Voice of Belgium. Being the war utterances of Cardinal Mercier, with a preface by Cardinal Bourne. London. 1917. The case of Belgium by the most eloquent of her champions, who speaks to the civilized world. 118 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Toynbee, Arnold J. Tlie German Terror in Belgium. An Historical Record. New York. George H. Doran Company. 1917. A running narrative, well- documented, of the spread of /' Frightf ulness " as the German armies advanced. Perhaps the most compact reference book on the subject. The Murder of a Nation. New York. Hodder & Stoughton. 1915. The Armenian atrocities. Whitlock, Brand, United States Minister to Belgium. Now in course of publication in Everybody's Maga- zine. The chapter on the Reign of Terror pub- lished in May, 1918, deals specifically with the atrocities. WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS By E. B. MoGILVARY Professor of Philosophy The German army is bound by oath to the Kaiser and to the Kaiser alone. The Kaiser's addresses to his troops show the extent of this obligation. ' ' You have given your- selves to me, body and soul. In view of the present Social- istic agitations it may come to pass that I shall command you to shoot your own relatives, brothers, yes, even par- ents, — which God forbid! but even then you must follow my command without a murmur." When young men have given themselves thus to a war- lord, they will hardly balk at other commands that run counter to their natural feelings. To know what sort of war they will wage in Poland, Belgium, and northern France, it will be sufficient to discover what sort of war they were taught to wage. The German soldier reads his orders for his treatment of the enemy in the War Manual (Kriegsbrauch) published by the German General Staff in 1902. Their essence is frightfulness. The German soldier, like the soldier of every country represented at the Hague Conference of 1899, is supposed to receive his orders for his treatment of the enemy from the regulations adopted at this conference. The essence of these regulations is humanity, in so far as this is possible in the conduct of war, 120 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Germany accepted in their entirety the '^ Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land", adopted at the Hague. She bound herself, in common with all the nations there represented, ''to issue instructions which shall be in conformity with the regulations." The United States, England and France have published war manuals in which the texts of this treaty appear as the basis of the law which their armed forces are to observe. Ger- many in her manual scarcely refers to these texts, and in her instructions to her army constantly violates both their spirit and their letter. The spirit of the Hague agreement concerning ^'the Laws and Customs of War on Land" is clearly expressed in its own declaration of purpose : His Majesty the Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia (and other rulers whose titles follow) . . . thinking it Important . . . to revise the laws and general customs of war, either with a view of defining them more precisely, or of laying down certain limits for the purpose of modifying their severity as far as possible . . . have, in this spirit, adopted a great number of provisions, the object of which is to define and govern the usages of war on land. . . . These provisions, the wording of which has been inspired by the desire to diminish the evils of war so far as military necessities permit, are destined to serve as general rules of conduct for belligerents in their relations with each other and with populations. . . . Until a more com- plete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents re- main under the protection and empire of the principles of inter- national law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity, and the require- ments of the public conscience. In 1902, three years later, the general staff of the German army published a manual for its officers entitled Cus~ WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS 121 toms of War on Land (KriegshraucJi im Landkriege)} The spirit of this book will appear as we proceed, but the key-note is struck in the "Introduction". There the of- ficer is warned against the "humanitarian views" of the nineteenth century, "which not infrequently degenerated into sentimentality and mawkish emotionalism", and against ' ' attempts to influence the customs of war in a way which was in fundamental contradiction with the nature of war and its object. Such attempts will not be lacking in the future, the more so as these efforts have found a moral recognition in some provisions of the Geneva Con- vention and of the Brussels and Hague Conferences". The officer is also warned that he is "a child of his time, and thus subject to all the moral tendencies which influence his nation. The more educated he is, the more will this be the case. The danger that in this way he will arrive at false views as to the proper nature of war must not be lost sight of. It can be met only by a thorough study of war itself. " He is therefore urged to make himself famil- iar with military history which will teach him "whether the prevailing customs of war are justified or not, whether they are to be changed or to be observed" — as if it had not been just the previous practices in the history of war which such agreements as those of the Hague had been designed to correct ! With a few exceptions to be noted below, the general staff's manual denies that there are any such things as 1 Translated into English under the title The War Book of the German General Staff, by J. H. Morgan, New York, McBride, Nast & Company, 1915. I have used this translation only after having compared it with the original and corrected it where necessary. The italics in all my quotations from this work and from the Hague Texts are my own. In citing the Hague Texts I have used the language of 1899 rather than that of 1907, because the former represents the precise agreements which by treaty were in force when the War Book appeared. 12'2 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK ''laws of war". It says there have indeed been attempts "to develop the current customs of war, to extend them and to elevate them to the level of a universally authorita- tive law, binding all peoples and armies. All these at- tempts have hitherto completely failed, with some few ex- ceptions to be mentioned later. Hence if in the following work the expression 'law of war' is used, it must be borne in mind that by this is meant not a written law brought into existence hy international treaties, but only a mutual agreement, a restraint upon arbitrariness which custom and tradition, human friendliness and calculating selfishness have erected, but for the ♦ observance of which there is no external sanction; only the 'fear of reprisals' decides". In the Hague agreement there are "laws of war", and a "code" of these laws, which take "populations and bel- ligerents under their protection and empire". Sixty such laws are carefully written out. In the War Manual there are, with some few exceptions, no such laws. In the Hague agreement "His Majesty the Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia" was "animated by a desire to serve the in- terests of humanity"; in the Manual His Majesty's gen- eral staff was animated by a desire to prevent "excessive humanitarianism, " and cynically referred to the Hague Regulations as affording examples of what it meant thereby. The Hague agreement was a treaty, ratified by Germany, and thus made as internationally binding as any treaty could be, that rested on good faith. It indeed had no "external sanction"; that is, no revenue was mortgaged and no territory was pledged to secure its execution. Would the imperial pride of Germany permit her to put up any guarantee for the performance of her plighted word, such ' ' guarantee ' ' as she now speaks of in the event of the evacuation of Belgium ? There was not even an arti- WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS i2§ cle making any party which should violate the agreement ''liable to pay compensation" — though such an article was inserted in the revised agreement of 1907. On its face the agreement, of 1899 was just a plain outright treaty. In the Manual ''only the fear of reprisals de- cides" any High Contracting Party to observe the Hague agreement, which is declared to be not a treaty. Of course any High Contracting Party which says that it is bound by its treaties only when there is an "external sanction", or a penalty attached for disobedience, proclaims that it does not respect its own pledged word — pledged openly and solemnly in a conference of nations. We are now prepared to examine a few of the specific instructions given by the general staff to its officers, com- paring these instructions with those Germany had agreed at the Hague to give to its armed forces. The Hague Regu- lations provide that requisitions levied in occupied enemy territory shall ' ' bear a direct relation to the capacity and resources of the country." The War Manual teaches that while "in theory the justification for this demand will be freely recognized by everyone, in most cases, however, it can hardly be observed in practice. ... In cases of necessity the needs of the army alone decide". The Hague Regulations provide that "private property . . . must be respected". The War Manual teaches that "every damage, even the greatest, may be done, which the conduct of the war demands or involves in its natural course. Whether the justifying necessity exists or not must be determined in each individual case. The answer to this question lies in the power of the commanding officer alone". The Hague regulations declare that even when there is no written provision, the decision as to what ought to be done must not be left to the arbitrary judgment of the 124 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOIC commanding officer alone. It must be decided by a refer- ence to first principles. The "War Manual, as we have just seen, even where written provisions exist, leaves it to the discretion of the commanding officer to obey them or not, just as he thinks best. In treating the subject of private property the War Manual gives the officer a lesson in military history. It justifies all the large-scale destruction and devastation- wrought by the German armies in 1870 as ''in no case overstepping the necessity prescribed by the military situa- tion". The Hague Regulations provide: ''No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, can be inflicted on the population on account of the acts of individuals for which it can not be regarded as collectively responsible. ' ' The War Manual teaches differently: "A new application of hostage-law was practiced by the German military command in the war of 1870-71, when it compelled leading citizens in French towns and villages to accompany trains on the loco- motives in order to protect the railway communications which were threatened by the population. Since the lives of peaceable inhabitants were thereby without fault on their part exposed to grave danger, every writer outside Germany has characterized this measure as not in accord with the law of nations and as unjustified towards the inhabitants of the enemy country. As against these unfavorable criti- cisms it must be emphasized that this measure, regarded on tlie German side also as harsli and cruel, was only re- sorted to after declarations and instructions to the inhab- itants had proved ineffective, and that under the given conditions it was the only method that promised to be ef- fective against the undoubtedlj^ unjustified and indeed criminal behavior of a fanatical population. Herein lies its justification under tlie laws of war, hut still more in tlie WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS 125 fact that this means proved completely successful. . . . To protect oneself against attack and injuries from the in- habitants and to employ ruthlessly the necessary means of defense and intimidation is obviously not only a right but indeed the duty of every military command." A popula- tion acting in self-defense against the German army is criminal and fanatical! The German army, in making use of a novel expedient condemned even by the civilian conscience of Germany itself as harsh and cruel, is only doing its duty! The Hague Regulations require that ''The Commander of an attacking force, before commencing a bombardment, except in the case of an assault, should do all he can to warn the authorities". The War Manual teaches ''A pre- liminary notification of bombardment is as little to be re- quired as in the case of a sudden assault". The Hague Convention singles out for exceptionally hu- mane interpretation two of its regulations, which "espe- cially must be understood in this sense", i. e. that ''popula- tions and belligerents remain under the protection and em- pire of the principles of international law, as they result from the customs established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity, and the requirements of the public conscience." One of these two regulations, em- phasized, demands that "The population of a territory which has not been occupied who, on the enemy's approach, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having time to organize themselves . . . shall be regarded as belligerent if they respect the laws and customs of war. ' ' The War Manual declines absolutely to recognize the belligerent status of such unorganized com- batants. It appeals from the authority of the treaty Ger- many had ratified to the authority of a German writer, who, eleven years before the Hague Conference, had said: 126 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK ''Subordination to responsible leadership, military organ- ization, and external recognizability as combatants, cannot be left out of account without giving up the whole founda- tion recognized as necessary for the admission of irregu- lars." Unorganized and ununiformed defenders of their country against sudden invasion like the embattled farmers of Concord and Lexington in 1775, were thus classed by the Manual as outlaws; they are the " f rancs-tireurs " whom the German armies occupying Belgium avowedly treated with such appalling severity. But there are some regulations which the War Manual does recognize as binding. Curiously enough most of these are to be found in the provisions of the Geneva Con- ference of 1864. Why did the General Staff abide by the provisions of the Geneva Conference and discard those of the Hague Conference? This question becomes all the more interesting when we learn that whereas the Hague Conference binds the powers ' ' to issue instructions to their armed forces which shall be in conformity with the regulations", the Geneva Confer- ence has nothing to say about such instructions. They are merely implied. The question can have but one answer. The provisions of the Geneva Conference relate to the treatment of pris- oners, and of the sick and wounded. These provisions af- fect an invading power as much as they do one suffering invasion. The provisions of the Hague Conference, on the other hand, affect primarily the treatment of invaded ter- ritory. Germany had the strongest army in the world, and the only one that was almost instantly mobilizable. She did not expect to be invaded; her own population would not be likely to be exposed to the harsh and cruel treatment she justified in occupied territory. Therefore in her War Manual she conformed to the Geneva Confer- WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS 127 ence and refused to conform to the treaty she made at the Hague. Let us see how this explanation is borne out by quota- tions from the War Manual. Prisoners ' ' are to be treated like one's own soldiers, neither worse nor better"; they should not be made to ''contribute directly or indirectly to the military operations". "Prisoners should only be killed in the event of extreme necessity", and ''only the duty of self-preservation and the security of one's own state can justify such a proceeding". These last rules are especially illuminating. Even those Hague regulations which are accepted by the War Manual are always subordinated to ordinary "military necessity". But this Geneva regulation with regard to prisoners is to be disregarded only in case of "extreme necessity". For it must be remembered that the best-laid plans may go astray, and what was planned as a brief offensive war may turn into a protracted one ; one 's soldiers are certain to be lost as prisoners ; and if Germany ill-treated the prisoners she took, she could be repaid in her own coin. We have seen that the War Manual refuses to recognize the Hague regulations as "laws of war". "Only the fear of reprisals " is to determine their observance. But in sup- porting the Geneva agreements with regard to the treat- ment of the sick and wounded the Manual talks in a very different language. "With the elevation of the Ge- neva agreements to the level of laws binding peoples and armies, the question of the treatment of wounded and sick combatants ... is removed from the sphere of the ' customs of war '. The soldier has the duty of contributing as far as he can to the observance of the whole law." Why this scrupulousness? Why regard the Geneva agreements as on the level of laws binding armies and peoples, and not regard the Hague agreements as on th^ sg,mQ kvell The 128 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Geneva agreement of 1864 was no more and no less a treaty than the Hague agreement of 1899. There was no '' ex- ternal sanction". It was an international agreement, rati- fied by many powers, and so was the Hague agreement. The terms of the binding clauses in the two agreements are almost exactly the same. The conclusion of the whole mat- ter is that Germany supports only such laws of war as are likely to turn to her own advantage. There is one other scrupulous insistence on international law in the War Manual which demands our attention. This concerns the duty of belligerents toward a neutral state. ''The belligerent state must respect the inviolability of the territory of a neutral state and its undisturbed exercise of all sovereign rights therein, and refrain from every en- croachment thereupon, even tJiougJi tJie necessity of war sJiould demand such encroacJiment". Why this scrupu- lousness here? Germany has not respected the neutrality of Belgium. Had she intended in 1902 to respect it in the event of war with France ? This is possible. But it is also possible that the general staff reckoned on the credu- lity of the neighbors of Germany. If, in an official work in which international law is reduced to a minimum, the inviolability of a neutral state is retained in that minimum, would it not be believed that whatever else Germany might do, she would not do what she had instructed her officers not to do even in case of military necessity? If this be- lief could be secured, France might, when war came, be led to mobilize on the German frontier, and thus a few precious days could be gained by the general staff of Ger- many to steal a march through Belgium. This is what actually happened in 1914. And when it did happen, the German Chancellor appealed from international law to the military necessity which the general staff had declared to have no jurisdiction in the premises. WHAT FRIGHTFULNESS MEANS 129 We have heard the general staff speak; we have heard the German Chancellor; but what says the Kaiser? Less than a year after he had ratified the Hague agreement in whose regulations ''it is especially forbidden ... to de- clare that no quarter will be given ' ', he made an address to his armed forces as they were about to set forth to join in the suppression of the Boxer rebellion in China : ' ' No mercy will be shown ! No prisoners will be taken ! As the Huns under Attila made a name for themselves, which is still mighty in traditions and legends to-day, may the name of Germany be so fixed in China by your deeds that no Chinaman shall ever again even dare to look at a German askance. . . . Open the way for Kultur once for all". These orders so shocked the public conscience of Germany that they were later edited down; but the German press of the time declared that they were followed out to the letter. The ''military necessity" of ruthlessness was, to say the least, not very great at that time. Or is German "military necessity" only another name for an excuse to adopt the practices of Huns? In 1914 Germany was engaged in a far more serious enterprise than a petty campaign in China. She was at war with nearly all the great powers. Her war-lord was still His Majesty of the Hun- Address, and his military necessity was indeed overwhelming. His officers had been trained for twelve years in the lawlessness and the ruth- lessness and the terrorism of the War Manual, his armies were no less well-disciplined and obedient. The civilian press was completely gagged so that "the requirements of the public conscience" could find no public expression. This public conscience itself had been schooled for years, and was now assured by the Kaiser's government that Germany was the victim of a gigantic conspiracy. The German chancellor 's office admitted that it had no influence 9— W. B. 130 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK with the military. Under these conditions, who, knowing the perfidious policy, advocated in cold blood in time of peace by the Kaiser and his general staff, of trampling international law under foot, can believe that this policy had been humanely changed under the exigencies of war? Who can believe the Kaiser and his staff and his government and his partisans, when they deny that German armies have committed the atrocities the official War Manual and Hun-Address had demanded of these armies? Who in this country, now brought into this war by German ruth- lessness, can fail to devote himself and all he has to the protection of his country and of the world from the planned world-domination of the military power that goes back for its customs of war to Attila and his Huns? GERMANY'S WAR ON NEUTRALS By W. H. PAGE Professor of Law In a united effort to lessen the horrors of war, a general set of rules has been agreed upon by the common consent of civilized nations as a standard of international decency. This mass of rules and principles is known as international law. One of the great objects of this set of rules is to prevent a war between hostile nations from injuring na- tions who have not taken part in the war and who are known as neutrals. The rights of neutrals have been se- cured, as far as guarantees can secure them, by every pos- sible rule of international law ; and they have been pledged by many treaties and by the Hague Conferences to which Germany has been a party. On this point at least, Ger- many's internal military policy apparently agreed with her promises and pledges to other nations. While Germany's military manual for her officers laid down many rules of conduct in other matters which flatly contradicted her pledges in the Hague Conferences and in treaties, still her international military orders pledged her to most solemn observance of the rights of neutrals. Nevertheless, when the great war broke out, Germany began to make war on all the neutral countries of the world, as well as declaring war on Russia, France, and England. Her first military movement was the invasion of Belgium, a country which had strictly maintained its neutrality, as German officials themselves admitted. As for her war 132 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK against the United States, Germany actually did more dam- age to us before we declared war than she has done since. Germany's war upon Belgium and upon the United States are her most flagrant examples of her war on neutrals, but no further reference to them will be made here since they are discussed elsewhere in this series of pamphlets; and this article will deal only with Germany's war on neutral nations other than Belgium and the United States. ORGANIZED PLRAGY The high seas, that is the open ocean outside of a line drawn a marine league from the coast of each nation, are the great highway of the world. The right to use the high seas in war is one of the rights which the common consent of civilized nations has secured to neutrals. Vessels which attempt to break an effective blockade may be seized on the high seas; and contraband of war, that is material which may aid the enemy in conducting the war, may be confis- cated. Ships of neutrals may be examined to see if they contain contraband of war, or in case they should attempt to break blockade. The right to interfere with neutrals on the high seas ends here. Neither attempting to break blockade nor transporting contraband of war is a matter justifying the detention, far less the death, of those who are engaged in such transactions; and apart from breaking blockade and transporting contraband of war, neutral com- merce has the right to go on the high seas free from all interference of the warring powers. Germany's decree of unlimited and unrestricted marine warfare is a decree which a sovereign power could make to vassal states, but as a declaration by one independent state to another, it amounts to a declaration of war. Of course the state against which the declaration is made can recog- GERMANY'S WAR ON NEUTRALS 133 nize the fact that war exists, or it can close its eyes to that fact deliberately. The United States did the first ; Norway and Holland did the second, and endeavored to comply with Germany 's demands as far as it could be done without stopping their foreign commerce. But Germany made war on all alike! This warfare on the high seas has not been limited to vessels carrying munitions of war. Merchantmen which carried the ordinary products of peace not suitable for use in war, and even fishing boats of neutral powers have been sunk. The territorial waters include that part of the ocean which lies between low water mark and a line which is drawn three marine miles outside of such low water mark. These territorial waters constitute just as much a part of the adjoining country as the dry land; and it is just as much making war upon a neutral country to invade the territorial waters and to wage war there or to attack ships, even war vessels of a hostile nation, within its ter- ritorial waters as it would be to fight battles upon the land of the neutral country. In violation of these rules Ger- many has attacked both neutral vessels and vessels of an enemy country within territorial waters. In the early part of May, 1917, two Norwegian vessels were stopped by a German submarine two miles from the Spanish coast. The crew of the submarine boarded the Norwegian vessels, took away such supplies as they wished, towed the Nor- wegian vessels outside of the territorial limit and then sunk them deliberately. In comparison with this, the sinking of a French steamship in Spanish territorial waters seems mild, although a violation of international law and an attack upon Spanish territory. Doubly aggravated, how- ever, is the act of Germany in sinking Spanish vessels in 134 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Spanish territorial waters, in raiding Spanish fishing boats, and in seizing a Norwegian vessel in Norwegian territorial waters. PICKING A QUARREL WITH DENMARK In the case of the Igotz Mendi Germany is apparently deliberately trying to pick a quarrel with Denmark. The Igotz Mendi was a Spanish steamship which had been cap- tured on the high seas by the German raider Wolf, in viola- tion of Spanish rights, and loaded with rubber, copper, and other articles plundered from neutral and allied shipping which had been sunk by the Wolf. The Spanish vessel was wrecked upon the coast of Denmark and in accordance with the rules of the Hague Conference to which Denmark was a party, Denmark interned the crew and took possession of as much of the cargo as was saved, so as to render no aid to either belligerent. In defiance of all rights, Germany noAV demands the release of the interned crew, the surrender of the goods which were saved, and — here is the crowning in- solence — payment for all goods lost in the wreck. "NO MINISTERS ABROAD— ONLY SPIES" To invade the land of a neutral country is in reality no greater wrong than to invade its territorial waters; but most of us can more easily understand that it is an open act of war. Furthermore, everyone can understand that an ambassador, because of the unusual rights and privi- leges given him, is especially obliged to take no part in hostilities against the country to which he is sent. Ger- many has violated each of these rights ; and frequently has violated both of them at the same time. The crews of Peruvian submarines have been bribed to attack vessels of the countries with which Germany is at war; sub-stations for submarines have been maintained off the coast of Spain ; GERMANY'S WAR ON NEUTRALS 135 in Mexico and Brazil wireless stations for military and naval operations have been established; and the German organization in southern Brazil was practically an inde- pendent army threatening civil war at a time when Ger- many was professedly at peace with Brazil. Each of these violations of the rights of a neutral country was aided by German diplomatic agents, who plotted against the country whose guests they were. In Spain also, the office of the German embassy has been little more than the headquarters of an elaborate spy sys- tem. The aim of this system has been precisely the same as that of German intrigues in the United States prior to our entrance into the war,— to destroy the economic and political unity of the Spanish people by all the familiar methods of the ''Potsdam system". The motives are also the same as in America, to induce an important neutral state under the compulsion of the fear of internal dis- orders of German manufacture to disregard its interna- tional duties; and to deter it from joining Germany's ene- mies. The first step was commercial and newspaper propa- ganda following the same course as that carried on by Messrs. Dernburg, Bernstorff, Dumba and Company m the United States. Then followed a series of unneutral, ille- gal and criminal acts against the peace of Spain. Just as von Bernstorff in Washington worked through Boy-Ed and von Papen, so the German ambassador at Madrid worked through his two attaches, Captain von Krohn and Dr. von Stohrer. Two fields were open for their activities, the military juntas or reform committees in the Spanish army, and the socialistic labor unions of Barcelona and other industrial centres. The army com- mittees were stirred up to present a virtual ultimatum to the Spanish government, threatening a rebellion if its demands were not complied with. The Socialists were lead 136 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK into an attempt to force the government to grant local self- government to Catalonia through a general strike in the great industrial centres. The Spanish government, how- ever, by a judicious mixture of firmness and liberality suc- ceeded in meeting the just complaints of the soldiers and workers, and in restoring normal conditions. Recently the independent newspaper El Sol has come out with a new series of amazing revelations. It has pub- lished a letter of the German ambassador to a well-known anarchist. The ambassador in this letter openly expressed Germany's desire to stir up trouble within Spain so that the government could not act with promptness in impor- tant matters connected with the war. Further, the letter showed that the German embassy had guided vast con- spiracies and had encouraged other anarchists to create violent disturbances throughout the country. DISEASE GERMS FOR ROUMANIA While Germany was still at peace with Roumania the German diplomatic agents had received boxes of explosives and germs of anthrax and glanders for use against Rou- mania. The sudden outbreak of war between Germany and Roumania compelled Germany to place her interests in the hands of the United States with which she was then at peace. These boxes of explosives and anthrax germs were found in the premises of the German legation. The box of disease germs bore the seal of the German consulate at Kronstadt and it was addressed to the German diplomatic agent at Bucharest, the capital of Roumania. It contained directions for the use of the disease germs to cause epi- demics among animals, which would of course spread to human beings. In this dastardly act, Germany first al- GERMANY'S WAR ON NEUTRALS 137 lowed her ambassador to Roumania to plot against the coun- try to which he was sent ; and then made the United States a party to the crime. BOMBS FOR NORWEGIAN SHIPS Eepeated explosions on Norwegian vessels finally led to an investigation which resulted in discovering, in the latter part of June, 1917, that German couriers to the German legation had been bringing in explosives which were subse- quently to be placed by German agents in the coal with which the Norwegian vessels were supplied. Many of such vessels were destroyed at sea by explosives placed on board through the action of the German diplomat who repre- sented Germany in Norway. Germany's first act was to protest against Norway's act in arresting the courier who was caught importing such explosives ; and Germany urged that Norway was violating her duty toward a foreign am- bassador by seizing an agent who was bringing into Nor- way the means of destroying Norwegian vessels. Subse- quently Germany apologized to Norway for this transac- tion ; but she continued to place explosives in coal intended for Norwegian vessels, and was caught in the act. The final statement of the Norwegian government shows that up to October, 1917, Norwegian vessels of a total tonnage of a million tons had been destroyed by German submarines or by explosives placed on board; that the lives of seven hundred Norwegian sailors had been lost in this way ; that most of these vessels were sunk without warning and that in some cases the entire crew had been murdered ; and that in making such attacks, notice was given regularly by Ger- many 's organized spy system of the time and place at which Norwegian vessels would sail. 138 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK "SPURLOS VERSEXKT" The infamous ''spnrlos Tersenkt" telegram of Count Luxburg has given special notoriety to Germany's treat- ment of Argentina, though that treatment is probably no worse than her conduct toward other neutrals. Germany had been sinking vessels belonging to Argentina on the high seas without notice, and Argentina had protested vigorously. At last, when the Monte Protegido was sunk, public feeling was greatly aroused. Germany finally apol- ogized and made offer of compensation, Avhereupon the popular anger subsided to a considerable degree. But Germany's representatiA^e at Buenos Aires, Count Luxburg, continued to notify his government of the sailing of Ar- gentinian ships, calloush^ suggesting that, in order not to excite popular rage a second time, either the ships be spared, or their crews be murdered to the last man, that none might escape to bear evidence of German perfidy and crime. The following telegram he sent, among others, through the Swedish Legation as the official message of that legation, addressed to Stockholm and thence forwarded to Germany. May 19, 1917, Number 32. This Government has now released German and Austrian ships on which liitherto a guard has been placed. In consequence of the settlement of the Monte (Protegido) case there has been a great change of public feeling. Government will in future only- clear Argentine ships as far as Las Palmas. I beg that the small steamers Oran and Guazo, 31st of January (meaning which sailed 31st), 300 tons, which are (now) nearing Bordeaux with a view to change the flag, may be spared if possible or else sunk without a trace being left ("spurlos versenkt"). Luxburg. GERMANY'S WAR ON NEUTRALS 139 The Secret Service Department of the United States Government secured these dispatches; and they were pub- lished by Mr. Lansing, Secretary of State, for the United States. When these dispatches were published the German newspapers criticised Count Luxburg as being foolish; and they attacked with great vigor the act of the United States Secret Service in intercepting these dispatches. But no one in Germany criticised the diplomatic agent who defiled his office by suggesting the wholesale murder of the citizens of the country to which he had been sent by his government, and with whom Germany w^as officially at peace. RUNNING A3IUCK The foregoing illustrations are only a few out of a great number that could be presented. They show that from the outbreak of the war, Germany has made war on friend and foe alike. Some of the cruelty towards neutral sea- men and some of the sinking of neutral vessels may have been caused by Germany's desire to gain some unfair ad- vantage in war. Much of it seems, at first glance, to be the result of sheer love for destruction and murder. How can Germany hope to advance her cause by sinking a Danish vessel bound to Iceland, or a Spanish vessel carrying food for neutral Switzerland? Yet there is probably a delib- erately adopted policy back of Germany's most extreme violation of neutral rights. If she could destroy every neutral vessel, her position in the competition for the com- merce of the world after the war would be greatly strength- ened. To gain this strong position Germany is now sinking neutral vessels even when out of the war zone and when engaged in purely neutral commerce. Many of these sink- ings are discovered and reported. Many other vessels are undoubtedly sunk without trace. While dead men tell no 140 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK tales, the enormous increase in the number of vessels of neutrals which are missing and unaccounted for can have but one explanation, and that is that they are sunk by Ger- man submarines and their crews are murdered. One by one the countries which attempted to remain neutral have been driven to recognize the fact that a state of war existed between themselves and Germany. Those which have not made official recognition of this fact, do so by suffering Germany 's attacks without attempting to retaliate or even to defend themselves. The activities of von Bern- storff and von Papen in this country, before the United States sent them home, in plotting against the United States, in establishing a system of spies, and in planning the destruction of the vessels and other property of the United States, are matched by similar exploits of German diplomatic agents in other neutral countries, such as Nor- way, Spain, Roumania, Mexico, and Argentina. Neutrality in fact was not possible. The question was not one of war or peace. It was a question between war on one side with resistance by the other, or war by one without resistance by the other. Escape from war was not permitted to neu- tral countries. Their only choice was whether they would be attacked without defending themselves ; or whether they would defend themselves against attack. When we finally declared that a state of war existed between us and Ger- many, we did so almost three years after Germany had be- gun war on us. HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL LAW By JOHN BRADLEY WINSLOW Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin We hear a great deal about Germany's deliberate viola- tion of the law of nations during the present war. But probably there are few persons who have any adequate ap- preciation of the profound shock to civilization which would necessarily result if a great world war could be conducted to final victory in insolent and admitted violation of the basic principles of international law and largely by means of that violation. The subject will bear reflection, but, first, there should be a clear conception of what international law is. DEFINITION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW International law has been defined as ''the aggregate of the rules to which nations have agreed to conform in their conduct towards one another.'' It includes within its sphere international relations in time of peace as well as in time of war, but it is most im- portant and meets its supremest test in times of war. The definition just given is quite accurate, but some- thing less technical, even if less accurate, may be more illuminating. International law is in truth the voice of the world's conscience; it is the world's conception of civil- ized morality applied to the relations between states, just as the law of a single state is that state's conception of 142 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK civilized morality applied to the relations between its citi- zens. There is as yet no court to declare it, no ex- ecutive to administer it, and no sword to enforce it. But there is behind it the moral sense of the civilized world, a sense which for centuries has been growing stronger with every passing year. BARBARIAN WARFARE KNEW NO LAW The horrors which attended barbarian warfare are well known; such warfare knew no law and recognized no re- strictions upon frightfulness. Every person, young or old, male or female, strong or feeble, armed or unarmed, resi- dent in the enemy's country, was regarded as a combatant and subject to torture, bondage, or death. Every means of warfare, however brutal. or foul, could be freely used; all property was subject to plunder and destruction; ra- pine, murder, pillage, and bestial rioting reigned supreme after every victory ; only heaps of smoking ashes told where villages had stood ; deserts took the place of blooming fields, and whole populations disappeared from the face of the earth. The Thirty Years War which raged in Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century was attended by the most atrocious and systematic ravaging of whole provinces which modern history records, and left central Europe a desolate waste, with its population decimated and reduced to a state of misery which can hardly be described. GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL LAW Since that time the growth of the world sentiment in favor of what may be called civilized warfare has been HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL LAW 143 steady, though marked by occasional lapses. Gradually there have come to be recognized certain fundamental prin- ciples which may be truly called the very foundation stones of international law as applicable to a state of war. They are as follows: (1) independent states have equal rights re- gardless of size, position, or resources; (2) treaties between states are to be faithfully observed until properly abro- gated; (3) war is to be waged only by armed forces of the state, not by or against civilians ; and (4) only such destruc- tion of life and property as is necessary to accomplish the purposes of the war can be justified. These principles have become sanctioned by the general usage of civilized nations, have been declared by many treaties, and expounded by philosophers and statesmen. Within the last quarter century they have been analyzed, codified, and specifically applied to many of the concrete situations and conditions resulting from war, by world con- ferences held at the Hague in 1899 and 1907, in which the civilized nations of the world, including Germany, actively participated. To all of the important rules for the con- duct of warfare laid down by these conferences Germany gave her assent. It will be worth while to state some of the more significant of the rules promulgated by the Hague Conference of 1907. Among the articles of the chapter regulating warfare upon land are the following: Article 22. The right of belligerents to adopt means of injur- ing the enemy is not unlimited. Article 23. In addition to the prohibitions provided by special conventions it is especially forbidden (a) to employ poison or poisoned weapons; . . . (e) to employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering. Article 25. The attack or bombardment by whatever means of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended, is prohibited. 144 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Article 27. In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare as far as possible buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected,' provided they are not being used at the time for military pur- poses. Article 50. No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individ- uals for which they can not be regarded as jointly and severally resp€nsible. Article 6. The state may utilize the labor of prisoners of war . . . the tasks shall not be excessive and shall have no con- nection with the operations of the war. Article 56. The property of municipalities, that of institu- tions dedicated to religion, charity, and education, the arts and sciences, even when state property, shall be treated as private property. All seizure of, destruction, or wilful damage done to institutions of this character, historic monuments, works of art and science is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings. Among the articles of the chapter relating to the rights and duties of neutrals are the following: Article 1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. Article 2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or con- voys of either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power. GERMANY'S VIOLATIONS That all of these rules have been grossly and repeatedlj^ violated by Germany during the present war there can be no doubt. Let us set down the gravest of these violations without malice or exaggeration, passing by, however, the revolting stories of murder, rape, and indefensible cruelty toward civilians about which there may perhaps be honest controversy, although the proof seems very convincing. Let us rather take the violations which are admitted or proven by impregnable evidence. HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL LAW 145 First, and foremost, stands the violation of the neutrality of Belgium which Prussia and the other great powers of Europe had solemnly guaranteed by treaty in 1831 and 1839. This was a two-fold violation of international law. Not only did it violate Articles 1 and 2 of that chapter of the Hague code relating to the rights and duties of neutrals, but it broke the plighted faith of the nation, given in the most solemn form. In this instance we have no need of proof or argument. The plea of Guilty has already been entered and it only needs now to pronounce sentence. Bethmann Hollweg, the German Chancellor, said in a speech to the Reichstag, August 4, 1914, ' ' Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and perhaps have already entered Belgian territory. Gentlemen, this is a breach of interna- tional law. " In view of the known facts it can not be said that this was an improvident admission. A burglar in possession of stolen property has small chance of convinc- ing any one of his innocence. Second, the bombardment by ships, Zeppelins, and aero- planes, of unfortified and undefended towns and even hos- pitals. The proof of these acts comes with almost every newspaper, and the sickening details of the slaughter of babes and women at night by bombs from the skies have be- come so frequent that we have become almost callous to them. Reference to Article 25 of the Hague rules already quoted shows at once what gross violations of international law these acts are. Comment upon them seems unneces- sary. Third, the employment of poisonous gases and liquid fire in direct violation of those articles of the Hague rules which prohibit the use of poison or material calculated to produce unnecessary suffering. Poison has ever been the weapon of cowards, torture the favorite device of despotic power. 146 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Fourth, the levying of vast fines and penalties upon cities and towns and villages, amounting in many instances to millions of dollars, in punishment for the acts of individ- uals. This is a clear violation of Article 50 of the Hague rules. In many cases the penalties were merely a pretended punishment for trivial acts. This is not to be understood as referring to the enormous war contributions which have been levied upon Belgium as a whole and upon occupied cities and towns in both Belgium and France for the sup- port of the German army. It is very difficult to ascertain the amount of these latter contributions, though they amount to many millions of dollars wrung from a ruined people. These, however, may receive some justification in Articles 48 and 49 of the Hague rules, which authorize the levy of money contributions in occupied territories sufficient for the support of the army and the administration of the ter- ritory ; therefore I leave them out. But I refer to the fines and other penalties which have been imposed upon com- munities on account of the acts of individuals. As examples of such punishments may be cited the levy of 5,000,000 francs upon Brussels for the individual act of a police con- stable ; the levy of 500,000 francs on the same city because of a murder committed by an unknown person in a suburb of the city ; the levy of the same sum on the city of Lille be- cause some inhabitants made demonstrations of sympathy for some French prisoners being escorted through the streets ; and the levy of 100,000 francs on the town of Arlon for the cutting of a telephone wire by an unknown person. The list of well-authenticated cases where such enormous fines have been levied for trifling and even ridiculous of- fences by individuals is very great, and seems to prove a deliberate intention to extract great sums of money from in- nocent people on the most flimsy pretext. The whole mat- ter is discussed and very many instances given in an article HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL, LAW 147 by James W. Garner, in the American Journal of Interna- tional Law for July, 1917, at page 511. Fifth, the destruction by fire of villages, towns, and cities and the killing of their inhabitants, young and old, men and women alike, on the alleged ground that some of their inhabitants had fired upon German soldiers. The best known case of this kind is the destruction of Louvain, ex- tending from the 25th to the 30th of August, 1914, and the murder of hundreds of its inhabitants. But Louvain was only one of a series of towns and cities in Belgium and northern France which were the victims of these outrages. Even if there were any real evidence for these alleged acts of hostility against German soldiers, the German gov- ernment would still be without adequate excuse. For the punishing of an entire city by fire and sword for the acts of individuals is contrary to the rules which that govern- ment had solemnly agreed to obey. SixtJi, the removal of millions of dollars worth of factory machinery, metals, and supplies from Belgium to Germany, in violation of Article 46 of the Hague Code which de- clares that private property must be respected in time of war and cannot be confiscated. Seventh, the taking prisoner of a quarter of a million of civilians, both men and women, and transporting them from Belgium and France to Germany and compelling them to work in factories and in labor camps, some near the front, and some elsewhere, but all doing work of direct or indirect military value. Concerning this deportation the American minister, Mr. Brand Whitlock, officially reported to the Secretary of State in January, 1917, as follows: The rage, the terror, and despair, excited by this measure all over Belgium was beyond anything we had witnessed since the day the Germans poured into Brussels.- . . . I am con- 148 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK stantly in receipt of reports from all over Belgium that tend to bear out the stories of brutality and cruelty. In tearing away from nearly every humble home in the land a husband and father, or a son and a brother they (the Germans) have lighted a fire of hatred that will never go out. . . . (It is) one of those deeds that make one despair of the future of the human race; a deed coldly planned, studiously matured, and deliberately and systematically executed, a deed so cruel that German soldiers are said to have wept in its execution and so monstrous that even German officers are now said to be ashamed. EigJitJi, the wholesale sinking of neutral freight and pas- senger ships on the high seas without warning, visit, or search, and regardless of the question whether they are carrying contraband of war or not. NintJi, the cold-blooded murder (for such it is) of civilian neutrals rightfully travelling upon the high seas in commercial ships. Whether the ships be enemy or neutral, all the laws of God and man require that the lives of passengers and crews be protected before the ships are sunk. The doctrine of ''spurlos versenkt" has no place in the policy of any nation which claims to be civilized. TentJi, the destruction of fruit trees and all private pro- perty of every kind in the evacuated portions of France, rendering the territory a desert of death, with no gain of military advantage. Eleventh, the ruthless destruction of the most beautiful cathedrals and other public buildings, the choicest treas- ures of medieval architecture, in violation of Article 56 of the Hague rules. Twelfth, the wholesale looting of the funds and property of banks, business houses, and private persons, in violation of Article 53 of the Hague rules. It may be said in passing that these acts also violate Article 47 which declares that "Pillage is formally forbidden." HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL. LAW 149 Thirteenth, the carrying on of plots and conspiracies by their diplomatic and consular agents in this country while Germany was still at peace with us; such conspiracies and plots being directed not merely against foreign countries but against our own country as well. This list of violations of international law is by no means complete, but it seems ample for present purposes. They are all explained when we fully understand the one under- lying and unchangeable principle upon which Prussian mil- itary autocracy makes war and has made war since the days of Frederick the Great. THE PRUSSIAN PHILOSOPHY OF WAR Article 13 of the Hague Code regulating land warfare expressly declares that "the right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited." To this statement the German War Manual^ answers thus : What is permissible includes every means of war without which the object of the war can not be obtained. . . . All means which modern invention affords, including the most danger- ous and most massive means of destruction, may be utilized. This is brutally frank but very illuminating. It clears away all the clouds and makes it very plain that Germany's violations of international law are the deliberate and pre- meditated acts of the Prussian war oligarchy which rules her. Along the same general lines, General Carl von Clausewitz says^: War is an act of violence intended to compel our enemy to fulfil our will In such dangerous things as war the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the * Morgan's translation, Vol. 2, p. 85. 2 0it War, 1832. 150 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK worst He who uses force unsparingly .... must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigor in its ap- plication To introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity. Another German military authority writing in 1877, Gen. Julius von Hartmann, says: Military action must be determined solely in accordance with those conditions which usually prevail in war; in this sense it is completely ruthless. ... It would be yielding to voluntary self-deception not to recognize that at the present time war must be conducted much more ruthlessly and much more violently, and that it must come much nearer to affecting the entire population than has hitherto been the case. In these extracts we have the explanation of Germany's wholesale violation of international law in a nutshell. Her philosophy of war is absolutely at variance with all inter- national law and she does not hesitate to proclaim the fact and glory in it. Elihu Root, in an address delivered in 1916, sums up the matter thus: The principles of action upon which this war was begun in- volve a repudiation of every element of fundamental right upon which the law of nations rests. The right of every nation to con- tinued existence, to independence, to exclusive jurisdiction over its own territory, and equality with other nations is denied. The right of any strong nation to destroy all these alleged rights of other nations in pursuit of what it deems useful for its own pro- tection or preservation is asserted. WHAT VICTORY FOR PRUSSIANISM MEANS Had these infractions of international law been com- mitted by a small state, the effect on international bv/ might be slight and temporary. The offending state would HOW GERMANY OVERTHREW INTERNATIONAL LAW 151 doubtless receive its punishment at the hands of other states at no distant day, and international law would re- main secure. But the violations have been committed by the state which is the strongest, in a military sense, of any state in the world and which is convinced of its mission to rule the world. If it is victorious, international law necessarily ceases to exist, except perhaps in books. Why? Because faith and honor will disappear as far as national relations are concerned. No nation can ever again trust another ; treaties will become in very truth mere scraps of paper. If one nation plays the game of di- plomacy with loaded dice and without regard to honor or good faith, others must do the same if they would survive. This means world-wide militarism; every state must be- come a military camp and every people an organized army. It means that the little states have no rights and cannot long survive, especially if they be agricultural states. Only manufacturing states which possess the necessary mineral wealth and can furnish themselves with armaments and war material from their own resources have any chance to live. It means that the mad race in armaments, both on sea and land, will go on with greatly increased speed. It means a world in which perpetual fear of one's neighbor reigns supreme, and revenge becomes the engrossing thought of the nations. It means that the vision of a world in which justice and democracy reign, and coopera- tion between friendly states takes the place of relentless military and commercial competition, becomes nothing more than a vision. It means, in all likelihood, a succession of wars ultimately resulting in the triumph of a great military autocratic state of which all other states, including this United States, shall be submissive slaves. 152 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Hall, W. E. International Law. Halleck. International Law. Fourth Edition. Edited by Sir Sherston Baker. Scott, James Brown. Texts of the Peace Conferences at the Hague, 1899 and 1907. Ginn. Boston. 1908. Wheaton. International Law. Fifth Edition. Edited by Phillipson. American Journal of International Law. Volume II. P. 74. Article by J. W. Garner. Volume II. P. 511. Article by J. W. Garner. Volume II. Supplement. P. 99. Tlie War Book of the German General Staff. Translated by J. H. Morgan. New York. 1915. United States War Dictionary. Published by the Com- mittee on Public Information, Washington. German War Practices. Published by the Committee on Public Information, Washington. Zitelman. The War and International Law, in Modern G err' any. This book is a collection of papers by vari- ous German writers. Kennerley. New York. 1916. Hill, David Jayne. International Ideals. Century Maga- zine. May, 1917. Smith, Munroe. German Theory of Warfare. North American Review. September, 1917. Zeppelin Raids and Eights of Neutrals. Review of Re- views. Vol. 52. P. 590. International Law on the Sea. World's Work. Vol. 29. April, 1915. GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM By W. F. GIESE Professor of Romance Languages The two most outstanding characteristics of the Ger- man government are Absolutism, the centralization of all the powers and functions of the state in the hands of the Kaiser, and Militarism, the subordination of all the more humane and civilizing functions of the state to the demands and the ideals of the military establishment. The German spirit, as represented by the Kaiser, is the child of Absolutism and Militarism; we cannot have it without having them also. Germany generously offers us all three. In case of refusal, she is ready to impose them upon us for our own good — and for hers. The most popular quotation — under government pat- ronage — in Germany today . is a couplet from the poet Geibel proclaiming that the world is to be lighted by the German spirit. The Kaiser has set out on this mission, with the sword in one hand — and the torch in the other. We who prefer the American conception of Liberty en- lightening the World must parry the sword-thrust and keep our houses well insured. The ambition of the house of Hohenzollern is to achieve world-power; its pretext is the holy desire to spread the German spirit over the face of the earth. It offers us at the point of the sword, not German Kul- tur, as it was represented by Goethe and Schiller and Kant, but a Kultur cast in the iron mould of the Hohen- 154 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK zollerns. We feel that the spread of this kind of Ger- manism among us would be, as it has been for Germany, a national calamity. As for genuine German culture, on the other hand, we have hitherto warmly welcomed it. The philosophy, the literature, the science, the music of Germany, all these products of the finer and deeper qualities of the German spirit, we have highly valued in the past, and assuredly, when the excitement of war is over, we shall again see clearly that they form a very large and very precious portion of the spiritual treasures of mankind. We shall welcome them again. These higher things are not the products of absolut- ism. It has wrenched them to its own base uses when it could; it has reviled and persecuted them when it could not. The number of German writers and thinkers who have been imprisoned or exiled during the last hundred years is an astounding one. Russia alone can parallel it. ''It is as if the very pressure from without had helped to strengthen and enrich the inner life," says Kuno Francke, professor of German at Harvard University, in speaking of the restrictions of personal liberty suf- fered in Germany, which, he adds, are such as no Eng- lishman would tolerate. ''The state," says Treitschke, ''is not an Academy of Art. When it abdicates its power in favor of the ideal aspirations of humanity it belies its own nature and perishes." The state, in Germany, stands for a per- verted Kultur, not for culture. This compound of absolutism and militarism, the best and most free-spirited Germans do not want in their own country. We assuredly do not want it in ours. The Kaiser says : "It is the soldier and the army, not GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 155 parliamentary majorities and votes that have welded the German Empire." He says : ' ' The soldier should have no will of his own ; you should all have but one will and that is my will; there is but one law for you, and that is mine. ' ' He says to his recruits: ''Should the necessity arise, you must even shoot down your fathers and mothers at my order." He says further: ''Only one is master in the land. That am I! Whoever opposes me I will smash in pieces ! ' ' The Kaiser refers here to the Social Democrats, the only influential party in Germany that stands for lib- erty and the rights of the common man. The Kaiser calls them ' ' a gang unworthy of the name of Germans, ' ' "traitors to the fatherland!" The Kaiser and the government are intensely mili- taristic. Wilhelm's first speech as Emperor was addressed to the army and navy, not to parliament and the peo- ple. These are the idols worshipped by the Hohenzol- lerns. ' ' German militarism is the best thing we have achieved in the course of our development as a state and a peo- ple," says ex-Chancellor von Biilow. A chorus of professors and politicians joins in. Pro- fessor Sombart proclaims war the holiest thing on earth, and all reecho von Moltke's sinister words that perpetual peace is only a dream and not even a beautiful dream. From the combined pressure of despotism and militar- ism, and thanks to the narrow range to which it has been confined by them, the German spirit has contracted certain grave defects. In the first place it is the victim of a superstitious worship of war, of a blind faith that the great problems of national life must be solved by 156 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK force, that blood and iron are the only final arbiters, that might, and not right, rules the world. No civiliza- tion built on this corner-stone has prospered in the end ; it has always died amid the curses of its victims. ^'But for German militarism German Kultur would long since have been wiped off the face of the earth," boldly assert the ninety-three representative Germans in the famous manifesto which they sent out from Ger- many 'Ho the civilized world." Such a conception of Kultur readily leads to the be- lief that Germany must flourish not through peace but war. ''Nothing is more immoral than to consider and talk of war as an immoral thing. War is the mother of all good things, ' ' says Professor Haase. ''If we are beaten," says the great scholar Harnack, **all the higher Kultur of our hemisphere, which it was our mission to guard, sinks into its grave with us. ' ' To dwell much on such ideas leads to a dangerous national self-conceit, to a state of mind which makes rela- tions with neighboring peoples difficult and hazardous. A German pastor, preaching a sermon (evidently some- what needed) on the humility of the Germans, says that when Germany compares herself with other nations, the comparison is always in her favor. Everybody that is familiar with the utterances of representative Ger- mans during the last few decades is painfully aware how common this arrogant tone has become. "The German should feel," says Professor Sombart, "that he is raised high above all the other nations who surround him and whom he sees in measureless depth beneath him." "One highly cultivated German," says the great scientist Haeckel, "represents a higher intellectual and GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 157 moral life- value than hundreds of the raw children of nature whom England and France, Russia and Italy op- pose to him." How can we hope for international good-will and peace on earth, if the greatest leaders of German thought thus not only preach to a deluded people the horrible doc- trine that war is the highest moral influence, the great school of virtue, the real fountain-head of national great- ness, but also the hardly less pernicious doctrine that the German is entitled to look down upon all his European neighbors with utter contempt? The intellectual outcome of such teachings is shown in the manifesto of the 3500 teachers in the higher edu- cational institutions of Germany who naively assert: ''Our belief is that the salvation of the whole civiliza- tion of Europe depends upon the victory which German militarism is about to achieve." The moral fruit may be seen in such utterances as these astounding words of the Reverend Doctor Fritz Philippe in a sermon preached in Berlin: ''The divine mission of Germany is to crucify humanity." It is plain that even religion itself is in Germany per- verted to serve the personal interests of the Hohenzol- lerns and their bureaucratic retainers. The Kaiser showed no special interest in religion — until he mounted the throne. Then, all of a sudden, he seemed to have been taken into partnership by God (not as a silent partner) . "Remember," he says in a proclamation to the army, "that the German people are the chosen of God. On me, as German Emperor, the spirit of God has descended. I am His weapon. His sword, and His vice-regent." "In our country," says the great chemist Ostwald, 158 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK * ' God the Father is reserved for the personal use of the Emperor. ' ' Even those who, like the Lokal-Anzeiger, stand less for the royal prerogative, claim him for the whole em- pire as ''a God who belongs to us alone, and who is not ashamed to belong to us. ' ' After such prostitution of what is most sacred, such mad claims to the possession of a tribal German deity, such insolent subordination of God and His church to the greater glory of a despotic dynasty, we may well agree with the words of Doctor Paul Rohrbach: *'In the name of no other Christian church has religion been so entirely subordinated to the principle of authority in the interest of the ruling classes." This militant and arrogant spirit leads to a new and barbarous conception of war, to a veritable brutalization of manners and morals. ''Every ascent to a higher mental culture," says the great journalist Maximilian Harden, ''impairs the bar- baric energy of warriors and encumbers them Avith scruples which damp their joyous courage." Marshall von der Goltz consequently asserts that there is no place for pity in the German soldier's heart, and he adds : ' ' It is better to let a hundred women and chil- dren belonging to the enemy die of hunger than to let a single German soldier suffer." The military leaders seem to have felt that the Ger- man soldier might not straightway, and, as it were, by God's- grace, achieve this ideal degree of barbarity. The official German War Manual says : " By steeping himself in military history an officer will be able to guard himself against excessive humanitarian notions : it will teach him that certain severities are indispensable in war, nay, GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 159 more, that the true humanity very often lies in a ruth- less application of them. ' ' Let us view this military spirit as reflected in German war-poetry. Here are a few stanzas from the Song of the Sword: It is no duty of mine to be either just or compassionate; it suffices that I blind the eyes of my enemies with such streams of tears as shall make the proudest of them cringe in terror under the vault of Heaven. I have slaughtered the old and the sorrowful; I have struck off the breasts of women, and I have pierced the bodies of children. It is meet and right that I should cry out aloud in my pride, for am I not the flaming minister of God Almighty? Germany is so far above and beyond all other nations that all the rest of them, be they who they may, should feel them- selves well cared for when they are allowed to fight with the dogs for the crumbs that fall from her table. But such son^s are, perhaps, misleading, if taken with a flat literalness. There are those who can give them a subtle interpretation which may even infuse them with a highly religious spirit. Doctor Seeberg, professor of theology at Marburg, says: ''We do not hate our ene- mies. No, we obey the divine command to love them. When we kill them, when we burn their homes, and over- run their territories, we are performing a labor of love." This military coloring has been felt to be a most de- sirable, in fact, an almost indispensable element in the training of character. Treitschke insisted that univer- sity professors had such inferior opportunities for ideal development, that the army officers must be chosen in- stead as the models for German youth to pattern after. Lange, the celebrated educational writer, says likewise that Germany must look to the army and the corps of 160 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK officers to endow it with and educate it in these higher values of Kultur. To a great extent this wish has been fulfilled. German education is largely imbued with the militaristic spirit. Men are preferred as teachers because they are mo7'e warlike than women. The very games of the children are given a military turn. Their reading books are of the propagandist order, celebrating the heroic exploits of German generals and the valor and virtue of the HohenzoUern monarchs, while anti-French poetry and prose are liberally strewn in. Even the famous Hymn of Hate, it is said, has passed into the school anthologies. History is taught from the most biassed national point of view, and all the great German historians are direct- ly or indirectly, defenders and whitewashers of the ruling house. The present Kaiser even threatened to close the state archives to Treitschke because he praised Bismarck more highly than the royal family — just as the Crown Prince recently brought about the suppression of Hauptmann's Breslau Festspiel because it glorified the people rather than royalty. Evidently German education is not disinterested. The people are not educated for their own good, but to serve the purpose of the ruling classes. The Kaiser says : ' ' The school is for the purpose of teaching how the Em- pire may be maintained. ' ' Of the common school teacher and of the university professor alike he says: ''According to his rights and duties, he is, in the first place, a state official. In this position of his, he should do what is demanded of him. He should teach the young and prepare them for resist- ing all revolutionary aims." Thus we see, by the Kaiser 's own words, that two con- stant features of German education are militarism and GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 161 absolutism. ' ' I want soldiers, ' ' said the Kaiser angrily, when he complained that the schools made their pupils near-sighted. The complete subordination of the lower classes, of the poor who do the world's work, is the indispensable con- dition of German imperialism. They are educated to think only as their masters wish them to and thus to become docile and unquestioning upholders of the ex- isting order of things, contented with their humble lot and without aspirations toward democratic liberty and equality. The effort to achieve this medieval ideal has been at- tended with considerable success. Germany is in many ways strangely unmodern. Harnack is quite right in deploring the prevalence of the spirit of caste. In no country is there less of social equality, of genial contact between the upper and the lower classes. ''Nowhere are the lines between employer and em- ployed more sharply drawn than in Germany, nowhere is there more of class feeling," says Professor Kuno Francke. In truth the humbler classes are looked down on with contempt and are usually treated with corresponding insolence and brutality. In many country districts, the laborer is treated as if he were still a serf. Women are worked harder than the cattle — the latter are the property of the owner and must be handled with consideration. In East Prussia, the use of the whip and of the fist and foot of the slave- driver are not uncommon, with language to correspond. Such are social conditions among the Junkers. When a workman or peasant becomes a soldier he is not unlikely to be treated in the same fashion. He is taken away for two years from his own work and his 11— W. B, 162 UNIVERSITY OF AVISCONSIN WAR BOOK own interests, to be submitted to an iron discipline. His drill-masters do not treat him very humanely. In 1902 the Reichstag protested. It was even listened to. Some 600 officers were condemned for cruelty to soldiers — one lieutenant for 600 cases of maltreatment, aiid one petty officer for not less than 1520. These pernicious practices were never remedied. ''We have submitted," said Vorivdrts June 30, 1914, ''hun- dreds of decisions of courts-martial from 1907 to 1913, in which alone tens of thousands of cases of maltreat- ment of soldiers have been judicially established." In connection with the Eosa Luxembourg trial, [1913] evi- dence was forthcoming to prove something like 30,000 separate instances of brutal treatment of soldiers. The trial was adjourned — doubtless with no intention of fur- ther ventilating the scandalous brutality disclosed. It is only too evident that the drill-master can carry his cruelty very far with safety. As Liebknecht says: **They try to tame men as they try to tame beasts." The civilian, when he has to deal with an officer is in even worse plight than the recruit. At Zabern, a colonel arrested at random and locked up thirty civilians, in- cluding a judge, for a whole day and night, in a cellar, in order to teach them proper respect for his uniform! "You wear the Kaiser's coat, therefore you are above other men." said Wilhelm, in addressing his recruits. It is true the colonel was brought to trial for this out- rage, but he was acquitted, in spite of an overwhelming protest from the powerless Reichstag. The Crown Prince sent him his congratulations, and he received 15,000 telegrams approving of his conduct. Many similar examples of military abuses might be cited, of civilians run through by officers whom they happened to jostle in the street, of ladies forced to sur- GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 163 render their seats in street-cars to officers, or pushed off the sidewalk into the mud by uniformed '^ gentlemen. " When the workman has finished his army-service, and is back at his daily work, he will again find the atmos- phere in which he lives somewhat oppressive. He will have longer hours and poorer pay than he would in al- most any other country. It is said, too, that 55 per cent of the workmen's families in Berlin live in a sin- gle room. Even in his single room he is not absolute master. The police will visit and inspect him and it whenever it is deemed necessary. They will ask him all sorts of questions about his wife, children, visitors and servants (if any), about his religion and his wages. Unless he has the courage to profess himself an outright atheist, they will assess him for church-rates, and if he lives in Polish Prussia they may force him to sell his property, or may throw his wife into prison for teaching her chil- dren to pray to the Kaiser's God in the uncultured dia- lect of these annexed provinces. As a laborer, if he does not like his wages he can, of course, strike. But he must not forget that the Kaiser once proposed, on his own initiative, a law making strikes punishable by three to five years of penal servi- tude. Against sickness, non-employment, and destitu- tion in old age, the government shrewdly protects him, in part, naturally, at his own expense. The scheme has its advantages, of course, but he will have to pay a large share of his slender savings into the government's in- surance fund — and, if he should ever leave the country, he will lose all he has paid in ! Why this crying injus- tice? There's a reason! It is an indirect method of restoring serfdom and of imprisoning the German within the bounds of his own country, lo that he and his ehil- 164 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK dren may furnish the Kaiser with a generous supply of cannon-fodder ! If he seeks to remedy these ills by political action, he will have to join the Social-Democrats, and as such will even have a vote, although his representatives in the Reichstag have no real poAver. They can only talk in this famous ''Hall of Echoes". As for himself, if he talks a little boldly, or even indiscreetly, he may be se- cretly tried for lese-majcsfe and sent to prison to learn respect for the Kaiser. A Hamburg editor was impri- soned six months for debating the question whether the Kaiser's grandfather was quite gi-eat enough to deserve the title of the Great. As a votci' one is also privileged to attend political meetings, provided tliey be duly an- nounced in advance to the police, who will be present, and who will close up the meeting if it becomes too polit- ical. Also our worker in a small town, for example, is in danger of losing his work, if his employer learns that he holds social-democratic doctrines. And if he is a shopkeeper, the privileged class will boycott him, and give their custom to some loyal furnisher to the court. The political rights of the workman have been happily summed up by Liebknecht: *'We Germans in Prussia have three cardinal rights: to be soldiers, to pay taxes, and to hold our tongues be- tween our teeth." The German who has long lived in America, and who loves freedom and the blessings of peace, can not there- fore love institutions which are the deadly foe of both. That he should love his fatherland, the sweetness of his native air, and the people to whom he belongs by ties of blood and speech is natural and human and neither could nor should be otherwise. But he can not love the military and autocratic institutions under which they GERMAN AUTOCRACY AND MILITARISM 165 lan-guish, and the hopeless inequality of their lot under a government efficient and order-loving, no doubt, but ar- rogant and despotic— a government on which he himself has turned his back. That despotism he is bound to hate even more profoundly than we do, for we have suf- fered its insolence only remotely and recently, he has suffered its silent and relentless pressure through long generations of ancestry. He will read in the same spirit as we do the praises of Kultur as sounded by a celebrated German writer, Thomas Mann: ^^ Kultur is a spiritual organization of the world, which does not exclude bloody savagery. It raises the demonic to sublimity. It is above morality, reason, and science." Is it astonishing that such a picture is profoundly abhorrent to every American? And is it astonishing that many a German, who has left America to go back and pass his old age in the fatherland which he had left as a youth, has in the imperial and militaristic Germany of to-day found life so narrow and freedom so restricted that after a short time he has gladly come back again to a land where the common man enjoys full political liberty and finds every business and social opportunity open to him and his children? 166 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Barker, J. Ellis. How Education has Degraded the Ger- man Character, in 19th Century. September. 1917. Modern Germany. London. 1915. Smith, Elder. A very valuable work in many ways; Chapter 20 deals with education. Dawson, W. H. What is Wrong with Germany? New York. 1915. Longmans, Green and Co. Mr. Dawson has long been recognized as one of the lead- ing authorities on contemporary Germany. Gems of German Thought. Collected by W. Archer. New York. 1917. Doubleday, Page. Out of Their Own Mouths. New York. 1917. Appleton. Conquest and Kultur. Committee on Public Informa- tion. Washington, D. C. 1917. These three vol- umes give brief typical extracts from original sources revealing the German spirit. Gerard, J. W. My Four Years in Germany. New York. 1917. Doran. Germany seen from the inside, by the American Ambassador to Germany. German Kultur, in Quarterly Review . April, 1915. German Thought and French Thought, in Educational Review. December, 1915. SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF MODERN GERMANY By F. C. SHARP Professor of Philosophy The moral and religious ideas of the Germany of today have been shaped to a remarkable extent by two Germans of the last generation — Friedrich Nietzsche and Heinrich von Treitschke. A powerful influence along parallel lines has been exerted by certain German writers on evolution. To know what seed these men have sowed is to understand much of the spirit which has produced this war. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Friedrich Nietzsche was a poet who wrote prose, some of it in the manner of the Old Testament — ^but in a very different spirit. He starts by assuming that belief in God and in a future life is as absurd for a grown man as a belief in Santa Glaus. The Christian religion, he thinks, is not merely false, it is demoralizing and dangerous. ''The Christian conception of God is one of the most corrupt that has ever been preached on earth." The moral ideas of the New Testament are equally false and vicious. The founder of Christianity, as portrayed in the Gospels, was a weak creature who did not have the backbone to stand up and stand out against opposition and enmity ; he was essen- tially a morbid personality. Paul was a fakir, whose ruling motive was envy of those above him in social station. The 168 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK only cliaiacter in the entire JSew Testament worthy of re- spect is Pilate, — this because he thought the death of one Jew more or less was a matter of not the slightest impor- tance. The New Testament is a book which, to avoid soiling his hands, a man should read with his gloves on.^ Why this wild hatred of Christianity ? Christianity, Nietzsche answers, is a religion of slaves. Invented by the lowest classes and for the benefit of the lowest classes, it had its origin in envy and hatred of the glorious members of the upper class in the Roman Empire and in the crav- ing for sympathy and help under the crushing burden of their despotic rule. It preaches sympathy and the equality of man. It sees something of value, something worth saving, in every human soul. It commands us to help and save the lowly, the weak, the fallen in body, mind, and character. It is the religion of the under dog; and the under dog v^as, as he is today, a mangy and spiritless cur. The only persons that really count, according to Nietzsche, are the born masters of men, created to rule the rest of man- kind, who in turn form the ''slave caste" or ''the herd". The masters may or may not be identical with the members of any actual aristocracy. In any event they are those who ought to rule. Their essential characteristic is strength, — in particular, strength of intellect and strength of will. They must be willing to sacrifice pleasure, comfort, ease, safety, friendship, and whatever else may block their way — and their way must lead to power over their fellow-men. At bottom every motive of human nature, in slave and master alike, is reducible to one, the will for power, in the sense of power over others (Wille zur Macht). The herd may partly conceal this fact from themselves by throwing dust into their eyes in the form of high-sounding words. A similar iSee The Antichrist, Sees. 18. 80. 42. 4« SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 169 blindness on the part of the master-class would be fatal to civilization. Nietzsche regards it as his mission to reveal to the fit few their own deepest cravings in order that they may know precisely what they want and see that they get it. In the pursuit of their ends these higher beings must recognize moral scruples as being nothing but childish prejudices, which a man worthy of membership in the master class will have thrown overboard by the time he has reached man's estate. Such a one should be able to say with St. Paul: ''When I became a man, I put away childish things." The masters are above and beyond or- dinary standards of right and wrong. What use they are to make of this discovery will of course depend upon their precise tastes and aims. A man may seek to impress his personality upon the race by his writings, as Nietzsche him- self did. And Nietzsche considers the life of the philosopher as the highest (because the most effective) form of the will for power. Such a man in his ordinary relations with his fellows may be harmless enough. Indeed he may exhibit a kind of love for a few kindred spirits, if by ' ' love ' ' is meant the desire to control the lives of others by impressing upon them one's own ideals. But if the master mind prefers to dominate others through political activity or the sword, he will not and he must not hesitate to make use of any means whatever that promise success. Treachery, breach of faith, cruelty, injustice and oppression, all these are perfectly proper means by which to gain and keep control over the herd. For the superior man, engaged in bringing his in- feriors under the whip of his will "everything is allowed". The French writer, Voltaire, declared that if there were no God it would be necessary to invent one. Nietzsche's God is the Superman. Somehow, in a way never cleared up, but apparently through the ruthless conflicts of the members of the master class with the herd and with each 170 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK other, there is to evolve a new species. It will be few in number, beyond doubt, but extremely select. These exalted creatures are the Supermen. What they will be like we, with our purblind eyes, can not see. But they will be splen- did- in their beauty and strength of body, mind, and will, and consistently masterful and ruthless in their control of the herd, as becomes their high endowment. The Superman will be his own God, a God who will not hesitate to worship himself, and will compel the herd to worship him whether they will or not. The production of this new species is the one event of real significance in the history of the human race. These views on God and man and life are set forth with all necessary clearness and consistency in Nietzsche 's later works, written in the years 1885 to 1888. On the other hand his great prose-poem. Thus Spake Zarathustra (1882-4) breathes in many respects a different spirit. Its principal character, Zarathustra the sage (who of course represents Nietzsche himself), burns with genuine love for his imme- diate disciples, and with zeal for a better world than this sorry, disgusting fragment of chaos in which he finds him- self imprisoned. Zarathustra preaches hardness and the crushing of the sympathies, but this is only because in his eyes the path leading to perfection of character is steep and dizzy and strewn with thorns. He professes to deny all moral distinctions, but he lashes without mercy the sins of hypocrisy, cowardice, envy, and the greed that cries ''Everything for me." The goal of life is sinking one's personal interests in the great work of hastening the com- ing of the Superman. These things represent real differ- ences in attitude between the teachings of the two periods in Nietzsche's life. In agreement with his later writings, however, are the denial of moral responsibility, the asser- tion of the necessity of a totally new and revolutionary SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 171 standard of right and wrong for the higher members of the race, the claim that the sole motive of human action is the will for power over others, the one-sided insistence upon strength of will as the one thing needful, the measureless contempt for the ''herd." The distinctly original ideas, as the necessity for a new moral standard and the coming of the superman, are so thin in content and so hazy in out- line that the reader is at liberty to interpret them as he wills. If he interprets them in the light of the systematic, clearly phrased and clean cut statements of the prose works of the following years he will see in Thus Spake Zara- thustra a work which, with all its contradictions, marks the writer as well on the road to his most dangerous and re- pulsive paradoxes. The popularity of Nietzsche's writings in Germany has for many years been very great. It is doubtful if any Eng- lish author has influenced in equal measure the beliefs of the English-speaking world. Kuno Francke, professor of German in Harvard University, wrote a number of years ago: ''In moral theory the average German of today is consciously or not a follower of Nietzsche. ' ' His teachings, as we can easily see, would appeal to two kinds of persons. The vague yearnings of Zarathustra for a better race and the call to work for its creation may well have given life a new meaning to more than one generous and high-minded soul. On the other hand, the doctrine of one standard for the "master" class and another for the "herd", with its demand for the ruthless trampling under foot of the weak by the strong — this doctrine would obviously play into the hands of the governing classes, each member of which can think of himself as by right a "master", and as such re- lieved of all moral obligations to the "herd" beneath him. Nietzsche has unquestionably appealed to both types of mind. In so far as he has awakened or strengthened in 172 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK the latter the lust for power and has destroyed or helped to destroy the inhibitions which in the normal man confine this impulse within its proper limits, he can not escape the responsibility for a share in that brutalizing of charactei- which, since the beginning of this century, has undoubtedly been taking place in certain classes of the German people. HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE The second prophet of modern Germany has a very dif- ferent message. Nietzsche is interested only in the indi- vidual, the exceptionally gifted individual, of course. On the other hand Treitschke, his rival for favor in modern Germany, cares chiefly and supremely for the state. The individual, however gifted, is not free to choose his own path regardless of any consideration except his own per- sonal aims. On the contrary his highest obligation is to serve the state. The duty of the individual to subordinate his will to that of his country is no new doctrine. But the form which it takes in the writings of Treitschke will appear novel to most American readers. He accepts, apparently quite unques- tioningly, a certain view of the state made in Germany in the early part of the nineteenth century. According to this somewhat astonishing doctrine, the state is not a mere name for all the persons living within certain boundaries and organized to secure certain common ends by common action. No, this view is entirely too flat and commonplace. The state is, in reality, a Person, a single being in the literal sense in which you and I are single beings. As the individual mind is a network of sensations, thoughts, feel- ings, and desires, so the state is a being composed of you and me and all our fellow-citizens, all rolled into one. This Person is ineffably higher than any of the units which make SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 173 it up. In comparison with its interests the interests of the individual are negligible. How this doctrine, so different in its foundations from Nietzsche's, may, in its turn, be made to play into the hands of aristocracy, is easy to imagine. In Germany the aristocracy is the mind and will of the state. And accord- ing to Treitschke it must alwaj^s remain this. For democ- racy as a form of government he has nothing but supreme contempt. Treitschke 's doctrine of the state, then, says (in effect) to the masses : Your personal interests count for nothing where they come into competition with those of the state ; the only thing that counts under such circumstances is the state, and the aristocracy exists to determine what the state shall do. At bottom, therefore, you have but one political duty, to obey, and to obey in silence. If this were all there is to Treitschke 's theory of the state it might perhaps pass as a mere curiosity. For a curiosity it is, born, like Nietzsche's doctrine of the Super- man, of man 's determination to have one kind of God if he can not have another. But Treitschke 's doctrines have an- other aspect which concerns us vitally. What is the relation of one of these gigantic Persons to another ? Have they any moral obligations to each other ? Treitschke answers distinctly in the negative. * The essence of the state, he says, is power; and everthing is allowed the state which is necessary for the maintenance and in- crease of its power. At bottom, then, states have no more obligations to each other than do wild beasts. They will indeed often find their interests in keeping their treaties, and may even spare the enemy's country in order to turn him into an ally, as Bismarck did with Austria. But whether to do this or not is a pure matter of policy — the only question is, Will it pay? ''If a state," says Treitschke, "is not in a position to maintain its neutrality 174 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK [by force of arms, of course] , it is empty words to talk of its neutrality. " In a similar spirit lie laughs with scorn at the simplicity of Frederick William IV of Prussia, who marched into Saxony and Bavaria to help his fellow kings crush the Revolution of 1848, and then, when he had these states at his mercy, quietly marched out again without seizing possession of them. The Saxons and Bavarians, he thinks, must have put their fingers to their noses as this army marched ingloriously out across their boundary lines. A higher form of human existence than the state, is, ac- cording to Treitschke, unthinkable. A "League of Na- tions" is nonsense. There will be separate states till the end of time ; and since their interests will clash and there never can be a supreme judge to compose or stop their quarrels, there will always be war. All talk about a war to end war is mere moonshine. More than that, it is im- moral. War is not a horrible necessity which fate will not let us evade. War is a glorious thing, arousing all that is best in man, strength, self-sacrifice, patriotism. "Any one with a knowledge of history realizes that to expel war from the world would be to mutilate human nature." The in- timation is perfectly clear that in the future, as in the past, Prussia will see to it that human nature is not "mutilated". There is nothing particularly original in Treitschke 's doc- trine of the relation of states to each other. Savages usually act upon it without a scruple. There are men in every country still professing it today. But a Christian civiliza- tion was gradually outgrowing it, in Germany as well as elsewhere. Treitschke has the unfortunate distinction of having done more than any other man to make it prevail in his native land. For twenty years or more he defended it, along with all the other features of his theory of the state, with great eloquence, in crowded classrooms, at the Univer- sity of Berlin, becoming the favorite of the aristocratic SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 175 world as were none of his colleagues. The writer was a student at the University of Berlin during this period and can vouch from his own observation for the extent and depth of Treitschke's influence upon the student body, that student body whose members are now taking a large part in ruling Germany. Nietzsche and Treitschke differ widely, as we see, in many of their views. The former preaches, at least in his later works, the ruthless pursuit of power unchecked by any con- sideration for the interests of others. Treitschke teaches, on the other hand, that the individual 's highest obligation is to submit his own will to the will of the state. But as far as the relation of state to state is concerned the followers of both men come out at exactly the same place. If, as Nietzsche claims, life is a struggle for power, to be pursued, where necessary, without any reference to considerations of morality, then of course that group of individuals called a state may use any means whatever to increase its power over other peoples. "Any society," he writes, ''that instinct- ively rejects war and conquest is on the decline and ready for democracy and a government by shopkeepers." And again: ''The state (is) organized immorality; externally, as the will for power, for war, for conquest, for revenge." On either theory, then, in the relations between states, might makes right. THE EVOLUTIONISTS There are, of course, many thoughtful men in Ger- many who have escaped the nets spread by the views we have been describing. Some of these have had this good fortune, only to be caught in the meshes of another fashion- able theory, at bottom identical with the others in certain of its ultimate consequences. Life, in this view, is a con- 176 UNIVERSITY .OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK tinuous struggle for existence in which only the fittest can survive. The upward march of animal life from the lowest forms to man has taken place in accordance with this prin- ciple. And since the evolution of man is ruled by this same principle human progress has depended and always will depend upon conflict and victory. Since the Ger- mans of today believe themselves by all odds the fittest, they conceive they have a mandate from nature to go forth and crush any nation that may possess anything they can use and that refuses to give it up. These ideas permeate General von Bernhardi's notorious book, Ger- many and the Next War, as well as many other writ- ings less widely known but equally vicious. They pervade the higher army circles in Germany, as is testified in the Atlantic Monthly for August, 1917, by the eminent zo- ologist Professor Vernon Kellogg, Mr. Hoover's second in command in Northern France. Imbued with these com- forting and stimulating doctrines the leaders of the German army have directed, often, apparently, with a perfectly good conscience, the ravaging of Belgium, Northern France, and Poland, and are preparing these unhappy countries for the uses of Germany ; in a similar spirit the Austrians are following their example with zeal and genuine Prussian efficiency in Servia; while the Turk has been allowed — if '* allowed" is not too weak a term — to go and do likewise in Armenia. In cleaning out the inhabitants of these coun- tries whether by fire and sword, by famine and disease, or by deportations, and preparing to move in themselves- they are (in their own opinion) simply repeating for the thou- sandth time the beneficent process whereby superior strains - supplant the inferior, to their own great profit and the glory of the human race. 2 See Wolcott, The Prussian System. Loyalty Leaflet 202, published by the Committee on Public Information, Washington. SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 177 I do not propose to criticize this view at any length. However plausible it may appear at first glance its founda- tions were thoroughly undermined in The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin, a gentleman who is quite properly sup- posed to have known something about the theory of evolu- tion, and who turned his powerful mind to the careful con- sideration of this problem. It has no standing among men of science in the English speaking world. The twist which the Germans are giving the theory of natural selection ig- nores the fact that (in the words of Professor Huxley) ''the man best fitted to survive a prize-fight is a prize- fighter". A nation that specializes in war, like the ancient Spartans or the modern Prussians, is likely to be more successful at the job than its neighbors whose interests run in other directions than the art of wholesale murder. But it need not be higher on the whole ; and may indeed be, as was Sparta, distinctly inferior in every other respect to those it conquers. It has moreover happened time and again (unfortunately) that civilizations that were higher, judged by any standard you like, have been overwhelmed and destroyed by mere numbers. In short the conditions of victory in war and the conditions of fitness for a satis- factory life in a civilized world are both extremely com- plex; and the two are identical only in part, and tend to grow farther away from each other with every genuine ad- vance in civilization. Whatever may be the facts about the laws of progress, however, it remains true that the Germans have become infatuated with their theories on the subject and are at- tempting to put them into practice ''for the p^reater good of humanity". If so, we have no alternative but to accept their challenge and show them that judged by their own standard, we, not they, are the better men. The will for power, — this, under a variety of forms, is 178 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK the God of modern Germany. There can be no trust be- tween nations and no permanent peace on earth till the people of Germany learn — and probably they will learn it only through disaster and defeat — that the God of their new prophets is nothing but a hideous idol. SOME MORAL AND RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF GERMANY 179 Bibliography Nietzsche. Authorized translation of his Works into Eng- lish by Dr. Oscar Levy. The most important are the following: TJius Spake Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; TJie Genealogy of Morals; The Antichrist; The Will to Power. Stewart, H. L. Nietzsche and the Ideals of Modern Ger- many. London. 1915. Davis, H. W. C. The Political Thought of Heinrich von Treitschke. London. 1914, An excellent presenta- tion within moderate limits ; largely a translation into English of Treitschke 's own words. Dewey, John. German Philosophy and Politics. New York. Holt. 1915. This book deals largely with the general point of view represented by Treitschke. Kellogg, Vernon. Headquarters Nights, in Atlantic Monthly, August, 1917. OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITION^ By EDWARD B. VAN VLECK Professor of Mathematics History repeats itself. In each. s-Qcceeding war some one of the warring nations is sure to protest to some neu- tral country against shipment of arms to its enemy. The reason for the complaint is at bottom always the same : — the shipment helps the other fellow. In the present war the facts relating to the exportation of arms from the United States are too plain and well- known to need more than the briefest restatement. Great Britain needed munitions and she imported them from the United States. On the other hand, Germany received from us directly no compensating benefits in trade since she was either unable or not sufficiently venturesome to dispute England's control of the seas. Consequently our foreign trade became altogether one-sided and, like the war, un- precedented in magnitude. Protests began to shower upon us. On April 4, 1915, Ambassador von Bernstorff presented a rather weak official note on behalf of Germany. This was followed June 29th by a stronger remonstrance from her ally, Austria-Hun- gary. The discussion which arose abroad and at home may be centered in four great questions. Was the sale of muni- tions legal ? Was the sale neutral ? Was it moral ? Was it wise? OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 181 1 — WAS THE SALE OF MUNITIONS LEGAL? The right to buy arms is absolutely vital to the safety of a peace-loving people. The less a nation thinks and plans for war, the greater necessity it has to import arms in time of sudden trouble. The smaller its army and stores of munitions, the more dependent it becomes upon the available war supplies of neutral countries. For this reason shipment of arms to warring nations by the citizens of a neutral country has been universal usage and has be- come an accepted principle of international law. Even the handful of writers on international law who are op- posed to it admit that it is firmly buttressed by usage and convention. Numberless declarations and precedents cover the case. A recent re-affirmation is found in article 7 of the Sec- ond Hague Convention of nations in 1907, which states: A neutral power is not called upon to prevent the export or transport, in behalf of one or other of the belligerents, of arms, munitions of war, or, in general, of anything which can be of use to an army or fleet. This article involved nothing in any way new, being merely a statement of accepted international law. As such, it was ratified later not only by the United States but by Germany, Austria and 22 other countries. Even Austria in her note of June, 1915, had to acknowledge that this article ''affords a formal pretext for the toleration of the traffic in munitions of war as carried on at present by the United States." The United States has both practised and preached this doctrine, beginning with Jefferson in 1793. It ''has al- ways depended upon the right and power to purchase arms 182 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK and anununition from neutral countries in case of foreign attack". As our Secretary of State, Lansing, said in reply to the Austrian note of protest: "This right which it claims for itself, it can not deny, to others." Tn a frantic effort to find precedent for our placing an embargo on arms von Bernstorff in his April note cited the fact that the United States had recently forbidden its citi- zens to export arms into Mexico. The conditions in Mexico were, however, exceptional. Neither the followers of Car- ranza nor of Huerta could be treated as a nation or even recognized as belligerents. Mexico was plunged in civil strife and bathed in murder and brigandage. Our prob- lem was that of policing and protecting our frontier from troops of bandits. Even then the embargo on the exporta- tion of arms into Mexico was imposed only after special authorization by Congress. As soon as a legal state of war in Mexico was recognized, the embargo was removed, and upon its removal our President called attention to Mexico's emergence from a state of anarchy to a condition governed by the ''accepted practice of neutrality". Up to the time of Germany's protest against our sale of munitions her legal position had been identical with our own. Dernburg, while on a special mission of propaganda in our country, spoke with truth when he said : I want to state that Germany has at no time disputed the right to sell or ship arms. The statement that she has is absolutely false. (April 30, 1915.) Indeed, it was only on the preceding 15th of December that the German ambassador by order of his government pre- sented a copy of a memorandum, in which it was asserted that "no exception can be taken to letting war material go to Germany's enemies." In the opinion of the German OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 183 Imperial Government her enemies were authorized to ''draw from the United States contraband of war, espe- cially arms, worth several billions of marks '\ Germany's practice also had been like ours. Her fac- tories sold enormous quantities of munitions in the Russo- Japanese and Balkan wars. German factories even sup- plied Turkey in its war against Italy, although Germany, Austria, and Italy were then bound in a triple alliance. In the Spanish- American war they shipped to our enemy, Spain, without protest from our national government. Our one-sided sale of arms to England in the present war is exactly matched by Germany's sale to England in the Boer war. The Boers were shut off from the seas even more completely than the Germans are to-day. Who ever discovered that the Germans on account of their one-sided sale of arms had the slightest hesitation in helping Eng- land win the war? Did their devout wish for the defeat of the British to whom they sold make their sale more neutral than ours? With this record behind her it is no wonder that Ger- many found it advisable to use Austria as a cats-paw in her second effort to secure an embargo on our sale of arms. Austria politely did not question ''the intention to main- tain the strictest neutrality" on our part but pointed out how circumstances had so developed as to defeat our in- tention. Since the Central Powers were shut off from the seas and we could sell only to the Allies she suggested that it might be advisable for us to equalize conditions by laying an embargo upon munitions. The effort was thus made to shift the issue from the question of legality to neutrality. 184 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK 2 — WAS THE SALE OF MUNITIONS NEUTRAL? Much popular confusion exi«ts as to what neutrality is. Neutrality is an attitude taken by a government toward warring nations. It does not mean that the people living under the government should have no opinion and suspend judgment on the righteousness of a conflict. Before our entrance into the war neither the dyed-in-the-wool Pro- German nor the noisy rooter for the Allies violated his country's neutrality because he expressed convictions. Neutrality is not such pathetic silence regarding the issues of the war as we have seen in the senior senator of our state. Neutrality is correct procedure hy a government in accord- ance with recognized usage and principles of international law. This standardized idea of neutrality was now adroitly disputed. In order to get a ground for objecting to our use of our rights as a neutral the Central Powers were forced to take a novel position. It was claimed by von Bernstorff that neiv conditions created by the Avar gave ''the concept of neutrality" a "new purport". By this new purport neutrality was made to hinge, directly or indi- rectly, upon the extent to which a nation made use of its rights as a neutral. Von Bernstorff assailed the neutrality of our munitions trade because its rapid development, he asserted, made it an essentially new and therefore unneutral industry. Many pacifists in our country also argued that it is one thing to sell a small amount of ammunition, and another and un- neutral thing to sell it in great quantities. This claim is extraordinaiy. For clearl}^ the mere exercise of the right possessed by a neutral can not render it unneutral, nor even the repeated exercise of that right. The munition OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 185 question would never have become an important topic of international law, had the sale of only a thimbleful of munitions been at stake. It attained importance precisely because on it might hinge the fate of a nation. It has been little realized how small a part of our total increase in exports has been due to our sale of munitions. Tables comparing our exports in the nine months follow- ing the war with those in the nine months preceding show that the increase in the exportation of munitions, war supplies, and the materials entering into their construc- tion was less than $200,000,000. Though this is an im- mense sum, it is less than one-half the corresponding in- crease in exported foodstuffs, not to mention textiles, leather, etc. Great emphasis was laid by the Central Powers upon the one-sidedness of our munition trade. ''If it is the will of the American people," it was stated, ''that there shall be a true neutrality, the United States will find the means of preventing this one-sided supply of arms to the Allies." They will at least see that corresponding bene- fits are secured by the other side. The casuistry of this new conception of neutrality is astounding. It puts upon the neutral the juggler's task of teetering this way or that according to the outcome of the struggle for sea-control. The weight must be thrown upon the weaker side in oi'der to balance the game. This intervention for the express purpose of championing the loser is an obvious act of un- neutrality. Such neutrality would cease to be a clear-cut principle to guide action and would become a delicate ad- justment of the interests of both belligerents by an outsider. This would lead to no end of disputes and wrangling over the proper balance. Nobody can claim that we did not sell to Germany as 186 UNiVERSiTY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK long as we could. Copper she exported in enormous and unprecedented quantities from the United States in the period just preceding the war, taking one quarter of our entire production and one-half of the amount exported. We now see why. About a year ago the submarine Deutsch- land made its famous trip to New London and sailed away from our harbor loaded with a cargo of nickel which Ger- many sorely lacked. But Germany had little need of war material. The coal fields of Belgium had been already grabbed. From Sweden she was constantly importing iron. Germany did not want ammunition : what she did want was to have food witJiheld from England. She therefore sought to manipulate the munition difficulty with the United States so as to stop our commerce with Great Britain. The kind of neutrality she wanted appeared in this naive suggestion of the Aus- trian note : If American industry is perfectly willing to supply Austria- Hungary and Germany as well as Great Britain and her allies, . . . it would be entirely sufficient to confront the opponents of Austria-Hungary and Germany with the possibility of the pro- hibition of the exportation of foodstuffs. (June, 1915.) The suggestion is astonishing. The position of the United States regarding the sale of munitions had been officially announced as early as August and October, 1914. Not only was that position strictly in accordance with in- ternational law, but the proposed alteration to effect Ger- many's aim would have been a distinct breach of neutral- ity. This was argued with unanswerable force in Lan- sing's reply to Austria. He could not agree to ''modify the rules of international law on account of special condi- tions". He pointed out the amazing character of the OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 187 Austrian claim that ''advantages gained to a belligerent by its superiority on the sea should be equalized by a . . . system of non-intercourse with the victor." In fact, Germany, having entered the war under well-known rules, made at the start what the world regarded as a foul slug at Belgium, with no umpire to call her down, and then wanted the rules changed during the course of the game. With cheek characteristic of recent German di- plomacy she asked it in the iiaiiie of neutrality ! 3 — WAS THE SAL.E OF MUNITIONS MORAL? An extreme position is taken by some pacifists who are opposed to war in any form. They abhor the munition trade. In their minds it is classed with the sale of liquor to drunkards. They push the doctrine of non-resistance to the limit, making it the cure-all for every evil. In a world of lambs and wolves they would stand by and see the wolves eat the lambs rather than interfere. The Amer- ican or French revolution could never have taken place among a people animated by such pacifism, and slavery, once established, would have become eternal. A pacific Christendom would never have resisted the inquisition. Nay rather, Christendom itself would have perished while the Turk established his harem over Europe. This pacifism answers itself. For who could sit still and see his wife and children deported when resistance might avail ? We scorn to answer a man who can never be stirred by moral indignation to forcible action — who prays and never gets off his knees. A second and less extreme class of objectors to our sale of munitions admit the occasional righteousness of war for the purpose of repelling aggression and preventing the advance of a perverse civilization. But they find it 188 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK ''hardly consistent that we should pray for peace and at the same time supply ammunition to continue the war". They argue that ' ' every rifle we ship may cause the death of a German soldier ' ' and ignore the fact that ' ' every rifle withheld from shipment may just as truly cause the death of a British soldier". Upon examination this objection to the sale of death- bringing weapons loses its apparent simplicity. Where shall one draw the moral line between the sale of ready- made firearms and the exportation of copper, nickel, cot- ton, and other materials wherewith to make them? In modern warfare petroleum, clothing, food, are all ammuni- tion, and a loan of money may be more helpful than all possible importations of arms. In short, modern scientific warfare is a coordination of so many different fields of in- dustry that it is impossible to define the term ''war supplies". A third class of objectors have seen nothing in our war trade but the sad and immoral spectacle of a set of greedy gluttons gorging themselves upon the profits of the muni- tion trade. Agitators like La FoUette, and men blind to all war except industrial fights, have spoken heatedly of a capitalist war into which we were being drawn. It is probable that at bottom most of these men were pro-Ger- man. They were altogether silent regarding the deeper moral issues of the war and its brutal conduct under Ger- man military autocracy. We now know that the embargo agitation was in large degree engineered and subsidized by German^ propaganda. Dumba, the ambassador who de- livered the Austrian note, had to be recalled on account of his connection with plots for the instigation of strikes in munition plants. Neither factories nor workmen have been safe from torch and explosives. OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 189 If the war is to be considered solely from a selfish indus- trial standpoint, it must be remembered that the money bags of employer and workingman are in the same boat, even though they quarrel over the steering. The war crip- pled or closed many of our factories, but fortunately for the laboring classes this was offset in large degree by the transfer of workmen to the manufacture of war supplies. Prohibition of such manufacture Avould have created an economic disturbance of enormous magnitude and brought distressing disaster to the laboring man. It is not without economic reason that the sanctions of international law have been framed for the protection of neutral nations in their commerce. But the moral challenge of our legal and neutral posi- tion can not stop here. The whole moral horizon must be scanned. Reluctant as many are to own it, we yet must admit that the American people have been shocked to the core at the conduct of the Avar by the Potsdam gang ; by their shameless intrigues in our own country, by their systematic and merciless raids on British cities, by their sinking of Norwegian and other neutral ships "spurlos'\ by their enormous levies on helpless Belgian cities, by their deportation and enslavement of Belgian and French wo- men, by the unrepressed butchery of the Armenian people. Slowly and surely we have been forced to see an irresistible conflict between German Kultur and a true democracy whose fruits are liberty, mercy, and human brotherhood. Confronted by such issues, we would have been cowardly and deaf to the cries of humanity if we had forbidden the sale of arms to the Allies. 190 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK 4 — WAS THE SALE OF MUNITIONS WISE? Finally, beyond controversy, the sale of munitions was wise. The whole world was afire. There was grave dan- ger that at any moment some unforeseen circumstance — if not the sinking of the Lusitania, then some other lawless or brutal event — would drag us into the caldron. Our army was puny, our congress inactive, our peace-loving president opposed to preparedness. We already had a very delicate situation on our Mexican border. The increase of our mu- nition factories was our only preparation for black emer- gencies. To have suppressed them would have been suicidal. In dealing with the munition problem instinct and past policy have not failed us. For a peaceful nation the main- tenance and reliability of international law are absolutely indispensable. It codifies the moral progress of nations in their relations with one another. As already stated, the right to trade in munitions is a principle guaranteed by international law for the protection of weaker or un- armed nations. To seek to maintain it was the only pos- sible wisdom for us. For no form of government is the ability to obtain arms from abroad more important than for a democracy. By its very nature an autocracy is a centralized force. It can both plan and execute a consistent, undeviating policy throughout its career. A democracy, on the other hand, is a medley of cross currents. It relies upon the conflict of interests to reach a social and political equilibrium. Because of this complexity of interests it is at a disadvan- tage in time of external stress, and the ability then to im- port arms may be for it a matter of life or death. If the right to trade in arms with neutrals is abandoned, each nation must depend upon its own internal resources OUR RIGHT TO SHIP MUNITIONS 191 and hoard of arms. Victory will go to that side which makes concealed preparations and springs unexpectedly at the throat of its foe. The small nation, no matter how civilized, will lie helpless before a big one, and all nations will be forced to keep armed to the teeth. Military service will become universal and the organization of the world will be based upon might. Such militarism is an abomination to our people. It is a recession from principles of mercy and forbearance, and reverts to the law of the jungle. In the New World we have lived in peace for a century with no military line between us and Canada. In the Old World European politics have bordered each country with a military fence. Driven reluctantly to take part, we find ourselves fighting for that for which we have always stood, the right of free peoples to live for themselves and in security. Shall we allow the military lines of Germany to reach our shores? 192 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography The most complete discussion of the munition question is found in the American Journal of InternatioTml Law. See Vol. 9. Editorial Comments: 687-694 and 927-935. Vol. 9. Supplementary Documents. Circular of the Department of State with ref- erence to neutrality and the trade in con- traband: Part II, 124-126. Vol. 10. Morey, W. C. TJie Sale of Munitions. 467-491. Gregory, C. N. Neutrality and tJie Sale of Arms. 543-555. Garner, J. W. TJie Sale and Exportation of Arms and Munitions to Belligerents. 749- 797. Additional references are: Rogers, L. American Congress and the Ex- portation of War Munitions in Contem- porary Review. Vol. 108, p. 718. Lovejoy, A. 0. As to an Embargo on Arms (a reply to Fran eke) , in Neiv Republic. Vol. 4, 156-157. Rogers, L. America's Case against Germany, Chap. 6. Scott, J. B. A Survey of International Rela- tions between tJie United States and Gev- maniy. Chap. 7. Dates of publication of diplomatic correspondence: 1915. Jan. 24. Bryan's reply to Stone's letter of in- quiry regarding neutrality. April 11. Bernstorff 's note. April 22. Bryan's reply. Aug. 12. The Austrian note of -protest. Aug. 15. Lansing's reply. GERMANY'S WAR ON US IN TIME OF PEACE By WILLIAM A. SCOTT Director- of the Course in Commerce Within the short period of three years, Germany trans- formed the United States from a friend and genuine ad- mirer into an enemy at war. As evidence of our former friendship and admiration "may be cited our high apprecia- tion of her governmental, industrial and commercial effici- ency, her attainments in science and art, and her educa- tional institutions; the large number of our students who attended her institutions of learning; the important place we gave in our schools to the teaching of the German ' language; our cordial and enthusiastic reception of her educational leaders in our colleges and universities; the sending of commissions and individual investigators to study her institutions and methods and report the results as a basis for domestic reforms ; and our readiness to wel- come and even to promote organizations which purported to have for their object the spread of German ideas, ideals and friendship. Our transformation into an enemy at war was the result, among other things, of a gradual revelation of the facts, which we were very slow to comprehend, that Germany had not only not reciprocated, but had abused, our friendship, that she had always been hostile to our national ideas and policies, that for years she had been secretly plotting against us and attempting to thwart our purposes, and finally that she was actually committing almost daily acts of war against us. 13— W. B, 194 • UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK GERMANY THE FOE OF DEMOCRACY The attitude of the ruling classes of Germany towards democracy appeared clearly in 1848 in their rejection of the constitution based on democratic principles, which was prepared and urged by a representative congress. This rejection started the stream of emigration to the United States which brought us Carl Schurz, General Siegel, and the very best of our German-American citizens. It showed itself unmistakably again in the statement of Bismarck — when he assumed leadership in Prussia — that thereafter great questions would be settled in Germany by blood and iron instead of by talk and discussion in congresses and about council tables. It was embodied in the constitution of the German Empire in 1870 which made autocratic and aristocratic Prussia the dominating and controlling state and the organs of government responsible to the Emperor instead of the Eeichstag. The clearest possible revelation of it has been made in Germany's treatment of us, the leading exponent of democracy in the modern world. TWENTY YEARS OF mTRIGUE In order to show how consistently and persistently hostile that treatment has been it is necessary only to review some of the leading events of our recent history. Germany ';» attitude towards our Monroe doctrine was correctly ex- pressed by Bismarck when he pronounced it ' ' an incredible impertinence"; and it showed itself in action in 1902 when she induced England and Italy to join her in intervention in Venezuela. During our war with Spain the hostility of the German people was expressed in their press and in their conversa- tion with and attitude towards Americans. Speaking of this, our Ambassador, Andrew D. White, said, in his auto- biography": ''Men who stood high in the Universities, men GERMANY'S WAR ON US IN TIME OF PEACE 195 of the greatest amiability, who in former days had been the warmest friends of America, had now become our bitter opponents, and some of their expressions seemed to point to eventual war." The Kaiser was reported to have said to an Englishman regarding this war: ''If I had had a larger fleet I would have taken Uncle Sam by the scruff of the neck." After the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and the establishment of a blockade of the port by Admiral Dewey, a German fleet commanded by Admiral von Died- richs, in size greatly in excess of that of other nations whose commercial interests in Manila were much greater than those of Germany, appeared and conducted itself in such a manner as to create the conviction that its intentions were hostile. It did not observe the usual naval courtesies due to the commander of a blockading squadron, in vio- lation of international law and the usages of war it took pos- session of a portion of an island commanding the harbor, and it interfered with the insurgents in their operations against the Spaniards. The German foreign office, while formally maintaining an attitude of neutrality, secretly attempted to form a European combination against us. Repeatedly and persistently Germany has attempted to embroil us with England. The Venezuela intervention al- ready mentioned is a case in point. During the Boer war she endeavored to induce us to intervene against England, using for that purpose an organization formed in Phila- delphia entitled the German-American League of the United States. In 1913 General von Bernhardi Avas sent on a mission to this country for the purpose, among other things, of inciting German Americans against England and of preparing them for assistance in the war with her which he predicted. When the war broke out, through her diplo- matic and consular agents in this country, she organized 196 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK and subsidized plots on our soil to incite revolutions in India and Ireland. Germany has also tried to stir up bad blood between us and Canada. Before the present war she persisted in cir- culating in Canada the false insinuation that we had de- signs upon Canadian independence and wished to incorpor- ate her into the United States. Evidence has appeared which implicates the German diplomatic agents of this country in attempts to induce the Province of Quebec to make itself independent of the rest of Canada. Since the war began, in violation of our neutrality and our laws, she has fought Canada from our soil. Among other things, she has sent people from here to blow up the international bridge at Vanceboro, Me., a factory at Walkerville, Can- ada, an armory at Windsor, and has plotted for the de- struction of the Welland Canal. That she has been actively hostile to us throughout our difficulties with Mexico cannot now be questioned. It is now known that she spent a large sum of money in assist- ing Huerta to stir up a revolution in Mexico, that she placed a warship at his disposal, that she supplied him with arms. Her crowning act of hostility in this territory, how- ever, was the plan revealed in the famous Zimmermann letter of January, 1917. In this communication, as will be remembered, she offered Mexico a liberal slice of our ter- ritory if in alliance with Japan she would attack us. SOWING THE SEEDS OF DOMESTIC DISSENSION If acts of hostility may be classified as of greater or less degrees of malignity, we would place above those already enumerated another group in which Germany has at- tempted to stir up dissension in the United States itself and to thwart the accomplishment of our domestic purposes. Recent revelations have made it quite clear that for years GERMANY'S WAR ON US IN TIME OF PEACE 197 certain organizations of German- American citizens and of German citizens living in this country, though ostensibly formed for innocent and even laudable purposes, were per- haps designed, and certainly used by Germany to work her own purposes in this country. Her plan, apparently, has been to prevent the real assimilation of citizens of Ger- man extraction and to form them into a compact group to be used for her own schemes, even though these should run counter to the-plans, the policies, and the interests of this country. She has done this in an underhanded, insidious manner, under cover of the pretense of cultivating our friendship and of strengthening the bonds that tie us to- gether. Germany has not only attempted to sow the seeds of dis- sension between our German-American and other citizens, but she has endeavored to widen the gap between our labor- ing and capitalist classes and thus to aggravate the most difficult and dangerous of our social problems. This she did by attempting to foment strikes in munitions factories. To this end she financed an organization known as Labor's National Peace Council, one of the primary purposes of which was to bring about such strikes through every pos- sible means, including the corruption of legislators and labor leaders. A CAMPAIGN OF CORRUPTION The official representatives of the German Empire in this country have attempted to influence legislation in Con- gress and have violated our laws after they were passed. Noteworthy examples of these classes of activities are Am- bassador von Bernstorff's attempts to induce Congress to pass a law to put an embargo upon the exportation of mu- nitions to the Allies, and the evasion of our customs regu- 198 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK lations and the violation of onr laws by Captain Boy-ed, the naval attache of the German Embassy at Washington, Dr. Buenz, Ex-German Minister to Mexico, Consul- General Bopp of San Francisco, prominent officials of the Ham- burg-American and the North German Lloyd Steamship lines and many others, in the sending of coal and food sup- plies from our ports to German raiders at sea. German agents have forged American passports on a wholesale scale and have violated our internment regulations and those pertaining to the return of German reservists. The corruption of our people and of our press has also been attempted on a large scale. Newspapers have been established, old ones subsidized, and lecturers hired, to give the American people the kind of impressions the Ger- man government Avanted them to have, and to prevent their getting any other kind. Checks, letters, and telegrams are in possession of the Government incriminating Ambassador von Bernstorff and other German officials in this work of corruption. Among these especially noteworthy is von Bernstorff 's telegram to his government asking for author- ity to expend $50,000 ''in order, as on former occasions, to influence Congress through the organization you know of." THE RESORT TO VIOLENCE From attempts to get us into trouble with our neighbors and friends, to form alliances against us, and to create dis- sension and rebellion and false impressions among our people, to acts of violence was a short step which Germany did not hesitate to take when in her judgment the oppor- tune moment came. When it became evident that through an embargo act in Congress and the fomentation of strikes in factories she was not going to succeed in preventing our manufacture of GERMANY'S WAR ON US IN TIME OP PEACE 199 munitions and their shipment to the Allies, she resorted to bombs and submarines. The depths of viUany to which she sank have been revealed in the conspiracy case against Fay, Scholz and Daechi, tools of hers in the bomb plots, and m the so-called von Igcl papers seized by secret service men in New York in April, 1916. It was nothing less than the manufacture of bombs disguised in various ways and their placement in coal bunkers and holds, and on the rudder posts of merchant ships clearing from our ports. The submarine outrages are so well known that a detailed account of them is unnecessary. Suffice it to say in bold out- line that they consisted in sinking without warning and without any effort to save the lives of either enemies or neutrals the ships of any and all nations, our own included. By means of these outrages millions of dollars of our pro- perty were destroyed and over two hundred of our citizens were foully murdered in cold blood. If anytliing further were needed to reveal to the gov- ernment and people of the United States the true character of the German government and the menace to which its victory in this war would expose us, it was supplied by the defense made of these outrageous acts and by the policy of deception and falsehood persistently followed in deal- ings with us. , Of most of the hostile acts which have been enumerated no defense was possible or was attempted. They were done secretly and underhandedly in the hope and expectation that the responsibility of the German government for them would never be disclosed. For the submarine outrages, however, its responsibility could not be concealed and the defense of necessity was set up-a defense which sets aside international law and justifies the commission of any act against the peace and prosperity of a neutral nation pro- vided a hard pressed belligerent believes it to promise a 200 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK military advantage. Sucli a defense, if we assume that it was presented in good faith, reveals the mediaeval state of mind and morals which makes a powerful nation like Ger- many a menace to modern civilization. HIDING BEHIND UES Throughout our negotiations with the German govern- ment concerning the submarine campaign and many other matters, she has practiced deception to such an extent as to create the conviction that no reliance whatever can be placed upon her promises or agreements. In a memorial accompanying a proclamation of February 4, 1915, it de- clared that ' ' the German Navy has received instructions to abstain from all violence against neutral vessels recogniz- able as such ' ' and that ' ' it is very far indeed from the in- tention of the German government ever to destroy neutral lives and neutral property." In spite of these statements the torpedoing of neutral as well as enemy ships carrying American citizens and those of other neutral countries was begun almost immediately and hundreds of lives were lost, including many Americans. The Lusitania tragedy in which 114 American lives were sacrificed occurred on May 7, only three months after this declaration. On July 8, 1915, in a note to Ambassador Gerard arguing in defense of the sinking of the Lusitania, the German gov- ernment again assured the United States that American ships would not be hindered in the prosecution of legiti- mate shipping and that the lives of American citizens on neutral vessels would not be placed in jeopardy. Never- theless between the date of that promise and September 4, 1915, six steamships carrying American citizens were at- tacked and twenty-three American lives taken. Subsequently, a promise was made to the effect that liners would not be sunk by submarines without warning GERMANY'S WAR ON US IN TIME OF PEACE 201 and without safeguarding the lives of noncombatants, and our government was assured that the German government was quite in accord with it regarding the matter of security of crews and passengers of ships to be sunk. Nevertheless, no substantial change was made in the practices of the submarines, ships continuing to be sunk indiscriminately and the lives of passengers and crews ruthlessly and brut- ally sacrificed- Many other similar promises and agree- ments were made and broken, no one of them in fact having been kept in good faith. When confronted with these broken promises and vio- lated statements, quibbles and subterfuges were resorted to which strengthened the conviction of insincerity and un- reliability which the events themselves had created. Among these may be mentioned the claim made in defense of the sinking of the Lusitania that she was armed, a claim based upon a false affidavit which German agents bribed a man to make. In other cases she denied sinkings by submarines which were afterwards proved. In others trivial and al- most absurd excuses were offered. AMERICA'S RESPONSE The revelation of these acts of hostility and actual war- fare against us in times of peace, attested by documents now in the possession of the federal government, is grad- ually making clear to the American people the true mean- ing and significance of President Wilson's statement that our purpose in entering this war was to make the world safe for democracy. More specifically he might have said that we entered it to secure our own safety. The danger from Germany was not remote, problematical, merely threatened. It was at hand. She was actually making war upon us. :02 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE Germany's war on lis between the autumn of 1914 and April, 1917, is being described in a striking series of articles now in course of publication in the World's Work, entitled Fighting Germany's Spies. It began in March, 1918, and is written by French Strothers. GERMAN SUBMAEINES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE By CARL RUSSELL FISH Professor of History WHAT FREEDOM OF THE SEAS MEANS In a commercial nation, such as the United States, the wages of every laborer, the price of every bushel of wheat, everything that we mean by prosperity or depression, de- pends on the free use of the sea. ''Freedom of the seas," however, is no more a simple term than freedom on land. If one person or nation is allowed to interfere with others as he sees fit, freedom disappears. Freedom must consist of equality of rights protected by known and accepted law. Law, neither national nor international, has as yet secured perfect equality, but as long as it exists it may be im- proved. If it is abolished, Ave return to barbarism. The United States has always stood for the equality of all nations in the use of the seas, protected by international law. In 1812, we fought Great Britain because Ave be- lieved that she Avas restricting the just rights of neutrals. Before and after that date, aa^c fought the Barbary poAvers, to restrict their interference Avith the vessels of other na- tions. In time of war, there is ahvays a conflict of interest be- tAveen the Avarring nations, Avho Avish to exercise the fullest poAvers of interfering AAdth each other's trade, and the 204 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK neutral nations, who wish to trade freely with both. A great portion of international law applies to this state of affairs. The United States has had experiences on both sides, and has contributed a great deal to the formation of this law. Some points are universally accepted, some dis- puted, some new and yet unsettled. This war will deter- mine whether the progress of the past is to be continued, or whether what the world has built up so far will be over- thrown. At present Great Britain and Germany are trying to starve each other. This is a perfectly legal war object. It is the siege method, which has been employed since civil- ized war began. The greatest previous instance was the siege of Paris, in 1870. No whole great nation has ever be- fore been besieged, because the mechanical means for doing it never before existed. When a nation is conducting a siege it has always been allowed to stop all trade of neutrals with the besieged area, on condition that it meets certain recognized legal requirements. The action of Great Britain and Germany, therefore, is to be judged by the means they employ to accomplish their purpose. The instrument of Great Britain is the blockade, of Germany, the submarine. BRITISH BLOCKADE METHODS Great Britain has laid out certain ''zones" on the sea, near to Germany, and blocking the entrance to German ports, from all seas, except from the Baltic, which her ves- sels cannot reach. Her warships meet all vessels passing through these "zones," and bring them into a nearby British port, where they can be examined or "searched" in safety. Vessels on the way to Germany are held, or rather Avould be if there Avere any, but none attempt the direct voyage. Vessels on the way to other countries are GERMAN SUBMARINES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE 205 allowed to pass on, unless they contain goods of use to Germany. Goods of use to Germany are, in the first place, those which it is intended to ship overland from the ports of Holland and Denmark, and those to be shipped across the Baltic from Norway and Sweden. Secondly, are goods imported into Sweden, Norway, Holland, and Denmark, in- tended to take the place of their own goods sent to Ger- many. If, for instance, Holland sends all the lard she pro- duces to Germany, and then imports enough to supply her own needs from the United States, Great Britain holds that the extra lard, that is, the amount over and above her usual imports, is really for the use of Germany, and seizes it. In carrying out this policy, she has examined the mail bags, for at times large amounts of goods have been sent to Ger- many in the mail through Sweden. In carrying out these practices, no lives are imperilled. Vessels are somewhat delayed by being brought into port to be searched, but these delays have been much reduced. All doubtful cases are brought to speedy trial in regular courts. These courts apply the rules of international law, and Great Britain has offered to submit cases in which the decision is questioned to arbitration. Not only does the policy endanger no American lives, but it is probable that all losses of American merchants will be made good, ex- cept in cases where they tried to send to Germany articles universally recognized as contraband of war, which are always liable to the risk of legal capture, for Great Britain has not exercised her legal right to confiscate goods in- tended to pass the blockade, but has restored them, or paid for them. Her war policy has been simply to pre- vent their reaching Germany. 206 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK GERMAN SUBMARINE METHODS Germany has laid out certain ' ' zones ' ' blocking off Great Britain, France, and Italy, from access to all countries by sea. She has announced that all vessels belonging to any nation, bound for any port, found in these zones, would be liable to destruction by her submarines. It is sometimes said that her rules applied to armed vessels and vessels carrying munitions only. This was not the case with the orders which finally provoked the United States to war. The munition controversy and the armed ship controversy are not involved. As a matter of fact, from the beginning of the submarine controversy, she sank unarmed vessels, like the Lusitania, vessels without muni- tions, like the Sussex, and American vessels, like the Gul- fiiglit. In the earlier part of the war, it is true that submarines were not ordered to sink all vessels, and the attack on the GulftigJit was excused as an accident. It was, however, the kind of accident that was sure to happen. The submarine cannot tell the innocent from the guilty. It cannot and does not attempt to '^search"; it sinks. In case of an accident, moreover, the case cannot be examined by a court, for the evidence is destroyed with the vessel. In the case of the Lusitania, the United States was able, by good luck, to prove that she was not armed; but the German govern- ment circulated the lie that she was armed, trusting that all the evidence was sunk, with hundreds of women and children, in the Atlantic. The essence of law is that dis- puted facts shall be reviewed in court. The submarine, in destroying the evidence, is an outlaw. Perhaps the earliest rule of international law, relating to maritime warfare, is that a war vessel, if it finds it neces- sary to destroy a merchant vessel at sea, which under GERMAN SUBMARINES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE 207 certain circumstances is allowed by international law, is bound to provide for the safety of passengers and crew. This the submarine cannot do. Its use for such purposes, therefore, means the violation of the fundamental prin- ciples of humanity itself, upon which international law is based. In practice the German submarines have gone still farther. In the case of the Faldbra, a submarine fired on the passengers and crew after they had taken to the ship 's boats, which offered them a precarious chance of safety. In the case of the Belgian Pnnce, the submarine crew de- stroyed the ship's boats, took the passengers on its deck, took away their life belts, and then submerged, leaving them to drown. Such cases, even if not part of the general policy, are a natural result of it, for the captain of the submarine is judge, jury, and executioner, and if his work is successful, there can be no judicial review of the case, for the evidence has perished. This is the policy directly advocated by Count Luxburg, the German minister to Argentina, in order to avoid diplo- matic controversies. His idea was that if the ship disap- peared ''without leaving a trace," it could be attributed to the accidents of the sea. The disappearance of 120 vessels since the present German policy began is an indication that Count Luxburg did not stand alone. THE ITNITED STATES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE The United States recognized the British blockade as a legal measure. In international law the legality of a blockade depends on three main points. First, proper notice and warning of it must be given ; and this was done. Secondly, the blockade must be ''effective," not merely an excuse for capturing now and then vessels sailing for a 208 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK certain port. The British blockade is almost 100 per cent effective. Thirdly, it must be enforced by measures recog- nized as legal. For the most part the measures employed by the British are those we ourselves used in our blockade of the South during the Civil War. On certain points we protested, and they were taken up for discussion. The question of contraband does not really belong to this subject, for it disappeared when Great Britain declared a blockade. A blockade, if legal, applies to all goods whether contraband or not. Her right to stop goods going through other neutral countries may be a little stronger if they are contraband, but her main case rests upon blockade. One point we protested was the blockade of the Baltic, on the ground that a blockade must be equal as against all neutrals, and here American vessels were excluded, but not Scandinavian. Great Britain replied that this in- equality was not the result of unfair discrimination on her part, but because of the geographical situation. The law on this point has yet to be determined. We protested also the laying down of "zones" and tJie bringing of vessels into port for search. Great Britain re- plied that these were but slight modifications of recognized rules, caused by the change of conditions of modern war- fare, and that they really served to increase the safety of neutrals. On the whole her position seems reasonable. The mail controversy was more difficult. The sanctity of mail is a well-established principle, while there is no doubt that United States mail was being used for purposes uni- versally recognized as illegal. This created a difficult problem that had not been solved when we went to war with Germany and undertook the control of our own mail. The most important principles of British policy were the doctrine of "continuous voyage" and "enemy destina- GERMAN SUBMARINES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE 209 tion." That is, that if goods be sent from Pittsburgh to Berlin, the whole voyage is one and continuous, and they can be seized at any point in it, not merely on the last lap ; and that goods being of enemy destination can be stopped even between two neutral ports. On these we were not in a position to protest seriously, for, with slight differ- ences, they were our doctrines in the Civil War and con- firmed by our Supreme Court. Even the British position that unusually large imports by a neutral were evidence that they were intended to be of use to the enemy found support in our diplomatic correspondence at that time. None of the controversies with Great Britain involve or involved loss of life. Whenever they involved property, they will, in all probability, be finally tried in the Hague Court, and the property delivered to whichever has the best case. The disputes have, for the most part, been on new points, upon which the law will not be certain until it is de- cided by that court. THE UNITED STATES AND THE GERMAN SUBMARINES The United States denied the legality of the German blockade because it had only one element of legality; it was formally announced. On the point of efficiency, it has seldom, in any week, reached 1 per cent. On the point of methods of enforcement, it has already been shown that it violates the very bases on which law rests. The final desperate offer of Germany to allow a fixed, small number of American vessels, marked in a conspicuous manner, to pass the zones, shows her utter failure to recognize the fundamentals of law, for it substituted absolutely the will of Germany, for freedom of trade under general rules, as the measure of our trade, and it threw the responsibility of maintaining her blockade upon the neutral instead of herself. Had we accepted, American industry to-day 210 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK wQuld be ruined ; the American farmer would be fortunate to get fifty cents a bushel for his wheat, and the freedom of the seas would be at an end. The German government, in fact, did not strongly argue that her position was legal, but justified it on the ground that it was in retaliation for violations of law by Great Britain, and that it was ''necessary." THE GERMAN PLEA OF RETALIATION Retaliation is doubtless, at times, justified. When the Germans violated the rules of war by using poison gas, it was plain that the Allies must fight gas with gas. Whether airship attacks in the civilian populations of unfortified cities should be met by retaliation of the same kind is being discussed. It is doubtful, however, if the German case for retalia- tion by submarines exists. There is some evidence that von Tirpitz considered their use for purposes of blockade before the present war broke out. It has been proved, also, that the first step in the chain of events leading to Ger- many's declarations of submarine blockade was the sowing of floating mines, to the north of Ireland, in plain violation of international law. The case of the United States, however, is stronger and simpler, and does not depend on controverted facts. We deny absolutely that the act of one of two warring nations can justify the other in illegally treating a third, neutral, nation. The neutral deals with each belligerent separ- ately. If a belligerent nation can cast international law to the winds, because it believes its enemy has violated some law, law no longer exists. Rumor, prejudice, false witnesses will always give the occasion, and the outbreak of every war will see the rules, laboriously built up in time of peace, thrown into the scrap heap. GERMAN SUBMARINES AND THE BRITISH BLOCKADE 211 GERMAN PLEA OF NECESSITY Necessity is a plea still more destructive. If the siab- marine cannot wage war according to legal methods, it is not a legal war weapon, and its use must be denied like poison and dumdum bullets. Law does, indeed, recognize self-defense as a plea against a charge of murder, but in such cases the court reviews the facts. In the case of the submarine no review is possible. According to the German argument, each nation is the judge of its own necessity. When a person or nation makes such a decision there is always a tendency to decide that a thing is necessary which is merely convenient. It puts the wish of the individual in the place of the judgment of the whole world. It sub- stitutes, finally and completely, force for law, might for right. THE BRITISH CASE VERSUS THE GERMAN Our controversies with Great Britain have all been con- ducted under the recognized forms of law ; disputed points have been as to what international law really meant, and they are on the way to a legal decision, which both parties will accept. They will surely result in adding valuable rules to international law, and in increasing the power of international law. They are like the disputes of individuals in everyday life, which are not inconsistent with peace. Our controversies with Germany all turned upon the point of whether international law was or was not binding upon nations. There was no legal outlet. We were forced to admit that law had no force, or to fight. If we win, we establish the binding power of law, and we may unite to perfect it as the basis for permanent international peace; if we lose, we must submit to a reign of force, to prepare perpetually for the next war. 212 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Documents International Conciliation, no. 94, Official Correspondence between the United States and Germaiiy, Aug. 6, 1914, to July 30, 1915. No. 95, Official Correspondence between tJie United States and Germany, Aug. 6, 1914, to April 8, 1915. No. 101, Great Britain's Measures against German Trade. These and other pamphlets may be obtained by writing to the American Association for International Concilia- tion, Substation 84 (407 West 117th St.), New York City. World Peace Foundation, Pamphlet Series, vol. V, no. 4, Pt. II, War Zones, Vol. V, no. 4, Pt. Ill, The Wilhelmina Case, Muni- tions of War, the Frye Case. Vol. V, no. 5, Pt. II, Sinking of the Lusitania. These and other pamphlets may be obtained by writing to World Peace Foundation, 40 Mt. Vernon St., Boston, Mass. Books Robinson, E. E., and West, V. J. The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson. Macmillan Co. New York. 1917. Rogers, Lindsey. America's Case against Germany. E. P. Button & Co. New York. 1917. GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT By CHARLES S. SLIGHTER Professor of Applied Mathematics and GEORGE WAGNER Assistant Professor of Zoology To those who know Germany from personal experience, the question arises as to whether the German people, aside from the ruling caste, have anything to gain from a final victory in this war. If there is truth in the philosophy of democracy, the answ^er must be emphatically, NO. The German masses can gain nothing by a victory of German autocracy ; they have much to gain from its defeat. THE GOVERNMENT OF GERMANY The German Empire was founded at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. It was founded, and its constitu- tion was written, by the ruling princes and their ministers, Avithout consulting the people. The constitution has not been altered from that day to this. There is no provision for its alteration by any body that in any way represents the masses of the people. Any alteration in it can be abso- lutely prevented by the sole will of the emperor. The German Parliament consists of the Bundesrat, or Federal Council, and the Reichstag. Of these the Reichs- tag is the one we hear of most. It is elected by secret bal- lot and manhood suffrage. The voting age is 25, probably 214 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK to let the arni}^ get its disciplinary power working on a man before he votes. Representation, however, can hardly bo railed equal, for the electoral districts were established on the basis of the population as it stood in 1871, and their boundaries have never been changed. Since then the cities have grown enormously in population, as compared with the rural districts. As a consequence the country districts, the great seats of ultra-conservatism, have a representation far beyond their rightful share. Prominent as it is in public accounts of German affairs, the powders of the Eeichstag are extremely limited. As late as January 1914, a mcinber, Dr. Friederich Naumann of Central Europe (Mittel-Europa) fame, said: We on the Left are altogether in favor of the parliamentary regime, by which we mean that the Reichstag can not forever remain in a position of subordination. Why does the Reichstag sit at all, why does it pass resolutions, if behind it is a waste- paper basket into which these resolutions are thrown? The prob- lem is to change the impotence of the Reichstag into some sort of power. . . . The man who compared this House to a hall of echoes was not far wrong. To those who are accustomed to do practical work in life it appears a mere waste of time to devote themselves to this difficult and monotonous mechanism. . . . When one asks the question, What part has the Reichstag in German history as a whole? it will be seen that the part is a very limited one. Both emperor and Bundesrat have absolute veto power over the acts of the Reichstag. This, and the fact is im- portant, applies to the repeal of the existing laws, as ^vell as to the enactment of new ones. In practice very little of any consequence comes to it that has not previously been sifted by the Bundesrat, and it comes usually with a clear statement as to what changes will be tolerated. Opposition to the government proposals by a Reichstag member, or any new proposals inconvenient to the government, are usually GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT 215 met by such sneering retort from the chancellor or one of his ministers, that one wonders how any man of real char- acter can consent to give his time as a member under such conditions. By joint action of the emperor and the Bun- desrat the Reichstag can be dissolved at any time, and a new election ordered. In such an election every power the government possesses or dares to seize, is used to pro- duce a government majority. And this power is such that it has always succeeded. The Bundesrat is the controlling house. It is really a board of ambassadors sent by the ruling princes. The delegates are selected by the rulers of the states, and must vote as instructed by these rulers. The delegation from each state must vote as a unit. Of the sixty-one votes in the Bundesrat, seventeen are from Prussia ; the three votes supposed to represent Alsace-Lorraine are subjected to the instructions of the emperor; and as a matter of practice, the single A-otes of a number of smaller states are absolutely under Prussian tutelage. So Prussia, or the emperor, has a clear majority. The chancellor, the highest officer of the State, is ap- pointed by the emperor, and is responsible only to him. This fact Bismarck, von Biilow, Bethmann HoUweg, and lately von Hertling, have never ceased to emphasize. When after the Zabern scandal the Reichstag passed a vote of lack of confidence in the Chancellor by an enormous major- ity, he simply laughed at it. He represents and shields all other ministers. All administrative powers, not ex- pressly delegated to others, belong to him. He has charge of the enforcement of imperial laws in all the states. He orders not only what is to be done, but also prescribes the way in which it is to be done. A consideration of the above makes it clear that the German government is anything but democratic. What is 216 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK more important, there is no legal way of changing any feat- ure of this government so long as the emperor does not de- sire the change. As long as he opposes it, there is only one way to bring it about and that is — Revolution. The emperor, theoretically, is only president among the princes of Germany. Practically he is the absolute auto- crat whose powers can be little interfered with. He is ir- responsible and his office belongs inalienably to the Prus- sian Crown. His control over the army is made absolute by law, and the Zabern affair showed the German people how far that power could be extended. His veto can pre- vent any change in the constitution, even though every other soul in Germany were for it. His veto can prevent the enactment of any proposition into law. He needs the consent of the Bundesrat only for dissolving the Reichstag and for declaring offensive war. But it has been shown above how thoroughly he controls the Bundesrat. For the declaration of defensive warfare he needs the consent of no one. The events of 1914 have shown how easy it is for a government not responsible to its people, to make any war appear a defensive one. After the recent remarkable dis- closures in the papers of Count Lichnowski, former Ger- man Ambassador in London, and of Dr. Miihlon, a former director of Krupp's, it is more certain than ever that the Emperor nnd his immodiatc supporters deliberately planned this war, without consulting even the Bundesrat. And they did not officially inform the Bundesrat until three days after the commencement of the first hostilities. THE PRUSSIAN SYSTEM One may well ask : How is all this possible in a modern state, with a public press, a public platform, a large class of highly educated citizens, a proletariat eagerly seeking a better place for itself ? The answer is : Prussia — Prussia, GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT 217 with its militarism, its manufacture of public opinion, its caste system. All these things Prussia has forced upon the lesser states of Germany. For in judging Germany, one must never forget that Prussia constitutes about two-thirds of it, both in area and population, and that the German Emperor is also King of Prussia. The Prussian constitution nowhere recognizes the sovereignty of the people. By Prussian political theory all sovereignty belongs to the king, the government is the king; and it lies within his rights to withdraw at any time such privileges as may have been granted in the constitu- tion. Prussia also has two chambers in its legislature. Of these the upper house is constituted as the king wills, with- out restriction. As a matter of fact it is overwhelmingly dominated by the East Prussian Junkers, the most reac- tionary class in all the western world today. Even so, this body has no powers the king does not desire exercised. It has a veto over all legislation, as has the king. The lower house is elected by the people— after a fashion. Every Prussian man of 25 or more has the vote — after a fashion. Votes are weighted according to the property be- hind them. The voters of each district are divided into three classes, each casting one-third of the vote. First, those wealthiest persons who pay one-third of the taxes; second, the well-to-do and middle classes who pay the sec- ond third; lastly, the vast numbers of God's patient poor who pay the last third. The result? Of the male popula- tion 4 per cent cast one-third of the votes ; 14 per cent the second third; and the last third is shared by the remaining 82 per cent. Get the first two classes to stand together, and 18 per cent will overwhelmingly defeat the wishes of the other 82 per cent. In 1900 the Social Democrats cast 218 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK an actual majority of the votes in the election, yet they secured only 7 seats out of a total of 400. The whole thing is a government by property. But there is even more than this. The ballot is not secret, is not even printed. Voting is by word of mouth before. elec- tion officials. It is not hard to see what effect this has upon the men of the poorer classes. Knowing that an hon- est vote may lose them their positions, they quite commonly take no part in elections. In 1903 only 24 per cent of the Prussian electors voted for members of the Prussian Diet, while in the elections for the Reichstag, which are secret, 75 per cent of the votes were cast. The story is not yet ended. The electoral districts were established in 1858. Since then they have not been changed. As a consequence, just as in the case of the Reichstag, the great cities which have grown enormously have no more representatives than they had then. One set of areas with three million people is allowed 9 representatives; another area with a similar population is allowed 66. All this much to the satisfaction of the Hohenzollern, for the pro- gressive elements live in the cities, while the peasant — who must never be looked upon as having any resemblance to our American farmer — is usually reactionary to the core. Even when so adroitly hand-picked, the lower house is carefully kept a very harmless, because powerless, institu- tion. Bismarck in the period from 1862-1866 defied it and the voters who elected it, not only once but many times. This is the school that Prussian parliamentarians are trained in. And as Prussians, by the nature of things, have the controlling voice in the Reichstag, and the King of Prussia, as German Emperor, has a veto over every action of the Reichstag, it is no wonder that this body is, as one of its own members said, a "Hall of Echoes." GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT 219 THE POWER OE THE WAR LORD The emperor is commander-in-chief of the army and navy, and as such is under no restrictions; how far his power goes in this matter can be seen in the Zabern affair of 1913. A colonel committed gross breaches against the rights of civilians. Against the protest of practically all Germany, the Kaiser ruled that the case must be tried be- fore a military court. The colonel was, of course, promptly acquitted. He received a congratulatory telegram from the Crown Prince, and a new decoration from his King. The army and its General Staff are in reality above the law. Its supplies are voted by the Reichstag to be sure, but once voted they continue indefinitely without further action. The General Staff is the most powerful group of men in Germany. Their plans are made for years— even scores of years— ahead. And these plans are secret. As soon as war is declared, the army practically takes charge of all civil government in the Empire. And there is then no appeal from its actions. MANUFACTURING PUBLIC OPINION It is only natural that in this age of publicity, an auto- cratic system such as this will want to create a system for controlling and moulding public opinion. And Ger- many has done so in most thorough fashion. The system begins in the lowest school, and it has no end. Teachers are state officials, and as such are amenable to discipline by authorities other than those of the school ; and they are de- pendent upon these authorities for promotion. In recent years no one has been appointed to a professorship whose royalistic views have not been thoroughly examined. After appointment his faithfulness to the ruling class is re- 220 UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN WAR BOOK warded by special appointments to comniiss'ons, or by titles, decorations, admission to court circles, a visit to his laboratory by some prince or by the ''All-Highest" him- self. But should he dare to utter thoughts displeasing, there come quickly attacks in the press, difficulties in his budget, social neglect. Educational policy is finally controlled by rulers and statesmen, rather than by educational experts. The lower schools are strictly regulated in everything they do. His- tory to them is only one long story of the greatness of the Hohenzollern. The two great school holidays are Sedan Day and the Emperor's Birthday. Contempt of other na- tions is constantly taught. With all this goes a constant iron discipline intended to make obedience to authority an automatic thing. All this is continued in the army, is indeed one of the foremost tasks of the army. There follows lastly that universal sys- tem of ^^Verhoten", so that the German may never for a moment forget that his chief duty is to obey. But after all the greatest instrument in this work of con- trolling the very thoughts of the citizens is the press. There is probably no country in which the masses have been allowed to know so little about the facts of the war. Even in times of peace, the government wields enormous power over it. It can ruin a newspaper by withholding from it information. Any one who knows how much of the news in German papers refers to official matters, will realize what this means. Nor does it end here. Newspapers carry great quantities of official advertising, which can be given or withdrawn at will. Private advertising can be in- fluenced — ^a merchant who has been given the title ''Pur- veyor to the Court" will know, without being told, what papers he can advertise in. The sale of any paper in the state railroad stations can be forbidden at any time. Press GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT 221 matter is not always censored before publication, but any issue of a paper can be suppressed by the police. One ed- itor must assume complete responsibility for everything that appears in a paper ; a paper of a non-royalistic attitude usually chooses for this position a man whose physical con- dition will withstand a deal of sitting in jail. Finally the government through its connections with private wealth, practically OAvns many papers. And by secret subsidies of which it need give no account to any one, it can and does control others. Bismarck's ''Reptilian Press" did not die with Bismarck. In time of war, the commander in each district becomes an absolute ruler. He can suspend any paper for a period or for the war. He can apply a real censorship. And by these powers he can practically dictate what the public shall read. Since the beginning of the war many important journals in Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Bremen, Leipzig, Dantzig, Essen, Diisseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich,, and Vi- enna, have by one means or another been forced to change their policy, or even their ownership. THE CASTE SYSTEM The perfection of this feudalistic system is perhaps best seen in the system of social castes. At the head stand of course the court circles, the army officers, the Junkers, — militaristic and royalistic to the marrow of their bones, the real props of the throne. Then comes the remarkable caste of civic officials. It is highly efficient, but its great curse is that its training tends to make each man in it a tyrant on a small scale. And the more important members of this caste have been born into it, or have been drawn in so early that they do not know any other life, and do not think any other thoughts than those of this officialdom. 222 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK There is no real contact with the crowd, who are looked upon as mere pawns in the great game played by the State. At the bottom of this social scheme stand the peasants and the workingmen, with the small shopkeepers and clerks just above them. It is commonly believed that the work- ing classes are well cared for by the state. They hardly feel that way themselves. Of the families of the working class in Berlin 55 per cent live in a single room. The common schools provided for the children of the working man lead nowhere except to a life like that of their parents. Access to a secondary or university education is almost impossible for them. All positions requiring more than a very elementary education are thus practically closed to the common people. It is almost impossible for a working man to rise above his class. The scheme aims not only to keep him down, but also to keep the members of the upper classes up, whether fit or not. GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT A German victory in this war will be a victory of this whole pernicious system. Can any one believe that such a victory will be of any benefit to the masses of Germany? Is it not certain that the German people can only gain by a German defeat? The German people have a democratic origin. At heart the masses are still democratic. The democratic leaders are numerous enough and able enough now, but those who have come in contact with them know how hopeless they feel about achieving any material reform in a country that bristles with bayonets. Seldom if ever has a triumphant despot extended the civic rights of his people. Victory makes an autocratic government arrogant and overbearing. It is only in defeat that it yields to the demands of those who bear the burden. GERMANY'S GAIN FROM GERMANY'S DEFEAT 223 It was thus with Prussia in 1806 and 1807 ; Austria made many reforms after her crushing defeat in 1866 ; France became a real republic only after the disasters of 1870; Russia awoke after her humiliation by Japan in 1904. And so it will inevitably be with Germany. A defeat of Prussia in 1866 would have SAvept away the whole Bismarckian tyranny. A victorious kaiserism will certainly not fail to make the Reichstag even more helpless than it is. Based on the claim that the Prussian sj^stem was the cause of its triumph, kaiserism would greatly increase its efforts to force that system on the smaller states. Even today that system is making dangerous inroads in Bavaria, in spite of valiant protests by the Liberal elements of that state. It will be only after a defeat that the people themselves will develop the courage to insist on a new deal. Faced by an appalling tax burden, shocked by the tales of Prussian conduct which their men will bring home, receiving at last the real facts about this war and its origin, will they not awaken and can we expect other than that their patience at last will end ? If by our efforts we can show that the Prussian system can be conquered, then may we expect the people of Ger- many to arise in their might and wipe it out. And then will the way be clear for that alliance for peace, in the path of which Prussia has so long been the stumbling block. But with a victorious militarism there can be no hope of a step toward democracy, whether in government, industry, social life, or the relations between nations. Such a democ- racy can be brought about only by a defeat of the per- nicious system that has so long dominated Germany, and now has disclosed its ambition to dominate the world. 224 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Bibliography Barker, J. Ellis. Hoiv Education has Degraded Geniwn Character, in Nineteenth Century. September, 1917. An important article on the corruption of public opin- ion by government agencies. Hazen, C. D. The Government of Germany. Committee on Public Information. Washington, D. C. War In- formation Series No. 3. Can be secured free from Committee that publishes it. Ogg, F. A. The Governments of Europe. New York. Macmillan. 1913. Pt. II, pp. 193-287. A lucid ac- count of the government of Germany and of Prussia, with some notes on other German states. Much use- ful bibliography. Kobinson, J. II. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Prussia. With an introduction and notes. Annals, American Academy of Pol. & Soc. Science, Supple- ment, Sept. 1894. The German Bundesrath. A study in comparative constitutional law. Publications, University of Penn- sylvania, Pol. Econ. & Public Law Series, No. 10. 1891. Verv readable. WHY WORKINGMEN SUPPORT THE WAR By JOHN R. COMMONS Professor of Economics A3IERICAN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY In no war that ever occurred have the government and the workingmen joined together as they are doing in the United States today. In every department of our govern- ment that employs labor, or fixes the prices that manufac- turers charge, or the wages that employers pay, a leading representative of labor is on the committee and he has as much power as the representative of the capitalists. The President of the United Mine Workers of America is assist- ant to Garfield, the Fuel Administrator. The President of the Building Trades Department of the American Federa- tion of Labor is on the Emergency Construction Board for building ships ; a leading organizer of the American Fed- eration of Labor is on the great War Industries Board which controls all kinds of manufacturing ; a trade union- ist is Secretary of Labor. These and many other trade union officials were named and placed there by the trade unions themselves, because these war boards have become the big employers of labor, or else they have control over the wages that private em- ployers pay. All through these industries of the country President Wilson is enforcing, as fast as the boards can get to it, the eight-hour day and time and one-half for over-time. 15— W. B. 226 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK Agreements with the unions also provide that wages shall be revised just as fast as the cost of living goes up, so that they will always keep ahead of the cost. But most important of all, these agreements with the trade unions give the same wages and hours to non-union men. All labor in this country is benefiting because or- ganized labor is actually taking its part in running the government. The manufacture of army clothing is taken out of sweat- shops, and minimum wages for women are fixed, with the well-known woman organizer of the Consumers' League in charge. The government is stopping child labor in all factories throughout the country. Nothing like it ever happened before, and anybody who says that this is a capitalistic war simply does not see what is going on. Never before has democracy for wage-earn- ing men and women made anywhere near the progress that it has made in the nine months of this war. If this is a capitalist's war it is just as much a workingman's war, conducted for workingmen, by workingmen. Capitalists are being controlled in their profits, and in the wages and hours of their laborers, with the help of leaders whom the workingmen themselves have put there. The President of the United States attends the great convention of organized labor at Buffalo, and notifies all employers of his stand for labor's claims. If American labor continues as it has be- gun, it will come out of this war with the universal eight- hour day and with as much power to fix its own wages hj its own representatives as employers have. And employ- ers are cooperating with labor for the common, purpose of winning the war. No wonder that the American Federation of Labor, as is shown by the vote at the recent Buffalo convention, sup- ports the war almost unanimously and stands for fighting it out to the limit, almost to a man. WHY WORKINGMEN SUlTORT THE WAR 227 Its members know that this is really a war for democ racy, because they are taking part in it, and are sharing in the conduct of it. They see how it works from the inside every day in the week. Never before was a war carried on by workingmen to the extent that this war is being cari-ied on. And never before, in war or in peace, was the voice of labor in government so powerful as it is now in America. Any workingman in Wisconsin or any other state Avho backs off at this time and refuses to stand by the great majority of his fellow-workingmen who are doing this great work for labor, is injuring himself and his brothers. A democracy in which the wage-earner has his share of influence is coming; and if it does not come as it should, the reason will be that some wage-earners are misled and don't know democracy when thoy see it, or don't support it when they know it. THE GERMAN MENACE TO AMERICAN LABOR But there is one thing that will set labor back perma- nently, and that is a German victory. Twenty years ago the Czar of Russia proposed that all nations should cut down their standing armies, but they could not do it because Germany refused. Later Great Britain offered to join with Germany and cut down their navies but the Kaiser would not even talk about it. Ger- many was preparing for something like this war. If Germany defeats Great Britain, she will take over the British navy. She will then be far and away the most powerful country in the world, and we Americans will be compelled to have a permanent standing army and a huge navy to defend ourselves from sudden attack. About every hundred years some nation of Europe starts out to conquer the others and rule the world. First it was Spain, which in America owned everything from 228 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK California to Patagonia. Then it was France and Napo- leon, who took Louisiana and the great country west of the Mississippi away from Spain. But though Spain conquered nearly every nation of Europe, and Napoleon conquered every nation on the con- tinent, they could not reach Great Britain. The British navy compelled Spain and France to let go of America; and such democracy as we have in North and South Amer- ica is possible because no one country in Europe could per- manently conquer the others as long as it could not con- quer Great Britain. Our country has been big and free and unarmed because Europe was divided among equal powers. Napoleon did not have a submarine with which to destroy Great Britain's power. But Germany is will- ing to fight the whole world if only she can succeed in her attempt to wipe out the British navy. Then she conquers not only Europe, as Napoleon did, but Asia, Africa, and America. If America had not come into the war, or if America had refused to sell food and munitions to the Allies, Europe would already have been conquered. If Germany wins, then there is nothing for North and South America to do but build up their navies and standing armies as big as possible, for when Germany strikes she hits suddenly and frightfully. Nations must look ahead. Individuals can be short- sighted, because they die anyhow. But not nations. If we do not win now, while Great Britain and France are able to fight, we shall have to be armed to the teeth for years and centuries ahead, as long as Germany rules the world. A huge and permanent army and navy, besides taking our boys and our workingmen every year for military serv- ice, means low wages, long hours of labor, suppression of labor unions, suppression of free speech, repeal of labor WHY WORKINGMEN SUPPORT THE WAR 229 legislation on belialf of women and children, and all the hardships that millions of workingmen have come to America to escape. It is bad enough to be compelled to make this one tre- mendous effort right now to win the war. It will be far worse to be compelled to be ready all the time for another like it. GERMAN SOCIALISTIC IMPERIALISM Those Socialists who want the workingmen in this coun- try to give in to Germany are surely blind, and very in- consistent. In Germany, the Socialist party supports this war. That ought to be expected in any country after war is declared. But it was a year before the war, in 1913, that the Socialists of Germany voted with the capitalists for the enormous war taxes that enabled the Kaiser to get ready for war. No new appropriations of money for war purposes can be made in Germany without a majority vote in the Reichs- tag; and in 1913 it required the votes of the Socialists to make a majority. Always before that year, they had voted against the Kaiser when he asked the Reichstag to appropriate money for preparation for war. But in 1913 they made a trade with him. They voted indeed against the military bill as such, which provided for an increase in armaments but which did not provide for taxes to pay for the armaments. This bill was carried by the vote of other parties, the So- cialists' votes not being needed. Then on the tax bill, where their votes were needed, the Socialists turned around and voted for the extra military taxes. This they did on the excuse that the bill taxed the in- comes and property of capitalists and aristocrats instead of wage earners. The Kaiser could not get the aristocrats to vote for such a tax bill, but he did induce the Socialists 230 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOit to vote for it. They excused themselves by claiming that the Kaiser offered in this bill to tax the rich, and that if they did not accept the offer, the taxes would afterwards be voted anyhow but would be levied on the working peo- ple. And they also put up the excuse that the Socialist party would lose out in the elections if they did not vote for the income and property taxes which they had always advocated. With this slim excuse they violated all the principles of anti-militarism and international brotherhood of wage- earners for which they had always claimed to stand. They sold out their comrades in other lands for the sake of lower taxes for themselves. These 110 votes that carried the new military taxes were a strict party vote, dictated by the caucus of the party. There were 37 Socialists who voted against it in the cau- cus, and 52 who voted for it. Then, according to their caucus rules, the whole 110 members voted in the Reich- stag as they were directed to do by the majority of 52 in the caucus. The minority protested, and one of their leaders truly exclaimed, ''The moment we give to the government the funds to cover military expenditure, our whole struggle against militarism becomes a farce." Yet the minority yielded and voted unanimously. It was worse than a farce. It was a crime against the Socialists and workingmen of every other land. Without the enormous war budget of 1913, for which these Social- ists voted, Germany could not have stored up the muni- tions in secret and have gotten ready to strike the next year before other countries could get ready. And, in order to clear themselves and make a record, this Socialist caucus in the German Reichstag played a cheap political trick. They asked the government to divide the question so that they could vote against armaments in WHY WORKINGMEN SUPPORT THE WAR 231 one vote and then turn around and vote for the taxes to pay for the armaments by another vote. They added fraud to their crime. They sold out to the militarists, and did it in such a tricky way that they could still say they voted against militarism. But they did not deceive themselves. ''No high-sound- ing words," exclaimed Geyer, a leader of the minority, ' ' not even your vote against the military bill as such will alter the fact that you have strengthened militarism by vot- ing the means to carry it into effect." Yet Geyer voted with the others to strengthen militarism. With such a record of double-dealing, charged and ad- mitted out of their own mouths, how can any Socialist have the audacity to ask the workingmen of America to give in to the Socialists of Germany? Indeed, a leading Ameri- can Socialist has said, there is nothing in the principles of Socialism that requires the Socialists of one nation to lie down and let the Socialists of Germany shoot them. Germany's alleged offer of peace to the Bolsheviki of Russia shows why the Socialists of Germany support the Kaiser. Germany is reported as demanding that Russia should admit German manufactures free of tariff duty and should give to Germany control of the entire Russian ex- portation of wheat. Whether these are the actual demands or not, they agree with Germany's record. It is the record of what she calls ."peaceful penetration." This kind of "peaceful penetra- tion" means the destruction of Russian manufactures and the imposition of low wages for Russian workmen, in favor of high profits for German capitalists and high wages for German workingmen. It means that Russia will not have the industries or the skilled labor that can make munitions of war. It means cheap food for German workmen at the expense of Russian peasants and farmers. 232 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK If the Kaiser offers such terms as these to the Socialists of Russia, in order to get Russia to desert the Allies, what will he do to the workingmen of France, England, and America if he whips us? And the Socialists of Germany have been the Kaiser's willing and eager agents to get the Socialists and working- men of the world to fall into the very trap laid for the Bolsheviki. This is shown by what they tried to do at Stockholm. They invited the Socialists and workingmen of the world to meet at Stockholm, in order to discuss terms of peace. Then they fixed up the representation so that the Kerensky Socialists would not be represented, but the Bolsheviki would send delegates. The Kerensky Socialists knew what Germany would do to Russia. The Bolsheviki were will- ing to yield to the Socialists of Germany. In the same way the German Socialists fixed up the rep- resentation at Stockholm so that the 100,000 Socialists in America would have 16 delegates and the 3,000,000 trade unionists only 4 delegates. What is happening to Russia is exactly what would have happened to the workingmen of France, England, and America if our Government had permitted the German Socialists in America to go to Stockholm to conspire with their brother Socialists from Germany and Austria. The German Socialists declared against indemnities and annexations. Indeed the Kaiser and the German Social- ists can well do without annexations or indemnities if they can do what they demand of the Bolsheviki — compel the Russian workingmen and farmers to become forever ex- ploited by Germany and the German Socialists. Finally, when the Kaiser showed his hand, he practically demanded the annexation of the territory occupied by Poles and Lithuanians which he had conquered from Russia. Germany's so-called peaceful penetration is worse for WHY WORKINGMEN SUPPORT THE WAR 233 Russia than annexation. If Russia were annexed the Rus- sians would have representation in the Reichstag. If Ger- many controls the markets of Russia, the Russians are ex- ploited without a vote to protect themselves. Surely when the Socialists of Germany join with the Kaiser to rob the workingmen of Russia, no American workingman will listen to the German Socialists in America. TRUE INTERNATIONAL DEMOCRACY On the other hand, a leading Socialist of the world, Camille Huysmans, has said to the Chicago Daily News that the war demands of President Wilson are identical with the demands of the International Socialists. The American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, com- posed of trade unionists and socialists, at its meeting in Minneapolis endorsed and repeated these demands. They are America's aims in the war, clearly stated: Equal rights for all nations f big and little; no people to he forced under sovereignty under wJiicli it does not wish to live; freedom of the seas; a concert of nations to guarantee peace and justice; limitation of armaments on land and sea. These are America's demands and the aims of American labor in this war. Greatest of all, and the one that all others lead up to, is disarmament, by limitation of arma- ments on land and sea. Without this, labor cannot be free in this or any other country. Unhappily we must fight now in order not to fight after- wards. When the Socialists of Germany, in 1913, voted for the huge war taxes when other nations were unpre- pared, they violated their principles and forced the Social- ists of every nation to fight. And any Socialist in America, however honest, who tries to belittle the faith and weaken the morale of America in 234 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK this great crisis, is simply false to his own principles. He . is playing the game of the German Socialists who have de- serted the workmen of other lands and have sold them- selves to the Kaiser. Rather than listen to such Socialists, let American work- ingmen join in with the magnificent patriotism of the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy. Let them say, as does the Alliance, that labor will take its part in con- ducting the war, and that the war shall be fought to a finish, for upon its success depend the freedom and the wages of American labor. WHAT WE ARE DOING FOR THE SOLDIERS Everybody must expect hardships out of a war. The greatest hardship is on the boys who go to the front. No- body can ever pay them what they are worth to the nation. . But our nation is doing the next best thing. We have more than doubled the pay the soldiers received before the war. The dollar a day, besides food, clothing, and expenses, which they now get while training and fighting is four times as much as the British soldier gets, eighteen times as much as the French, and nine times as much as the German. Besides, if they are disabled, the government compen- sates them for the rest of their lives, by givinIhid., p. 51. " See a speech of Erzberger, Centrist leader of the Reichstag, New York Times, May 11, 1918. "THE WORLD MUST BE MADE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY" 263 Thus has disappeared the last vestige of democratic rule in the Ukraine. Finland, too, has declared itself a separate state, inde- pendent of Russia. There, too, German troops are now present. Again they were ' ' invited ' ' by the Finns. Again the course of Germany's rulers is the age-old course of ruthless imperialism. Their methods are obvious, their purposes translucent. In fighting the war against Ger- many, we are fighting also for the freedom of the Lith- uanians, of Russia, of Finland, and of the Ukrainians, ' ' to choose their own way of life and of obedience." WHY WE MUST FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE Long before Germany's direct and underground as- saults upon our own independence and freedom of action had forced us into the war, the sympathies and hearts of our people had gone into the trenches of our present allies. Why is this? What have we of the United States to do with the defence and growth of democracy in Europe? Why was President Wilson able to coin a phrase and sym- bolize in it our fears and our longings, and crystallize in it our national will? There are two outstanding reasons for this: First, a sympathetic attitude toward any movement having freedom in view has been the political tradition of our leaders and our people since the beginning of our national existence. Second, the danger from Germany's imperialism is a vital one to the free institutions of all democratically ruled peoples of the world, those of Europe and ourselves as well. In 1822 the Greeks were in the midst of their long strug- gle for liberty against the terrible oppression of the alien Turks. In his presidential address to Congress in that 264 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN WAR BOOK year. President Monroe spoke of tlie " " great excitement and s:\Tnpatliy in favor (of the Greeks; which have been so signally displayed throughout the United States." In 182-i AVebster declared that the s^inpathy of our people for the Greeks sprang from the nature of our gov- ernment and the spirit of all her institutions. "Our side of this question," said Webster. *''is settled for us without our own volition. . . . Our place is on the side of free institutions. ' '^^ In the German revolution of 1848 and 1849 the attitude of our government and our people was a similar one. The provisional government of the German confederation was recognized. The instructions to our envoy contained the following words: ''Should either a republican form of government, or that of a limited monarchy (founded on a popular and permanent basis), be adopted by any of the states of Germany, we are bound to be the first, if pos- sible, to hail the birth of the new government and to cheer it in every progressive movement that has for its aim the att-ainment of the priceless and countless blessings of freedom. ' ' This is our great tradition of readiness to help any people to attain freedom from superimposed rule. In 1910, a prominent American historian summed up this case in the following prophetic words : If there is to be in the coming century a great battle of Armageddon — once more Europe against the Huns — we can no more help taking our part with the hosts of freedom than we can help educating our children, building our churches, or maintain- ing the rights of the individual.'^ "See War Information Series, No. 8. published t-y the Committee on Public Information, Washing^ton. D. C. "Albert Eushnell Hart, in Foundations of American Policy, p. 240. -THE WORLD MUST 3E MADE SAFE FOR DEM'XTRACY- 265 Shonld the plans of militaristic Prussia be succ^sfnh all democracies of the world, inclndin^ our own, would be in grave danger. The program of the German militarists was,, and still is. to break forever the power of our sister democracy. France. France must be ' ' bled white I ' ' Then England, that ''nation of shop-keepers,'' with its liberal institutions, must be made subservient to Grerman auto- cratic ideals. It must be removed forever from the path- way of the expansion and spread of the G-erman rule. Indirectly, the success of autocracy in Europe would, by the glamour of its achievement, force all the freedom-lov- ing people of the world to adopt the methods of military autocracy. The menace of German autocratic power would compel us to enter upon an indefinite, constantly increas- ing program of military armament. There would be no safety in the world for the free col- onies of the British Empire. Canada. New Zealand, and Australia have been fighting for three years the fight for democracy — for our democracy as ivell as iheir oxen. We know, now, that their fight is our fight. Directly, also, our own democracy like those of Canada. New Zealand, and Australia, would be in danger. The South American republics would be the first to meet the onslaught of militaristic autocracy. German imperialistic policy has aimed for twenty years or more at the control of the South American republics — and then our turn was to come. After the Spanish- American war a German military at- tache, in explaining to an American officer the Gn?rman plan of conquest, declared: Some montlis after we finisli our work in Europe (the taking of Paris and the crushing of England) we will take Xew York 266 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AVAR BOOK and probably Washington and hold them for some time. We will put your country in its place with reference to Germany . . . . The Monroe doctrine will be taken charge of by us, . . . . and we will take charge of South America, as far as we want to. There is no doubt as to the great issue involved in this war. The world must be made safe for democracy. And now is the time for the democratic peoples of the world to fight this issue to a finish. 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