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GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 BY 
 
 EMIL REICH 
 
 (doctor juris) 
 Author of "General History," *' Foundations of Modern 
 Europe," "Atlas Antiquus," "Atlas of English 
 History," "Select Documents," "Suc- 
 cess Among Nations," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1914 
 

 Copyright, 1914 
 
 Bt ANDREW MELROSE 
 
 Under title "Germany's Swelled Head* 
 
 //£' 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
 BINQHAMTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 OCT 28 1914 
 
 'CI.A388.I24 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The late Dr. Emil Eeich, author of the trench- 
 ant volume here reprinted, was a Hungarian 
 born, and was educated at the Universities of 
 Prague, Budapest and Vienna, where he had 
 ample opportunity to study the German Em- 
 pire and interpret its thought and aspirations 
 from a close and critical standpoint. Latterly 
 he lived for many years in England, and came 
 to identify himself entirely with Britain's wel- 
 fare and interests, but he was able to claim, in 
 a short preface, that his book was ** based on 
 a full and sympathetic study of German history 
 and literature, both in the past and in the pres- 
 ent/' 
 
 The motive which inspired the author to put 
 pen to paper in 1907 derived from an appre- 
 hension, only too well founded, that the British 
 nation was by no means fully awake to the na- 
 ture of German aspirations, although these 
 were, in his opinion, fraught with menace to 
 the peace and well-being of the British Empire. 
 To-day, Germany, running amok in Europe, has 
 justified his prognosis to the utmost, and Brit- 
 ain has been forced to face the * * supreme strug- 
 gle" which he foresaw. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 Dr. Eeich's startling exposure of the Kaiser 
 and the governing classes of Germany did not 
 immediately achieve its object. Indeed, the 
 book passed almost unnoticed, for in 1907 the 
 average Englishman still refused to believe 
 that the Kaiser and his subjects were inspired 
 by bitter enmity to the British Empire. Then, 
 too, Dr. Reich's plea for the creation of a huge 
 standing army was calculated to prejudice him 
 in the eyes of the large mass of people whose 
 tradition is that the nation is secure while it 
 maintains command of the sea, and that the 
 burden of naval expenditure is heavy enough 
 in its drain upon the public purse, without the 
 addition of tremendous sums to the annual army 
 estimates. Add to this the fact that the book 
 was published by a provincial printer, and it 
 is possible to account for the neglect which was 
 the portion of the first edition. 
 
 Although the book missed the public for whom 
 it was intended, it made an impression on a 
 few discerning minds. That astute watcher of 
 European politics, the late King Edward, read 
 it and was so much impressed that he recom- 
 mended it to a distinguished soldier, as will be 
 seen from the striking letter of the Bishop of 
 Durham which appeared in the Times of Au- 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 gust 17. We quote the opening paragraph: — 
 
 ^^ About seven years ago, I was a fellow 
 guest at Trinity Lodge, Cambridge, with a 
 distinguished soldier, who showed me, be- 
 fore we parted, a book to which his own 
 attention had been called by King Edward. 
 It was Germany ^s Stvelled Head, by Dr. 
 Emil Reich.'' 
 
 No doubt the distinguished soldier was duly 
 impressed, and no doubt he passed the book 
 on to other distinguished men in both services. 
 Probably it is not straining the point to sug- 
 gest that the state of preparedness in which 
 Germany found us at the opening of the war 
 may have been not a little due to the valuable 
 information concerning her intentions given by 
 Dr. Reich. 
 
 In order to bring Dr. Reich's work up to 
 date, there has been added an epilogue, by an- 
 other hand. This, it is believed, will make it 
 clear that the omens which were already above 
 the horizon in 1907 have, in the interval, been 
 reinforced by sundry dicta and data since ob- 
 served by those who have kept an eye upon 
 European politics and on the things that were 
 being written, said and done in Germany. 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 In revising the text of Dr. Reich's original 
 work, an attempt has been made to eliminate 
 some of the matter that is irrelevant to the 
 present issue ; but it has been thought unneces- 
 sary to correct or qualify the author's state- 
 ments as to the naval and commercial situation 
 in the summer of 1907. These have still a cer- 
 tain historical significance, and in themselves 
 form part of the case upon which Dr. Reich 
 based his exposure of the Kaiser's dreams and 
 the seeming apathy of the advisers of the Brit- 
 ish Grovernment. There has been steady de- 
 velopment in the British naval policy since 
 1907, and none could rejoice more than would 
 Dr. Reich, were he still alive, in the fact that 
 war, sudden war, has found the British navy 
 fit and ready. 
 
 If it were necessary to justify the republica- 
 tion of Dr. Reich's masterly summary of Ger- 
 man pretensions, sufficient reason would surely 
 be found in the immediate desirability of mak- 
 ing absolutely clear to the ordinary citizen the 
 nature and objective of the Kaiser's policy, 
 and the swelled-headedness of the German peo- 
 ple which has made possible the present insane 
 campaign. 
 
 August, 1914 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 Summary of the whole book, p. 1. The Kaiser — his real 
 personality, 1-5. Potentially he is where Napoleon was in 
 1807, 7. Some utterances of the Kaiser, 10, 11. What he 
 means by "German people," 11. H. S. Chamberlain's work 
 {Foundations, etc.) and its enormous success in Germany, He 
 and his school "prove" that ell the great men of the past 
 were Germans, 13-16; so was Jesus, 16, 17; and others, 17-23. 
 Vast influence of this crazy idea, 24. Quotations from Wolt- 
 mann's book proving all the great Italians of the Renascence, 
 and the French, to have been of German origin, 24-37. How 
 all this has created the swelled-head of the Germans, 37-38. 
 The ignorance of Britons about Germany, 39. The Germans 
 are upstarts, and hence intolerably conceited, 40-47. There is 
 a "German Religion," 47. Quotations to show what the Ger- 
 mans are taught to think of themselves; and of the "evident" 
 vocation of Germany, 47-67 ; judgments of French and Rus- 
 sian writers on Germany's swelled head, 67-69. 
 
 PART II 
 
 How Austria-Hungary, in her present position, contributes 
 to the swelling of Germany's head, 72-81; and Russia, 81-82. 
 Result: There are now only two Great Powers in Europe, 
 Great Britain and Germany, 82. The German Navy and its 
 constant and rapid growth, 83-101. German plans in Persia, 
 101-106. German prosperity, 106-109. To understand Ger- 
 man Imperialism one must understand the real driving causes 
 of British Imperialism, 109-113. Why Germans hate emi- 
 gration, 113-118. Nor do they mean to abstain from having 
 
 ix 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 children; connection between Imperialism and Malthusianism, 
 119-123. From all this follows one thing, and one alone: 
 German expansion by war with England, 124-129. The folly 
 of thinking that the Germans build their fleet for "defensive 
 purposes" only, 129-131. Discussion of the facts apparently 
 in favour of the opinion that the Germans perhaps do not 
 mean to be aggressive, 131-144. Fallacy of the "two power 
 standard," and discussion of the necessity of having the right 
 spirit, i.e., the real guarantee of victory, 145-150. Features 
 giving German Imperialism a strong leverage, such as no na- 
 tion in modern times has had, 154-158. Weak features of 
 the Germans, 15S-173. 
 
 PART III 
 
 The argument in conclusion: Germany is driven towards 
 expansion, and such expansion can only take place at the ex- 
 pense of the British Empire: a struggle is inevitable, 174-189. 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 An Imperial Machiavelli, 190-193. A bid for Mahometan 
 support, 194-196. Russia flouted, 197-199. The Coup d'Ag- 
 adir, 199. Balkan trouble and German policy, 200-201. The 
 Germans versus the World, 201-206. The ethics and opinions 
 of William II., 206-209. The influence of Bismarck, 209-212. 
 Prussian Atheism, 212-214. Germans and Militarism, 214- 
 223. In Conclusion, 223-224. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
PART I 
 
 The Germans are afflicted with the severest 
 attack of swelled-headedness known to modern 
 history. 
 
 The British are practically ignorant of this 
 dangerous state of mind in their greatest rivals. 
 
 These two statements are the burden of this 
 book. The first of them can be made out as one 
 can prove a mathematical truth. Of the cor- 
 rectness of the second statement, that is, of the 
 fact that the British, as a nation, are amazingly 
 ignorant of the state of the German mind, the 
 author has convinced himself in the course of 
 very numerous lectures and conversations en- 
 abling him to learn the views of thousands and 
 thousands of Britons of all classes, both men 
 and women. 
 
 What, for instance, can be more astounding 
 than the opinions commonly held in this coun- 
 try with regard to the Kaiser? To most Eng- 
 lishmen he is a kind of ^* impulsive young man'* ; 
 a sort of reckless after-dinner talker, hasty 
 
 telegraphist, jack-of-all-trades, and ^^commer- 
 
 1 
 
2 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 cial traveller of the Germanic firm. ' ' When, in 
 a public lecture, one speaks of him as ** William 
 the Greatest,'' the whole audience bursts into 
 self-complacent laughter. Say at a lecture, that 
 *^the mailed fist is looming large and has to be 
 nipped in the bud," and you pass for the man 
 who has said a great political truth in a witty 
 manner. 
 
 THE EEAL KAISER 
 
 Yet there is not a grain of real judgment in 
 all this. It is only another form of shaking 
 hands with oneself, of patting oneself on one's 
 back. Strange to say, this rather awkward way 
 of stroking one's back is the most pleasing of 
 distractions to most people talking European 
 politics. The Kaiser is nothing less than the 
 very reverse of what most Englishmen imagine 
 him to be. He is, to begin with, a man of ripe, 
 sober, and substantial judgment. On all the 
 outstanding questions of European policy he 
 is undoubtedly the best informed individual in 
 existence. He knows all the great States and 
 Nations of Europe from personal contact with 
 them; he speaks their languages, and knows 
 their history intimately; he is constantly kept 
 up to the mark; and, to give just one instance, 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 3 
 
 twelve experienced men of his Cabinet never 
 stop paying the minutest attention to all mili- 
 tary movements and military resources of the 
 British, all the world over. The French Pres- 
 ident, or his leading ministers; the Emperor- 
 King of Austria-Hungary ; or the King of Italy, 
 let alone the Czar of Russia, cannot, in point 
 of real information on European politics, be- 
 gin to compare with the Kaiser. 
 
 Now, knowledge of this kind is power. Not 
 all knowledge is power. There is theoretic 
 knowledge; there is newspaper knowledge; 
 there is schoolroom wisdom; and there is the 
 Desert of Sahara called the knowledge of the 
 official mind. But the information possessed 
 by the Kaiser on international politics is true 
 and very valuable knowledge. It is in the light 
 of this knowledge of his that we must view all 
 his apparently rash and impulsive acts. He 
 wires readily; he evidently likes it. But this 
 must not induce any one to the belief that he 
 wires first and thinks it out afterwards. His 
 famous wire to President Kriiger was, as we 
 now know, a carefully-thought-out lightning. 
 He wanted to embroil England in South Africa, 
 so as to win time for his naval preparations. 
 Prussian policy always has been what soldiers 
 
4 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 call ricochet shooting : one aims at A, but shoots 
 atB. 
 
 The Kaiser clearly and definitely knows what 
 he is about. In France, the statesmen are crip- 
 pled by the false position of a defeated nation, 
 chafing unspeakably under her defeat, not yet 
 able to wash out the blot ; in Austria-Hungary, 
 the unending conflicts of the various nationali- 
 ties paralyse all consistent and great states- 
 manship; in Italy, the Pontiff saps the King; 
 Eussia is too busy at home to think of Europe. 
 In Germany alone, of all Continental great 
 Powers, is there a European policy clearly 
 grasped and energetically carried out. In Ger- 
 many alone, of all Continental countries, is 
 there a ruler, young, strong, well-informed, and 
 pursuing a definite, well-founded, and well- 
 organised international policy. To speak of 
 such a ruler as most Britons do, is nothing short 
 of absurd ; absurd, from the British standpoint, 
 we submit. The point is not to bandy jokes at 
 this or that failing of good taste in the Kaiser ; 
 the point is to know what he is after, and if he 
 can realise his plans. The point is to see his 
 real proportions ; to do, by him, what most peo- 
 ple do with themselves : to take him seriously. 
 
 Eeally, the chief reason why so many people 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 5 
 
 fail to appreciate the Kaiser aright, is his con- 
 stant making of speeches. Britons dislike 
 words; more especially spoken words. The, 
 man who talks much is here in this country not 
 held to he a man of power. His words, his 
 speeches discredit him. However that may be 
 in Great Britain, on the Continent people con- 
 stantly talk. Although the average Briton may 
 deem it almost incredible, it is a fact that peo- 
 ple on the Continent have long conversations. 
 They do listen to good speeches with deference ; 
 and men in power are expected to deliver fine 
 speeches. The Kaiser is a born orator. He 
 speaks naturally very well, and even the style 
 of his addresses, delivered on the spur of the 
 moment, is quite remarkable. Whether he de- 
 livers a sermon on board ship, as he has fre- 
 quently done ; or whether he addresses students 
 at Bonn University, a regiment, labourers, 
 scientific congresses, or diplomatists ; he invari- 
 ably succeeds in giving point and life and fine 
 shape to his ideas. On the Continent this is a 
 serious power. To underrate it, to judge it 
 from the British standpoint, is not only absurd, 
 but also quite beyond the point. A man who 
 can talk as well as the Kaiser would be a prom- 
 inent man in Germany under all conditions ; but 
 
6 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 that such great oratory should be the gift of a 
 person who happens to be the German Emperor, 
 that is a fact of far-reaching importance with 
 a nation with whom Authority and high-class 
 oratory have an enormous influence. 
 
 THE KEYNOTE OF HIS POLICY 
 
 We shall soon see what constitutes the evident 
 and only aim of the Kaiser. His well-known 
 utterance, to the effect that the future of the 
 Germans lies on the water, is the keynote of all 
 his policy. The past of the Germans evidently 
 ^'lay on beer,'' to imitate the Kaiser's phrase- 
 ology ; the future, bowing to modern teetotalism, 
 lies on water. How many good or poor jokes 
 can be made on that utterance! How many 
 have been made! Yet, the point of all points 
 is to find out whether in that teetotalising of 
 German policy, the Kaiser has or has not struck 
 the true keynote on which his nation will act. 
 We unhesitatingly say, he has struck it. There 
 is no other keynote to the future of Germany. 
 
 Under these conditions, the words and acts 
 of the Kaiser must be taken very seriously in- 
 deed. His personal intervention in nearly all 
 important questions of European politics in- 
 dicates a master will and an intellect fully con- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 7 
 
 scious of Germany's vast possibilities. English 
 papers have talked of his diplomatic raid on 
 Morocco as of a Lohengrin venture. But the 
 Kaiser's ship carrying him to the coast of the 
 Shereefian Empire was not a swan, and he is 
 no Lohengrin. In fact, the shortest considera- 
 tion of the facts of the present international 
 policy in Europe will show to any one not 
 fatally blinded by prejudice or conceit, that the 
 Kaiser is potentially where Napoleon the Great 
 was, exactly one hundred years ago. In 1807, 
 in summer, Napoleon was at the height of his 
 power. He had, in open battle, as well as in the 
 council-room, beaten all the Great Powers of 
 the Continent. All the German rulers, and 
 first of all, the ^' Roman Emperor of the Ger- 
 manic Empire," or the Austrian ruler, were 
 utterly defeated by him. So were the Princes 
 and Republics of Italy; and last, not least, the 
 King of Prussia and the Czar of Russia, whom 
 Napoleon had worsted both at Austerlitz (1805) 
 and Friedland (1807). On the Continent, then, 
 there was, in 1807, no Power that could se- 
 riously think of thwarting Napoleon, whether 
 alone or allied with one or two other Powers. 
 
 Such was the state of the Continent exactly 
 one hundred years ago. We here submit, that 
 
8 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 potentially, at any rate, the state of the Con- 
 tinent is at present (1907) quite the same sort 
 of a '^one man's show,'' as it was in 1807. 
 
 The Germans themselves look upon France 
 as a nation that has practically given up the 
 political game altogether. The French, says 
 one of Germany's most popular and influential 
 thinkers, are evidently retiring into an idyllic 
 life, and have abandoned all hopes of playing 
 a great role in the councils of Europe (Eduard 
 von Hartmann). In other and more recent ar- 
 ticles, the French are styled by the Germans, 
 *'the bankers of Europe." Thus does Ger- 
 many construe the silence of France during 
 these thirty-six years. 
 
 Austria-Hungary, and Russia, both of them 
 beaten States, are seriously troubled by in- 
 ternal dissensions, and the Germans are prac- 
 tically free from the danger of being suddenly 
 attacked by one or two of their Continental 
 neighbours; just as was Napoleon in 1807. 
 They have signally defeated both Austria and 
 France, their most dangerous neighbours. As 
 to Russia, Germany has had no war with a Czar 
 since 1762; and there is, at present, no reason 
 to think that Russia will attack Germany. 
 
 From this it follows with irrefutable cer- 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 9 
 
 tainty, that Germany in 1907 is in a position 
 even stronger than that of Napoleon in 1808. 
 For, Napoleon had in that year commenced his 
 unending and most troublesome wars with the 
 Spanish; and, although his Generals defeated 
 the Spanish armies time after time, he could 
 not secure the peaceful possession of the Penin- 
 sula. Nor was he safe with Austria. In 1809 
 he had to wage a new and very complicated 
 campaign against Austria ; and when in 1812 he 
 invaded Eussia, his Spanish wars were still 
 going on, all over Spain and Portugal. Now, 
 the Germans see themselves at present in a far 
 more favourable condition. They have little 
 to fear from France, Spain, Austria, or Italy. 
 Their hands are free. The Kaiser can, without 
 fear of unexpected surprises, concentrate his 
 forces upon England or Russia, or any other 
 objective. No other monarch on the Continent 
 can claim a similar position of absolute free- 
 dom of action. 
 
 Can it, under these circumstances, astound 
 any one that the Kaiser has a full consciousness 
 of his unprecedented possibilities! In speeches 
 without number he has given expression to his 
 pride and strength and aggressiveness. In a 
 speech delivered at the completion of a fort on 
 
10 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 the Western frontier of Germany, he said : * ' I 
 christen thee Fort Haeseler. Thou wilt be 
 called upon to defend the conquests of Germany 
 upon her Western foes.'' (March 1, 1900.) On 
 another occasion he said: — 
 
 ^'I have no fear for the future, I am con- 
 vinced that my plan will succeed. I have 
 within me the indomitable purpose to walk with 
 a firm step, in despite of every resistance, in 
 the path that I have once recognised to be the 
 right one." 
 
 *^If one wishes to settle something in this 
 world, the pen is only powerful so long as it is 
 backed by the power of the sword. ' ' 
 
 Again, when laying the foundation stone of 
 the Eoyal Museum at Saalburg (October 4, 
 1900) after consecrating the building to the fu- 
 ture of the German Fatherland: — 
 
 ^^May it in times to come, by the unified co- 
 operation of princes and peoples, of their 
 armies and their citizens, become as powerful, 
 and as firmly united, as wonderful as the uni- 
 versal Roman Empire, so that one day it may 
 be possible to say, as formerly, "Civis Ro- 
 manus sum/' i. e., **I am a German citizen J' 
 
 On October 28, 1900, when celebrating 
 Moltke 's birthday, he emitted a wish that, * ^ the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 11 
 
 Staff might lead Germany on to further vic- 
 tories/' and again: ^^My utmost wish is to re- 
 move whatever divides the great German peo- 
 ple." 
 
 THE PAN-GERMAN IDEA 
 
 For the full understanding of these latter 
 words, the non-German reader must be warned 
 not to take the term ^^ German people" lightly. 
 By ^'German," the Germans understand at 
 present practically all the nations worth talking 
 about. ^ ^ German ' ' no longer means the people 
 between the Ehine and the Vistula ; that is, the 
 nation that talks German, drinks beer, and 
 makes music in the streets, in beer-gardens, and 
 in concert-halls; the nation of ^' poets and 
 thinkers ' ' as the elder Lord Lytton used to call 
 them. By ^'German" is now understood the 
 vast ocean of peoples who talk a Teutonic lan- 
 guage, and who, if they do not talk a Teutonic 
 idiom, ought in common decency to talk one. 
 The Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, Dutch; the 
 English, the Belgians, the Swiss ; the Austrians, 
 the Russian Kurlanders, Lithuanians; the nu- 
 merous tribes in Hungary talking German dia- 
 lects ; all these people are, so runs the gospel of 
 modern German scholars, really Germans. 
 
12 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Lest the reader should believe that the con- 
 temporary Germans are so modest as to claim 
 only Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, 
 Switzerland, Hungary, Western Russia, and the 
 little islands called British, the author hastens 
 to add that the most influential writers in the 
 Fatherland teach the Germans the following 
 amusing lesson: The Slavs too, that is, the 
 Russians, Poles, Bohemians, Servians, Croa- 
 tians, etc., are, originally, all Germans. 
 
 Perhaps the reader would like to see a quota- 
 tion or two about this remarkable discovery. 
 While most of us have, thanks to the wisdom of 
 Parliament, accustomed ourselves to learn that 
 most material things have been ^'made in Ger- 
 many''; many people are still innocently believ- 
 ing, that some nations, at any rate, were not 
 made in the Fatherland. The error is pro- 
 found. All the great nations are, we now hear 
 from hundreds of University chairs, from thou- 
 sands of journalistic pulpits, really German, 
 and ought therefore to be submerged in One 
 Universal Germany. 
 
 Amongst the various ^^world-famous" men 
 trumpeting about this doctrine of Pan-German- 
 ism, or Alldeutschland; that is, that all historic 
 nations, in order to reach their final bliss, must 
 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 13 
 
 and will be minced up into the Great German 
 Universal Sausage. This doctrine, dished up 
 to the German nation by some of their most 
 serious writers and scholars of Berlin, Munich, 
 Strassburg, or Leipsic, is taught, more particu- 
 larly by a man who, by the irony of fate, goes 
 by the name of Chamberlain ; Houston Stewart 
 Chamberlain. The book in which he advances 
 his startling propositions is entitled The Foun- 
 dations of the XlXth Century, and it has had 
 a most marvellous success with the Germans. 
 Although heavy, both in bulk and price, it sold 
 in many, many thousands of copies, and is, by 
 the majority of the Germans, considered to be 
 a higher revelation of truth unfathomable. 
 Eich men have bought up thousands of copies 
 of this grostesque and absurd work, distribut- 
 ing them, free of charge, to hundreds of Public 
 Libraries. The Kaiser publicly and warmly 
 approved of it. It has given rise to quite a 
 literature on, for, or against it; and Chamber- 
 lain is now one of the most popular and influ- 
 ential writers in Germany. 
 
 The secret of Chamberlain's very great suc- 
 cess in Germany is not far to seek. With an 
 air of scientific argument he proves to his own, 
 and to German satisfaction, that all history 
 
14 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 spells ^'German,'' and that all future develop- 
 ments of the world will be *^Made in Germany.'' 
 The Germans are indeed, Chamberlain teaches, 
 the elect people. It is mere frivolity to think 
 that the Jews are the elect ones. By no means ; 
 the Germans are the ones, the unique, the only, 
 the overmen, the chosen people. (That is prob- 
 ably the principal reason why they so hate the 
 Jews. It is professional envy. Clearly, the 
 Germans, not the Hebrews, are the Jews, the 
 chosen people.) It is none of their fault. 
 Many of them, being of a modest turn, regret 
 being so immensely superior to other tribes. 
 But they cannot help it. It is in them ; Nature 
 has been so kind to them. They lift their arms ; 
 and all resistance vanishes into the fourth di- 
 mension. They look at any thing, event, or 
 riddle, and, piercing it through and through 
 with the darts of their unfailing intellect, they 
 solve, explain, or reconstruct it. Their stom- 
 ach is strong; they can and will absorb all the 
 mountains, meadows, rivers, seas ; and their di- 
 gestion will not suffer in the least. 
 
 This, then, is the gospel according to Mr. 
 Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He says: — 
 
 **By Germans, I mean the various popula- 
 tions of Northern Europe who appear in his- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 15 
 
 tory as Kelts, Germans, Slavs, and from whom, 
 mostly in inextricable confusion, the peoples 
 of modern Europe are sprung. That they came 
 originally from a single family is certain, but 
 the German, in the narrower Tacitean sense, 
 has kept himself so pre-eminent among his kins- 
 men intellectually, morally, and physically, that 
 we are justified in applying his name to the 
 whole family. The German is the soul of our 
 culture. The Europe of to-day, spread far 
 over the globe, exhibits the brilliant result of 
 an infinitely varied ramification. What binds 
 us into one is the Germanic blood. . . . Only 
 Germans sit on European thrones. What has 
 happened is only prolegomena. . . . True his- 
 tory begins from the moment when the German, 
 with mighty hand, seizes the inheritance of an- 
 tiquity. ' ' 
 
 It would be waste of time to quote here one 
 hundredth of the passages in which that Teuton 
 Chamberlain shows and ^^ proves,'' that in the 
 Germans, and in them alone, there is that mys- 
 terious something-or-other, that has enabled 
 men of German blood to do the great things 
 of the past. Of course, all the great men of the 
 past were, when you scrutinise them more 
 closely, nothing but Germans. So was, for in- 
 
16 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 stance, Dante, whose face, Chamberlain says, 
 is ^^characteristically Grerman.'' So was, one 
 need scarcely insist, St. Francis of Assisi ; and 
 Pascal, whom some people are still foolish 
 enough to consider one of the greatest of 
 Frenchmen, was, the redoubtable Chamberlain 
 says, nothing more nor less than a German. 
 Did he not oppose the Jesuits'? 
 
 After these master-strokes of critical analy- 
 sis, no one, we hope, will feel inordinately 
 moved by reading what Chamberlain has to say 
 about Jesus. One is, of course, nowadays, 
 quite used to hearing all sorts of remarks on 
 the great personalities of the Bible. Moses 
 has long been reduced to an emigration-agent, 
 or to the modest predecessor of Messrs. Thomas 
 Cook and Son. David, otherwise quite a nice 
 young man, has long been shown up as a plag- 
 iarist, who took, it is true, his best inspirations 
 from the hacks of the '^British Museum" in 
 Jerusalem, four hundred years after his death. 
 All this is well known. We are likewise quite 
 prepared to Campbellize the central figure of 
 Christianity into a fairly successful cardboard 
 model of a goody-goody man. But how im- 
 measurably greater than all this is Chamber- 
 lain ! He has it, at first hand, that Jesus was 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 17 
 
 • no Jew at all. He has no doubt about it. He 
 says with the simplicity so characteristic of 
 Prussian thought: — 
 
 ''Whoever maintains that Christ was a Jew 
 is either ignorant or dishonest: ignorant if he 
 confuses religion and race, dishonest if he 
 knows the history of Galilee. . . . The prob- 
 ability that Christ was not a Jew, that He had 
 not a drop of pure Jewish blood in His veins, 
 is so great that it is almost a certainty. To 
 what race did He then belong? To that there 
 is no answer. ..." 
 
 After which. Chamberlain indulges in con- 
 jectures. Perhaps, he says, Jesus was an As- 
 syrian colonist. On further consideration, he 
 finds that Assyria won't do. He then turns 
 westward, and opines that Jesus was probably 
 a Greek. This inability of Mr. Chamberlain 
 to find the obvious, is rather strange. Some 
 men of genius are like that. Although there 
 can, seriously speaking, be no doubt whatever 
 to what great nation Jesus did belong. Cham- 
 berlain, the apostle of that great nation, failed 
 to see it. How strange ! How wonderfully in- 
 tricate are the paths of thy wanderings, oh 
 Truth ! 
 
 But Germany is greater even than Mr. H. S. 
 
18 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Chamberlain. In due time, slie went into trav- 
 ail and gave birth to the man who saw what 
 Mr. Chamberlain could not see. We mean, of 
 course, the obvious fact, the manifest truth, that 
 Jesus — was a German. The kind reader is 
 asked to study a ponderous volume by J. L. 
 Reimer, entitled ^^A Pan-German Germany'' 
 {Ein P anger manisches Deutschland, 1905) on 
 pages 232, 233. There he will find arguments 
 expressed in the best University slang of Ber- 
 lin, and submitted with becoming seriousness, 
 to the effect that, if Jesus was not of German 
 origin. He was a fraud. Nobody can sincerely 
 say He was a fraud. Ergo, He was a German. 
 Or was He not blond! Had He not blue eyes, 
 and that roseate skin so clearly indicative of 
 German complexion? If this is not convincing 
 (and of course there are men so obdurate as not 
 to be convinced by any argument of that kind) 
 then one has only to analyse the name of Jesus. 
 The first syllable, Jes, is clearly an altered 
 Ger — , the letter r being frequently treated as 
 a vowel, and so dropped altogether, or changed 
 into 5. The second syllable -us, is only the 
 Latin ending for males, hence equal to the Ger- 
 man (or English) man. Can anything be more 
 evident? 
 
GEEMANY^S MADNESS 19 
 
 It is thus quite beyond any reasonable doubt, 
 say the German thinkers, that all Northern, 
 North- Western, Central, Eastern, and South- 
 Eastern nations are really Germans. When, 
 therefore, the Kaiser speaks of Greater Ger- 
 many, of the Germans in general, he, in all 
 sincerity, means two-thirds of Europe. He 
 means that the German Empire of the near 
 future will, and by right of Eace ought to, com- 
 prise two-thirds of Europe. 
 
 This, we are convinced, will appear to most 
 British readers too childish an idea to be worth 
 serious consideration. The average man in 
 England will say to himself: **Even granted 
 that a few writers in Germany do entertain such 
 extravagant ideas, surely one cannot admit that 
 the bulk of the Germans accept them as serious 
 principles of German politics. In all countries 
 there have been single eccentrics who absurdly 
 overrated the significance and importance of 
 their nation. Scotsmen have laboriously 
 proved that Adam was a Scot. Some English- 
 men have written heavy books on the English 
 being the *lost ten tribes.' Americans, if 
 we are to believe some of their writers, nearly 
 all come from Oliver Cromwell ; and, as Thack- 
 eray used to say, one cannot wonder that The 
 
20 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Conqueror won the battle of Hastings, since so 
 many ancestors ^canie over with the Con- 
 queror. ' '' 
 
 There is much common sense in all this. Sin- 
 gle eccentrics do not prove very much as to the 
 state of mind of the majority of a people. 
 Some years ago the author met at the British 
 Museum a countryman of his, a Hungarian, who 
 spent all his time and wasted all his efforts 
 on a book in which he undertook to prove that 
 all the great leaders of mankind were Hungar- 
 ians. The only difference with regard to such 
 solitary ^'cranks'' is this — nobody cares for 
 what they say or write. Their works are be- 
 lieved in only by a few fellow-invalids, and en- 
 joyed by knowing lovers of odd books. But, 
 in the case of Germany, as she has recently de- 
 veloped, the state of affairs is essentially and 
 completely different. 
 
 That which, in other countries, never rises be- 
 yond a mere oddity is, in contemporary Ger- 
 many, a vast wave of national thought. In the 
 Fatherland, as has long been remarked by many 
 an observing traveller or scholar, the writers, 
 teachers, journalists, and scholars of the day 
 have an infinitely greater influence on the peo- 
 ple, than similar brain-workers ever wield in 
 
- GERMANY'S MADNESS 21 
 
 England. German political unity was really set 
 in motion by German thonght, that is, by the in- 
 credible influence of German professors, poets, 
 and writers. Once these bookmen take up an 
 idea, be it ever so nebulous, it is sure to fall, 
 in due time, as fertilising rain upon the rough 
 soil of Germany. 
 
 . The reader is therefore asked never to for- 
 get that, no matter how laughable and childish 
 those Pan-German ideas may be, they are at the 
 same time most serious, on account of the effect 
 they have had on the Germans. In this world 
 there is no greater power than effect. To laugh 
 at a thing because it is laughable is, in political 
 matters, most unsound. Once already, in the 
 sixteenth century, a German undertook some- 
 thing that moved the then Pope to peals of 
 laughter. It appeared to Pope Leo X. too 
 ludicrous for words that Luther, a poor and 
 helpless Austin monk and professor in Ger- 
 many, wanted to upset the Papal power. Yet 
 that helpless German did upset very much of 
 the Papal power. The Pope's power seemed 
 then as great, if not very much greater, than, is 
 the power of the British navy to-day. 
 
 If, then, we are now going to tell the reader 
 more of the boundlessly fatuous ideas enter- 
 
22 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 tained by the Grermans with regard to the 
 power, destiny, and ^* evident vocation" of their 
 Race, we do so firstly, because we should like 
 to warn him of the very great danger implied 
 in beliefs of that kind shared by practically all 
 the sixty million Germans; secondly, and only 
 as a minor motive, because we want him to en- 
 joy thoroughly the grim humour of the thing. 
 
 AUL GKEAT MEN HAVE BEEN GERMANS ! 
 
 We have seen that the Kaiser and the most 
 popular writers in Germany have rapidly come 
 to the conclusion that all the great men of the 
 past, from Jesus downwards, were either pure 
 or mixed Germans. But, so far, we have heard 
 this statement only as a vague opinion. Now 
 we are going to see how elaborately this state- 
 ment has been proved in various works written 
 by German scholars. 
 
 The underlying contention of the whole mat- 
 ter is, of course, very transparent. The Ger- 
 mans who boldly say that the twentieth century 
 is theirs, just as the sixteenth belonged to the 
 Spanish, the seventeenth to the French, and the 
 eighteenth to the English, the Germans, we say, 
 want to go one better than all the nations. For, 
 while the Spanish or English were satisfied to 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 23 
 
 call one century theirs, the Germans want to 
 show, not only that the twentieth century will 
 be theirs, but that as a matter of fact all the 
 preceding centuries were, properly considered, 
 also theirs. 
 
 Such views would not appeal very strongly 
 to the English, who as a rule, do not trouble 
 themselves very much about former centuries. 
 But, in Germany, thanks to the great attention 
 paid to the teaching of history in all the public 
 schools, every schoolboy knows the names of 
 Italy, France, or Spain. Everybody there 
 knows something about Dante, Raphael, 
 Michelangelo Buonarotti, Leonardo da Vinci, 
 Machiavelli; or such Frenchmen as Rabelais, 
 Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes. He has, when 
 young, been taught to consider these men as the 
 glories of humanity. When, now, a learned 
 German proves to him, in an elaborate book, 
 that all these summits were only peaks of the 
 German Alps, the effect upon that German is 
 immense. His pride in his nationality is in- 
 creased and intensified to an extraordinary de- 
 gree. He cannot help thinking that German 
 blood, German ideas, German influence, and, in 
 short, everything German has by nature some- 
 thing utterly superior to anything non-German. 
 
24 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 The whole perspective of life is changed within 
 him. He alters his former bearings; he takes 
 a new view of the world; that is, he gets what 
 the Germans call a world-view, or Weltan- 
 schauung of a new type. 
 
 To underrate this sort of thing, to speak 
 lightly of such a wholesale change in the men- 
 tality of the nation which, amongst advanced 
 peoples in Europe, is the most populous, would 
 be too futile for words. On the contrary, we 
 have to weigh it very carefully ; we must take it 
 into close consideration. It is out of such 
 vague but persistent feelings that a nation 
 forges its most formidable weapons of aggres- 
 siveness. 
 
 It is for this reason that we are here going to 
 give a few extracts from the works of Ludwig 
 Woltmann, who, in two books published recently, 
 tells the Germans that most of the immortals 
 of Italy and France were, properly speaking, 
 of German blood. The British reader may not, 
 and we trust will not, agree with the opinions of 
 Mr. Woltmann. This, however, is not the point 
 at all. The real interest is in the fact that 
 Woltmann 's views have been taken by the Ger- 
 mans very seriously indeed, that they have 
 been, and are being discussed in the gravest 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 25 
 
 of German historical and ethnological reviews, 
 and that their effect upon the average German 
 is nothing short of extraordinary. In other 
 words, the late Woltmann may be, and we have 
 no doubt, is hopelessly wrong; but the effect of 
 his works on the most responsible of German 
 writers and readers is very considerable. 
 
 His chief instrument in proving that the 
 great men of the Italian Renascence, or the 
 wonderful painters, sculptors, thinkers, and 
 poets of fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy, 
 were all Germans," is thus constructed. Wolt- 
 mann, together with a great number of English 
 and Continental anthropologists, takes it for 
 granted, that there are in Europe a number of 
 separate Races. More especially, there is the 
 Northern or Germanic Race, with a long head 
 (dolichocephalic), blond hair, and blue eyes; 
 and the Mediterranean Race, with a short and 
 round head, and swarthy complexion. When- 
 ever he finds that an Italian is reported as hav- 
 ing been of a long-headed, blond, and blue-eyed 
 appearance, he has little doubt that the mother 
 of that Italian had, if secretly, preferred the 
 embraces of some doughty German. And if 
 one considers that the Germans have at all 
 times been the roving mercenaries, lackeys. 
 
26 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 clerks, and waiters of all Europe, it is not im- 
 possible to assume tliat wherever Mr. Wolt- 
 mann needs a German substitute for the more 
 legitimate work of paternity, he can freely 
 draw upon some one German lackey or butler 
 or waiter for the emergency. 
 
 In order to fortify his surreptitious fathers 
 in their claims to glory, Woltmann makes free 
 use of that beautiful method of German philo- 
 logians, by means of which one can conveniently 
 prove what one pleases. Thus, it is not quite 
 evident to the untutored mind of the ordinary 
 mortal how Mr. Cecil Rhodes can be said to be 
 of the family of the late President Kriiger. 
 But for a German philologian this apparently 
 impossible problem does not offer serious dif- 
 ficulties. Rhodes is named — ^who can doubt it? 
 — after the famous island in the Eastern Medi- 
 terranean, of which the Greek proverb used to 
 say : ^ ^ Here is Rhodes — jump here ! ' ^ meaning, 
 that any man boasting of his being able to jump 
 anything, was asked at Rhodes to jump the 
 width of the enormous harbour of the capital 
 of that island. That clearly proves that Cecil 
 Rhodes was boastful. So was, some people say, 
 the late President Kriiger. Accordingly, both 
 were of the same family. To disguise that. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 27 
 
 Cecil Rhodes, who was so fond of Greek and 
 Roman antiquities as to have nearly all the 
 Greek and Latin classics specially translated 
 for his use, chose a classical name suggestive 
 of a colossus, the colossus of Rhodes. Can any- 
 thing be simpler ? In very much the same way, 
 Herr Woltmann shows that most of the great 
 Renascence men of Italy were Germans. 
 
 The reader is asked to read the following ex- 
 tracts from Woltmann 's Die Germanen und die 
 Renaissance in Italien (1905) with great atten- 
 tion. 
 
 Again and again we beg to remind the reader 
 that the evident absurdity of Woltmann 's views 
 is not the point at all. We deal here with the 
 mental state of a whole nation. A people like 
 the modern Germans, who can take such views 
 in dead earnestness, are either hopelessly de- 
 cadent, or dangerously excited, overweeningly 
 conceited, and perilously swelled-headed. Now, 
 it is an absolute fact that Woltmann 's views 
 have been taken very seriously indeed. 
 
 One of the oldest, most respectable Profes- 
 soren-Blatt, or reviews, written mostly by and 
 for German University Professors, the Beilage 
 (Supplement) to the MuncJiener Allgemeine 
 Zeitung, and other reviews (especially the 
 
28 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Liter ar is ches Centralhlatt) equally serious, 
 have reported on Woltmann's book, with a 
 gravity and an interest generally devoted to 
 first-class scientific works only. In reading the 
 following extracts, the British citizen must 
 therefore be aware of the fact that he is reading 
 an absurd opinion shared by thousands of 
 highly instructed and influential Germans. • We 
 leave it to our readers to appreciate the polit- 
 ical dangerousness of such opinions. 
 
 Woltmann takes one great Eenascence Ital- 
 ian after the other, and comes to the conclu- 
 sion that they were all Germans. He says : 
 
 *'Benvenuto Cellini (1500-71). — His por- 
 trait by Vasari is in the Palazzo Vecchio in the 
 picture representing Cosimo in the circle of the 
 artists of his time: a head-piece between Cos- 
 imo and Tribolo seated at his left. The hair 
 on his head is brown and slightly disposed in 
 locks, the beard blond, inclining to reddish. To 
 judge from the photograph, the eyes are light 
 in colour, presumably blue, as blue eyes alone 
 are wont to give in photography so light a re- 
 flex.^' (p. 75.)^ 
 
 ^^Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564). — 
 
 1 Surely the painting itself might have been seen by this 
 erudite German. — Ed. 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 29 
 
 (=Bernhard) ancestor of the family, lived in 
 Florence about 1210. He had two sons, Ber- 
 linghieri and Buonarrota, the former of whom 
 had likewise a son, Buonarrota. By this name, 
 recurring frequently in later generations, the 
 family came to be called. It is a Grerman name, 
 compounded of Bona (=Bohn [probably the 
 ancestors of the publishers, Messrs, Bell and 
 Son,] Bonne) and Hrodo, Roto (=:Rohde, 
 Rothe), Bona and Rotto are cited as Lombard 
 names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old Lom- 
 bard Beonrad, corresponding to the word Bon- 
 roth. Corresponding names are Mackrodt, 
 Osterroth, Leonard. According to Condivi the 
 Buonarroti spring from the family of the 
 Counts of Canossa, a noble Lombard gens in 
 the territory of Reggio, related to the Emperor 
 Henry II. In point of fact the Counts of Can- 
 ossa always looked on the artist as a relation. 
 Of Michelangelo's bodily presence we have pre- 
 cise and essentially accordant descriptions by 
 Vasari and Condivi. In his Life of M.B, A. 
 Condivi writes: * Michelangelo is of well-built 
 body, sinewy and bony rather than fleshy and 
 fat ; sound, more than anything else, both by na- 
 ture, by bodily exercise and by abstinence, 
 though as a child he was weakly and subject to 
 
30 GEEMANY^S MADNESS 
 
 fits. In his face he has always been well- 
 coloured. Of medium stature, he is broad 
 shouldered, but in the rest of his body weak 
 rather than robust. The temples strongly pro- 
 ject, more than the ears. His nose has a some- 
 what crushed appearance, not by nature, but 
 from the stroke of a fist he received in his youth 
 on the cartilage of the nose. The brow in pro- 
 file projects beyond the nose. The eyebrows 
 have a scanty fringe of hair. The eyes might 
 be called small rather than large, of the colour 
 of horn, but variable with ^^ flecks'^ of yellow 
 and blue. Hair and beard are black. These 
 particulars are confirmed by the portraits. 
 First and foremost take the portrait by Bugiar- 
 dini in Museo Buonarroti. Here comes to view 
 the ** flecked'' appearance of the iris, especially 
 in the right eye. The left may be described as 
 almost wholly blue. The lateral projection of 
 the skull over the ears is to be explained by an 
 abnormal growth of bone. Michel appears to 
 have been rachitic and hydrocephalus, which 
 may be connected with the fits of his youth. 
 From the remark that his face was highly 
 coloured, it may be concluded that his cheeks 
 were of fresh, ruddy hue. In the Museo Civico, 
 at Pavia, is a fresco likeness by an unknown 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 31 
 
 hand, in which this fresh red is distinctly recog- 
 nisable on the face. Taking all these bodily 
 characteristics into consideration, it must be 
 said from an anthropological point of view that 
 though originally of German family, he was a 
 hybrid between the North and "West brunette 
 race/ " (pp. 73-4.) 
 
 *'LoKENzo Ghiberti (1378-1455). — The name 
 of the Ghiberti, who are first mentioned in 1260 
 among the Guelf families in Florence, is de- 
 rived from Old High German Wiberto Guiberto, 
 New High German Wilbert. As Vasari re- 
 ports in Life of L.G., he set his likeness in the 
 bronze of the Baptistery in Florence. In his 
 work Vasari presents a profile likeness evi- 
 dently drawn after this bronze head. I have 
 more minutely studied the anthropological 
 characteristics of this head on a gypsum cast. 
 The skull is very long and small, index about 
 73, therefore pronouncedly dolichocephalic. 
 The face, too, is long and small, the nose lightly 
 curved, the hair disposed in locks, though noth- 
 ing is reported as to the colour of the hair and 
 eyes, yet, on the ground of the family name 
 and the build of head and face, we may with 
 great certainty assume that he was descended 
 from the Germans. '^ (pp. 69-70.) 
 
32 OEEMANY^S MADNESS 
 
 *' Giovanni Bellini (1426-1507) has left two 
 likenesses by himself; one in the Uffizi, the 
 other in the Conservatoire Palace in Kome. 
 Both show German features of face, light straw 
 yellow hair and bine eyes. Bellini is from Old 
 High German Belo, Bella, Bellin.'' (p. 80.) 
 
 ** Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1517) or, as he 
 called himself, Leonardo Vinci, came of a noble 
 family, the earliest extant document about 
 whom, dated 1339, is signed by a Florentine 
 notary. He was born in an old Castle to the 
 N. of Empoli, of which a tower and some walls 
 still remain. The Castle, in olden time 'Cas- 
 serodi Vinci,' is evidently named after a Ger- 
 man Knight Vinco {= Winke, Vincke). In the 
 neighbourhood are several castles and villages 
 with old German names, such as Cerreto Guidi, 
 Lamporrechio ( = Lamprecht) and Tizzana 
 (Tizzo = Tietz). Some mile and a half {halhe 
 Stunde) NE. of Vinci, on the slope of Monte 
 Albano, lies a ^Luogo d'Anchiano,' where a 
 Castle is said to have formerly stood, the name 
 of which is derived from the old German Ango 
 (— Anke, Enke). Here the family Vinci had a 
 country house, in which was bom Leonardo, in 
 the midst of a district once peopled by Ger- 
 mans. In the valleys and on the slopes of 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 33 
 
 Monte Albano, at a distance from the great 
 highway, you still find among the peasantry 
 many blond and blue-eyed men, in all likelihood 
 the remains of the Gothic tribe. Out of this 
 soil sprang the otherwise unknown Caterina, 
 mother of Leonardo, a lady, 'que era di hon 
 sangue/ of a robust and sound stamp of hu- 
 manity. Like his nephew Pieroda Vinci, a 
 sculptor, Leonardo was tall and strong in bodily 
 make, the hair of his head and his beard hang- 
 ing down to the middle of his chest. The like- 
 ness of himself in red chalk in the Pinacotheo 
 at Turin shows the head of a greybeard, with 
 small, high-arched brow, small face, and 
 slightly aquiline nose. A profile likeness in 
 Windsor Library presents a skull of great 
 measure lengthwise. In the ^ self -likenesses' in 
 the Uffizi, is a portrait of Leonardo, though not 
 possibly by Leonardo himself, and it may be 
 assumed to have been taken from life. It 
 shows him with blond hair on head, blond beard, 
 and blue eyes. Leonardo's blond complexion 
 is not reported in so many words by his biog- 
 raphers, but the constantly extolled beauty of 
 his hair almost implies it, seeing that for the 
 Italian, and especially of the Renaissance, 
 blond hair was the characteristic of physical 
 
34 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 beauty. A figure in ^Tlie Three Archangels 
 and Tobias' — by Verrochio, according to the 
 prevailing view — ^presents the picture of a slim 
 and tall-grown youth, with large blue eyes, yel- 
 low hair, finely shaped and expressive features, 
 which one may conjecture to be the portrait of 
 Leonardo. Altogether, from biographical and 
 iconographic sources, Leonardo's anthropolog- 
 ical features may be summed up as follows: 
 Tall and strong figure; long and small skull; 
 face of like conformation, with lightly curved 
 nose, light complexion, large blue eyes; blond 
 hair of head curled in ringlets; blond beard. 
 If any among the great Italians, Leonardo was 
 a pure and unmixed scion of the German race. ' ' 
 (pp. 83-6.) 
 
 ^^Raffael Santt (1483-1520).— As shown by 
 Passavant, there lived in Colbordolo, Raffael's 
 father's birthplace, about the first half of the 
 fourteenth century a certain Sante, giving the 
 family name of Sante or Santi to his descend- 
 ants. The name of the Castle Colbordolo is 
 of old German origin, analogous to Heribord; 
 Heltiport, and similar names. Like its deriv- 
 atives Santini, Santoni, Santi is equally a Ger- 
 man name, corresponding to Sandt in New 
 High German. Raffael's mother, Magia 
 
GEKMANY'S MADNESS 35 
 
 Ciarla, was the daughter of a merchant in Ur- 
 bino. According to Muratori, Ciarla is said to 
 be derived from Charles and to have been 
 brought to Italy by the Franks. In this case 
 it would be equivalent to the old German Carla. 
 Nothing certain is known of the bodily presence 
 of BaffaePs father, Giovanni. In the case di 
 Raffaelo in Urbino, however, is a fresco like- 
 ness, let into the wall, from Giovanni's hand, 
 presenting Frau Magia and Baifael as Ma- 
 donna with the Bambino. It is remarkable how 
 scanty are the notices left by his contempora- 
 ries regarding Baffael's exterior. BaifaePs 
 likeness of himself in the Uffizi shows us the 
 painter at the age of twenty-three. This pic- 
 ture has, however, been several times painted 
 over, and only mouth and nose remain intact. 
 In this portrait we find Baffael with a nobly 
 shaped and small face, soft grey eyes, with a 
 slight inclination to brownish, and dark blond 
 hair shading into reddish. 
 
 **In the Berlin Museum is an altar piece of 
 Giovanni Santi, representing Mary and the 
 Child Jesus, which has always been taken to be 
 the image of Baffael and his mother. Both 
 have light blond hair. The child has blue eyes, 
 whereas the mother has grey eyes, dashed with 
 
36 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 a bluish and brownish glimmer. In the fresco 
 likeness at Urbino above-mentioned, both 
 have light blond hair. The child's eyes are 
 unfortunately closed, the mother's are of a 
 mixed grey. There is further, a likeness of 
 Raffael in his sixteenth year, ascribed to his 
 father, a good copy of which is in the Hanover 
 Museum. Here Raifael has yellow blond hair 
 and dark grey eyes. In the Libreria of Siena 
 Cathedral, Ratfael and his teacher Pinturicchio 
 are, in Catherine's Canonization, presented, 
 full figure, as taper bearers. Both have blond 
 hair and rosy-white skin. Whereas, however, 
 Pinturicchio shows eyes of distinct blue, corres- 
 ponding to those of his self-portrait in Spello, 
 Raffael has grey-yellow eyes. To this likeness 
 of Raffael by Pinturicchio, then his teacher, 
 must be attached the greatest importance in 
 forming a judgment of his physical type. Of 
 the identity there can be no doubt. Here more 
 particularly is the so characteristic dropping 
 of the upper eyelid. Altogether it may with 
 great certainty be concluded that in his youth 
 Raffael had light blond hair and bluish eyes, 
 but with advancing age hair and eyes assumed 
 a somewhat darker shading. 
 
 ^'Raffael's skeleton, found in the Pantheon, 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 37 
 
 was five feet two inches, Parisian measure = 
 167-5 cm. long. The skull was small. 
 
 ^^G. K. ISTagler, too, in his Rafael als 
 MenscJi und Kiinstler writes: ^His features 
 were of regular beauty, the eye clear and pure, 
 the mirror of a beautiful soul ; the form of the 
 head was oval, and the hair blond till with the 
 progress of the years it inclined slightly to 
 brownish.' '' (pp. 89-91.) 
 
 The British reader of the preceding extracts 
 will probably think that in such stuff and twad- 
 dle there is not much to frighten serious men. 
 Nor is there. We do not mean to assert 
 that the stuff itself, or, in other words, that 
 Herr Woltmann's misplaced erudition, has, by 
 itself, any value whatever. The great men of 
 the Italian Eenascence were no more German 
 in mind or body than they were Yankees. But 
 what cannot be taken too seriously, we contend, 
 is the effect of such stuff on the mind of the 
 German nation. The stuff is wretched enough, 
 but its effect is a most important matter. 
 
 EESULTANT SWELLED-HEADEDNESS 
 
 One can readily understand that the British, 
 themselves, calm in their strength, are inclined 
 to treat such vagaries as strong men generally 
 
38 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 treat the extravagances of boys. But one can- 
 not quite understand that the British, on learn- 
 ing that these vagaries of a great number of 
 German writers have fairly dazed the German 
 people, still continue to smile with tranquillity. 
 This, it would appear to us, is in the highest 
 degree impolitic. The actions of a nation like 
 the Germans are, in the first place, influenced 
 by their state of mind; and, given that that 
 state of mind in Germany is now one bordering 
 on absolute megalomania, or the most morbid 
 form of self-conceit and swelled-headedness, it 
 is safe to conclude that their actions, too, will 
 soon assume forms of the most daring self-as- 
 sertiveness and aggression. 
 
 In this country, Germany and the Germans 
 are practically as unknown and as poorly under- 
 stood as if they lived somewhere in Central 
 Asia, and not within eight hours' sailing from 
 England. Their literature is so little known 
 that more than once the author was asked by 
 Englishmen whether the Germans had three 
 or four writers of note. The following story 
 is absolutely true, if intensely humorous. A 
 rich city merchant invited to one of his recep- 
 tions a number of literary people. The conver- 
 sation for a time touched upon German litera- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 39 
 
 tnre, and amongst other names that of Goethe 
 was frequently mentioned. The host had never 
 heard that name before. Rather annoyed by 
 the constant recurrence of that name, he asked 
 one of his literary guests who Goethe was. 
 He received the answer that Goethe was one of 
 the great German poets. Thereupon the city 
 merchant indignantly exclaimed: ^^Of course, 
 we know him, but we call him over here 
 ^Schiller' 'M 
 
 What, indeed, does the average Briton know 
 of the vast wave of Imperialism that has 
 flooded the hearts and the minds of the Ger- 
 mans! Does he ever read the Alldeutsche 
 Blatter J the organ of the Pan-Germanists ! ^ 
 Does he study the Deutsche Erde, a geograph- 
 ical review devoted to Pan-German interests! 
 Has he ever heard of the periodicals and books 
 treating of the '^necessary,'' ^'inevitable," and 
 *'providentiaP' spread of the German Empire 
 over Europe and the globe! Has he ever at- 
 tempted to appreciate aright the effect of this 
 constant and unremitting excitement of impe- 
 rialist fever that has, these twenty-five years, 
 seized the Germans! It never enters his mind 
 to think of it, to pay the slightest attention to 
 
 2 Even the British Museum Library has no copy of it. 
 
40 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 it. Occasionally, it is true, the Briton is 
 roused to anger or indignation by an utterance 
 or act of the Kaiser or his Chancellor. How- 
 ever, influential as these two dignitaries may be, 
 they are not the most effective of the Imperial- 
 ists in Germany. The most effective are those 
 German authors who, like Professor Treitschke, 
 Herr Woltmann, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, Herr 
 Eeimer, Herr Hasse, Count Ernst Reventlow, 
 and a host of others, instil the poison of megalo- 
 mania into the Germans in the one manner in 
 which the Germans will take it in the largest 
 doses. 
 
 GERMANY IS AN UPSTART 
 
 Perhaps the following consideration will 
 help the reader to see the matter in its true pro- 
 portions. The most ignorant is aware of the 
 fact that Germany is an upstart ; that her exis- 
 tence as a Great Power is, so to speak, of yes- 
 terday. As to Prussia, she was a little over 
 250 years ago a small State under the suzer- 
 ainty of the King of Poland; and six hundred 
 years ago most of the Prussians proper were 
 still heathens, talking a Slav language. It was 
 only by the end of the thirteenth century that 
 the Prussi were converted to Christianity. 
 
 4 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 41 
 
 Some South-German people contend that this 
 conversion is not complete even in our days. 
 
 It is common knowledge that, of all the kinds 
 of intractable pride, the pride of the upstart is 
 the worst, the least amenable to sound limits. 
 For centuries and centuries the Germans have 
 been buffeted about by the French, English, 
 Swedes, Poles, and formerly even by the Hun- 
 garians. For centuries the German Princes, 
 hat in hand, went the round of all the Courts of 
 Europe, begging for subsidies, kissing hands 
 and licking shoes of various powerful ministers, 
 mistresses, kings, popes and generals. For 
 centuries they were used and utilised like so 
 many flunkeys by the older and more powerful 
 nations around them. The Prussian rulers es- 
 pecially, whether the so-called Great Elector, 
 who died in 1688, or Frederick William I., in 
 the eighteenth century, and Frederick William 
 the Fourth in the nineteenth, were forced to 
 eat many a humble pie and, as the French say, 
 to swallow many a snake. Over one-half of the 
 British State debt is composed of moneys 
 thrown as sops, compensation, salaries, or 
 bribes to innumerable German Princes during 
 the seventeenth, eighteenth, and part of the 
 nineteenth centuries. 
 
42 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 As in matters of politics and State life, so 
 it was also in matters of private life. Of all 
 the nations of Europe, the Germans form the 
 largest contingents of * ^ foreigners ' ' in various 
 non-German countries. The Germans outside 
 Germany and Austria are very much more 
 numerous than either the Jews, the Chinese, 
 or the gypsies. Millions of them are in Amer- 
 ica, in Russia, everywhere. Millions and mil- 
 lions of them are in the demoralising condition 
 of expatriated, de-nationalized men and women. 
 All that tells. All that leaves deep, indelible 
 traces on the soul. It rankles in the heart; it 
 embitters; it pricks and prods, until one day 
 the mass of moral kindling takes iire, and then 
 we have the prairie fire of a nation inflamed 
 with a secular cry for vengeance, for the reha- 
 bilitation of their status as a nation and as in- 
 dividuals. It is a sort of Jacquerie or peasant- 
 rising on a vast national scale. The peasants, 
 too, after enduring all sorts of humiliation, 
 finally rise, and then — woe to all humanity! 
 Castles and their tenants are burned; men, 
 women, and children are slaughtered. The hu- 
 man beast appears in its most hideous form. 
 
 The following incident has been told fre- 
 quently enough; it can never be told too fre- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 43 
 
 quently. When Adolphe Thiers, subsequently 
 President of the French Republic, went to the 
 various Courts of Europe, imploring them to 
 help France, which was then at the feet of the 
 victorious Germans, he met, at Vienna, the 
 German historian Ranke, the man who in his 
 numerous works had written up all the igno- 
 minies, humiliations, and indignities of Ger- 
 man history. Thiers asked Ranke against 
 whom the Germans were fighting after Sedan, 
 since Napoleon III. was long their prisoner. 
 ^'Against whom!" Ranke exclaimed; ^'against 
 Louis XIV.!" Now, Louis XIV. died in 1715, 
 or over 150 years before the date of this con- 
 versation between Thiers and Ranke. Yet, 
 Ranke did not by any means exaggerate. The 
 humiliations inflicted upon the rulers of Ger- 
 many by Louis XIV. had been so revolting that, 
 after five generations, the Germans were unable 
 to forget them. It was at the very palace of 
 Louis XIV. that the assembled German Princes 
 solemnly united in the establishment of the Ger- 
 man Empire. The insult of 1681, when Louis 
 captured Strassburg in the midst of peace, 
 burned with the same fire in 1871. In fact, it 
 is only the common sense of the whole of Ger- 
 man history to say that, for centuries, they were 
 
44 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 accustomed to endure nameless insults at the 
 hands of nearly all the nations around them, so 
 that, whenever a Swedish or French conqueror 
 spat into their faces, they exclaimed only: 
 *^Does it rain, I wonder!'' 
 
 THE SAVIOUKS OF THE: WORLD 
 
 Now, let any one of some experience of life 
 ask himself what may be expected from a per- 
 son that has hitherto been lectured, insulted, 
 and sweated by individuals whose superior he 
 is now sure to be. It would surpass all human 
 nature to keep one's head quite level under 
 such circumstances. The Germans know that 
 they are, or are held to be, the military supe- 
 riors of any two or three of the nations sur- 
 rounding them. Their innumerable writers, 
 professors, journalists, poets, and politicians 
 tell them so unceasingly, every day, in every 
 paper, scientifically, learnedly, or philosophic- 
 ally. They hear that it was really they who 
 saved the world in the past. 
 
 Just read the following extract from Cham- 
 berlain's book. He speaks of the wild Ger- 
 mans who invaded the Roman Empire. Of 
 those savage hordes. Chamberlain says : — 
 
 ^^This barbarian, who prefers to enter the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 45 
 
 battle naked, the savage, who suddenly rises np 
 out of woods and marshes, to pour upon a civil- 
 ised and cultivated world the horrors of a 
 mighty conquest, and fights with the bare fist, 
 is nevertheless the lawful heir of the Greek and 
 the Roman, blood of their blood, and spirit of 
 their spirit. What he unknowingly tears from 
 strange hands is his own. But for him, the day 
 of the Indo-European was passing to its end. 
 The Asiatic and African slave had crept mur- 
 derously up to the throne of the Roman Em- 
 pire, while the Syrian bastard was seizing upon 
 legislation, the Jew was using the library of 
 Alexandria to adapt Greek philosophy to the 
 Mosaic law; soon, too, the Mongolian was to 
 crush under his savage blood-stained foot the 
 sublime blossoms of the primal Aryan {iirari- 
 schen) life: Indian thought, Indian poetry; and 
 the Bedouin, intoxicated with the madness of 
 devastation, was to burn that Garden of Eden, 
 Erania, in which for thousands of years all the 
 symbolism of the world had grown up, into an 
 eternal desert; art had long ceased to exist, 
 and there was for the rich only formality 
 {Schahlonen), for the poor circus-riding; there- 
 fore, to use Schiller's phrase, there were no 
 longer men, but only creatures. It was high 
 
46 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 time that the deliverer appeared. . . . We can 
 regret only one thing — that the German did not, 
 everywhere his conquering arm preyed, extermi- 
 nate more completely, and that, in consequence 
 of this, the so-called Latinization, i.e., the mar- 
 riage with the chaos of peoples, gradually re- 
 covered wide territories from the only quick- 
 ening influence of pure blood and unbroken 
 youth, in fact, from the control of the highest 
 talent.'' 
 
 In other words, but for the Germans over- 
 running the Roman Empire — that is, but for 
 this, the most unfortunate event of all Euro- 
 pean history — Europe could, so the Germans 
 are now taught, never have been saved by ' * the 
 only quickening influence of pure blood and 
 unbroken youth." Just think of the nonsense 
 of it all! These *' fallen and corrupt" Romans 
 and Greeks forged, throughout the time when 
 the ^'pure and unbroken" Germans invaded and 
 ^^ saved" them, the mightiest weapon of organ- 
 isation and civilisation that had up to that time 
 appeared in human history: the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church. But for that Church and her re- 
 demption and colonisation of more than one- 
 half of the soil of Europe, we should still, in 
 company with the Germans, eat glands in the 
 
GEKMANY'S MADNESS 47 
 
 wild forests and swamps of Lancasliire or Han- 
 over. 
 
 But can any one wonder at this wholesale 
 distortion of all history, when one reads what 
 the contemporary German writers and thinkers 
 and statesmen tell the Germans to think of 
 themselves! The reader is asked to go pa- 
 tiently over the following extracts, and to con- 
 sider that such excessive and wicked flattery 
 is made to a nation that has, as we just saw, 
 barely emerged out of a secular state of polit- 
 ical inferiority. No more dangerous microbe 
 could be implanted in the organism of a peo- 
 ple. 
 
 Friedrich Lange, erstwhile editor of the Tag- 
 liche Rundschau, has gone so far as to invent 
 and preach a species of ^'German religion'' 
 (Deutsche Religion), and from many pulpits it 
 has been announced that 'Hhe German people 
 is the elect of God, and its enemies are the ene- 
 mies of the Lord.'' 
 
 Chamberlain teaches the Germans as fol- 
 lows : — ^ ^ Who can live in Italy to-day and mix 
 with its amiable and highly-gifted inhabitants 
 without feeling with pain that here a great na- 
 tion is lost, irredeemably lost, because it lacks 
 the inner driving power, the greatness of soul. 
 
48 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 which would fit its talent *? This power comes 
 from Eace alone. Italy had it as long as it 
 possessed Germans: nay, even to-day, in those 
 parts which were formerly occupied especially 
 by Kelts, Germans, and Normans, the popula- 
 tion develops the true German industry, and 
 brings forth men who strive with desperate 
 energy to keep the country together and to lead 
 it in glorious paths. Cavour, the founder of 
 the new kingdom, springs from the extreme 
 North ; Crispi, who knew how to steer it through 
 dangerous rocks, from the extreme South. 
 
 ^^ Fidelity is found in nearly all pure-bred 
 races, e.g., never more than in negroes; and 
 what man could show more fidelity than the 
 noble dog? This fidelity and that freedom do 
 not grow one out of the other, but are two 
 phenomena of the same character, of which 
 one is more of the intellectual, the other more 
 of the moral, side. The negro and the dog 
 serve their master, whoever he is: that is the 
 morality of the weak, or, as Aristotle has it, 
 of him who is naturally born to be a slave. The 
 German chooses his master, and therefore his 
 fidelity is fidelity to himself : that is the morality 
 of the free-born.'' For this reason. Chamber- 
 lain intimates, it is correct to consider St. Paul 
 
GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 49 
 
 of German origin. This incredible freak of the 
 perverted historical sense is put by Chamber- 
 lain in the following manner: — *^More decisive 
 for my theory is the kinship of the deeper 
 spiritual dispositions between Kelts and Ger- 
 mans. . . . Does one, then, think it is a mere 
 accident that St. Paul addressed his epistle on 
 Redemption by Faith, etc., to the Galatians, to 
 those Gallic Greeks of Asia Minor who had re- 
 mained almost purely Keltic — that document in 
 which one fancies one hears a German speaking 
 who was exceptionally gifted for the under- 
 standing of deepest mysteries T' 
 
 Even the wild Goths were noble and tolerant, 
 according to Herr Chamberlain, and therefore 
 superior to the foul Romans: — **Thus the per- 
 fect religious tolerance of the Goths, when they 
 became masters of that Roman Empire in which 
 the principle of intolerance had so long pre- 
 vailed, is as characteristic of German feeling 
 as is the protection which they gave to the mon- 
 uments of art. We see here those two features : 
 fidelity and freedom. . . . The German is the 
 most ideal, and at the same time the most prac- 
 tical, man in the world, and that, not because 
 these are contrasts, but because they are iden- 
 tical. The German writes ^Die Kritik der 
 
50 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 reinen Vernunft/ but invents at the same time 
 the railway; the century of Bessemer and Edi- 
 son is that of Beethoven and R. Wagner." 
 
 Their writers tell the Germans: — ^^We are 
 the best colonists, the best sailors, and even the 
 best merchants. . . . We are the most intelli- 
 gent nation there is, and the most advanced in 
 science and art. . . . We are, without contra- 
 diction, the most warlike people on earth.'' 
 
 The sense and passion of everything German 
 are carried to such an extent that Bismarck's 
 secretary once wrote to the Municipal Council 
 of Berlin: — 
 
 ^*I have the honour, on behalf of Prince Bis- 
 marck, to thank the Municipal Council of the 
 Royal City of Berlin for the transmission of 
 a pamphlet relating to the fifty-ninth meeting 
 of German doctors and naturalists. His High- 
 ness regrets, however, that he is unable to take 
 cognisance of it, as his principles forbid his 
 reading a German text printed in Latin char- 
 acters. 
 
 **V. Reinbaben." 
 
 The astonishment of the Municipal Council 
 of Berlin was pretty great on receiving this let- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 51 
 
 ter. It became immense when it was noticed 
 that the printed heading of the letter was alone 
 in Latin characters. 
 
 GERMANY AND THE FUTUEE 
 
 Can one wonder, under such circumstances, 
 that the Kaiser a few years ago, at the cele- 
 bration of the 200th anniversary of the founda- 
 tion of the Kingdom of Prussia, exclaimed: 
 ''Nothing must be settled in this world with- 
 out the intervention of Germany and of the 
 German Emperor. '^ 
 
 In 1905, the Kaiser, on the 28th of April, a 
 few days after the conclusion of the Anglo- 
 French Entente Cordiale, said, at Carlsruhe: 
 ' ' Let us remember the great time in which Ger- 
 man unity was established on the fields of 
 Woerth, Weissemburg, and Sedan. Present 
 events invite us to forget internal discords. 
 Let us be united in case we should be compelled 
 to intervene in the politics of the world.'' On 
 1st May at Mayence, at the opening of a new 
 bridge, he said: ''This work, destined to de- 
 velop peaceful communications, might serve for 
 graver purposes." 
 
 After such utterances on the part of a re- 
 sponsible ruler, we need not be astonished to 
 
52 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 learn that irresponsible professors, whose in- 
 fluence on the Germans is nevertheless extraor- 
 dinary, indulge in far louder dreams. Thus 
 Professor Treitschke, the most jingoist of all 
 German historians, and also one of their ablest 
 writers, says: — 
 
 ^^Then, when the German flag flies over and 
 protects this vast Empire, to whom will belong 
 the sceptre of the universe! What nation will 
 impose its wishes on the other enfeebled and 
 decadent people 1 Will it not be Germany that 
 will have the mission to ensure the peace of the 
 world? Eussia, that immense colossus still in 
 process of formation, and with feet of clay, will 
 be absorbed in its home and economic difficul- 
 ties. England, stronger in appearance than in 
 reality, will, without any doubt, see her Colonies 
 detach themselves from her and exhaust them- 
 selves in fruitless struggles. France, given 
 over to internal dissensions and the strife of 
 parties, will sink into hopeless decadence. As 
 to Italy, she will have her work cut out to en- 
 sure a crust of bread to her children. . . . The 
 future belongs to Germany, to which Austria 
 will attach herself if she wishes to survive.'' 
 
 It is under the pressure of such ideas, taught 
 in Germany by their foremost writers and 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 53 
 
 thinkers, that the Germans have persuaded 
 themselves of the necessity of occupying vast 
 territories, both in their own neighbourhood 
 and in foreign continents. This Greater Ger- 
 many, or the expansion of the German race (as 
 if such a thing existed — as if the Germans had 
 not the blood of all the nations in them) has 
 become a dogma with the Germans. Even in 
 their school books it is publicly taught. See 
 the following from the manual of Herr Daniel, 
 professor of geography at the Royal College at 
 Halle:— 
 
 ^ ^ France was primarily a small kingdom born 
 of the dismemberment of Charlemagne's em- 
 pire and bounded by the Rhone and the Saone 
 rivers, and has only expanded at the expense 
 of Germany; during the Middle Ages Lyons 
 and Marseilles were German towns." 
 
 The same author, in an equally classical work 
 in use in the schools, gives the ** natural fron- 
 tiers of Germany as on the west'' are *Hhe hills 
 which extend from Cape Grisnez to the Ar- 
 gonne, the plateau of Langres, the faucilles, 
 the mountains of Alsace, the heights between 
 the Rhine and the Rhone, and the Jura to the 
 lake of Geneva." 
 
 If Germans are taught similar political 
 
54 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 geography about France, the reader may easily 
 imagine what they are given to understand 
 about the 'inevitable'' destiny of the smaller 
 Slav peoples in their neighbourhood. Thus we 
 read in Pan-German books : — 
 
 ''We sometimes hear the following objection 
 from the savants and sages, opponents of the 
 Pan-Germanic idea. ' Of what use to us will be 
 the Czechs, the Slovenians, and the others? 
 Will the Catholics of Austria really represent 
 an increase of our power?' To the first ob- 
 jection we reply that a universal Germany is 
 only possible if the great Slav power Russia 
 is crumbled to bits, is completely overthrown. 
 Then, when the triumphant German armies oc- 
 cupy the country from the Moldau to the Adri- 
 atic, it will be possible simply to expel the non- 
 German populations from Cisleithania. . . . 
 An indemnity may be given them, but the coun- 
 try must be cleared and the land colonised by 
 Germans. In the event of such momentous hap- 
 penings, we would not hesitate to take large 
 tracts of territory from France and Russia to 
 form the glacis of our frontiers on the east and 
 on the west. It would, moreover, be necessary 
 to impose as a condition of peace that the na- 
 tive should evacuate these provinces and be 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 55 
 
 compensated by the conquered powers. There 
 again colonisation would be carried out. That 
 is how we propose to enlarge our European 
 frontiers. This enlargement has become for 
 us a matter of necessity, just as bread is neces- 
 sary for our rapidly increasing population. ' ' 
 
 The Vorivdrts has put it on record that, to a 
 numerous and sympathetic audience of pro- 
 fessors and students of Protestant Theology, 
 the theologian Lezius made a speech, which was 
 loudly applauded, in which he advised that the 
 Prussian Poles should be treated like China- 
 men. The following is an extract from this 
 prodigious oration : — 
 
 ^'Solomon has said: ^Do not be too good; 
 do not be too just.' The Polish press should 
 be simply annihilated. All Polish societies 
 should be suppressed, without the slightest 
 apology being made for such a measure. This 
 summary procedure should be likewise applied 
 to the French and Danish press, as well as to 
 the societies of Alsace, Lorraine, and Schleswig- 
 Holstein. Especially should no consideration 
 whatever be shown to anything relating to the 
 Poles. The Constitution should be altered with 
 regard to the latter. The Poles should be 
 looked upon as helots. They should be allowed 
 
56 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 but three privileges : to pay taxes, serve in the 
 army, and shut their jaws'' (sic). 
 
 GERMAN PRETENSIONS AND EXPANSION 
 
 In the following extracts the reader may fol- 
 low the various stages of that German expan- 
 sion all over the globe. 
 
 Schmoller, the political economist, writes: — 
 ^'We must at all costs hope for the formation 
 in Southern Brazil, of a state with 20 or 30 
 million Germans, and that this State should re- 
 main an integral part of Brazil, whether it be 
 constituted as an independent state, or whether 
 it remain in close relation with the Empire." 
 He quotes from Deutsches Handels Archiv, 
 March, 1901, a report of the German Consul at 
 Blumenau (Brazil) :—^* Of the 40,000 inhab- 
 itants, about 30,000 are German Brazilians, 
 8,000 are Austrians, and the residue is com- 
 posed of Portuguese Brazilians." He quotes 
 Dr. Hasse as saying: *^We shall see the Ger- 
 man oak grow bigger, and from the German 
 Emperor will spring the Emperor of the Ger- 
 mans." Schmoller quotes also from Handels- 
 museum, June 13, 1901: — *^ Little by little, 
 slowly and surely, Germany is securing the 
 trade of Bolivia. When she has done that en- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 57 
 
 tirely, she will have secured the plenitude of 
 influence, a complete moral and material su- 
 premacy, and a colony acquired without war 
 or expense.'' 
 
 The German military authorities add : — * ^ The 
 German army and fleet must have at command 
 a field where they can work homogeneously. 
 If, as seems probable, the work of the army 
 should be to the south and east of the Empire, 
 it is almost indispensable that it should be sup- 
 ported by the fleet in the Adriatic and the Med- 
 iterranean. Our strategic front must extend 
 from the Baltic to Trieste. France and Eussia 
 have each a share in the maintenance of equi- 
 librium in the seas of North Europe and of the 
 Mediterranean Basin. We must have exactly 
 the same. Besides, are the shores of the Upper 
 Adriatic so far from German lands? There is 
 little more than 100 kilometres as the crow flies 
 from the Gulf of Trieste to the frontier of 
 South Carinthia — a point from which, going 
 northward and skirting Bohemia, there are 
 nothing but compact masses of Germans to be 
 found. On no account should this part of the 
 coast be allowed to fall into Latin or Slav hands, 
 for, if it were, that side of Germany is swamped 
 for a century, maybe for ever." 
 
58 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 The Japanese talk hopefully of conquering 
 the Dutch East Indies, which they consider an 
 easy prey ; and the Germans, on their side, con- 
 fidently remark that if the lesser Holland of 
 Europe became a dependence of the Great Em- 
 pire, the greater Holland of the Antipodes 
 would become the finest of the German colonies. 
 
 At Kiao-chau the Emperor William had given 
 a first exhibition of his attitude towards China. 
 Glorying in his strength, and impatient to 
 parade it, looking on the Chinese as a ^* barbaric 
 people, '^ he extolled the ^'mailed fisf and en- 
 couraged it among his representatives. Baron 
 Ketteler paid with his life for his imprudence 
 and his provocations. Personally hit by the 
 assassination of his minister, the Emperor 
 seized the occasion to adopt a tragic attitude; 
 in his imagination he saw himself a new Joshua, 
 fighting with the people of God, against the 
 Amalekites, and at the same time — with that 
 curious mixture of practical common sense and 
 romantic imagination which is one of the char- 
 acteristic traits of his nature — started a diplo- 
 matic campaign for the acceptance of a Ger- 
 man field-marshal as head of the international 
 army. 
 
 In Western Asia the Germans pursue, and 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 59 
 
 not unsuccessfully, a forward policy of con- 
 stant infiltration. The following extracts are 
 very instructive. 
 
 Lt.-Col. Hildebrandt writes: *'Tlie Germans 
 likewise have a great strategic interest in the 
 Bagdad Railway ^ for in the contingent event of 
 a blockade of the Suez Canal — a blockade which 
 political complications, or, later on, military 
 operations, might bring within the range of 
 possibilities — this railway would supply Ger- 
 many with the most direct road to the East of 
 Africa and Asia and towards her transoceanic 
 possessions." 
 
 Siegmund Schneider writes in Die Deutsche 
 Bagdadhahn: ^* Russia has, by the treaty of 
 St. Petersburg of 1896, secured the right to send 
 along the railway lines of Eastern China (cov- 
 ering 1,500 kilometres of Chinese Manchuria) 
 detachments of Siberian Cossacks to guard 
 their line. In the same way it will be neces- 
 sary, during the construction of the Bagdad 
 Railway, that similar measures should be car- 
 ried out to ensure the safety of the constructors 
 and protect them from the attacks of Bedouins 
 and brigands in Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, and 
 Babylonia." 
 
 Dr. Rohrbach writes in Die Bagdadhahn: 
 
60 aERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 *^A Turkey strong, militarily and politically, 
 can alone enable ns to find in the lands of the 
 Euphrates and the Tigris an increase of our na- 
 tional possessions and an improvement in the 
 economic scale. For a weak Turkey not a 
 pfennig, but to a strong Turkey let us give all 
 the money that may be required. * ' 
 
 Dr. Paul Rohrbach writes in Lie Zeit: 
 * * There can no longer be any doubt on the sub- 
 ject. The Anatolia Railway Co., which is in 
 the hands of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, will 
 have the financial and technical management of 
 the undertaking. It may, therefore, be said 
 that the Bagdad Railway is in reality a Ger- 
 man enterprise, as we on our side desired it to 
 be and strove to make it, whilst our adversaries 
 on the other hand did their utmost to thwart 
 it at Constantinople with so much jealousy and 
 tenacity. ' ^ 
 
 Lt.-Col. Hildebrandt, writing in the Interna- 
 tionale Revue uher die gesammten Armeen und 
 Flatten (p. 73, March, 1902), Witzleben, Dres- 
 den, says: **The concession was granted at 
 the end of 1899, and it may be taken that it was 
 obtained thanks to the policy of the German 
 Government, which has resolutely claimed for 
 its country the position of a world-power in the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 61 
 
 concert of nations. The construction of the line 
 is consequently in German hands ; and the same 
 is the case with the huge maritime works which 
 are being carried out by the Anatolia Company 
 on a site which will furnish an excellent port, 
 and in the Bay of Ismid, on the spot known as 
 Haidar-Pasha, near Scutari, on the Bosphorus, 
 opposite to Constantinople, of which it may be 
 said to form a suburb.'' 
 
 At the end of March, 1902, the following note 
 appeared in the Turkish papers: — ''Up till to- 
 day MM. Zander (representing the Deutsche 
 Bank) and Huguenin have acted as managing 
 directors of the Anatolia Eailway. Henceforth 
 M. Zander will take up the title and duties of 
 'Manager of the New Concession Lines,' and 
 M. Huguenin remains manager of the Anatolia 
 Company. ' ' 
 
 In 1880 the trade of Germany with the Otto- 
 man Empire amounted to 8,500,000 francs 
 (£340,000) ; in 1900 it had increased to 81,250,- 
 000 francs (£3,250,000) ; and in 1904 to 84,450,- 
 000 francs (£3,378,000), having increased ten- 
 fold in twenty years. 
 
 This regular system of expansion is very 
 considerable, aided by various societies whose 
 only aim is the spread of the German language, 
 
62 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 of German commerce, and German ideas. 
 Thus, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein 
 sends subsidies to the German schools scattered 
 throughout the world, and especially to those 
 in the Slav countries of Austria; the Society 
 for the Propagation of the German Language 
 (Deutscher Sprachverein) works in the same di- 
 rection. The Deutsche Kolonial Gesellschaft 
 encourages ideas of oversea expansion, whilst 
 the Deutscher Flottenverein, with already close 
 on 1,000,000 members, completes the work of 
 converting public opinion to new sacrifices so 
 as to have by 1915 a fleet strong enough to beat 
 the British fleet. It is especially religious so- 
 cieties that distinguish themselves by their zeal. 
 The Odin-Verein of Munich, the Gustav-Adolf 
 Verein have specially devoted themselves to 
 the ^* evangelisation'' of Austria; the arrest of 
 one of their missionaries, pastor Everling, 
 caused some sensation at the time. The Evan- 
 gelical League has conducted with great ardour 
 the ^^Los von Rom^^ (''Away from Rome!") 
 campaign, for w^hich in 1903 it had already dis- 
 bursed 400,000 marks. All seem to fulfil a 
 sacred function, the exaltation of the national 
 name and greatness. "The king at the head 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 63 
 
 of Prussia, Prussia at the lieacl of Germany, 
 Germany at the head of the world." 
 
 Such nations as the Germans cannot reason- 
 ably hope to absorb, they unremittingly endeav- 
 our to win over to their interests. Amongst 
 these the Americans proper, the people of the 
 United States, are the foremost. The Kaiser 
 rarely misses an opportunity of ingratiating 
 himself with the Yankees. He sent their uni- 
 versities works of art; he introduced the flour- 
 ishing system of a constant exchange of pro- 
 fessors, so that American professors are giving 
 temporarily lectures at Berlin, while German 
 scholars go to the States to deliver discourses 
 on German Science ; now, he is said to send one 
 of his sons to Princeton University to be edu- 
 cated in America; he has recently utilised the 
 chance left him by the oversight of the British 
 Government, and sent an official representative 
 to the solemn opening of the Carnegie Insti- 
 tute at Pittsburg. More than this is done by 
 a host of German writers, who submit to the 
 Americans tempting reflections such as the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 ^^The apprehensions of the American people 
 prevent the United States establishing compul- 
 
64 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 sory military service ; they can only rely, there- 
 fore, on the development of their navy. The 
 most rational solution for the United States is, 
 therefore, to seek a ^rapprochement' with Ger- 
 many. The strength of the combined fleets will 
 soon exceed that of the British Navy. On the 
 other hand, the magnificent German army would 
 render possible widespreading transoceanic ex- 
 peditions. . . . The similarity of character fa- 
 vours a German- American alliance. Our sixty 
 million citizens and the eighty million American 
 are ever increasing and multiplying, and see 
 their qualities improve, whereas the Latin races 
 remain stationary or retrograde. Thus the 
 Teutonic race, to which Americans belong as 
 well as ourselves, could aspire to the domina- 
 tion of the globe if the two nations walked to- 
 gether instead of remaining isolated. Since 
 1820 Germany has sent over ^ve million emi- 
 grants to the United States, that is, 22 per 
 cent, of the total immigration. No other coun- 
 try has sent so large a contingent. At the last 
 census (1900) the number of individuals set- 
 tled in the United States born to two German 
 parents or one was estimated at 7,800,000, and 
 of this number over two and a half millions had 
 been born in Germany.'* 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 65 
 
 THE COMING STRUGGLE 
 
 From the preceding extracts it will be seen 
 that the Germans are now suffused with a pro- 
 found and passionate belief in their great his- 
 torical vocation. Again and again we beg to 
 submit to the British reader that he must not 
 take views and opinions such as have been here 
 given in the way in which such things are taken 
 by the nation of the United Kingdom. In Great 
 Britain all sorts of views and intellectual or 
 political opinions are constantly being pub- 
 lished and discussed; yet, with the exception 
 of a few faddists and eccentrics, nobody takes 
 them over-seriously. At any rate, it may be 
 stated with absolute correctness that very few 
 people in this country are likely to labour any 
 given political or economical theory to its log- 
 ical extremes. 
 
 The British nation has grappled with the 
 realities of politics, party strifes, international 
 policy, or ordinary wealth far too much to be 
 addicted to mere theoretical pushing of ideas 
 to their inferential fag ends. Hence the most 
 extreme ideas in religion, philosophy, or poli- 
 tics are, in Great Britain, less likely to be car- 
 ried out in unmodified strict logic. Compro- 
 
66 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 mise and half-measure wisdom are the soul of 
 this country. In Germany, on the other hand, 
 imperial problems, for instance, are as yet 
 purely theoretic. No Germans, if we except 
 one or two generations of Germans, have ever 
 had any practical acquaintance with imperial 
 problems. They cannot, therefore, know how 
 to fit ideas to reality, how to modify theory to 
 practice. Under these circumstances, their 
 theoretic bent has all but free scope. Where, 
 in reality, there are a thousand difficulties, they 
 see none. The whole matter of world-power 
 appears to them in the light of a simple and 
 clear problem. The opinions of their leaders 
 are taken by the Germans quite literally, and 
 the realisation of their unbounded ambition is, 
 they hold, only a matter of a few sound laws 
 and increased energy. 
 
 All this only adds to the overweening conceit 
 filling them. For, not only are they convinced 
 that the world ought to be theirs, but also that 
 this appropriation of the globe, and perhaps 
 of a few other planets, is relatively a simple 
 affair. They, therefore, do not hesitate to draw 
 the logical conclusion from all that their lead- 
 ers tell them. One has only to read the follow- 
 ing speech by Gen. Von der Goltz : — 
 
 I 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 67 
 
 ^'It is therefore necessary to convince our- 
 selves, and to convince the generation we have 
 to educate, that the time for rest has not yet 
 arrived ; that the prediction of a supreme strug- 
 gle, in which the existence and the power of 
 Germany will be at stake, is by no means a 
 vain chimera emanating from the imaginations 
 of a few ambitious madmen ; that this supreme 
 struggle will burst forth one day terrible and 
 momentous as all struggles between nations 
 that serve as a prelude to great political revo- 
 lutions. ' ' 
 
 Also, Gen. Bernhardi's speech to the Berlin 
 Society, 23rd January, 1905: — '*In spite of 
 treaties and peace congresses, it is still by steel 
 that great questions are settled." 
 
 ''The English peril haunts Germany,'' writes 
 M. Georges Villiers. ''By the force of things 
 the 20th century will see the German and the 
 Anglo-Saxon in a death struggle for maritime 
 and commercial supremacy. At any rate, there 
 is hardly a German who is not persuaded to- 
 day that such will be the case. Those even who 
 deny the possibility of such a conflict are not 
 those whom it preoccupies least.'' 
 
 And Prince Biilow, the German Chancellor, 
 in a speech delivered in the Reichstag (Decem- 
 
68 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 ber Gth, 1897), said: — ^'The time has gone by 
 when Germans left the earth to one of their 
 neighbours and the sea to another, retaining 
 for themselves the sky, where pure doctrine 
 reigns. " 
 
 As a corroboration of the statement here 
 made with regard to the extraordinarily high- 
 strung feeling of imperial expansion on the part 
 of the Germans, we here add two remarks made 
 by well-known men in the world of literature, 
 one a French Catholic priest, the other a Rus- 
 sian novelist. The Pere Didon, author of sev- 
 eral famous w^orks on Jesus and the religious 
 movement of our day, says: — 
 
 ^*She (Germany) lays claim to being mili- 
 tarily, politically, scientifically, religiously, 
 morally, and cerehrally the first nation in the 
 world. Chauvinism in Germany is more than 
 a sentiment; it is a theory, a dogma in a sci- 
 entific dress. A distinction is made between 
 the two races, the German and the Latin; the 
 German, although only a newcomer on the scene 
 where great events are enacted, being naturally 
 placed first." 
 
 The Russian novelist, Dostoi'ewski, writes : — 
 ^'Chauvinism, pride, and an unlimited confi- 
 dence in their own strength have intoxicated the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 69 
 
 Germans since the war. This people, that has 
 so rarely been a conqueror and has so often 
 been conquered, had all of a sudden beaten the 
 nation that had humiliated all the other na- 
 tions. ... On the other hand, the fact that Ger- 
 many, but yesterday all parcelled out, has been 
 able in so short a time to develop so strong a 
 political organisation, might well lead the Ger- 
 mans to believe that they are about to enter on 
 a new phase of brilliant development. This 
 conviction has resulted in making the German 
 not only Chauvinistic and conceited, but flighty 
 as well; it is not only the Teutonic grocer and 
 shoemaker now who are over-confident, but pro- 
 fessors, eminent scientists, and even the min- 
 isters themselves as well.'' 
 
 No wonder that the arrogance of the ^* Elect 
 Ones of God" come out at every possible and 
 impossible occasion. When Bismarck was 
 asked what he would do, should some 100,000 
 British soldiers be landed on the north coast 
 of Germany in case of a war between Great 
 Britain, France and Germany, he replied: ^'I 
 should have them arrested by the police." 
 
PART II 
 
 In the preceding section of this work something 
 was said about the notions of extreme national 
 pride and jingoism with which a very great and 
 exceedingly influential number of German writ- 
 ers, thinkers, professors, statesmen, and jour- 
 nalists have these twenty odd years filled the 
 heads of the Germans. This by itself is, we 
 venture to submit, a dangerous state of things, 
 and we have repeatedly tried to explain to the 
 reader how these fanatic articles, books, views, 
 or utterances of German leading men must be 
 taken at their full face value, and how absurd 
 it would be to compare their effect upon the 
 German nation with that of similar books in 
 this country. 
 
 Everybody has heard of the vast influence 
 which, in the eighteenth century, was exercised 
 by a handful of French writers about political 
 economy and politics on the coming and on the 
 character of the French Eevolution. One can- 
 not, indeed, maintain that History is always 
 governed by ideas, and thus by thinkers and 
 
 70 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 71 
 
 writers. But there are periods and conditions 
 when such otherwise harmless multipliers of 
 ink factories have a very serious influence upon 
 their nation. 
 
 In this chapter we are going to put before 
 the reader the various circumstances which, 
 independently of what German writers think 
 or say, have powerfully contributed to swell 
 the German head.^ 
 
 Common sense — the least common of things, 
 though the most necessary — will tell any man 
 who gives his thoughts to matters of European 
 history and politics that no single nation in 
 Europe can be great or small but what the 
 other nations contribute to it very consider- 
 ably. A self-made nation does not exist any 
 more than does, strictly speaking, a self-made 
 man. Some other nation has invariably had 
 a hand in it. So we note that Spanish great- 
 ness was grafted and partly caused by the weak- 
 
 1 Although Germany's struggle for supremacy has been pre- 
 cipitated in a manner that Dr. Reich could not foresee, and 
 some of his hypotheses and deductions are correspondingly 
 irrelevant to the present European crisis, there is yet left in 
 this and the succeeding section of his work much that is valu- 
 able in the matters of information and criticism. We venture 
 to think that these sections are still worthy of perusal, before 
 the reader passes to the Epitome in which the case stated by 
 Dr. Reich in his first section is manifestly confirmed. — Ed. 
 
72 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 ness of the then Germany and Italy. French 
 greatness in the seventeenth century was based 
 on the then weakness of Spain, Italy, Germany, 
 and, periodically, of England, too. At present 
 (1907) Germany's greatness, which is unde- 
 niable, is based on the partial eclipse of France 
 and Austria and on the absence of the spirit 
 of Chatham in England. 
 
 It is unnecessary to refer here to diplomatic 
 and other incidents which have served to ob- 
 scure the importance of France in comparison 
 with Germany. We proceed to consider the 
 position of Austria-Hungary. 
 
 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY VASSAL OF GERMANY 
 
 In the case of Austria-Hungary, things stand 
 even much better for a mushroom-growth of 
 the German swelled-head. There is, in fact, 
 no exaggeration in saying that Austria-Hun- 
 gary is, in international politics, the mere vassal 
 of Germany. For over two centuries the rul- 
 ers of Prussia were the humble subordinates 
 of the Austrian Hapsburgs. When, at the be- 
 ginning of the eighteenth century, the Electors 
 of Brandenburg became Kings of Prussia, they 
 became so by the grace of the Austrian rulers, 
 who were the Emperors of the Holy Roman 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 73 
 
 Empire. As late as 1850 the King of Prussia 
 was slighted, not to say duped, by the ruler of 
 Austria. Since 1866 this has been completely 
 reversed. Not only was Austria signally de- 
 feated by Prussia in that year; but when, in 
 1870, Germany made war on France, and Aus- 
 tria thereby had an excellent opportunity of 
 squaring her count with Germany, the Aus- 
 trians did not do so at all, and thus missed the 
 greatest of their chances in modern history. 
 Ever since, Austria-Hungary has been, in her 
 own self-interest, bound to make friends with 
 Germany, to abet and follow her, or to be, as 
 was said above, her vassal. 
 
 At the conference of Algeciras, for the settle- 
 ment of the Moroccan Question, when all the 
 other Powers sided with France and England, 
 Austria-Hungary went, arm in arm, with Ger- 
 many. Things have come to such a pass that 
 Germany is at present the strongest guarantee 
 for the maintenance of the dual empire called 
 Austria-Hungary. The author, himself a Hun- 
 garian, is well aware of the fact that nine per- 
 sons out of ten in this country indulge in the 
 belief that Austria-Hungary will, on the demise 
 of Francis Joseph I., who is now (May, 1907) 
 seventy-six years old, fall to pieces, and that 
 
74 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 the Germans will take up and assimilate as 
 many of these pieces as they may oare to. 
 
 This belief is, we venture to submit, totally 
 erroneous. On the demise of her present aged 
 ruler, Austria-Hungary will not fall to pieces 
 at all. That dual empire is a peculiar product, 
 the oddest of European history. It has no 
 unity whatever, racial, national, religious, or 
 geographical. It is, in one word, not a straight- 
 forward, natural result of the energy and the 
 opportunities of a people, such as is France, 
 England, or Germany; it is a makeshift, a pis- 
 aller, as the French call it ; a thing which is bad 
 enough as it is, but the absence of which would 
 be worse still. Old Palacky, the historian of 
 the Bohemians or Czechs, rightly said that if 
 Austria did not exist, it would be necessary to 
 invent it. It is not a country, or a nation; it 
 is a misfortune, but an inevitable one. This 
 can be made clear very briefly. 
 
 The Germans have had too many terrible dis- 
 asters in the last three centuries ; they have, as 
 was pointed out above, learned too many a 
 wholesome lesson, to ignore what a blind man 
 can see. We mean, they know that any attempt 
 of theirs on a Continental country, unless really 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 75 
 
 justified as an act of self-defence, would almost 
 immediately call forth a coalition of most of 
 tlie other Powers of Europe. Suppose, for in- 
 stance, that Germany, out of sheer arrogance 
 and greed, should invade Holland or Switzer- 
 land. Nothing can be surer than that such an 
 invasion would at once prevail upon the other 
 Continental Powers to unite against Germany. 
 If Germany should, instead of Holland or 
 Switzerland, choose Austria as an object of 
 appropriation, the balance of power would be 
 thereby so gravely affected that Italy and 
 France, let alone Hungary, Belgium, and Hol- 
 land, would forthwith combine for the rehabili- 
 tation of the European equilibrium. 
 
 All this the Germans know full well. Their 
 leaders, such as Professor Hans Delbriick, tell 
 them so every day. They do not want to re- 
 peat the fatal mistake of Napoleon. The great 
 French Emperor was almost unceasingly mak- 
 ing war on one Continental Power after the 
 other, until finally all of them coalesced and 
 combined against him, and so brought about 
 his downfall. The Germans are quite aware 
 that if, trusting in their superior military or- 
 ganisation, they continue exasperating one Con- 
 
76 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 tinental nation after the other, those nations 
 will without fail unite against them, and fight 
 them until they meet their Waterloo. 
 
 Quite apart from this danger of a European, 
 at any rate a Continental, coalition against 
 them, the more thoughtful of the Germans are 
 not at all anxious to absorb recalcitrant nations 
 on the Continent. Already the few million 
 Poles cause them no end of trouble ; and if the 
 Germans, by hypothesis, forced the Dutch, 
 Swiss, let alone the Austrians, into the Ger- 
 man Empire, their Imperial Parliament would 
 become a real inferno^ or, in plain English, an 
 ungovernable anarchy. Prince Biilow, the Ger- 
 man Chancellor, has repeatedly declared that 
 the Poles form the greatest danger to the Ger- 
 man Empire. Now, fancy some nine million 
 Catholic Austrians entering the German Em- 
 pire, and thus, by their deputies, the German 
 Imperial Parliament. The Catholic or Centre 
 Party is already one of the most influential 
 parties in the Reichstag at Berlin; if nine mil- 
 lion more Catholics should be represented in 
 it, the Catholics would swamp the German Par- 
 liament. The Germans, mostly Protestant, can- 
 not possibly desire that. Bismarck said more 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 77 
 
 than once that he could not afford to absorb 
 Austria, even if it were offered to him. 
 
 All the foregoing reasons do not as yet give 
 the complete statement with regard to Ger- 
 many's unwillingness to seize on Austria. 
 There is a still more powerful reason; one 
 which at this stage of our little work we cannot 
 discuss in full, but which may and must be 
 touched upon. It is this: What Germany 
 wants and desires is not continental expansion, 
 but maritime expansion. In seizing part of 
 Austria, the Germans would, to put it in simple 
 language, only catch a Tartar. The gain is 
 doubtful, the advantage far from certain. To 
 expand on sea, on the other hand, would give 
 the Germans unbounded facilities for their 
 ever-growing surplus population, and for their 
 international trade. If we suppose that Ger- 
 many is offered the choice between say, Switzer- 
 land and South Africa ; there is no doubt what- 
 ever that the Germans would select the latter. 
 In the same way, Asia-Minor has immense at- 
 tractions for them; and the Dutch islands in 
 the East Indies are an object fervently desired 
 
78 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 by Germany. All this transmarine expansion, 
 however, means sea-power; in fact, supremacy 
 on the sea. This supremacy, again, means a 
 victorious war with Great Britain. 
 
 This, then, is the real, the true, the only ob- 
 jective of German *^ world-policy.'^ If Great 
 Britain yielded to them, by force of course, her 
 supremacy on sea, the Germans would not trou- 
 ble much longer about being aggressive on the 
 Continent. It would not pay them. To wrest 
 the naval supremacy from Britain is a matter 
 of war, but of a war incomparably shorter and 
 less costly than a war with a continental coali- 
 tion. It is well known that naval campaigns 
 may be decided in an exceedingly short time, 
 in a week or two. One signal victory, and the 
 campaign is decided. Such a rapid solution of 
 the problem cannot be so much as dreamed of 
 on the Continent. On the other hand, neither 
 Britain nor Germany can seriously hope to be 
 joined, in a naval war, by a coalition proper. 
 No more disastrous mistake can be made than 
 to believe that Britain will eventually be helped 
 by France, that is, by the French fleet. It will 
 not, unless a very profound and improbable 
 change comes over the whole mind of the French 
 nation. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 79 
 
 The Germans would therefore have to face 
 the British fleet alone. This is undoubtedly a 
 considerable venture. Yet it cannot be com- 
 pared with the venture of facing a Continental 
 coalition against the German army. If the 
 British nation had attacked Germany a few 
 years ago, say at the time of the Kaiser's tele- 
 gram to Krtiger, the ambition of the Germans 
 with regard to maritime expansion would have 
 been nipped in the bud. At that time the dis- 
 proportion between the British and the Ger- 
 man fleets was too much in favour of the former. 
 In a few years' time, however, this dispropor- 
 tion will be very much toned down. Unless 
 one believes in the absolute and unconditional 
 invincibility of the British fleet as in a sort of 
 law of nature, one is not entitled to assume that 
 the German fleet cannot ever defeat it. Such 
 statements may do in public gatherings crowned 
 by a wildly jingoistic gallery. They cannot be 
 taken seriously in a study of Britain's future. 
 At any rate, it remains true that the Germans 
 are entitled to think that it is much easier and 
 more profitable to make good their desire for 
 maritime expansion than to realise any hope 
 of absorbing the Continent against a coalition 
 of Powers. In the former case they would have 
 
80 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 to fight only one, if a very great, Power; in 
 the latter they would be attacked by at least 
 ten Powers. 
 
 Given all these undeniable circumstances, no 
 sane person will lightly attribute to the Ger- 
 mans an idea of beginning their expansion by 
 an attack on a great and hitherto friendly Con- 
 tinental Power, such as Austria-Hungary. 
 Quite on the contrary : Since the Germans are 
 fully aware of the folly of rousing against 
 themselves, unnecessarily, some 150,000,000 
 continentals; since, moreover, transmarine ex- 
 pansion is for them by far the more profitable 
 expansion of the two, and by far the more feasi- 
 ble, the Germans will, there is not a shadow of a 
 doubt, take great care to avoid any complica- 
 tions on the Continent. They will do every- 
 thing in their power to maintain the chief Con- 
 tinental State in the centre of Europe, that is, 
 Austria-Hungary. 
 
 That legend of the disruption and collapse 
 of Austria-Hungary after the death of the pres- 
 ent ruler is only a thought whose parent is the 
 wish of the, alas! but too numerous, peace-at- 
 any-pricers of this country. In their humanity 
 they wish the Germans to ravage, occupy, and 
 swallow Austria-Hungary, instead of attacking 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 81 
 
 the British fleet. Such an Austrian diversion, 
 those goody-goody ones think in the inmost 
 recesses of their hearts, wonld keep the obnox- 
 ious Teuton from the shores of this country. 
 So it would, but the Germans are not kind 
 enough to be made the cat's-paw of Exeter 
 Hall, and of the members of the Society for 
 the Prevention of Cruelty to Cats. 
 
 It has so far been shown that the extraordi- 
 nary self-assurance of the Germans is partly 
 based on the eclipse of France and of Austria- 
 Hungary. We shall now see that Eussia, too, 
 by her complete defeat at the hands of the 
 Japanese and by the ensuing anarchy within 
 her empire, has for the time being ceased to 
 have any serious influence on European mat- 
 ters. If one considers that it was the German 
 Kaiser who, practically the first, in a now fa- 
 mous painting of his, foreshadowed the ^'Yel- 
 low Peril," and that this very ^^ Yellow Peril" 
 was the cause of the downfall of Russia, and 
 thus of the unprecedented ascendency of Ger- 
 many, one cannot but be amazed at the strange 
 and contradictory effects of political events. 
 Russia is not only the immediate neighbour of 
 Germany; there is also practically no natural 
 barrier of any serious kind between the two 
 
82 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 countries. This has always rendered Germany 
 very apprehensive of danger on the Eastern 
 or Russian side of her empire. It has repeat- 
 edly prevailed upon German rulers to go warily 
 and with even exaggerated caution. It has, un- 
 der all circumstances, poured water into the 
 German wine, as the French say. They could 
 not think of sounding high trumpet-tones in 
 handling international affairs. The Russian 
 Bear was there. But now (1907) he is no 
 longer there. He has withdrawn into his ob- 
 scure lair, there to lick his own wounds, a-grum- 
 bling and a-moaning. 
 
 THE POSITION IN 1907 
 
 If, then, we twine up all the threads of Eu- 
 ropean politics into one big rope of inference, 
 it comes to this : In all Europe there is at pres- 
 ent no longer a concert of six great Powers, but 
 only a duo of two Powers: Germany and 
 Great Britain. The rest of the Powers are 
 what in music we call ripieni, i.e., merely fill- 
 ing out the chords and harmonies. This state 
 of minored prestige Germany has a capital 
 interest to maintain in Europe. If the polit- 
 ically anaemic Powers should coalesce and unite 
 against Germany, they might become most dan- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 83 
 
 gerous to Germany. Hence the whole of Ger- 
 man policy is directed to one single object: to 
 keep the former great Powers as bloodless as 
 possible, to anaemiate without unduly exasper- 
 ating them. This done, there remains for the 
 Germans one single great duel, that with Great 
 Britain. This, they hope they will be able to 
 manage. 
 
 The reader has undoubtedly noticed, from 
 time to time, the progress in building men-of- 
 war that has, in the course of the last ten years, 
 been made in Germany. The daily papers 
 bring such reports from authentic sources, and 
 here and there a more thoughtful Englishman 
 has collected them for future reference. The 
 mass of this nation, we are afraid, has treated 
 these most serious matters with the usual lev- 
 ity. It is, therefore, necessary to collect here 
 the latest and most authentic data about the 
 startling progress of the German fighting navy, 
 in order to impress the British reader with the 
 fact above insisted upon, to wit, that the Ger- 
 mans do prepare for a possible encounter with 
 Great Britain. Their navy can have only one 
 meaning: England, or, to speak with due re- 
 gard to Scots and Irish, let alone Welsh sus- 
 ceptibilities. Great Britain. Neither Russia 
 
84 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 nor Denmark, Norway or Sweden are threaten- 
 ing the German coast. The colonies of the 
 Germans are primitive; and their trade does 
 not as yet require a navy as vast as the one 
 they are building. Now, as to the facts of their 
 men-of-war, built and building: 
 
 During 1906 the German navy was increased 
 by fifteen new warships, all of which were built 
 in German shipbuilding yards, and represent a 
 total displacement of 62,582 tons. Only three 
 of these warships were built in the Government 
 yards, and it speaks volumes for the gradual 
 development of shipbuilding in Germany that 
 the remaining twelve units were turned out by 
 private yards. These fifteen units were made 
 up of two squadron-battleships, two armoured- 
 cruisers, two small cruisers, one mine-laying 
 vessel, one ship for hydrographical purposes, 
 one tender, six torpedo-boats, and one subma- 
 rine; one of the torpedo-boats has not been 
 launched yet. The battleships were the Schle- 
 sien, launched at Danzig in May, and the 
 Schleswig-Holstein, launched in December at 
 Gaarden, near Kiel ; each is of 13,200 tons, and 
 they are the last of the five vessels of the 
 Deutschland type. With these two, the German 
 navy has now twenty-four big battleships. 
 
 ii 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 85 
 
 The armoured cruisers are the Scharnhorst, 
 launched at Hamburg in March, and the Gneise- 
 naUy launched in June at Gropelingen, on the 
 Weser; each is of 11,500 tons displacement. 
 The small cruiser Nurnberg was launched at 
 Kiel in August, and the Stuttgart at Danzig 
 in September. The Nautilus y Germany's first 
 mine-layer, of 2,000 tons, was launched on the 
 Weser in August; the tender Delphin, of 445 
 tons, was launched at Kiel in January. One 
 division of torpedo-boats was launched at Kiel ; 
 the last of these boats, G 137, fitted with the 
 Parsons turbines, and of 572 tons could not be 
 launched in December, nor has the date yet 
 been fixed. Finally, last August, the U 1, the 
 first submarine boat owned by Germany, was 
 launched from the Krupp Germania yard at 
 Gaarden; it is of 180 tons. 
 
 In an appendix to Count Reventlow's book, 
 ^^Weltfrieden oder Weltkrieg'^ (World-peace or 
 World-war) f 1907, the well-known German 
 writer on naval subjects gives an interesting 
 account of his correspondence with six of the 
 most important private shipbuilding yards in 
 Germany with regard to their resources for the 
 construction of battleships and cruisers of the 
 largest type. Krupp 's Germania yards at Kiel 
 
86 GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 
 
 replied that they were perfectly capable of com- 
 pleting a large battleship or cruiser within a 
 period of twenty-four to thirty months, and that 
 the seven slip-ways at their disposal would en- 
 able them to lay down at least two of these 
 vessels every year. The Howaldts works, also 
 of Kiel, returned a similar reply, and guaran- 
 teed to deliver one large battleship or cruiser 
 every year after the first two years. The me- 
 chanical appliances available at Kiel were of 
 the most modern type, and skilled labour was 
 plentiful. The Vulkan yards at Stettin stated 
 that they could lay down two battleships of 
 18,000 tons each and two cruisers of 15,000 tons 
 every year. If the guns and armour were 
 promptly delivered by the makers, they too 
 would be able to complete the ships within 
 twenty-four to thirty months. When the Vul- 
 kan ^s new yards at Hamburg had been opened 
 their productive capacity would be increased 
 50 to 75 per cent. The firm of Blohm and Voss 
 estimated that they could lay down two large 
 ships, either battleships or cruisers, every year, 
 and that they could deliver them within two 
 or two and a half years if a continuous succes- 
 sion of orders were assured. Herr Schichau, 
 of Schichau *s works at Danzig and Elbing, re- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 87 
 
 plied tliat, if necessary, lie could *^ comfort- 
 ably'' accommodate four battlesliips of 18,000 
 tons each upon the stocks, and could also at 
 the same time carry on the work of fitting out 
 two or three more similar vessels. Herr 
 Schichau informed Count Reventlow that he 
 had already completed a battleship in thirty 
 months, but that in general he would prefer to 
 receive a fresh order every half-year rather 
 than reduce the present building period of 
 thirty to thirty-six months, which was quite 
 short enough. The Weser Shipbuilding Com- 
 pany drew attention to its new yards, and 
 pledged its ability to lay down two battleships 
 and two cruisers simultaneously, and to com- 
 plete them within a period of twenty-four to 
 thirty months. In addition to these private 
 yards, Germany possesses all the resources of 
 the Imperial navy yards at Kiel and Wilhelms- 
 haven. 
 
 The extent of dock accommodation for large 
 ships available in German ports is described 
 as being ample, so that from this point of view 
 there is no reason why the rate of construction 
 for the German navy should not be accelerated. 
 There are four floating docks, including one 
 with a capacity of 35,000 tons, at Hamburg, one 
 
88 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 at Bremen, and one at Stettin, all of which are 
 in private hands, while the naval authorities 
 have two dry docks at Kiel and four at Wil- 
 helmshaven, two of which are still under con- 
 struction. The State of Bremen also owns a 
 dry dock at Bremerhaven, which is rented by 
 the North-German Lloyd, and, if necessary, the 
 locks of the Kiel Canal could be utilised for 
 docking large ships, especially when the new 
 and larger locks which are projected have been 
 built. 
 
 Furthermore, we read the following telling 
 facts in April, 1906: — 
 
 The action of the German Admiralty in plac- 
 ing with extreme promptitude the orders for 
 the two new battleships to be laid down under 
 the German programme of 1907 has come as 
 something of a surprise to the British naval 
 authorities. The large armoured ships to be 
 laid down for the German Navy this year are 
 three in number. Two of them are described 
 as battleships and the other is known as an 
 armoured cruiser. All three are larger than 
 any vessels yet built or designed for the British 
 Navy. The two battleships will displace 19,- 
 000 metric tons, or 18,000 British tons, apiece, 
 800 tons larger than the Dreadnought. It is 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 89 
 
 understood that they will be laid down in the 
 next few weeks. Their armament is reported 
 to be fourteen or sixteen 11-in. guns of fifty 
 calibres, so mounted that they will bring to 
 bear a broadside superior to that of the Dread- 
 nought. They will, it is believed, have turbine 
 engines, though, since great secrecy has been 
 maintained as to their details, nothing is cer- 
 tainly known. Their speed will probably be 
 about the same as that of the Dreadnought. 
 They will be completed in the summer of 1910. 
 
 The new German armoured cruiser will dis- 
 place about 19,200 tons, and will therefore be 
 2,000 tons larger than the British ships of the 
 Invincible class. It is known that she will have 
 turbine engines and that a speed of over 
 twenty-five knots is expected from her. Her 
 armament is believed to consist of ten 11-in. 
 guns mounted in the centre line, so that all can 
 fire on either broadside, but some accounts rep- 
 resent it as being even more powerful. Like 
 the British Invincibles, she will be capable of 
 destroying any battleship of the pre-Dread- 
 nought era. 
 
 In all, this summer (1907) Germany will 
 have six monster ships building for her Navy. 
 These are made up thus : Two battleships, be- 
 
90 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 lieved to be of over 18,000 tons, voted in 1906; 
 one armoured cruiser of 16,000 tons, voted in 
 1906; two battleships of 18,700 tons, voted in 
 1907; one armoured cruiser of 19,200 tons, 
 voted in 1907. 
 
 England bas seven monster ships building or 
 complete : the Dreadnought, voted in 1905, com- 
 plete; the three 17,200-ton armoured cruisers 
 of the Invincible class, voted in 1905, complet- 
 ing; and three battleships of the Superb class, 
 and 18,600 tons, voted in 1906, building. In 
 addition, two battleships are to be voted under 
 the estimates of the present year, and a third 
 may be laid down if the Hague Conference fails 
 to secure disarmament. But these last ves- 
 sels will not be laid down till the beginning of 
 1908. 
 
 Thanks to the enterprise of the London 
 Daily Express (see an article in that paper of 
 April 4th, 1907), we now know that the German 
 Admiralty has decided to turn the port of Em- 
 den, at the mouth of the river Ems, into a first- 
 class torpedo base. This decision is Ger- 
 many's reply to the formation of the British 
 Home Fleet and the creation of a new flotilla 
 of torpedo-boat destroyers at Dover. Emden is 
 the nearest German harbour to the English 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 91 
 
 coast, and is some fifty miles nearer to Sheer- 
 ness than Wilhelmshaven, which has hitherto 
 been the most westerly of Germany's naval 
 ports. It will be remembered that Emden is the 
 port which is always chosen by novelists and 
 story writers as the point at which the German 
 army is embarked for the invasion of England. 
 Embarkation wharves extend for over a mile 
 along the right bank of the Ems, bnt apart from 
 this the place is not very well adapted for the 
 purpose usually allotted to it. The fortifica- 
 tions are very feeble, and there are only a few 
 troops quartered there, while for many miles 
 the line of railway leading up from the military 
 centres is a single one. 
 
 These difficulties, however, could easily be 
 surmounted, and they do not in the least affect 
 the decision of the German Government. The 
 principal German naval base in the North Sea 
 is Wilhelmshaven, and this is connected with 
 Emden by the Ems-Jahde Canal, about forty 
 miles in length, which is deep enough to allow 
 of the passage of small torpedo craft. By us- 
 ing this canal, whatever force of torpedo-boats 
 is at Wilhelmshaven can reach Emden without 
 touching the sea at all, and it is stated that it 
 is extremely unlikely that a force of boats will 
 
92 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 be permanently maintained at Emden. The 
 only craft to be there permanently will be the 
 necessary *^ mother ships. '^ There is no doubt, 
 however, that the new base will provide a use- 
 ful and dangerous striking point for Germany 
 should she ever come into conflict with Great 
 Britain. 
 
 The Express naval correspondent at Sheer- 
 ness had an interview with an officer of the 
 Home Fleet at that port. **I am greatly sur- 
 prised,'* he said, *Hhat the move has not been 
 made before. Emden will certainly be of much 
 more use to Germany as a torpedo base than as 
 a possible jumping off place for an invasion 
 which in all probability they would never risk. 
 It brings their torpedo craft within eight hours 
 of the English coasf 
 
 **Do you think the British Admiralty will 
 have to make any answer to this stepf the 
 officer was asked. 
 
 ^'With the flotillas of destroyers now based 
 here and at Dover,'' he replied, ^^we ought to 
 be safe enough; but, in my opinion, the Sheer- 
 ness flotilla spends far too much of its time in 
 the Channel and in the North of Scotland. 
 They call it the Nore flotilla, and it ought to be 
 the Nore flotilla, and nothing else. The divi- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 93 
 
 sions at Sheerness and Dover should spend 
 most of their time cruising about otf the mouth 
 of the Thames. The Home Fleet will be a fine 
 bait for these Emden torpedo craft, and we 
 cannot afford to run any risks of a surprise.'* 
 
 Another officer whose opinion was asked 
 said: — **We cannot overrate the efficiency of 
 German torpedo vessels. If Emden is going 
 to be a torpedo base there ought to be at least 
 thirty-six destroyers at Sheerness, and twelve 
 continually at sea to prevent a surprise.'' 
 
 Later reports brought the following informa- 
 tion: — Between that port and Wilhelmshaven 
 runs the Ems-Jahde Canal, and whatever ves- 
 sels of the size of German destroyers may be 
 at the dockyard port can reach Emden in less 
 than two hours, without touching the open sea 
 at all. The torpedo branch of the German 
 navy is the most efficient department of a very 
 efficient fleet. The men who man the craft are 
 all expert in their work, for they are entered 
 into the torpedo schools on joining the navy, 
 and never leave that branch until they quit the 
 service for good. The crews frequently re- 
 ceive lectures on the defences of British naval 
 bases. The full strength of the German navy 
 in torpedo-boat destroyers is seventy-one, and 
 
94 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 as each ship is replaced as soon as it reaches 
 the age of ten years, they are in all respects 
 up to date. In the British Navy there are still 
 to be found several destroyers twelve, thirteen, 
 and even fourteen years old. 
 
 At present the German vessels, of which 
 forty-three are in full commission, are divided 
 between Wilhelmshaven, Cuxhaven (both North 
 Sea ports), and Kiel, and, as it is very improb- 
 able that any of those now in commission will 
 be reduced to the sham British standard of 
 *^ nucleus crews," the end of this year, when 
 the new harbour is completed, will see at least 
 forty modern and efficient German destroyers 
 within eight or nine hours' steaming distance 
 of the English coast. 
 
 As a protection against the possible attacks 
 of such a force. Great Britain maintains in the 
 North Sea only twenty-four fully-commis- 
 sioned destroyers, of which at the present five 
 are laid up for repair. Even when all of them 
 are fit for sea, they are frequently hundreds 
 of miles away in the English Channel or the 
 north of Scotland. Behind these ready-for- 
 war craft a considerable force of torpedo ves- 
 sels is attached to the Nore Division of the 
 Home Fleet, but, as they are manned on the 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 95 
 
 pernicious nucleus crew system, they are prac- 
 tically negligible for immediate fighting pur- 
 poses. Besides, they are all assembled for ex- 
 ercises at Torbay, 340 miles from the North 
 Sea. The recent developments in German 
 naval organisation have no other object but to 
 threaten Great Britain's supremacy in those 
 waters which the creation of the Home Fleet 
 was intended to assert. That fleet came into 
 official existence on New Year's Day. So far, 
 its ready-for-war strength in the North Sea is 
 represented by two battleships to Germany's 
 sixteen. The Fifth Cruiser Squadron is still 
 existent only on paper. 
 
 In March, 1907, the Rheinisch Westfaelische 
 Zeitung, published at Essen, gave prominence 
 to a telegram from Berlin announcing on in- 
 formation derived from the best source that the 
 naval administration intends to purchase the 
 whole of the ^^Oberland" of Heligoland with 
 the object of fortifying the entire island. 
 Several tracts have already been bought, and 
 the garrison is now being reinforced by 420 
 men. It is proposed to turn the North Harbour 
 into a torpedo harbour for the active fleet, and 
 the harbour will be developed on a correspond- 
 ingly large scale. The telegram continues: — 
 
96 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 ^'The present fortifications are a half -measure, 
 for they are unable to offer any effective re- 
 sistance to the heavy turret guns of hostile war- 
 ships, whose range, too, would out-distance the 
 batteries of the island. The German people 
 will understand why the plan has now assumed 
 definite shape and development. Heligoland 
 would be a plain hint to the Western Powers 
 and an unmistakable reply to their recent 
 machinations. Great Britain has ostenta- 
 tiously increased her Home Fleet, and the new 
 war harbour at Devonport is a fresh link in 
 the chain of measures which stand in direct 
 antithesis to the disarmament proposals which 
 Great Britain is with suspicious zeal espousing. 
 Let us make Heligoland a German Cronstadt 
 which, covering the mouths of the Weser and 
 Elbe and the Kiel Canal, together with the 
 coastal defences on the mainland, will form a 
 base within whose sphere an enemy will not 
 lightly dare to intrude." 
 
 The Berliner Neueste Nachrichten states that 
 it is only contemplated to improve the fortifi- 
 cations at a cost of £60,000. The German 
 active battle fleet, or North Sea Squadron, con- 
 sisted, middle of May, 1907, of the sixteen most 
 up-to-date vessels in the Imperial Navy, with 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 97 
 
 two others in reserve at Wilhelmshaven. It 
 lias now been decided to add two battleships 
 to the active fleet and two to the reserve, bring- 
 ing the total up to twenty-two. 
 
 The numerical inferiority of the British 
 Fleet in home waters, to which attention has 
 so often been called of late, will be greatly in- 
 creased by this augmentation of the German 
 fleet in service. The British Channel Fleet, 
 which covers the North Sea, contains fourteen 
 battleships in full commission; Germany will 
 shortly have eighteen in the same waters. In 
 the Home Fleet at the Nore there are six more 
 battleships, but these, as was admitted in the 
 House of Lords, are largely manned with un- 
 trained crews, and cannot be regarded as in- 
 stantly ready for war. The British total is 
 therefore twenty to the German twenty-two, 
 the percentage ready for immediate hostilities 
 being respectively 70 and 82. In addition, the 
 German torpedo flotilla is much stronger than 
 the British, and, unlike it, is always in the 
 North Sea and ready for instant service. 
 
 This change is typical of what has been going 
 on for the past three years (1904-1907). 
 While the British Naval Estimates have been 
 reduced by six millions sterling, the German 
 
98 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 have increased by three millions. While Brit- 
 ish arsenals and dockyards are being reduced 
 and neglected, those of Germany are being 
 rapidly developed. It is only a continuity of 
 policy on both sides that has led to the reduc- 
 tion of the number of British ships in full com- 
 mission and an increase in the German. 
 
 GERMAN NAVY LEAGUE 
 
 In many ways even more important than all 
 that has been done by the Germans in the mat- 
 ter of ship-building for purposes of war, is the 
 constantly growing intense interest of the Ger- 
 man nation in those naval preparations. The 
 German Navy League is well known as the 
 mouthpiece of the German Government. Here 
 are a few facts about the activity of that 
 League, brought down to May, 1907: — 
 
 During the last year the membership of the 
 League increased from 865,000 to 906,000, 
 whereas the British Navy League only numbers 
 about 20,000 members. 
 
 The Navy League of German Women works 
 in co-operation with the Navy League itself, 
 and numbers many thousands of enthusiastic 
 women friends of maritime expansion. Dur- 
 ing the last twelve months nearly 2,000 public 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 99 
 
 meetings were held under tlie auspices of the 
 League. Six hundred thousand copies of a 
 naval handbook were sold at cost price, and 
 500,000 copies of a pamphlet on ''Germany's 
 Naval Power'' were supplied to the branches 
 for distribution. The lectures and meetings 
 were supplemented by biograph productions 
 showing pictures of the fleet at sea and other 
 phases of naval life. One of the most impor- 
 tant features of the work of the League was the 
 propaganda conducted among school teachers 
 and schoolboys at State schools. Many thou- 
 sands of pamphlets and leaflets were distrib- 
 uted to teachers, who also received from the 
 League's officials much general information 
 about the navy, in writing. 
 
 Three hundred teachers from inland towns 
 were conducted on a four days' excursion to 
 Hamburg and Kiel, at the expense of the 
 League, to enable them to see the importance 
 of Germany's mercantile interests and the size 
 of the fleet with their own eyes. Several ex- 
 cursions of schoolboys to Kiel were also ar- 
 ranged at the expense of the League, which 
 thus enabled between 2,000 and 3,000 German 
 lads to obtain a personal interest in the Kai- 
 ser's fleet. Special railway excursions were 
 
100 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 also run from many inland places to Kiel at 
 low prices, to enable Germans in general to 
 view the fleet. The monthly paper issued by 
 the League has a circulation of 355,000. These 
 particulars prove clearly enough that great 
 popular interest and enthusiasm exist in Ger- 
 many in regard to the navy. 
 
 Count von Reventlow, the well-known Ger- 
 man naval expert, has given the Daily MaiVs 
 Berlin correspondent a statement of the rea- 
 sons why limitation of naval armaments is re- 
 jected by the Kaiser's Government. He pro- 
 posed as an inscription over the Conference 
 Hall at the Hague, ^'Si vis bellum, para pacem" 
 (^^If you wish for war, prepare for peace"). 
 
 Count von Reventlow argues that Germany 
 must follow England's principle of maintaining 
 a fleet able not only to guard her coasts, but to 
 maintain unimpaired the over-sea communica- 
 tions vital to her existence. ''In this region 
 of national defence England has been the 
 world's schoolmaster. We in Germany con- 
 fess ourselves without exception believers in 
 the English doctrine, for the soundness of 
 which English history furnishes such brilliant 
 confirmation. How far our teacher interprets 
 the meaning of 'coast-defence' is apparent from 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 101 
 
 her old strategic principle that in war one's 
 own lines of defence must be laid on the 
 enemy's shores. 
 
 ^*It lies, indeed, in the incompleteness of hu- 
 man nature that Christian altruism has not yet 
 become the common possession of the nations. 
 So must we Germans acknowledge that we still 
 possess enough wicked egoism to defend our 
 property to the maximum of our strength. As 
 yet, Germany is far from having reached this 
 point. 
 
 ^^It is obvious that many Englishmen should 
 wish to see the cost of their Navy reduced. 
 But here again Germans are so devoid of al- 
 truism that they cannot set the desires of Eng- 
 lish taxpayers above German life interests. I 
 can only repeat my former proposal that Eng- 
 land slacken her armaments until the comple- 
 tion of the German naval programme in 1920, 
 when both fleets will be about equally strong. 
 Then will the millennium be at hand, and tax- 
 payers can sacrifice a cock to ^sculapius." 
 
 GERMANY IN THE MIDDLE EAST 
 
 The attentive reader of the preceding state- 
 ments of fact cannot possibly think that Ger- 
 man enterprise for purposes of greater na- 
 
102 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 tional expansion is nothing more than a pious 
 wish of a few professors or other academic 
 people. This enterprise is distinctly imperial- 
 ist ; it is consciously the set resolution of a great 
 nation to assert their place of prominence in 
 the supreme council of nations. One has only 
 to read what the Germans have recently com- 
 menced doing in far-off Persia, to get a very 
 clear idea of their determined bid for imperial 
 power of the first magnitude. In a valuable 
 and authentic report published in the London 
 Daily Express, of April 3, 1907, we read as 
 follows : 
 
 ^'Germany, in need of new fields of expan- 
 sion, has marked down Persia as a favourable 
 country for exploitation, and elaborate plans 
 have been worked out for the promotion of 
 German commercial interests and the extension 
 of German enterprise in the Shah's dominions. 
 
 ^^ These plans are to be carried out by Ger- 
 man capitalists supported by the German Gov- 
 ernment, in spite of the fact that every step 
 forward contemplated by the Germans involves 
 an invasion of the recognised sphere of British 
 influence and an attack on British interests in 
 Persia. German enterprise in Persia thus 
 promises to bring about a critical situation in 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 103 
 
 the Middle East, besides increasing the tension 
 between Great Britain and Germany already 
 existing in Europe. 
 
 *' Germany's schemes for exploiting Persia 
 are so menacing to British interests that they 
 merit serious attention on the part of His Maj- 
 esty's Government. 
 
 *^ Hitherto Great Britain and Russia have 
 been the only Powers with extensive influence 
 at Teheran. North Persia has been recognised 
 as the Russian sphere of influence, and South 
 Persia as the British. The Anglo-Russian 
 agreement, now practically concluded, provides 
 for the removal of future causes of rivalry in 
 Persia. 
 
 *^This arrangement between Great Britain 
 and Russia is extremely distasteful to Ger- 
 many, who desires to further her own ends in 
 Persia. It is significant, however, that the 
 commercial development now beginning is to 
 be confined to South Persia, and carefully ex- 
 cluded from North Persia. 
 
 * ^ In plain words, this means that the German 
 Government is willing to patronise an invasion 
 by German merchants of the British sphere of 
 influence, while carefully avoiding any action 
 that could give offence to Russia. German 
 
104 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 protestations of friendship for England cannot 
 conceal the fact that the scheme now begun in 
 Persia with the consent and knowledge of the 
 German Government is an effort to gain a 
 footing in a country adjacent to Britain's In- 
 dian Empire. 
 
 ^^The German Orient Bank was founded 
 more than a year ago to promote profitable en- 
 terprises in Eastern countries. Its own capital 
 amounts to £800,000, and its founders and 
 backers are three of the most powerful insti- 
 tutions in Germany — the Dresdner Bank, the 
 National Bank of Germany, and the Schaffhau- 
 sen Banking Association. One of its directors, 
 Herr Gutmann, junior, is now at Teheran to 
 begin practical business operations in Per- 
 sia. 
 
 *^The plan of campaign has been carefully 
 worked out, and begins with the establishment 
 of a German bank at Teheran to compete with 
 the British and Russian banks already there. 
 The main object of this bank will be to secure 
 concessions. 
 
 **The German Orient Bank will also try to 
 establish a great commercial centre at the most 
 favourable port on the Persian Gulf, obtain- 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 105 
 
 ing a concession of territory as the site of the 
 necessary buildings. This would be the head- 
 quarters of a new German line of coasting 
 steamships to distribute to all the Persian ports 
 the German exports brought to the chosen com- 
 mercial centre by the Hamburg- America and 
 other German lines. 
 
 ^'The steamships of the Hamburg- America 
 Company now plying in the Persian Gulf 
 undercut their British competitors by charging 
 85. a ton of freight as compared with 125. a 
 ton rate of the British ships, and it is expected 
 that a continuation of this policy will drive the 
 British flag out of the Gulf. 
 
 ^'An audacious scheme of railway construc- 
 tion, seriously encroaching on British rights, 
 completes the project of the German Orient 
 Bank. It is stated that one of these projected 
 German railways, running from Teheran to 
 Bagdad, would earn profits simply by convey- 
 ing the corpses of pious Persians to two holy 
 places southward of Bagdad, where the Persian 
 Moslems desire to be buried. Another pro- 
 jected railway, running from Bagdad eastward 
 and then southward to the new German com- 
 mercial centre on the Persian Gulf, would 
 
106 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 provide the urgently needed terminus for the 
 Bagdad Railway. 
 
 ^'The German Government recently ap- 
 pointed a new Minister to Teheran, Herr Stem- 
 rich, an expert in Oriental affairs, to promote 
 German commercial interests in Persia. One 
 of Herr Stemrich's first acts was to recommend 
 an immediate extension of German enterprise. ' ' 
 
 COMMERCIAL. ENTEEPEISE AND PROSPERITY 
 
 What makes all these far-reaching plans and 
 preparations even more menacing, at any rate 
 more important than they are at present, is 
 this: that Germany, at home, is making such 
 rapid strides towards an unprecedented prog- 
 ress of her national wealth and prosperity, that 
 her oversea enterprises will, without doubt, 
 easily find their necessary financial backing by 
 capital in Germany. For this purpose, one has 
 only to read the report of Mr. Consul H. Har- 
 ris-Gastrell on the trade of the Kingdom of 
 Wurtemberg, one of the South-German States, 
 issued in 1907. In that country practically 
 every industry is reported to be in a highly 
 flourishing condition. Orders are pouring in, 
 capital is doubling with unparalleled rapidity, 
 wages are rising, and there is an extraordinary 
 
GEKMANY'S MADNESS 107 
 
 demand for labour. The British Consul 
 says : — 
 
 ''The general economic improvement in Ger- 
 many . . . has continued steadily, and in the 
 latter of the two years under review (1905- 
 1906) attained a hitherto unprecedented 
 height. 
 
 ''There are no signs as yet of high-water 
 mark having been reached, most manufacturers 
 having orders for months in advance. 
 
 "The home labour supply has proved inade- 
 quate to meet the increased demands, and in 
 some trades a considerable number of foreign 
 workmen have been obtained. 
 
 "This scarcity of labour has resulted in a 
 very general increase of wages, which in many 
 industries amounts to more than a 10 per cent, 
 rise, and also in many cases a shortening of the 
 working day.'' 
 
 It is stated that the coal consumption of the 
 German Empire has risen from 166,200,000 tons 
 in 1904 to 195,000,000 tons in the first eleven 
 months of 1906. Goods traffic on the railways 
 on 1906 was double that of 1905. 
 
 The following table shows the amazing 
 growth of German imports and exports during 
 the past twelve years: — 
 
108 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 IMPORTS 
 
 1894 £206,000,000 
 
 1906 £392,000,000 
 
 EXPORTS 
 
 1894 .. .. .., £166,000,000 
 
 1906 £306,000,000 
 
 An increase of nearly 100 per cent, in twelve 
 years. 
 
 In most trades the only subject of complaint 
 is the scarcity of workmen. The following are 
 typical extracts: — 
 
 Machinery. — Employers complain of the dif- 
 ficulty of securing skilled technical labour. 
 
 Motor Industry. — The demand (in 1905-6) 
 far exceeded the output. 
 
 Brickmaking. — The labour problem becomes 
 more difficult every year. A large number of 
 Italian workmen are now employed. 
 
 Furniture. — Manufacturers complain of the 
 difficulty of obtaining skilled labour. 
 
 Boot and Shoe Trade. — The industry has 
 made good headway. The manufacturers com- 
 plain of the difficulty in securing skilled hands. 
 
 One of the most striking evidences of Ger- 
 many's amazing prosperity is given in the fol- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 109 
 
 lowing remarkable statement of capital in- 
 vested in industrial undertakings: — 
 
 Capital invested in the year 1904 £11,250,000 
 '' '» '' 1906 £19,500,000 
 
 An increase of nearly 75 per cent, in two 
 years. 
 
 imperialism: German and British 
 
 The upshot, then, of a cool and sincere inves- 
 tigation into the state of German political, 
 naval and economic conditions is this : that the 
 Germans do think of expanding their country 
 into an empire proper, and that they have all 
 the means of doing so. They have the money 
 for it; they have, as was shown above, the 
 requisite prudence and the firm resolution to 
 avoid complications on the Continent; they are 
 fast getting the navy for the carrying out of 
 their imperialism. Now, unless a person is 
 ready to maintain that a man who is actually 
 in a position which entitles him to assume that 
 he can readily double his income, will yet and 
 in all cases, abstain from doing so; unless, we 
 say, one is inclined to assert such a thing, we 
 cannot possibly assume that the Germans will. 
 
110 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 in the near future, abstain from further expan- 
 sion, industrial and imperial. There have been 
 single individuals who, like Sylla, quietly with- 
 drew into private life, although all the treas- 
 ures of power and wealth were in their hands. 
 But there is in history no record of an entire 
 nation that has ever done such a thing. We 
 have no right whatever to presume that of the 
 Germans. On the contrary, for the reasons 
 given, we are obliged to expect them to proceed 
 with ever greater energy on the road to impe- 
 rialism, or to '^world-power'' as they call it. 
 
 In the opinion of the present writer, the in- 
 ability of so many thousands of Englishmen 
 to see aright in all questions of the relation of 
 Germany to Great Britain is largely due to the 
 ignorance in which they are about the real driv- 
 ing causes of their own, of British Imperial- 
 ism. The average Briton lives and dies in the 
 belief that the great achievement that we call 
 The British Empire was made chiefly by a sort 
 of innate genius of the '* Anglo-Saxon Eace." 
 That blessed expression seems to account for 
 everything. It is, in fact, not too much to 
 say, that forty people out of fifty will conven- 
 iently account for most things under the sun by 
 referring them either to the weather or to the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 111 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Eace. Yet, with due deference 
 to both of these remarkable Powers, it might 
 be urged with no mean lack of probability, that 
 there are quite a number of historical, political 
 and other events that can be traced back to 
 neither of the so-called four seasons in Eng- 
 land, nor to the influence of the Anglo-Saxon 
 Race. British Imperialism is one of these 
 events. It was made neither by meteorolog- 
 ical, nor by racial qualities. It was made, be- 
 cause it had to be made; because Imperialism 
 was more necessary to the dwellers of Great 
 Britain than was either the Church of England 
 or the Temperance Movement. 
 
 British Imperialism began with William the 
 Conqueror, or the famous Franco-Norman who 
 succeeded the only one of all English Kings to 
 engrave the date of his greatest battle upon the 
 memory of every Englishman. This is now not 
 too far from 850 years. Imperialism in this 
 country is older than Oxford University, the 
 House of Commons, the Church of England, the 
 Nonconformist Churches, the English Sunday, 
 or the English language. At first that Impe- 
 rialism spent itself in France (from 1066 to 
 1453), and then when it was found out that 
 France could not be conquered, it worked at the 
 
112 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 incorporation of Ireland and Scotland, and when 
 that was finished (1707), it went abroad and 
 fought and wrought together the present Brit- 
 ish Empire. The same reason that made the 
 English of 1900 say, ^'from Cape to Cairo," 
 made them say in 1100, '^from the Tweed to 
 Biarritz,'' or (as Biarritz did not exist at that 
 time) ^'from Berwick to Bordeaux." It was 
 always the same thing. Imperialism is not a 
 matter of choice, or of Knight-errantry, a sort 
 of Don Quixote enterprise. This was partly 
 taught by the late Professor Seeley; but quite 
 wrongly. It was not by *^ absent-mindedness" 
 that the British Empire was founded. It was 
 an imperative necessity that called it into exist- 
 ence. We venture to refer our readers to our 
 book Imperialism (1905, Hutchinson) for fur- 
 ther details. 
 
 Here we speak of these things only because 
 we mean to bring out as strongly as possible 
 the fundamental nature of all Imperialism 
 proper. This nature spells Necessity. The 
 Romans did not build up their Empire because 
 in a moment of bored leisure they said to them- 
 selves: ^^Life is a nuisance — let us go and do 
 something — suppose we conquer the world!" 
 They conquered the world because they were 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 113 
 
 placed before the alternative of perishing at 
 once or conquering everything. Now, the Ger- 
 mans of our days are in a similar position. 
 They are at present over sixty million people ; 
 that is, the German Empire already contains 
 more European whites than does the British 
 Empire. They are exceedingly prosperous, 
 and, since wealth increases the greed for lux- 
 uries even more rapidly than the power to make 
 money, the Germans are daily getting more and 
 more anxious for the possession of new fields 
 of commercial activity and power. But how 
 can they do justice to these immensely power- 
 ful desires of theirs unless they expand into a 
 world-empire? They must become a world- 
 empire or they must abdicate. 
 
 THE GERMAN ABROAD 
 
 At a great number of '* classes'' or discus- 
 sions after lectures and other public addresses, 
 the author has heard it remarked by various 
 British men and women, that if the Germans 
 want to expand their commerce, they can very 
 well do so without waging war with England, 
 since England does not roll any obstacles what- 
 ever in the way of German immigration into 
 British Colonies. This is as yet perfectly true. 
 
114 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Germans may at present leave their Father- 
 land, repair to, say Australia, and there es- 
 tablish any business of their own under condi- 
 tions and circumstances identical with those 
 applying to an Englishman. No discrimina- 
 tion is made against them. They may buy 
 land, open shop, trade, import or export, teach, 
 perform — in short, do anything they please, 
 without anybody forcing them to become Brit- 
 ish citizens, or laying upon them any burden 
 heavier than that laid upon British citizens. 
 
 All this is quite true; and if the Germans 
 were still where they used to be in the first half 
 of the nineteenth century; if their Fatherland 
 was still a geographical expression rather than 
 a high-strung national State, then, and then 
 alone, we might very well expect them to emi- 
 grate without much heartburning or patriotic 
 compunction. However, this has long since 
 ceased to be the case. Germany is no longer a 
 geographical or purely literary expression. It 
 is an intensely developed national polity ; a na- 
 tion instinct with all the powers, pride, and pas- 
 sion of the older nations, such as the British 
 and the French. Thousands of Britons could 
 find comfortable berths in countries other than 
 such as belong to the British Empire; say in 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 115 
 
 Eussia, Hungary, Italy or Austria. Yet few 
 of tliem avail themselves of the opportunity, 
 simply because they do not care to live in a 
 country not their own. And if any British 
 journalist or statesman should publicly preach 
 emigration of Britons to non-British countries, 
 he would be regarded as an enemy of England. 
 It is even so in modern Germany. They do not 
 want to lose hundreds of thousands of their 
 compatriots to America or to the British Em- 
 pire. They want to keep them. They want to 
 talk German, to make DeutscMhum and 
 Deutschland one and the same thing. If, there- 
 fore, anybody should counsel them to unburden 
 themselves or the surplus of their teeming pop- 
 ulation in Australia or South Africa, they 
 would consider such a suggestion as a malig- 
 nant one, as a personal insult. Can we wonder 
 at that? 
 
 Is it not quite natural that a nation that has 
 by hard-won victories finally realised its secu- 
 lar dream of political unity does not feel in- 
 clined to encourage emigration into foreign 
 countries? The German, as is well known, 
 easily assimilates himself to new and stronger 
 nationalities. During a ^ye years' stay in the 
 United States, we have never seen a German 
 
116 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 who had remained German in his mode of think- 
 ing and feeling. One of them, Judge Stallo, 
 said he did ; but he did not. We convinced our- 
 selves of that by personal intercourse. The 
 Canadian French still retain their fine lan- 
 guage of the times of Louis XIV. ; the Germans 
 in the States drop the idiom of their original 
 home in less than one generation. 
 
 There is, be it remarked in passing, a pecul- 
 iar reason for that. No ordinary German, 
 whose parents were folk living in small provin- 
 cial towns in the country, talks ^^high'^ or book- 
 German. They all talk a dialect, and Germany 
 bristles with an incredible number of dialects, 
 jargons, modes of pronunciation, and so on. 
 To any one well acquainted with German, it is 
 the easiest thing in the world to tell the social 
 status of any given German man or woman by 
 the language he or she uses, and more espe- 
 cially by his or her pronunciation. Now, the 
 majority of German-Americans are the chil- 
 dren of very humble German folk. Learning 
 German from their parents, they can talk only 
 such German as their parents gave them, that 
 is, peasant German. Rather than reveal, by 
 their pronunciation, that they come from peas- 
 ant stock, the German-Americans pretend not 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 117 
 
 to know German at all, and even willingly for- 
 get their ^ ^ Dutch, ' ' as they call it. In any case, 
 the Germans in the States, as everywhere else, 
 become first oblivious of, then indifferent to, 
 their original language, and so to thousands of 
 mental moods and attitudes ingrained in the 
 language. They de-Germanize themselves. 
 This is but too well known to the people of Ger- 
 many. They dread emigration more than any- 
 thing else. It institutes to them a national 
 danger, a loss in humans. 
 
 A very curious instance of this facile de-Ger- 
 manization of some Germans occurred a few 
 years ago in — Germany herself. When for 
 purposes of higher policy, a great number of 
 Polish families were transplanted from Prus- 
 sian Poland to Westphalia, with its purely Ger- 
 man population, it was soon found out that 
 many a German peasant, under the singular 
 spell of the Polish women, began to neglect his 
 own vernacular, and to talk Polish. This too 
 is not incomprehensible. The Germans have, 
 on the one hand, become very sensitive as to 
 their newly acquired national unity, and united 
 nationality; on the other hand, that feeling, 
 stronger in words than in fact, has not yet 
 reached the intensity and firmness that we find 
 
118 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 in members of nations who, like the English or 
 French, have each been nationally united for 
 several hundred years. 
 
 Emigration, then, no matter what facilities 
 may be offered to the Germans, is the very 
 method they disapprove of most. In fact, their 
 leaders do everything in their power to fill 
 their compatriots with a strong aversion from 
 leaving Germany for a British or American 
 country. If, moreover, we take into considera- 
 tion the great and constantly rising prosperity 
 of contemporary Germany ; especially if we re- 
 member that what the German industrials lack 
 most is human labour, as Count Posadowsld, 
 Imperial Home Secretary, has publicly re- 
 marked, and as was shown above in detail; we 
 cannot but come to the conclusion that emigra- 
 tion to non-German countries is not a way out 
 of the difficulty, because it is not likely to be 
 resorted to by very many Germans. 
 
 But if emigration is discouraged and dis- 
 credited, what else can the Germans do to sat- 
 isfy their irresistible desire for expansion? 
 Their own colonies are far and unprofitable, 
 and not favourable in point of health. On the 
 Continent, for reasons just given, they cannot 
 expand otherwise than at the risk of a Euro- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 119 
 
 pean coalition against them. What else can 
 they do I The average Briton has never given 
 that matter the slightest thought ; and if he has, 
 he dismissed it with a vague smile. Or has the 
 author not repeatedly heard Englishmen say, 
 in effect, that if a war with Germany should 
 break out, it will be *'not in our lifetime,'* but 
 ^^in a hundred years from now"? To one who 
 studies German preparations every day of his 
 life; to one who knows German and the Ger- 
 mans, their history and literature; to such a 
 person such remarks send a cold shiver through 
 his heart. After the awful experience of the 
 Boer War, to talk like that of a war with the 
 best-trained, highest-spirited, and most danger- 
 ous nation in the world! It is nothing short 
 of appalling. 
 
 IMPERIALISM AND THE BIRTH-EATE 
 
 Of course, there is still another way out of 
 the difficulty. It is one that implies no hard- 
 ship whatever to the British, and is therefore 
 welcome to them. It is, moreover, a radical 
 solution of the whole German question. It 
 would leave no secret animosity against Eng- 
 land in the hearts of the Germans. Undoubt- 
 edly there is such a method. It has long been 
 
120 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 known to various nations. This method is — 
 to have but very few children; in other words, 
 to Malthusianise the nation. Why the Ger- 
 mans, in order to please the British and to rid 
 them of all bother about wars (a bother that 
 might interfere with British amusements at 
 music halls, racecourses, comedy theatres, and 
 other sublime places), why we say, the Germans 
 do not adopt this method of settling the whole 
 business, one cannot really quite see. It would 
 be so nice of them. However, they do not 
 adopt it. The wide and spacious German 
 women will persist in bringing forth such a 
 number of young Teutons that in the last forty 
 years they have outdistanced France by over 
 twenty million people. In fifty years from now 
 the Germans will certainly be a matter of far 
 over 100,000,000 people in the German Empire 
 alone. From the Kaiser downwards, they have 
 all numerous families. The fact is that the 
 Germans have quite appropriated the great les- 
 son about the connection between Imperialism 
 and children. They know that a nation which 
 has reached a certain number must irretrievably 
 grow Imperialist, or otherwise — Malthusianise 
 herself. We take the liberty of here quoting 
 part of an article which we published in the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 121 
 
 Daily Express of April 18, 1907, and in wMch 
 we gave a resume of some of the ideas of our 
 book on Imperialism (1905). We said: — 
 
 *^It is well known that millions of modern 
 men and women are, as they think, ^dead 
 against all Imperialism.' It is to these and 
 their friends that I should like to submit some 
 human remarks on the relation of Imperialism 
 and children. For this purpose, we shall 
 shortly regard the modern history of France. 
 Repeatedly the French, or rather their rulers, 
 attempted to widen the territory of France in 
 Europe, that is, to found a French Empire. 
 
 ^'The last attempt, clearly prepared by the 
 Republicans of the great Revolution (1789- 
 1799), was realised, for a time, by Napoleon 
 I. He imperialized many a country round 
 France. However, the French nation, more 
 especially the French women, hated Napoleon's 
 imperial ideas. These women, all-powerful in 
 France, sapped and sapped the popularity of 
 Napoleon, whom they called the man-eater. 
 
 ^*When, therefore. Napoleon lost a battle or 
 two in 1813 and 1814, the French, instead of 
 rallying round their great Imperial leader, as 
 the Spanish had done round Palafox, Castanos, 
 or Cuesta, for over seven years, at once cooled 
 
122 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 off, and Napoleon went first to Elba and then 
 to St. Helena. The French had missed their 
 chance of making an empire. 
 
 ^^ Napoleon, the greatest political thinker of 
 modern times, had clearly seen that the French, 
 already in his time the most populous nation 
 in Europe (even Russia was then less popu- 
 lous), imperatively needed more elbow-room 
 for — children. Unless the French, Napoleon 
 thought, get greater chances for human expan- 
 sion, they will either emigrate, or — they will, 
 given their national and secular passion for 
 thrift, cease having children. This is precisely 
 what happened. The very reason that made 
 French women hate Napoleon, namely, that he 
 sent so many Frenchmen out of France, makes 
 them hate their large colonies. Madame does 
 not want to leave France; and what Madame 
 dislikes, the gods, being French and polite, do 
 not approve of either. Hence, one thing alone 
 remained. ^Let us adopt,* the madames said, 
 Hhe system of that amiable English clergy- 
 man, Malthus, and have as few children as pos- 
 sible.' This they have sedulously done ever 
 since : with this interesting result, that France, 
 in 1815 more, much more populous than Ger- 
 many, is now 22,000,000 less populous than the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 123 
 
 empire of William II., although the areas of 
 the two countries are practically the same. 
 
 **The human note, thus, comes to this: Na- 
 poleon's Imperialism, fiercely attacked by 
 French and non-French Socialists, pacifistes, 
 ^humanists,' positivists, anarchists, women, and 
 professors of history; Napoleon's Imperialism 
 cost the French some two million men, it is 
 said. I know that this figure cannot be posi- 
 tively proved. But I accept it. Napoleon 
 killed two million men for Imperial purposes. 
 The Germans, too, lost a similar number. 
 Well, may I learn, who killed the twenty-two 
 million French now missing? One won- 
 ders. . . . 
 
 *^Kill the Imperial sentiment, and you kill 
 millions of babes. Kill the Imperial sentiment : 
 loosen the Imperial ties; try to manoeuvre out 
 of it, to make silly compromises, or to dupe it 
 somehow or other, and in the end you will have 
 manoeuvred your nation out of children, and 
 duped your honour out of all shape." 
 
 The British reader — who is, we are afraid, 
 too much given to a minimizing of any danger 
 of invasion of or war with Great Britain — 
 ought to ponder the preceding reflections with 
 great care. The question really comes to this : 
 
124 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 What can the Germans do but expand! And 
 since they cannot possibly expand on the Con- 
 tinent, they must necessarily expand by sea- 
 power, which inevitably means conflict with The 
 Sea-Power of the world — with Great Britain. 
 The one way out of the difficulty would be the 
 artificial restriction of the fast-growing popula- 
 tion of Germany. This the Germans do not 
 want to resort to ; and surely no Briton can, in 
 common decency, advise or force them to do 
 so. 
 
 WAR IS INEVITABLE 
 
 What, then, can be the ultimate upshot of 
 all these circumstances? War — conflict; noth- 
 ing else. The reader is most seriously re- 
 quested to take all the preceding remarks and 
 observations into consideration. We do not 
 say that a given German, or this or that set of 
 Germans, as such, hate the British. We posi- 
 tively know he or they do not. We are con- 
 vinced by facts under our immediate observa- 
 tion that a very considerable portion of the 
 Germans are rather favourably inclined to- 
 wards the British. We know that untold num- 
 bers of them sincerely admire English litera- 
 ture, English ways and social manners. But 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 125 
 
 we do know, at tlie same time, tliat such sympa- 
 thy or admiration does not alter the crucial 
 point — that is, the fact that Germany wants 
 more expansive power at the expense of the 
 British. Between Germany and Great Britain 
 there is an antagonism that can be gotten over 
 only by means of armed conflict. 
 
 All through history we see such antagonisms. 
 There was the same antagonism between Athens 
 and Sparta; between Rome and Carthage; be- 
 tween the Greek and the Roman Catholic 
 Church; between England and France in the 
 Middle Ages and up to Waterloo; between the 
 North and the South of the United States ; and 
 between many a minor set of nations. It has 
 nothing to do with personal likes or dislikes; 
 with the sayings of the Press; with dynastic 
 differences; or with ^' racial' ' views. It is in 
 the nature of things. It is like the conflict be- 
 tween day and night, between winter and sum- 
 mer, or between youth and old age. It can be 
 staved off for a time; it can never be averted 
 altogether. In the present work it is our ob- 
 ject to make this as clear and convincing as 
 possible. For it needs a lot of convincing in 
 this country. In Germany every single person 
 is and has long since been sufficiently convinced. 
 
126 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 In Germany every able-bodied man is a sol- 
 dier. Together with his education as an effi- 
 cient unit for military purposes, he is taught 
 a little history, and the great spirit of an ag- 
 gressive and growing nation is infused into him. 
 In a country where practically every one man 
 is or has been a soldier, the necessities of war 
 are amongst the A B C of things; they are 
 known to everybody. There is not a grown per- 
 son in Germany but knows that, just as he in- 
 dividually has to obey his military superior in 
 order to keep the whole of the German army in 
 sound form, even so, all over Europe, each na- 
 tion has to obey her superior, that is, the com- 
 mands of European balance of power. 
 
 We do not ignore that many an Englishman 
 fondly imagines that Socialism in Germany is 
 a disruptive force, or one that will impede or 
 incapacitate Germany in any attempt at mak- 
 ing political moves of European grandeur. No 
 greater illusion can possibly be indulged in. 
 Socialism in Germany, as everywhere else on 
 the Continent, except France, is a purely theo- 
 retic force. It yields to the first onslaught of 
 any one of the old historical and real forces on 
 the Continent. Witness the signal defeat of 
 Socialism in the recent (1907) elections in Ger- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 127 
 
 many, when the Kaiser and his councillors ad- 
 vanced the real forces of their political army. 
 Socialism in Germany is politically not a party 
 based on historic realities, but only a manoeuvre 
 based on abstract ideas of a certain school of 
 economists. Now, if there is one thing more 
 certain than another, it is this : abstract theories 
 cannot, in the long run, undo historic and prac- 
 tical forces. 
 
 In England, these two hundred years, there 
 have been any number of *^ parties'' teaching 
 abstract novelties, such as Theism, Atheism, 
 Positivism, and so on. They have never been 
 able to cope with the historic and practical 
 force called the Anglican Church. It is even 
 so with Socialism in Germany. It is abstract. 
 It was called into existence by two scholars, by 
 Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. The very 
 fact that both were originally of Jewish extrac- 
 tion, that is, that neither had had a share in 
 the real life of the historic forces of Germany, 
 shows that Socialism is born of abstract ideas. 
 It can cause, and it has caused, much disturb- 
 ance and discussion; it cannot build up or de- 
 stroy Germany. Bismarck, faithfully continu- 
 ing the traditions of the old and historic class 
 of Junker J or country squires, to which he be- 
 
128 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 longed ; Bismarck, we say, did build up the unity 
 of Germany, and Lassalle failed. 
 
 A nation is not a piece of mineral on and 
 with which one can make any experiment one 
 chooses. A nation is something organic, and 
 refuses to be handled by abstract and mechan- 
 ical measures. They, therefore, who indulge 
 in any thought of Germany being seriously 
 crippled or thwarted by her Socialists are liv- 
 ing in a fooPs paradise. Has not Bebel, the 
 acknowledged leader of the German Socialists, 
 repeatedly declared that his party does not 
 believe in disarmament, in settling all interna- 
 tional disputes by the Hague Tribunal, and also 
 that he and his will unhesitatingly take up arms 
 in defence of Germany, or in any cause involv- 
 ing the honour and greatness of the Father- 
 land? Bebel has drawn upon himself the se- 
 vere strictures of M. Herve, the anti-militarist 
 leader of the French Socialists, but he did not 
 mind that very much. 
 
 Germany has parties — even a peace party. 
 However, those parties are like mere shadows, 
 as compared with the real power in Germany — 
 the State, i.e., principally Prussia. The aver- 
 age Englishman has not the least idea of the 
 extent to which, in Germany, the influence and 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 129 
 
 interference of the State has practically nulli- 
 fied all other activities in the public or political 
 life of the Grerman nation. The nearest exam- 
 ple in England to that effect are the great banks 
 in England. A bank such as the London and 
 South- Western Bank, or the London and County 
 Bank, may have and does have more than a 
 hundred branch offices each; but everybody 
 knows that all the business of those banks is 
 decided and managed at headquarters. The 
 local managers have no power worth speaking 
 of. It is all done at the central office. This is 
 what happens in Germany with the whole pub- 
 lic and political life of Prussia or Bavaria sev- 
 erally. In such a country, as one may readily 
 gather, political parties have very little to say; 
 and Government always finds means to play 
 out any party by dexterous electioneering 
 moves. Under these conditions the Socialists 
 in Germany, anyhow hateful to Government, 
 can be and have actually been played out by 
 adroit managing of the elections. The Social- 
 ists, then, have no power to stop or retard the 
 aggressiveness of the German State. 
 
 Other extreme lovers of peace in this coun- 
 try indulge in another set of day-dreams. They 
 think, and even say in public, that the Ger- 
 
130 dERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 mans do not in the least mean to be aggressive 
 to Great Britain, and that the war fleet they 
 are building is merely a defensive fleet, that is 
 to say, one for the legitimate defence of the 
 growing and considerable maritime interests of 
 the Germans. Now, as half-truths are, as a 
 rule, more dangerous than a full-fledged un- 
 truth, it may be said that the foregoing state- 
 ment is one of pernicious half-truth. Nobody 
 means to deny that the maritime commerce and 
 the oversea interests of the Germans have in 
 the last thirty years been increasing at a very 
 rapid rate. Nobody, therefore, can deny the 
 Germans the right of seeing to the protection 
 of their vast trade by means of a big fleet of 
 men-of-war. Yet it is equally true that the idea 
 that the principal object of the German fleet 
 is defensive and not aggressive is thoroughly 
 and hopelessly wrong and absurd. 
 
 A merely defensive army is a military non- 
 entity. The British naval victories were all 
 won hundreds and thousands of miles away from 
 England — at Copenhagen, at Cape St. Vincent, 
 at Lagos, Trafalgar, Abukir Bay, etc. That 
 means, the English did not think of matters 
 naval what now so many British think of mat- 
 ters military. They always believed in oifen- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 131 
 
 sive warfare; they attacked the enemy outside 
 the English Channel or the German Sea — in the 
 Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, and elsewhere. 
 They were, in order to be efficiently defensive, 
 in the first place effectively offensive. This is 
 an old, old principle of all warfare; and of all 
 the nations, the Germans are fully and clearly 
 aware of it. They do not for a moment believe 
 that their fleet is meant only for purely defen- 
 sive purposes. They know that such a state- 
 ment is absurd and impossible. They know' 
 that to be really able to defend the German 
 trade anywhere, they must be in a position to 
 attack any one of their rivals or enemies in any 
 sea. If, therefore, the German fleet is said to 
 be one for defensive purposes only, it is, when 
 uttered by Germans, a downright hypocrisy; 
 when by British persons, an unmitigated folly. 
 The German fleet can have and has only one 
 possible aim — that of attack, of offensive war- 
 fare, just as has the German army, and even 
 very much more so. The German army is 
 checkmated to a large extent by a possible coali- 
 tion of the rest of the Continental armies. The 
 German fleet is not thwarted by such a coalition 
 of sea-Powers. 
 
 As the reader may see, it is here contended 
 
132 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 that the ultimate and even the proximate in- 
 tention underlying all the moves of the German 
 Empire and the Kaiser is quite patent. There 
 is no doubt about it. It is, of course, true that 
 if one tries to read the real mind of the Ger- 
 mans from hundreds of occasional or chance 
 remarks, articles, or other utterances of theirs, 
 then indeed the task of making a concordance 
 of the bewildering and contradictory statements 
 of the German Press — official and non-official — 
 becomes overwhelming. However, in a prob- 
 lem as great as is the near conflict between Ger- 
 many and England, it does not matter very 
 much what this paper or that statesman says 
 or does not say. William Pitt, shortly before 
 the outbreak of the endless wars with France 
 from 1792 to 1815, publicly declared that Eu- 
 rope was going to have a period of complete 
 peace lasting at least fifteen years. If one 
 now reads the Times or the Globe of a hundred 
 years ago, one is amazed beyond words at the 
 profound ignorance in which the writers of 
 these papers were with regard to the near fu- 
 ture of Napoleon or the Continent. The Ger- 
 man question is, like all great questions, almost 
 independent of this or the other chance thing 
 or event. In European history there always 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 133 
 
 have been currents of events, just as in the 
 sea there are currents of water. And, just as 
 no whale or shark can stem or alter the gulf- 
 stream, even so no ruler or diplomatist can de- 
 flect certain historic currents in Europe. To 
 this, as to a very important element of our 
 study of the German question, we shall soon 
 return. 
 
 BRITISH MYOPIA 
 
 At present we want to dwell a little upon the 
 effect of the opposite view. We mean the view 
 that the German question is not clear at all; 
 that we cannot as yet know what the Germans 
 are after; and that the conflicting evidence to 
 be gathered from an observation of the Ger- 
 mans is not sufficient to give us the desired 
 clearness. Such views are spread even by pa- 
 pers of otherwise great value. It is precisely 
 this view, which we combat, that has only lately 
 (May 20) been put forward in an able leader 
 in the Morning Post. We consider it our duty 
 to show the inadequacy of such views. For this 
 purpose we here append the leader in toto. It 
 says : — 
 
 ^^The business of a statesman, said Bismarck 
 a good many years ago, is to see things as 
 
134 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 they are. What is the statesman's business is 
 also the business of every citizen in so far as 
 he concerns himself with his country's affairs 
 or with its relations with other countries. We 
 all want to see things as they are. Yet it is 
 not always easy. What, for instance, is at 
 present the idea and the feeling of the majority 
 of Germans on the subject of this country and 
 of British policy! If we were to be guided in 
 our judgment by what we read in some of the 
 German newspapers, we might imagine that the 
 Germans were all filled with apprehensions of 
 some dire design supposed to be cherished in 
 this country against the welfare, the expansion, 
 or even the peace of Germany. As no Eng- 
 lishman is aware of any such design; indeed, 
 as all of us know that no such design exists, 
 there would be a temptation to suppose the 
 population of Germany alSiicted with some men- 
 tal disease or with one of those extraordinary 
 delusions of which a once-much-read writer 
 wrote a history. But those who have in late 
 years travelled in Germany and mixed with the 
 people in that country have discovered that 
 among the educated class there the representa- 
 tive character of the newspapers is denied, and 
 it is asserted that the articles unfriendly to 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 135 
 
 England are not the expression of the popular 
 feeling, or, at any rate, are not to be taken too 
 seriously. Between those papers which make 
 it their business to preach down England and 
 those cultivated Germans who denounce these 
 newspapers it is hard to get at the facts and 
 see things as they are. The Germans outside 
 of Germany, the travelled Germans, are not 
 anti-British. They generally know something 
 of England and the English. But they are not 
 always listened to with respect by the Germans 
 at home, at any rate not by all the newspaper 
 writers. It is to be hoped that there will 
 shortly be a change of fashion in Germany, and 
 that the habit of discussing the imagined deep- 
 laid plots of England will die out. Meantime 
 it may help towards the clear view which is so 
 desirable, to consider some of the undoubted 
 facts about the German Empire which are apt 
 to be forgotten, not only here, but there. 
 
 ^^ Germany has for a whole generation been 
 enjoying steady and increasing prosperity. 
 None of the great States of Europe has so much 
 to show in the way of material progress. Most 
 of the large towns have been within the last 
 twenty-five years so transformed as to seem 
 to have been almost entirely re-built. The 
 
136 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 standard of comfort, and even of luxury, at- 
 tained is beyond the dreams of the last genera- 
 tion. Manufacture, trade, and commerce have 
 flourished exceedingly. The whole country 
 bears on its face the marks of accumulating 
 wealth. For education of all sorts and for the 
 advancement and diffusion of knowledge pro- 
 vision is made on an ampler scale than in any 
 other country of Europe. These great ad- 
 vances have followed close upon and seemed 
 to be the consequences of the great struggles 
 which led to the foundation of the new Empire 
 as the form and symbol of national unity. Ac- 
 cordingly the national self-consciousness has 
 been exalted, and Germans to-day take a legiti- 
 mate pride in their country. The Army is con- 
 sidered, probably rightly, to be the best organ- 
 ised and best trained in the world, and the 
 Navy has for a whole generation worked hard 
 to make itself the Army's counterpart. Ger- 
 many's influence makes itself felt far and wide, 
 not merely in Europe. These are some of the 
 marks of greatness in a nation. The nation 
 that is so well situated in regard to its arrange- 
 ments for defence, for education, and for trade, 
 and of which the prosperity is so remarkable, 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 137 
 
 can hardly have good reason to be excessively 
 timid or anxious as to the future. 
 
 ^^Yet there are a number of writers in Ger- 
 many who seem to spend their time looking 
 abroad for possible troubles, and for several 
 years past they have represented England as 
 the most probable source of danger to Ger- 
 many. If these writers had all been silent it 
 is quite possible that traders and manufactur- 
 ers in England and in Germany would have been 
 conscious of a certain rivalry. Mr. Haldane, 
 in a speech the other day, spoke of the 'legiti- 
 mate antagonism of trade competition. ' But it 
 is by no means clear that this antagonism need 
 have a national or international aspect. Two 
 spinners in Bolton are much keener rivals one 
 of the other than either of them of any German 
 competitor, and yet they can manage to live 
 together in the same town without quarrelling. 
 It would not be easy to find a British trader 
 or manufacturer who would wish this country 
 to pick a quarrel with Germany. Some of them 
 would be glad to be helped against German com- 
 petition by a protective tariff, but they would 
 not on that account wish the two nations to 
 enter into the extreme competition of a war. 
 
138 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Moreover, men of business best realise that the 
 best customers are rich, industrious nations, 
 and that Germany and England, with or with- 
 out tariffs on one side or on both, are neces- 
 sarily bound to have very large commercial 
 dealings with one another. Apart from manu- 
 facture and trade where the two nations are 
 competitors, but not necessarily unfriendly 
 competitors, what are the interests of the two 
 nations which clash! We have never been able 
 to discover them. There is no rational cause 
 for a quarrel between England and Germany, 
 and if a quarrel arises it must be due to some 
 wrong, malice, or misunderstanding. These 
 things it is not always possible to prevent. 
 They ought not to arise, and it is the duty of 
 each nation and of each Government to avoid 
 being the author of any such occasion of dis- 
 pute, and, of course, also to be strong enough 
 in case of a gratuitous quarrel thrust upon it 
 to defend itself. 
 
 ^^The latest misunderstanding, if it is a mis- 
 understanding, seems to be due to the fact that 
 King Edward, like the German Emperor, occa- 
 sionally travels to visit the Sovereigns of other 
 countries, and that these visits, on the whole. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 139 
 
 have contributed towards closer relations be- 
 tween Great Britain and the other countries. 
 The wider the circle of these international cour- 
 tesies and kindnesses extends, the more likely 
 is the preservation of peace. That this view 
 should not commend itself to some of the Ger- 
 man critics is remarkable seeing that Ger- 
 many's great achievement is held to have been 
 the preservation of the peace of Europe by a 
 series of alliances. The close understandings, 
 first between the three Emperors and after- 
 wards between Germany, Austria, and Italy, 
 are held by German statesmen to have been the 
 foundations of a European equilibrium that has 
 lasted some thirty years. A close understand- 
 ing between England and France, between Eng- 
 land and Italy, and between England and any 
 other Great Power is not likely to aim at any 
 disturbance of the status quo or at any attack 
 on other Powers. If, therefore, there are 
 alarms in Germany, the observer who wishes 
 to see things as they are must infer that they 
 are of purely German origin, and are not at- 
 tributable to any action that has taken place 
 outside that country. The problem which the 
 observer has to solve is to account for this 
 
140 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 spontaneous generation of heat in a body politic 
 having so many of the elements of health and 
 strength as the German Empire.'^ 
 
 The writer of the preceding article is quite 
 right in his main contention, to the effect that, 
 unless we can see things as they are, all our 
 efforts to construe aright the political situa- 
 tion will be abortive. The present work is only 
 an attempt to see things as they are, and as 
 they will be on the basis of what they are at 
 present (1907). In using the word ''things,'^ 
 we mean to distinguish things from persons. 
 In all politics, persons are of great importance ; 
 but in some questions of great or international 
 politics, single persons are not all-decisive. 
 
 This is where the ordinary diplomatist or 
 statesman makes his gravest errors. For in- 
 stance, a given ambassador of Great Britain at 
 the Court of Berlin is, by the very nature of 
 his office, thrown in daily contact with the 
 Kaiser, his Ministers, his other officials, and 
 the various persons moving on the political 
 stage of Berlin. These he, the ambassador, 
 may and frequently does know very well. See- 
 ing that these persons apparently do the whole 
 of German policy, or that all the acts and docu- 
 ments coming officially from Germany may, at 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 141 
 
 least outwardly, be traced to the activity or in- 
 fluence of these persons — the ambassador, not 
 unnaturally, believes that they are the true 
 originators and, as it were, the causes of all 
 those documents and acts. And since the am- 
 bassador knows each of them intimately, he 
 readily persuades himself that he has a real 
 insight into their characters and minds, and 
 thus also into the real causes of German pol- 
 icy. However, in thinking so, that ambassa- 
 dor frequently, and in great international ques- 
 tions always, commits a fatal error. 
 
 The ultimate and true cause of events and 
 measures in German policy is not exclusively 
 in the characters and minds of a number of offi- 
 cial persons in Berlin. In such great questions 
 there are impersonal causes driving on both the 
 non-officials and the officials. To these great 
 questions belongs, in the first place, the conflict 
 between Germany and Great Britain. It is a 
 conflict based on facts and tendencies inde- 
 pendent of the will or belief of this or that in- 
 dividual man. It is in the very nature of things. 
 If, therefore, we continue to consult the say- 
 ings or doings of German official persons only, 
 or, for the matter of that, of British officials 
 only, we are not likely at all to get at the root 
 
142 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 and driving cause of tlie whole question. Those 
 sayings and doings may very well be contra- 
 dictory, and are mostly misleading. They are 
 meant to be so. This is also in the nature of 
 things. 
 
 Again, is it not about high time that every 
 man in this country should clearly understand 
 a fact taught and observed by all unprejudiced 
 students of European politics? We mean the 
 fact that in all international matters the nations 
 of Europe stand to one another nearly always 
 in a ^ ^ state of nature. ' ' They recognise but too 
 frequently nothing but the law of Might, or 
 the law of the stronger fist. However polished, 
 ** civilised,'' or *^ educated" the nations of Eu- 
 rope may be inside their respective boundaries 
 and towards members of their own country, it 
 is historically certain that in all very serious 
 international questions they have almost in- 
 variably behaved like egoistic savages. One 
 nation, in these matters, is as bad as another. 
 Under these circumstances, we cannot allow our- 
 selves to slip into the convenient belief that 
 there will be no conflict with Germany, because 
 this or that German minister or chancellor is 
 **such a nice fellow." So he may be — in pri- 
 vate life. As soon as he enters on life inter- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 143 
 
 national, lie is at once *4n a state of nature." 
 From a German filled with the humanitarian 
 ideals of Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, he be- 
 comes forthwith a human animal. As such he 
 obeys only the instincts of his uncontrolled na- 
 ture, and all that he asks of his cultured intel- 
 lect is to serve him with specious excuses for 
 his animal instincts. This, the good intellect 
 (read: lawyers, statesmen, journalists) always 
 furnishes him with. 
 
 Undoubtedly the Germans will, in case of 
 actual conflict, declare that they have been * * out- 
 raged," ''bullied," or ''deceived" into it by the 
 "perfidious British." That goes without say- 
 ing. The English have always been "perfidi- 
 ous." They won the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, 
 Agincourt, the victory over the Armada, the 
 battles of Naseby, the Boyne river, Cape La 
 Ilougue, Blenheim, Malplaquet, Quebec, Plas- 
 sey, Wandewash, St. Vincent, Camperdown, the 
 Nile, and Trafalgar — all by "perfidy." They 
 made The Parliament — by "perfidy." They 
 persuaded Shakespeare to pose as the author 
 of Hamlet and a few other dramas, not unknown 
 to fame, written by some other person, prob- 
 ably a Prussian — by "perfidy." It has long 
 been proved. It cannot be doubted. In fact. 
 
144 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 all great States are perfidious, and all small 
 ones are painfully honest. The Prussians, of 
 whom Prince Bismarck himself said that they 
 '^made no moral conquests,'' the Prussians are 
 God-fearing goodies, or what our girls would 
 call ''such dears." 
 
 If the thing was not so terribly serious, it 
 would be killingly funny. The average man 
 invariably takes the symptom for the cause, 
 the person for the thing, the skin for the bone, 
 and the occasion for the motive. In the pres- 
 ent case we venture to submit that the matter 
 is so grave that it ought, for once, to persuade 
 even the average man of this country to pierce 
 the shell of things, and to grasp the core thereof. 
 We said above that in all European history 
 there are currents, ''streams" of events which 
 cannot be unmade by the influence of any in- 
 dividual or any set of individuals. One of these 
 maelstroms is the antagonism between Ger- 
 many and Great Britain. This, and this alone, 
 is the truth. All diplomatic incidents, such as 
 messages, speeches, press articles, conventions, 
 meetings, banquets, wires, and wireless reports, 
 are mere externals. They cannot alter the 
 stream. They may retard it ; they may discol- 
 our it. They will never deflect it. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 145 
 
 FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED 
 
 Wliat, then, is the only thing to be done? 
 Evidently only one thing: prepare for the con- 
 flict. The Germans have learnt this lesson thor- 
 oughly. They are, as a nation and as individ- 
 uals, preparing themselves carefully. Their 
 ^^Navy League'' numbers close on a million 
 members. The British Navy League does not 
 exceed 20,000. In Germany every ablebodied 
 person is a soldier, filled with the great military 
 spirit — the spirit that made old Blticher say to a 
 tottering Prussian regiment in battle: *''Ye 
 scoundrels, do you then want to live for ever I" 
 The spirit that prompts every German to think 
 that if he were not ready to die for his country, 
 what on earth is he living for 1 The spirit that 
 shrinks from no sacrifice, from no self-denial, 
 from no hardship of discipline. The spirit that 
 is aware that to speak constantly of the rights 
 of citizenship is only half the thing; the more 
 important part is to think of the duties of citi- 
 zenship. The spirit that fills a man with the 
 true sense of immortality, that is, with the feel- 
 ing that he has obligations not only towards his 
 contemporary fellow citizens, but also to those 
 
146 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 that will be his fellow citizens in the generation 
 to come. 
 
 This spirit is strength, great strength. It is 
 this spirit that has made our incomparable Eu- 
 rope, as thousands of years ago it raised the 
 Greeks, Jews, and Romans above all the other 
 nations of the world. That spirit can be com- 
 bated only by a like spirit. Numbers will not 
 do. Spirit is vanquished by spirit alone. The 
 ** two-power standard '* is a mere snare. It is 
 the view of a grocer or a haberdasher. Now, 
 a grocer or haberdasher is a very valuable mem- 
 ber of the community in his way ; and the social 
 displacement from which he suffers in this coun- 
 try is most unjustified and absurd. But his 
 views on international questions are somewhat 
 narrow. He is apt to assume that, if a man 
 with £100 in his till has more business power 
 than the man with only £50 in his box, even so 
 a nation with two ships against one of its enemy 
 has the greater military power of the two. 
 Nothing can be more misleading. England beat 
 Spain, although the Armada consisted of very 
 many more vessels than were then in the posses- 
 sion of the English. The French beat all the 
 European armies, including British corps too, 
 from 1792 to 1813. The Japanese beat bulky 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 147 
 
 Russia; and the Boers held out close on three 
 years against overwhelming odds. History is 
 full of such examples ; and, if people only cared 
 to study itj they would find that all history is 
 one of minorities. Look at a map of Europe. 
 Russia is by far the largest territory; has she 
 ever been the most important? England looks 
 tiny enough on the map, as against Scandinavia, 
 France, Spain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
 Russia; has she not in the last two hundred 
 years played first fiddle at more than one mo- 
 ment critical for all Europe! 
 
 To weigh probable success by numbers, to 
 leave out the immense leverage of spirit, is not 
 only ridiculous, but most dangerous too. Even 
 in business, any observer who cares to study the 
 question will find that, as a rule, he who begins 
 on nothing, or with no capital to speak of, very 
 frequently beats the heir or successor who com- 
 menced business with an established house and 
 much capital. The former, the successful busi- 
 ness man who had nothing at the start, had the 
 right spirit ; the other had not. The spirit, the 
 great spirit is, we repeat it, the great winner of 
 battles. There is no doubt whatever that the 
 Germans at present are brimful with that spirit. 
 They overdo it, no doubt; they are positively 
 
148 GEEMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 swelled-headed ; they suffer from megalomania. 
 Yet the very exaggeration of the thing proves 
 that the thing itself is there. And since such a 
 spirit can be combated only by a like spirit, the 
 question, the great and ominous question, arises 
 — whether this country has the same spirit. 
 Whether Great Britain and her people are ani- 
 mated by the same consciousness of the critical 
 situation of all Europe, which the Germans are 
 clearly aware of. Whether the average Briton 
 feels that Europe has come to a period of far- 
 reaching decisions. Whether he has any idea 
 at all that Europe, instead of having been all 
 during the last century a complicated game of 
 chess between six Great Powers, has now been 
 reduced to a simple duel between two Great 
 Powers only. Whether he can really grasp all 
 that this undeniable fact implies. Whether he 
 feels within himself the force to arouse himself 
 out of the slumber of self-complacency, and face 
 the stern tasks imposed upon him by history, 
 with a manly courage. 
 
 A Briton of to-day is not the son of his par- 
 ents only. Two thousand years of history 
 weigh upon him. Two thousand years of 
 struggle, work, and extraordinary efforts — 
 mental, moral, and material — ^have laid upon 
 
GERMANY ^S MADNESS 149 
 
 him an immense responsibility. He is not a 
 gentleman of independent means; he is a de- 
 positary. He must not think — and woe to him 
 and his nation if he does so think — that he can 
 draw on his means given him by sixty genera- 
 tions of heroes and workers, freely and ad lib. 
 He is a depositary ; he will have to account for 
 his means to the next generation, and, unless 
 he be more careful than he is, to himself too. 
 Otherwise it will happen to him, what always 
 happens to faithless depositaries. He will lose 
 his honour, together with his means. Again we 
 ask, are we entitled to say that the average man 
 in this country is fully conscious of all these 
 momentous truths! 
 
 To say with childish self-complacency, ^'Our 
 fleet cannot be beaten'' is too dangerous for 
 words. In history the Impossible alone is im- 
 possible. II ne faut jamais dire, jamais, as 
 Prince Metternich used to say. If indeed, a 
 nation, well protected by Nature, trained 
 through secular practice and tradition is in 
 actual possession of a great naval force ; and if 
 such a nation continues to do everything to keep 
 up her great efficiency ; then, and only then, that 
 nation may with fair probability assume that 
 it cannot easily be beaten. But this constant 
 
150 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 preparation requires two things before any- 
 thing else : First, the right spirit in the whole 
 nation; and then, in addition to daily practice 
 in the art of war, a very careful study of naval 
 warfare in the past. 
 
 The spirit ; the spirit — there is the whole mat- 
 ter. The spirit of earnestness, of real serious- 
 ness. The British are grave enough; are they 
 also sufficiently serious? Are they anxious 
 concerning the vast problems still to be solved 
 by them? They devote millions in money and 
 billions in words, written and spoken, to the 
 problem of the alleged intemperance of the 
 British nation. Do they devote adequate at- 
 tention to the political intemperance of their 
 great rivals, the Germans 1 The very people in 
 Great Britain who go about preaching, writing, 
 lecturing, collecting money, etc., etc., to combat 
 the supposed intemperance of the British nation 
 — that can be easily proved to drink less than 
 one-third of the quantity of wine, beer, or 
 liqueurs consumed either in France, Germany, 
 or Austria-Hungary — the very people, we 
 say, go about preaching, lecturing, and writing 
 on the moderation and friendliness of a nation 
 that thinks of nothing, and can think of noth- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 151 
 
 ing else than the destruction of British suprem- 
 acy on sea. 
 
 Who does not know that the numerous goody- 
 goody ' ' peace-at-all-price ' ' people, who publicly 
 declare that Germany does not dream of at- 
 tacking England, are mostly the very faddists 
 who tell and spread the grossly exaggerated 
 reports about the perdition of this country by 
 the consumption of too much drink? The vari- 
 ous ^' peace societies'* venture to say and pub- 
 licly to state that Germany does not dream of 
 attacking England. And such criminal drivel 
 is said in the face of the fact that the Boers, 
 with only 50,000 men, against the 5,000,000 of 
 the Germans, did dare to attack British posses- 
 sions a few years ago. Many people in Eng- 
 land imagine that the Germans mean to invade 
 this country, even to possess themselves of it. 
 Nothing is more remote from the minds of the 
 Germans. At any rate, this is not at all the 
 principal idea. What they do think of, and 
 what in their international and home situation 
 they are bound to think of, is to win the suprem- 
 acy on sea, or, if that be impossible, equality 
 on sea with the British. Invasion of England 
 is a mere incident in their plan. Once they de- 
 
152 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 feat the British Navy in the North Sea; once 
 they hold this sea, as the Dutch repeatedly, and 
 for long periods, held it, they have attained 
 everything they really want. 
 
 The game of interests, counter-interests, side- 
 interests, and side-counter-interests amongst 
 the Powers of Europe is so subtle that no great 
 player of the game need despair of doing again 
 what has been repeatedly done before. The 
 Germans, we repeat it, do not contemplate an 
 invasion of this country; certainly not in the 
 first place. They saw, even in their successful 
 war with the French, that the second part of 
 that war, or the one in which the French nation 
 as such defended her territory, was by far less 
 successful than the first, where the Germans 
 fought the regular armies of France. The 
 great surrenders of whole corps happened in 
 the first part of the war only. The Germans 
 only meditate how to make it impossible for the 
 British to maintain the claim to supremacy on 
 sea. To this one great task the Germans sub- 
 ordinate all and everything. It dictates their 
 diplomacy, their acts, their preparations. 
 
 He who has never made a serious study of 
 History, is very likely to estimate wrongly many 
 a feature in the life of a nation. Thus, to give 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 153 
 
 just one instance, tlie so-called absurd move- 
 ments in Society or in political life are almost 
 invariably misjudged by men unversed in the 
 study of the play of historic forces. Take as 
 an example the excessive theories now launched 
 in the sea of German literature. We have 
 heard of some of them in the previous part of 
 the present book. The average man laughs at 
 them, condemns them as unreasonable, and 
 thinks that, being unreasonable and absurd, 
 they must needs fail of success. No graver 
 error could be indulged in. Of two sets of so- 
 cial or political moves, the more absurd one has 
 by far the greater likelihood of success. Far 
 from pooh-poohing and contemptuously ignor- 
 ing these *' absurdities,'' caused in Germany 
 by the overweening conceit of the German 
 teachers, leaders of thought, and their pupils, 
 we ought to take them into very serious con- 
 sideration. A nation like the Germans, that 
 eagerly assimilates such theoretic stuff, is soon 
 ready to crave for the deeds crystallising those 
 theories in practical reality. In fact, had His- 
 tory been taught properly, no man in Great 
 Britain could for a moment doubt that the very 
 excesses and absurdities at present rife all over 
 Germany with regard to the immense role that 
 
154 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 the Germans are *^ evidently" destined to play 
 in the sublunar world, clearly indicate and 
 prove that from mere vague hopes and 
 dreams, the Germans are on the point of com- 
 ing to deeds. Where there is so much smoke, 
 flames are sure to break out soon. 
 
 GERMAN ASSETS 
 
 Leaving such general reflections, which, as 
 we know, have not much weight with British 
 readers, we hasten to point out some more con- 
 crete and palpable factors in the coming wave 
 of German Imperialism. The Germans have 
 various features of their own that distinguish 
 them from former nations who attempted to 
 build up great Empires. Thus, to speak in the 
 first place, of one of the most important points : 
 Nearly all previous nations showed a marked 
 tendency to the artificial restriction of the 
 growth of population, as soon as they passed 
 the line of moderate wealth and reached the 
 state of inordinate material prosperity. The 
 ancient Romans, the richer they grew in money, 
 the poorer they became in children. It was 
 even so with the Greeks, the Byzantines, the 
 Italian Republics, and many a modern state. 
 Not so the Germans. Although their material 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 155 
 
 prosperity lias, in the last generation, risen by 
 leaps and bounds almost unparalleled in modem 
 times, their population, far from decreasing, is 
 rising so quickly that, according to SchmoUer, 
 they will be 104,000,000 in the year 1965; ac- 
 cording to Hiibbe-Schleiden, 150,000,000 in the 
 year 1980; and according to Leroy-Beaulieu, 
 200,000,000 in the year 2000. 
 
 At any rate, it is certain that as amongst the 
 more advanced nations of Europe the Germans 
 are now the most numerous by far, so they are 
 likely to remain the most populous highly 
 civilised nation in Europe. This is, one 
 need hardly insist, a very important factor. 
 They mean to expand imperially, and are fully 
 convinced of their ability to do so. 
 
 Equally important is another feature of mod- 
 ern Germany. It consists in that the Germans, 
 quite unlike the French, attained their utmost 
 power, not through violent and destructive 
 revolutions at home, but by means of a great 
 and victorious war with the French outside 
 Germany. The French obtained the greatest 
 momentum of strength and power by and 
 through a fearful civil convulsion attacking 
 every one of the organs of their body-politic, 
 by the French E evolution. Such convulsions 
 
156 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 may and do give the nation so convulsed an 
 energy of the most intense kind, and hence an 
 unusual leverage in the conflict with other na- 
 tions; yet the leverage acquired by the Ger- 
 mans, if not quite as great as that of France in 
 1794 or 1796, was made good without any funda- 
 mental upheaval of the whole structure of the 
 German polity. Consequently the Germans 
 show a steadier and surer growth in power. 
 Having grown steadily, they gained in sureness 
 of power what they lost in time and intensity. 
 
 The above two features are only part of a 
 series of distinctive advantages possessed by 
 Germany in the competition for rule and expan- 
 sion. When, in former ages, the French were 
 the mightiest nation on the Continent, they yet 
 never counted amongst their advantages the 
 asset that Germany to-day is quite sure of. 
 France had allies, but they were, as a rule, 
 small Powers. Germany has a staunch and re- 
 liable ally that is not a small Power, Austria- 
 Hungary. France was never sure of either her 
 flanks or her rear. Germany is quite sure of 
 her rear. Finally, and perhaps principally, the 
 great efforts made by France to realise imper- 
 ial expansion were much less the wish and ear- 
 nest desire of the French people than the dynas- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 157 
 
 tic policy of her rulers. In Germany, at pres- 
 ent, the people itself wants, believes in, and de- 
 mands imperial expansion. In Germany an im- 
 perialist, like Mazarin in France, will not be 
 hampered by dissensions at home, such as the 
 Frondes of 1648-1653, which exasperated the 
 great Cardinal. 
 
 All these undoubted facts conspire to make 
 the situation of Germany a very strong one. 
 To overlook them would be fatal to Great 
 Britain. From her very situation in historic 
 space. Great Britain has, ever since the Tudors, 
 been one of the umpires of the Balance of 
 Power in Europe. It matters everything to 
 the British, whether the central State on the 
 Continent, i.e., Germany, is strong or weak, ag- 
 gressive or submissive. Evidently, no State 
 can eventually upset the balance of Europe as 
 readily as can the central State. Napoleon I. 
 himself became a European power only after 
 he had practically seized most of Germany. He 
 never had the whole of Italy, or of Spain ; nor 
 did it much matter. But the possession of Ger- 
 many gave him the command of the Continent. 
 Even of Austria-Hungary he never possessed as 
 much as of Germany, although he defeated the 
 Austrian armies more frequently. The greater 
 
158 aEEMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 half of the then Austrian monarchy, or Hun- 
 gary, he never controlled. Yet he was the con- 
 trolling Power on the Continent, because he 
 practically controlled the whole of Germany. 
 It is by such considerations that one may arrive 
 at the true estimation of the fact, that there 
 is now in the very centre of the Continent a 
 strong and united Empire ; the German Empire. 
 The possibilities implied in this fact are bound- 
 less. So far any serious student of European 
 politics must go with the most extreme of Ger- 
 mans. In fact, it must be admitted that no 
 State in Europe is in a position so favourable 
 for imperial expansion as is Germany. The 
 more clearly we see that, the more fully we con- 
 vince ourselves of the truth and force of this 
 statement, the surer will be our step on the 
 slippery ground of political conjectures. 
 
 In the preceding remarks we dwelt, and in- 
 tentionally, on the strong and advantageous fea- 
 tures of Germany as an international Power. 
 It would be childish to deny that Germany suf- 
 fers also from the defects of her virtues. She 
 too has her weak points, her very faulty sides, 
 and before coming to the final summing-up of 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 159 
 
 the facts and to the verdict, it is necessary to 
 dwell on some of the graver shortcomings inher- 
 ent in the German nation and empire. We are 
 going to do so at once. However, we cannot 
 omit remarking that before examining the 
 strong or the weak points of Germany, a Briton 
 ought never to lose sight of one cardinal fact 
 that is more than likely to render his view of 
 German politics unsafe. 
 
 Professor Schiemann, the well-known Ger- 
 man politician and personal adviser of the 
 Kaiser, rightly said a propos of the late visit 
 of British journalists in Germany, that to the 
 average Briton Germany is quite unknown. To 
 this we add that, not only is this the case with 
 regard to present or contemporary Germany, 
 but still more so with regard to Germany in the 
 past, or to the history of Germany. Thus his- 
 tory might be left out from practical politics if 
 it did not shape it, if it did not influence it. 
 But it does. No one can understand contem- 
 porary German politics who does not possess 
 sound knowledge of German history. In Eng- 
 lish historical literature there are exceedingly 
 few authoritative books on German history. 
 While the Germans have written up every as- 
 pect of English history in a very large number 
 
160 OERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 of elaborate, if not perfect books, the British 
 have done, comparatively, very little with re- 
 gard to German history. But even this does 
 not show the full strength of the point we want 
 to raise. Not only have the British no 
 scholarly or practical knowledge of Germany, 
 whether in the past or in the present, but they 
 are also very likely to misconstrue the facts they 
 do know on that subject. 
 
 Ever since the Middle Ages, the principal Eu- 
 ropean enemies of England were the Dutch, the 
 Spanish, and especially the French. In fact, 
 from 1688 to the end of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, France was the hereditary enemy of Eng- 
 land, or was considered to be so. In the course 
 of the secular conflicts with France, the British 
 naturally learned much about the temper, 
 habits, tendencies, and resources of the French. 
 As in all wars we want to adapt ourselves to 
 the means of our adversary, one may state with 
 absolute accuracy that the British diplomatic, 
 naval and also partly the military traditions 
 are distinctly adapted to and meant to serve 
 in conflicts with a particular sort of enemy, 
 with the French. Undoubtedly, many a Brit- 
 ish diplomatist or admiral, saturated with the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 161 
 
 secular traditions of Anglo-Frencli wars, would 
 be a matcli for any French diplomatist or ad- 
 miral. Nothing is more likely. It is, however, 
 still doubtful whether that British diplomatist 
 would prove as efficient a representative in dip- 
 lomatic conflict with Germany too. 
 
 We have only to consult history to find, that, 
 for instance, James I. committed a long series 
 of blunders because he persisted in treating 
 Spain as if she had been what France then 
 really was. He knew France, so he simply ap- 
 plied his method of dealing with France to his 
 way of dealing with Spain. It can hardly be 
 doubted that, in all diplomatic, naval, or mili- 
 tary conflicts with Germany, means other than 
 those that applied to France must come into 
 play. Germany is not France; the Germans 
 are, if not radically, yet sensibly different from 
 the French. Their geographical, political, eco- 
 nomic and social features are largely differ- 
 ent. But chiefly their historic growth, this, the 
 main factor in a nation's life, differentiates 
 them from the French. The British know much 
 about the French ; they know practically nothing 
 about the Germans ; whereas the Germans are 
 well acquainted with everything British. 
 
162 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 FORMIDABLE BUT BRITTLE 
 
 This, then, is the necessary remark that had 
 to be premised in order to give the reader the 
 proper point of view for a right estimation of 
 the strong and weak points of the Germans. 
 With this important proviso, we may now try 
 to stndy the less advantageous points of the 
 Germans. And in the first place, and before 
 everything else, it must be remarked that the 
 Germans are a power at once formidable and 
 brittle. Powers are measured, not by what 
 they can do when victorious, but by what they 
 are likely to be able to do when misfortune 
 overtakes them. 
 
 On consulting history we find that no nation 
 in Europe has proved so brittle, so utterly un- 
 able to recover from one fell blow of the fate of 
 battle, as did Prussia, or the dominant State in 
 the German Empire. When in 1806 Napoleon 
 and Davout, on one and the same day, beat the 
 Prussian armies at Jena and Auerstaedt, all 
 Prussia succumbed like a house of cards. 
 Huge, well-garrisoned Prussian fortresses sur- 
 rendered to a few French cavalry regiments. 
 The collapse of Prussia is unparalleled in all 
 modern history; yet it happened only twenty 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 163 
 
 years after the death of Prussia's greatest 
 King, Frederick II., the Great. The men who, 
 later on, regenerated and rebuilt Prussia, were 
 all of them non-Prussians. Scharnhorst, Stein, 
 Bliicher were, by birth, no Prussians. Here, in 
 this fact, is implied one of the greatest failings 
 of the Prussian system. 
 
 That much-imitated system breeds great 
 measures, but no great men. At any rate, not 
 a sufficient number of great personalities. 
 States cannot be made enduringly strong with- 
 out the possession of the strongest and most 
 efficient of all assets, that is. Personalities. 
 There is Frederick II., and Bismarck; but that 
 is all. The great personalities of the Germans 
 are literary and artistic, not political, nor mili- 
 tary. In denying the Prussians, and the Ger- 
 mans in general, the possession of great mili- 
 tary personalities, we seem to expose ourselves 
 to the sneer of the best-petted prejudices of the 
 day. Yet we will persist in saying that the 
 Germans are not likely to have great captains 
 of war. The German army may be, and no 
 doubt is, highly organised and disciplined. 
 But to have a well-trained army is like having 
 an elaborate dictionary of words. Does the 
 possession of the dictionary vouchsafe the 
 
164 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 possession of a fine style? Style is a matter of 
 personality; so is the style of an army. The 
 greatest nations of all history excelled infinitely 
 less in system and measures, whether political 
 or military, than in the faculty of producing 
 men with a great political or military person- 
 ality. The Romans, of all nations, had no sys- 
 tem whatever. 
 
 The Germans, who have written more on 
 Roman history than all other nations put to- 
 gether, have yet never understood the A B C of 
 Roman history. Professor Mommsen, the Ger- 
 man '^authority'' on Roman history, has writ- 
 ten up in five big volumes the ^^ system'' of the 
 Roman constitution. The truth is, the Romans 
 had no system of their constitution, no more 
 than the modern English have. It was all a 
 matter of personality. Not the edict of the 
 Praetor, but the Praetor himself was the im- 
 portant point. 
 
 Just so, in real war, it is not the military 
 ordinances, but the great power of a military 
 personality that wins battles and campaigns. 
 In Germany this is all practically impossible. 
 As great conservatories of music make no really 
 great virtuosi, so the German army system 
 breeds only efficient mediocrities, but no great 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 165 
 
 military personality. Wlien all goes well, as it 
 did in France in 1870-1871, thanks chiefly to 
 the demoralization of the French, such a Prus- 
 sian system works admirably. But when things 
 do not go well, it is bound to come to grief. 
 This can be proved almost mathematically. 
 Since the German system provides not only for 
 normal but also for emergency or problematic 
 cases and since each German officer is bound to 
 obey the given rules to the letter it follows with 
 irrefutable certainty that the German army, 
 in any case of novel situations or of unforeseen 
 yet probable reverses, would be at a loss what 
 to do. Especially would this be so if the oppos- 
 ing force consisted of officers to whom a broad 
 margin of personal initiative was given. 
 
 We are quite aware that much initiative was 
 taken by, if not given to, the German officers 
 in the Franco-German war. This, however, 
 does not alter matters very much, because that 
 war was, for the Germans, a victorious one from 
 the very start. It does not indicate what the 
 German officers would do in case of continued 
 reverses ; more particularly, if we consider that 
 the Germans have had no great war for now 
 over six-and-thirty years. Such a long peace is 
 deadly to the rise of free and great military 
 
166 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 personalities endowed with boundless resource- 
 fulness. We are so strongly convinced of the 
 absolute truth of this statement that we do not 
 hesitate to aver that any great European State 
 that would pass through the practice of a really 
 great war with a European Power other than 
 Germany, would by such a practice alone obtain 
 an immense advantage over the Germans, and 
 eventually beat them. If Austria-Hungary, 
 rousing herself out of her lethargy, would carry 
 on a two years' war with Turkey for the posses- 
 sion of the western part of the Balkans, and if 
 Austria-Hungary came out victorious over the 
 brave and hard-fighting Turks, she would have 
 thereby alone indefinitely increased her chance 
 of beating back a German attack upon her. 
 
 The current view that the German army is in- 
 vincible cannot for a moment be maintained. 
 If an army has gone through a succession of 
 victorious campaigns, and has actually defeated 
 its most important competitors, then, and for 
 the time being, it may be said that such an 
 army is probably invincible. But of an army 
 that has had no great war for more than one 
 generation, it is impossible to say with any 
 degree of certainty whether or no it is invinci- 
 ble. Nobody wants to deny that there is, to use 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 167 
 
 the words of Napoleon, an art of war, and that 
 the Germans are doing everything in their 
 power to carry that art to its highest pitch, as 
 far as that can be done in times of peace. But 
 it is equally certain that the art of war, as every 
 other art, finds its most perfect expression 
 through a great artist, that is, through a per- 
 son born to it, and endowed with a great mili- 
 tary personality. Now what we here contend is 
 that the over-systematization and over-regula- 
 tion of everything connected with the German 
 army renders the rise of a great German mili- 
 tary personality not very probable. Of course, 
 in the other countries of Europe there is as yet 
 even less probability of the rise of such a tower- 
 ing captain. At any rate, we desire to warn 
 the reader and student of European policy from 
 assuming too rashly the absolute superiority of 
 the German army as an engine of war. 
 
 The reader may be surprised to hear that in 
 our opinion the German Navy is very much less 
 hampered by defects such as we pointed out 
 with regard to the German Army. In the Ger- 
 man Navy there is no secular tradition weigh- 
 ing upon the elastic members of the service. 
 The Germans have, in the inhabitants of the 
 north coast of their empire, a numerous and 
 
168 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 hardy sea-faring population. With regard to 
 their chances in maritime warfare they are in- 
 finitely less cocksure, hence much less system 
 ridden than with regard to their view of war on 
 land. They do everything to make themselves 
 acquainted with all the physical, geographical 
 and strategic features of the North Sea, and of 
 other seas. At Bergen, in Norway, there is 
 given every year an elaborate course of lectures 
 on everything connected with the nature of the 
 North Sea. The elasticity and greater personal 
 initiative allowed to captains, officers, and 
 crews of German men of war are very remark- 
 able. 
 
 PERILS OP BUREAUCRACY 
 
 One of the greatest failings of the Germans is 
 their inability to take private and individual 
 initiative in any public affair. Everything is 
 done by the State-paid members of a vast 
 bureaucracy. The State is everything in Ger- 
 many; Society is, for purposes of public and 
 political life, not in existence at all. As long as 
 there is peace, such a system works admirably. 
 It is a sunny-day system. In times of national 
 reverses the first thing to break down is tlicl: 
 very bureaucracy which otherwise forms the 
 
aERMANY'S MADNESS 169 
 
 prop and mainstay of the people. Once the 
 bureaucracy breaks down, there happens, what 
 we saw in Russia on the breakdown of the Mos- 
 covite bureaucracy. Public business cannot be 
 carried on without some men commanding an 
 authority sufficiently great to make people obey 
 them. But where, as in Germany, all authority 
 is monopolised by a bureaucracy, nobody is able 
 to command authority on the break-up of 
 bureaucracy. What saved Rome and has al- 
 ways saved England is the very fact that in 
 both realms there always were men command- 
 ing the requisite authority. In Britain such 
 men are, as a rule, not even in office. In Ger- 
 many they are practically impossible. The 
 constitution of the German Empire was made 
 by Bismarck with the deliberate intention of 
 rendering the rise of politically important but 
 unofficial personalities a practical impossibil- 
 
 ity. 
 
 In case of disaster, unless Germany happens 
 to have an inordinately gifted ruler, she is ex- 
 posed to greater chances of decomposition than 
 most other nations of Europe. The Germans 
 have never learned the open secret that their 
 greatest achievements in literature, science, 
 philosophy, and music were, as a rule, done by 
 
170 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 men trammelled by no bonds of officialdom and 
 State-hierarchy. They have never seen, and 
 will never see that what holds good for intellec- 
 tual greatness, holds good also for greatness 
 political. Instead of having twenty-six rulers 
 as they now have, they would have, had they 
 ever learned the Great Lesson of Politics, 
 twenty-six great and free statesmen ; or, in other 
 words, twenty-six possible saviours in times of 
 reverses. Any nation fighting Germany on 
 land must concentrate all its efforts on a con- 
 siderable initial success, as the surest means of 
 depriving the Germans of most of the advan- 
 tages now given them by their system. 
 
 Germany is in this respect the very contrast 
 to Britain. In the latter country initial suc- 
 cesses of the adversary have seldom proved of 
 much importance. The true force of this coun- 
 try came out in times of reverses even much 
 more than in periods of success. In Britain the 
 number of independent men, working on their 
 own initiative and on their own responsibility, 
 is very much greater than that of similar in- 
 dividuals in Germany. Such independent per- 
 sons have long learned to stand adversity — to 
 be, as the saying is, good losers. This has given 
 to all Britain her peculiar tone, her power in 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 171 
 
 adversity, her stamina. All this is rather the 
 exception in Germany. When, in another sec- 
 tion of this book, we said that the Germans had 
 the real spirit of war and imperialism, we al- 
 ways implied that their spirit is the right one 
 for enterprises promising and giving fair re- 
 sults. At the present moment we are speaking 
 of periods of failure, and with regard to such 
 periods we say that the Germans are consider- 
 ably less well equipped than are the British. 
 There is no victory of Zama without the force 
 to stand the defeat of Cannae. 
 
 Another great drawback for the Germans is 
 the contemporary international situation re- 
 garding a new imperialism. When Spain, Hol- 
 land, or England started on their careers of 
 colonising vast and fertile tracts of colonies, 
 the other Powers in Europe or Asia interfered 
 with them either not at all, or in a casual man- 
 ner. Holland, although a tiny country, has still 
 immense colonies, and used to have very much 
 more. In those times a few bold captains were 
 able to lay hold of immense districts in Asia, 
 Africa, or America. At present this is all well- 
 nigh impossible. Even in Asia the new and 
 formidable power of the Japanese has arisen 
 and would at once veto any violent change in 
 
172 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 the distribution of hitherto uncolonised coun- 
 tries. The Colonial and imperial ambitions of 
 the Germans have come in a very unpropitious 
 moment. What formerly could be achieved by 
 a Cortez, Pizarro, Drake, or Frobisher, accom- 
 panied by a few gallant fellow adventurers, has 
 now become a vast enterprise, involving hun- 
 dreds of millions of money and hundreds of 
 thousands of men. 
 
 If the reader will carefully contemplate all 
 that the preceding remarks imply, he will ar- 
 rive at the conclusion that the Germans cannot 
 possibly realise their imperial, and, as we have 
 seen, indispensable ambitions, otherwise than 
 by defeating the Power which both has the most 
 valuable colonies, and is held to command the 
 sea, or the access to such colonies. Tertium non 
 datur; a third issue out of the difficulty does not 
 exist. True, one might say that the French 
 would perhaps, in exchange for Alsace and 
 German Lorraine, cede the valuable and large 
 isle of Madagascar to the Germans. Perhaps 
 the French would. But it is certain that no 
 ruler or minister in Germany could seriously 
 think for one moment of proposing the retro- 
 cession of Alsace and German Lorraine to the 
 French. He might just as well propose the ces- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 173 
 
 sion of Cologne, Frankfort on the Main, or 
 Berlin. 
 
 Just as the Germans made their inner unity 
 not by persuading one another to unite, as did 
 the Scots and the English, but by great wars 
 with Austria, on the one hand, and with France, 
 on the other; even so they can acquire colonies 
 not by direct conquest, but only by indirect wars 
 with England or France. Being the central 
 country in Europe, the Germans must neces- 
 sarily use indirect means for their great policy, 
 whether at home or abroad. For, on account 
 of their central position, the surrounding 
 Powers have always so strongly interfered with 
 the Germans, that the latter could not secure 
 tranquillity within otherwise than by establish- 
 ing their superiority abroad. Against this in- 
 exorable consequence of their central position 
 there is no other remedy left. We have come 
 to the strange but nevertheless true conclusion, 
 that even the weak points of the Germans prac- 
 tically force them to be aggressive. Their un- 
 doubted strength prompts them to the same ac- 
 tion that their undoubted drawbacks equally en- 
 tail upon them. Several nations have, in the 
 course of history, been in a similar position. 
 It always ended — in one and the same way. 
 
PAET III 
 
 THE AKGUMENT IN CONCLUSION 
 
 We have now reached the end of our task. We 
 have tried to place all the relevant facts of the 
 German Question before the reader. Begin- 
 ning with a statement of the inordinately over- 
 reaching national vanity of the Germans, we 
 admitted that their international position is one 
 both full of promise and beset with most irritat- 
 ing dangers. While constantly dwelling upon 
 the swelled-head of the Germans, which, unre- 
 mittingly stimulated by a host of their most 
 popular writers, is constantly growing instead 
 of decreasing, we dwelt with equal insistence on 
 the real power and strength and value of the 
 Germans. None but a malevolent jingo of Ber- 
 lin can possibly take our work as one deliber- 
 ately running down or reviling things and per- 
 sons German. 
 
 There is much to be admired in the Germans, 
 and what they have done in the past has laid all 
 the future generations under undying obliga- 
 tions. But here we mainly consider the future. 
 
 174 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 175 
 
 We studied the past in order to foresee the 
 future; just as we always study the present in 
 order to understand more fully the past. In 
 calling attention to German aspirations, to Ger- 
 man ambitions, we mean to do a work of hon- 
 esty, of political honesty. Such among the pub- 
 lic men or writers of this country as go on de- 
 claring to the people of Great Britain that the 
 Germans harbour no hostile intentions against 
 the British; that, in fact, the relations of the 
 two countries and peoples are the best they 
 can be; such people, we make bold to say, are 
 the enemies of Great Britain. The true friend 
 warns in advance ; it is the faddist who, out of 
 sheer conceit, is unable to see the most palpable 
 things, and accordingly does not warn his 
 friend, and so ruins him. 
 
 We are quite aware that in this country any 
 enthusiasm or tragic earnestness is discounted 
 with a cold sneer. Nor can we wonder that a 
 nation who, alone of all European nations, re- 
 mained, for centuries, practically unassailable, 
 has preserved a coolness of nerve which is im- 
 possible to Continental nations living under 
 constant menace of ruin. But things have 
 changed. England is no longer unassailable. 
 Europe has now, instead of two fleets, namely 
 
176 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 the Britisli and the French, as there used to be 
 before, no less than half-a-dozen big fleets, and 
 several minor ones. The whole international, 
 or inter-European, aspect and situation of Great 
 Britain is thoroughly changed. She is, politic- 
 ally, no longer an island. 
 
 Only a few years ago many a Briton proudly 
 talked of the *^ splendid isolation'' of Great 
 Britain. Since then that isolation has been de- 
 liberately given up, and entente is following 
 entente. Politically, therefore, we repeat it, 
 England is no longer an island. Nor is she one 
 strategically, or from the standpoint of war. 
 We need not here refer to the series of brilliant 
 and suggestive articles of the Military Corre- 
 spondent of The Times on the perfect feasible- 
 ness of an invasion of this country. We simply 
 submit, that a country, whether an island or no, 
 that has no sufficient army of its own, is always 
 exposed to invasion. 
 
 Any country, no matter how large, may be 
 compared to a big fortress. Much depends, no 
 doubt, on the strength of the walls and ram- 
 parts, bastions and towers. Yet the main force 
 of resistance is in the garrison. Great Britain 
 is the fortress; her navy is the equivalent of 
 the walls and ramparts of that fortress. The 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 177 
 
 national army of England is tlie garrison of the 
 fortress. Tlie inference from all this is only 
 one: The fortress of Great Britain cannot be 
 declared to be in a state of safety, in that her 
 garrison is far too weak for the purpose. The 
 walls of Great Britain consist practically of 
 about 100,000 seamen. That is far too little for 
 a fortress of the extent of England. 
 
 The reader is again reminded that hitherto 
 the great and decisive naval battles of Great 
 Britain have been fought in seas other than the 
 Channel or the North Sea. In the whole of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only two 
 pitched sea-battles were fought by the British in 
 the North Sea; one in 1781, off the Dogger 
 Bank, between Parker and the Dutch Admiral 
 Zouttman, ending in a draw; and the other in 
 1797, when Duncan, with utmost effort, defeated 
 the Dutch Admiral De Winter. All the great 
 and decisive sea-battles were fought by the 
 British thousands of miles away from Eng- 
 land. 
 
 The great naval war of the British in the near 
 future will, on the other hand, be fought in the 
 North Sea, and practically there alone. Any 
 decisive advantage of the enemy exposes Eng- 
 land at once to an invasion. 
 
178 OERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Again we say that the Germans have no in- 
 tention whatever to possess themselves of this 
 country. Such an idea does not enter their 
 minds. This, however, does not exclude a tem- 
 porary invasion for the purpose of a huge in- 
 demnity, or other advantages. Every school- 
 boy knows that the Dutch Admiral, De Ruyter, 
 entered the Medway in 1667, thanks to strategic 
 advantages which he had secured in the North 
 Sea, and threatened London for some time. 
 The same thing came near happening in 1690, 
 when the French Admiral, Tourville, after de- 
 feating the Anglo-Dutch fleet off Beachy Head, 
 made for the entrance of the Thames River. 
 There is no reason to assume that such a thing 
 could not happen again in our time. In war^ 
 as in life, everything is possible. 
 
 These, then, are the seminal factors of the 
 whole problem: Here is a country, Germany, 
 that having come as the last among the peoples 
 bidding for imperialism and expansion, cannot 
 hope to achieve much by attempts to spread its 
 eagles on the Continent of Europe. It is there- 
 fore driven, irremediably driven, to spread by 
 sea-power. Like ancient Carthage, which could 
 not expand into the interior of uninhabitable 
 Africa, Germany too cannot seriously hope to 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 179 
 
 possess herself of much more territory on the 
 fully occupied Continent of Europe, and is 
 forced to spread by maritime power. However, 
 Carthage met Kome, that is, a power well-knit 
 and strongly organised on land, and very ca- 
 pable on sea. The end was the downfall of Car- 
 thage. Had Eome possessed only sea-power, 
 Carthage might very well have defeated her. 
 But Eome had land and sea-power. Given her 
 efficient constitution and her twofold power, 
 Eome could not be worsted in the long run. 
 Everybody knows that Eome finally defeated 
 Carthage by means of a land-battle fought on 
 Carthaginian territory, at Zama. The Ger- 
 mans, if victorious over the British fleet, can 
 very well invade England, and hold it for some 
 time. The British, with the present organisa- 
 tion of their army, could never think of invad- 
 ing one town of Germany. Is such a situation 
 not threatening enough! Is it wise to leave 
 one's enemy a possible advantage so great as 
 to surpass by far any advantage one may have 
 over him! 
 
 Or, compare the possible losses of the Ger- 
 mans in case of their defeat on sea, with those 
 of the British in a similar case. The Germans 
 would, in the first place, lose all their colonies. 
 
180 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 In other words, they would lose what as yet is 
 of little if any value to them. They would 
 furthermore lose heavily in their large Trans- 
 marine commerce. The British, on the other 
 hand, would, in case of a naval disaster, lose 
 practically everything. The indemnity which 
 the Germans would exact, would be enormous, 
 both in colonies and in money. Neither Jena 
 nor Sedan could be compared in point of im- 
 mensity of loss with a decisive naval victory of 
 the Germans over the British fleet. It would 
 be the catastrophe of modern times. 
 
 Yet in the face of all these facts, there are 
 still thousands and thousands of influential men 
 in this country, who talk of the *' impossibility 
 of war with Germany," of the ^^ peaceful and 
 amicable inclinations" of the Germans. Must 
 one really despair to convince the average 
 Briton that wars between civilised nations do 
 not depend on the peaceful or amicable inclina- 
 tions of individuals'? Suppose that every Ger- 
 man be filled with pure friendship for England. 
 That would not in the least prevent him from 
 going to war with Great Britain. He may love 
 England and the English ; yet assuredly he must 
 love his own interest and that of his country 
 very much more intensely. Of passions, the 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 181 
 
 stronger one invariably has the upper hand. 
 The Germans, as a nation, have never cared 
 for home politics. Their individual indiffer- 
 ence and absolute incapacity in that respect 
 have always been so great, that, aided by the 
 disintegrating pressure from outside Powers, 
 they have to the present day not been able to 
 unite into one homogeneous, great and un- 
 divided polity. They still are twenty-six dif- 
 ferent States united into an Empire. Home 
 politics do not interest the German Burger, or 
 burgess. It is quite different with *^ world- 
 politics, ' ' as they call it in the Fatherland. Just 
 because the average German leaves home-poli- 
 tics to the officials and semi-officials, he reserves 
 all his political ardour for '* world-politics,'' or 
 for the hopes and tasks of Imperialism. Na- 
 tions intensely absorbed in the building up of 
 their home institutions, such as, at present, the 
 Hungarians, or the Italians, do not take much 
 stock in international policy. Vice versa, the 
 Germans, having had all their home institutions 
 mapped out for them by their rulers and min- 
 isters, concentrate all their fervent interest on 
 the sphere where there still is political activity 
 on a grand scale, offering many a chance of big 
 success to individual ambitionists. 
 
182 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 This imperialism, then, is the Great Passion 
 of the Germans. They are, at present, where 
 the English were in Elizabethan times. They 
 burn with the Great Passion. Every one of 
 them is brimful of it; and no power can stop 
 or retard that mighty current. The enthusi- 
 astic love which every German feels for the 
 Kaiser is only another way of expressing his 
 enthusiasm for that vast imperialism which the 
 Kaiser loves to incarnate in his personality. 
 Against such a mighty national sentiment, no 
 mere friendship for other nations can prevail. 
 Whatever, therefore, individual Germans may 
 or may not say about the relations of England 
 and Germany, this cannot in the least alter the 
 forces driving the latter into antagonism to the 
 former. 
 
 Far more to the point; infinitely more con- 
 sonant with the dignity, past and future prestige 
 of Great Britain would it be if all men of lead- 
 ing spirit, all preachers, teachers, statesmen, 
 journalists, or thinkers of this country joined in 
 bringing before the nation the necessity of 
 preparations which, if properly made, would 
 indeed retard, or eventually frustrate, any at- 
 tempt on the part of Germany. To talk of uni- 
 versal military service, even if it is done by 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 183 
 
 Lord Roberts, is hateful to the majority of 
 British citizens. Where the victor in so many 
 battles can carry no conviction, we should be 
 only foolishly presumptuous in trying to con- 
 vince our readers. The facts of the near fu- 
 ture will convince them. Nations are invari- 
 ably kicked, and never persuaded, into reforms. 
 
 Omitting, therefore, any lengthy discussion 
 of this, the one potent means of securing last- 
 ing peace between Great Britain and Germany, 
 we only want to point out some evident teach- 
 ings of history. 
 
 The Germans, as we tried to show, are a 
 Power both mighty and brittle. They are brit- 
 tle, because they do not, and owing to their sys- 
 tem, they cannot, have a rich supply of great 
 personalities, whether military or political. 
 
 From this it follows with deadly certainty, 
 that a nation that wants to defeat the Germans, 
 must cultivate just the sort of weapon in point 
 of which the Germans are very deficient, that 
 is, mighty, spontaneous personalities. The less 
 the British nation will imitate the manner and 
 method of war obtaining with the Germans, the 
 more she is likely to worst them. 
 
 If the Germans, in imitation of the British 
 tendency to big units in sea war, go on build- 
 
184 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 ing Dreadnoughts of an ever-increasing size, the 
 British ought to lay stress on lesser and more 
 nimble units. If the system of the Germans 
 breeds living machines, the British system ought 
 to breed the broadest initiative of captains and 
 officers. If Germany excels in both a strong 
 navy and an exceedingly strong army. Great 
 Britain ought to excel in an exceedingly strong 
 navy and in a strong army. If Germany wants 
 to attack England, England ought to attack her 
 long before. 
 
 In the same way, the Bagdad railway, which 
 is practically a German enterprise, ought to bo 
 counteracted by a British railway through 
 Beluchistan and Persia. The whole of Great 
 Britain's Asiatic policy ought to be based on 
 the more than fair probability, that Eussia does 
 not in the least plan a coup on India, as she has 
 never planned it to this day. In the same line 
 of political thought. Great Britain might with 
 great advantage come to an agreement with 
 Holland guaranteeing the contracting parties 
 mutual help for the maintenance of their East- 
 Indian possessions. The commonwealth of 
 Australasia ought to be stimulated into the 
 building of an efficient fleet, so as to be able to 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 185 
 
 step in with migM in any conflict for Great 
 Britain's Asiatic possessions. 
 
 All this and many more measures are dic- 
 tated by the actual facts of the international 
 situation of Great Britain and Germany. For 
 him who has studied History as a matter of 
 real life, and not merely as a heap of musty 
 documents, a description or precis of which en- 
 ables one to get a certificate in an ^^exam,'' or 
 to pose as an * ^ authority ' ' in University circles 
 amongst pedants; for such a man it cannot be 
 doubtful that, if Great Britain manages her 
 cards with prudence, she must in the end force 
 Germany to lower her flag. 
 
 Empires are the products of the beginning or 
 the end of great periods of history. Antiquity 
 began and ended with Empires ; during its man- 
 hood it knew only of intensely developed smaller 
 States. Europe is in her manhood ; Africa and 
 Asia are in their infancy. In Africa and Asia, 
 therefore, Empires were still possible ; but they 
 have long been made by the British, French, 
 Russians, Dutch, and a few minor nations, such 
 as the Belgians or Portuguese. To win new 
 Empires in Asia is, since the rise of the mighty 
 Japanese, quite impossible. To wrest old ones 
 
186 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 from their present possessors is feasible only if 
 those old possessors persist in making blunder 
 after blunder. 
 
 If, then, we consider the international position 
 in the light both of history and latter-day poli- 
 tics, we arrive at a conclusion which is indeed a 
 fearful mortification to the Germans, but never- 
 theless a sober truth, provided the leading in- 
 ternational Powers act according to the elemen- 
 tary rules of sound politics. 
 
 The conclusion is this : On the one hand, the 
 Germans, for the reasons given all through the 
 present work, are bound to strive for more ex- 
 pansion, for Imperialism. They do so, they 
 will do so, with even greater intensity. They 
 are simply bound to do so. On the other hand, 
 they cannot possibly establish a really valuable 
 new Empire, if the old Imperial Powers take 
 proper measures because they come too late in 
 the historic day. 
 
 Empires are not made where, when, and by 
 whom it pleases. Had Alexander the Great 
 been born a hundred years before his actual 
 date, he could never have defeated the Hellenes, 
 and therefore, lacking Hellenic help, he could 
 not have defeated the Persians. Napoleon 
 would have done nothing without the French 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 187 
 
 Revolution. It was that extraordinary event 
 that gave birth to extraordinary military tal- 
 ents, which in turn helped Napoleon to win the 
 battles of Rivoli, Marengo, Austerlitz, and Jena. 
 The Germans want to make a vast Empire with 
 the help of a strict system, and out of sheer in- 
 tention and resolution, without any help from a 
 great historic event in their favour. 
 
 Had the British lost South Africa in the late 
 Boer War, which, as Col. F. N. Maude himself 
 has pointed out, was far from an impossibility 
 in the first six weeks of the war (see The Times 
 Literary Supplement of May 31, 1907), then 
 indeed the loss of British prestige would have 
 constituted, for Germany, one of those historic 
 events that enable other Powers to step in and 
 achieve new imperial triumphs. But given that 
 new Empires are, for the present, unhistoric, 
 not to say unnatural; given that the Germans, 
 however so badly they need such an Empire, 
 ought not to be able to acquire it, so long as 
 Great Britain follows the clear dictates of her 
 past and her present ; there remains nothing for 
 the Germans but to give up the dream of Pan- 
 Germanism. 
 
 Should Great Britain, misled by men who 
 have never made a serious study of either his- 
 
188 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 tory or of the Continent in its present configura- 
 tion, misread the signs of the time, and instead 
 of meeting the inevitable aggressiveness of the 
 Germans by due preparations, continue to treat 
 the German Question lightly, or ignore it alto- 
 gether, then indeed the dream of Pan-German- 
 ism will not remain a dream. 
 
 By a similar misreading of Continental poli- 
 tics, England lost in the eighteenth century her 
 vast American colonies. Of course, the average 
 Briton is not at all aware of this broad historic 
 fact. He thinks that the Yankees *' wrested" 
 their country from the British. Nothing is less 
 true. The loss of the present United States 
 was caused, as we have shown in a separate 
 work, almost exclusively by the foolishly pro- 
 voked hostility of France, Holland, and Spain 
 against Great Britain. The British fleet was 
 worsted by the French fleet, both in America 
 and in India, and consequently the American 
 colonies were lost. 
 
 Should the signs of the time again be mis- 
 read, then there is no reason for the Germans 
 to despair of the success of their vast ambi- 
 tions. They bide their time ; they want to wait 
 for a moment when Great Britain will commit 
 blunders similar to those that caused the loss 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 189 
 
 of the present United States, a loss greater tlian 
 any Empire ever sustained. Such blunders of 
 their adversary are in reality the foundation of 
 their policy. They began the war with France 
 because they positively knew that France was 
 not properly prepared. They mean to do the 
 same thing with Great Britain. 
 
 It is in the hopes of rousing the British nation 
 to this danger, that the present little book is 
 written. The Germans, the author holds, must 
 expand, will expand, but ought not to be able to 
 establish a new Empire at the expense of the 
 British Empire, as long as Great Britain, fully 
 cognisant of the imminent danger of Germany's 
 Swelled Head, prepares for the conflict both 
 from the military and naval standpoint, let 
 alone by means of judicious diplomacy. Late 
 comers must be satisfied with crumbs; if they 
 get more, it is only because there is something 
 radically wrong with the people who preceded 
 them. 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 That Dr. Eeich^s conception of the Kaiser ^s 
 objects and the temper of the German people 
 was substantially correct has been proved be- 
 yond the shadow of a doubt. The Kaiser has 
 fired the mine which he laid, and his action has 
 been applauded by the majority of his subjects. 
 We propose to supplement the evidence col- 
 lected by Dr. Reich. His book was written un- 
 der the impression made by the Kaiser's violent 
 attitude towards France on the question of 
 Morocco. Let us observe the diplomatic ac- 
 tivities of William II., both before and after 
 that date. Never in the history of the world 
 has there been a more striking exhibition of in- 
 sane wickedness and cunning than the German 
 Emperor's. 
 
 AN IMPERIAL MACHIAVELLI 
 
 The machinations of German diplomacy lay 
 at the back of the trouble in the Far East which 
 culminated in the Russo-Japanese War. Wil- 
 liam II. had proclaimed that the Yellow Races 
 were a peril to European civilisation, and he 
 
 190 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 191 
 
 had embodied the idea in a poorly executed 
 picture presented to the Czar. After the Chi- 
 nese-Japanese War, Germany, with Russia and 
 France, deprived the Japanese of Port Arthur. 
 Two years later (1897) the Germans began the 
 dismemberment of China by seizing Kiao-Chau, 
 and, immediately afterwards. Port Arthur was 
 occupied by Eussia. The occupation of Port 
 Arthur by the Eussians was bound, sooner or 
 later, to cause hostilities between the Czar and 
 the Mikado, and the astute soldiers at Berlin 
 could have had little doubt in their own minds 
 as to the result of a struggle between the highly 
 efficient and patriotic Japanese Army and Navy 
 and the Eussian land and marine forces in the 
 Far East. 
 
 By encouraging the Czar to embark on the 
 Eusso- Japanese War — the Eussians received an 
 assurance that they would not be attacked by 
 Germany during the continuance of the Man- 
 churian campaign — the Kaiser and his ministers 
 were an efficient cause of the War, and of the 
 subsequent risings in Eussia. When the Kaiser 
 visited Tangier on March 31, 1905, and inter- 
 fered in the settlement of Morocco, the Eussian 
 armies were retiring before Japanese troops 
 trained by Germans. The sinister policy of 
 
192 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Germany towards Russia had been successful. 
 
 A similar policy had been pursued by Ger- 
 many towards the British Empire. The Boers 
 had been encouraged to believe that they could 
 count on German support if they endeavoured 
 to subjugate the British in South Africa. It 
 will be remembered that in the Eighties of the 
 last century, Kriiger had been entertained at 
 Berlin by Bismarck, and it must have been with 
 the deliberate intention of deceiving the Boers 
 and hastening a South African War that the 
 Kaiser despatched his telegram to the Boer 
 President. ^^I sincerely congratulate you,'' the 
 imperial Machiavelli cabled, ^ * that, without mak- 
 ing any appeal for the help of foreign Powers, 
 you have succeeded, with your people and your 
 own strength, in repulsing the armed bands 
 which have troubled the peace of your land. ' ' 
 
 The Kaiser had, however, not the slightest 
 wish to assist the Russians against the Japan- 
 ese, or the Boers against the English. At the 
 interview, a report of which was published by 
 the Daily Telegraph on October 28, 1908, he 
 even claimed to have prevented Russia and 
 France from attacking us during the Boer War, 
 and to have sketched out the plan of campaign 
 executed by Lords Roberts and Kitchener ! 
 
GEEMANY'S MADNESS 193 
 
 Assuming — it is a large assumption — that 
 these statements are true, we are not in his 
 debt. Prince Von Biilow, his Ex-Chancellor, 
 has kindly explained his master's motives. 
 *^ Among the French, '^ says the Prince, ^Hhe 
 deeply rooted national hatred against the Ger- 
 mans would speedily and completely have ousted 
 the momentary ill-feeling against England as 
 soon as we had definitely committed ourselves 
 to a course hostile to her [Great Britain's] in- 
 terests. . . . During those years we were occu- 
 pied in founding our sea power by building the 
 German navy, and, even in the event of [Brit- 
 ish] defeat in the South African War, it was 
 possible to stifle our sea power in the embryo." ^ 
 
 Thus, without the loss of a Pomeranian 
 grenadier, the Kaiser's iniquitous diplomacy 
 had crippled Eussia, endangered the French 
 savings invested in Eussia, saddled Great 
 Britain with an enormous debt, and sacrificed 
 the lives and fortunes of innumerable Eussians, 
 Japanese, Britons, and Boers. 
 
 1 Imperial Germany, by Prince Von Biilow, translated by 
 Marie A. Lewenz, M.A. (Cassell & Co.), pp. 31-2. 
 
194 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 A BID FOR MAHOMETAlSr SUPPORT 
 
 Another blow aimed at the British Empire 
 may yet be successful and lead to the massacre 
 of all Europeans (including Germans) isolated 
 among Mahometans. 
 
 Two years after cabling to Kriiger — in 1898 
 — William II. paid a visit to the Sultan of 
 Turkey, Abdul Hamid, who had been extirpat- 
 ing the Armenians. From Damascus he 
 thanked that miscreant for his hospitality. 
 *'May the Sultan," he said, ''and the three hun- 
 dred million Mussulmans scattered over the 
 earth be assured that the German Emperor will 
 always be their friend. ' ' ^ Since 1883 the Turk- 
 ish Army — once trained by Moltke — had been 
 reorganised by the celebrated German strate- 
 gist. Von der Goltz. As the majority of Mus- 
 sulmans live in the British Empire, and large 
 numbers of them in French colonies, the 
 Kaiser's object in courting the Mussulmans was 
 obvious. His theatrical pilgrimage to the Holy 
 Land in 1898 gave him an opportunity of in- 
 specting the country through which a German- 
 
 2 Germany and the Qerman Emperor, by George H. Perris 
 (Melrose), p. 410; Imperial Germany, by Prince Von BUlow, 
 p. 84. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 195 
 
 Turkish Army would marcli on the Suez Canal 
 and Egypt, while the Bagdad Railway, permis- 
 sion for the construction of which was secured 
 by German financiers in 1899, was probably de- 
 signed to enable him to throw troops into India 
 where he doubtless hoped to find support from 
 the Mahometans and Bengalese. 
 
 The Bagdad Railway is a continuation of the 
 German Anatolian Railway, which had been 
 constructed earlier. Russia, defeated and in 
 the throes of a Revolution, it was expected, 
 would not be able to prevent Germany, Austria- 
 Hungary and Turkey, between them, from 
 coercing the Balkan States, and, but for the for- 
 tunate defeat of the Turkish Army and the re- 
 vival of Russia, German troops might to-day be 
 on the shores of the Persian Gulf and in Egypt. 
 Writing in October, 1911, General Von Bern- 
 hardi observed that *^ Turkey — the predominant 
 Power of the Near East — is of paramount im- 
 portance to us [the Germans]. She is our nat- 
 ural ally. . . . Turkey is . . . the only Power 
 which can threaten England's position in 
 Egypt, and thus menace the short sea-route and 
 the land communications to India. "^ 
 
 3 Germany and the 'Next War, by General Friedrich von Bern-, 
 hardi, translated by Allen H. Powles (Edward Arnold), p. 99. 
 
196 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 The short sea-route to India would be threat- 
 ened by Turkey; the next step was to obtain a 
 position from which Germany could command 
 our long sea-route. If she could obtain ports on 
 the coast of Morocco she might cut both arteries. 
 The people of Morocco, also, are Mahometans. 
 Consequently, in 1905, the Kaiser suddenly as- 
 sumed the role of protector of Morocco while 
 Russia, France's ally, was embarrassed by the 
 war with Japan. If his fleet had been power- 
 ful enough, he would presumably have followed 
 up his intervention by overt acts of hostility. 
 As it was, he had to be content with driving M. 
 Delcasse from the French Foreign Office, and 
 procuring the Algeciras Conference. 
 
 The Russian Baltic fleet was destroyed by the 
 Japanese at the Battle of Tsu-Shima (May 27- 
 28, 1905) ; on June 6, M. Delcasse resigned, and, 
 on the same day. Count Von Bulow was created 
 a Prince. It was after j not before Sedan that 
 Bismarck had been promoted to the same rank. 
 The services for which Von Biilow was re- 
 warded may be surmised. From the standpoint 
 of a disciple of Machiavelli, Frederick the 
 Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck, the policy to- 
 wards Russia, the British Empire, and France 
 had been masterly. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 197 
 
 RUSSIA FLOUTED 
 
 So far, the Kaiser, judged by Atheist and 
 Anti-Social standards, had been very success- 
 ful. At the Algeciras Conference (1906), no 
 doubt, he discovered that the United States and 
 Italy, the third member of the Triple Alliance, 
 were not prepared to promote German ambi- 
 tions. Nevertheless he had triumphantly as- 
 serted Germany's right to be consulted in the 
 Morocco settlement, and he had been supported 
 by Austria-Hungary. ^ ^ You showed yourself, ' ' 
 said the Kaiser, addressing his ally, ^'a brilliant 
 second in the tourney, and can reckon on the like 
 service from me on a similar occasion. ' ' 
 
 This occasion was not long in coming. In 
 1907, at the Guildhall, William II. assured the 
 British Public that his aim was above all *'the 
 preservation of peace." But in 1908, at his 
 instigation or with his connivance, Austria- 
 Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, two 
 Turkish provinces held by her in trust under the 
 Berlin Treaty. It was at the suggestion of the 
 late Marquess of Salisbury that Austria-Hun- 
 gary had received a mandate to administer this 
 territory. 
 
 The annexation was, of course, a challenge to 
 
198 GERM ANY 'S MADNESS 
 
 Servia and Russia. The Kaiser, by threats, 
 obliged Russia to swallow the insult. To use 
 his own histrionic phrase, he ''took his stand in 
 shining armour'' by the side of the Emperor 
 Francis Joseph. 
 
 It was a few days after the annexation of 
 Bosnia-Herzegovina (October 7, 1908) that the 
 interview with him, already referred to, ap- 
 peared in the Daily Telegraph (October 28, 
 1908). In this interview he alleged that one of 
 his dearest wishes ''was to live on the best 
 terms with England, though the prevailing sen- 
 timent among large portions of the middle" 
 (why not the upper!) "and lower classes of his 
 own people was not friendly to England. ' ' On 
 February 17 of the same year he had written 
 privately to Lord Tweedmouth, then First Lord 
 of the Admiralty, with a view to influencing our 
 naval programme. "Lord Esher," he is re- 
 ported to have written, "had better attend to 
 the drains at Windsor and leave alone matters 
 which he does not understand." Lord Esher 
 had not accepted the Kaiser's promises at their 
 face value. 
 
 Not unnaturally, the interview in the Daily 
 Telegraph aroused a storm of indignation 
 among the Germans. The manuscript, it was 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 199 
 
 explained to them, had been sent by the Em- 
 peror to the Chancellor who alleged that he had 
 not read it. Probably to deceive the peace- 
 lovers in England and elsewhere, the Kaiser 
 was publicly reproved by Prince Von Biilow. 
 It was to the advantage of the plotters in Ber- 
 lin to make us believe that the German had be- 
 come a fettered despotism. 
 
 Having humiliated Russia, the Kaiser again 
 attempted to humiliate France. In July, 1911, 
 the Panther was despatched to Agadir and the 
 Algeciras settlement of the Morocco question 
 reopened. To escape from war, France was 
 obliged to surrender — it is true in return for 
 the Protectorate of Morocco — a large part of 
 her territory on the Congo, and, but for the (to 
 the Germans) unexpected firmness of the Brit- 
 ish Government, it is probable that Germany 
 would have acquired a naval base in Morocco, 
 menacing our Mediterranean and West African 
 trade routes. The arrangement with France 
 after the coup d' Agadir will, perhaps, be 
 marked as the last triumph of German diplo- 
 macy. 
 
200 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 BALKAN TROUBLE AND GERMAN POLICY 
 
 The Kaiser's murderous friend, the Sultan 
 Abdul, had been deposed by the Young Turks in 
 1909, but German officers were still drilling the 
 Turkish army, and its armaments were being 
 made in Germany. After the Agadir incident, 
 Italy declared war on Turkey — ''in direct op- 
 position," says General Von Bernhardi, ''to the 
 interests of the Triple Alliance" — and con- 
 quered Tripoli. "This undertaking," pursues 
 the General, "brought her to the brink of a war 
 with Austria, which, as the supreme Poiuer in 
 the Balkan Peninsula, can never tolerate the en- 
 croachment of Italy into those regions. ' ' ^ The 
 next year (1912) the Turkish Army, despite its 
 German training and German weapons, was de- 
 cisively defeated in nearly every encounter with 
 the Bulgarians, Servians, Greeks and Montene- 
 grins. The Turks failed to exhibit "the high 
 military qualities ' ' ^ with which Von Bernhardi 
 had credited them. Had it not been for the 
 folly of the Bulgarians in quarrelling with the 
 Servians and Greeks, the German aims, so far 
 as the Balkans were concerned, might have had 
 
 * Germany and the 'Next War, p. 86 : the italics are ours. 
 6 Ibid., p. 14L 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 201 
 
 to be postponed indefinitely. There is strong 
 ground for suspicion that Bulgaria, ruled by a 
 German prince, was thrust on Servia by the 
 Germans and Austrians. 
 
 The second of the Balkan wars (though it 
 ended in the triumph of Servia, Greece and 
 Roumania), by further exhausting Servia, en- 
 couraged Germany and Austria-Hungary to 
 pursue their aggressive policy. There can now 
 be no manner of doubt that last year Germany 
 was preparing to shake *Hhe mailed fist" at 
 Russia and her Allies. The Kaiser, in 1913, 
 raised a huge war-benevolence from his sub- 
 jects, a considerable part of which, it may be 
 noted, was allocated to the air-fleet. 
 
 THE GERMANS VERSUS THE WORLD 
 
 We come now to the diplomatic intercourse 
 immediately antecedent to the present war. 
 Was war deliberately planned for 1914? It is 
 open to doubt. ^^Let it be the task of our 
 diplomacy," General Von Bernhardi adjured 
 his superiors, ^*so to shuffle the cards that we 
 may be attacked by France, for then there would 
 be reasonable prospect that Russia for a time 
 would remain neutral. ' ' ^ He remarked else- 
 
 6 Germany and the Next War, p. 290. 
 
202 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 where (p. 296) that the Agadir Convention was 
 *^as liable to revision as the Algeciras treaty, 
 and, indeed, offers, in this respect, the advan- 
 tage that it creates new opportunities of friction 
 with France. ' ' According to him, ^ * the German 
 Government, from important reasons which 
 conld not be discussed," had in 1911 ** consid- 
 ered it expedient to avoid, under present condi- 
 tions, a collision with England or France at any 
 cost'' (p. 294). It is significant that our Am- 
 bassador at St. Petersburg telegraphed on the 
 30th July last, to Sir Edward Grey, that the 
 *' German ambassador had a second interview 
 with Minister for Foreign Affairs at 2 a.m., 
 when former completely hrohe down on seeing 
 that war was inevitable. He appealed to M. 
 Sazonof," added Sir G. Buchanan, 'Ho make 
 some suggestion which he could telegraph to 
 German Government as a last hope. ' ' '^ 
 
 We learn also from another despatch that, in 
 the opinion of the Russian Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs, ' ' Germany was unfortunate in her rep- 
 resentatives in Vienna and St. Petersburg; the 
 former was a violent Russophobe, who had 
 urged Austria on, the latter had reported to his 
 
 7 Correspondence respecting the European Crisis {Parliamen- 
 tary White Paper No. 6, 1914, Price 9d.), p. 53. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 203 
 
 Government that Eussia would never go to 
 war. ' ' ^ 
 
 The domestic difficulties of Great Britain, 
 France and Russia, however, decided the tiger 
 at Berlin to spring. 
 
 The arming of Ulster and the Nationalists, 
 the refusal of the army officers in Ireland to exe- 
 cute the British Cabinet's orders, the resigna- 
 tion of their posts by Sir John French and other 
 eminent officers, the undoubted strength of the 
 Socialists and Syndicalists in Great Britain and 
 the apparent strength of the Peace-at-any-price 
 Party among us seemed to afford to the mater- 
 ialists at Potsdam a reasonable hope that we 
 might accept their ^ infamous proposal" to re- 
 main neutral while Belgium and France were 
 being crushed and despoiled of their colonies. 
 
 Moreover, if Von Bernhardi's book reflects 
 the workings of the military brains of the Prus- 
 sian and Austro-Hungarian Armies, the British 
 fleet has alone been taken into account by the 
 German strategists. Our Colonial militia, he 
 remarks (p. 137), '^can be completely ignored 
 so far as concerns any European theatre of 
 war," and *4t is very questionable whether the 
 English army is capable of effectively acting 
 
 8 Ibid., p. 71. 
 
204 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 on the offensive against Continental European 
 troops'' (p. 121). Though he does not criticise 
 the Belgian Army, we surmise, from his ob- 
 servation that Holland ^^ would easily yield to 
 a German invasion" (p. 144), that no resistance 
 was anticipated — by him at all events — from 
 Belgium. 
 
 France, also, to superficial observers, ap- 
 peared this year to be drifting towards a Revo- 
 lution. The murder of M. Calmette and the 
 croakings of an unpatriotic Senator as to the 
 unpreparedness of the Army may have led the 
 Germans astray. As for Russia: it may well 
 have been believed that she had not recovered 
 from her war with Japan and from the Revolu- 
 tion which was still smouldering. 
 
 To personages like the Kaiser and the Crown 
 Prince the political situation appeared too 
 tempting. The German Crown Prince, if 
 gauged by his utterances, loves bloodshed and 
 brutality, and the Kaiser gives the impression 
 that he firmly believes himself to be a super- 
 Napoleon. '^I cannot stand him any longer," 
 said the grim realist, Bismarck, ** ... I can- 
 not make genuflexions, or crouch under the table 
 like a dog. He wants to break with Russia. 
 ... I cannot tack on as a tail to my career the 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 205 
 
 failures of arbitrary and inexperienced self- 
 conceit for which I should be held responsible.'' 
 
 The Kaiser's self-conceit is the primary cause 
 of the war; and, as Mr. F. W. Wile in his article 
 in the Daily Mail of the 14th of August points 
 out, the treacherous inspection of our armament 
 firms made by the head of the firm of Krupp 
 and his expert between June 14 and 23 — i.e. he- 
 fore the murder of the heir to the throne of Aus- 
 tria-Hungary — must have been inspired by the 
 Kaiser. 
 
 ^^ Although I am not able to verify it," tele- 
 graphed our ambassador at Vienna to Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey on the 30th of July, ''I have private 
 information that the German ambassador knew 
 the text of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia 
 before it was despatched, and telegraphed it to 
 the German Emperor."^ The following pas- 
 sage from a telegram sent by Sir H. Rumbold 
 from Berlin to Sir Edward Grey is also worth 
 noting, *^ Emperor returns suddenly to-night, 
 and Under-Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs says that Foreign Office regret this step, 
 which was taken on His Majesty's own initia- 
 tive." ^^ 
 
 9 Correspondence respecting the European Crisis, p. 52. 
 10 Ibid., p. 21. 
 
206 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Admiral Mahan pronounces that the Kaiser's 
 absence from Berlin at the opening of the crisis 
 was a mere ruse of war. After the ^ infamous 
 proposal" made to Great and Greater Britain, 
 it is impossible to give William II. the benefit 
 of the doubt. 
 
 THE ETHICS AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAM II. 
 
 The Kaiser has provoked millions of men to 
 kill millions of other men. Owing to him, in- 
 numerable women and children will be murdered 
 or die of starvation, and the products of the 
 labour of countless human beings destroyed or 
 wasted. Already some of his subjects have dis- 
 covered this. The committee of the German 
 Humanity League, Berlin, have sent to the Brit- 
 ish Humanity League a document in which he is 
 characterised as ^'the uncurbed tyrant, sur- 
 rounded by parasites, now directing the most 
 desperate, devilish, and selfish campaign ever 
 waged against humanity"; as ^^the despot 
 whose insatiable egotism is drenching Europe 
 with the blood of its workers and wage-earners ' ' 
 (Times, Aug. 15, 1914). 
 
 The Prussian statesman Stein called Napo- 
 leon **the great criminal," but Napoleon had 
 this excuse, that he issued from the French 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 207 
 
 Revolution, that he was a man of vast ability 
 and that, in the existing condition of things, his 
 reforms — and he made many and useful re- 
 forms — had to be forced on mankind at the point 
 of the bayonet. One wonders what epithet 
 Stein or, say, Kant would have applied to Wil- 
 liam II. and his councillors ! That the Kaiser 's 
 ethics are peculiar may be gathered from his 
 address to the German soldiers despatched to 
 China in 1900. 
 
 As reported by the Bremen Weser Zeitung 
 he said: — 
 
 ''When you meet the foe you will defeat 
 him. No quarter will he given, no prison- 
 ers will he taken. Let all ivho fall into your 
 hands he at your mercy.. .Just as the Huns a 
 thousand years ago, under the leadership of 
 Etzel (Attila) gained a reputation in virtue of 
 ivhich they still live in historical tradition, so 
 may the name of Germany hecome known in 
 such a manner in China that no Chinaman will 
 ever again even dare to look askance at a Ger- 
 man.'' {Times, July 30, 1900, p. 5.) 
 
 The reference to Attila was commonly sup- 
 pressed, but the rest of the quotation was cir- 
 culated on postcards throughout Germany. 
 {Times, Aug. 11, 1900, p. 4.) 
 
208 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Two days later, the modern Attila preached 
 a sermon on board the Hohenzollern. 
 
 ^'We will mobilise/' he is reported by the 
 Kreuz Zeitung to have said, ^'not only battalions 
 of warriors, but also a holy force of supplicants. 
 And there is much that we have to beg and pray 
 for on behalf of our brethren who are going 
 forth to fight. They are to be the strong arm 
 that is to chastise the assassins. They are to 
 be the mailed fist that is to strike into the midst 
 of these wild deeds." {Times, Aug. 3, 1900, 
 p. 4.) 
 
 The Kaiser is not more tender to his own sub- 
 jects than to the Chinese. ^^It may happen, 
 though God forbid," he told some recruits at 
 Potsdam on November 23, 1891, ''that you 7nay 
 have to fire on your own parents or brothers. 
 Prove your fidelity then by your sacrifice.^' ^^ 
 Whether he believes in a God is a moot point. 
 On another occasion he said to some soldiers, 
 ''You must all have only one will, and it is 
 mine; there is only one law, and it is mine." ^^ 
 
 Of the nauseating doses of flattery which the 
 Emperor has administered to his subjects here 
 are a few samples: — 
 
 11 Germany and the German Emperor, sup. cit., p. 391. 
 
 12 Ibid., p. 390. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 209 
 
 (1) ^^The German people are the salt of the 
 earth.'' 
 
 (2) **To us Germans great ideals have be- 
 come permanent possessions, whereas to other 
 peoples they have been, more or less, lost." 
 
 ( 3 ) ' ^ Far stretches our speech over the ocean, 
 far the flight of our science and exploration ; no 
 work in the domain of new discovery, no scien- 
 tific idea but is first tested by us and then 
 adopted by other nations. This is the world- 
 rule the German spirit strives for. ' ' 
 
 (4) ^'Our German people will be the granite 
 block on which the good God may complete His 
 work of civilising the world. Then will be real- 
 ised the word of the poet who said that the world 
 will one day be cured by the German character. ' ' 
 
 (5) ^^Berlinese sculpture has reached a de- 
 gree of perfection that the Renaissance would 
 scarcely surpass." 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BISMAKCK 
 
 One would need the pen of Voltaire to por- 
 tray the Kaiser. His sole excuses are that 
 when a boy he came under the influence of the 
 cynical Bismarck, and that his conceptions of 
 Germany and War are shared by a large num- 
 ber of semi-civilised Germans. Let Bismarck 
 
210 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 himself describe how he tampered with the Ems 
 telegram and produced the Franco-German 
 War. 
 
 ^^ Having decided to resign'' (the grandfather 
 of the Kaiser was, comparatively speaking, a 
 humane man and wished, if possible, to avoid 
 a war with France, and Bismarck wanted to 
 resign if there was no war) ^4n spite of the 
 remonstrances which Roon made against it, I 
 invited him and Moltke to dine with me alone. 
 . . . During our conversation I was informed 
 that a telegram from Ems . . . was being de- 
 ciphered. When the copy was handed to me it 
 showed that Abeken had drawn up and signed 
 the telegram at His Majesty's command, and I 
 read it out to my guests, tvhose dejection tvas so 
 great that they turned away from food and 
 drink. ... I put a few questions to Moltke as 
 to the extent of our preparations. . . . He an- 
 swered that if there was to be war he expected 
 no advantage to us by deferring the outbreak. 
 ... I made use of the royal authorisation com- 
 municated to me through Abeken, to publish the 
 contents of the telegram, and, in the presence of 
 my two guests, I reduced the telegram by strik- 
 ing out words, but without adding or altering. 
 . . . After I had read out the concentrated edi- 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 211 
 
 tion . . . Moltke remarked: *Now it has a dif- 
 ferent ring : it sounded before like a parley ; now 
 it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge. ' I 
 went on to explain: * If I at once communicate 
 the text . . . not only to the newspapers, but 
 also by telegraph to all our Embassies, it will 
 be known in Paris before midnight, and . . . 
 will have the effect of a red rag upon the Gallic 
 bull.'' ^3 
 
 Bismarck had a patriotic reason for his con- 
 duct in sub-editing the telegram — Napoleon III, 
 and Francis Joseph were undoubtedly prepar- 
 ing to attack Prussia — but it was an abominable 
 action on his part to reveal later the fraudulent 
 method by which he provoked the war. By do- 
 ing so he destroyed any moral justification the 
 Germans had for retaining Alsace-Lorraine, and 
 he poisoned the minds of the present generation 
 of Germans. And he did it merely to gratify 
 his hatred for the Kaiser ! If one of the fore- 
 most of Prussian patriots behaved in this cyni- 
 cal and selfish way, what can the world expect 
 from the average Prussian officer and bureau- 
 crat? 
 
 13 Bismarck, his Reflections and Reminiscences, translated 
 under the supervision of A. J. Butler, late Fellow of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, pp. 95-100. 
 
212 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Englishmen will have read with pitying 
 amusement the vapourings of the Anglo-German 
 Houston Chamberlain (see pp. 11-14, 37-39). 
 It may interest them to know that his theories 
 are merely a development of some table-talk of 
 Bismarck reported by his jackal, Busch. * ^ The 
 Germans,'' said the Man of Blood and Iron, 
 **the Germanic race is, so to speak, the male 
 principle throughout Europe — the fructifying 
 principle. The Celtic and Slav peoples repre- 
 sent the female sex. . . . The Revolution of 
 1789 was the overthrow of the German element 
 by the Celtic." ^^ 
 
 PKUSSIAN ATHEISM 
 
 Bismarck was primarily a civilian. Views 
 akin to those held by him appear in magnified 
 forms in the writings of German soldiers. Be- 
 low are the reflections of the late Count Yorck 
 von Wartenburg, Colonel of the General Staff 
 of the Prussian Army, on Napoleon's horrible 
 order to his Adjutant-General *Ho convey all 
 the gunners and other Turks who were captured 
 at Jaffa with arms in their hands to the sea- 
 shore, and have them shot, taking care that 
 
 14 Bismarck, Some Secret Pages of His History, by Busch, I. 
 526-7. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 213 
 
 none escape/' — an order rightly denounced by 
 every Christian historian. 
 
 *^In the eyes of mere didactic historical 
 writers," said Count Von Wartenburg, '^this 
 deed may appear horrible and revolting, but 
 practical military history must not consider it 
 as such. ... If such an act is necessary for the 
 safety of one 's army, it is not only justified, but 
 its repetition in any future war will be advisa- 
 ble, and no convention could alter this fact. ' ' 
 
 Comment on such comments is superfluous. 
 As Mr. Belloc remarks, ^'Prussia is . . . Athe- 
 ist. Her Atheism has profoundly penetrated 
 the private morals of her people. It has not 
 only penetrated, it has permeated the mind of 
 her rulers. ' ' 
 
 Again: the ex-trainer of the Turks, Field- 
 Marshal Von der Goltz, assures us that ^Svars 
 are the fate of mankind, the inevitable destiny 
 of nations," and that ^inexorability and seem- 
 ingly hideous callousness are among the attri- 
 butes necessary to him who would achieve great 
 things in war. In the case of the general there 
 is only one crime for which history never par- 
 dons him, and that is — defeat."^^ 
 
 15 The Nation in Arms, by Baron Colmar Von der Goltz, 
 translated by Philip A. Ashworth (pp. 470 and 79). 
 
214 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 One of the greatest American generals in the 
 North and South War said that war was 
 * * Hell, ' ' and Napoleon himself, if Segur is to be 
 trusted, considered it to be ^^a game of barba- 
 rians," the art of which consisted in being 
 stronger than the enemy at a given point. The 
 language of Von der Goltz, Von Wartenburg 
 and the Kaiser takes one back to the days of the 
 Thirty Years' War, of Timour, of Attila or of 
 the Assyrians. 
 
 GERMANS AND MILITARISM 
 
 The writer of these lines was a few days ago 
 in Switzerland, living on the most friendly 
 terms with several Germans, among them two 
 frank and kind-hearted youths who spent much 
 of their time amusing some French children. 
 Both of these lads were suddenly summoned to 
 join, one the German Fleet, the other the Ger- 
 man Army. Among the writer's friends has 
 been a German of vast intelligence, extraordi- 
 nary modesty, and unaffected kindliness. How 
 many among us have had similar experiences! 
 That a well-educated people, hospitable and 
 fond of family life, should be used as his jemmy 
 by the strange intelligence who has pronounced 
 Count Zeppelin to be *Hhe greatest man of the 
 
GERMANY 'S MADNESS 215 
 
 century'' is a tragedy unequalled in the world's 
 history. 
 
 The monsters who have made this War have 
 taken the fullest advantage of the enormous and 
 portentous superiority possessed to-day by the 
 armed over the unarmed man, and also of the 
 facilities afforded by the printing-press to 
 stimulate the vanity, fears, and hatreds of 
 human beings. The barbarous behaviour of the 
 Prussian officers in Alsace-Lorraine and now in 
 Belgium, the tales of horror which, from time 
 to time, have reached us from the German 
 Colonies, show the nature of the tyranny which 
 the Prussian camarilla is seeking to impose on 
 the white and coloured races. If Prussia were 
 to succeed, it is probable that the institution of 
 slavery would be revived. The friends of the 
 Turks and condoners of the Armenian mas- 
 sacres would have no compunction in coercing 
 men to satisfy their needs and unnatural ca- 
 prices. ^'England," observes General Von 
 Bernhardi, ^'committed the unpardonable 
 blunder, from her point of view, of not sup- 
 porting the Southern States in the American 
 War of Secession." 1^ That the Southern 
 States wished to preserve and extend their 
 
 16 Germany and the Next War, p. 92. 
 
216 GERMANY ^S MADNESS 
 
 *^ domestic institution'' of slavery ought not, of 
 course, to have deterred us ! 
 
 At the trial of Dr. Peters, the High Commis- 
 sioner for German East Africa, who, inter alia, 
 had flogged and executed a woman, the Disci- 
 plinary Court at Berlin observed: ^^With re- 
 gard to the flogging of the women, it may be 
 admitted that flogging is a customary punish- 
 ment for women as well as for men in Africa. ' ' 
 General Von Liebert, ex-Governor of the prov- 
 ince, gave evidence and remarked that *4n 
 Africa it is impossible to get on without 
 cruelty,'' and that the condemnation of Dr. 
 Peters (he lost his post) was ^^a stain and dis- 
 grace upon German justice and the German peo- 
 pjg >> 17 rjij^jg general was a member of the 
 Reichstag and President of the Anti-Socialist 
 League. 
 
 Rightly regarded, the war against Germany is 
 a war for the liberation of the German nation, 
 and the sooner that we make that clear to them 
 the better. In the Napoleonic War, the Allies de- 
 clared that they were waging war on Napoleon 
 alone, and in the Franco-German War the 
 Prussian rulers — but falsely — alleged that their 
 enemy was Napoleon III. and not the French 
 
 17 The Times, July 1, 1907. 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 217 
 
 people. The mass of the Germans, it cannot be 
 too often repeated, have been grossly deceived 
 by their Government, and by most of their Pro- 
 fessors and Publicists. If any one doubts this, 
 let him procure General Von Bernhardi's 
 classic; a cheap edition of the translation has 
 been issued by Mr. Edward Arnold. From that 
 amazingly candid work we append some ex- 
 tracts. 
 
 (i) ^^The German people'' is ^Hhe great- 
 est civilised people known to history" 
 (p. 6). 
 
 If SO, their behaviour is curious. ** Gentle- 
 men, ' ' said the German Chancellor on August 4 
 to the Reichstag, 'Sve are now in a state of 
 necessity, and necessity knows no law! Our 
 troops have occupied Luxemburg, and perhaps 
 are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that 
 is contrary to the dictates of international 
 law. . . . The wrong — I speak openly — that we 
 are committing we will endeavour to make good 
 as soon as our military goal has been reached. 
 Anybody who is threatened, as we are threat- 
 ened, and is fighting for his highest possessions, 
 can have only one thought — how he is to hack 
 his way through. ' ' 
 
218 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Germany was supporting Austria-Hungary 
 and Austria-Hungary liad sent to Servia an ulti- 
 matum tlie like of which has never been deliv- 
 ered since the Age of Napoleon. Sir Edward 
 Grey, who is not accustomed to exaggerate, told 
 Count Mensdorff that he had '^ never before 
 seen one State address to another independent 
 State a document of so formidable a character. ' ' 
 That the real author of the ultimatum was the 
 clement prince who ordered his soldiers to give 
 no quarter to Chinamen is not improbable. 
 Servia, moreover, had practically accepted the 
 terms of the ultimatum. To murder, to beg- 
 gar, and to burn the houses of neutrals is a 
 natural action on the part of ^^the greatest 
 civilised people known to history.'' 
 
 (2) *^From the time of their first appear- 
 ance in history, the Germans showed them- 
 selves a firstclass civilised people" (p. 53). 
 
 The Romans and Greeks who first came in 
 contact with them would not have agreed with 
 the General. The Goths and the Vandals were 
 Germans. 
 
 (3) ^*The proud conviction forces itself 
 upon us with irresistible power that a high, 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 219 
 
 if not the highest, importance for the en- 
 tire development of the human race is as- 
 cribable to this German people'' (p. 68). 
 
 General Von Bernhardi is more modest than 
 his master (see p. 163). 
 
 (4) *^Two great movements were born 
 from the German intellectual life, on which, 
 henceforth, all the intellectual and moral 
 progress of man must rest: the Reforma- 
 tion and the critical philosophy" (p. 69). 
 
 The italics are ours. General Von Bernhardi 
 is trespassing on the Kaiser's province! The 
 Chinese had the impertinence to invent gun- 
 powder and printing. Gothic architecture came 
 from France. The Renaissance commenced in 
 Italy; Italians discovered America, a Pole, 
 Copernicus, the heliocentric system ; and Shake- 
 speare, Bacon, Newton and Watt had the mis- 
 fortune to be Englishmen, Fulton to be an 
 American. Wycliffe, too, was born before 
 Luther, and Hus happened to be a Bohemian. 
 The Emperor Sigismund who sent Hus to the 
 stake was, however, a German. 
 
 (5) **From the point of view of civilisa- 
 tion, it is imperative to preserve the Ger- 
 
220 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 man spirit, and by so doing to establish foci 
 of universal culture '^ (p. 75). 
 
 Cannot ^*foci of universal culture'' be estab- 
 lished without the assistance of Krupp and his 
 agents? One would suppose that a Chinese 
 Wall had been erected round Germany! That 
 German culture is synonymous with ^^ universal 
 culture" is a hard saying. Their printed al- 
 phabet and their language, to take two exam- 
 ples, are very clumsy vehicles for the transmis- 
 sion of thought. It may surprise the soldat de 
 plumCy as Napoleon would have called him, to 
 learn that there have been scientists, artists, and 
 men of letters, who were not, or are not Ger- 
 mans. Faraday and Darwin were Englishmen, 
 Pasteur and Balzac were Frenchmen, Metchni- 
 koff is and Tolstoi was Russian, Chopin was a 
 Pole, Edison is an American, Marconi is an 
 Italian. The Germans have devoted them- 
 selves to the study of Antiquity, but the most 
 brilliant and penetrating study of the Ancient 
 World has been written by an Italian, Ferrero, 
 who, however, had the bad taste — long before 
 Mr. Norman Angell — to expose the folly and 
 wickedness of the German conception of War. 
 Of course, no one denies that the world is 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 221 
 
 heavily indebted to the race which has produced 
 Leibnitz, Bach, Lessing, Kant, Niebnhr, 
 Savigny, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Gauss, 
 Virchow, Wagner, Koch, and Ehrlich. 
 
 (6) ^^No people is so little qualified as 
 the German to direct its own destinies'' 
 (p. 112). On this point General Von Bern- 
 hardi enlarges. 
 
 (a) Germany is *^a country . . . torn 
 asunder internally and externally" 
 (p. 128). 
 
 ( h ) The Germans ^ ^ have to-day become 
 a peace-loving — an almost *too' peace- 
 loving — nation" (p. 2). 
 
 (c) The German character is ^^good- 
 natured" (p. 2). 
 
 (d) The Germans *^wish not to be dis- 
 turbed in commercial life" (p. 2). 
 
 It is strange that this, ^Hhe greatest civilised 
 people known to history, " is ^ ^ so little qualified 
 to direct its own destinies. " It is not so strange 
 that the Germans '^wish not to be disturbed in 
 commercial life." 
 
 (7) ^'When the State renounces all ex- 
 tension of power, and recoils from every 
 
222 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 war which is necessary for its expansion 
 . . . then its citizens become stunted. . . . 
 This is sufficiently exemplified by the pitia- 
 ble existence of all small States'' (p. 19). 
 
 And the City States of Athens and Florence 
 produced a finer art and literature than the 
 vast German and Roman Empires! 
 
 Von Bernhardi, general and statesman, is 
 more illuminating than Von Bernhardi, his- 
 torian and sociologist. There is no need to 
 comment on the following quotations. 
 
 (1) ** Nothing is left but war to secure to 
 the true elements of progress the ascend- 
 ency over the spirits of corruption and de- 
 cay" (p. 13). 
 
 (2) War is ^^a moral obligation, and, as 
 such, an indispensable factor in civilisa- 
 tion" (p. 17). 
 
 (3) *'From the Christian standpoint we 
 arrive at the same conclusion" (p. 22). 
 
 (4) ^^The efforts directed towards the 
 abolition of war must not only be termed 
 foolish, but absolutely immoral, and must 
 be stigmatised as unworthy of the human 
 race" (p. 27). 
 
 (5) ** France must be so completely 
 
GERMANY'S MADNESS 223 
 
 crushed that she can never again come 
 across our path" (p. 104). 
 
 (6) ''The principle of the balance of 
 power in Europe . . . must be entirely dis- 
 regarded" (p. 107). 
 
 (7) ''A pacific agreement with England 
 is, after all, a will-o '-the-wisp which no seri- 
 ous German statesman would trouble to fol- 
 low" (p. 97). 
 
 (8) ' ' Our next war will be fought for the 
 highest interests of our country and of 
 mankind. This will invest it with impor- 
 tance in the world 's history. ' World power 
 or do^vnfall!' will be our rallying cry" 
 (p. 156). 
 
 IN CONCLUSION 
 
 So long as the German nation was under the 
 control of armed men like the Kaiser, his son, 
 and General Von Bernhardi, a war between the 
 German and the British Empires could scarcely 
 have been prevented. 
 
 Yv^hen estimating the chances of Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary, the Omnisciences at Berlin 
 seem to have left one or two important factors 
 out of their calculations. The Russian Army 
 has been through the furnace of the Russo- 
 
224 GERMANY'S MADNESS 
 
 Japanese War; the Servians distingnislied 
 themselves in the two Balkan Wars ; the French 
 have had numerous opportunities of discover- 
 ing, under war conditions, the nature of modern 
 warfare, while the British Army was tested by 
 the Boers. The German and Austro-Hungarian 
 soldiers, on the other hand, are amateurs, very 
 few of them having been in action. 
 
 At the risk of seeming irrelevance, we shall 
 close by quoting an appreciation of Lord Kitcli- 
 ener made by a Prussian Staff Officer, Major 
 Von Tiedmann, who, as military attache, ac- 
 companied the British army in the Soudan cam- 
 paign. ^'Lord Kitchener," he wrote, ^Svas 
 familiar with the country and people of the 
 Soudan and all facts concerned with it ; he spoke 
 Arabic well, and it would have been difficult to 
 find a more suitable person for the conduct of 
 the campaign. . . . He waited unconcernedly 
 for the right moment; but, when it came, he 
 pounced with eagle-like swiftness and sureness 
 upon his prey, and dealt the decisive blow in a 
 surprisingly short time. He had neglected 
 nothing. ' ' 
 
 J. B. E. 
 
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