Class -Js Book G3pyrightK?_ CDBfRIGHT DEPOSm SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY MICHAEL A. MORRISON SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Studies of German Life and Character During the Great War, Based on the Enemy Press BY MICHAEL A. MORRISON // NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY ^6 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE EL DORAN COMPANY MAY -4 1918 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ©GI.A497158 M In i PREFACE In this volume have been brought together selec- tions from articles which have appeared in the Daily Chronicle since the early months of the Great War, and having as their object the portrayal of German life and character as these have been affected or modified under war conditions. In nearly every case the source from which the articles have been drawn has been the German newspaper Press or well-known and widely circulated German periodi- cals. The articles have been sifted with great care, and only those have been used which, in the judg- ment of the writer, throw needed light on the con- ceptions entertained by the German nation of their duty and world mission, on their attitude towards their enemies, on their ambitions and dreams of world-dominion, and on those remarkable psycholog- ical developments of the race which have evoked the amazement or horror of the greater part of civi- lised humanity. A widespread desire has been expressed to give greater permanence to some of the more valuable of these Sidelights than is possible in the ephemeral columns of a daily newspaper, and it is to meet this desire that the present compilation has been made. Much attention has been necessarily bestowed on the German dream of dominion in the Near and Middle East. Throughout this entire struggle Ori- ental Empire has run like a red thread woven into the fabric of their ambitions. Their ambition has vi PREFACE not been so much to Germanise countries which by any intelligible, ethnological process of reasoning can be regarded as Teutonic, as to advance the great imperial conception of a world-system under Hohen- zollern sway stretching from the coast of Flanders to the confines of India. With sure instinct German political writers have felt that the extension of their influence in the Balkans, in Asia Minor, in Mesopo- tamia and Persia, and their mastery of the Straits and of the Suez Canal would bring them nearer to the longed-for day when a decisive blow might be struck at the power of Britain, and the vast inheri- tance of our Eastern Empire pass into the hands of the German conqueror. In the following pages we see the attitude of the people towards these schemes, their enthusiastic ac- ceptance of them, their predisposition and readiness to dream dreams of Oriental Empire, and their gloating satisfaction that the new and splendid em- pire should be acquired at the cost of their bitterest enemy, and mark the downfall of this enemy's world- dominion. Considerable space has also been given to articles which aim at throwing light on modern German conceptions of religion and morals. A close exami- nation of the materials here offered will show that religious and didactic authorities have invariably sought to square the principles of religion and the higher ethic with the war practices and sentiments prevalent among the "Volk in Waffen." Where difficulties of reconciling the two arise, religion and the higher ethic are made to assume a complexion or a shape which simplifies the process of squaring. Great theological luminaries, famous ecclesiastical historians, renowned authorities on the training of PREFACE vii youth, are presented to us In these pages as condon- ing the darkest national crimes, and so obscuring high moral issues in the Interests and in defence of the criminals. Another important object which this book has in view is to illustrate the gradual change of German war sentiment from the period of easy contempt of their enemies, from the period of frenzied jubilation and confidence in victory which characterised the nation in the early mlonths of the war, to the dawn- ing sense that all was not well, and that Germany was being confronted with the hostility of the civi- lised world. The articles displaying the proud as- surance of the early period may be easily distin- guished from those of the past twelve months, in which we can clearly recognise the first muffled notes of unmistakable despondency. Finally, It may be well to mention that In the se- lection of these articles it is not intended that a perverse or oblique light should be cast on the Ger- man nation, or that their conduct and aims should be held up to obloquy merely for the gratification of any national hatred or contempt. The object has rather been to seek truth, and to give such a fair presentation of German life and character as will extenuate or palliate nothing which calls for repro- bation, and at the same time to set down naught in malice. It Is of the utmost Importance that we entertain well-defined conceptions of the attitude and aim,s of the German people. The strain of the war upon them, the three years of wearing anxiety through which they have passed, their bitter disillusionment In so many directions, the ever-growing hostility of the civilised world, and the gathering fear that all Vlll PREFACE their hopes, ambitions, and visions of world-empire will fade away like a desert mirage have powerfully influenced and continue to influence the national character. It will be to our advantage to learn all we can of the nature of the dangers still to be en- countered from the enemy astride our path, and it is as a modest contribution to our knowledge of the enemy that this book has been written. CONTENTS CHAPTER I GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY PAGE The Progress of Kultur — In Praise of Kultur — Real and False Kultur — Racial — Determination and Despondency — Patriotic Feelings — Vce victis — Consolation — Psychology of Trench Life — Hate — ^The Spider's Web — "That Man on his Island" — Divine Approval of Hate — In Praise and Defence of War — War the Regenerator — War the Purifier — War a Biological Necessity — The World's Dislike — Herr Rohrbach's View — ^Thc Neighbour's Envy 15 CHAPTER n PASTORS AND PROFESSORS: THE RELIGION OF GERMANS The Valley of Dry Bones — Huns and Christianity — Eminent Theo- logians: Apocalyptic — A Great Theological Light — A Trucu- lent Pastor — Heaven in Allegory — The German Professor — Nothing to Apologise For — What is Humanity? — The Leader of the Monists — Harnack and the Princes 41 CHAPTER HI CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS War Pedagogy — Voices of Children — Future Careers .... 57 CHAPTER IV BERLIN AND HAMBURG Street Scenes — ^Thinking Deeply — ^Esthetic Teas — Big Orders: No Workmen 65 CONTENTS CHAPTER V COLONIES AND COLONIAL EMPIRE PAGE A German Colonial Empire: A Hamburg View — A Colonial Museum 74 CHAPTER VI ORIENTAL DOMINION Orient and World Trade — New Route to India — Bagdad the Centre — Bosphorus, Suez Canal, Egypt: Control of the Bosphorus — • Relations with Turkey: Speechless with Admiration of the Turks — Kladderadatsch and the Turks — Kurds and Germans — ^To Revivify Arabia — ^To Revivify Persia 80 CHAPTER VII THE NAVY AND MERCANTILE MARINE England's Trump Card — The Mercantile Marine: The Hanseatic Spirit 94 CHAPTER Villi THE kaiser's MAJESTY In a French Church — Near Lodz — At Church in Vilna — Near Verdun — Soldier and Saint 102 CHAPTER IX HINDENBURG The Hindenburg Cult — "O Hero of Tannenberg!" — Hindenburg at Church — Hindenburg Dithyrambics — Hindenburg in Sculp- _., ture "^113 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER X THE PRESS AND ITS WRITERS PAGE The Journalist of the Future — Hating England — The Hand of Peace — Harden of the Zukimft — Sour Criticism . . . .119 CHAPTER XI ZEPPELINS AND FRIGHTFULNESS Defending the Raiders — The Great Destruction — Scoffing at Mas- 130 CHAPTER Xn WAR MONUMENTS Commemorating the Dead — A Mountain Monument — Nailing: The Hindenburg Idol — Hindenburg in Gold and Iron — The Angels and Hindenburg 138 CHAPTER Xni WAR ART: PICTORIAL AND MUSICAL An Illustrated Journal — Angels of Death — The German Spring — Music: Police Music — Patriotism and Operas^' Deutschland UberAIles" 146 CHAPTER XIV TH(EATRES AND THE DRAMA •The Franctireurs"— "The Devil's Politics"— "The War Recon- ciles" — "The German Armourer" 154 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER XV POETRY AND WAR SONGS PAGE The Emden — For Children — Up at Britannia! — Albion — A Bread Hymn — England'sjFlag — The^Sword of Judgment — ^The Arch- angel and a Poet — A Clerical Poet . . . .' . . . .. l6o CHAPTER XVI BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH Are we Hypocrites? — England, a Lie — The Anglo-Saxon Soul — ^The World's Tyrant — Perfide Albion — London Pictures . . . 169 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY CHAPTER I GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY The Progress of Kultur — In Praise of Kultur — Real and False Kultur — Racial — Determination and Despond- ency — Patriotic Feelings — Vcb victis — Consolation — Psychology of Trench Life — Hate — ^The Spider's Web — "That Man on his Island" — Divine Approval of Hate — In Praise and Defence of War — War the Re- generator — War the Purifier — War a Biological Ne- cessity — The World's Dislike — Herr Rohrbach's View — The Neighbour's Envy. The war-psychology of Germans, the phenomena of their mind during these years of terrific strain, is a subject of the utmost interest and importance. In selecting the passages which follow, care has been taken to avoid everything in the nature of idiosyn- crasy, a matter with which, properly speaking, psychology has nothing to do. Our object has been to reveal, within our limits, a general picture of the niind of the nation, its feelings and cognitions as affected by war, or by the position in which it finds itself in relation to its enemies. With the object of obtaining this picture let us 15 1 6 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY first of all endeavour to understand what the Ger- mans mean by the word "Kultur." It figures in all their claims to distinction. It is pre-eminently their Kultur, they say, which entitles them to the supreme position in the world which they are determined to occupy. We shall call three exponents of Kultur to testify to the nature and value of this product of German civilisation — the eminent theologian, Dr. Seeberg; Baron von Gleichen-Russwurm, a descend- ant of the poet Schiller; and the Cologne Gazette. The Progress of "Kultur" Dr. Seeberg, next to Adolf Harnack, the greatest theological luminary in Berlin, has been lecturing on "War and the Progress of Culture." Germany, ever since the Reformation, in all her efforts after "Kultur" has preferred the "Kultur" of the Ideal to that of the Real. This striving of hers is to be sharply distinguished from the "Kultur of the Mer- cantile," which is England's highest aim, and from the French "Kultur of Rentes," which is the most vulgar "Kultur" in the world, and leads to an empty and bombastic liberalism. As to Russia, it is the land of reaction, of absolute despotism, of suppressed personalities. Germans in this war, the professor insists, are not murdering civilisation, nor are Germany's sons merely fighting for their Fatherland, but for the heart of history and for the most sacred values of hunaanity. The lecturer, in a fervid peroration, im- plored his hearers to hold the cup in readiness into which would drop the ripe fruit which Germany's victorious warriors would bring home with them. GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 17 In Praise of Kultur In an article on French civilisation the Cologne Gazette compares this fine flower of French growth with German Kultur, greatly to the disadvantage of the former. The journal tells us what German Kul- tur is. It is the perfecting of human existence, both in the man himself and in his externals. Kultur works both in the soul and in the body. Its aim is to elevate the spirit and make more beautiful the human body. The more Kultur a people possesses the purer are its feelings, the more humane its dispo- sition, the more chaste all its expressions of life. Kul- tur does not seek the formation of an elite, rather the drawing together of the entire nation for the prosecution of better objects and conditions of life. In all its work Kultur sets an ideal before itself, and in the case of Germany, especially, this ideal is one of goodness and supreme virtue. Kultur, we are told, is as a refreshing, purifying, invigorating breeze over a miasma-laden atmos- phere. It clears away the vapours engendered in the swamps of so-called civilisation. The Kultur of Germany is calculated to refresh, purify, and invigo- rate the world. Real and False Kultur Baron Alexander von Gleichen-Russwurm, a great-grandson of the poet Schiller, lectured recently in the great hall of the Reichstag before an audience which filled the place to its utmost capacity. His subject was "Our Kultur Superstition and our Kultur Faith." Baron von Gleichen is one of the best 1 8 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY known writers in Germiany on purely literary sub- jects. Many of the German conceptions of Kultur, said the baron, are vague ideas about matters which have only ephemeral interest, and have nothing in com- mon with real Kultur. "Fashionable shibboleths," he calls most of these matters. Very few people have a real and clear conception of what Kultur means, and that is why the word plays so wretched a role in this war, a dangerous role because it seeks to cover up dangerous realities. We have come to a new Tower of Babel, and the nations no longer understand one another. The fault is largely that Germans are far too addicted to the superstitions of Kultur and are losing the power of independent thought. Kultur in its conception is an agricultural term, and might be taken to signify well-tilled land which has been rendered habitable. Translated into the spiritual and intellectual, Kultur means Human Dignity; and it is to some extent the fault of Ger- mans that in this war true human dignity has suf- fered so much shipwreck. "Thought has been a rare guest in this land of thinkers and poets. All our education, our art, our convivial conceptions, our entire public life is dominated by half-under- stood catch-words, and this is not Kultur, it is Kul- tur-supersti-tion." This war, continued the speaker, has taken care that not one stone of the old superstitions will rest on the other; and if Germans have any wisdom left they will see to it that after the war they will build again from the deep foundations, and escape for ever from "the Tyranny of Zero." There has been more than enough of the domination of the State, of the GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 19 community. Real education, the education of the individual as a man and a soul, must be re-intro- duced. For after all, men and women are souls and spirits, not machines, or cogs on the wheels of ma- chines. Racial Otto Hauser, a well-known poet and essayist, has written a book on the supremacy of the blonde race, Race and Race Questions in Germany, which receives much attention throughout the country. The Blonde Conqueror It is Herr Hauser's view, supported by the events of this war, that the blonde-haired Northern race is destined to exercise dominion over all the nations of the world. All that mankind has done worth doing — great deeds, great thoughts, great words — has been the work of the blonde race. Their pre- ponderance over the other races, "Polar or Equa- torial," is undisputed. In so far as they maintain their race in its purity are they conquerors in all the realms of hum;an activity. The more they intermix with other races, the more they degenerate and lose in nobility. The blondness of the German race in this war is a guarantee that the race will be victorious over the "Polar" Russian and the Latin Frenchman. The British are so mixed as a race as to be absolutely negligible. Herr Hauser deals with the fact that great men have appeared among dark-haired races in a quite summary way. He claims that an im- mense majority of those men of genius were blonde- 20 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY haired or the descendants of blonde-haired progeni- tors. He begins with David, the Royal Psalmist, who was blonde; but he passes over Solomon and the Prophets as doubtful. He asserts that the great men of classic Greece were blonde, and that Dante, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci were also fair- haired. He is not quite sure about Shakespeare, as we have no records, but Napoleon was certainly- blonde in his youth. Goethe is troublesome, for he had brown eyes and black hair, but Herr Hauser points out that Goethe was not a faultless genius, and that in hundreds of his verses there are grave blemishes. Herr Hauser casts his gaze into the future and finds the Germanic blonde race marching from con- quest to conquest, until the whole world, with all its varieties of hair, is at its feet. Between now and the final triumph of blondness it might be advisable, he says, to abstain from admixture with Southern blood, and to foster as much as possible all inclina- tions towards the blonde races of the North, where strength, virility, and the sureness of victory alone reside. "The Northern Blonde Man is the limit and highest perfection of the human race." The Ger- man variant of the Blonde Man, rendered proud and assured by conquest, will rule the universe. Determination and Despondency In the third year of the war, when the earlier san- guine notions about a speedy conclusion to hostilities and complete victory had become more sober, and the nation had begun to realise that the task before them was beset with difficulties of an almost in- surmountable character, two currents of thought be- GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 21 gan to appear side by side, one expressive of the determination of the people to hold out, the other indicating the growth of a feeling very much akin to despair. Patriotic Feelings Numerous articles have been appearing lately in the ultra-patriotic Press dealing with the superiority of German patriotism over that of other countries. Just as the German in his soul and in his intellectual development is the superior of all others, so is his love of country on a higher plane. In the Tdgliche Rundschau we have an article entitled, "The Patri- otic Feelings of Germans," from which a few char- acteristic sentences may be quoted. "Why," asks the writer, "do we not allow our- selves to be starved? Why are we not alarmed? Why do we not bend? Why do we not throw away the sword under the impulses of exhaustion, weari- ness, and despondency? Whence come these illimit- able successes of ours, whence this courage, this en- durance, this high sense of sacrifice? "Our high spirit is not a mechanical thing, the result of good schooling, wise calculation, and or- ganisation. Behind it all there is something far greater, stronger, more penetrating. Patriotism with us is an affair of honour. Faithfulness even towards a sinking, ruined, and debt-laden Father- land is the duty of every man of honour, even when pain and sorrow are exhausting his life-blood. "Even were Germany poor and weak, without Kultur, without greatness, we, her children, must remain true to her, even till death. And even should all other lands sparkle before our eyes in 22 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY brilliance and riches and power, it would be a dis- grace to bend the knee before them, and forget or betray our poor Fatherland. To act thus would be to act without honour and without Kultur." "ViE ViCTis" In an explosive article headed "Vae Victis," the Kolnische Zeitung alludes to the indescribable woe which will overtake the Fatherland should the enemy get the upper hand and force Germany to her knees. The situation is so threatening and the work of des- troying the onslaughts of the enemy so gigantic that the writer, in a final flourish, exclaims, "Therefore, German Siegfried, seize thy Balmung firmer and let him rain down the hardest blows. Up, my people., the flame-signals smoke!" The article begins with "Gotterdammerung," the Twilight of the Gods, which has a sentence to itself. We are told that the Norns of Destiny are whisper- ing their uncanny language. With bated breath the world is listening, asking what the coming days, weeks, months will bring. The most fearful drama in all the changing history of mankind begins. On the strongly fortified front stretching through the wildernesses of Russia, and over the barrier of the Carpathians, in Mesopotamia and Macedonia, from the Alps to the North Sea, there are sharp bursts of flame like evening lightning. It is a question, says the writer, of "to be or not to be." Germany has trodden many a thorny path, but none has been so thorny as this which must now be trodden. How many are there, he asks, who have actually realised the frightful seriousness of this coming gigantic wrestling for the existence and fu- GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 23 ture of the nation? Those who are engaging in profiteering and usury are fallen on by the writer with fury and compared to vampires sucking the heart's blood of the people, fattening on the misery of their fellows, on the sacred need of the Father- land. Another category which comes in for some most ornamental denunciation are those who are con- tinually grumbling, who allow the small anxieties and needs of these hard times to obscure their vision of the great objects in view. "You are sinning against the Fatherland. What shall we eat, what shall we drink, wherewithal shall we be clad? are without doubt important questions, but man does not live by bread alone." The writer asks his compatriots whether they would live in plenty at the price of a foreign yoke? "Could we bear to be hindered in our spiritual and intellectual life? The people which have produced a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe, a Beethoven would be hungry and unhappy at full tables were they in slavery. Therefore all power to be united for the last gigantic deed. Let us devote fortune and treas- ure, life and body, thought and reflection to the one aim — the meeting of our enemy's attack, the secur- ing of our free development. "Our ascent to the sun makes our enemy envious. On the frontiers of our empire their envy and hatred beat. Germany Is to be humiliated, to be thrown back to its former impotence and unimportance." In frenzied sentences the writer holds up a picture of the woes which will befall the Fatherland should the hordes of Canada and Australia, Tonkin and 24 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Senegambia break down the steel barriers and inun- date the German land. Shudderingly he describes how the Allies desire to place their feet on the neck of Germany. They would make of Germans a na- tion of beggars and ruin their industry and com- merce. Germaniam esse delendam is the inexorable cry from the Thames, the Seine, and the Neva. "Therefore, gather round your leaders in unanimity and determination." The concluding sentences reach dizzy heights of rhetoric. "The spirit of our ancestors, which a cen- tury ago shook off the yoke of Napoleon, once more spreads its pinions. A breath of that great time animates our days. We will risk all, dare all. Un- worthy the nation that does not risk all for its hon- our. It is this spirit which must blaze in our nation." And then the final flourish about the sword of Sieg- fried. German Consolation Dr. Johannes Miiller, a well-known professor of divinity, also a scientific pedagogue, fills half a page of the Tdgliche Rundschau with an article headed "German Consolation." The writer clearly feels the call to comfort his compatriots. Do not despair, is a phrase repeating itself a score of times in his article. Miiller is a popular lecturer, and what he says may be regarded as an attempt to meet and ex- orcise the evil spirit of despair which has begun to fret and nag at the vitals of a large section of the population. "German heart, don't despair; do what your con- science dictates," are Dr. Miiller's opening words. He praises the conduct of the war by Germany. GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 25 "We have conducted this war on the principles of justice and humanity, and it was only against our wishes that we were compelled to resort to retaliative measures, only when all the paths of reason were closed to us. All along we have delayed using our sharpest weapons, and always to our own injury. And now, at the summit of our victorious defence on all fronts, we have offered peace to our enemies. It was only then, when our offer was refused, that in God's name we seized our very sharpest weapon. And this we did, moreover, because our conscience dictated the step. Therefore, German people, do not despair!" Dr. Miiller proceeds to implore the nation to be "comforted and strong." "We have suffered ter- ribly in body and soul. The losses to our manhood are frightful, but children will be born to us like the dew from the dawn, if we only have courage against death and need. That which we have pos- sessed In the world has all been taken from us, and our Kultur among all the nations has been destroyed ; but God will make full recompense. He has turned us in on ourselves, in order that we may find our- selves. Harden yourselves, German people; col- lect yourselves, strike roots into the depths. Spring will come again, and once more you will strike out your branches, a great world-tree. And should you be poor In this world's goods, you will be rich in yourselves. Should your Kultur collapse in ruins, have confidence in the future. Catastrophes are the forerunners of new creations. A new era will come after the twilight of the gods caused by the war." After this consolatory passage. Dr. Miiller tells his readers that one word, "Durch" (through) , rules the situation. But it must be a "through" which is 26 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY unconditional, irremediable, ruthless, and to the point. "We have experienced this war as a visita- tion of God, and therefore we would carry through God's work on earth as in heaven, in physical-in- tellectual as well as in spiritual-divine things. And even though after the war but a remnant of us re- mains, we shall have All-Germany contained in this remnant. It will be a remnant which will develop more powerfully than ever before, because God is with us. Therefore, do not despair!" Dr. Miiller is not quite sure how the war will end. "We do not know how the war may end. But what- ever its end, victory or defeat, it will be something of which we have had hitherto no conception. What- ever its end, it will lead us from the narrow and confined into the spacious, from the depths to the heights, from dire necessity to salvation. It will open up for us a New Land of unsuspected possi- bilities which no enemy can take from us though the world were full of devils." The evil reputation which is Germany's in the world, the dislike and visible repugnance of other nations, is clearly having its effect on the nation. Professor Miiller faces the situation as follows: "German heart, do not despair, even though the entire world blackens and defames you, even though there seems no prospect of any diminution of the falsehoods and blasphemies which follow you and would pillory you as a monster before God and man I Despise all this pestilence of falsehood, laugh at it; but do not despair. What difference does it make what is thought of us? It only matters what we are. The enemy may condemn us all to hell; but so long as God beheves in us. and He does believe in us, it will be all right. GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 27 "We have hardly any one left us in the world. We have become solitary, we are the outcasts and the forsaken among the nations. Those who once blessed us now curse us. Those who once ate our bread now tread on us, German heart, do not worry about this ! Ingratitude is the world's reward. The world would now gladly hang you and dance around your martyr's stake. It is all grotesque. Laugh at it. Laugh your sacred, freedom-giving laugh." Psychology of Trench Life Dr. Max Dessoir, Professor of Psychology at the University of Berlin, who has just returned from a research visit to the front, has been lecturing on the war as it relates to his particular branch of science. The first psychological effects of the war — an ex- treme tension and excitement, a storm of enthusiasm — has gradually given place to a sort of "exalted spirituality" of a more sedate character, of which the first and most evident outcome is generous sacri- fice. Psychologically considered, he says, the fighting army is a group of individuals who have become separated from their accustomed surroundings, and are now held together by a new unity of object and will. Their gigantic performances inside the new limits are only explicable by this unity of will. What has been accomplished is fabulous, all the more be- cause it has not been accomplished by intellectual athletes, but wholly and entirely by men who willed. And this will has shown itself so almighty because it is In the service of a super-personal task. With regard to life in the trenches Dr. Dessoir thinks that its most striking characteristic is the 28 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY animalistic, the return to original types. The deca- dents and the aesthetes have again learnt the "rap- tures of the customary." But intellectual life is not at a high level. What the men read is only calculated to amuse them. If they attempt literary production their work is cheap and commonplace. Their art is far below their opportunity. Music is the most popular art, but it is only used as a "rhyth- mic stimulant." Noticeable is what Herr Dessoir calls a rare ele- vation of the inner man, a re-enlivening of the re- ligious sense. It is not, of course, the lecturer is careful to explain, religion in the confessional sense. Of this there is not a trace. The religious phenom- enon hangs together with the "healthy emotion and upheaval" which has been awakened in so many by a feeling that outside the powers which have been brought so near to them there are other powers col- lectively called Destiny. This takes the shape of a feeling of separation from all that is not in touch with actuality, from all that has only "a certain unending shadowiness" to recommend it. The religion Dessoir speaks of has nothing, he says, in comm:on with the behef of those who seek in creeds and dogmatic formulae some strengthening of their faith in the supernatural, or with the belief of those who regard certain shadowy Powers as loving, gracious, just, and paternal. It is a religion which simply says. Beyond those stern terrors with which I am in daily or hourly contact there is an overwhelming Something in whose hands is my Des- tiny, something omnipotent, omnipresent, inscrutable, unknowable, inevitable. Dr. Dessoir says that this feeling of utter impotence in the hands of Iron GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 29 Destiny grows less acute when the soldier exchanges the trenches for life at the rear. The courage which German soldiers display in extreme danger and crisis is not the physical cour- age of the ordinary individual, nor yet the courage of moral conviction, nor yet that of the sportsman. In the very climax of danger it is not this ordinary courage which possesses them, rather is it the con- viction that it would be senseless to resist the un- alterable, and that almighty Destiny rules the hour for weal or woe. The fearful weight of these im- pressions, and the regularity of their recurrence, banishes the desire for self-preservation. Dr. Dessoir does not think that the psychology of the trenches will outlive the war. He hopes not. The souls of these men are not lovely or lovable. But the spirit of sacrifice may remain; also the cold ruthlessness which will tolerate no master in the world. Hate We cannot have a complete picture of the psychol- ogy of the German people without an examination of the passion of hatred which has obsessed the na- tion like an evil spirit from the beginning of the war. We have this feeling characteristically expressed by Dr. Fuchs in the Munchner, Medizinische Woche as follows: "Educate to Hate ! Educate to reverence of Hate! Educate to love of Hate! Away with the false fear of brutality and fanaticism I We must not hesitate blasphemously to announce, 'And now abideth faith, hope, and Hate, these three; but the greatest of these is Hate.' " 30 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY The Spider's Web History, says the Vossische Zeitung, knows no country which for so many centuries has so consis- tently and unscrupulously asserted herself as Eng- land. Rome shows nothing like it. At the present time Japan has some resemblance to England, but only Japan. British diplomatists were indeed skilful, but greater still was the stupidity of their victims. And that nation, whichever it was, that stood by to help England got its reward — a kick. That nation which was 'cute enough to unmask the hypocrite was laden with the full measure of British hatred. The Vossische is overjoyed that England hates Germany. It is an honour to be hated by such a country. And it was in the web of this great spider that the German fly was to be im-prisoned! The most powerful of England's allies is the Lie. It is an ally which she has used in every country in the world, especially in the United States. We are told that every implement of British di- plomacy, "from boy scouts to Grub-street poets," has been mobilised — clean or dirty implements, it makes no matter. Pulpits, university chairs, the Bench, the Press, the society dame, retired ministers, mem- bers of the Royal Family have all been utilised to announce the German danger, and they have done their work well. And therefore Germans will rigidly adhere to their iron determination to conquer. "We must con- quer!" exclaims the excited Vossische. "We will conquer! We can conquer ! The enemy is England ! The prize Is Freedom ! We shall do all in our power to free ourselves. The world must not become a GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 31 British prison! This is the thunder-word and will of the German people." "That Man on his Island" Frau Emmy von Egidy, one of Germiany's best- known novelists, contributes a remarkable article to the Hamburg N achrichten on "Sacred Hate." She warmly advocates the cultivation of what she calls "glowing animosity" as a first duty of patriots. In- dividually they may follow the extreme Christian doctrine of loving their personal enemies, but when it comes to the enemies of the State there must be no half-feelings, nothing palliative must be urged in defence of the enemy. But do not perpetually talk about your hatred, implores the writer; do not pub- lish it to the four winds of heaven. Hate with the whole intensity of your heart, but be quiet about it! Frau von Egidy asks what have Germans to do with "that man on his island" ? Between him and Germans there is a great gulf fixed. Germans do not wish any longer to study his characteristics, his good and his bad qualities; there is no need to call down curses on his head. He has told Germans that his will is to destroy them, he has announced his intention to employ the most shameful means to bring this about. Germans do not wish to know more. Their answer is Hatred — ^that must suffice. Every fresh foul blow of England can only inten- sify this Hate to white heat, can only deepen this detestation. And what Germans mean by "depth of hate" will yet astonish the world. The world has yet much to learn of what Germany is capable when the will of her people is saturated with de- structive energy. This feeling will stand behind her 32 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY soldiers, it will help them to bear their intolerable privations, it will give their bullets the right direc- tion, it will sharpen their swords. If German hate is to be sacred, says this furious lady, it must be kept sacred. Divine Approval of Hate The Deutsche Tageszeitung publishes a remark- able article on the "Sacredness of Hate." The German idea, says this journal, is not op- posed to the conception of "Gott Strafe England!" This expletive expresses in simple form the universal feeling of German soldiers at the front, who know that England is the arch-enemy, the most dangerous and persistent of enemies, the enemy who has in- duced France and Russia to make common cause with her. How is it possible not to hate an enemy so un- scrupulous and cunning and treacherous? Perhaps Germans will try again to love England when they have her under their feet, but in the meanwhile they will hate her, "and hate her with their entire souls, and out of the deepest depths of their nature." Be it observed, says the Tageszeitung, that this hate is a source of immense power. If German sol- diers and sailors were robbed of it, if the hope of final retribution on the British were taken away from them, their enthusiasm would wane. Is it possible to believe, asks the writer of the article, that the present high pitch of endeavour would be continued without this enthusiasm of hate? More remarkable still is the following passage: "Strong hatred, not petty malice, has God for its GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 33 source. In order really to love the good, we must burn with anger against the bad. Love is the out- come of hate; grows out of it. If you choke hate you wither love. And God desires that we both love and hate." "It is clear that God has risen again in us Ger- mans, in order that the powers of darkness may be exorcised and conquered. But to carry out this mis- sion we must have the weapon of hate in order to make tense our sinews and strengthen our arm. He who loves his people must nourish hate. Take hate from us and you take the steel from our soul and the iron from our blood." This rhodomontade is followed by a blasphemous chant in which Christ on the Cross is made to approve of German hate because it springs from German love for the Father- land." In Praise and Defence of War One of the greatest of Prussian historians, Treitschke, a man who has profoundly influenced the soul of the nation and aided in forming the most unlovely parts of its character, has said that "War is the only medicine of a sick nation; it produces heroism and is glorious." For nearly three years variations of this theme have been dinned into the ears of the German people. Pedagogues, profes- sors, theologians, journalists have instilled it into the minds of the young and impressionable. War is the great restorer, the great reviver, the stirrer up of stagnant pools of life, the scatterer of miasmas engendered by worldly-mindedness and wealth, the scourge of God for the enemies of the Fatherland. 34 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY War the Regenerator In the Kolnische Volkszeitung, the principal or- gan of the Clerical party, we have an extraordinary article on the "Kultur value" of the war. Accord- ing to this newspaper the war has become for Ger- many a great moral regenerator. It has placed be- fore the eyes of the nation the great principles of piety, patriotism, civil unity, sacrifice, the value of real things, the emptiness of vain trifles. It has brought about a return to German simplicity as an ideal of eternal value. The war, we are further told, has opened the eyes of Germans to certain signs of degeneracy in their manner of life, In their dress. In their amusements. In a word, the war is rapidly leading Germans back to their old piety and honour, to the love of one's neighbour. Germans have returned to the pristine virtues of the race, to that old fidelity and austere simplicity which Tacitus praised. The Volkszeitung asks If It is possible to believe that there are still frivolous German women at a time when German men, under incredible hardships, are defending with their swords the holy flame of their hearths. It asks If there are still men who threaten the honour and the life of others at a time when the blood of their fellows Is flowing in streams In defence of the Fatherland. The newspaper ar- rives at the conclusion that these categories of men and women have ceased to exist. In art and literature, we are told, there are abounding signs of a similar renaissance of the real and essential. We are assured that Germans at the present time find no pleasure in the Ignoble, the bad, GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 35 the common; no more pleasure in all those doubtful tendencies and movements which sprang up in the old days of the decadence, like weeds in a rank gar- den. The nation now realises that it will require all its physical and moral powers if it is to attain to the heights to which victory is beckoning it. As further evidence of national improvement, the Volkszeitung tells us that frivolous pictures have vanished from shop windows. In bookshops the writings of the preachers of pleasure, the works of the hedonists and sensualists, have been relegated to the dustiest and most remote shelves. In the theatres decadent drama and dubious comedy have given place to the purer classical drama of Schiller. And the process of purification has even descended to the humblest cinema shows with their erotic pieces, their duels, and other reprehensible subjects. A different atmosphere, we are informed, now prevails, an at- mosphere more congenial to the growing seriousness of the nation. War the Purifier It is interesting to note the pains taken by nu- merous leading journals In Germany to point out the high moral advantages which flow to nations and individuals from war. That war is a national regenerator, that its practice elevates and purifies those engaged in it, seems to be the lesson which these journals wish to inculcate. The Hamburg Fremdenhlatt makes a selection of the "golden sayings" about war uttered by "great spirits," from which we take the following: "Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beauti- ful dream,. War is an integral part of the order of 36 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY the universe instituted by God. It develops the noblest attributes of man — courage, surrender to the common cause, self-sacrifice. Were there no war the world would dissolve in putrefaction, or sink into the grossest materialism." — Moltke. "Wars invigorate humanity, just as storm pre- serves the sea from putrescence." — Hegel. "The condemnation of war is not only absurd, it is immoral." — Treitschke. Although the Hamburg journal cites these pas- sages now, it must not be forgotten that they are fa- miliar to every German boy and girl in their earliest school years, that these children have grown up to regard war as a necessity in the healthful life of a nation, and the practice of arms as the^ noblest call- ing to which a citizen can devote himself. War, a Biological Necessity Dr. Fugmann, of the Leipzig University, has pub- lished a book entitled The Blessing of War. It is one of those numerous works which have appeared in Germany since the outbreak of hostilities dealing with war as a biological necessity and as the great "world cleanser." Its argument follows the usual lilies which are common to this class of German book. But a portion of Dr. Fugmann's picture of Ger- many before the war is worth quoting: "There was dissension on all sides. The people were engrossed in the pettiest interests of the day. The life led by the bulk of Germans was indescribable, even though serious men lifted up their voices against the iniquity of it all. Fidelity and faith had disappeared. A man's word had no value. Contracts were made GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY 37 only to be broken. Business in general assumed a shape resembling a huge organised deception. The corruptions of life grew apace in town and country, and no prophet, no preacher of morals, no apostle of nature, no seer was in a position to stem the tide of degeneracy and decay. Every man who professed an ideal was ridiculed. Such was Germany before the war." It may be, continues the writer, that hundreds of thousands will be killed or ruined by this war, but even such a calamity is infinitely to be preferred to millions rapidly degenerating and grow- ing daily more rotten. God loved the German na- tion to such a degree, says Dr. Fugmann, that He sent this war to heal it of the gangrene which was eating into its vitals. The book concludes as follows : "This war comes from God, therefore it is a blessing. War is the father of all things, and for Germans it is the cause of an incomparable regeneration, an indescribable blessing for the great future before us." The World's Dislike It is characteristic of the German that he is per- petually discussing the question, Why are we dis- liked? Even In the pre-war days it was a question he was always asking, and never finding a satisfac- tory reply. The outbreak of war made the discussion more urgent. In every journal in the empire the subject was laboriously argued. The reply usually forth- coming was that human beings are naturally envious of those who have reached heights unattainable by the vulgar crowd. From envy to hate is only a step. German success, German prowess, German grandeur 38 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY and might made Germans hated by the little-souled other nations. That is the whole secret. There were some writers who frankly admitted defects of character, who doubted whether Germans had yet attained to those heights of moral and social per- fection which entitled them to the universal admira- tion of mankind. It is a diverting subject, as the following quotations will show. Herr Rohrbach's View Foreign nations regarded Germans, said an emi- nent lecturer, as a nation of noisy barbarians, only partially developed. Herr Paul Rohrbach admits there is some truth in this, but tries to prove that the noise and the barbarism were necessary if the race is not to die of inanition, or become sickly by stag- nation. With all their faults, he says, Germans have a sohd kernel which foreigners do not recog- nise. It is this kernel which they are to develop when the war is over. And in addition, Germans, says Rohrbach, must accustom themselves to easier, more amiable, and smoother forms of social Inter- course with the rest of the world, and bestow more circumspection on the selection of those who are sent out into the world as the representatives of the Fath- erland. If this Is carefully attended to, Germany, predicted the speaker, will not only conquer in its business and economic relations, but will everywhere make moral conquests as well. The amusing thing about this lecture is that it was arranged by an ultra-patriotic committee eager to hear what splendid fellows they were. At its conclusion there were vigorous expressions of dis- sent, and one recalls from Holy Writ the story of GERMAN WAR PSYCHOLOGY [39 another prophet who blessed what he was summoned to curse, and cursed what he should have blessed. The Neighbour's Envy In social life, says Dr. Gogon Fridell, a well- known publicist, we like people if they are unusually honourable or respectable in conduct; if they are modest and polite, if they are kindly and simple. But it is in exactly these qualities that the German is pre- eminent. One would naturally think that the mo- tives prompting our likes and dislikes in private life would be translated into international relationships. By no means. There is no country in the world where all the fine qualities just mentioned are more a national asset than in Germany. From the simplest workman to the most august authority, the marks of hearty benevolence and gentlemanly compliance are in clearest evidence. However paradoxical it may appear, it is just be- cause the German is so pre-eminent in the finest qualities of amiability that he is so profoundly dis- liked by other nations. It is not that he is disliked in spite of his nobler attributes, but because of them. "There is nothing more intolerable to your neigh- bour than your superiority." Goethe said so, and it must be true. • • • • • Dr. Fridell illustrates his argument thus: "What is it," he asks, "that the French, English, and Rus- sians demand from us in this war? Complete dis- armament, says the Frenchman; the destruction of all your great factories, says the Briton ; the destruc- tion of everything, says the Russian. That is to say, the Frenchman objects to our military superi- 40 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY ority, the Englishman to our industry and commer- cial skill, the Russian to our possessions. It is the hatred of the ne'er-do-well for his able neighbour. The German Fact is the constant and abiding cause of French resentment. The Briton is without senti- ment ; for him it is enough that the German is a suc- cessful merchant. In the case of the Russian it is pure nihilism, the primitive hate of the original man for his neighbour with real estate." So long as the splendid qualities of the German are not the prevailing qualities comimon to the whole world, so long will the German be hated. Modesty, genuineness, and "enthusiastic essentiality" are the fundamental powers of the German race. You see these powers exemplified, says Herr Fridell, in the philologist, the labourer, the discoverer, the priest, the banker, the soldier. The souls of them all are filled with "enthusiastic essentiality." CHAPTER II PASTORS AND PROFESSORS: THE RELIG- ION OF GERMANS The Valley of Dry Bones — Huns and Christianity — Emi- nent Theologians: Apocalyptic — A Great Theological Light — ^A Truculent Pastor — Heaven in Allegory — The German Professor — Nothing to Apologise for— What is Humanity? — ^The Leader of the Monists — Harnack and the Princes. It is not the purpose of this chapter to enter Into the modes of divine worship in Germany or to dis- cuss the beliefs based on various confessions. Our sole object is to reflect prevailing religious sentiment as It appears In the only sources open to us. In the selections which follow, we only cite the views of men filling responsible and leading positions In the Churches to which they belong. We have rejected extravagant ebullitions of fanaticism where these are not backed by responsibility. Let us first of all confine ourselves to the utter- ances of Court chaplains^ — men, that Is to say, who have filled elevated positions at Court, and are sup- posed to know the Imperial mind on affairs of re- ligion. The Valley of Dry Bones The Kaiser's chief Court chaplain, Dr. Dryander, recently returned from the Russian frontier, where 41 42 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY he has been engaged on religious duties among the German troops. Preaching in the Berlin Cathedral for the first time after his return, he took as his text the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, in which the Hebrew prophet sees his marvellous vision of the valley of dry bones, and the transformation of the dry bones into an exceeding great army under the breath of the Spirit of God. Dr. Dryander referred to the taunts of Germany's enemies, to their mocking reproach that the religion of Germans is merely a phase of their patriotism, and contended that exactly the contrary was the fact, and that German patriotism was really a part of their religion. Said the Court preacher: "The power in our patriotism is our faith, our religion. And when the breath of the Spirit of God moved as with a rushing noise over the nation in those unfor- gettable days of August 19 14, the idea of God be- came God Himself, the unknown God became the known. This was the faith which our warriors took with them into the field and which has since animated all their actions." Huns and Christianity Pastor Heyn, in the Fossische Zeitung, is Indig- nant that certain utterances ascribed to German preachers in French and British newspapers should misrepresent these Christian teachers, and leave a false impression regarding what they really did say. There is space only for the well-known case of "Pas- tor Fritz Philippi of Berlin." Pastor Heyn triumphantly points out that there is no such pastor in Berlin, and that the gentleman PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 43 in question milnisters at Wiesbaden. Further, his remarks were not made to his congregation, as stated In the British and French journals, but to soldiers in a field service at the front, and afterwards pub- lished in the Christliche Welt. The enemy Press quoted Pastor PhlllppI as saying: "The divine mis- sion of Germany is to crucify mankind. The duty, therefore, of the German soldier Is to hit without mercy. They must kill, burn, destroy. Every half measure must be disapproved; there is no mercy in war." What Pastor PhlllppI really did say is quoted by Pastor Heyn as follows: "Therefore, my men, standing in defence and arms, you are crucified hu- manity. You know for whom you are suffering. As In a dream you see the free German land lying In a golden harvest of peace. Beyond the war Is re- demption. Now, Sword ! Be a sword and strike hard. Fire! Be a fire and burn. Half measures are a crime. The less there Is of forbearance in war the more merciful Is war. It means rest for children and grandchildren. "Our great brother Jesus was not able to kindle His sacred fire on earth, like as the sun comes forth in the early morning rejoicing. He was the Cruci- fied. He wore the Crown of Thorns. He had to go through the fire of hate, of wickedness, of the war of all against the One. He had to prevail. We also must prevail. For this Is also this monstrous war — a crucifying of humanity. . . . We must prevail! We must allow ourselves to be slandered If we have become masters In the use of the means of terrific destruction by mines and bombs. Our enemies may take the responsibility that In this fearful war all the claims of humanity are being crucified." 44 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Even Pastor Heyn recoils from a full justification of these atrocious sentences. He says: "These words of Pastor PhilippI fall and hit like hacked iron. It is fearful that a servant of the Gospel feels himself compelled to utter these things. But what if he must feel them? They are uttered out of the need, out of the anguish of the present time. I ask every Englishman, every Frenchman, Do you not feel that your sons and brothers in the field have the holy unholy duty imposed on them of wielding the sword with their last strength if thereby peace may come? If so, then spare us your hypocritical in- dignation if Germans feel and say the same." Pastor Heyn winds up his apologia by asking whether it is any use asking the enemy Churches to protest against this "vihfication" of German pas- tors. He wishes to know whether the command- ment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour," is still in force in the Churches of England and France. We are obliged to Pastor Heyn for his apologia, which confirms in every particular the original report of Herr Philippi's remarks. What we wish to know is, why this indignation? Pastor Heyn knows as well as we do that this Wiesbaden minister of the Gospel, and the others recently associated with him, are not by any means alone in their monstrous teach- ing, and that from all parts of Northern and Middle Germany we have had repeated instances, well au- thenticated, of the Hun in Religion. We ought, perhaps, to add that in Southern Germany and in Rhenish Prussia ministers of religion are more apt to remember that they are the servants of the Prince of Peace, and not the advocates of unbridled sav- agery. PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 45 EMINENT THEOLOGIANS Apocalyptic Professor Adolf Delssmann, one of the most emi- nent theologians In Germany, has turned his atten- tion to the Apocalyptic visions of St. John, and in the marvellous chapters on the opening of the seals gains some prophetic insight which he turns into an article for the Berlin Lokal Anzeiger. First of all there is the Red Horse, "and he that sat thereon had power to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another. And there was given unto him a great sword." The professor sees in this terrific figure the sign and symbol of the war which is devastating so many fair lands. He next turns attention to the opening of the third seal and to the figure sitting on a Black Horse with a pair of balances In his hand. He quotes, "I heard a voice say: A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny, and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine." In Dr. Delss- mann's opinion this means the end of the war, and the justice and righteousness which will ensue. There is also allusion to the recent confiscation of bread cereals. But the expositor of the Apocalypse is chiefly con- cerned with the White Horse of the vision, "for he that sat on the horse had a bow, and a crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer." This is Germany, and the professor, fascinated by his discovery, calls "Vorwarts" to his compatriots, for theirs will be the crown and the victory. 46 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY But he says nothing about the Pale Horse, "and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell fol- lowed with him." Nor does he quote Shelley's lines: "Next came Anarchy; he rode On a white horse splashed with blood; He was pale even to the lips Like Death in the Apocalypse. And he wore a kingly crown; In his hand a sceptre shone; On his brow this mark I saw: *I am God, and King, and Law !' " A Great Theological Light Professor Relnhold Seeberg, of the University of Berlin, next to Professor von Harnack Germany's greatest theological hght, and well known in foreign countries, has written a remarkable article on "War and Brotherly Love" in the Illustrirte Zeitung. Dr. Seeberg, we understand, is the leading professor of New Testament exegesis, and his interpretations must be accepted as the authoritative view of modern German Christianity. War, he says, is, in Germany, everywhere recog- nised as "a renewer of idealism in our hearts, and as that which pours iron into the blood of men." Had he claimed this for some vivifying religion, for some new evangel of humanity, we might have listened to his attempts to substantiate the claim, but he claims this for war. He has dug out a remark of Luther's : "War is a work of love"; and he argues: "If the highest law and rule of morals is love, and If war Is moral — and of this there can be no doubt — ^It fol- lows that war must also be a work of love." A schoolboy could point out the fallacy of this foolish syllogism. PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 47 Seeberg says, further, that the German nation has been attacked. Its share of the goods of the world which it has won is to be taken from it, and its free development is to be retarded. To this fearful rob- bery of an entire nation come the maltreatments and brutalities of the enemy. The men of the people have risen to defend their possessions. What is this but love? But this perhaps is not brotherly loVe in its widest sense, it is not the love spoken of in the famous passage wherein we are told not to hate, but to love our enemies. The Founder of Christianity looked for a proof of the genuineness of our love in our readiness to love an enemy. But, argues the famous Berlin exegete, we are to remember that war is not a work of hate. We are, of course, to do the very worst we can think of to our enemy, to render him in every way in our power incapable of action, but we are not necessarily hating him in doing so. He proceeds: "War is a tremendous struggle between nations, in which one nation or group of nations fights for the freedom of development, for its share of the goods of the world, or for influence on the destinies of mankind. In such a struggle physical, intellectual, moral, and economic forces are employed, and their employment is quite con- sistent with brotherly love towards those against whom they are employed. For example, continues the professor, if a certain nation attempts something beyond its power, if it permits envy, revenge, and thirst for fame to overmiaster it, it is not an im- moral act to fall on this nation and beat it to the ground and to show it in the stern lessons of war that its envy, revenge, arrogance avail it naught. To give this lesson is an eminent work of love." 48 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY It may be argued, says Seeberg, that killing and mutilating is not a work of love. In itself perhaps not, but It must be remembered that the result of such a war as that just mentioned has been to bring an arrogant and envious nation to its senses, and to reduce the sum total of greed, envy, and malice in millions of the men who have been vanquished. As a matter of fact, adds the professor, it may even happen that the vanquished will draw more benefit from the war than the conqueror. It is this which makes war so clearly a work of brotherly Christian love. Professor Seeberg believes that when the war is over his countrymen will be most anxious to love their brethren who have been their foes. But this brotherly love of theirs is twin sister to wisdom, not to folly, and if the defeated brethren show no desire for German love it will not be pressed on them. German friendship and love must be asked for. It would be the height of folly, thinks the professor, to run about and offer it. This is the last word and counsel of this great Ger- man doctor of Christianity, the man at whose feet a generation of theologians has sat. A Truculent Pastor One of the best-known Leipzig divines is Pastor Lober, of Fremdiswald. In an article headed "Chris- tianity and War" he comes to the conclusion that there is no contrariety between the service of God and the service of war. Every one, he says, serves God who makes the blood of the enemy flow, and it is because he is thus serving God that he can reckon on God's blessing. The admonition of the New PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 49 Testament to return good for evil cannot be applied in war. In war evil must be met by evil, and wher- ever possible by greater and increased evil. War demands Old Testament severity, not the mildness of the new dispensation. He is to be praised and envied who sees his enemies perish. Pastor Leber's concluding words are as follows : "It is only another side of love for one's country, the desire for thorough revenge on the malicious enemy. We beflag our houses, we ring our bells, and sing "Nun danket alle Gott" when countless multitudes of Russians meet a terrible death in the Masurian swamps, or when 2,000 seamen are plunged to the bottom of the ocean by our subma- rines. And such expressions of gratitude and joy are genuinely German and genuinely Christian." Heaven in Allegory The latest number of the Berliner Illustrirte Zei- tung contains an allegorical picture entitled "The Heavenly Host," which is a curiosity in its way. A detachment of German infantry is shown storming a position, some of the men with their eyes directed towards the enemy, others with their gaze towards heaven. In the midst of whirling clouds we see the dim and shadowy figures of "the Heavenly Host." They are all naked. Their leader is a ferocious nude figure with hair streaming behind him, and waving a short sword. He is followed by naked figures on horses madly careering through the void. The riders are also armed with short swords, the horses are without bridle and saddle, for all the world like the Valkyrie riders of Wagner's opera. The idea of the artist, a certain Herr Bischoff- so SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Culm, is that the celestial detachment in the clouds is composed of the spirits of departed German war- riors, and that they are lending their invaluable su- pernatural aid to the battling infantry below on the earth. The German artist's conception of heaven is not nearly as graceful a picture as the allied Turk's idea of Paradise. The German Professor The German professor, a most conspicuous war figure, is a category by himself. The outbreak of hostilities brought him into immediate prominence. He developed at once the most extreme chauvinism. He adopted as his own, popular shibboleths and popular passions, and ran amok among the enlight- ened classes of the world as the hot defender of Prussianism and of all that the Prussian State stands for. The professorial utterance has its own shape, as we shall see. It is not particularly didactic, or logical, or educational; it is dogmatic, intolerant, spiritually shortsighted. In any sketch of the life and character of the German people as influenced by the war the professor's share in uttering the national sentiment cannot be ignored. We naturally ask our- selves, What do the intellectuals, the spiritual elite of the nation, say? What is their point of view? And when we read their lucubrations we marvel that they all say pretty much the same thing. The following letter from Privy Councillor Pro- fessor Lasson of the University of Berlin to a friend in Holland is a fine flight of bombastic incoherence. We ask ourselves, if a professor of philosophy is driven to write this stuff, in what a state of mind must the average German be? PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 51 Nothing to Apologise for Dear Sir and Friend, — For months I have not written to a single foreigner. Foreigner means ene- my, dum probetur contrarium. No one can remain neutral to the German State and people. Either you consider It as the most perfect creation that history has produced up to now, or you acquiesce in its destruction, nay, in its extermination. The man who is not a German knows nothing of Germany. Two million volunteers have enlisted, amongst whom are two of my grandsons — one a student of theology twenty-one years old, the other a sixth-form boy of eighteen — eight nephews and great-nephews, and more than twenty cousins. We are morally and intellectually superior, beyond all comparison, as is our organisation and our institu- tions. Wilhelm II, delicae generis humant, had In his possession a power with which he was in a position to smash everything; yet he has always protected peace, justice, and honour. The greater his suc- cesses, the more devout and humble he has become. His Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, by far the most prominent of living men, knows no other motives than truth, fidelity, justice. Our army is the epi- tome of German intelligence and moral excellence; its perfect discipline is well known. Now there is no German house, from the Kaiser's to the labourer's, that is free from mourning. We must sacrifice our dearest, our best, our most noble ones to fight with Russian beasts, English merce- naries, Belgian fanatics! The French are the only ones at all comparable 5a SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY with us. There shall be no peace until the three mischief plotters who would not let Europe rest are completely subjugated. We want peace and safety for ourselves in order to be able to guarantee it for others. We wish to carry on untiringly our work of kultur. We have nothing to apologise for. We are no bully State. We threaten no one so long as we are not attacked. We do good deeds to all people. What is Humanity? In an article headed "Humanity," Professor Os- kar Bie, in the Hamburg Fremdenblatt, defends the accepted German theory that every great war modi- fies our conceptions of this virtue, and practically casts overboard the theories of the past "in favour of the new theories which result from altered tac- tics and a more highly developed technique in muni- tions." In the professor's opinion, an opinion supported by editorial comment, there is no such thing as prin- ciples of humanity. Humanity is not like an inex- orable law of nature. It is the outcome of circum- stances, and varies from age to age, from country to country. There was no more humanity in the age of ar- rows, swords, and axes than in the age of the ma- chine gun. In the former case you stood up against your foe and hacked at him, now you shoot him a mile away. There is no more humanity in dropping a bomb filled with poisonous gas from an airship than in blowing somewhat similar gas into your enemies' faces. The only difference is that the latter process is a novelty, and has not yet been adopted univer- PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 53 sally. Humanity in war, says the professor, does not and cannot exist, and to talk about Hague Con- ferences and accepted rules of humane .conduct in the face of the new emergencies of this war is about as ineffective, and makes about as much Impression on the German nation, as a schoolboy's essay. And so with the submarine. It is neither more nor less than a cannon of a sort, and destroys enemy property as ruthlessly and blindly as a siege gun on land levelled on an enemy city. There is no inhu- manity about it. For the present Germany's emer- gencies justify its use in every conceivable way. Af- ter the war is over the nations, if they like, may sit in council about It, and formulate rules which will be binding until the next emergency arises. New technique, says Professor Bie, gives new powers to the army using it. The army is a fool that relin- quishes its advantage. The professor's conclusion is : Technique creates might, might creates right, and right creates human- ity. All these conceptions are changing, and Ger- mans are not going to discuss them in the middle of a war. Germans will not be made fools of; they decline to be sentimental. The Leader of the Monists Ernst Haeckel, the octogenarian zoologist and pioneer of Monism, has just finished a book with the title Eternity: Thoughts about Life and Death, Re- ligion, and the Doctrine of Evolution. It is a series of more or less connected thoughts which he thinks might be regarded as foundation stones for a phil- osophy of the war. Professor Haeckel has nothing comforting to say. 54 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY His philosophy is of the drabbest and most cheerless sort. The bulk of his book is devoted to prove that the answers to the above questions can only be had in religion or in philosophy, and that in religion the answer is wholly unsatisfactory and untenable. The war, he says, has reduced to an absurdity the doc- trines of providence and predestination. In view of the deaths of such masses of people, in view of the fact that daily thousands die in open battle, in trenches, in air machines, submarines, hospitals, and prison camps, all of them carried away by blind chance, and others owing their escape to the same blind chance, the illusion that the destinies of men are In the care of an Omnipotent Intelligence with care- fully arranged plans is an idea which cannot be en- tertained for a moment. The famous professor lays equally pitiless hands on the behef in an All-loving Father, either as it ap- pears in the philosophy of dualism, or as it is ex- pounded in systems of Christian ethics. This war, he says, proves the absurdity of the Christian prin- ciple of loving one's neighbour and the futility of pacifism. Pacifism and Christian ethics have both been declared bankrupt. The Horrible which we see daily, what is it but a mockery of "Love thy neighbour as thyself" ? Haeckel, however, is not without a message of comfort. He finds it in science, or, as he expresses it, "in the monistic religion of reason." It is but a sorry substitute he offers for what he calls the "pre- vailing superstitions." It is not even original. He goes back 250 years to his old idol Spinoza, and preaches the beauty and satisfying nature of Resig- nation. This great teacher in Germany has nothing better to recommend to his suffering compatriots PASTORS AND PROFESSORS 55 than brave "devotion to the Unavoidable," "the knowledge and recognition of the eternity and inde- structibility of the Cosmos and of the courses of Nature in which the individual unceasingly appears and disappears in order to make a place for new forms and new modes of unending Substance." "What an inexhaustible treasure-house of most noble enjoyment do these countless wonders of an eternal process offer to the thinking man of Kultur!" With this sentence Haeckel concludes a book which will bring but scant consolation to the many who regard him as their teacher and prophet. Harnack and the Princes Germany's arch-professor, Adolf von Harnack, eminent historian and theologian, intimate of the Kaiser and president of a score of academies and learned societies, has been lecturing in Munich on "The Kultur-war in the World-war." Royal princes and the aristocracy of the Bavarian capital thronged to hear the great man; the intellectual aristocracy was also present. It was a most successful lecture, and nearly the entire non-Sociahst Press extols it as a marvellous exposition of German ideals, and as a deadly criticism of the Kultur of Germany's enemies. The Munchener Post, the organ of Bavarian So- cialism,, finds, however, nothing to admire in the ut- terances of the great ecclesiastical historian, and much that deserves the gravest censure. It will be interesting to follow the criticisms of the Post. They reveal an attitude of mind with which the extremists will be, sooner or later, in collision. Harnack began his lecture by lengthy allusions to the lies and libels of Germany's enemies. He cited S6 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Oxford professors and other intellectuals in proof of his statement that the cultured classes of Great Britain were criminally blind to the eminent cultural services of Germany. But the Post unkindly reminds Herr Harnack that German professors like Lasson and Sombart, Haeckel, Eucken, and scores of others, including the great Church historian himself, have united in declaring in words of unmeasured ferocity that only Germany is entitled to call herself a Kultur- State, and have claimed that with the exception of Germany and her allies, no other nations have the right to maintain that they cherish lofty ideals. Professor Harnack exclaims, "Thank God, our Kultur is different from that of the others, both in its essence and in its manifestations," and draws in consequence the rebuke from the Post that he is strongly reminiscent of a certain Pharisee who thanked God that he was so superior to the publi- can. The famous scholar tackled his theme by begin- ning with Russia. Russia has neither history nor Kultur. "Harnack's idea," says the Post, "is that Russians are hordes of barbarians and their country a desert. This is stupidity against which the gods struggle In vain. The man seems to Ignore the ex- istence of Pushkin and Lermonteff, Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, Gorki, and a host of others. With a gesture Herr Harnack contemptuously waves Rus- sia aside." "They may be a merciful and charitable people, but what of that," says the German divine, "with a supercilious look at the princes and aristo- crats In front of him." CHAPTER III CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS War Pedagogy — Voices of Children — Future Careers. Much space is devoted In the German Press to the discussion of "War Pedagogy." The discussion Is conducted, as Germans discuss all such subjects, with Intense acrimony, the disputants abusing one another with a choice vocabulary of vituperation. A case In point was the publication of a pamphlet by Profes- sor Foerster, an eminent pedagoglst, who took as his main thesis that children must be brought up to regard not only the interests of their own coun- try, but also with a readiness to recognise the rights and Interests of their neighbours. War Pedagogy Foerster complained that since the war began German children have not been sufficiently Impressed with this side of their duty, and that a strong mili- tary bias, in the narrowest nationalist sense, has been given to all their Instruction on the war. "Na- tions," said Foerster, "can neither Isolate themselves nor others, and children must be taught that with all their patriotism they are destined to Intercourse with the peoples of other countries, and that their happiness, the happiness of their country, and the happiness of neighbouring countries depend on the 57 58 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY loftiness_of their views on this subject, and the stand- ard they set themselves as men in carrying out these views." In his pamphlet Foerster dechned to dwell on the fact that the Christian religion, which is the relig- ion officially professed by Germany, is a religion of love. The emphasising of this fact is more the duty of the Church. But he could not refrain from say- ing that the teaching of a high ethic Is an important part of pedagogics, and that no responsible guide to youth should neglect any opportunity of impress- ing the ductile minds of children with the hateful- ness of hate, and with the beauty of treating all men, of whatever nation, with tact, good feeling, and fellowship. One would have thought that sentiments so excel- lent and self-evident, especially in a pedagogist, would have met with instant recognition. But it was not so. One authority after another rose to declare that these doctrines taught to German children at a time when the nation was in arms in defence of its most sacred values were little short of treason, that if pressed to their logical conclusion they must ex- ercise an enervating effect both on teachers and taught, and that for German children there was only one point of view worth considering — ^the German point of view. "Steel and not sugar-plums, muscles of cord, cool heads, and German, German, Ger- man," was the summing up of the whole duty of pedagogues towards children by one of Foerster's antagonists. Then appeared Dr. Erich Meyer, a well-known educational authority, who wrote a lengthy article in the Tdgliche Rundschau to prove that Foerster was a weak-kneed and namby-pamby humbug. Herr ■ / CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS 59 Meyer declares that when Foerster wrote: "The souls of the young will suffer damage should they ever forget that in this war brother is fighting against brother," he said something which, if taught to a German boy, would change his German soul to something like the soul of a sponge. "It is our business," says Meyer, "to push aside all these lofty ideals, to teach the youth the stern realities of this war, to teach them that at last, after a long existence as an endurer, an existence of un- worthy slackness, our people have ceased to dream." Herr Erich Meyer will not tolerate the men who can say a word on behalf of Latin civilisation as compared with German Kultur. Latin civilisation is deteriorating, and if its ideals are taught to Ger- man youths and girls the result will be catastrophic. "Away with such nebulous and sickly sentiment! Let it be rooted out from the soul of our people !" Meyer scornfully asks : "What good are these great ideals to our soldiers? They require cold blood in them. And the more they are free of this senti- ment the more beautiful, the more German are their actions." "The school must indeed learn that war is a frightful and mad terror which one might gladly banish from the world for all time; but with every desire to make the school a training ground for peace, it must before all else be made a preparatory school for war, and for the development of that power which will enable us to give effective blows of our hammer." . . . "All of us now know what this war is teaching us — that the war is a battle of life and death between two ideals of humanity, the German and the un-German ideal. There can be no compensatory balancings. With arms or with- 6o SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY out arms the battle must be fought to a finish, until one or other of the ideals has disappeared." Voices of Children An Interesting article in the Berliner Tagehlatt gives the answers to a series of war questions put to forty-two boys and thirty-eight girls in Bavarian Grammar Schools, the children being between twelve and fourteen years of age, and selected for their general intelligence. The first question Is: What is the war in your eyes? The replies, as a rule, are very proper. The war Is a struggle for honour and for the existence of our land. Or it is a visitation of God in order to bring mankind back to Him. One girl writes, "The war is an enchanting murder!" Question Number 2 : What pleases you most in the war? Here also the answers are, as a rule, quite correct: The numerous victories, the bravery and endurance of the soldiers, the deeds of the submarines, Hindenburg. Some candid children thought the numerous holidays and the shortening of school hours the most pleasing event of the war. One girl, probably she who spoke of the enchanting murder, wrote, "I am best pleased when I see our soldiers leave for the front decorated with flowers, going to pour out their blood." Question 3 : What is the least pleasing thing about the war? Answer: When the soldiers suffer in the trenches, or when the wounded are detrained or moved. But the majority replied: The action of England in stirring the nations against us. The Tagehlatt states that over and over again the chil- dren express their boundless hatred of England. CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS 6i "If you had to go to the front, what would you do?" is the fourth question. The answer from near- ly all is that they would fight with all their power and courage, or they would go to help Hindenburg, or they would earn an Iron Cross, or they would have a wild adventure as patrols, or they would en- gage themselves as spies. Twenty of the girls want- ed a weapon of some kind to kill Englishmen; only four desired positions as nurses. The fifth question was : Should the enemy Invade Germany, what would you do? They would all fight to the last moment. One girl would wait for her bullet, but another, a real Bavarian, would hide in the Thomas Brewery, somewhere in a secluded corner. Question 6 runs: Why are we at war? Most of the replies state that Germany was compelled to defend herself. England had plotted against Ger- many in order that British trade would be better after the war. One boy wrote: "We are at war because the English wished to plunder us and fill their own gold sacks." The penultimate question is: Who will be vic- torious, and why? Germany, of course, because its soldiers and sailors are braver and better than those of other countries, because Germany has Hinden- burg, because German munitions are better. Nine girls and four boys believe that Germany will prob- ably be victorious. And one gentle little girl thought the Germans would be victorious because so many of them carry a rosary or a prayer-book. The final question is: Who is our worst enemy, and why? The reply is obvious. The questioner knew the answer he would get. The English are Germany's worst enemies, because they began the 62 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY war, and caused It, because they are the greatest liars and deceivers, because they would starve Ger- many, and because they waited until May in order that they could employ more of their wild men against Germany. Future Careers The Frankfurter Zeitung furnishes us with an Im- portant and deeply interesting study of young Ger- many in the shape of answers to questions set to a class of boys between the ages of twelve and four- teen, all of whom were in their last year at school. We purpose, however, to deal with the answers to only one question: What will be my future career? The first answer is as follows: "As my father has fallen on the field of battle, and as my mother is sickly, I must see that I quickly earn money so that my mother need not go to work." The next boy writes: "I want to be a farmer, for the farmer in war time does not suffer want. He can eat as much as he wishes, and earns a lot of money." Another lad: *T shall hire myself to a farmer, where I can always get enough to eat and receive In addition 6s. a week." Most of the boys desire to learn a handicraft. One precocious youngster explains this by saying that after the war "handicrafts will be like a golden floor." Another: "We must work hard at learn- ing, for we must fill up the gaps made by the war." "If we boys are industrious and have learnt some- thing good we shall be very prosperous after the war." "I wish to become a shoemaker," says one young philosopher and poet, "because I can sit on my stool, and as I draw the wax ends through the CHILDREN AND SCHOOLS 63 soles of the boots I can sing and whistle. Perhaps I shall even become a poet like Hans Sachs, of whom it has been written that he was poet and cobbler at the same time." The writer of the Frankfurter article rejoices that these young prigs have a perfectly clear notion of the demands which their trades will make on them. "When I bring my mother money for the first time she will be delighted. That will be the most beau- tiful day in my life when I lay the money on the table." Another good boy writes: "The half of my money I shall give to my mother, the other half I shall put in the savings bank." We are told it is remarkable that the war with its terrors has neither frightened the boys nor made them more shy. Quite the contrary. Most of them regretted their youth. If they were permitted, every one of them — those brave German boys — would spring to their arms, "even though I should sacrifice my young life in battle." "When I am fifteen, and should we then be still at war, I shall volunteer for the fortress machine-gun detachments. Here I shall distinguish myself by bravery in order to obtain the Iron Cross, and be promoted to the rank of sergeant." All wish to volunteer, and all have already made up their minds regarding the branch of the Service to which they will attach themselves. "I shall join the infantry," says one egoist, "because I shall only have myself to look after." Another would join the Navy, "because it is so fine, and, besides, the future of my fatherland lies on the water." "When I have served twelve years in the army I shall get a nice job at the Post Office or on the railway." 64 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY A number of the boys spun the thread of their lives into quite other directions. "I shall not marry, because I do not wish to get angry with a wife." Where has this young cynic of twelve learned this philosophy of life? "I shall not marry," says an- other of the good boys, "because I shall take my parents to live with me and support them till they die." "I shall not marry, as I would have to care for my wife and children, and that is too expen- sive." "As soon as I leave the army I shall marry and close my life happily." "When I am twenty- seven I shall marry a wife and live with her in peace and happiness. She will present me with two chil- dren. They will be smiths, and will look after me later. When I am seventy I wish to die, as I shall have lived long enough." CHAPTER IV BERLIN AND HAMBURG Street Scenes — ^Thinking Deeply — ^^sthetic Teas — Big Or- ders: No Workmen. BERLIN The war has enormously contributed to make Berlin the real capital of the German Empire. In the old ante-war days each of the Federal States, In view of the encroachments of Prussia, made a point of emphasising the Importance of Its own capital as the centre of Its life, and gave to Berlin only what was Berhn's due — recognition of Its position as the centre of Imperial administration, the residence of the Imperial family, and the clearing house for the for- eign transactions of the Empire, diplomatic and eco- nomic. But Berlin before the war could hardly be re- garded as occupying the same position In the life of the people as Is occupied by London, Paris, or Vi- enna in the life of Britishers, Frenchmen, or Aus- trlans. It was badly tainted with the blemishes of the parvenu. Its population were regarded as vul- gar, blatant, ostentatious, assertive, and altogether lacking In the observance of those finer amenities of life which defy description, but are none the less a part of the imponderables — of those spiritual agents and influences met with In ripe and ancierjt 65 66 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY communities. Germans from the south and west felt themselves out of sympathy with the struggling, striving grossness of the Berliner, and it is safe to say that in popular holiday resorts and other gath- ering places the least popular guest was the man and woman from "Athens on the Spree," as the Berliner, with more than his usual defects of humour, calls his city. To a large extent the war has changed all this. The centralisation of military affairs in Berlin, its importance as the point where all the threads meet and are kept in hand, its dominating position as the home of the Reichstag and of those administrative departments for controlling the Empire's food sup- plies and national auxiliary labour have all contrib- uted to enhance the position of the capital in the es- timation of the people, and to make it in very truth the centre of the German nation at war. What its position may be after the war as the centre of na- tional life or as a centre of social influence it is im- possible to forecast, but at the present time it fitly represents Germany, and what Berlin says to-day the rest of the country will say to-morrow. That is the reason why in these pages so much attention is bestowed on this city — its life, Its thought, its social outlook, and those aspects of Its citizens which best illustrate their attitude to the war and its tasks. Our first study of the capital is taken from For- warts, the principal organ of the Majority Social Democratic party. BERLIN AND HAMBURG 67 Street Scenes The Socialist organ draws attention to the mili- tary life of the streets. Large as Berlin's garrison was before the war, soldiers were not then notice- able in great numbers. Now the majority of males in the streets are in uniform. They are mostly wounded or men on furlough. Among them you see any number of boyish faces, any number of grey heads. The father walks with his son, both in uniform, both wounded. The wounded usually move about in groups with Red Cross sisters, the weaker generally leaning on a sister. Business is toned with the colours of war. From cinemas to chocolate shops — it is all War, War, War. Forwdrts draws attention to the number of shops which have been closed owing to the failure of their tenants to make both ends meet. It seems that in most cases the stocks remain Inside un- touched, as the creditors can do nothing with them. Certain trades (Forwdrti does not specify them all) have suffered more severely than others. One busi- ness, however, is mentioned — the Wirtschaft, the place which combines the public-house and restau- rant. These establishments in vast numbers have closed their doors, the bars are cobwebbed, the dusty glasses stand in the corners with dead flies in them. The landlords have all gone to the war, their guests too. No longer the great tankards of foaming beer. The loud "Prosits" have given place to a strange silence, dumb and deserted are the places of mirth, and great placards on the dirty windows announce that a restaurant is to let. 68 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Vorwdrts also notices as a sign of the times the appearance of woman in numerous callings for which a year ago she was regarded as wholly unsuitable. What man in the German Empire a year ago could have imagined women tram or omnibus conductors, ticket collectors, letter-carriers, doorkeepers, lift at- tendants, scavengers? The Socialist newspaper points out that the war is bringing up problems of so difficult a character that no one ventures to offer any solution of them. The war has brought it home to Berliners, as noth- ing else has ever done, that change and decay are the phenomena of life most in evidence, and that the old inherited traditions are being swept aside. The vibrations of this awful drama of war, says Vorwdrts, will shake our daily life to its founda- tions. Thinking Deeply Oscar Blumenthal, the well-known writer of genial comedy, sends an interesting letter to the Neue Freie Presse, giving his impressions of life in Berlin. In many external ways, he says, it is the old Berlin, but a moment's attention shows that the war has eaten deep into the daily life of the people, and that innumerable citizens feel, and show that they feel, that their daily routine "has been torn up by the roots." One sees that the citizens are thinking deeply, and that they regard their lives now, and until the final decision comes, as merely provisional existences. Berlin, says Blumenthal, is as a palace with a laugh- ing fagade, within which are chambers of a most serious character. BERLIN AND HAMBURG 69 At night there are crowds as usual, and brilliantly lighted streets. Cafes and restaurants are well filled, and in various cabarets five-o'clock tea is dis- pensed. Lyrical poets wander about from hall to hall to declaim their hymns of hate and their battle scenes, and in the theatres we have patriotic plays. But the war, nevertheless, has written its bloody autograph on every paving-stone of Berlin. One cannot engage In the shortest walk without meeting swarms of wounded ojfficers and men, with their serious, war-bitten faces. In some you see the con- valescent, others limp along on their sticks and crutches, others with pale faces, shadowed by mel- ancholy, tell of their superhuman exertions. Everywhere in Berlin, continues Blumenthal, im- patient people are met who desire to see the pace of the war accelerated. On their breakfast tables every morning they demand hot rolls and hot bulle- tins of victory, and they will not understand that the German and Austrian Grand General Staffs are not conducting this war for the gallery, or for the grati- fication of nervous people. Esthetic Teas Writing In the JVoche, Baroness van Bunsen dis- courses on German sociability during the war and after it. This lady, one of the best-known leaders of Berlin society, is sorry to confess that before the war there was much that was "inharmonious and unsympathetic In Berlin conviviality." The social functions, accompanied by eating, which used to be arranged at luncheon and dinner-time have now altogether ceased "for reasons which are evident to 70 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY every one." The Baroness means that as there is no food there can be no feeding. She is delighted that those gross and material con- vivialities have given way to something more refined. Berlin society now meets between four and six and indulges in an aesthetic tea or coffee. It isn't really tea, nor is it really coffee, and there is no cream, very little milk, and hardly a lump of sugar. There are "war cakes," which are tendered to you by a maid or an elderly servant in livery, but of meat not a scrap. It is all very aesthetic, and conversation reaches degrees of brilliancy unheard of in the old carnivorous days. The evening between nine and eleven is the time for really elegant parties. They assemble after their frugal meals at home. They don't come for food — that would never do, as there is none for them, says the Baroness. But there are cold drinks and warm drinks and a little cake, and as for the conversation, it Is more briUiant than in the afternoon. What the Baroness cannot stand is the snobbery still preva- lent, every class pretending to be richer and better than they are — small officials, officers, landowners, all pretending to be millionaires, and doing their pretension shabbily. HAMBURG The great Hanseatic city, its people and Its Press, deserve separate treatment. It is in the centre of so many German ambitions, the cradle of so many dreams, the sacred place where so many enthusiasts have seen glorious visions of empire. Herr Ballin, the Jewish director of the Hamburg-America line, the greatest shipping concern in the world, has his BERLIN AND HAMBURG 71 headquarters here, and inspires all classes of Ger- mans, from his Imperial master down to the lowliest workman, with hopes of a greater Germany beyond the seas, linked to the home country by vast and far- reaching merchant services which one day will drive British competition from all the Seven Seas. It is the home of the mighty colonial schemes which have dazzled the eyes of so many Germans — a great African Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, crossed and recrossed by efficient railways; a powerful base on the Moroccan coast to afford protection and add strength to a strong Af- rican squadron; an Australasian Empire Including New Guinea, the Samoan Islands, and a wide- spreading Pacific archipelago; settlements in the China seas and on Chinese rivers, with the inex- haustible Chinese markets behind them; and, last but not least, the glorious possibilities of a German South America. Hamburg is also the centre of the network of schemes summarised under the word "Bagdad." From Hamburg to Bagdad is the cry. The city Is full of organisations for the furtherance of Ger- many's ambitions in the Near and Middle East. As^ sociations for organising Balkan trade, for opening up the resources of Asia Minor, for the peaceful penetration of Persia, and for the utilisation of Mesopotamia, swarm in the city under royal and imperial patronage. Hamburg has developed a Pan- Germanic spirit more intense, more organised, more dangerous than any other city of the empire, and Its enormous wealth and resources have been freely ex- pended in the furtherance of its ambitions. It stands to reason that a city with such a mind Is In the very forefront of the anti-British crusade. 72 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY From no other centre of population is the raucous voice of hate so loudly raised. It was in Hamburg where business firms first hit on the idea of stamping their paper with "Gott Strafe England." It was in Hamburg where the largest subscriptions were raised to commemorate dead commanders of submarines who had wrought the greatest havoc against Eng- land. It was in Hamburg that the Lusitania medal originated. It was a Hamburg pastor who declared from his pulpit that his people were doing God a service in hating the British and in taking every step possible to wipe so pestiferous a nation from the face of the earth which they polluted. The following extract from a Hamburg newspa- per deals with the situation as it has been affected by the war. It will be noted that, in spite of a bold front, deep depression reigns. Big Orders: No Workmen The Hamburger Fremdenhlatt has evidently read the descriptions in neutral and enemy newspapers of the woeful plight of Hamburg, Bremen, and other German harbours, and is determined to set things in a rosier light by the exercise of a little imagina- tion. We must not run away, we are told, with the idea that the grass is growing on the quays of Ham- burg, or that the broad expanses of the Elbe are desolations. It is shipbuilding which is probably one of the most active industries on the coast at the present time. When we reflect that the shadow of war is over the land it is simply amazing, says the Fremdenhlatt, what is being done in shipbuilding. It is true, we arc informed, that the yards are not turning out much, but the quantity of orders on BERLIN AND HAMBURG 73 hand is most satisfactory. In other words, the yards have orders which they cannot execute. They are "looking forward, however, to a briUiant fu- ture." On the Stettin stocks the work is much more extensive than it was a year ago. Riiscke & Co. re- port that they have more orders than they will be able to execute for a long time, and the Flensburg Shipbuilding Company is in the same "satisfactory" condition. When the war is over, their report states, they will have more than enough to do. "The reports from the North Sea yards are quite as favourable as those from the Baltic." Blohm & Voss, in Hamburg, do not state the nature of the orders on which they are at work, but from their report we gather that they have orders to the value of £1,800,000. This fact rejoices the heart of the Fremdenhlatt. But whether they are doing any work on these orders, and whether the orders are from the Admiralty or from private sources is a matter wrapped in mystery. At the Weser works, in Bremen, "the prospects are favourable," and at the Seebeck yard at Geestemiinde we are told that the company begins the new year with "a large number of unfulfilled orders," and that for the pre- sent they have ample work for their hands. From another source we learn that this yard, which usually employed over 500 men, has now a staff of twenty- six, mainly engaged in keeping the works in some sort of repair. We can quite believe that they have ample occupation for their workmen. CHAPTER V COLONIES AND COLONIAL EMPIRE A German Colonial Empire — A Hamburg View — ^A Colonial Museum. A GERMAN COLONIAL EMPIRE When war broke out and immediate steps were taken by Great Britain to deprive Germany of her colonies, there was an affectation of much amuse- ment in the German Press. Innumerable writers set to work to point out that even though successful in their "filibustering expeditions," the British would before long recognise that the fate of these colonies would be finally decided on European battlefields; and the Allies were warned that not a hair of a Ger- man colonial head would be injured without com- plete compensation being demanded. As the war progressed, and colony after colony was occupied by the British, a number of writers were set to work to discuss the value of colonial pos- sessions in the German scheme of world-empire, and to assert that no peace could possibly be acceptable which did not provide for the restoration to Ger- many of her lost possessions. A side-issue was raised on the question whether a strong fleet was or was not a necessary accompaniment to colonial posses- sions. One batch of writers maintained that Ger- man colonies were acquired and developed when Germany was in command of very inferior naval 74 COLONIAL EMPIRE 75 strength, and that other powers with vast colonies were able to govern them without any development of maritime power. On the other side it was argued that the present war showed how vulnerable that power was which neglected the development of her fleet, and that one of Germany's tasks after the war must be the building of such a navy as would render all future attacks on her colonies impossible. The subjoined extracts will illustrate the German colo- nial mind and attitude. A Hamburg View The Hamburger Fremdenhlatt devotes an entire page to "German Colonies" in connection with an address delivered in Hamburg by Dr. Solf, who is described as "Secretary of State for the Colonies." Dr. Solf lectured on the need of colonies to Ger- many, an excellent lecture in its way; and it is inter- esting to see the "Minister for the Colonies" em- ploying his enforced leisure in this harmless man- ner. The Fremdenhlatt, which illustrates the discourse with charming examples of Samoan landscape and a picture of the house where Herr Solf once lived as Governor of Samoa, tells us that among the most painful experiences of the war is the baseness and shortsightedness of Germany's enemies in employing coloured and half-civilised troops against the Fath- erland. Next to this in base meanness is the robbery of "our young colonies." That the enemy will occupy them is only too certain, but it will be robbery car- ried out with much loss of blood and with infinite treachery. 76 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY "Among the attributes of the nation who are called Huns by the hypocritical English, and Boches by the degenerate French, is a remarkable idealism, incomprehensible to our enemies, which irradiates the entire German people, from the palace to the workshop. This is why we do not merely regard the German colonies as trading settlements, as places where money may be made, or where the native races may be sucked dry. This is the Briton's way with his foreign possessions. For the German his colonies are lands of fable, shimmering in the magic of marvellous sunlight, virgin territory exercising a potent attraction for our youth, and in which we have unfurled the banner of Kultur and humanity." The Fremdenhlatt concludes: "Among the great tasks which the war imposes on Germany is the win- ning back of our colonial possessions. Not only this, but their security for coming generations. Over the palms of Samoa, in the West African model colonies, in South-West Africa fertilised with our blood, in New Guinea, the most lovely tropical land on earth, the German flag will wave again." A Colonial Museum A remarkable movement is on foot, supported by the highest patronage, for establishing at Stuttgart a German Institute and Museum in the interests of overseas Germans. The King of Wurttemberg and the German Emperor are to be the patrons of the enterprise, and among those contributing the neces- sary funds are. In addition to the various Federal Governments, the principal shippers and heads of the largest exporting firms. Stuttgart is chosen as COLONIAL EMPIRE 77 the seat of the new Institute and Museum, partly be- cause there Is an Invincible objection to the establish- ment of too many national undertakings In Berlin, and partly because Swablans have been so frequent- ly the pioneers of German enterprise abroad. In the numerous appeals for sympathy and funds issued by the founders we are able to gather a fairly accurate notion of what Is Intended. We hear that Germans living abroad are being subjected to ill- usage and contempt, and that they are living In con- ditions of the direst need. They are stretching out hands to Middle Europe, "they are blood of our blood," and their wounds must be healed and their needs supplied by their brethren at home. It Is pointed out that the Influence of these overseas Germans can be enormously Increased. No Euro- pean country has sons In such influential positions abroad as Germany. These men must be linked to the Fatherland with Indissoluble bonds. Too many of them, alas! have allowed the riches and snares of foreign influence to sap their Deutschtum. In addition to the 80,000,000 Germans at home, there are 20,000,000 abroad. How are these sons of the Empire to be strengthened In their love and allegiance to the Fatherland? This is the problem which Is being faced by the founders of the Institute and Museum. After the war there will be tremen- dous changes, and Germany may reasonably look forward in time to an almost immeasurable Increase of her overseas trade. No time must be lost In ar- ranging for the necessary supply of all available raw materials; equally urgent Is the question of an ex- tension of markets for finished manufactures. The 78 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY cordial co-operation of the overseas German is ab- solutely necessary. These and similar thoughts occupy the founders of an institute which is to supply a knowledge of overseas Germans and their conditions of life to the nation at home, to further their interests at home and abroad, and to awaken an intelligent interest among the masses of the people in the concerns of those colonies of German men "who are our ad- vanced guard abroad." The Museum is not to be a cabinet of curiosities. Among all the various objects exhibited there is to be a living connection. Overseas Germany is to be shown in the midst of her surroundings and in her dealings with native peoples and races. In this way the Imperial German will grow familiar with coun- tries in which he is becoming vitally concerned. We have some interesting details regarding the nature of the collections in an article contributed b)?' Dr. Carl Uhlig to the Berliner Tagehlatt. They are to embrace the intellectual and material possessions of the overseas German, and, in addition, much that is important In the frame In which his life is set. The German settlement, trade, domestic life and its ar- rangements, clothing, utensils of all sorts, the pro- duce of the soil, arts and crafts, objects of industry, means of transport and communication and all that fitly illustrates or explains the scientific, artistic, re- ligious, and social institutions of the country are all to be exhibited. Each country where Germans are "standing at the outposts of our world-mission" will have its own special section. But this is not all. There will be an important department devoted to German shipping lines trad- ing with foreign countries where Germans are set- COLONIAL EMPIRE 79 tied; another will Illustrate the German Press In those countries; and a third will be devoted to ex- hibits bearing on overseas German schools. Special attention will be given to displaying processes of manufacture from the raw material to the finished article of various commodities In which Germany Is largely Interested, and which are produced by Ger- mans. We hear that cocoa, coffee, cotton, and rub- ber are among these. Finally, there will be the In- stitute and Museum Library, which has been planned on a vast and very complete scale. Much shelf- room will be given to books on economic subjects, "but other subjects will not be neglected." It will be the aim of the founders to make the library a complete fountain of knowledge regarding those foreign countries "which come within the ambit of our economic and cultural world-mission." The concluding sentence of Dr. Uhlig's article is as follows: "Although the founding of the new Institute and Museum is pre-eminently a work of peace, it nevertheless belongs to those tasks which must be taken up to-day in preparation for the eco- nomic battles which must be fought after the war, and which will affect all classes of our people." CHAPTER VI ORIENTAL DOMINION Orient and World Trade — New Route to India — Bagdad the Centre — Bosphorus, Suez Canal, Egypt: Control of the Bosphorus — Relations with Turkey: Speechless with Admiration of the Turks — Kladderadatsch and the Turks — Kurds and Germans — To Revivify Arabia — To Revivify Persia. The establishment of dominion In the Near and Middle East has been, from the first, one of the chief aims of Germany. Long before the war the eyes of the Kaiser, his admirals and generals, his financial and Industrial magnates, had been turned to the Orient, and the Drang nach Osten, once a vi- sion and a dream, assumed the visible proportions of a definite scheme of policy. This Is not the place to follow the rapid progress made by Germany In the realisation of her dreams of oriental dominion. Our task here is confined to following the manifes- tations of this will for dominion as they were dis- played In the Press during the war. Much has hap- pened since 1898, when William II at Damascus made the famous speech In which he told the 300,- 000,000 Mohammedans of the world that they could rely on him as their true friend. At the time the world was Inclined to view this utterance as mere rhodomontade. We have since learnt that It was nothing of the sort, and that It embodied a definite and far-reaching policy. It will be remembered that 80 ORIENTAL DOMINION in the following year, 1899, the Kaiser obtained the first concession of the Bagdad railway. In the selection of the following extracts from German newspapers and periodicals we have pur- sued the plan of presenting the various phases of the Great German ambition as it affected the different sections of the population. The extracts range over countries and seas from the Bosphorus to the Ganges. Turkey and Egypt, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia, Syria and Palestine, Afghanistan and India have all floated before the dazzled eyes of those dreamers of Eastern Empire. A mirage? Certainly, but it is a mirage which spread before the gaze of a nation of seventy millions and inspired much of the indomit- able fortitude which they have shown In Durchhalten. The gradual fading away of those majestic visions of towers and minarets and palm groves over the arid deserts of the war will powerfully contribute to weary courage and show In sterner and clearer light the dread actualities which must be faced. Orient and World Trade In the Oriental Society, Professor Albrecht Wirth has been lecturing on "Orient and World Trade" to a distinguished audience. After a learned intro- duction, such as a German professor might be ex- pected to deliver, he pointed out that if Germany was to rise to an adequate conception of the bewilder- ing prospect before her, she must, in the very first place, arrange for an Increase of shipping to the East. From the Baltic and North Sea and the ports of the East there must be unbroken lines of ships moving backward and forward, and from the shores of these seas to the warm waters of the Persian Gulf 82 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY and Bay of Bengal there must be the same unbroken communications on land. We are told by Professor Wirth that the exer- tions of the Allies to retain the possession of the Dardanelles and Constantinople in their hands will not delay the march of events. The pioneers are already on all roads that lead from the heart of Germany to Constantinople and the Indian Ocean. They are the pioneers of a new era of German world supremacy. From these sublimities Professor Wirth descended to discuss practical details. "What languages should our traders master in order the more speedily to win this economic campaign?" As far as the Professor himself was able to judge from personal experience, Hindustani was the best vernacular in Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and it Is a language easily acquired. It will be inadvisable to spend too much time on Persian or Armenian for countries east of Constanti- nople. Turkish is Indispensable for the German trader. There are 28,000,000 speaking this lan- guage. For work in the Balkans, Bulgarian is not so necessary as Greek. Greek, besides. Is used all over the ports of the Levant. Use might also be found for the Albanian languages, "when we begin to open up the mineral resources of that country." New Route to India In the Lokal Anzeiger appears a remarkable ar- ticle, under the heading, "The New Way to India," which is an excellent example of the dreams dreamed by the latest type of expansionist. Starting with the building of the Ludwig Canal, eighty years ago, which united the Danube with the ORIENTAL DOMINION 83 Main, the writer traces the various ambitious designs which have engaged attention for connecting the North Sea with the Danube, and linking up the Rhine, Elbe, Oder, Moldau, Vistula, and Danube in one vast network of inland waterways. This scheme has been advanced a step farther, and in a few weeks, we are told, there will be held in Vienna a conference of the Bijrgermelster of all Ger- man, Austrian, and Hungarian Danube towns to con- sider the great conception of uniting the North Sea with the Black Sea by a system of waterways nav- igable for large vessels. This scheme, when rea- lised, will be the "New Way to India" — the third, the other two being "that discovered by Vasco di Gama, round the Cape, and the route opened at Suez in 1869, under the salutations of Turkish cannon." The year 1492, when America was discovered, and 19 1 6, when the "colossal" Idea of the new road to India was born, "springing on the world full-pano- plied, like a new goddess of victory from the head of Pallas Athene, are dates which generations to come will regard as co-equal and epoch-making." This year of 191 6, it is pointed out. Is memorable also in that It sees the flight of the British from Mesopotamia, driven from their positions by Turk- ish and German guns, fighting there In the fear of death, defending the last wall round India. "Ideally considered," says the writer, "the way from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf is already free. This is the concatenation of events : the conquest of Ant- werp, the storming of Belgrade, Gallipoli, Kut-el- Amara. "All the Paris Conferences, all the Wilsons, all the thousands of new Dreadnoughts will not alter the situation. We already breathe lighter, notwith- 84 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY standing the heavy sacrifices we have borne, and those yet to be endured. And when the wonderful network of waters Is finished the thousand-fold fruit of German industry will amply reward the blood- bedecked sowers of the seed — Westphalian coal and steel, Berlin machines and Vienna furniture. Bava- rian beer and leather, chemicals from Wurttemberg, books from Leipzig, sugar from Magdeburg. All these will speed down the Danube to the distant East without the eye of a single spying enemy being able even to count the ships. "The British strong places of Gibraltar, Malta, and Suez have lost their terrors for us. And a mighty navy of the Danube Powers will then cruise on the Black Sea. Perhaps, also, the sons of the sol- diers who now with blood and Iron are opening up this free road for Central Europe, will build the ca- nal which will unite the waters of the Euxine with those of the Euphrates. Then, If not earlier, there will be an end to the cruel and grinding power of England!" Bagdad the Centre The occupation of Bagdad by the British forces recalls the florid book by Dr. Karl Mehrmann, The Diplomatic War in the Near and Middle East, pub- lished some weeks ago, and generally regarded as the German classic on the history and politics of the Bagdad Railway. The concluding sentences of the final chapter are as follows: "The work and trouble connected with the realisa- tion of the railway have not been in vain. The principles of our understanding with Turkey will re- main permanently, and it is on this foundation that ORIENTAL DOMINION 85 our political and economic future will be built. The future which stretches out before us, beyond the bounds of our circumscribed Central European posi- tion, will be a future which will make us the un- hindered participators of all advantages of all zones, from the temperate North to the tropical South. It is a future which will give us back our colonial pos- sessions in Central Africa, and enlarge them; a fu- ture which secures for us an uninterrupted sphere of interest from the North Sea through the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. "The work on the Bagdad Railway and our pre- dominant position on it will create a Central-Euro- pean-Near and Middle Eastern unity of military and transport interests, and result in the consolidation of a society of powerful states which will guaran- tee a new and assured equilibrium." Equally worth recalling at the present time are the words of Dr. Paul Rohrbach, another of the best known protagonists of the Hamburg-to-Bagdad pro- ject, a man who has probably done more than any other to maintain German ambitions in the Near and Middle East at white heat. In his book The War and German Politics we read: "What will happen should the British and Rus- sians drive in a wedge between us and our plans in the Orient? The independence of Turkey would be gone, the countries between the Straits and the Gulf, between Port Said and Ararat would be partitioned among our enemies. What would happen to us should we never again be able to exercise influence there? It is clear that this would be the end of our Welt-politik. It would mean our withdrawal from the company of world-nations." "The Bagdad line opens up for us the markets of 86 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY hundreds of millions, it leads to the shores of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, The way thereto is ours in the future— through the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and the Gulf of Aden; through the Danube basin, the Balkans, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia; through Armenia and Persia. The nation that is shut out from all this is shut out from, the shining front chambers of the world's palace, and is forced to take up its abode in the chilly, sunless rooms behind." BOSPHORUS, SUEZ CANAL, EGYPT Discussions on the Bosphorus, the Suez Canal, and Egypt cannot be avoided if Germany is to acquire an oriental dominion. England's influence is here supreme, but at all costs it must be overthrown, and Germany in her newly awakened might can do it. Control of the Bosphorus Dr. Paul Rohrbach is Germany's great popularlser of an overseas empire, with colonies and dominions exceeding in glory and power those of the detested rival. Lecturing lately in the Berlin Urania, Dr. Rohrbach said that Germans might dispute about the aims and objects of the war, but there was only one question to be considered: How is Germany to secure her place among the great nations of the world? But, said Herr Rohrbach, if we consider our allies we see at once how we can catch up the other nations. A "Union" between Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Balkan Pov/ers, and "The Orient" will equalise the existing preponderance of the enemy, and make ORIENTAL DOMINION Germany economically Independent. The Orient will supply Germany with all she needs, and in firm co- operation with the "Union," Germany would be able to conduct her next war under much more favourable circumstances. This, says Dr. Rohrbach, is the very kernel of the German position. Dr. Rohrbach pointed out that in the control of the Bosphorus Germany has the key of Russia's entire power, Russia's grain exports, the alpha and omega of her trading balance, pass through these straits, "In the same way," the control of the Suez Canal would deeply injure England were the "Union" in possession of this short cut to England's populous possessions in the East, "These are our war aims and objects, and it is this which is at the root of our enemies' objection to enter Into peace negotiations with us. It will be an exceedingly bitter pill for them to swallow. They know that their very existence as World Powers is threatened when we control the Bosphorus and the Suez Canal." With regard to England Dr, Rohrbach is inexora- ble — no pact, or treaty, or understanding with her. "We can only use England politically, economically, morally, when she is thoroughly beaten, and when she recognises that she is beaten. We must not start grumbling at high impending taxation. We are pay- ing these extra taxes to secure Germany's position as a World Power, and better is world dominion with high taxation than a lowly position with mild taxation." RELATIONS WITH TURKEY When Turkey joined the Central Powers the Otto- mans became "Blood Brothers," "Companions in 88 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Arms," and "Comrades in Knightly Deeds." The German Press was, and continues to be, bespattered with their praise. Associations arose like mushrooms all over the Empire, having as their object the study of the Turkish language, literature, and art. "Turk- ish Evenings" were held at which "eminent Turkish poets and musicians" held forth. The "University of Constantinople" was endowed with German pro- fessors, and theologians of note were appointed to lecture on the excellences of the Koran, and its su- periority in some respects to the Christian Gospels. We subjoin some diverting examples of this courting of the Turks, of the making of common cause with the "Butchers of the Balkans," of the pride with which Germany goes arm in arm with the Turk through this catastrophic war. Speechless with Admiration With remarkable insistence the German Press prints lengthy articles about the Turks of a highly flattering character. For any one who has been accustomed to the unanimous verdict of the civilised world regarding this retrograde and impossible na- tion — a verdict to which Germany herself used to subscribe, it is amusing to read of the solid virtues of head and heart which have been discovered since the Sultan sent his troops to help the Kaiser. Count Reventlow, in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, Is simply speechless when he contemplates Turkish bravery, Turkish discipline, Turkish patriotism. The march to the Suez Canal, he says, was one of the finest of military achievements. Germans, he affirms, are proud to fight shoulder to shoulder with the Ot- toman forces for their mutual existence. Here is ORIENTAL DOMINION 89 the last word of wisdom from this journalistic fire- eater: "The Osmans fight the same fight as the Germans for freedom and independence. It is this ideal which has drawn closer the bonds that bind them together. And those bonds will be still further strengthened by the mutual knowledge of Germans and Turks that they are militarily worthy of one another, and that the fame of the deeds ojf the one shine all the brighter in the light shed by the deeds of the other." We do not know which is the "one" and which the "other," but for once we can cordially endorse a sentence of the count's balderdash. "Kladderadatsch" and the Turks The intimate relations between Turkey and Ger- many find fitting expression in a special "Turkish number" of Kladderadatsch, a comic journal pub- lished in Berlin. It is bound in a scarlet cover dec- orated with a crescent, and the name of the paper is in ornamental Arabic characters. Inside the cover there is a dedication "To the Turks," which is trans- lated into Osmanli. Here and there a heavy witti- cism, generally at the expense of England, is done into Osmanli, but the gem of the thing is undoubt- edly the dedication. It is in verse, and the poet tells the Turks from the bottom of his German heart that they are a proud nation, standing like a rock and victoriously bring- ing to shame and disgrace the hypocrisy and rascality of their enemies. The Turks are "the guardians of honour," the keepers of a noble inheritance left them by their heroic fathers. They are the descendants of eagles who have at last arrived from the mist 90 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY into sunshine, who are soaring upwards to a proud aim, namely, freedom, justice, truth to themselves, and freedom to the "people on the Nile." And thus, says the poet of the comic journal, we Germans stand at your side, brother's hand in brother's hand, until over a v/ide stretch injustice shall disappear, and until the morning red of a new dawn flames over the old earth. Kurds and Germans Professor von Luschan, of Berlin, director of the Anthropological and Ethnographical Museums, de- livered a lecture in the great hall of the Prussian Lower House on "The Turks," ImhofE Pasha in the chair. The elite of social and official Berlin were present. Herr von Luschan sought to establish the theory that although in the main Turks and Teutons were separate races, there were nevertheless strong racial affinities between them, which probably accounts for the growing sympathy and friendship characterising their intercourse. In a number of screen pictures the lecturei pointed out striking anthropological sim- ilarities between Turks and Germans, and contended that in the course of the ages two currents of migra- tion have been at work — one from northern Europe to the south-east, the other from the south-east to the north. It is not unusual among Turkish women, and quite usual among Kurds, to find individuals with the golden hair and deep blue eyes of North Ger- many. Herr von Luschan does not hesitate to say that the Kurds are a purely North European family, and that this is clear not only from their morphology. ORIENTAL DOMINION 91 but also from the structure and vocabulary of their language. Herr von Luschan has repeatedly met with indi- viduals in the Orisons, in Wurttemberg, and else- where in South Germany, who bore unmistakable marks of a noble Turkish origin. There were some other remarkable scientific excursions by the profes- sor, one identifying the Armenians with the ancient Hittites, but for us the main attraction of his lecture is his theory that the Kurds and the North Germans are one race. It is probable that few people in this country will be disposed to quarrel with the theory — save on scientific grounds. To Revivify Arabia In the Vossische Zeitung appears a characteristic article, entitled "The Heart of Islam." It is charac- teristic in that it is one of an endless series ap- pearing in the German Press pointing out the policy which Germany will pursue after the war In countries which she has hitherto not controlled, but where she believes she has important Interests at stake. As a rule, these countries have hitherto been regarded as within the British sphere of influence, but countries in which Russian and French Influences are para- mount are also the subject of examination. The gen- eral trend of all these articles is to show that in Egypt and Syria, In Morocco, the Congo State and Algiers, in Persia, Baluchistan, Slam, and the Malay States a system of Indifferent government prevails which Is contrary to the best interests of the Inhabi- tants and that it is the world mission of Germany to remedy abuses and inaugurate a system of govern- ment and economics which will bring happiness to 92 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY hitherto down-trodden races and measureless wealth to enterprising Germans. The article on "The Heart of Islam" deals with Arabia. In the opinion of the writer the reform of Arabia might be left to Turkey — of course, under German direction. It will be the task, we are told, of the German-Turkish Allies to rebuild the desolate villages, to repair the choked harbours, and generally to pour fresh blood Into the country. The way to revive Arabia, says the article, is to prolong the Hedjas Railway to Mecca, and here and there, where needful, to build branch lines to the sea and into the Interior eastwards. It Is most Impor- tant to keep an eye on the harbours, which must be so enlarged as to enable German steamers to call at them. Railways, harbours, telephones, and tele- graphs will reduce Arabia to order. To Revivify Persia In various German newspapers It Is Interesting to notice the suggestions made for Increasing German spheres of Influence in countries hitherto closed to her financial and trading circles. Of course, these suggestions are made with the firm conviction that Germany's ultimate victory is assured. Persia seems to be much In the mind of nationalist writers. Recent events have shown them that the Shah's Government are to some extent under Turk- ish Influence; and as Turkey in the future will be a German sphere of Influence, so also will Persia. The Hamburg Nachrichten maintains that it is in Persia's best Interests to obtain financial backing from Germany. Railways must be built there, link- ing up the sea with the Asia Minor and Mesopota- ORIENTAL DOMINION 93 mian systems. Then look at the natural products of Persia and the herds of cattle, the carpet Industry, dried fruits, etc. It will be Germany's mission to put these on the markets of the world. Above all else, there must be a Trans-Persian railway in German hands. Branch lines will shoot out in all directions from the trunk line, and the desert will blossom like a garden ! Then there are the mines, with their rich mineral stores. There are rubies and turquoises, and pearls in the Gulf, and other wonderful things beyond the dreams of avarice — ^all waiting for the "open se- same" of the kind German railway-man, supported by the Deutsche Bank. And it Is an easy cry from Persia to Afghanistan, and there again are more riches. Germany must get into communication with Kabul, and prepare in time for the day when the star of England will decline, and the road is open from Kabul through the Khyber to the swarming bazaars of India, CHAPTER VII THE NAVY AND MERCANTILE MARINE England's Trump Card — The Mercantile Marine: The Hanseatic Spirit. Shortly before his retirement, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, in reply to an address from some of his admirers, used these words: "In its deeds, in its magnificent spirit of devotion and heroism, our navy has proved, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that it is worthy of the German people. The courage of the officers and men, their daring and skill, their absolute mastery of every situation in which they have been involved, will go down to history as one of the most brilliant pages of the annals of this war." The belief expressed by the Grand Admiral is the almost universal possession of the nation. The Ger- man fleet, it is believed, is supreme in the world. Fear of its prowess has driven the British navies, far superior though they are in strength, to take shelter in the remote fastnesses of northern coasts, whence they dare not emerge. We may read in the passages which follow the pride taken in the "achievements" of the Kaiser's navy and the belief in its invinci- bility. Much of the grandiloquent language employed is clearly forced, and it is reasonable to suppose that it Is employed in dispelling an uneasy belief among the people that the weapon which was supplied to the Empire at such enormous cost, and which was 94 MERCANTILE MARINE 95 to break down the maritime supremacy of Britain, has fallen rather short of the expectations enter- tained of it. For a similar reason, doubtless, we have the numerous high-flown descriptions of the disgraceful raids on the English coasts. The fol- lowing extracts deserve careful study. England^s Trump Card Admiral Kalau vom Hofe is one of Germany's best-known naval writers. He is not on active serv- ice, but he is a great personal friend of the Grand Admiral, and only awaits a summons to lead the German fleet to glory. While waiting for this tardy summons he employs his leisure in writing articles for the Press, and one of these appeared in the Magdeburgische Zeitung, under the title "England's Trump Card." It was Mr. Asquith who gave the Admiral the idea. In a speech the late Prime Minister was in- discreet enough to venture some remarks "flattering to English vanity" on the invincibility of our fleet. The fleet is England's trump card, said Mr. Asquith, and the Admiral is eager to see it played. He won't believe for a moment that it is unconquerable. There is clear evidence to the contrary. Look at the num- ber of British ships lying at the bottom of the ocean, if you wish to know whether the fleet is invincible. Indeed, the Admiral thinks it highly probable that Admiral Jellicoe himself is doubtful about the pre- ponderating power of the force under his command. If he is not doubtful, says our Teutonic naval specia- list, why on earth does he hold so anxiously aloof? Why does he leave the defence of British coastal waters to mines, and nets, but more particularly to 96 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY auxiliary cruisers torn from the commercial and fish- ery fleets, and numbering 2,300 craft? A pretty penny the British public will be obliged to pay for these auxiliaries to a fleet which is timidly hiding in the fastnesses of the northern seas ! Admiral Kalau vom Hofe thinks the naval administration of England deserves recognition for these crafty ar- rangements, but to give credit to the hiding English Armada — never ! Why are "those proud leviathans of the deep" away in their remote harbour? Because, says the Admiral, of the activities developed by a few Ger- man submarines, and because of the opportune and bold attacks of German cruisers in the North Sea. The Admiral complains that, although all this is true, the world still believes in the invincibility of the British fleet — a wholly nonsensical belief, a degrad- ing belief. It is the duty of every German, therefore, and especially of every German seaman, to combat the "mendacities" of English Ministers and writers re- garding the invulnerability of their navy, and its al- leged marvellous operations. It is in the interest of Germany, and certainly in the interest of neutrals, to knock this lie on the head for all time. To say that the British navy dominates the sea is a fable. It dominates only the trade routes, for the simple reason that Germany, for well-known and definite reasons, has not thought fit to defend these routes. Germany, says the Admiral, could not afford to make its weak fleet still weaker by taking vessels away from its main region of defence in the North Sea. But this prudent decision, the Admiral is careful to explain, was not forced on Germany by the heroic deeds of the British Armada (he takes pleasure in MERCANTILE MARINE 97 this foreign word), but is purely owing to the nu- merical superiority of the combined British, French, and Japanese navies, as well as for other good rea- sons. Solvuntur risu tabulae. The German navy, continues the Admiral, is in a position to fetter the English Armada on the dis- tant northern point of Scotland and hinder it taking any action either against the coasts of Germany or against neutrals. Nearer to Germany it dare not come. It dare not leave its refuge even to defend the life interests and prestige of England in the Med- iterranean. There it must employ French and Ital- ian ships — ships, with few exceptions, of an inferior character. Let us suppose, says this egregious sea- man, that the ships of the French navy are no longer available — for it is not impossible that the French Ally may come to see that its particular object in this war is unattainable, and that it has bled quite enough in the interests of England — the impotence of the British fleet will be at once revealed. The probability is at hand that England, under the pressure of events in the Balkans, will be com- pelled to liberate her fleet from its northern fast- nesses to fight the German fleet at Heligoland for the freedom of her passage to the Mediterranean. Why does this proud British fleet avoid the bat- tle? The Admiral has his answer ready. Because it is in terror lest German artillery and torpedoes should lame it too badly, and because the leaders of British policy do not wish to see themselves robbed of their best instrument of power. That is why they do not wish to play out their strongest trump card. In reply to Herr Asquith the Admiral points out that the British "Armada" has till now done noth- ing. That is has locked up German oversea trade 98' SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY without serious fighting is merely the consequence of the unfavourable geographical position of German harbours, and of the limited German coastline on the North Sea. Nor is it true to say that the Eng- lish fleet has swept the seas of the German mer- cantile marine. The German trading ships were warned in time, and were therefore able to seek the shelter of neutral harbours, where they still remain. They were not swept off the sea — they went of their own accord! And if German submarines recently have not been so active on the English coast as formerly, British ministers are not to suppose that this is to be ascribed to the activity of the British fleet. There are other reasons. "This war was not necessary if the Ger- man fleet is only to be conquered on paper and by sonorous speech. Therefore, out with your trump I" THE MERCANTILE MARINE The Berliner Tagehlatt publishes the following ar- ticle "The Hanseatic Spirit," interesting as a fine specimen of Teutonic bounce and brag. It displays the workings of the mind of German shippers, their ambitions, and the schemes which they ultimately hope to realise. The Hanseatic Spirit The writer laments that in a few days after the declaration of war the German mercantile flag dis- appeared from the sea, and that deep and painful silence descended on the towns and harbours of the North Sea. Hamburg and Bremen shippers at first took no steps to meet the ntw situation. They MERCANTILE MARINE 99 believed that the war would be a short one, and that after "a passage of arms" with England intimate commercial relations with that country would be re- sumed on much the same lines as before the war. The silence and inactivity were not, therefore, the result of crippled powers, but of optimism. But the war extended, and the Hanseatic merchants saw that they could not sit down with idle hands until the war was over. They resolved on a "Durchbruch" ; they resolved on making themselves strong for the future. And now for months, we are told, the men on the North Sea have been persistently working and wait- ing, not for "the Day," but for "the Future." Much has happened lately to witness to the fact that the work has been crowned with success. , Ballin, of the Hamburg-America line, and Heinecken, of the North German Lloyd, have declared that their building op- erations have known no cessation, and that their fleets at the conclusion of the war will resume their operations with perhaps a still higher tonnage than they possessed when war broke out. The same thing, we are told, applies to all the other great lines. The Hansa: line, the Hamburg- South America Company, the Deutsche-Australische line, the Kosmos and Levant lines have all announced that they are building new ships, or that their new ships have already been built. Even smaller con- cerns, engaged in the Baltic trade, have been able to lay down a large number of new vessels. The vast majority of these new ships will be freight-carriers. It is absurd to think, says the writer, that there will be any diminution of German tonnage. Besides, the post-war ships will be better and more modern than the ships of the ante-war period, and certainly loo SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY better than the fleets of England. It is not only that the percentage of new German ships will be higher than in England, where tonnage has sadly deteriorated owing to the stress of war work and the ravages of submarines, and where the large yards have been fully occupied with Admiralty orders, but in the war period German ships have been resting, have been repaired and modernised, and can spring at once into action. The one trouble which the writer of this article foresees lies on the financial side of the question. The Germans have plenty of technique, but no money. And while English and neutral shipping companies have been piling up reserves out of their swollen profits the German companies have been con- suming their reserves. The one comfort of the writ- er lies in the hope that the German Government will come to the rescue with liberal and adequate sub- sidies. No, not his one comfort. There Is one comfort more — ^the fact that a German submarine merchant- man has taken a cargo of dyestuffs to America, and has brought back a cargo of rubber. It would be wrong, he says, to over-estimate the importance of this blockade-breaker in supplying the wants of Ger- many, even though many of its sister ships are al- ready completed, but neither must its importance be under-estimated. It will certainly weaken the vigour of the British blockade, and "its moral and legal importance" is enormous. Perspectives of unimagined grandeur stretch out before the writer. He revels in the thought of the development of the new submarine. "A submarine MERCANTILE MARINE loi mercantile fleet of 500,000 tons would be able to render every attempt at a blockade illusory, and be able to supply Germany with all the raw material she requires for her manufactures." CHAPTER VIII THE KAISER'S MAJESTY In a French Church — Near Lodz — At Church in Vilna — Near Verdun — Soldier and Saint. There Is a story told of the Kaiser that on one oc- casion when viewing the scene of a battle on the East- ern front, where the carnage was more than usually frightful, his eyes filled with tears and he exclaimed to the surrounding officers, "My conscience Is clear In the sight of God and of history. I did not wish this war." But If there Is one thing more certain than an- other it Is that history will hold the Kaiser responsi- ble for Armageddon, and that It was the ambition of the House of Hohenzollern which directly plunged the world Into the welter of war from which it will take a century to recover. It Is difficult to arrive at any definite conclusion on the question whether the Kaiser's popularity has increased or diminished during the war. Light on this subject does not come from German sources. He has undoubtedly exercised severe self-restraint. His orations have been comparatively few and sel- dom very outrageous, and he has certainly not Inter- fered by Imposing on his generals the Imperial no- tions of strategy. He has assiduously visited hospi- tals, distributed Iron Crosses, and attended sermons and prayer-meetings at churches on the main fronts. THE KAISER^S MAJESTY 103 He has cultivated, moreover, many of the amenities, and legion Is the number of letters he has caused to be sent to mourning widows and mothers, and the number of babies whose godfather he has become. But whether these acts have really Increased his pop- ularity Is doubtful. They do not touch with pallia- tives any of the open grievances which the nation has against him. Criticism of him Is, of course, silent, an expression of blame is impossible ; but Indications are, nevertheless, not lacking that his seat In the af- fections of his people has not been strengthened, and that he is regarded as the representative of a sys- tem which has brought disaster on the country, and made Germany a byword among the nations. We allow the extracts which follow to speak for <-bemselves. For the most part they describe the Kaiser's frequent visits to his troops. They are marked, as every utterance about the man is marked, with much hyperbole and exaggeration, with the sycophancy which we must expect from the German Schmock. Our first extract describes the Kaiser's appearance at church in a French village near Longwy. In a French Church It was an Improvised church, but preparations had been made for the Emperor's presence. The walls were decorated with lances. One thousand men took up position on one side, an equal number on the other. In the front seats were the generals and the Kaiser's suite. An arm-chair in the centre was for the War Lord. He appeared in his field-grey uniform, with a scarlet and gold embroidered collar. Over his uni- 104 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY form he wore a long grey mantle. He looked grave, exceedingly grave, and much older than the writer of the sketch imagined him. His features were so motionless, his eyes so set and stem that he looked as though chiselled in stone. He rose from his seat at the prayers and hymns, and in the singing took an active part. The hymns were apparently all familiar to him, as he seldom looked at his hymn-book. At the conclusion of the service the choir of singers and trumpeters sang the famous chorale, "Wir treten zum Beten." At first it was not rendered with the necessary fire and verve, and, this displeasing the Kaiser, he marked time vigorously, and as the choir followed his beat their music grew louder and more spirited, until, we are told, it thrilled all who heard it. When all was over and the Benediction pro- nounced the Kaiser shook hands with the pastor and thanked him for an impressive service. Near Lodz Next we hear of His Majesty at church near Lodz, the great manufacturing centre In Russian Poland. In the afternoon there was a religious service, the preacher taking as his text, "The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is in the Lord." The sermon was not heard by the reporter, as a strong, icy wind blew from the north. The soldiers sang "Wir treten zum Beten vor Gott, den Gerech- ten," and the Kaiser spoke to his army. But again the words were lost in the sough of the Arctic wind over the Polish steppe. The Emperor then reviewed his officers, and they greeted him with cries of "Ave, Caesar!" But the THE KAISER^S MAJESTY 105 reporter tells us that they did not greet him as gladia- tors, but as the hope of the nation in its great need. Speaking of William II's appearance, the reporter at first thought that the Kaiser had aged terribly, but on closer inspection he discovered it was a grey cloth which he wore round his head that gave the appearance of age. Indeed he was surprised at the Emperor's elasticity. Furrows there were on his face, graven deeply by the experiences of the long months of war, and there was a sternness and gloom about his eyes which was new, and a bitterness in his speech and voice which was absent In the old days. At Church in Vilna In the Vossische Zeitung we have a visit paid by the Kaiser to Vilna, where he met Hindenburg and where the Field-Marshal and his master went to church. The two clergymen, both of them old men, are outside watching his Majesty's coming. He ap- proaches, wrapped in a grey cape, with a hood, and under his helmet a grey head-protector. He shakes hands with the clergy, chats with them a while, and offers to follow them into the church. But the pastors know their duty, and follow the supreme War Lord to the altar. Prince Oscar attends his father, and finds the places for him in the hymn-book. The Kaiser sings the first verse. Hindenburg is close at hand. We read about his serene face. The Chiefs of the Ma- rine and General Staff are also there — Falkenhayn and Holtzendorff, Ludendorff and Eichhorn. The writer declares that had he an entire paint-box and io6 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY twenty yards of canvas at his disposal he could not do justice to his impressions. We believe him. The sermon was of the usual character — the sort of stuff a Prussian parson would preach to a war lord like the Kaiser, to a war lord who has also preached sermons. We are told that during its de- livery the imperial gaze was fastened unmovingly on the preacher, his features showing traces of the "sharpest thought." There was another hymn, and suddenly the sun broke out from the clouds. It is always breaking out from the clouds when the Kaiser is about. The Kaiser again spoke to the clergymen, beckoning them towards him as though he wished to say something cordial. We are then told that his Majesty, accompanied by his brilliant suite, went to the castle and distri- buted Iron Crosses of the first and second class. The writer saw the Kaiser as he was engaged in this oc- cupation, and got the impression of a "great friend- liness of heart which one seldom sees on the stern face." He recalls how a hundred years ago Na- poleon came to Vilna, and contrasts that scene of long ago with the present brilliant picture. Near Verdun A number of sketches deal with the Kaiser visit- ing soldiers in hospital. In the following we have described the Emperor's fatherly ways with the men, followed by a description of a visit to the bat- tlefields of Verdun. The characteristic report does not bear curtailment. According to the Tdgliche Rundschau, His Majes- ty had been to church near Verdun, and he then vis- ited this particular locality in order to see "his THE KAISER^S MAJESTY 107 wounded warriors." He entered the courtyard, filled with men slightly wounded. "Morning, boys!" "Morning, your Majesty!" "And then rapid questions and answers. At first the men were a bit timid, but the Kaiser's adroit camaraderie and jolliness soon put every one at his ease, and they soon felt as though they were talking to a popular captain. You should have seen th^ men whom he spoke to — the unconscious convulsion in their battle-scarred visages, the deep breathing. Sometimes it was only a word or two about their homes. To one man the Kaiser said, 'Ah, yes, I know your place. Was there on manoeuvres. Beau- tiful place; you might willingly let your bones be smashed with shot for a home like that. Fancy, If we had let the Russians into it !' " But it was not exactly what the Kaiser said which we are asked to admire ; it was his genial and cordial laugh, his consoling and inspiring humour. It Is this which stiffens the boys' necks, which brings radi- ance to their eyes. It is this which makes them say, "I have been In his neighbourhood, I have seen him face to face, the man for whom I have battled and bled, and for whom hundreds of thousands have already died without hearing the Kaiser's thanks from his own Imperial lips." The Kaiser then entered the hospital where the seriously wounded lay. There was a board at the head of each bed, with particulars of the case. Those who had won the Iron Cross had their ribbon pinned on the board. Here the same jolly atmosphere, only slightly damped as the men were very weak. It Is astonishing, the jollity caused everywhere by the Kaiser's coming. From bed to bed he went, and on io8 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY each bed the War Lord laid a twig of laurel and a picture-postcard of himself, which he took from his aide-de-camp. The Schmock of the Tdgliche Rund- schau tells us that sometimes the "August Visitor" took from a parcel the most treasured of all war decorations, the Iron Cross and its ribbon, and pre- sented it to the suffering men. "Ah," says Schmock, "how our souls' eyes see the joy of the homes, when the letters come, written with trembling hands, which tell that the Kaiser has spoken to the writer, and has laid an Iron Cross and a sprig of laurel on his bed!" "That laurel sprig and Cross will occupy the place of honour on the wall, and go down to the children's children. What proud blessedness for their owners!" "Ye enervated and enfeebled enthusiasts for peace, do not denounce war ! Ye do not know war, the mighty regenerator of the souls of men!" Then Schmock takes us up unto a high place where there Is a tree, a great spreading beech. He de- scribes the approach of the Kaiser and his Chief of Staff and their staffs. They have come from the hospital, and are approaching the tree in profound meditative talk. High up the tree a watch tower has been built, reached by a flight of stairs. The War Lord ascends with his Chief of Staff and others. In this conning tower there are great telescopes and vast maps, with the use of which the Emperor Is perfectly familiar. He looks out over the extended landscape, with the glittering Meuse winding through It, with rusty red zigzag stripes (the trenches) , dark round spots (the craters), a landscape like that of the moon, arid, desolate, hopeless. Here and there patches of spring verdure, and In the grass and amidst the distant trees villages nestle. No — they THE KAISER'S MAJESTY 109 are villages no longer. They are shapeless, waste places, full of horror, standing there in the diffused light of the evening sun. Germany's "Oberster Kriegsherr" surveys the scene, and his features as- sume a stern, unbending aspect. We are asked to wonder what his thoughts are. The omniscient Schmock cannot help us. Even he does not know. But he tells us about the fire-vomiting hills of the Meuse, the white shrapnel cloudlets, the smoking woods and farms, the smoking Verdun, with its soar- ing cathedral towers, the vomiting earth where a heavy shell strikes. The War Lord's stern gaze takes it all in, his ear listens to the undertone and hoarse murmur of the distant guns. The earth trem- bles. The greatest War Lord in history watches the greatest battle in history, a battle which language is too feeble to describe. • « • • • Schmock proceeds to tell us that it almost seemed as though the Battle knew its great Disposer were present, for from far and near came a mad resonance of firing. In the Disposer's presence the Battle threw off its wearied Sunday manner, and German guns thundered along the slopes of the Dead Man into the French trenches. Slowly, thoughtfully, the Kaiser descended from his tree, and then with rapid step to his waiting car, the soldiers throwing their caps into the air and yell- ing "Hurra! Hurra!" It was once more quiet on that hilltop, with its giant beech bursting Into leaf. The beech must have thought, says Schmock, "What a precious burden I have borne to-day, him in whose person Germany's sacred struggle for life and pros- perity Is personified!" no SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY At regular Intervals selected correspondents are permitted to write letters from "Grand Headquar- ters," descriptive of the life led by the Kaiser, and of the deeds of manhood, chivalry, and piety which fill It, All of them, of course, unite in describing his Imperial Majesty as a twentieth-century Bayard, with the tender heart of a St. Francis, and the mys- tic piety of a St. Thomas a Kempis. Soldier and Saint The latest of these reports deals with the Kaiser in a little French town. Although he might have made a selection of the beautiful chateaux in the neighbourhood, he preferred to lodge in a modest little house where he had only a room for receptions, a bedroom, and a dining-room. "And this is the lodging of the Kaiser of the German Empire!" His manner of life, we are told. Is as simple as his dwelling. In the morning a cup of tea or coffee, with some cold meat and war bread; for lunch, soup, meat, and fruit; for dinner, two courses and fruit. There Is some ordinary table wine and Kriegsbrot for every meal. How sick he must be of this bread ! But the correspondent says the War Lord enjoys It. The Kaiser usually Invites two or three guests to dinner, frequently the representatives of the Austrian army. The dining-room Is ornamented with hunting trophies from the Argonne. We are informed that the army immensely enjoys those days when the Kaiser visits the front. The things he has said at the front will fill a shining page when the history of the war comes to be written. The soldiers' eyes fill with tears when they see him. THE KAISER^S MAJESTY iii They are proud to hear that he has been in their trenches. His Majesty, we hear, always manages to be at the front on great occasions. You might think he is averse to fatigue. Not a bit of it. He likes fatigue. He has travelled longer distances by automobile than any of his generals. Sometimes on these trips he meets a marching regiment, and here is where his gentle knighthood is seen — he tells the chauffeur to go slowly lest the men be inconvenienced by the clouds of dust from his car! Or he stops, and cries out to the men, "Guten Morgen Leute!" and they reply, "Guten Morgen Majestat!" their eyes again full of tears. Again we hear that old story of the Kaiser tasting the soup prepared for the soldiers' dinners. "Give me a mouthful," he asks the cook, and he gulps down the stuff so condescendingly that even the generals' eyes fill with tears. "I eat what my soldiers eat," says this histrionic personage, and the soldiers cheer. One beautiful scene in a graveyard is reported. The colonel of a regiment which had been badly mauled accompanied the Kaiser to the graves of the men. An officer holding flowers was standing at the graves. The Kaiser, turning to this officer, re- marked that he presumed the flowers were intended for him; and when this supposition was confirmed. His Majesty took the flowers, untied the bindings, and laid a separate flower on each grave. But why should the Kaiser have thought that these flow- ers in that sad burying-place were intended for him? Charming tales are told of visits to military hos- pitals. To one young fellow who looked pale and worn he gave three weeks' furlough; another soldier, who had just undergone a severe operation, opened 112 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY his eyes and saw the Kaiser tenderly looking at him. The soldier tried to speak, but had not sufficient strength. The attendants said his pale lips muttered "Hurra, der Kaiser!" So the Kaiser stroked his cheeks and asked him to lie quiet. When he got home the Kaiser sent the wounded man an Iron Cross. Chivalry of an almost unexampled character was displayed in the Kaiser's treatment of prisoners. We read of French officers who were so affected and dazed when they saw the Kaiser's majesty that they were rendered speechless, and even their eyes filled with tears. But it is his piety which mainly impresses this correspondent. A characteristic passage is the fol- lowing: "There is something sacred which accom- panies the Emperor on all his ways, and this is his unshakable confidence and faith in the Creator. This piety streams out from him over the entire army. Those who have seen the Kaiser at a field service will never forget the sight. When the Kaiser joins in the singing of 'Wir treten zum Beten,' his clear eyes raised to heaven, we remember his words of last autumn: 'One man with God is always in a majority.' " CHAPTER IX HINDENBURG The Hindenburg Cult: "O Hero of Tannenberg!" — Hin- denburg at Church — Hindenburg Dithyrambics — Hin- denburg in Sculpture. THE HINDENBURG CULT When the supreme War Lord called General von Hindenburg to assume office as Controller-In-Chief of the military situation he acted In accordance with the fervid wishes of his subjects. The victor of Tannenberg, the man who drove a Russian army into the Masurian Lakes and engineered the subse- quent advance Into Courland and Lithuania and the overthrow of Rumania, had to a most remarkable extent Imposed his personality on the German nation. His massive strength, his rough-hewn features, his shrewd table-talk, his care for his men, his Iron will and stern resolve were all qualities which appealed to the Teuton. They recalled the qualities of men under whom their forefathers had conquered, and all the sentiment of the nation rose In a hurricane of joy when the Kaiser's rescript was published. We shall see In the following articles the wild growth of the Hindenburg Cult, how It permeated the entire nation, how It dragged them out of the Slough of Despond Into which they were In danger of sinking. The cult began early In 191 5, It remains 113 114 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY undiminished, and so powerful is his name that the fateful retreat on the Ancre which signalised last February and March was carried out without a mur- mur, merely because the nation believed that Hin- denburg ordered it. Hindenburg could make no mistake. Hindenburg had some deep scheme in his brain for the overthrow of the enemy. Subsequent reverses in Flanders and at Verdun have done noth- ing to impair his reputation, and he remains the people's idol. "O Hero of TannenbergI" The military correspondent of the Frankfurter Ze'itung was highly pleased with Hindenburg's ap- pointment as Chief of the General Staff. He makes a particular point of the unity which will now mark the entire conduct of military affairs, and states that the psychological importance of the Kaiser's step lies in the fact that Hindenburg has been borne into his new office by the confidence of the undivided nation. The writer concludes : "From the bottom of their hearts the German nation greets Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and we soldiers regard them with open hearts. These are the men we want. We wanted them always, and now at last they are here. Jubilation from many million throats greets them, and this jubilation will express itself later in deeds of German heroism. The old military law of all wars that the personality of the general makes the army strong once more is verified. In a heavy hour, O hero of Tannenberg, thou takest the bridle in thy hand. But be com- forted, an entire nation stands behind thee !" HINDENBURG 115 HiNDENBURG AT CHURCH Field-Marshal Hindenburg certainly stirs the pop- ular imagination. His table-talk, his obiter dicta, his views on Goethe and Schiller are sedulously circulat- ed by admiring writers. We have a description of the great man at church on one of the Whitsuntide holidays. We are told it was no towering Gothic cathedral, suitable as this might have been, in which the national hero worshipped God, but in a modest little chapel near the Russian frontier. He did not sit in any carved or gilded stall, among great prelates and dignitaries, but in one of the front pews, among the ordinary congregation. "He is of powerful appearance, tall and broad and solid. From his eyes an iron will speaks, but also sovereignty and goodness. From this man goes forth a grandeur and majesty which no one can resist." After the close of the service, when he rose to leave the little chapel, he strode down the aisle alone in solitary greatness, the entire congregation, to a man, standing in reverential silence until he had passed out. In the gaze of the simple people one could notice awe mingled with love for the man who had saved the German East and driven the despised invader from the land. Could one have looked into the hearts of those people, what fountains of endless gratitude might have been seen welling forth! And so it goes on, day after day, a growing tide of fulsome adulation. Hindenburg Dithyrambics The great Field-Marshal had just celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday, and every newspaper in the ii6 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Empire employed its most high-f alutin writer to com- pose the birthday article. Some of these productions are amusing, but most of them are nauseous in their servility and abject flattery. One Nationalist journal writes: "No German till the end of time will forget the iron hand, the steel brain, the glittering, effulgent spirit of our great Hindenburg. Like a star in the firmament he shone, leading to victory; like a pillar of cloud he showed his people the path they were to follow. Away in the remotest future, when most of our institutions will belong to a hoary antiquity, when high names and sounding reputations will have passed into oblivion, one name and one reputation will stand out from the mists of the past — a name and reputation of purest radiance^ — Hindenburg!" Another journal of more sober tendency speaks of Hindenburg as the great national hero for all time. Myths will cluster around him as they cluster around the heroic demigods of antiquity. He is the incar- nation, says this newspaper, of the German national genius for war, the man of hardened iron, the man of determination, a bright luminary just sufficiently dimmed by its humanity to enable us to gaze at it unharmed. A third journal declares that Hindenburg rises head and shoulders over his contemporaries like a new Knight Roland. The monumental embodiment of German genius, he stands beside Bismarck as the man who has engraved his name on the destiny of the nation. And so modest withal! There was once a Socialist who visited him, and the Socialist found him friendly, simple, even shy. The Socialist expressed astonishment, but It was pointed out to him by the Tdgliche Rundschau that these great men who overtop their fellows are all like this. HINDENBURG 117 It is singular how all the journals make mention of Hindenburg's piety as one of his most noble attri- butes. Piety, as a rule, is not much in favour with German newspapers. They are not pious themselves, and piety In the Kaiser and in members of the Kai- ser's house has hitherto been rather roughly treated by the bulk of the Press, but Hindenburg's piety Is evidently a thing by itself. In the Kreuz Zettung an admirer of Hindenburg narrates how lately at Beuthen he was present at divine service with the Field-Marshal and his Staff. It was overpowering, he writes, to notice this man before the altar, his aides-de-camp behind him. He stood before the altar and prayed aloud, asking God for help and power to enable him to carry out his work to a victorious conclusion. Hindenburg, says the writer, is not an Over Man, but he is The Great Man, and penetrated through and through with re' ligioslty and the fear of God. The writer does not tell us whether the heavenly powers were Impressed by the Field-Marshal standing before the altar and praying aloud, but it is clearly his opinion that Hin- denburg conferred very considerable honour on them. Hindenburg in Sculpture Professor Cauer, a well-known sculptor, has been honoured by the great demigod Hindenburg with some sittings for a bust, and in the Bauzeitung the ecstatic artist delivers himself as follows: "Hinden- burg's entire figure, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, measures a trifle over six feet. He holds himself with soldierly erectness, but his head Is slightly bent forward, a habit which one always notices in big men accustomed to speak with ii8 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY those of lesser stature. He gives you the impression of a knight in his armour. His deep voice, and his remarks — often whimsical, but never injurious or ironical — are full of kindness and friendliness." If you look at Hindenburg closely you will notice a furrow over the nose drawn between the swellings of the brow. This furrow has been graven by the inward excitement arising out of the gigantic re- sponsibilities of the war. Sometimes you get the impression, Herr Cauer tells us, of something strained and suffering, an impression heightened by the yellow colour of the skin. Herr Cauer was astonished at the leanness of the Field-Marshal. The photographs had taught him to look for a fat man. But he is actually thin. Professor Cauer has noticed this growing thinness in many men taking a leading part in the war. Leanness increases the impression of energy in Hindenburg's face, and it is certainly preferable from the artist's point of view. Those gross delineations of Hindenburg one sees every- where give wholly false notions of him — they ignore the human kindness, the tender, gentle details of the head. CHAPTER X THE PRESS AND ITS WRITERS The Journalist of the Future — Hating England — ^The Hand of Peace — Harden of the Zukunft — Sour Criticism. We are fairly well acquainted with the general char- acteristics of the German Press and of the men who write for it. Here, as in many another respect, the war has faced us with stern truths. In the old days we were accustomed to regard German newspapers as stodgily written, heavy things, coloured with a prevailing provincialism and lacking in the spirited enterprise which distinguishes our own and the Amer- ican Press. We seldom looked to them for light and leading In International affairs. One or two of them obtained a certain unenviable notoriety as organs of the Wllhelmstrasse, but the bulk of them, when dealing with foreign politics, displayed an Ig- norance, a prejudice, an obscurantism and wrong- headedness which gave them a unique position In the World's Press. But the war has changed much of this. Instead of the diverting variety of opinion which used to characterise them, German papers, since the outbreak of war, have shown that unanimity of view which can only be the result of a forceful hand behind the scenes. Not only Is the news the work of this hid- den hand. Leading articles, comments, reflections, as well as war correspondence show the Indubitable 119 I20 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY marks of inspiration. The same article appears in the High Conservative Kreuz Zeitung, the Liberal Frankfurter Zeitung, and the Socialist Forwdrts, al- tered only so far as the same hand is altered by wearing different gloves. To all intents and pur- poses the German Press has become the abject slave of the Government. It dares express no opinion of its own if this opinion conflicts with the views of those in authority; and any criticism of the war and its conduct, or of those even remotely responsible for its conduct, is made with the dread of condign punishment falling on the offender. Enslaved in ev- ery particular, but gladly bearing the chains which seem seldom to gall them, the willing mouthpiece of a system which in times of peace they used to con- demn as a disgrace to an enlightened nation, Ger- man papers have sunk in the estimation of the world to the level of the sorry prints which used to serve the purposes of the third Napoleon or the third Alexander. The Journalist of the Future In an article in the Tdgliche Rundschau dealing with the work which Germany will expect from her foreign journalists after the war, we have much to arouse our interest and curiosity. By foreign journal- ists the Rundschau means the representatives of the German Press in foreign countries. Their task, we are told, will not be an easy one. Apart from the fact that in countries now hostile to Germany this task will be hindered by open and secret opposition, the demands made upon German journalists abroad will be of a far more exacting character than hitherto. THE PRESS 121 One of their first duties must be to find out those items of interest which the principal news agencies of the countries in which they live do not desire to see circulated in Germany. For one reason or an- other these countries may wish to hide from Germany certain actions or movements or efforts of a character hostile to Germany; for example, all those actions included under the catchword, "The War after the War." It will be the duty of the German journalist living in these countries to fix his closest attention on all these movements, to follow every kind of veiled or open attack on German Influence abroad, and to send home faithful and minute reports. These German journalists must be guided by the principle that every other German settled in the country in which they live is his natural ally and fellow-worker, and that from these he can obtain many a useful hint regarding the attitude assumed by natives to Germany and the German cause. Journa- list and colonist must work into one another's hands. The German journalist must also keep an eye fixed on those publications in which foreign Govern- ments or other authorities Invite tenders for the supply of goods or for the execution of large con- tracts. There should be some organisation started In Germany through which the earliest information on these matters could be made available In large Industrial and commercial centres. Hitherto these centres have derived most of their Information about foreign tenders from ofiiclal publications, which, In the nature of things, are often dilatory. The prompt use of the journalist's Information would enable Ger- man contractors and manufacturers to hand in their tenders earlier. One of the most essential attributes of the foreign 122 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY representative of German journals after the war will be diplomatic adroitness in his relations with foreign news agencies, and in his dealings with the Press of the country in which he resides. Much will de- pend on his personal influence and tact whether or not he Is able to have intentional or unintentional mis- statements rectified In the Press of the country to which he is accredited, mainly by the publication of articles written by him. The writer in the Rundschau Is so convinced of the Increasing importance of German journalists abroad that he Insists on the creation of a number of new posts for them, especially In those countries where hitherto French and British journalists have co- operated, to the detriment of German Interests and Influence. For example. It Is Intolerable that the South American Republics, with their thousands of German settlers, engineers, and other workers, should have only the Agence Havas and the Paris Press to fall back on. In those countries Germany has done far more for the population than France, but French and British journalists have succeeded In moulding public opinion, and, owing to the rich experiences gathered by them, have been able to act and react on the sentiment of the people In a way disastrous to Germany. In the opinion of the Rundschau, immediate steps should be taken at once. The leading German news- papers should proceed to select men competent to fulfil the responsible new duties required of them. These should be asked at once to attend the foreign language courses at the universities, so that when peace has been signed they may immediately pro^ ceed to their posts fully equipped, A remarkable suggestion is then made. There THE PRESS 123 should be an authoritative handbook for the use and guidance of this new generation of German foreign correspondents. It might have some such title as "Foreign Politics in the German Press." A com- mittee should be appointed to make a selection of the best and most authoritative articles in the most influential German newspapers. Perhaps the Koln- ische Zeitung may have published a weighty and informing article on German interests in China, or the Berliner Tagehlatt may have written authorita- tively on France, the Kreuz Zeitung on Russia, the Frankfurter Zeitung on the United States, the Rund- schau on the South American States, and so on. These articles might form the body of the "Handbook" and be supplemented by much useful information, and by hints in which the new journalist would find enlightenment and inspiration. It is well to know in advance the character and aims of the German Press representative whom we are to look for after the war. There ought to be no difficulty in making preparations for his advent. His reception ought not to be lacking In warmth. Hating England The venerable Frau Gabrielle Reuter, who is a well-known journalist as well as a popular novelist, has supplied the Berlin Morgenpost with a ferocious article in justification of the hatred felt for Britain. We single out this article because of the eminence of the writer, and because she represents her pro- fession. As every one is aware, articles denunciatory of this country are of daily occurrence in the Ger- man Press, but as a rule they are by nobodies — the obscure mediocrities admirably satirised by Gustav 124 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Freytag in his Schmock. But Frau Reuter is a woman of enormous influence, especially among her own sex, and when she speaks we are compelled to listen. Why should Germans not hate the English, asks Frau Reuter, the people who for so long have se- cretly waited for the day and hour to compass Ger- many's destruction? Their hatred is far deeper. It is a cold, Satanic hatred. German hatred is young and immature compared with the completed British article. She explains why Germans do not hate Russia with the same Intensity. They also have been pre- paring for this war. They have scandalously ill- treated Germans in their midst, they have laid waste East Prussia. But Germans do not hate them, be- cause they are a strange, wild race, with whom Ger- mans have nothing in common. But the English are kindred, and Germans hate them so bitterly because they so cynically betrayed their love ! Frau Reuter declares that it has become natural to hate the Britons. They make no secret of their longing for Germany's downfall, and no means are too disgraceful to employ to bring this about. All their "fair play," all their "gentleman- liness," qualities which once imposed so much on Germans, were only for home consumption at their island firesides. Look at their newspapers. To fan German hate to seething point you have only to circulate those journals throughout the Fatherland. Why denounce German hate? It has become the sacred duty of every German, and will endure to the second and third generation. Germans will be com- pared to that Kriemhild who allowed her kith and THE PRESS 125 kin of the Nibelungs to be slaughtered in order to slake her revenge. The hatred towards England, says this furious lady journalist, begins to fill our entire being, even though Christ demanded of us that we love our en- emies. To-day this precept is more impossible than ever for normal humanity. It sounds like the stray tone of a flute on the battlefield. Frau Reuter concludes by beseeching her fellow- countrymen to girdle themselves with hatred as with brazen armour, to carry it in their hands like a thunderbolt. But they are not to let it poison their blood, and they are to protect their souls from this hereditary enemy of mankind. The Hand of Peace Herr Rudolph Stratz, a well-known literary light in the Fatherland, contributes to the Woche an article on "German Peace Will," in which he dis- cusses the effect on the population of a rejection of the Imperial Chancellor's peace proposals of Decem- ber, 19 1 6. Having established the fact that moral power is the strongest thing on earth, Herr Stratz accepts the "fact" that this moral force is wholly on the side of Germany and her allies. It is this moral force which has united Germany into a flaming thunder- cloud. If Germany has hitherto been victorious it will remain unconquerable after the effort of the levee-en-masse. The blindness of the enemy to see things as they are compels Germany to this final effort, but before the effort is put into terms of war the German soul, "in which hero and man dwell to- gether," offers the hand of peace to the enemy. 126 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY The next question which Herr Stratz considers is, Will this "gesture of magnanimity" be understood by the enemy? He does not know. But "moral insanity" is a phrase coined by the British, and it is this moral insanity which has befogged the brains of Germany's enemies with a "bloody fog." Will the word "peace" uttered by a German mouth be the first beam of the sun breaking through the ex- halations of the night? Or is the world to see the Cossack still fighting for Kultur, the Zulu for civilisa- tion, the Maori for human dignity, the Hindoo for freedom, the Japanese against militarism? Herr Stratz cannot answer these questions; he leaves it to the Tower of Babel, which calls itself the enemy of Germany. "We wait, leaning on our swords, wait- ing with the quiet of the stronger." "But should the handful of wholesale murderers who lead our enemies utter the awful 'No' as re- sponse to our peace offer, this 'No' can only result in strengthening a hundredfold our confidence in our righteous cause." Herr Stratz declares that the bells of the night of St. Sylvester sound in the ears of Germans with voices from the distant German centuries. Their Iron tongues clanging through the air tell us that Germany in the midst of a world of enemies has always stood like a granite block in a raging sea. With death before her eyes Germany's sword has always eternal youth restored to her. Herr Stratz sees Germany as a great giant, full of daring, cunning, and strength. The refusal of the Allies to accept peace will transform the people into this daring, cunning, and forceful giant. And then comes a magnificent burst: "If it is peace, we shall thank God. If war — HIndenburg calls, HIndenburg leads, HIndenburg conquers ! Out on the fronts the THE PRESS 127, march of all Germans forward, at home all Germany at work. Our united people will then resemble that fabled sword of Balmung, welded In necessity, an- nealed and hardened by our will Into adamant. Noth- ing mortal could withstand the sword of Balmung when it was swung by a hero. "And a hero will swing it. This hero Is the Furor Teutonlcus. The sacred fury of our army, which greets thankfully an honourable and victorious peace, will, if disappointed in its hope of peace, all the readier turn its heart to God and smite the enemy with Its fists." The famous saying of Bismarck that Germans fear God and nothing else In the world Is quoted by Stratz with questionable relevancy, and he concludes: "Should It really happen that the first tender col- ours spread over the dawn, should our eyes really behold this dream-picture — ^the dove with the olive branch over the bloody weapons — it Is still too early to describe the feelings which would then threaten to burst every heart. Every German knows these feelings. Nearly every man on earth knows them. The hour In which the bells of peace shall ring out is so sacred and sublime that we cannot now trust ourselves to speak of It." HARDEN OF THE "ZUKUNFT" Maximilian Harden, the brilliant editor of the Zukunft, z weekly periodical published In Berlin un- til about three months ago, when it was suppressed, is a class by himself. A fervent admirer of the first Chancellor, and as fervent a hater of the Kaiser whose active interference brought about Bismarck's fall, Harden has never missed an opportunity of 128 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY flinging his envenomed shafts at the August Person. The skill with which this is done, the absolute clear- ness of his attack in which everything is avoided which might be construed into lese-majeste has made Harden feared and hated by the Court sycophants and by all those who see in William II the hope and glory of his country. During the war Harden has taken his own inde- pendent line of criticism — sometimes working the high patriotic course, sometimes castigating with un- holy joy the loud-voiced nationalists whose riot of war language sickens him. In the following passages from the Zukunft he ad- monishes his compatriots regarding sundry short- comings he has noticed, and manages to say some very unpleasant things to them. Sour Criticism "Bridle your joy at the tidings of victory," Har- den tells the nation, "and rouse your conscience and the conscience of your neighbour [Austria-Hun- gary]." Speaking to those at home, he amplifies his meaning as follows : "We have no desire to be roarers, people who rend their mouths, and, un- armed and safe from danger, demand from their brothers in the field that they conquer new worlds. That is cheap stuff, and smacks of the gratitude of the ox. Carry your own limbs to the murderous fire, you, whether land-thiefs or counts who are so de- sirous of battle. We would have no patriotic ad- monitions from those who sit here in security, for whom the war is filling their purses, doubling their pay, their prestige, and their power. Their corn, minerals, manufactures are far too highly paid for. THE PRESS 129 These people must be quiet, and honestly ask them- selves whether their enthusiasm for a heroic age is not connected with some trace of a desire to prolong the duration of the war business on which they are flourishing." Harden is angry that people who advise what is reasonable are grumbled at in Germany, but let them not weary in well-doing. "The man who washes gold taken from a blood-red river bed need not neces- sarily be ashamed of his occupation, but let him be silent about the devotion of others to the Father- land, and do not let him preach the deification of heroes. We have no need of usurers who take ad- vantage of the necessities of the masses who are seeking their modest and indispensable nourishment. By all means let merchants have a profit to cover their expenses, to provide an existence for them and their families. But usury with food is a deadly sin, and he who at this time coins meat, corn, vege- tables is a downright rascal. He who stores butter, hoping that the price will rise still higher, belongs to the gallows, and the poor railway conductor who fasted in order that he might send lard to the lads at the front is entitled to hang him. Let us be decent and devout, and not manufacture idols and strut about because others are gladly bleeding for us." Herr Harden asks his fellow-countrymen to think of that ancient Roman who, when Mars thundered by in his golden chariot, made a garland of corn, saddled his swiftest steed, and rode to the nearest altar to lay his garland before the god, with the prayer that the dread deity would do no mischief either to seed or harvest. CHAPTER XI ZEPPELINS AND FRIGHTFULNESS Defending the Raiders — ^The Great Destruction — Scoffing at Massacre. Prolonged and minute study of the German Press does not tend to support the theory that a consider- able section of the nation is opposed to the new frightfulness any more than it was opposed to the old. Occasionally one notes in an obscure Socialist journal a lame protest against the employment of "extreme" measures, but the protest, such as it is, is directed not so much against any moral questions involved as against the inadvisability of adopting a species of warfare which will make It more difficult for Germany after the war to resume normal rela- tions with her present enemies. The entire nation, almost, is steeped in this horrible desire for fright- fulness. They desire it. They howl for It when the authorities, visited by a gleam of reason, hesitate. To say that only the military and naval authorities are responsible Is to say something for which there is absolutely no foundation. Let the following selec- tions from well-known papers speak for themselves. Defending the Raiders The Tdgliche Rundschau, which has a well-de- served reputation for truculence, second only to that 130 ZEPPELINS 131 enjoyed by the Deutsche Tageszeitung, publishes an article entitled, "Our Good Conscience in the Expe- ditions of our Airships," in which full vent is given to the brutal ruthlessness of the large school of Anglophobes represented by this paper. This article in the Rundschau mocks at the "howl- ing" of the French and British Press regarding re- cent air raids, and finds amusement in our alleged silence about the actual military damage done, and in the prominence we give to the injuries inflicted on women, aged persons, and children. Is it intended, asks the Rundschau, to impress either the German people or the German mihtary authorities by this manoeuvre? The German heart, otherwise so easily moved, makes no response. Germans, we are told, sincerely regret the fate of every English family into whose "peaceful kitchen" a bomb falls, but as far as popular opinion can be gauged no one would limit the action of the Zeppelins or other aircraft in their work of destruction. On the contrary, the nation's conscience applauds this action, and the raids of the aircraft are followed with the utmost satisfaction. "We are convinced that in our air- craft we possess a weapon the ruthless employment of which will influence the result of the war, and bring about its speedier conclusion." "Were the case so that we were only able to drop twenty bombs on British towns every three months or so, It would be better to desist altogether from this method of warfare. It would have no military value, and would only serve to intensify hatred, bit- terness, and slander. Pinpricks are invariably a sign of weakness. Our German moral feelings are on far too high a pinnacle to warrant us in pursuing a policy of this sort." 132 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY In its most emphatic type the Rundschau proceeds: "We can attack our principal enemy in his own house. We can do this, and we must do it. We must leave no means unneglected which are calculated to bring the end of the war nearer. This we owe to our own people, to their future, to our field greys, and to their wives and children. That English wives and children happen to perish in such undertakings is matter for regret, and we do regret it, but one Ger- man field grey man is of more value in our eyes than a dozen English women and children, and a single German village must be more valuable to us than the entire City of London." The Rundschau conjures up the picture of what would happen to German women and children should the British, French, and Russians succeed in defeat- ing Germany, should they have an opportunity of "cooling their courage" on them, should they suc- ceed in inundating Germany "with those savages from all parts of the world who have displayed such proof of their noble humanity in East Prussia, in Togo, Cameroon, and New Guinea." "We would not shed needless blood," concludes the article, "we would not even seek revenge for in- justice we have suffered. Where should we begin, where end? We are not judges on earth. Bismarck did the correct thing, morally and politically, when he ignored the lamentations of tender humanitarians and ordered the bombardment of Paris. Thereby he brought the war to an end. We would be untrue to our duty if from feelings of so-called humanity we did not ruthlessly employ and exploit for all it is worth so efficient a weapon of war as the airship. In this hour the highest commandment of human charity for us is — do all that is in your power to ZEPPELINS 133 bring about for Germany a speedy and triumphant end to the war. If the Zeppelins and other aircraft are effective for this purpose let them go forth. They are effective, and therefore we have a good con- science, and our conscience will be all the easier the more often they go forth, and the more destructive are their operations." The Great Destruction The well-known Berlin firm of UUstein & Co. have published a book entitled Zeppelins over England, which they have copiously illustrated with horrific pictures of blazing and devastated English towns, factories, harbours, and ships. This book apparently collects all the awful tales of calamity, in all their absurdity, with which the German public have been regaled for the past twelve months. These we need not repeat. But there are new features as well, newer and spicier details of terrible destruction served up, from which a few extracts may be given. We note the glee with which the author does his work, his gloating over horrors, his howls of fiendish joy. Doubtless he knows his public. The author supposes himself in a Zeppelin, which has already reached the English coast, and has been appointed to operate between Yarmouth and Nor- wich. A well-known railway unites these two towns. The trains on this line travel relatively slowly, but on this night their pace was accelerated. It was "flight, flight!" But above in the air there was something moving still more rapidly. Bursting bombs hailed on the railway stations, destroying, tearing. The metals rolled up like thin wire. A searchlight is 134 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY turned on the Zeppelin, a bomb extinguishes It, and batteries which had fired in the light of the search- light were silenced for ever. "The Destruction goes its way along the line, which is torn up beyond recognition. A train ap- proaches at racing speed. \Vith thunderous crashing, which is heard above the droning of the air-screws, the locomotive pitches into the ruins, turns over, the train burns. British troops will not be transport- ed on that line for some time to come. The Ger- man Death swings his scythe, and prepares him- self for new blows. This is War — war which you would have. The starved, ruined Germany ap- proaches you!" In Lincolnshire, proceeds our liar, railway-sta- tions, great stores, barracks were attended to. Bombs struck a remount depot. Many hundreds of horses were killed, torn to pieces. "There must be no pity for these horses. It is another blow for the British, front. Do the British tacticians require horses to storm the trenches? One less trouble for our com- rades in France." Another Zeppelin Is approaching the coast. "For- ward, yonder is England!" There Is a ship below. Its three slender smokestacks are visible. On this ship fell the first iron greeting. Badly injured, the stricken ship runs to the coast and is stranded. "One ship less." At the end of Spurn Head the lighthouse flames out. Crash down on it went a bomb, and the proud edifice toppled over and fell with loud tumult across the mole. "One mark less to steer by !" "And the loss Is all the more keenly felt because of the difficulty of navigating the river up to Hull. The English Admiralty, of course, denies everything, as usual. Lighthouse? Nothing of the kind. That ZEPPELINS 135 was a lame mule and a young, innocent child that the bomb fell on." Much savage gloating is gloated over Grimsby, which is alleged to have suffered terribly. "Here in Grimsby are the most dangerous enemies of our U-boats — ^the fishermen, mine-sweepers, and the pa- trol boatmen, who sniff out the submarines." Great execution was done among oil-tanks, on which in- cendiary bombs were dropped. We get the words of command which the commanders of the Zeppelins call out to their crews: "Incendiary bombs !" "Quick fire!" And then columns of dense smoke and forked flame shoot up to the heavens. Munition factories burst in a million fragments. Their value is millions of pounds. "Incendiary bombs!" And in eight or ten places fire — a monstrous fire, lurid in the night. The place is bright as day. Panic! There under- neath they are running wildly about, seeking to save themselves, seeking shelter. Close by is the railway station. One train after another steams out of the station, and a congested mass of people storms the building, seeking flight. Hundreds, thousands! "Looking at the dense masses tightly squeezed together a horrible recollection dawns on the Zep- pelin commander. The Zeppelin hovers over the station. Not very long ago in Carlsruhe there was a joyful festal multitude in the streets. The enemy bombs crashed down on innocent people, shattering, tearing, killing. Hundreds of children wallowed in their blood. Remember Carlsruhe ! No, we are Ger- mans, we are Huns, barbarians! We do not fight against children, and the commandant left the word of command unspoken!" 136 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY After their night of terror in which the entire Eastern Coast had burst into flames the order was given "Homewards!" A fiery monster sprang up to the sky almost licking the clouds. It was their last bomb. "The air seems to rotate, a current seizes the Zeppelin, shakes the gondolas, beats on the hull. The gigantic torch of fire is our signpost, and illuminates the great grey Zeppelin, which soars ever higher and higher, unapproachable as it stands out to sea." Scoffing at Massacre An article in the Deutsche Tageszeitung by the notorious Count Reventlow dealing with the Arme- nian massacres may find a place in this section. Nothing can exceed the brutality and sinister indif- ference of this Prussian aristocrat to the fate of the unfortunate race which has been done to death at the command of the Kaiser's ally and friend. The Count ridicules the idea that Americans and British should concern themselves with the internal affairs of a Power with which neither of them has any right to interfere. The United States may threaten a breach of diplomatic relations with Tur- key, but Herr Reventlow expresses a hope that the Sublime Porte will not allow itself to be moved. If Turkey is of opinion that in order to crush the Ar- menian agitation and to prevent its recurrence, all and every means are necessary, it is guilty of no murder and no atrocity, and only takes those meas- ures which in its opinion are justifiable and neces- sary, all the more justifiable and necessary as Turkey is now carrying on a struggle for life and death against numerous enemies. It would be ask- ZEPPELINS 137 ing too much of Turkey to require it to nourish an internal enemy at its breast merely because such a course would be well-pleasing to the English and Americans. The time is past, says the Count, when the Great Powers can interfere with Turkey as they please. As soon as the German Empire takes up the posi- tion that this Armenian business is an internal af- fair of its Turkish ally, concerning Turkey alone, it will be no concern of anybody what Turkey does with her revolutionary and blood-sucking Armeni- ans. Count Reventlow is indignant that a German newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung, should be found which condescends to justify Turkish action, or to defend libellous attacks on German Consuls. It Is a political mistake to take any notice of these attacks. "We Germans are not obliged to give an account of our actions either to our enemies or to neutrals. If we begin this business we shall be obliged to continue it. We shall certainly not be ensnared into discussing with the British and Amer- ican Press matters which concern Turkey alone. To do so would be to play the enemy game and to sow distrust between Germany and Turkey." It is a matter of complete indifference to Ger- many, says Count Reventlow, whether a British noble lord has declared that 800,000 Armenians have been slaughtered. No one in Germany is worrying whether or not another cartload of atroci- ties has been dumped on her. The place of the German Empire and of every Individual German Is at the side of their Turkish ally, and without criticism. CHAPTER XII WAR MONUMENTS Commemorating the Dead — A Mountain Monument — Nail- ing: The Hindenburg Idol — Hindenburg in Gold and Iron — The Angels and Hindenburg, In the German Press much space is devoted to dis- cussing the form which monuments to dead soldiers will take after the war. There seems to be a gen- eral aversion towards the system followed in 1871, when every town, important or insignificant, set up its own "Krieger Denkmal," or its statues of Wil- helm I, or Bismarck, or Moltke, hardly one of which has any pretension to artistic merit. But they were all big and bulky, with masses of stone and bronze and much rather gruesome ornamenta- tion. In hardly a single case was there a vestige of real feeling or inspiration. In the Deutsche Tageszeitunff we hear the following proposal: Commemorating the Dead If all these silly monuments were taken down from their ridiculous pedestals, now that copper is so scarce, and melted into guns and munitions they would serve a far better purpose than they serve now. With regard to the future, the most popular pro- posal for commemorating the dead is the forma- 138 WAR MONUMENTS 139 tion of a "Hain," or grove, to be called the "Hel- denhain," or Hero's Grove. These groves are altogether a German concep- tion, and they existed in the most remote periods of antiquity. They must be of oak trees, in ac- cordance with the ancient tradition. Each dead soldier is to have an oak planted in his memory. The oaks would be planted in a circle, with a space in the middle, in which a temple or pergola might be built. In the old German forests the priests used to utter their incantations after listening to the rustling of the oak leaves in the wind. If a community should think that the idea of a pergola or temple smacks rather of paganism, a lime tree (linde) might be planted in the Centre of the grove. This would be called the Peace Linden, or the Kaiser's Linden. And just as the oak sym- bolises German martial power, so does the lime re- mind the Germans of domestic peace. "Our fore- fathers regarded the lime as sacred." Round the Hain, and sheltering it from the wind and the dust, there must be a thick, high hedge, an orderly, well-arranged tangle of red thorn, wild rose, elder, and honeysuckle. "The birds will nest here, and evenings, when the community go up (the Hain must be on an elevation) to remember their dead or think of the glory of their Fatherland, it will be pleasant to hear their joyful choralling in the thickets and listen to the whispering of the oaks." A Mountain Monument Startlingly original is the following: According to the Breslau Generalanzeiger a gi- gantic war monument to commemorate fallen Silesian I40 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY soldiers Is to be erected in the heart of the province on the Angels' Mountain of the Zobten range. This mountain, which is about 3,000 ft. high, is a promi- nent object and seen from all parts of the Silesian lowlands. The intention is to cut into terraces about 800 feet of the upper part of the mountain, and to give this portion a regular conical form. On the summit, and raised on a mighty base of rock, a colossal building surmounted by a cupola is to be raised. At the four corners of the building, on the roof, fires will flame out all night long and be vis- ible from all parts of Silesia. NAILING It is impossible to realise anything more grotesque than the craze which mastered the German people in regard to the "nailing" of monuments to serve as symbols and tokens of the nation's devotion to the cause of the war, and of their resolution to con- tinue it to a victorious conclusion. A popular gen- eral, a national emblem, a mythical hero, the his- torical representative of a state or district, was carved in wood, framed in gigantic proportions and set up In some public square or popular resort. The figure thus set up was to be covered with nails, ham- mered into the wood, the nails to be sold at certain fixed sums, according to the metal of which they were made — Iron, silver, or gold. Some war char- ity was usually selected as the recipient of the funds thus collected. The HIrdenburg monument, a gigantic figure of the "Great Strategist," erected in the Berlin Tler- garten, is perhaps the most amazing of these war monuments. The following extracts and comments WAR MONUMENTS 141 from the Press will enable the reader to form a vivid conception of this extraordinary craze which has obsessed the German people. It may be noted that men of better taste were often revolted by the crudity and grossness of it all, and used no ambigu- ous phrases in their endeavours to bring their com- patriots to a saner frame of mind. The Hindenburg Idol We are informed that the Hindenburg statue is strikingly like the original, showing all his massive dignity, his rugged Teutonic features, "like those of the heroes who fought under Arminius," and his "shrewd benevolence," whatever this may be. The statue to be covered with iron nails at a shil- ling each rests on a square pedestal over six feet high. Hindenburg himself is 33 feet high from the soles of his mighty boots to the crown of his colos- sal head. There are 90 cubic metres of wood em- ployed. The "Schmocks" of the Berlin Press tell us that between the bottom of his military mantle and the pedestal, "an average-sized man in a top- hat might safely stand." The great Field-Marshal stands "in an easy atti- tude." His cap is in his hands, which rest in front on his sword. Even Berliners, probably the most unaesthetlc population in Germany, are feeling nervous about the "Kolossal" wooden monument of Hindenburg opposite the Reichstag building. They object to the bulk of the monstrous thing, but, above all, they seem to squirm at the idea of hammering nails into the vital and tender portions of their idol's anat- omy. They are comforted with the reflection that 142 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY it is only wood which is punctured by the nails, but the idea is gruesome and cannot be ignored. To hammer nails into a dragon or an Iron Cross or an eagle, even into a mythical person, even into the Archangel Michael, may be quite all right, but into Hindenburg ! In another journal we have further details of the monument. The great strategist's face is said to have a serious expression, his eyes a far-away look. His right hand holds his sword, his left is laid over his right arm and holds his cap. The open mili- tary cloak displays the Pour le Merite order. Hin- denburg's head is over 4 feet long, his sabre is over 20 feet long. His boots are so big that ten men could be hidden in one of them. The weight of the wooden monument Is 20 tons, and is built of twenty-one separate portions carved out of 125 thick planks. Into the head and hands no nails will be hammered. To cover the other parts 1,600,000 nails will be required. The nail armour, when com- pleted, is calculated to weigh ten tons. An iron nail costs a mark, a silver nail five marks, a gold nail 100 marks. Each contributor is presented with a pin bearing the inscription, "For the Iron Hindenburg." Hindenburg in Gold and Iron The Tdgliche Rundschau writes that all is not well with the colossal Hindenburg idol erected at Berlin In front of the Reichstag building, and whose dimensions were proudly published by the Press to a wondering Fatherland. It now seems that al- though more than two years have elapsed since the huge thing was erected only patches of the Field- WAR MONUMENTS 143 Marshal's boots and the hem of his military cloak have been covered with nails. Every effort has been made to give him his "Iron Armour." The school children have had holidays in order that they might proceed in their thousands to hammer in their nails, each of which costs a shil- ling. Soldiers in barracks have had leave for the same purpose, and several newspapers are raising funds which are to be distributed among necessitous patriots eager to drive in a nail, but not eager to pay for it. And yet the work does not progress much. The great image of the Field-Marshal has still vast expanses in which not a single nail has yet been driven. We are informed that a square tenth of a metre cost £7 105. to be-nail. The hem of the cloak is over 30 feet long, and before it is covered with nails £700 must be expended. After a month's drumming by the chief Mumbo Jumbo men they have managed to cover half a yard of hem. Most nailers show a preference for Hindenburg's boots, which are painted a bright yellow. Consid- erable progress has been made here, although the boots are over two yards high, but much still re- mains to be done, for the Tdgliche Rundschau tells us that gaping patches of yellow wood are still vis- ible. A gallery has been built round the idol, ap- proached by ladders from the ground. On the oc- casion of Hindenburg's recent birthday there was a good deal of crowding, and citizens with no de- sire to waste time brought their own hammers — hundreds of them. The most difficult problem for the Mumbo Jumbo men is the outlining on the plinth of the name Hin- denburg with gold nails. Each of these nails cost 144 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY £5, and in order to cover the most modest of the letters, namely, I, 280 nails are necessary, repre- senting a total of £1,400 for I alone. There are very many rich citizens in Berlin, but only 400 have been found to hammer in a gold nail. There are unpleasant rumours afloat that the £5 nails are not gold at all, but only gilded. In order to erect this ugly nightmare £5,000 was spent. It was hoped that it would bring in £150,- 000, but these hopes have been crushed. Berlin will certainly not cover Hindenburg with iron, and appeals are now being made to the provincial cit- ies. The appeal will hardly be successful, as nearly every large town has an idol of its own at which Its citizens are busily hammering. Till the end of August, 19 17, only £35,000 had been collected, or less than a quarter of the expected total. The Angel and Hindenburg It is reserved for Lustige Blatter to surpass all its competitors with a fine outbreak of poetry and patriotism combined. We have a full-page picture of a night in the Berlin Tiergarten. Stars in mul- titudes are burning through the sky. In the back- ground there is the Victory Column, in the fore- ground that monument of vulgarity, the colossal wooden idol of Hindenburg. Standing on tiptoe beside one of the Field-Marshal's boots is an angel of the chubby boy variety, a brilliant aureole round his head, in one hand a hammer, in the other a nail in the form of a scintillating star. We are unable to reproduce the poetic aroma of the verses below the picture, but we can venture a faithful transla- tion, as follows: WAR MONUMENTS 145 "The Christ-child has extracted on Christmas night a star-nail in all stillness, from the high- vaulted arch of heaven and brought it down to earth. Doing homage to genuine heroism, which is ready to sacrifice its blood, the Christ-child ham- mers the star-nail into the Marshal's coat of honour, to the renown of German arms." It is a beautiful and inspiring thought. CHAPTER XIII WAR ART: PICTORIAL AND MUSICAL An Illustrated Journal — ^Angels of Death — The German Spring — Music: Police Music — Patriotism and Operas — "Deutschland Uber AUes." German art as it has been made manifest by the war is well worth a careful study. As we shall see in the subjoined extracts German nature has made German war art. Let us begin with pictorial art as it has been revealed in periodicals. The following refers to a typical example of war art. Similar drawings have been produced in hun- dreds, and enjoy enormous popularity. An Illustrated Journal The latest number of the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung, Germany's most important pictorial weekly, enables us to catch a glimpse of the artistic leanings of the people after twenty-one months of war. The frontispiece is a design of flaming torches, battle flags, iron crosses, blazing ruins, and flying Taubes, with a border of oak leaves. In the centre is a ghastly picture of a Zeppelin vomiting death and destruction over an English city filled with tall factory chimneys rising in a choking atmosphere of flame and smoke. In the centre of the paper is a fanciful picture of "Attacks by German flying machines on English 146 ^ WAR AET 147 fortified coast towns: German seaplanes crossing the North Sea on their way to England." Between this picture and an officer inspecting mines we have "An Easter Prayer" — a wayside crucifix silhouetted against an evening sky, with two German soldiers in adoration before It. Over the page we have a picture of a monstrous Austrian mortar, its gigantic outline thrust into the dark night, and soldiers busy with its complicated mechanism. Inset is a hymn, "Salve Sancta Bar- bara," St. Barbara being the patron saint of the Austrian army. The hymn reminds the Saint of what she has done for her devoted soldiers, and asks her to accept their adoration. It tells her that she has fearfully routed the enemy, and that the enemy, thanks to her efforts, will remember Aus- trian cannonading for a hundred years. Probably, with the object of softening the coarse- ness and pltilessness of it all, we have no fewer than half a dozen pictures of German soldiers discours- ing music to crowds in tortured France, Belgium, and Russia, the huge drums and brasses being thumped and blown with all the vigour of conquer- ors. Angels of Death A cartoon in Ulk, the comic supplement of the Berliner Tagehlatt, is intended to express the indig- nation of the people at the Allies' rejection of the "Kaiser's Peace Proposals." "Very well, then we shall send out other Angels of Peace." These are the words below the picture on the front page of Ulk. The cartoon is a repul- sive drawing without a vestige of skill or humour. 148 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY Over a desolated landscape of riven trees and waste places, the three gigantic figures of Hindenburg, Falkenhayn, and Mackensen are flying in the char- acter of angels of destruction and death. The ar- tist has certainly succeeded in lending truculence and brutality to their faces. Enormous dark pinions support them in their flight, and in their hands are flaming swords to execute vengeance on those who dare to reject a German peace. The three angels of death are dressed in pickelhauben, military greatcoats, and top-boots. The German Spring Kladderadatsch is another of Germany's "humor- ous" weeklies. It issued a special "Spring Num- ber," the idea of the publishers being to show in "humorous" form the happy season of spring brightened and made still more "German" by the victorious course of German arms. The frontispiece shows a gigantic sword plunged deeply into a ploughed field. The guard of the sword is sprawled over with a German eagle, the hilt has sprouted, and from its rings shoot forth luxurious green, rising to a cloudless sky. There is a man ploughing peaceful fields in the background, a broad stream, a ruined burg, a church, and a shep- herd herding sheep. But dominating the entire landscape the sword with its grotesque corona of green branches. The next picture is entitled "Withered Leaves in Spring," and shows a naked German warrior of very athletic proportions in the form of an angel, his pinions fixed, a pickelhaube on his head. He is blowing furiously, and flying about in front of his WAR ART 149 strong blast are various British, French, and Rus- sian newspapers, regarded as specially inimical to Germany. Next we have a spring landscape dominated by a gigantic figure of Mars, leaning on a blood-smeared sword, and hideously smiling as he looks down on a shady place where lilies of the valley are grow- ing. The German name for these flowers is "May Bells," and Mars, familiarly addressing them, says, "And yet, notwithstanding my thunder, the Ger- man May Bells are ringing!" Finally, we have a picture of "German Spring on the Bagdad Railway." It represents the railway passing through a wide tropical plain, with a man on a camel in the distance and a fort from which the Crescent floats. Along the line comes Ger- mania, tripping as gracefully as her rather opulent proportions permit. Her hair is garlanded with the oak leaves of victory, and she carries over one arm a huge basket of flowers, which she daintily strews along the side of the railway. Over her abundant bosom is the Black Eagle. There are pictures in this "Spring" number which are unspeakably filthy, and it is supplied with letter-press of a vulgarity, brutality, and obscenity which no German "comic" journal is, apparently, able to avoid. MUSIC With justice the German nation claims pre-emi- nence in the art of music. Names like Beethoven and Bach, Schumann and Schubert, Mozart and Gluck, Wagner and Brahms have become house- hold words all the world over. That this lofty pre- I50 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY eminence has been maintained cannot be said. Long before the war the dry rot of decay and degeneracy had set in. We think at once of names like Strauss and Reger. With the outbreak of war debasement on a still more profound scale set in, and the follow- ing notices go to illustrate this. "If music be the soul of love" which comes o'er one "like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets," what are we to say to Strauss's new Alpine sym- phony? The composer of Salome and Electra is nothing if not original, and judging by the section headings of the coming symphony it is a very weird and original piece of work. The following are the movements: Night. Sunrise. The Climb. Hunt- ing Horns from Afar. Entering the Forest. Wan- dering by the Stream. The Waterfall. Appear- ance. On Flowery Meadows. On the Heights. Through Thickets. Losing the Way. On the Gla- cier. Dangerous Moments. On the Summit. Vi- sion. Mists Arise. The Sun Grows Dark. Elegy. Quiet before Storm. Hurricane and Storm. De- scent. Sunset. Conclusion : Night. Police Music The two following passages illustrate prevailing sentiment and require no comment. The general commanding the nth Army Corps, stationed at Hamburg, Altona, and the neighbour- hood. Is keenly alive to what he calls the spiritual and intellectual interests of the soldiers under his command. WAR ART 151 His latest ukase deals with the music played to popular audiences in public gardens and other open spaces, in cafes, restaurants, and similar resorts. In the general's opinion most of the music offered to the public at these places is of so light and shallow a character — musical comedy airs, waltzes, rag-time catches, and the like — as to be "wholly at variance with the seriousness and greatness of the time." The general has therefore issued an order that this music — so unworthy of Germans in days of such earnestness — must cease. Any one offending against this ordinance will be punished by the po- lice. As the Hamburg Fremdenhlatt points out this order constitutes the police the judges of music which is or is not in accordance with the serious- ness of the times, and citizens will inevitably ask themselves whether the police have been sufficiently trained in the niceties of musical ert and in the in- fluence of the various kinds of music on the human soul to carry out the wishes of this exacting gen- eral in a reasonable manner. Patriotism and Operas The opening of the new opera season affords patriotic musical critics a welcome opportunity of airing their sentiments. They express a childish delight that operatic theatres have turned their se- rious attention to the exclusion of the works of for- eign composers. The admiration of what is un- German and foreign is, we are told, one of the most shameful weaknesses of the Teutonic nations, and nowhere has this admiration been more fulsome and more out of place than in the realm of music. One 152 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY musical critic writes : "Thank God, we now see an end to this loathsome sycophancy. This nation of Germans, with music welling up in their souls, with the fresh, full streams of song in their hearts, the divine gift of Terpsichore which has flooded the German soul, that we should descend to adopt the impure strains of France and England, Italy and Russia is intolerable. The Olympus of music be- longs to us. The gods of sound are of German blood and speak to German souls. Gluck and Weber, Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert and Wagner, Strauss, Weingartner, and Reger, are they not all of Teutonic tongue, and are they not our own?'* And therefore we are told that the coming sea- son will see the foreign opera absolutely taboo. Sneering remarks are made about the superficiality of Carmen, about Madame Butterfly and La Bo- heme. The shallowness of these works, their lack of "appeal to the soul," their silly, meretricious glitter must no longer disgrace the German opera stage. A long black list of foreign composers is announced, and satisfaction is expressed that on not a single German stage this autumn and winter will the works of Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo, of Debussy, Saint-Saens, Charpentier, and Delius be heard. "Deutschland uber Alles" The seventy-fifth anniversary of the writing of "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles" inspires the Tdgliche Rundschau to the following diverting out- burst. "In view of what we possess in this song we can WAR ART 153 turn away with pride from the calumnies of our enemies. We have a far greater right to such a song than the British to their 'Rule, Britannia,' or the French to their 'Marseillaise.' The enemy may call it an imperialistic song of conquest, a proof of German arrogance, but all that leaves us cold. "When other nations throw all this in our teeth they confuse self-respect and the love of the Father- land with presumption and megalomania. We shall retain the song with its good old melody, and we Germans shall be proud that we have become such splendid fellows, that we do not need to run syco- phantically after strangers, to be trodden under foot by them. "And it is in this sense that the song storms throughout the world wherever the German tongue is heard. No longer shall we be satisfied to supply the Anglo-Saxon world with its clerks, barbers, and waiters. We do not want the blessings of Russian civilisation. We wish to be Germans and remain such, conscious of our peculiar character and of our mission in the world. It is only in this way that we can compel the enemy world to respect us. We re- nounce gladly all desire for their friendship and love. "The French, if they wish, may talk in their 'Marseillaise' about the 'jour de gloire'; the Eng- lish, with their 'Rule, Britannia,' may announce their desire for sea dominion, world-power, and riches. But we thunder out against them all as German battle-cry this song of union and fidelity, thunder it out over the trenches, over all lands and seas, this proud song of the German singer: " 'Deutschland, Deutschland, iiber AUes, t)ber AUesinder Welt!'" CHAPTER XIV THEATRES AND THE DRAMA "The Franctireurs"— "The Devil's Politics"— "The War Reconciles" — "The German Armourer." Only the other day a leading dramatic critic of Berlin was loudly deploring the sterility of German playwrights. The war, with all its potentialities of inspiration, with all its quickening events of a colos- sal character, had failed to stir a ripple on the sur- face of the stagnant pool. Only mediocrities had a hearing, or those who succeeded in throwing a meretricious glitter of patriotism over their sorry melodrama. "The Franctireurs" Early in the war the Wattenburg Theatre in Leipzig brought out a patriotic play called "The Franctireurs." The play at first was interdicted by the police on the ground that the text had not been sanctioned by the authorities, and that portions of it drew forth the noisy disapprobation of the audience. The play deals with the present war, the scene is laid in a Belgian country house, and the dramatis persona are German and Belgian officers and the peasants of the neighbouring village. A German infantry captain discovers that his 154 THEATRES AND THE DRAMA 155 brother-in-law, a civilian Belgian, has either shot, or has caused to be shot, the leader of a German Uhlan patrol. Undisturbed by the ties of relationship, and ignoring the patriotism of the Belgian franc- tireur, the captain takes a terrible vengeance on his relative and on the peasants who sided with him. Judging by the meagre newspaper comments, the audience was rather divided in opinion, a portion of it evidently not sympathising with the German cap- tain's Kultur, "The Devil's Politics" A more ambitious effort was that of Hans Lux, a well-known minor dramatist. The Diisseldorf papers — the play was first produced in the Rhenish city — give the subjoined description of this dra- matic effort, which they call a three-act political com- edy. Its title is The Devil's Politics. The Diisseldorfer seems very proud of the play. It is a small thing, but their own, and is packed full of political allusion bearing on the present situa- tion, which lends it a fascination sought in vain in the play as a work of art. The "Devil" is a cosmopolitan personage, iron- ical, sceptical, amusing, intellectual enough, but a shocking bad devil. His daughter is Donna Felici- tas (observe the allusion to Italy), who is "dan- gerously beautiful." Certain individuals with a shady reputation seek the Donna's favour — they are Baron Gxenhead (Russia), the Marquis Pompa- dour (France), and Lord Whip (England). The Donna's father favours the pretensions of Lord Whip, who is tremendously rich, but the Donna, an unscrupulous and treacherous little thing, flirts 156 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY around promiscuously. There is a solemn but most virtuous Baron somewhere in the background (Ger- many) , of whom the reviews tell us disappointingly little, save that he also is affectionately inclined to- wards Felicitas. Oxenhead, Whip, and Pompadour frequently come together and play the fool, saying "character- istic things," displaying their national idiosyncrasies and tickling the audience to ecstasy. We are told the play is full of these "good things." There is a suspicion, however, that the story drags somewhat, for we meet with a wearisome character. Dr. Fiihl- horn, a friend of the German Baron, who is con- stantly rubbing it into the Baron that the trio of strangers are shockingly bad people, and that Donna Felicitas is no better than she ought to be. This Fiihlhom, we are told, takes special delight in raining wordy blows on Lord Whip, and finally succeeds in showing his German friend that his dig- nity is best preserved by leaving this undesirable company to their own wicked designs. We hear that the play is full of symbolism of a high order, and that Dr. Fiihlhorn "symbolises the soul of the German nation in its detached idealism." "The War Reconciles" We have the following account of a new cinema melodrama which is enjoying great popularity in Berlin. The performance begins with a lengthy poem glorifying the services of the cinema to civilisation and especially to German Kultur. Three acts fol- low, giving the fall and rise of the hero, a naughty German noble who has led a wild life, forged names THEATRES AND THE DRAMA 157 to various bills, and generally misconducted him- self. He flies to the United States, where so many of his kind have preceded him. His lot is hard; he hungers, and thinks of the parable of the Prod- igal Son. Then he works, and by steady applica- tion he rises in the social scale and marries an Amer- ican girl — fabulously rich. Then the war breaks out. The claims of his business, the claims of wife and home, are thrown aside as of minor importance. He has only one thought — this reformed rascal — ^to fly to his hard- pressed Fatherland, attacked on all sides by un- scrupulous enemies, and to offer his life for his country. In the course of the campaign he per- forms prodigies of valour, and is rewarded with the Iron Cross — First Class. With this on his breast he returns wounded to his parents, who proudly clasp him to their hearts and forgive everything. We are not told whether the police forgave him. The Conservative journals are alone in objecting to this beautiful story. German nobles, they say, do not forge signatures to bills. "The German Armourer" The patriotic spectacular play, for which the or- dinary stage affords inadequate accommodation, has held a large share of public attention. Circuses are usually employed for their representation, as there is more scope here for massed effects, for coloured illuminants, and for the magnetism of the crowd. The German Armourer is one of these patriotic dis- plays, and was performed with wonderful eclat and a magnificent display of properties at Schumann's circus in Berlin. The Crown Princess and a vast 158 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY array of court, military, and society notables were present. The author of the play is a certain Major Lauff, who, in pre-war days, was the Kaiser's own par- ticular poet laureate. He has written very purple plays about HohenzoUerns, which the Kaiser has always insisted on producing with elaborate histor- ical settings. They are, of course, of no merit from a literary point of view. It is clear that The German Armourer has puz- zled the newspaper critics. Not one of them is able to give any coherent account of what it is about, and satisfy themselves with glowing descriptions of the gorgeousness of the circus and the elevation of those present. But the probable meaning of the piece is this — an attempt to display historically, and with the necessary trappings, the rise of German arms, and their growing strength and varying fortune from the time of Barbarossa to the Field Greys of the present war. One paper says this Is done with "conscientious symbolism" ; another that the spec- tacle is "full of flesh and colour"; another that it will "mightily attract our youth and spur them to deeds of daring and adventure." All through what are evidently very wearisome scenes there is an Armourer, a prominent member of the Royal Opera, who shrilly declaims Major Lauff's verses, hammering at the same time a sword — the German sword — on an anvil. He begins hammering in the remote and half-mythical days of Barbarossa, and it is not until the days of the Em- peror Maximilian that the admirable artisan is re- warded with a knighthood. In little more than an hour and a half the entire Prussian history book was run through, and we understand that the Crown THEATRES AND THE DRAMA 159 Princess and other representatives of the Hohen- zollerns in the Court box were vastly pleased. Their attention, it seems, was mainly directed to a lady from the Royal Theatre, of majestic build, who represented Germania, and whose "sonorous organ" rang through the vast spaces of the circus. CHAPTER XV POETRY AND WAR SONGS The Emden — For Children — Up at Britannia ! — Albion — ^A Bread Hymn — England's Flag — The Sword of Judg- ment — ^The Archangel and a Poet — ^A Clerical Poet. We must Include poetry In the number of those arts which have received exemplification during the war. It is instructive to note how German writers use It as a vehicle for Imaginative feeling, as one of the great primal human forces which go to the de- velopment of their people. But It will be the al- most universal verdict that as in music, so In poetry, nothing great or enduring has been produced. Crude, raw passion there is In abundance, a "sow- ing with the whole sack," an absolute lack of re- serve and dignity, and a hurried descent to appall- ing appeals to the lowest instincts and barbarities of the race. Subjoined will be found a number of poetical ef- fusions arranged chronologically. No attempt has been made to render the originals into English verse, as it was felt they would only lose In the process. The "Emden" When the Emden was eventually run down there went up from this country a certain sigh of relief, and, mingled with it, a good deal of quite sincere l6o POETRY AND WAR SONGS i6i admiration for the Emden's commander, Captain von Mueller. Not that Captain von Mueller had not done things which he ought not to have done. In the cold light of reason he was little better than a buc- caneer, but he was after all a gallant and chivalrous buccaneer, and exceedingly clever at his business. It is a curious fact that these tributes to Captain von Mueller, quite unaffected as they were, have been savagely resented in Germany. In a satirical jour- nal, Jugend, for example, there Is a "poem" on the subject. Literally translated it reads thus: Spare him your vile adulation; In sooth, he needs it not; This hypocritical daubing; For what he did, was his duty. Now when full fifty keels Are to the credit of the brave, Would ye play at being noble-natured And praise him aloud as a hero? Silence, sanctimonious land of fakes. What has been done, is done. Yet praise from you were shame To such a man as he is. It would be hard to find a better proof of the in- herent ill-conditionedness, perceptible In time of peace as in war, of the German temperament. For Children In the second year of the war Vorwdrts drew at- tention to the practice of certain Berlin schoolmas- ters compelling their children to learn by heart Lis- 'i62 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY sauer's disgusting "Hymn of Hate," and con- demned it as a degrading course, and contrary to all accepted canons of pedagogy. Later, the Socialist journal pilloried another large communal school in Berlin, where a scurrilous piece of doggerel was recited at a social gathering when the parents were present. The chorus of this gutter lyric was sung with great gusto by the chil- dren. There was a verse about the Russians, an- other about the French ; but the lines which brought down the house were the following: Betrayer with the lying tongue, Faithless and abandoned England, How our sailor lads will thrash thee, Ere thou reach the German strand! Up at Britannia! The principal Agrarian journal, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, has a house poet, Fritz von Briesen, wl.ose muse in a halting fashion seeks to pluck a bay leaf from Lissauer's crown. The following is a prose version of his latest: "The British seed is ripe for harvest, and the German Deed is annealed in hardest steel. Now, come what may, now German Sword, strike thy strongest blow ! Up at Britannia ! "Hurrah! Blue youngsters from Under the Sea! They now hunt the Britons on all sides! They whack them right sore, the hucksters, until each Briton now knows who rules the sea ! Up at Britannia ! "And Michel! Open the springs of thy heart, the source of German goodness, and let stream forth the German anger, the Furor Teutonicus shall POETRY AND WAR SONGS 163 be thy only companion at sea! Down with Brit- annia 1" Albion The house poet of the Hamburger Fremdenhlatt, Herr Alfred Rebtz, furnishes his newspaper with a poem on "Albion," a really exuberant production. In vision the poet sees a circus after the model of Ancient Rome. In the arena are battling the glad- iators of all nations — Celts and Slavs and Scythi- ans. Fighting against terrific odds, and a combina- tion of all the other gladiators, are the "Ger- manen." They meet every wile of their enemy, and bear them down with the strokes of their good swords. High on his throne is Caesar, "a weary man in purple." He spreads his robes about him and leans over the balustrade smiling. But when he sees the "Germanen" forcing back their foes he lifts his hands and shouts to the Celts, the Slavs, and the Scythians to renew their efforts and smash the "Germanen." The "Germanen" raise dark, angry eyes to the Lord of the World on his high throne. The concluding verse is as follows: "Vain fool! the time will come when thy rotten throne will crumble, when no strange peoples will fear thee longer or fight for thy fame! Hide thyself in thy purple mantle, crawl trembling away! The be- trayed Germanen will find thee — Albion!" A Bread Hymn Ernst Lissauer, who has earned considerable no- toriety as the author of the "Hymn of Hate," has written another poem, entitled "Bread." It ap- 1 64 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY pears in the latest issue of the Frankfurter Zeitung. The following is a prose translation: "The Annunciation "They cannot force us with weapons. They would devastate us with Hunger. Enemies crowd- ing on enemies are around us, and over the fron- tiers come misery and need. But I will sing for you the Annunciation of Spring — our earth is with us in alliance, and already the new Bread grows in her bosom. "Warning "Save the food, preserve and honour itl Bread is sword! "Prayer "The farmers have sown the seed. Now let us come together and pray the prayer for the harvest. " 'Soil of our country ! They cannot force us with weapons. They would devastate us with Hunger. Rise up in Thy Harvest-Anger I May the stalk grow bearing rich corn! Dearest soil on earth, hear our Psalm ! Let them be put to shame by the rich ears and the blade!' " England's Flag Ritter von Dombrowski has published a book of war verses. Only one poem has any interest for the English reader. It is entitled "England's Flag," and deals with certain occasions on which our ships are alleged to have committed outrages POETRY AND WAR SONGS 165 at sea while treacherously sailing under a foreign flag. Here is a prose rendering of some of the Ritter's verses: "Gott strafe England! This was the cry for re- venge which ran though our land. And God heard the cry and punished your cowardly shame. "The proud lion of England's coat-of-arms is led by a ring in his nose. Hucksters lead him. And England's flag, crowned with fame, is nothing more than a ridiculous and miserable rag. "Under foreign colours a cowardly band of rob- bers hide themselves, pale and timid. Take my ad- vice, England, and decorate your masts with women's frocks or babies' wrappings. "And so heaven has granted what we have asked. You yourselves have shamelessly trodden in the dust the sign and token of your power." The Sword of Judgment Herr Walter Flex, one of the poets of Young Germany, has written a poem, entitled "The Sword of Judgment," of which the following is a transla- tion: "The flame of the world-conflagration storms and roars, the earth melts in the glow. In God's fist his giant hammer reverberates over flood and field." "The world has become a human smithy, God Himself at the furnace. The hammer rises and falls, and the earth-anvil hums in response. "A sword of judgment is being forged in the glow, a sword over people and times. He into whose hand the sword passes will stride over the earth. "Before God's smithy in the storm of night the 1 66 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY great ones of earth are wrangling. Greed for the sword, thirst for power courses hot through all their veins. "You princes! Whose oath-hand is pure? Which of you dare hold God's sword? Arise, Ger- man Kaiser! The sword is thine! God leaves it with thee as thine." The Archangel and a Poet The Lokal Anzeiger, in a recent number, pub- lishes a lengthy poem by Rudolf Herzog, Ger- many's most popular novelist, entitled "From Zeb- dou to Laghouat." The poem describes the al- leged sufferings of a number of German prisoners arrested by the French in Morocco and marched to the coast under a strong military escort. The French authorities stated at the time that these Ger- mans had been guilty of treacherous attempts to stir up the natives to revolt, and that on the desert march to the coast they were exposed to no greater rigours than those inseparable from the climate, or than those cheerfully borne by the military escort. Herzog's poem is an inset in the figure of a gi- gantic picture of the Archangel Michael, who is represented as heavily armed in steel. Around the Archangel there are flickering tongues of fire to symbolise, probably, his celestial radiance. Both hands are clenched and held in a highly commina- tory manner, and his face bears an expression of rage and hatred which is demoniacal. The satanic attitude and expression, with the accompanying flames, are reminiscent rather of pictures we have seen of angels who have fallen from their high es- tate. POETRY AND WAR SONGS 167 The poem itself Is a genuine Hun effusion, sup- posed to be the cry for vengeance of the "martyrs" who made the march to the coast. The last verse runs : "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and no mercy for the enemy who sank to butchery. The desert mirage, that mocked, the endless track that drank the blood of the martyrs, the marching in tottering ranks! Oh, we shall hammer into the enemy's foreheads the words 'Zebdou and Lag- houat.' " If Herr Rudolf Herzog, who used to bear the reputation of a humane and cultured man of let- ters, will allow his memory to go back a few years he will recall an incident in the Herero war, when General von Trotha deliberately drove 16,000 of this unfortunate tribe, mostly old men, women, and children, into a part of the desert where he knew there were no wells. He will recall the awful fact that only a remnant of the 16,000 escaped the hor- rors of death from thirst. We recommend to him the perusal of the Reichstag debates on that dis- graceful episode. A Clerical Poet Ottokar Kernstock published a volume of war verses. The profits were to go to a war charity. The Arheiter Zeitung feels a loathing for these verses, "with their bombastic and romantic trap- pings," which are neither more nor less than "brutal hate writings belonging to the stock-in-trade of the clique who have this war on their consciences." There is one "poem," called "Prayer Before the Battle of the Huns," in which Kernstock Informs us that it is their own fault that God has not long 1 68 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY ago assisted the Central Powers In their struggle against Serbs and Italians, Russians, French, and English. It is because they were "slack" that they must now suffer. In another "poem," called "Ideas," Germany and her allies are "heroes and pure as angels," and the enemy "an army of de- vouring vultures," "dehumanised hordes of the lowest land devastators and barbarians," "ruffianly robbers and cunning, lustful felines." Coming to particulars, the Russians are "depraved hordes of Slavs," the Serbs a "brood," the French "wild game of Paris," the Italians "foreign foxes," and the British "the cruel sons of Mammon and Eris." Eris, it will be remembered, was the lady in the Hesiodic theogony who threw the famous apple of discord among the guests at a certain marriage fes- tival. Kernstock, who is a clergyman as well as a poet, apparently finds infinite delight in calling on the Almighty for assistance, and implores his Maker "to be deaf to the entreaties of our enemies." He is certain of victory, for "the Celestial Hosts are with us, and St. Michael is our Field-Marshal." His description of the battle in the Masurian Lake district contains this passage : "Then God nodded, and the Revenger came and drew his vengeful sword, and those who escaped the sword were choked in the mud of the swamps." In a fine frenzy of wild writing he asks his com- patriots to strike, thrust, murder, and burn; and the vine dressers especially are conjured to press the "blood-red wine" out of the Italian foreigner. The Arbeiter Zeitung asks: "Is this publicly uttered de- lirium of blood fever, accompanied by cries for God's assistance, not open blasphemy?" CHAPTER XVI BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH Are we Hypocrites? — England, a Lie — The Anglo-Saxon Soul — The World's Tyrant — Perfide Albion — London Pictures. The war had not lasted many days when the cry arose from all sorts and conditions of Germans that "England was the enemy." For more than three years not a day has passed without our hearing this solemn asseveration. France, Russia, even Italy, were enemies in a minor degree. They were all base, it is true, all guilty of high crimes and mis- demeanours against Germany, all besmirched with the vices of greed and envy, but England was the criminal without the pale, England was the quin- tessence of brutality, cunning, hypocrisy, the incar- nation of all that is satanic, and therefore the enemy par excellence. Out of the innumerable articles in German periodicals having England and the Eng- lish as their theme it is not so much our purpose to reproduce those which are characterised by extreme extravagance of language, as to offer a brief pre- sentment of average opinion. It will be seen that average opinion remains pretty much the opinion which Treitschke expressed nearly fifty years ago: "England blocks the way to the growth of Ger- many from a European into a World Power. She is the Robber State, sprawling across one-fifth of 169 I7Q SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY the world, though rotten to the core and moribund," We are to remember that "average opinion," dur- ing all the fifty years since these words were writ- ten, believed as Treitschke believed, that war with England was the solemn and inevitable duty of virile Germany, led by Prussia. Are we Hypocrites? Baron von der Goltz, a relative of the late Field- Marshal, occupies a divinity chair in the Univer- sity of Berlin. He writes on The Face of Eng- land, and discusses the question whether the British are hypocrites. Baron von der Goltz is one of the best-known professors at the University of Berlin. In a chap- ter which he contributes to a book called The Face of England, the Baron discusses the question, whether the mask worn by England is that of the pious hypocrite? He finds the question difficult to answer, although he can quite understand the prev- alence of a belief that England's piety is a political as well as a religious attitude, and that where poli- tics and religion come into conflict in England's his- tory she has invariably decided in favour of her terrestrial, and to the injury of her celestial, in- terests. Herr von der Goltz writes very learnedly about the differences which have always existed between our ecclesiastical systems and the national compre- hension of religion. The old Celtic Church, the Roman Rule which succeeded it, the Protestantism of Henry III {sic), which was superinduced on this Rule, and all later systems and rules and move- BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH 171 merits have never expressed the nation's real heart, with the result that a religious mask has grown over the face of the people difficult to remove or pene- trate. Added to this the enormous growth of riches and luxury on one hand, and the gross neglect of the poorer classes on the other, have made it impos- sible that true religion can deeply influence the masses. There is much religiosity in England, but little real religion. The English perhaps are not conscious hypocrites, but their general character is one of falseness and unreliability. Such, in brief, seem to be the Baron's conclusions. England a Lie Count Posadowsky, who filled the office of Im- perial Home Secretary in Prince Biilow's Chancel- lorship, writes to the Leipziger Tageblatt on "The Lie as Great Power." Of course England is the embodiment of the Lie. It is the Count's belief — or rather his professed belief — ^that England's whole history, past and present, is founded on untruth, deception, and hy- pocrisy. It requires a forehead of brass, writes the Count, to maintain that Germany will suppress the free- dom of the world, and that England is the pioneer of liberty. England is the one nation which has persistently misused her power, which has brought half the world under her dominion by intrigue and violence of an unexampled character, which claims the sovereignty of all the seas, and has established a rule In India on the same footing as the abso- 172 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY lutism of Russia. One may study In the history of England and her Colonies, says the Count, innu- merable instances of her misuse of power in her arrogant treatment of other independent States. The Anglo-Saxon Soul Dr. Troeltsch, an eminent philosopher, lectured on "The Anglo-Saxon Soul" to large audiences throughout the country. The following is a resume of a lecture, delivered, it is stated, to the "intellectual elite of Berlin." According to Dr. Troeltsch, our civilisation shows two directions, one "Christian-liberal-demo- cratic," pertaining to our middle classes, the other pertaining to our upper classes, which he calls "Conservative-ruling-despotic." Our civilisation, such as it is, goes back to the Tudor period. The moral philosophy of the British justifies every act of the imperialistic dominating class, and seeks to show how these acts are conformable to Christian- ity. The English believe they are the Elect. This belief makes them regard every success as moral. The success of an action is the best proof of its morality. The "National Egoism" of the British was badly trounced by Troeltsch. Everything we do in our imperialistic mission in the world is marked by this egoism. The Anglo-Saxon way is first the Bible, then trade, then the flag. Troeltsch asked his au- dience not to believe in British anti-militarism and pacifism. There is not a pacifist among us who is not ready to justify any action which is to the na- tion's political advantage. BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH 173 The World Tyrant By the editor of the Tdgliche Rundschau: England can only be conquered by might, never by arrangement or negotiation. England is the world-tyrant, which has led the nations into this war, and which alone maintains the continuance of the war until she has accomplished her object — the final removal of a dangerous competitor. It is Eng- land we must make to suffer if we are to have peace. But in order to do this, to adopt a sentence of Clausewitz, we must liberate ourselves from an un- reasoning want of confidence in the powers which God has given us. Hitherto we have stood up against a world of enemies. Whether they will or not, we shall compel them to reason. And God will continue to be with us. "Perfide Albion" The Kolnische Zeitung regales its readers with a diverting article on "The English Manner of Ex- pression." The conclusion of the Rhenish journal is that we are just as much "perfide Albion" now as we were in the days of Napoleon. No German who has been any length of time in England, says this journal, and who has mixed with Englishmen in trains, hotels, or lodging-houses, that has not been struck with our manner of expression. Our talk is confined to the weather, to hotel con- ditions, to food, and impending sporting events. The Englishman hates to be decisive. He says, "That is too outspoken," and he laughs or makes 174 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY a deprecatory gesture when a stranger expresses a strong view. The Britisher hates "outspoken." He does not want to unveil himself. This veiling is a great Eng- lish art. It is a trick, and in political and business relations It plays a very dangerous role. Its ob- ject is to induce confidence, to get the stranger off his guard. The Britisher appears a simple, in- genuous person, but it is not so. He is the refine- ment of cunning. The war has taught Germany a lot about those unscrupulous and selfish Britishers, and after it is over it will be for the Germans to alter their atti- tude to the perfidious islanders. "We will no longer be the victims of their wiles." The Kdl- nische says "it will be absolutely necessary to be on one's guard, and to mistrust every expression of English friendliness. In the past our diplomatists, journalists, and traders were guilty of fateful mis- takes in attaching a wrong meaning to the English manner of expression. The agile Englishman uses his smooth and colourless language to deceive the nations in every direction. His thoughts are never theirs, and the secret depths of his soul are un- fathomable. He has a proverb about it: You never get to the bottom of an Englishman." London Pictures The Vossische Zeitiing describes a London Sun- day and a recruiting scene. "Are we aware, for example, that it is quite a customary thing for respectable male citizens of London on Sunday mornings to dress themselves in their Sunday best, and with their gilt-edged hymn- BRITAIN AND THE BRITISH 175 books under their arms to repair in twos and threes to a crowded gambhng and drinking club in the neighbourhood of a church, where they pass the hours of divine service, and that they then return to their homes, where they discuss with their wives and children the points of the sermons they are supposed to have heard?" The writer tells us also something new about re- cruiting in London. The description applies to a poverty-stricken quarter, "where vice and misery grinned at one another." There was a recruiting station round the corner, and "newly baked" sol- diers were grouped around it. From a side street the sounds of a cornet, "out of tune, patriotic, sen- timental." Probably a blind man playing for cop- pers. No, it was the English method of recruit- ing. The musician played "God Save the King," and his companion mounted a step-ladder and harangued the crowd about mutilated children, vio- lated women, and aged men burnt to death; also about England's "glory." The cornet man then played "Kathleen Mavourneen," or "Home, Sweet Home." Men hurried past as though afraid of being caught in the net, children played in the gut- ter, and women gossiped about the dear times. People in the greengrocer's shop grinned, and the butcher busied himself with the carcass of a horse. In the distance, coming nearer, a fife-and-drum band. "They're always the same lot," was the remark of a woman with a horseflesh beefsteak un- der her arm. The woman was right. They were the same lot. It was a crowd of stage figures, de- lirious drunkards, fished out of the streets and led about like tame bears. "The impression was sought to be given that these fellows were recruited 176 SIDELIGHTS ON GERMANY from pure patriotic enthusiasm." "They were marching about in their own rags." The crowd indulged in noise and laughter, the man at the cor- ner with the trumpet played "Tipperary," the man on the step-ladder bawled to the playing children, and the ladies continued their talk about the dear- ness of things. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment DateiuAy l[^] PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 007 629 376 4 •