MMi\ M ill m {|HllHUH|(!f[JHHMlv AN ANSWER TO GERMANY'S APPEALS ii Slliili.!. iilil Mm rmv mi ii FREDERICK W: WHITRIDGE tliiti[ VX) m Book. 1^? \(\V^ Gop)iightN°. COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. One American's Opinion of the European War One American's Opinion of the European War An Answer to Germany's Appeals By Frederick W. Whitridge NEW YORK EP-DUTTON & COMPANY PUBUSHERS A^'^^ ^ ^^1^*" x*^ Copyright, 19 14 BY E. P. BUTTON & CO. OCT 30 ibl4 TTbe Itnfcftcrbocher t^vces, IRew IBorIt ©Cl,A38817a PREFACE IN the present great European conflict the United States is neutral, and under any circum- stances of which I can conceive, it ought to, and will, remain neu- tral. Why, therefore, the sym- pathies and the opinions of Amer- ica should be of importance to any of the contestants, I do not understand. I am informed, how- ever, that the German Government has established here a very per- sistent, expensive, and, of cotuse, efflcient Publicity Department, VI PREFACE which is appealing to Americans for their sympathy and endeavor- ing to make them believe a number of things which at present they do not believe at all. If those en- deavors are worth while, it is equally worth while to let that Publicity Department — together with the few, more or less American busybodies, whom it has beguiled with a promise of the limelight — know that in the judgment of at least one man a very great major- ity of the people of this country feel that the kind of civilization under which they were born and have been brought up, has been put in peril by a wanton breach of the peace of the world by the German Empire. Bernhardi de- PREFACE Vll clared that the struggle is for German world-power or downfall. If that be the issue, we are in favor of the downfall. The same miHtary philosopher says: "The American plutocrats have no notion that the widening development of mankind has quite other concerns than material pros- perity, commerce, and money- making." But ''the widening development of mankind" means not only those things, but it means that more and more himian beings shall have freedom to de- velop their own souls without government restraint or assistance, and it also means that a military autocracy, or a comparatively small number of people, intoxi- Vlll PREFACE cated by the magnitude of their own power, under any other name, shall have less and less freedom to impose upon us the primeval law of the strongest. F. W. W. Contents PAGE Observations on the War . i The Responsibility for the War 4 Germany's Self-Deception . 9 Mercenaries . . . .19 Germans Then and Now . . 25 Scraps of Paper . . .42 Examples of German " Culture " 46 The Appeals to America . . 57 Germany and Colonial Empire 65 America's Reply to the Appeals 77 zi One American's Opinion of the European War Observations on the War. ■pOR many years certain German publicists have been writing about ''a day of reckoning with England.** They have not been very explicit about the account on which the reckoning was to be had, but generally the day of reckoning was that upon which it was to be decided whether many desirable things in the possession of England should be taken away and made German. For nearly as many years also the youth of 2 OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR Germany, especially in the navy, have been drinking to the toast of "The Day." ''The Day'* has at last come, and brought with it the most gigantic and the most wicked war of the whole Christian era. Eigh- teen million men or more, in the flower of their age, are striving to kill one another, the war is on land and sea, under the face of the waters, and from the heavens "There rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue." To us, behind the insurmountable barrier of the ocean, "The Day'* seems to be the very Dies Irae — a day of wrath and doom, and the OBSERVATIONS ON THE WAR 3 civilization mankind has been for three hundred years so laboriously building, like the ants or the coral insects, appears to be crumbling into ashes. As the misery, the bestiality, and desolation of that ''Day" become apparent, there is a general appeal to public opinion by all the contestants to divest themselves of responsibility for its horrors. THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR Germany has made an elaborate formal statement of its position. England and Russia have published in full the correspondence leading up to the war, and from German sources or from the friends of Germany, many appeals have been made for the sympathy and ap- proval of America. Professors have appealed to the universities, clergymen to the churches; the professional German-Americans to everybody, and amongst many 4 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 5 others, one pamphlet with no less a title than "Truth,'* has been issued over the signature of Herr Ballin of the Hamburg-American Steam- ship Company, Prince Biilow, and a number of important names, to the countrymen of Washington and Lincoln. It might be a sufficient answer to all of these appeals to point out that the Triple Alliance was, by its terms, for defensive purposes, and Italy, the third member of the Alliance, when appealed to by the others, replied : ''But you have not been attacked. You have taken the initiative, and, therefore, we are absolved from our con- tract. " Or else to say with the New York Times of Sunday, the 6 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 27th of September, which has published and weighed all the correspondence and evidence: ■ ''The case is quite too plain for further argument. We trust that our German friends, should they persevere in their endeavors to conciliate American public opinion, will at least refrain from further affronts to our intelligence by the reiteration of the charge that Eng- land is responsible for the war, or that Russia began the war on Germany in pursuance of her pan- Slavic designs/' I believe the Times is right. I do not think you could empanel a jury in the United States — outside of Hoboken or Milwaukee — which would not find that Germany RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR 7 began this war, and that England went into it only upon the appeal of King Albert of Belgium to King George to protect the neutrality of Belgium. It is as clear to me as the day- light that the invasion of the neutrality of Belgium was the proximate cause of the war, at least with Great Britain, and there is a sufficient amount of evidence to make it equally clear that Germany had long been preparing for the war, and intended to have it at about this time, before even the particular pretext for it was found. I know of four cases during the month of July in which orders were given in pre- paration for war, and the view 8 RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAR SO earnestly pressed in Germany that the three Powers fell upon Germany without warning is an idle tale. GERMANY'S SELF-DECEPTION What IS not clear is, how Ger- many allowed herself to be so grievously deceived as to the status of those she was about to make her enemies, the British Empire in particular, and as to the manner in which her violation of Belgium's neutrality would be appraised by the world. She apparently be- lieved that the French army was in as bad a way as an orator in the French Chamber declared it to be. The issue has almost proved the orator to be wrong. She believed 9 10 Germany's self-deception the reorganization of the Russian army could not be completed for another two years. She believed that there would be civil war in Ireland within six weeks, that there would be rebellions in India and Egypt, that South Africa would rush to her with open arms, and that Great Britain would never voluntarily fight, if at all. What has happened ? The French army seems to be in good form, the Russians appear to have an abundance of troops, and in England John Redmond has sung ''God save the King" at West- minister, and is now telling his constituents in the south of Ireland that he had promised the Arch- bishop of Malines that the Irish GERMANY S SELF-DECEPTION II would come in their thousands to avenge the destruction of cathe- drals, churches, the shooting of priests, and the sack and ruin of Belgian towns. In India, seven hundred princes have offered to the Imperial Government their armies, their jewels, and contribu- tions of money ranging up to £300,000. In Egypt, there has hardly been a mutter. In South Africa, General Botha, the Prime Minister, declared that while the Boers had had their differences with Great Britain, the latter had kept faith with South Africa, and anyway the South Africans would ten times rather be under the British, than under the German, flag. General Smuts echoed Gen- 12 Germany's self-deception eral Botha, and three or four former Boer generals have volun- teered to serve under French and Kitchener. It was not to be ex- pected that the opinion of the people would be unanimous as was that of their South African Par- liament, and Germany has actu- ally been able to foment an unim- portant opposition. On this record Germany must obviously have been very badly served by her own Ambassadors and Ministers, or else she must be under an obsession about her own grandeur and pop- ularity to make such a series of egregious blunders. In 1870, Mr. Gladstone's Gov- ernment made the same inquiries of Prince Bismarck which Sir GERMANY S SELF-DECEPTION 1 3 Edward Grey made this year of Bethmann-Hollweg and of the French Government about the Belgian treaty, but Sir Edward got an entirely different answer from Germany from that Prince Bismarck gave to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Asquith at Edinburgh, on September 17th, thus stated the British attitude. ''In 1793," he said Wm. Pitt announced: "Eng- land will never consent that an- other country should arrogate the power of annulling at her pleasure the political system of Europe established by solemn treaties and guaranteed by the consent of the Powers." He went on to say: "This House" — the House of Com- mons — * ' means substantial good 14 Germany's self-deception faith to its engagements. If it re- tains a just sense of the solemn faith of treaties it must show a deter- mination to support them, but I come down to 1870 when this very treaty to which we are parties no less than Germany, and which guarantees the integrity and inde- pendence of Belgium, was threat- ened. Mr. Gladstone was then Prime Minister of this country, and he was, if possible, a stronger and more ardent advocate of peace even than Mr. Pitt himself. Mr. Gladstone, pacific as he was, felt so strongly the sanctity of our obliga- tions that — though here again we had no direct interest of any kind at stake — he made arrangements with France and Prussia to co- Germany's self-deception 15 operate with either of the belHger- ents if the other violated Belgian territory. In a speech ten years later, delivered in 1880 in the city of Edinburgh, Mr. Gladstone him- self reviewed that transaction and explained his reasons for it. He said this : ' If we had gone to war * — which he was prepared to do — 'we should have gone to war for freedom. We should have gone to war for public right, we should have gone to war to save himian happiness from being invaded by a tyrannous and lawless Power. That,' Mr. Gladstone said, 'is what I call a good cause, gentlemen, though I detest war, and there are no epithets too strong, if you will supply me with them, that I 1 6 Germany's self-deception will not endeavor to heap upon its head.'" The German reply to every such statement of Mr. Asquith's is, That is all humbug, hypocrisy, and cant ! The English are fighting us from envy and for their own interest and are lying about their motives. Well, suppose that to be so, would anybody but a nincompoop, as M. Hanotaux pleasantly calls the German diplomatist, have given the English such a magnificent pretext for concealing their motive as the German repudiation of the Belgian treaty has afforded them? Suppose the Germans had this year followed the same course as that of Prince Bismarck in 1870, and France had been invaded as GERMANY S SELF-DECEPTION 1 7 it was in that year by the way of Alsace and Lorraine, the Germans would by this time have been as far advanced into France as they are now, they would have come with clean hands, they would have escaped the losses they have suf- fered at the hands of the Belgians, they probably would not have had England on their hands or else its hypocrisy and cant would have been unmasked, and they would not have lost every friend they had. What can we think of such diplomacy? And as if they had not made blunder enough the Germans have now made the cap- ital mistake of utterly despising their adversaries. The Emperor himself within twelve months has 1 8 Germany's self-deception said, waving his arm through the air: *'We shall go through Bel- gium like that." He did not, and the Germans have lavished contempt upon the little English army, and have wound up by denouncing it as made up of mer- cenaries, an expression I have heard repeated by their sympa- thizers in this country. MERCENARIES Mercenaries ! Why, my friends, you do not know what the word means. The Germans furnished indeed the principal mercenary soldiery during the middle ages, but the last mercenaries I have heard of were the Swiss Guard of Louis XVI whose glory is per- petuated by Thorwaldsen's Lion at Lucerne, and the Hessians, some thousands of whom came to this country to assist George III in suppressing the American Revolu- tion. They did no credit to them- 19 20 MERCENARIES selves, to the Prince who sold them, or the King who bought them. The very name Hessian has become a word of reproach in the United States. I have even heard of it being applied by Tam- many leaders to the editors of German newspapers who were ne- gotiating with them for the deliv- ery of the German- American vote. Let me recall to those gentlemen, by the way, a remark of the Kaiser* s for which we should all be grateful to him; he said: "Germans, I know, Americans I know, German-Americans I do not know. '* What conceivable re- lation have such mercenaries either to the compulsory army of Ger- many or the volunteer army of MERCENARIES 21 Great Britain, and what ethical difference can there be between the soldiers who serve their own countries for a pittance a day because they have to, and others because they wish to ? Such errors of judgment and of fact show they no longer read Schiller in the Wilhelm Strasse, or have for- gotten his famous line, ''Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens. '* There is, however, a funda- mental difference between the two armies. The German soldier is a cog in a vast machine; he is spoken of and treated oftentimes as mere Kanonen f utter. His offi- cers form a caste by themselves and behave as if they were of 22 MERCENARIES different clay from their men. There are many instances in this war when, after officers were cap- tured, they complained bitterly when they were put in the same railway carriages or in the same hospital quarters, or were given the same food as their own men. The English soldier is an individ- ual. There is a certain camara- derie between him and his officers born of the universal love of sports and its attendant democracy in the cricket and playing fields of every village and town in the United Kingdom. Father Molloy, a priest who has been serving as chaplain with part of the British forces and who crossed the ocean with me the other day, said: MERCENARIES 23 "General French, no matter how hard he had to fight during the day, always tried to spend a little time in the field hospital at night with the wounded. He would stroll in, sometimes accom- panied by an orderly, but many times alone. He would ask the wounded how they were getting on, and in the case of chaps shot through their legs, would slap them on the back and say: 'Fine business, old boy. You'll get him next time. How soon will you be out and back with us?' *'And sometimes the General would stay too long and realize that he could not get back to headquarters that night. Then he would wrap a blanket aroimd 24 MERCENARIES him and curl up on a vacant cot or on the floor alongside a wounded 'Tommy* and go to sleep. I tell you, every British soldier is strong for Sir John French — a real man as well as a soldier. '' That is the human touch which makes men invincible. I can im- agine the same thing might have happened with one of the generals of the Great Frederick, but what German general of this generation would so demean himself? GERMANS THEN AND NOW In these observations about Ger- many, England, and the war, I venture to believe, with at least as much modesty as the professors and the publicists who are appeal- ing to the sympathy of America, that I know something about the subject under discussion. I once lived in Germany, and passed two of the happiest years of my life in that country. I have traveled all over it. I sat at the feet of Treitschke when he was less bitter than his infirmities subsequently 25 26 GERMANS THEN AND NOW made him. I have known Ger- mans of every class, from the top down. I found them all and more than all that General Bernhardi now says they ought not to be. They were peaceable, simple, and friendly. Their knowledge, their industry, and economy were revel- ations to me. I saw in the Ger- man army a great and necessary means of education, and when I came home it was with great respect for the administration of the German Government, and a deep affection for the German people. I have watched their de- velopment for many years since then with admiration, and their competition with the English with a certain amusement, because they GERMANS THEN AND NOW 27 waked up my English friends when they did not wish to be awakened. After a good many years I went back to Germany for a visit and one of the first things which struck me was numerous gigantic national statues which were hide- ous, and which literally defiled the earth everywhere, and when I asked why such monstrosities were permitted, the answer was, "Man muss Stolz sein. " Finally, when I came upon the monument to the old Emperor, between the old Castle in Berlin and the River Spree, I said to myself: ''I must have been asleep. This thing could not be tolerated by people who had any sense of beauty, of perspective, or proportion. This 28 GERMANS THEN AND NOW cannot be Berlin and Imperial Germany. It must be only some Greater Pirnipernickel. ' * In every direction there were evidences of a great change in the cities and in the people. The urban communi- ties as a whole were wonderfully improved, and the cleanliness and orderliness of everything were very remarkable. The country had grown rich, and enjoyed a great and visible prosperity. Berlin had grown faster than any American city — even in Hinter Pommern I believe they were making money. The demeanor and talk of the people had changed as much as everything else; the old simplicity and modesty had disappeared, there was a good deal of talk about GERMANS THEN AND NOW 29 abominable scandals in high so- ciety, and generally the people were exhibiting the worst vices of a raw plutocracy. The English '' milords'* with Waterloo on their lips used to be the most offensive people in Europe. They were ousted by the Ameri- cans with their vulgar extrava- gance and their ignorant compari- sons of everything they thought they saw, with what they remem- bered in ''God's own country." But during the past decade the Germans have become easily the most objectionable people to be seen in the inns and on the high- ways of the Continent. Mr. Price Collier called them the "boors of Europe," to the intense displeas- 30 GERMANS THEN AND NOW tire of the Berlin press, when he appeared at Court functions at the head of the Linden. This change in the mental attitude of the people was especially noticeable in respect to England. It is fre- quently said here and elsewhere that it is the Kaiser himself who has made this war, or that he could have prevented it. I do not think those who make that charge have any conception of the state of mind of the people behind him and his advisers. The Germans used to have rather a friendly feel- ing for Great Britain: they ad- mired her and thought of her as their former ally and friend, though the late Crown Princess, the present Emperor's mother, GERMANS THEN AND NOW 3 1 did a good deal to make England disliked, — but the German com- mercial and working classes liave not even now desired war, for many practical reasons, but under- neath the peaceable and friendly surface which they presented, there lay a deep and general feeling against England. It is not the individual Englishman whom Ger- mans dislike, but England as a Power; they despise her as they do all other nations except perhaps America, which they fear as a commercial rival. The German writers on the war since it has begun all say that England is jealous of Germany, and therefore seized the opportunity to attack her, but in all my conversations 32 GERMANS THEN AND NOW with Germans, I have found the reverse to be true. I have noticed a curious mixture of envy and contempt for England — envy be- cause the EngHsh have certain amenities of life which every Ger- man copies as fast as he can; and contempt, for which I have never heard any better reason than that, as they look at it, English officers are ashamed of their uniforms, and get out of them and into civil dress as soon as they can. On the other hand, there is a good deal of annoyance among the English with the Germans because they have been hustled by the Germans in business, which is probably good for them; but as for being jealous of the Germans, I cannot imagine GERMANS THEN AND NOW 33 an Englishman who would not say : *' Jealous of the Germans! Why on earth should we be?" The Germans, however, really believed that England was worn out politically, commercially, and on the sea, and that its army was negligible. This feeling has occa- sionally blazed up during the last twenty years, as at the time of the Kaiser's telegram to Kriiger during the Boer War, at the time of the Algeciras conference, and during the Morocco crisis. The Kaiser himself has been accused of being too friendly with England, and now that all this smoldering envy, dislike, and even hate have kindled into the red flame of war, the Gov- emment, the public, and the press 34 GERMANS THEN AND NOW have let themselves go indeed. The Kaiser is reported as say- ing, ''It is my royal and im- perial will that General French's contemptible little English army shall first be crushed," and the Hamburger Nachrichten, Bis- marck's old organ, said on August 28th: "We have taken the field against Russia and France, but at the bottom it is England we are fight- ing everywhere. We must prove to Russia the superiority of our culture and of our military might. We must force France on her knees until she chokes. It is not yet time to offer terms. But be- tween Russia and Germany there is no insoluble problem. France, GERMANS THEN AND NOW 35 too, fights chiefly for honor's sake. It is from England we must wring the uttermost price for this gigantic struggle, however dearly others may have to pay for the help they have given her." That is the note which runs through the whole German press — that is "die letzte imd grosste Abrechnung — ^mit Eng- land." The origin of these changes in the mind of the German people, and the ultimate causes of the war itself, I will not undertake to discuss. The differing national ideals, the racial antipathies, the fundamental differences between German and English civilizations 36 GERMANS THEN AND NOW are subjects too vast for just con- siderations within the limits of this paper. Whether the war was brought on at this time for the love of war for war's own sake, and was the mere effervescence of arrogance on the part of the military hierarchy; whether it is the Prussian desire for greater influence or more power which filled Prince Hohenlohe with ap- prehension about the future of the Empire whenever he found himself, as he said, among *' their Prussian Excellencies"; whether it is the Pan-Germanic propaganda which means nothing less than the domi- nation of the world, or at least of Europe, by the Germanic race; whether it, as has been charged, GERMANS THEN AND NOW 37 has been hastened by the great financial interests under the leader- ship of Gwinner, Tyssen, Rath- enau, and others for their own patriotic purposes; or whether, finally, it was Nietzsche's philoso- phy, or all these causes together, I will not venture to say. An answer can be found in Bern- hardi's book, Germany and the Next War; in Professor Cramb's admirable reply, entitled Germany and England; and in the numerous works of Pan-Germanism, of which Professor Usher's is the most fa- miliar to us. The cause which has certainly colored all the others is Nietzsche's philosophy of which an American scholar says: 38 GERMANS THEN AND NOW ''The German war personality is Nietzsche — based on a phi- losophy which has taken a deeper hold on the German mind than any other since Hegel. Nietzsche wor- shipped power. His ethics were: * Do, be, get everything you have the strength to do. Pity is a vice. Evolution means the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the unfit. Christianity with its sympathy for the poor in spirit means decadence, was a disease. The world belongs to those who have the might to get it, and treaties, peace pacts, arbitrations, are mere points of strategy to mislead other nations, and when the grim reality of war comes they all vanish and are forgotten. GERMANS THEN AND NOW 39 "'Indeed, sympathy with the weak, the suffering, and the power of pathos are themselves weak- nesses, and might is the ultimate proof of right. The world be- longs to those who can get it, and those who have broken through to these supermorals have the world that believes in the old-fashioned virtues at their mercy.*'" Whatever the causes, the war has come, its horrors are appar- ent, and the spirit with which Germany entered upon it is, I believe, fairly expressed by the Lokalanzeiger, of Berlin, on Au- gust 3d. It said: "We begin to-day the final fight » President Stanley Hall, of Worcester. 40 GERMANS THEN AND NOW which shall settle forever our great position in the world, which we have never misused, and when the German sword glides again into its scabbard everything that we hope and wish will be consummated. We shall stand before the world as the mightiest nation, which will then, at last, be in a position, with its moderation and forbearance, to give to the world forever those things for which it has never ceased to strive — Peace, Enlightenment, and Prosperity,'* Now, that is what we call very tall talk, which we do not much care to hear from other people, and when the Germans ask for sym- pathy in these United States, I venture to assert that they will get GERMANS THEN AND NOW 4 1 precious little of it, because we are essentially a business people, a civil and kindly people, and be- cause we are not a cruel people. SCRAPS OF PAPER When the German Chancellor angrily called the Belgian treaty "a scrap of paper," which must be disregarded because Germany was in a hurry and because it was necessary for the German armies to go through Belgium in order to save time, the New York World replied magnificently: "So was Magna Charta a scrap of paper; the Bill of Rights, the Decla- ration of Independence, the Con- stitution of the United States were all scraps of paper, and if there is 42 SCRAPS OF PAPER 43 no faith or honor in the world, that is all they are still." But we do not believe it. The capacity to make contracts and enforce them is one of the corner-stones of our civilization, and one of the marks of an honorable man is the way in which he lives up to his contracts. Perhaps the Chancellor would like to know how his views are looked at practically in this country. I happen to know of a bank in this city, where the majority of direc- tors have German names, or are of German birth. At first, their sympathies were all with the Fatherland, but when Sir Edward Goschen's account of his last inter- view with the Chancellor was published, they said to each other: 44 SCRAPS OF PAPER ''Why, Germany signed the treaty. It is like a promissory note. Are they going back on it?" So with some of the early German war measures. The Government com- mandeered all the savings-bank de- posits of their own people, because, as they said, the money having been saved, the people could most easily part with it; and many German merchants have written, presumably by order, to their creditors abroad, that they could not pay their debts, but that they had subscribed to the German war loan in the names of their creditors for the amount of their debts, which they hoped would be satisfactory, and if it was not, they would decline, after the war was SCRAPS OF PAPER 45 over, to have anything to do with the creditors who objected to this method of payment. Things of that sort shock decent business men, and the only native Ameri- can I know with avowed German sympathies says of them: "They cannot be true. Nobody would do such things/' EXAMPLES OF GERMAN '' CULTURE " Then, we do not like the way the Germans have flung away their manners. At first they maltreated Americans, on the theory that they were English, quite abomi- nably. I know American ladies who were in Dresden two weeks after the outbreak of the war. They were insulted, arrested as Russian spies, and one of them, who was perfectly well known to a certain tradesman, had her face slapped by him. At that time 46 GERMAN CULTURE 47 the population seemed to have gone completely daft, and the Government made no endeavor to restrain them, but, after a few weeks, orders from Berlin were given, in consequence of which Americans everywhere found noth- ing too good for them. The treat- ment by the German Government of the former French and Russian Ambassadors when they left Beilin, and of the poor old Dowager Em- press of Russia, is almost incred- ible, and the Germans exhibited to them the kind of culture that existed in their country in the days before Grotius was born. Their mouthings about the German Kul- tur, which seems to have no rela- tion to culture, and their fierce in- 48 GERMAN ** CULTURE dignation about England's having induced Japan to take possession of the port of Kiao-Chow are not unamusing, if one can be amused at anything in the midst of the horrors of this war. The German possession of Kiao-Chow was as naked a theft as any of which the Germans have ever accused Eng- land, and what the Japanese have done is simply to copy the ultima- tum, in part word for word, which the Germans sent to them many years ago and send it back to them. Why should they get feverish about that? Finally, it appears to Americans that the Germans are carrying on this war in a way which is not only cruel, but brutal and uncivilized. GERMAN '* CULTURE " 49 The theory that the civil popula- tion of a country — like the lame shoemaker of Zabern — must be terrified into submission is perhaps arguable, but it cannot be done through the abolition of common, human feeling, and in Belgiimi the Germans appear to be endeavoring to reduce to practice some of the Kaiser's speeches which I supposed were to be taken as largely rhetori- cal, like the Wagnerian talk about their golden helms, their shining armor, their pure and sacred swords, and so on. But not at all. The Germans have embarked upon a deliberate, calculated, wanton, and senseless campaign of destruc- tion. In the mailed fist speech the Kaiser said: ''Give no quarter; 50 GERMAN ''CULTURE*' make yourself as terrible as did the Huns under Attila.'' His people are now doing it. I know of an American lady who was at a hotel in Belgium the evening the Germans came in early in August. The order was given to shut all windows — the ther- mometer was ninety degrees — and they were told that anyone who looked out would be shot. One man was shot in that hotel during the night, and early the next morn- ing twenty-odd people, including women and old men, were lined up and shot. There are many well authenticated reports of simi- lar occurrences, and the Figaro on September 24th printed a copy of a proclamation which L6on Bour- GERMAN ''culture" 5 1 geois, the former Premier, found affixed to the walls of Rheims Cathedral. The proclamation was signed "By Order of the German Authorities." It says in part: **In order to secure the safety of the troops and in order to assure calm among the population of Rheims, the persons named below have been taken as hostages by the General in command of the Ger- man army and will be shot on the least attempt at disorder. In ad- dition the town will be entirely or partially burned and the in- habitants hanged if a single infrac- tion of the preceding instructions occurs." This is followed by the names of a number of prominent citizens. (( _.,„ n^-TT-rw-n »» 52 GERMAN CULTURE The German Chancellor, on Au- gust 14th said: "We expect that the sense of justice of the American people will enable them to compre- hend our situation. We invite their opinion as to the one-sided English representations, and ask them to examine our point of view in an unprejudiced way. "The sympathy of the American nation will then lie with German culture and civilization, fighting against a half Asiatic and slightly cultured barbarism.*' We have tried to examine their point of view but I, for one, say that the way the Germans have behaved in Belgiimi is perfectly detestable. There are upwards of 60,000 Belgians in England to-day GERMAN *' CULTURE '* 53 being fed, clothed, and sheltered, and the ghastly tales they have to tell of the reasons why they are broken and penniless fugitives in a strange land are making the world see red. Poor Belgium! Have some of the Kultur soldiers been reading Motley so as to learn how to visit on the land the Span- ish terror? ''War," the Chan- cellor may reply, "is, as General Sherman said, hell." So it is, and it is also damnation to those who wage it as Germany is now waging it in Belgiimi. Neither Sherman nor any other Americans ever ordered out a squad of non- combatants, of old men, youths, and women, to be shot. That is defended as a military necessity; 54 GERMAN "culture'* but from our point of view, some at least of the German command- ants in Belgium, soaked in German culture though they be, are blood brothers to the Mexican gentlemen who are thieves, murderers, and patriot generals on alternate days. As we remember the burning of the library at Louvain, as we read the other day Mr. Whitney Warren's account of the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, which, remem- bering the position of that edifice, could only have been deliberate, we regard the Pan-Slavic peril with perfect tranquillity, for we are sure it cannot be more odious than the Pan-Germanic practice. I say nothing of the unspeakable outrages and mutilations which GERMAN "culture** 55 are charged. I can conceive that the Belgians whom the Germans have driven mad, have done out- rageous things, but I refuse to believe, except on the evidence of my own senses, that the offenses charged against German troops and German officers can be true. I suppose on the great accounting at the end of the war some of the sufferers will still be alive and can be produced. Meanwhile, if the Germans are disturbed about the charges, they ought to be told they should not be so childish as to offer the testimony of a dozen reporters who have been all over Belgium and seen nothing, or offer to appoint an impartial judge to investigate. What they should H -^^„ ___„_ if 56 GERMAN * CULTURE do is to get a few judges from the neutral countries of the highest position and hang everybody those judges find guilty of murder, arson, mayhem, or rape. THE APPEALS TO AMERICA Two of the various German appeals to America deserve special mention. The first, called The Truth, reminds me of a saying of Lessing's that if the gods held in one hand the truth, and in the other the pursuit of truth, the wise man would say : ' ' Give me the pur- suit of truth; the truth is not for mortals." I should advise Herr Ballin and Prince Billow, and their associates, to ponder on this obser- vation and instruct their editors to get out an expurgated and 57 58 THE APPEALS TO AMERICA amended edition of their pamphlet as soon as possible. What they say about neutrality is, however, such rubbish that one is constrained to say to Mr. Ballin: "You are one of the most successful business men in the world. Is an obligation of the Hamburg-American Steam- ship Company signed by you good, or is it only a scrap of paper?" — and to Prince Biilow: ''You are a gentleman. Do you invite us to doubt your plighted word?" The other appeal by Professors Rudolf Eucken and Ernst H. Haeckel is a little puzzling, for on August 1 8th they say, "On England alone falls the monstrous guilt and the historical responsi- bility," and on the 31st of August THE APPEALS TO AMERICA 59 they declare "nobody but Russia is to blame for the outbreak of the war." They are of the opinion that England *s complaints of the violation of international law "are the most atrocious hypocrisy and the vilest Pharisaism," and their language is so lurid that, great names though they bear, they must be considered as really only a couple of peevish old gentlemen who have quite lost their tempers. There have been other appeals to the American people which I have not myself seen, but they are without avail. It is only natural for American citizens who were born in Germany, or one of whose parents was born in Germany, to sympathize with the Fatherland 60 THE APPEALS TO AMERICA because they have not shaken off the habits of beHeving what they are told to believe, and accepting as final that which is ''officially stated/' Those habits have led to some very curious misapprehen- sions in parts of Germany as to what is now going on. Hundreds of people have returned here from Germany within the past six weeks who, until they got the New York papers at Quarantine, believed that all the English ports were closed by German mines, that there were no English ships coming to America, that the people in the south of England were starving, that Leeds had been destroyed by Zeppelin bombs, and that there was a rebellion in India. THE APPEALS TO AMERICA 6 1 I have, however, been surprised at the number of native Germans who say "The Kaiser is dead wrong this time/* and who are not German sympathizers in this war at all. Among the native-born Americans the feeling is almost wholly in favor of the allies, and among the hundreds and even thousands of Americans also like myself who have lived and studied in Germany, I believe the fact to be that the overwhelming majority now think of the Fatherland as they would think of an old friend who had gone out of his mind. We believe the Germans to be crazed by militarism and the contempla- tion of their own greatness and power. We believe Germany, 62 THE APPEALS TO AMERICA great and powerful nation that it is, with an army and perfection of organization which give many people a sense of awe as of some- thing superhuman, is suffering from some fatal delusions as to its position in the world, as to what the world thinks of Germany, and as to what will be the results of its present great adventure. Power, the Germans hold, is the essence of the state; nothing should re- strain its exercise in the interests of the state; and through it alone the state expresses its will; individ- ualism is submerged in the state. They have almost created a re- ligion of power and valor, and Christianity is openly proclaimed to be a worn-out creed. THE APPEALS TO AMERICA 63 These theories explain much if not everything which has thus far taken place during the war. But much has occurred which can be accounted for only upon entirely different theories of life and con- duct. How can Germany from its own standpoint account for the Belgian refusal of its pieces of silver, or for the defense by the Belgians of their homes and their individuality until they have won a place in the world's history beside the Greek heroes who died at Thermopylae? How can Ger- many account for the British Em- pire itself? There are in India 270,000,000 people governed by less than eight hundred white men with an insignificant army. Canada, 64 THE APPEALS TO AMERICA Australia, and New Zealand and the islands all over the globe are bound to Great Britain by little more than a flag and a language, and yet they have begun to pour forth money and men to fight against the extension of German Kultur, and promise as much and as many more as are necessary to prevent a final German victory. GERMANY AND COLONIAL EMPIRE The most dangerous of the de- lusions, under which, as I view it, Germany is now laboring, is about colonies and a colonial empire. The loudly increasing cry in Ger- many for the past few years that she must have a place under the sun, which I at first thought meant we must allow without demur the individual German to steal our seats in the railway carriages and hustle and crowd our daughters away from their places in foreign $' 65 66 COLONIAL EMPIRE galleries, really means that Ger- many must have great colonies which can relieve the pressure of her population and where the emigrants can still remain German and find, as Bernhardi says, a German way of living. Had it been written in the Book of Fate that the Germans were to be a colonial power, they would have had their colonies long ago — that is, the Germans would have gone out into the waste places in the world, settled and improved them, and the flag of the Fatherland would have followed them. This they did not do, and now that the earth is fully occupied, the only way in which she can get this par- ticular place under the sim is by COLONIAL EMPIRE 67 somehow or other getting posses- sion of what belongs to somebody else. Conquest is an intelligible way to go about it and is appar- ently one of the purposes of the present enterprise, but the German Government has apparently had other ways in mind. The German interests in Morocco for instance were few and unimportant, yet, a short time ago, if Professor Usher is correct, the German Govern- ment endeavored to get into that country through agents provoca- teurs in a way which was as crooked and foolish, as Admiral Diedrich's performances in Manila Bay were stupid.' Let us suppose, however, the ^ Usher: Pan-Germanism, pp. 17-18. 68 COLONIAL EMPIRE Germans had their colonies. I consider that the German theory of government by force and the consequent German theory of regu- lating everything public and pri- vate — I have known a German policeman to stop a young Ameri- can from whistling quietly on the street — are incompatible with the elasticity and tact essential in col- onial administration, and, so far as one can judge, the Germans would be sure to make a mess of their colonies. The filthy scandals of Dr. Carl Peters and the expense and troubles of the Herero War are not forgotten, and I remember that when Germany got one of the Samoan Islands there was the greatest difficulty in getting the COLONIAL EMPIRE 69 Samoans, who were oiling them- selves in the sun, to understand that when a German officer ap- peared they must stand up and salute. The main difficulty, however, with the German colonies would be the Germans themselves. When they go out into the great world they do not want, as Bernhardi says, to find a German way of living, but they want to find a better way. I heard recently from a friend of a case in point. He met a German merchant in one of the towns of British South Africa and said to him, ''What are you doing here? I should think you would be at such and such a place" — the capital town of the 70 COLONIAL EMPIRE nearest German colony. The German replied: '*I went there, and when I got out at the station there was a German sentry with a gun. When I went to the Com- missioner's house there was an- other sentry with a gun. After I got into the house, there was a large room all full of German red tape. So I got away and came here, where I have done very well.** The fact seems to be that the Prussian discipline which has been so exalted has done its work and has overdone it — there are three suicides in Berlin to one in London. When a German escapes from under that discipline he never again subjects himself to its thralls, and one of the most curious things COLONIAL EMPIRE 7 1 to be noted in a general survey of the world is that among all the millions of Germans who have left the Fatherland since 1848 for this country so very few of them ever go back to Germany. It is not only that they better them- selves materially, but they get a taste for the sort of freedom they never got at home. A good many German mercenaries, who enlisted here during the Civil War for the sake of the high bounties we paid for recruits, went back and are living on their pensions, and a few international bankers who never struck root here have gone back, but in a large acquaintance I have heard of only one instance where a German who had prospered re- 72 COLONIAL EMPIRE turned to pass his old age at home. That was the case of a brewer who had made a few hundred thousand dollars and then built for himself a house in the German district whence he had emigrated, such as his boyhood's fancy had pictured he would have in his old age, and into that house he moved to end his days. At the end of two months he locked the front door, and said, ''By God! I can't stand it another minute, " — and came back to his place in the Middle West. He did not like what he thought was the continual inter- ference and meddling in his private affairs. Many years ago I was concerned in the establishment in this city COLONIAL EMPIRE 73 of a system of free circulating libraries, and one evening the late Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, the founder and owner of the Staats- Zeitung in this city sent for me and two of my associates and said he had been interested in our work, and proposed to give us a library, and stock it with German books. He went on to say: ''I intend to attach to this gift one condition. I do not deceive myself about my people at all. I am a German, and as long as there is German immigration into this country there will be a German element here, but as immigration ceases the Ger- man element will pass away. The Germans forget their language, do not keep up their ties with 74 COLONIAL EMPIRE the old country, and in time they will as a distinct element cease to exist. I hope we shall contribute to the ultimate American some qualities of thoroughness, honesty, and good citizenship, but as an element we shall cease to be. And the condition which I have at- tached to this gift is that a large vault I have placed in the cellar shall be maintained as a place where the records of the German societies as they gradually die shall be preserved/* That li- brary has long since been amalga- mated with the great public library of New York. The vault is maintained, and I believe the records of one or two German societies are already in it. COLONIAL EMPIRE 75 Mr. Ottendorfer was right. The Germans in America are among the best, sanest, and most valuable of our citizens, but the Germans are of all people the least tenacious of their nationality. In this country the EngHsh, Scotch, and even the Irish speak of *'home" for genera- tions. The Scandinavians charter ships to go ''home" to spend their Christmas; numbers of them who prosper go back to pass their old age. The Slavs go back by thou- sands, and have carried the EngHsh language with them, so much so that in one case an election for the Reichsrath in Austria was con- ducted in that language.^ The Italians go back by tens of thou- » Steiner. 76 COLONIAL EMPIRE sands and you can hardly find a town in Italy in which someone is not living in a little vineyard or villino who made his money in America. But, as I have said, the Germans practically never go back. They become Americans, just as they became Australians in Aus- tralia, where they are now support- ing their new country against the old, or they become Brazilians, Chilians, Central Americans, even Haitians, and their chocolate col- ored children are outside the Ger- man culture entirely. AMERICA'S REPLY TO THE APPEALS Herr Ballin's and Prince Bu- low's editors, in their version of The Truth, cry out, ''Listen, all ye people." Perhaps I may reply to them: Listen again. You have guns the like of which have never been seen on land or sea, but you can not hold the hearts of your people. They want something larger than you can give them. Yoiu- ultimate design to confer "peace, enlightenment, and pros- perity*' upon the rest of the world, 77 78 America's reply to appeals the world will not have. You are unanimous to-day and splendid in your futile endeavors to realize your ideals, but General Nogi, the conqueror of Port Arthur, is re- ported to have said: "I foresee two more wars, one of which will be fought out on the plains of Belgium and will leave Germany so beaten and terrified that there will not be another war for a hundred years and perhaps never. ' ' Listen again to the prayers of more millions than you can ever hope to be, that such may be the result of this war, and renounce your false gods, mind your own great business, give us back the Germany of Luther, Beethoven, Goethe, Schil- ler, and Kant, and try to recognize AMERICA S REPLY TO APPEALS 79 that your function on this earth is not to own it, but is to fertilize other peoples — as you have been doing for a thousand years. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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