jommtta 
 
 mmw' 
 

 -^^ 
 
 0' ^^' 
 
 
 ^ ,0 
 
 \^^ 
 
 r, 
 
 -^^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 . .^ -% 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 
 ,0o 
 
 .0' 
 
 '/^ 
 
 
 c. . ^ .- . 
 
 \t- 
 
 " x>' 
 
 X ,f^^~'*Tf*i., 
 
 
 
 .A^^ ^ 
 
 .^^ 
 
 C> 
 
 ■^^. 
 
 .,v>' -^ 
 
 '-^, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 S^o_ 
 
 ^^■'^ ^ * O V ^ 't> 
 
 \ >, o ■■"■ / ^- ^ \ " ^N. 
 
 
 .^-^ 
 
 o 
 
 : 4i 
 
 c^, 
 
 <^ * 
 
 .1 
 
 
 ^ A^^ ^' '-f/^b 
 
 A 
 
 ^^% 
 
 
 •^o 0^^ 
 
 
 .<-\\ 
 
 >o- 
 
 
 
 
 V 
 
 
 •J- <^\ 
 
 -^ ,^^ 
 
 "c^ 
 
 ■^. 
 
 '-/■' 
 
 
 
 o. 
 
 
 \ 1 B 
 
 
 ^0°^. 
 
 
 c^. 
 
 ,0- 
 
 ^ ^"^ 
 O V 
 
 V 
 
 -P. 
 
 " x>^ 
 
 
 "^ .^' ^ . 
 
 '^^^- 
 
 ^^ 
 

 ■^ <^^ '^ i{\ «§ /% ^ if' v\^ 
 
 '<* 
 
 M' ,J 
 
 ? <J 1 
 
 ''^;.. 
 
 
 
 5^ .^^-'. -"c 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ < 
 
 \0 o^ ,. ^/ 
 
 
 %> ,# 
 
THE EUROPEAN WAR OF 1914: 
 
 Its Causes, Purposes, and Probable Results 
 
THE 
 
 JROPEAN WAR OF 1914: 
 
 ITS CAUSES, PURPOSES, AND 
 PROBABLE RESULTS 
 
 By 
 John William Burgess, Ph.D., J.U.D., LL.D. 
 
 Formerly Professor of Constitutional and International Law, and Dean 
 
 of the Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure 
 
 Science, in Columbia University, New York City 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1915 
 
'>^ 
 
 -^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 Copyright 
 
 A. C. McCIurg & Co. 
 
 1915 
 
 Published April, 1915 
 
 W. p. HAUL PRINTING COMMNY, CMICAQO 
 
 r 
 
 APR 30 i9l5 
 
 CIA398623 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ^ ^T^HE contents of this little book were pre- 
 pared some months ago, but its appear- 
 ance has been intentionally delayed until this 
 time. I am not sure that its publication even 
 now is not premature. 
 
 It is a fact of history as well as personal 
 experience that the majority is generally on 
 the wrong side of every great question in the 
 beginning. I myself have seen this country 
 in hysteria four times during my own con- 
 scious existence. The first time was the Anti- 
 Abolitionist craze, when the North as well as 
 the South rose in what men then fancied to be 
 righteous indignation against these assailants 
 of the existing order and the public peace, the 
 despised Garrisonians, but what really was 
 only the rage of a guilty conscience trying to 
 deaden itself to the knowledge of the sin it 
 was supporting. And then in less than five 
 years I saw these same men leading the vast 
 choir of the majority and singing the battle 
 hymn of freedo;n. 
 
Preface 
 
 The second time was the greenback craze 
 and the third time was the free-silver craze, 
 when, in spite of the jejuneness of the sub- 
 ject, the great majority were so affected by it 
 and worked themselves up to such a pitch of 
 self-righteousness against the rascals, who 
 would make the debtor pay in appreciated 
 money, as almost to silence their contention 
 for a sound and honest currency. It took all 
 of the official and moral power of four Presi- 
 dents, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, and McKin- 
 ley, to stem this torrent of popular holiness, 
 make men exercise a little common sense, and 
 feel a little common honesty. And yet I 
 hardly know a man today who is not ashamed 
 if his grandfather was touched by either of 
 these follies. 
 
 And now for six months we have had the 
 Anti-German craze, perhaps the most unrea- 
 sonable of all — for who is so blind as not to 
 perceive with a glance that the united triumph 
 of the Autocrat of the Land and the Autocrat 
 of the Sea means their dominance of the 
 world ; and what have the Germans ever done 
 
Preface 
 
 I to us to deserve abuse at our hands — but 
 perhaps the most explicable of them all, for 
 if the majority has so little correct under- 
 standing, in the beginning, of domestic ques- 
 tions, such as I have cited, how can it be ex- 
 pected to have any comprehension whatever 
 of a great foreign movement, epochal in civi- 
 lization, such as that with which the Euro- 
 pean world is now convulsed? 
 
 It was quite inevitable that the attention 
 of the vast majority should be riveted prima- 
 rily upon some of the nearer lying, more un- 
 importance, incidents di the movement, and 
 that these should be misinterpreted and these 
 misinterpretations become exaggerated until 
 they should finally assume the form of carica- 
 ture and catchword. There are some evi- 
 dences at present that we are beginning to 
 emerge from this spell of excited and mis- 
 guided feeling and to look at things more 
 calmly and objectively. It is this which has 
 encouraged me to release this little volume 
 for publication at this juncture. 
 March, igi^. J. W. B. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Occasions of the War ... i 
 
 II The Proximate Causes of the War . 45 
 
 III The Underlying Causes of the War . 82 
 
 IV American Interests in the Outcome of 
 
 the War ii3 
 
 V The Austro-Hungarian Empire and 
 
 the Crime at Sarajevo . . . . I55 
 
 VI Belgian Neutrality 167 
 
 VII The Export of Arms and Munitions 
 
 to Belligerents I79 
 
 VIII The German Emperor 189 
 
 Index 203 
 
THE EUROPEAN WAR OF 1914 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE OCCASIONS OF THE WAR 
 
 ^T^O a man who, for nearly fifty years, has 
 been accustomed almost daily to read 
 and Interpret diplomatic papers, and whose 
 profession It was for nearly forty years to 
 teach others how to read and interpret them, 
 it seems a remarkable phenomenon that the 
 British White Paper has been, with such 
 unanimity, in this country, assumed to show 
 that Sir Edward Grey was the prime apostle 
 of peace throughout the period of active dip- 
 lomatic intercourse just preceding the out- 
 break of the war which Is now devastating 
 Europe. I have read all of the numbers of 
 this paper through many times and can repeat 
 verbatim the language of those which are 
 pivotal and crucial, and I am quite sure that 
 
 I 
 
The ^European War 
 
 there is another way to interpret that paper, 
 a way more consistent in theory, more intel- 
 ligible throughout, and more naturally con- 
 nected with preceding movements, than the 
 interpretation so generally regarded in this 
 co,untry as the only possible one. 
 
 In approaching this subject I will ask my 
 readers to keep three things well in mind. 
 The first is that this British White Paper does 
 not present the causes of this war nor its pur- 
 poses, but only the occasions of it. The 
 causes of the war lie far back of anything 
 contained in this paper. They are, as will be 
 demonstrated more fully in the next chapter, 
 the determination of Russia to dominate the 
 Balkan lands and to extend her empire to the 
 Bosphorus, the ^Egean, and the Adriatic ; the 
 determination of France to make conquest of 
 Elsass-Lothringen, and the determination of 
 Great Britain to repress the political, indus- 
 trial and commercial growth of Germany. 
 These three things constituted for years be- 
 fore the outbreak of this war the chief 
 perils threatening the life and prosperity of 
 
The Occasions of the War 3 
 
 the German Empire and the Austro-Hun- 
 garian Empire. So long as they could be 
 kept apart, peace could reign in Europe, but 
 when they were brought together in what was 
 first called the Triple Entente, and this 
 Entente was developed into the Military Alli- 
 ance of August, 19 14, then peace left the 
 world, when to return God only knows. This 
 British White Paper is simply the history, 
 from the British point of view, of the way 
 in which this development was accomplished. 
 In the second place, let it be always kept in 
 mind that diplomatic papers are not sermons 
 by sincere God-fearing clergymen, nor scien- 
 tific essays whose purpose is the demonstra- 
 tion of truth, but that the language of them is 
 frequently chosen and employed to cover up 
 the real purpose and to produce results dif- 
 ferent from, sometimes contradictory to, 
 those professed to be desired. In reading 
 diplomatic papers, one must be able to read 
 not only between the lines, but behind the 
 lines and before the lines and around the 
 lines, and one must never forget that the re- 
 
The European War 
 
 suits actually produced were those probably 
 intended by the successful party. 
 
 In the third place, one must remember that 
 most diplomatic correspondence Is verbiage 
 and is modified by secret verbal agreements. 
 One must be able to select the parts which 
 contain the gist of the proposition or the 
 argument and free it from the nebulosity with 
 which it is surrounded, for the most part in- 
 tentionally surrounded, and to apprehend the 
 verbal understandings which give them their 
 real meaning. 
 
 Naturally, the first thought of the world 
 after the brutal murders of the Crown Prince 
 and Crown Princess of the Austro-Hungarian 
 Empire on June 28, at Sarajevo, was what 
 Austria-Hungary would do about it. Nobody 
 entertained the idea that such crime would 
 be allowed to pass unpunished. The Austro- 
 Hungarian government began immediately 
 an investigation which lasted until the close 
 of the third week in July, and on July 23 it 
 made declaration of what it had discovered 
 and what it intended to do. 
 
The Occasions of the War, 5 
 
 It affirmed that it had found that the assas- 
 sination of the Prince and Princess was 
 planned in Belgrade; that high Servian offi- 
 cials were implicated in it ; that the arms and 
 explosives with which the murderers were 
 provided had been given to them by Servian 
 officials and functionaries belonging to the 
 Narodna Odbrana, the society for exciting 
 revolution among Austrian Servians against 
 the Austro-Hungarian Government; and, 
 finally, " that the passage into Bosnia of the 
 criminals and their arms was organized and 
 effected by the chief officials of the Servian 
 frontier service." 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian Government fur- 
 thermore declared that the assassinations at 
 Sarajevo were connected with, and the nat- 
 ural outcome of, subversive movements for 
 disrupting the Austro-Hungarian Empire and 
 detaching certain of its parts, which had been 
 for years in progress in Servia; that these 
 movements were participated in by members 
 of the Servian race living or sojourning in 
 the Austro-Hungarian Empire ; that the Ser- 
 
The ^European War 
 
 vian government itself knowingly allowed 
 these movements to go on unhindered in the 
 press, in the schools, and in the revolutionary 
 societies, in spite of the promises which that 
 government had, March 31, 1909, made to 
 the Austro-Hungarian Government of friend- 
 ly and neighborly conduct; and that the 
 Austro-Hungarian Government could not, in 
 view of this situation, " pursue any longer the 
 attitude of expectant forbearance which they 
 had maintained for years in face of the mach- 
 inations hatched at Belgrade and thence prop- 
 agated in Austria-Hungary," but were now 
 in duty bound to put an end to the intrigues 
 which formed a perpetual menace to the 
 tranquillity of the Empire. 
 
 On the basis of these statements and 
 explanations the Austro-Hungarian Govern- 
 ment demanded of die Servian Government 
 that it should publicly proclaim in its official 
 journals that the government condemned the 
 propaganda against Austria-Hungary and re- 
 pudiated it, regretted the participation of 
 Servian officials in it, deplored its criminal 
 
The Occasions of the War 7 
 
 results, and warned both officials and private 
 persons that it would proceed with the utmost 
 rigor against anybody who should thereafter 
 be guilty of attempting to promote it. 
 
 The Austro-Hungarian Government also 
 demanded, more specifically, the suppres- 
 sion of publications inciting the people to ac- 
 tions against the peace and integrity of Aus- 
 tria-Hungary, the dissolution of all societies 
 in Servia whos€ aim was the promotion of 
 this propaganda, the elimination fro.m the 
 public instruction of everything encouraging 
 the same, the removal of all officials from 
 the public service guilty of promoting this 
 propaganda, the arrest and trial of those offi- 
 cials shown by the Austro-Hungarian inquiry 
 to have been implicated in the assassinations 
 of June 28, the prevention of illicit traffic in 
 arms and explosives from Servia across the 
 frontier between Servia and Austria-Hun- 
 gary, the dismissal and punishment of the 
 Servian frontier officials who had facilitated 
 the work of the assassins, and explanation of 
 the utterances of high Servian officials 
 
8 The ^European War 
 
 approving the murder of the Prince and 
 Princess. 
 
 Finally, in order to make sure that the Ser- 
 vian Government would sincerely meet these 
 requirements, the Austro-Hungarian Govern- 
 ment demanded that representatives of Aus- 
 tria-Hungary should be allowed to cooperate 
 with the Servian Government in the inquiry 
 as to the accomplices on Servian territory in 
 the murders of the Prince and Princess, and 
 in the suppression of subversive movements 
 directed against the integrity of the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire. 
 
 This was a firm and decided demand, but 
 it was required by the necessities of the situa- 
 tion. Here was a turbulent community — I 
 will not call it a state, because one of the 
 chief characteristics of a state is that it is 
 organized, legalized morality — a turbulent 
 community guided largely in its acts and pur- 
 poses by insurgents, conspirators, and regi- 
 cides, a community which had already twice, 
 between 1908 and 19 14, by its lawless con- 
 duct brought Austria-Hungary tQ the verge 
 
The Occasions of the War 9 
 
 of war, a community which had, between the 
 same periods, been under solemn and express 
 pledges to Austria-Hungary to cease its In- 
 trigues and machinations against that country 
 and to live in frank and friendly relations 
 with it, but which, in constant disregard of 
 this pledge, and of its duty independent of 
 the same, continued to weave its plots for the 
 dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian 
 Empire, and finally instigated the foul mur- 
 der of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian 
 crown, with the purpose of producing just 
 what has happened, namely: a European war 
 for the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian 
 and the German Empires. The demands, 
 therefore, on the part of Austria-Hungary 
 that this criminal conspiracy and these crim- 
 inal acts against her existence should immedi- 
 ately cease, as well as the press and school 
 propaganda encouraging them, and that the 
 chief conspirators should be brought to jus- 
 tice, and that this should be undertaken under 
 such cooperation on the part of Austro-Hun- 
 garian representatives as would make it rea- 
 
lo The ^European War 
 
 sonably certain that It would be effectively 
 accomplished, were well within the bound- 
 aries of the provocation. 
 
 Only a little more than a year ago our 
 government demanded that a Mexican Gov- 
 ernment should step down and out because 
 our President believed that Huerta had had 
 some part In the assassination of his predeces- 
 sor, Madero, and our government enforced 
 this demand. Let us suppose now that our 
 own Vice-President and his wife had gone 
 for an official visit to Austin, Texas, and had 
 there been assassinated. In the execution of a 
 plot hatched In Mexico City, In which the 
 highest officials of the Mexican Government 
 had been found to be Implicated, and for the 
 accomplishment of which the weapons had 
 been furnished from the Mexican Govern- 
 mental arsenal, and that the murderers and 
 weapons had been knowingly passed across 
 the frontier by Mexican officials, and that all 
 this had been done as part of a conspiracy 
 formed In Mexico, by the leaders of the coun- 
 try In and out of the government, for detach- 
 
The Occasions of the War ii 
 
 ing Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Cali- 
 fornia from the United States and re-connect- 
 ing them with Mexico — what would the 
 United States have done? In view of what 
 she did do, I think it fair to say that she 
 would have slapped Mexico off the face of 
 the earth, and that in case any other power in 
 the world had interfered she would have told 
 it to attend to its own business and stand aside 
 or it would be slapped aside also. 
 
 The question between Austria-Hungary 
 and Servia was thus one involving the honor 
 and existence of the Austro-Hungarian Em- 
 pire, a question, therefore, in which, accord- 
 ing to the existing canons and practices of 
 diplomacy, no other power had any right to ' 
 interfere, and which, according to these same 
 canons and usages, was not subject to arbitra- 
 tion. Moreover, the purpose of this demand 
 was entirely punitive. It was not an issue 
 under which Austria was seeking her own 
 aggrandizement or to disturb the balance of 
 power in Europe. She solemnly declared 
 that she would annex no foot of Servian terri- i 
 
12 The European War 
 
 tory, and as a matter of fact she was striving 
 to maintain the balance of power in Europe 
 disturbed and thrown out of joint by the 
 machinations of the powers of the Triple 
 Entente through the Italian Tripoli expedi- 
 tion and the recent war of the Balkan powers 
 against Turkey. 
 
 I have in my possession at this moment a 
 statement from an important officer of the 
 British Crown, which is dated September i6, 
 1 9 14, and contains the following paragraph: 
 
 My own private opinion is that Grey has utterly 
 outmanoeuvred the Germans. He began the game 
 by getting Italy to annex Tripoli. Practically that 
 was the end of the Triple Alliance, as now we 
 have a million of hostages in North Africa, and 
 Italy dares not stir against us. Then came the 
 Balkan League financed by England and France 
 and, but for the idiotic vanity of King Ferdinand, 
 we should have had the war then. For the last 
 three years England, France, and Russia have been 
 steadily preparing for the struggle and Germany 
 stupidly played the enemies' game. 
 
 The seduction of Italy, thus, from the 
 Triple Alliance, and the Balkan war against 
 
The Occasions of the War 13 
 
 Turkey, ending in the driving back of Turkey 
 and in weakening her as a weight against Rus- 
 sia in the Balkan peninsula, were the things 
 which had, by the beginning of the year 19 14, 
 so changed the balance of power between the 
 Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente as to 
 threaten the very existence of the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire. All the powers in both 
 of these combinations understood this per- 
 fectly and Great Britain more than any other, 
 and Sir Edward Grey more than any other 
 man consciously brought it to pass. 
 
 Immediately after the assassinations at 
 Sarajevo, which revealed to Austria-Hungary 
 that the conspiracy against her existence had 
 become active, the diplomacy of Sir Edward 
 Grey struck out upon a line entirely consist- 
 ent with the antecedents to which I have 
 called attention, a line destined to bring war, 
 a line which has brought war, and a line 
 which if not intended to bring war is evidence 
 of great dulness in the mind of its inventor. 
 Before the demands of Austria-Hungary had 
 become known, he began inquiring of the 
 
14 The European War 
 
 German Ambassador in London and, through 
 Great Britain's representative in Berlin, of 
 the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 about them. The German Ambassador de- 
 clared that he had no information on the sub- 
 ject, but the British Charge in Berlin tele- 
 graphed to him. Grey, that the German For- 
 eign Minister 
 
 insisted that the question at issue was one for set- 
 tlement between Servia and Austria alone, and that 
 there should be no Interference from outside in the 
 discussions between these two countries; that he 
 had, therefore, considered it Inadvisable that the 
 Austro-Hungarlan Government should be ap- 
 proached by the German Government on the mat- 
 ter. — (British White Paper No. 2, July 22, 1914.) 
 
 This was absolutely the correct attitude dip- 
 lomatically towards the subject, and It was the 
 insistence of Great Britain and the other pow- 
 ers of the Triple Entente to depart from it 
 which started the ball rolling in the wrong 
 direction. 
 
 On the next day Sir Edward Grey had a 
 rather sharp discussion with Count Mens- 
 
The Occasions of the War 15 
 
 dorff, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador in 
 London, in which he protested against a time 
 limit, which Count Mensdorff had indicated 
 might be contained in the Austro-Hungarian 
 demands, and virtually threatened him with 
 Russian interference. Count Mensdorff called 
 attention, in justification of a time limit, to 
 the fact that Servia had utterly disregarded 
 her plighted word, given ^vt years before, 
 to live on neighborly terms with Austria- 
 Hungary, and had pursued her hostile pur- 
 poses against Austria-Hungary, and that it 
 had become necessary for Austria-Hungary 
 to protect herself promptly. Moreover, 
 Count Mensdorff indicated to Sir Edward 
 Grey that St. Petersburg was the place where 
 restraint should be exercised. — (British 
 White Paper No. 3.) 
 
 On July 24, the contents of the Austro- 
 Hungarian demand upon Servia were com- 
 municated by Count Mensdorff to Sir Ed- 
 ward Grey, and the latter immediately 
 declared to the former that he had "never 
 before seen one state address to another inde- 
 
1 6 The European War 
 
 pendent state a document of so formidable a 
 character," and remarked that Great Britain 
 would enter into an exchange of views with 
 other powers. — (No. 5.J 
 
 On the same day Sir Edward Grey received 
 a dispatch from the British Ambassador in 
 St. Petersburg which manifested a high state 
 of excitement on the part of the Russian gov- 
 ernment. It ran: Russian Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs said that Austria's conduct 
 was both provocative and immoral ; she would 
 never have taken such action unless Germany 
 had been first consulted; some of her de- 
 mands were quite impossible of acceptance. 
 He hoped that His (Britannic) Majesty's 
 government would not fail to proclaim their 
 solidarity with Russia and France. The 
 Ambassador went on to say that in his opin- 
 ion Russia and France had already deter- 
 mined to intervene between Austria-Hungary 
 and Servia, and that the Russian Foreign 
 Minister had informed him that he thought 
 that Russian mobilization would have to be 
 carried out. — (No, 6, July 24.) 
 
The Occasions of the War 17 
 
 Here now was the great opportunity for a 
 peace-loving British Foreign Minister, If he 
 were genuinely peace-loving and not a pre- 
 tender, to get In the finest work of his life. 
 What would such a British Foreign Minister 
 have replied to the excited requests from Rus- 
 sia to Intervene In this Austro-Hungarian- 
 Servlan question. I think he would have 
 said: 
 
 This is a local question between Austria-Hungary 
 and Servia, a question in regard to which we have 
 no right to intervene, and we must keep our hands 
 off. Moreover, it is a question involving the honor 
 and existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a 
 question, therefore, which, according to the canons 
 of diplomacy, is not arbitrable, and we should not 
 insist upon, or propose, its arbitration. It is true 
 that we may think the demands on Servia peremp- 
 tory, but we must consider that foul murders have 
 been committed, the murder of the heir to the 
 Austro-Hungarian throne and his wife, and that 
 Austria-Hungary claims that this has been accom- 
 plished by the cooperation of Servian officials in 
 execution of a plot formed at Belgrade, a plot for 
 disrupting the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
 
 And we must remember that Servia is a rest- 
 
l8 The European War 
 
 less, turbulent community, a community in which, 
 only ten years ago, high officials, the leaders of the 
 party still in power in Servia, wantonly assassinated 
 their own King and Queen and pitched their dead 
 bodies out of the window to be kicked and spat 
 upon by the mob, a community which has long been 
 the firebrand of Southeastern Europe, while Aus- 
 tria-Hungary is a great, highly-civilized state which 
 has rendered inestimable service to the culture and 
 civilization of Europe, among many other things, 
 in halting and settling the Magyars, in defending 
 Europe against the invasion of the Moslem, and in 
 holding the Slav, the Magyar, and the German 
 together in the bonds of a peaceful empire for the 
 last fifty years. 
 
 We must trust the word of Austria-Hungary, 
 which during the last few years has manifested 
 great forbearance toward Servia, that she will exact 
 only a just measure of satisfaction for the crimes 
 that have been committed against her. If it should 
 prove later that she is going beyond this and is 
 encroaching upon general European interests, then 
 will be the time for us to interfere. To do so 
 before then would be immoral and provocative on 
 our part. 
 
 Now do we find anything like this from 
 Sir Edward Grey In the numbers of the Brit- 
 
The Occasions of the War 19 
 
 ish White Paper? I cannot discover it, but 
 instead of it we find just what, as it seems to 
 me, a very clever diplomatist would do, who 
 desired to bring about a war of extermina- 
 tion against the German and Austro-Hun- 
 garian Empires, and at the same time throw 
 the responsibility for it upon the shoulders 
 of his victims. Now what would be the ele- 
 ments of the plan of such a foreign minister 
 intent upon such a purpose? Would it not 
 be as follows? 
 
 1. To assume the correct diplomatic attitude for 
 his own government of non-interference in the ques- 
 tion between Austria-Hungary and Servia, but at 
 the same time to encourage Servia to resist the 
 demands of Austria-Hungary by pronouncing them 
 extravagant and peremptory. 
 
 2. To encourage some other power, in this case 
 Russia, to interfere between them by representing 
 that Russia had some special legitimate interest in 
 intervening, some special right to intervene. 
 
 3. To propose arbitration of the question be- 
 tween Russia and Austria-Hungary raised by the 
 intervention of Russia in the question between 
 Austria-Hungary and Servia. 
 
20 The European War 
 
 4. To represent Germany as responsible for the 
 failure to bring about arbitration of the question 
 between Russia and Austria-Hungary, without ex- 
 plaining that this was really arbitration of the ques- 
 tion between Austria-Hungarj^ and Servia. 
 
 5. To do nothing to restrain Russian mobiliza- 
 tion. 
 
 6. To encourage France to sustain Russia. 
 
 7. To refuse to enter into any understanding 
 with Germany on any conditions. 
 
 8. To find, at the last moment an issue, an ap- 
 parently unselfish issue, under which to enter into 
 the great struggle. 
 
 Now let us see from the evidence con- 
 tained in the British White Paper Itself If 
 this was not the exact course of the diplo- 
 macy followed by the British Foreign 
 Minister. 
 
 (First.) Did he encourage Servia to re- 
 sist the AustrO'Hungarian demands? 
 
 On July 24, he said to the Austro-Hun- 
 garlan Ambassador In London " that he had 
 never before seen one state address to 
 another Independent state a document of so 
 formidable a character," criticising par- 
 
The Occasions of the War 21 
 
 ticularly the demand made by Austria-Hun- 
 gary that Austro-Hungarlan representatives 
 should be allowed to cooperate with Servian 
 officials in the investigation relating to the 
 participation of Servian officials and subjects 
 in the assassination at Sarajevo, and in sup- 
 pressing the movements against the integrity 
 of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the 
 same time, he disclaimed any concern on the 
 part of his government with the merits of 
 the dispute between Austria-Hungary and 
 Servia. — (British White Paper No. ^.) 
 
 On the same day, he telegraphed to the 
 British Charge d!Af aires at Belgrade that 
 Servia ought to give Austria-Hungary fullest 
 satisfaction should it be proven that Servian 
 officials had had any part in the Sarajevo 
 murders, that Servia ^^ ought certainly to 
 express concern and regret ;'' for the rest, 
 however, that " the Servian government must 
 reply to the Austrian demands as they con- 
 sider best in Servian interests*' * (No. 12.) 
 Xhe Charge was authorized to repeat this to 
 
 * Italics mine, J. W. B. 
 
22 The European War 
 
 the Servian Government after consulting his 
 French and Russian colleagues at Belgrade. 
 That the Servian Government understood 
 completely the position of the British Gov- 
 ernment as encouraging Servia to resist the 
 Austro-Hungarian demands is clearly mani- 
 fest from the telegram sent by the British 
 Charge at Belgrade to Sir Edward Grey 
 after the reply of the Servian government to 
 the Austro-Hungarian note, which telegram 
 reads: " I have been requested by the Prime 
 Minister to convey to you the expression of 
 his deep gratitude for the statement which 
 you made on the 27th inst, in the House of 
 Commons.'' — (No. 8^-) 
 
 (Second.) Did Sir Edward Grey en- 
 courage Russia to intervene in the question 
 between Austria-Hungary and Servia? 
 
 On July 24, he instructed the British Am- 
 bassador in Paris that if Russia took the 
 view of the Austro-Hungarian demands on 
 Servia, which it seemed to him any power 
 interested in Servia would take,"^ he would 
 
 ♦Italics mine, J. W. B. 
 
The Occasions of the War 23 
 
 be powerless to do anything with Russia. 
 (No. 10.) Of course this communication 
 was immediately imparted to the French 
 Government and from the French Govern^ 
 ment to the Russian Government. 
 
 On the 25th, he telegraphed to the British 
 Ambassador at St. Petersburg that the per- 
 emptory character of the Austro-Hungarian 
 note to Servia made it almost inevitable that 
 Russia and Austria-Hungary would quickly 
 mobilize against each other. (No. 24.) 
 
 On the 25th, he instructed the British 
 Ambassador at Vienna to support the steps 
 taken by the Russian Ambassador at Vienna 
 in making a demand upon the Austro-Hun- 
 garian Government for an extension of the 
 time limit imposed by the Austrian note for 
 the Servian reply and for furnishing data on 
 which the Austrian note was based. (No. 
 26.) Here was not only an encouragement 
 to Russia to intervene in the question between 
 Austria-Hungary and Servia, but a participa- 
 tion in that intervention, and that, too, after 
 the disclaimer of any concern on the part of 
 
24 The European War 
 
 his government In the merits of the question, 
 as noted in No. 5. 
 
 On the 27th, he telegraphed to the British 
 Ambassador at St. Petersburg that Germany 
 and Austria-Hungary ought to understand 
 from the concentration of the British fleet 
 that Great Britain might not stand aside. — 
 (No. 47,) 
 
 (Third.) Did Sir Edward Grey propose 
 mediation of the question between Russia and 
 Austria-Hungary raised by the intervention 
 of Russia in the question between Austria- 
 Hungary and Serviaf 
 
 On the 25th of July, he telegraphed to the 
 British Charge d^Af aires in Berlin that he 
 had said to the German Ambassador In Lon- 
 don that Russian and Austro-Hungarian mo- 
 bilization would apparently soon take place 
 and that he had suggested mediation between 
 them by Great Britain, France, Germany, 
 and Italy. — (No. 2^.) 
 
 On the 26th, he telegraphed to the British 
 Ambassador In Paris his proposition for 
 mediation in so general and comprehensive 
 
The Occasions of the War 25 
 
 terms that when it was repeated to the Brit- 
 ish Ambassador in Vienna and communicated 
 by the latter to the Russian and French Am- 
 bassadors there, these men said that while 
 they felt satisfaction with the proposition 
 ^^ they doubted whether the principle of Rus- 
 sia being an interested party entitled to have 
 a say in the settlement of a purely Austro- 
 Servian dispute would be accepted by either 
 the Austro-Hungarian or the German Gov- 
 ernment.^^ * — (Nos. ^6 and 40.) 
 
 On the 27th, he informed the British Am- 
 bassador in Berlin that he had said to the 
 German Ambassador in London that the 
 Servian reply had gone farther than could 
 have been expected and that the German 
 Government should urge moderation at 
 Vienna. — (No. 46.) 
 
 His proposition at that moment was that 
 the German Government should urge upon 
 the Austro-Hungarian Government to make 
 the Servian note, which rejected the crucial 
 demands of the Austro-Hungarian Govern- 
 * Italics mine, J. W. B. 
 
 ■■■AA*'^'^^-*- 
 
26 The ^European War 
 
 ment, a basis for discussion. The German 
 Government felt great embarrassment in 
 doing this, feeling that it might irritate the 
 Austro-Hungarian Government, but yielded 
 to the British request. 
 
 That the German Government was correct 
 in this forecast was immediately shown by 
 the answer of the Austro-Hungarian Govern- 
 ment to the proposition, namely, that it was 
 too late for that, and by the Austro-Hun- 
 garian declaration of war on Servia. (No. 
 ^ ^,) Evidently the German Government 
 was diplomatically correct in its desire to 
 treat the Austro-Hungarian-Servian question 
 as a matter between those two states alone, 
 and that in yielding to the persuasions of Sir 
 Edward Grey to step in, where neither it nor 
 any other government had any right to inter- 
 fere, had come dangerously near to getting a 
 snub from its only ally. 
 
 The position of the German Government 
 was now most embarrassing. It had no such 
 influence over the actions of Austria-Hungary 
 as has been ascribed to it by the all-wise 
 
The Occasions of the War 27 
 
 newspaper editors. Austria-Hungary is the 
 proudest state on the European Continent 
 and one of the oldest. Its imperial-royal 
 house wore the crown of Charlemagne for 
 500 years, and, in its view, the German 
 Empire is a newcomer. Its diplomatists are 
 among the most skilled and accomplished 
 statesmen of Europe. Of course, they were 
 justly offended at Russia's assuming to forbid 
 Austria-Hungary from securing such satisfac- 
 tion for her grievances against Servia as she 
 considered necessary to her honor and safety. 
 Of course, they knew that Great Britain was 
 acting with duplicity in pretending to hold to 
 the correct attitude of non-interference for 
 herself and at the same time encouraging 
 Servia to resist and Russia to interfere. And 
 of course, they felt that their German ally 
 should not yield to either Great Britain or 
 Russia or both in giving any countenance to 
 such a departure from correct and usual 
 diplomacy. 
 
 Sazonof and Grey knew these things, too, 
 but, instead of giving due weight to the 
 
28 The European War 
 
 embarrassment of the German Government, 
 they undertook to make it the scapegoat in 
 their work of developing, through these inci- 
 dents, the Entente into a Military Alliance. 
 They not only cared nothing for the embar- 
 rassment they were creating for Germany in 
 declaring that Germany's control over Aus- 
 tria-Hungary was the key to the situation, 
 but it was with them a new point gained to 
 increase, at every turn and move, that embar- 
 rassment in order to alienate, if possible, 
 Austria-Hungary from Germany. That this 
 embarrassment was clearly understood by the 
 British Government is to be surely concluded 
 from the dispatch received July 29 by Sir 
 Edward Grey from the British Ambassador 
 in Berlin. It reads: 
 
 I found Secretary of State very depressed today. 
 He reminded me that he had told me the other day 
 that he had to be very careful in giving advice to 
 Austria, as any idea that they were being pressed 
 would be likely to cause them to precipitate matters 
 and present a fait accompli. This had in fact now 
 happened, and he was not sure that his communica- 
 tion of your suggestion that Servians reply offered a 
 
The Occasions of the War 29 
 
 basis for discussion had not hastened the declaration. 
 (No. 76,) 
 
 (Fourth.) Did Sir Edward Grey attempt 
 to make it appear that Germany was respon- 
 sible for the failure to bring about arbitration 
 of the question between Russia and Austria- 
 Hungary without explaining that this was 
 really arbitration of the unarbitrable question 
 between Austria-Hungary and Serviaf 
 
 On July 29, he telegraphed to the British 
 Ambassador in Rome that he had anticipated 
 the German objections to mediation by the 
 powers by asking the German Government 
 to suggest any form of procedure under 
 which It might be applied. (No. g2.) He 
 claimed that the German Government had 
 accepted the proposition for such Interfer- 
 ence by the powers In principle, although the 
 German Government had expressed great 
 misgivings about the interference of the pow- 
 ers in such a question and had suggested 
 direct communication between Russia and 
 Austria-Hungary as the proper mode of 
 dealing with It. — (No. 4^-) 
 
30 The European War 
 
 The trouble was that the German Govern- 
 ment regarded Sir Edward Grey's proposi- 
 tion for mediation as being practically arbi- 
 tration, and had held from the first, quite 
 correctly, that the question between Russia 
 and Austria-Hungary was in substance the 
 question between Austria-Hungary and Ser- 
 via and was not arbitrable. While Sir 
 Edward Grey sought to give another mean- 
 ing to his proposed mediation, he still made 
 no distinction between questions which might 
 be properly brought under it and those which 
 might not, which was the point of embar- 
 rassment for the German Government. The 
 world, however, can, he knew, be relied on 
 to take things more in the rough and to 
 regard objection to mediation as evidence of 
 desire for war. The British White Paper 
 evidently encourages this view. — (No, 8^.) 
 
 (Fifth.) Did Sir Edward Grey do any- 
 thing to restrain Russian mobilization? 
 
 On July 29, he received official notice from 
 the British Ambassador in Berlin that Russia 
 was mobilizing her forces against Austria- 
 
The Occasions of the War 31 
 
 Hungary. (No. 'j6.) Also from the Rus- 
 sian Ambassador In London. (No, yo.) 
 On the same day, he gave the German Am- 
 bassador In London to understand that Great f 
 Britain would not attempt to exert any Influ- 
 ence upon Russia to stand aside In the ques- 
 tion between Austria-Hungary and Servia 
 and allow those two states to settle It them- 
 selves. (No, go.) At the same time he 
 indicated to the Austrian Ambassador In 
 London that he regarded Russia as having 
 some particular interest in Servia. — (No, 
 
 9'-) 
 
 On July 31, he received from the British 
 
 Ambassadors In Berlin and St. Petersburg 
 notice that Russia was mobilizing on the Ger- 
 man frontier, at the very moment when, on 
 request of the Czar, the Emperor was 
 attempting to secure an understanding be- 
 tween Russia and Austria-Hungary. (Nos, 
 108 and US') And on the same day he 
 instructed the British Ambassador In St. 
 Petersburg that the German Ambassador In 
 London had asked him " to urge the Russian 
 
32 The European War 
 
 Government to show good will in the dis- 
 cussions and to suspend their military prepa- 
 rations," and that he had said to the Am- 
 bassador that he " did not see how Russia 
 could be urged to suspend them unless some 
 limit were put by Austria to the advance of 
 her troops into Servia." (No. no.) On the 
 same day he received the thanks of the Rus- 
 sian Minister of Foreign Affairs for his atti- 
 tude. — (No. 120.) 
 
 (Sixth.) Did Sir Edward Grey encourage 
 France to sustain Russia? 
 
 On July 29, he informed the British 
 Ambassador in Paris that he had told Cam- 
 bon, the French Ambassador in London, that 
 so long as the question was one between 
 Russia and Austria-Hungary, Great Britain 
 would not feel called upon to take a hand in 
 it, but if Germany became involved and 
 France became involved, then Great Britain 
 would have to consider, and that the French 
 Ambassador had indicated that this was sat- 
 isfactory, since if Germany attacked Russia, 
 France was bound to help Russia. (No, 
 
The Occasions of the War 33 
 
 8y.) Both of these men knew, of course, 
 that if Russia attacked Austria-Hungary, 
 Germany was bound, under the provisions of 
 the Triple Alliance, to go to the aid of 
 Austria-Hungary. This would not In reason 
 be an attack by Germany on Russia, but 
 France was determined to so regard It. In 
 fact. Grey and Cambon had arranged for 
 such a situation two years before. — (No, 
 
 105') 
 
 Sir Edward Grey also informed the British 
 Ambassador In Paris in this dispatch that he 
 was on the point of Informing the German 
 Ambassador In London that Germany must 
 not presume upon the neutrality of Great 
 Britain. He also referred to the fact that 
 the British fleet, which had some time before 
 been concentrated In the Channel, ostensibly 
 for a review, had not been dispersed, in other 
 words that the British fleet was mobilized. 
 This was all intended, of course, for the 
 French Government and could not have 
 failed to assure France that If, in a war 
 between Russia and Germany, France should 
 
34 The European War 
 
 take up arms in support of Russia, Great 
 Britain would take up arms in support of 
 France. 
 
 When, therefore, Germany asked France 
 if she would remain neutral in a war between 
 Russia and Germany, France replied that 
 she would consult her own interests. 
 
 On August 2, Sir Edward Grey received 
 from the British Ambassador in Berlin infor- 
 mation that he, the Ambassador, had just 
 been informed by the German Secretary of 
 Foreign Affairs that owing to the fact that 
 Russian troops had crossed the German 
 frontier, Germany and Russia were in a state 
 of war. (No. 144.) And on the same day 
 he, Sir Edward Grey, handed the French 
 Ambassador in London a memorandum 
 which read: *' I am authorized to give an 
 assurance that if the German fleet comes into 
 the Channel or through the North Sea to 
 undertake hostile operations against French 
 coasts or shipping, the British fleet will give 
 all the protection in its power.'' (No. 148.) 
 Everything was now prepared for Great 
 
The Occasions of the War 35 
 
 Britain to join with France and Russia, and 
 the final task of Sir Edward Grey was to find 
 the issue under which to bring this about. 
 
 (Seventh and Eighth.) Did Sir Edward 
 Grey refuse all understanding with Germany ^ 
 and finally effect the participation of Great 
 Britain in the war under a feigned issue f 
 
 What that issue was to be is first indicated 
 in the White Paper. (No. loi, dated July 
 30.) It is a dispatch sent by Sir Edward 
 Grey to the British Ambassador in Berlin for 
 communication, of course, to the German 
 Government. The tone of it is altogether 
 different from the usually quiet manner of 
 this gentleman. It is excited and extrava- 
 gant and recriminatory. It is the tone of a 
 man who is conscious of the weakness of his 
 position and is seeking to strengthen it by 
 magnifying some apparently vulnerable 
 point in the position of his adversary with 
 the intent to put his adversary in a false 
 position. 
 
 In this dispatch he virtually accuses the 
 German Chancellor of trying to strike a bar- 
 
36 The European War 
 
 gain with Great Britain whereby Great 
 Britain should remain neutral while Ger- 
 many should violate the neutrality of Bel- 
 gium. This dispatch was an answer to one 
 he had received from his Ambassador in Ber- 
 lin on the preceding day informing him that 
 the German Chancellor was most desirous 
 to remain on friendly terms with Great 
 Britain and was ready, in case Great Britain 
 would remain neutral, in the event of war 
 between Germany and France, to give Ger- 
 many's pledge not to take any French terri- 
 tory in Europe. The only thing said about 
 the neutrality of Belgium by the Chancellor 
 was that it would depend "upon the action 
 of France what operations Germany might 
 be forced to enter upon in Belgium." 
 
 When this heated communication from Sir 
 Edward Grey was conveyed to the Chancel- 
 lor, he was occupied with the menacing posi- 
 tion of Russia on the eastern frontier and 
 he merely asked the British Ambassador to 
 leave the message with him for reflection be- 
 fore answer. — (No. log.) 
 
The Occasions of the War 37 
 
 Sir Edward Grey now put the question to 
 both the German and the French Govern- 
 ment whether they were prepared to give 
 assurances of respecting the neutrality of 
 Belgium. (No. iiS-) It Is to be presumed 
 that Sir Edward Grey meant the neutrality 
 of Belgium as guaranteed by the Treaty of 
 1839. This Treaty was signed by Great 
 Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. 
 It had never been signed nor ratified by the 
 present German Empire. Did the German 
 Empire, originating thirty-two years after 
 the signing of this Treaty and composed of 
 twenty-four other states besides Prussia, in- 
 herit the obligations of Prussia? If so, had 
 Belgium herself done anything or agreed to 
 anything before August i, 19 14, which could 
 be regarded as Imparity of treatment by her 
 of her guarantors and thus absolving the 
 prejudiced guarantor from his obligations? I 
 will not undertake to answer these questions, 
 although I know the German Government 
 claimed that she had. (No. 122.) I raise 
 them only to show that Germany and France 
 
38 The ^European War 
 
 did not stand in the same position over 
 against this question put to them by Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Moreover, as against France, Great 
 Britain could only be neutral or an ally. 
 As against Germany, on the other hand, 
 Great Britain could only be neutral or an 
 enemy. The French Government could, 
 therefore, answer at once and in the affirma- 
 tive without endangering its own interests. 
 The German Government, on the other 
 hand, felt obliged to assure itself of the neu- 
 trality of Great Britain before giving any 
 pledge in regard to Belgium. 
 
 On August I, the German Ambassador 
 in London asked Sir Edward Grey, whether, 
 if Germany promised not to invade Belgium, 
 Great Britain would engage to remain neu- 
 tral, and Sir Edward Grey answered that 
 he could not say that. The Ambassador 
 then pressed Sir Edward Grey to formulate 
 conditions upon which Great Britain would 
 remain neutral and suggested the willingness 
 of Germany even to guarantee the integrity 
 
The Occasions of the War 39 
 
 of France and the French colonies on condi- 
 tion of the neutrality of Great Britain, and 
 Sir Edward Grey refused to promise neu- 
 trality upon any terms, even of his own 
 making, and declared his refusal to be defin- 
 itive. — (No, 123.) 
 
 The German Empire here virtually pro- 
 posed the same arrangement in regard to Bel- 
 gium as that entered into by Great Britain 
 and the North German Union and Great 
 Britain and France in 1870, namely, that 
 Great Britain should, in a war between Ger- 
 many and France, remain neutral and with 
 Germany guarantee Belgium against in- 
 vasion by France, and with France guarantee 
 Belgium against invasion by Germany, and 
 Great Britain refused. Great Britain thus 
 indicated to Germany that she had deter- 
 mined to become a belligerent enemy to Ger- 
 many in the impending war and would not 
 agree to remain neutral under any condi- 
 tions proposed by Germany or formulated 
 by herself. 
 
 On the next day, August 2, Sir Edward 
 
40 The European War 
 
 Grey, without waiting for the final answer 
 of the German Government to his demand 
 that Germany should, without regard to the 
 attitude of Great Britain, promise not to 
 invade Belgium, gave, as we have already 
 seen, assurance to France that Great Britain 
 would participate In the Impending conflict as 
 the ally of France. (No. 148.) With this, 
 Germany was finally made to realize that the 
 three great powers, commanding half the 
 world in area and population, were resolved 
 to make war upon her. In fact were already 
 at war with her, and that her only chance 
 was to strike quick and hard and where the 
 danger was most immediate. 
 
 Now this is how I read the British White 
 Paper. It Is the way that one hundred and 
 fifty millions of people In Europe read It, 
 not only Germans and Austrlans, but Swiss, 
 Dutch, Danes, Scandinavians, and some Eng- 
 lishmen, and it is the way that twenty-five 
 millions of people in this country read it. 
 I believe it is the way every unprejudiced 
 historian and diplomatist will read it twenty- 
 
The Occasions of the War 41 
 
 five years from today. And It shows one of 
 two things, namely: that Sir Edward Grey 
 consciously intended to bring about this war, 
 at this time, from the moment that he en- 
 couraged Servia to resist Austria-Hungary 
 and encouraged Russia to assert a protec- 
 torate over Servia, or that he is a dullard 
 and was an unwitting tool in the hands of 
 the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 Sazonof. 
 
 I would rather think the latter, but in the 
 way of this stands his war speech in Par- 
 liament on August 3. It must be remembered 
 that at the time this speech was made the 
 telegrams and dispatches contained in the 
 later-published White Paper, which we have 
 been citing, were known only to the British 
 Cabinet. Parliament and the people of 
 Great Britain had no knowledge of them 
 until several days later. 
 
 In this war speech. Sir Edward Grey sup- 
 pressed the propositions contained in No. 
 123 of the British White Paper and in the 
 Emperor's telegram to King George of Au- 
 
42 The European War 
 
 gust I, in which Germany went the whole 
 length of virtually offering to agree not to 
 go to war with France at all, provided only 
 Great Britain would remain neutral and 
 guarantee that France would do likewise; 
 or, in case Great Britain could not restrain 
 France, not to invade Belgium and not to 
 make conquest of any French territory, Euro- 
 pean or colonial, provided only great Brit- 
 ain would herself remain neutral. 
 
 The fact that Sir Edward Grey did this 
 most reprehensible thing, and, at the most 
 critical moment, left the impression upon the 
 mind of Parliament and the people that the 
 German Government had made no reply to 
 the British demands about Belgian neutral- 
 ity, indicate that he was playing the g^me 
 of war-maker and not peace-maker. The 
 war was already an established fact as be- 
 tween Russia and Germany, and he seems to 
 have been determined not to allow Germany 
 to escape from the mortal peril of war on 
 her western as well as her eastern boundary 
 at the same time. In other words, he seems 
 
The Occasions of the War 43 
 
 consciously to have seized this promising op- 
 portunity for forcing Germany to solve her 
 problems with the different states of Europe 
 all at once and against their combined power. 
 Even Englishmen doubt whether the 
 British Cabinet could have brought the Par- 
 liament and the people to the approval of 
 its war policy without that bit of deception 
 practiced on them by the Foreign Minister 
 in that speech of August 3. Three mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet, the most honest and gen- 
 uinely patriotic men In it, Morley, Burns, 
 and Trevelyan, left the Cabinet rather than 
 to be participant In this policy; J. Ramsey 
 MacDonald, member of Parliament, de- 
 nounced Sir Edward Grey In unsparing 
 terms for his dislngenuousness ; Arthur Pon- 
 sonby pointedly asked the question In an 
 article In the London Nation: "Did the 
 Prime Minister In referring to what he 
 called the Infamous proposal at the same time 
 draw attention to the German Ambassador's 
 request, at a later date^ that we should for- 
 mulate the conditions on which we would re- 
 
44 The European War 
 
 main neutral?" and answered it "no," and 
 C. H. Norman declared that "Sir Edward 
 Grey laid a snare for the House of Com- 
 mons, out of which, in the excited condition 
 of public opinion, the House could not be 
 extricated with honor and dignity." 
 
 Moreover, Sir Edward Grey declared in 
 this same speech of August 3, that the British 
 fleet was already mobilized and that the army 
 was mobilizing, that the forces of the Crown 
 were ready and that, in the opinion of the 
 Prime Minister and the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty, there was never a time when 
 those forces were in a higher state of readi- 
 ness and efficiency than at that moment. 
 With regret I am compelled to say that 
 through his own utterances. Sir Edward 
 Grey seems to me to convict himself of hav- 
 ing consciously followed a course of conduct 
 leading directly to universal war. 
 
 Let us now turn to the causes of the war 
 and examine if they do not sustain this inter- 
 pretation of the British White Paper. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PROXIMATE CAUSES OF THE WAR 
 
 Tj^OR a correct and exhaustive understand- 
 ing of these we must go back at least 
 to the formation of the present German Em- 
 pire. After the disrupture of the German 
 Confederation in the year 1866, by the with- 
 drawal or expulsion of Austria from this con- 
 nection, the French Empire became the lead- 
 ing state of Continental Europe, at least west 
 of Russia. 
 
 According to the well established principles 
 of British diplomacy, France was then the 
 state whose wings must be clipped and it was 
 Great Britain's problem to find " some 
 George who would do it." This was not 
 difficult. The formation of the North Ger- 
 man Union in 1867, embracing all of the 
 German States north of the Main, and of 
 the German Zollverein, including all the 
 
 45 
 
46 The European War 
 
 members of the old German Confederation, 
 except Austria, excited the apprehension of 
 France for her leadership in Continental 
 Europe. 
 
 France sought an opportunity for war with 
 the North German Union In the year 1870 
 and found It In the Spanish question. We 
 must not, however, delude ourselves with the 
 idea that this question caused the Franco- 
 Prussian War of 1870-71. The cause of that 
 war was the determination of France not 
 to allow the North German Union to grow 
 into the present German Empire. The 
 Spanish question was only the pretext. 
 
 What attitude would now the other powers 
 of Europe assume towards the conflict? 
 Russia had not forgiven France for the de- 
 feat In the Crimean War of 1853-56. She, 
 therefore, remained neutral. Italy was still 
 mourning over the loss of Savoy and Nice, 
 which she had been obliged to transfer to 
 France for Napoleon's aid in her supreme 
 effort for the expulsion of the Austrlans in 
 1859, was also still suspicious of the plans 
 
The Proximate Causes 47 
 
 of France for gaining a further foothold in 
 her borders, and was resentful at the main- 
 tenance of the French garrison for uphold- 
 ing the Pope's supremacy in Rome. This 
 was a sufficient balance to the gratitude of 
 Italy towards France for the latter's assist- 
 ance in 1859 to keep Italy quiet in 1870. 
 Austria was still smarting under the de- 
 feat of 1866, but her partner in the dual 
 monarchy, Hungary, had profited by it, and 
 whatever intentions hostile to the North Ger- 
 man Union Austria may have entertained 
 were suppressed by the rapid and decided 
 victories of the North German arms. 
 
 Lastly, Great Britain saw, at that moment, 
 in the French Empire her only possible rival 
 on the sea and had not forgotten the long 
 struggle with France for the mastery of the 
 sea. The growth of Germany as a Conti- 
 nental power merely did not seem to threaten 
 her interests, but rather to be a protection 
 to her against French colonial aspirations. 
 The one point necessary to her traditional 
 policy was to prevent the coast of the Chan- 
 
48 The European War 
 
 nel from Dunkirk to Antwerp from falling 
 into the hands of either party, that is, to 
 maintain the independence of Belgium. Na- 
 poleon had already revealed intentions upon 
 Belgium, and although the Treaty of 1839 
 guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium and 
 signed by Great Britain, France, and Prussia, 
 as well as Russia and Austria, had never 
 been formally repealed, yet Great Britain 
 deemed it necessary, for the safe-guarding 
 of her own interests more than those of Bel- 
 gium, and for their safe-guarding rather 
 against France than against the North Ger- 
 man Union, to exact from France and the 
 North German Union separate but identical 
 treaties with her, guaranteeing during the 
 period of the impending war and for a year 
 following its close the neutrality of Belgium. 
 Under these treaties she was willing to re- 
 main neutral and let the war take its course. 
 While the triumph of the German arms 
 and the organization of the German Empire 
 by the union of the South German States 
 with the North German Federation did not 
 
The Proximate Causes 49 
 
 seem to give the British Statesmen much 
 concern, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine 
 seemed to require some explanation in order 
 to give assurance that this was not the first 
 step in a policy of conquest to be followed 
 by the new German Empire. It was of 
 course easy to show historically that Ger- 
 many was only reclaiming her own, but the 
 more convincing justification was that the 
 mountain range on the west side of this ter- 
 ritory was the natural military boundary on 
 the southwest between Germany and France, 
 and that its possession by France was a con- 
 stant menace to German unity and safety. 
 This was Germany's chief ground, and it 
 was satisfactory to Europe generally, except 
 to France herself. To France it was the 
 symbol of her reduction from the first to the 
 second place among the states of Continental 
 Europe west of Russia. The determination 
 of France to regain her leadership made 
 itself concrete in the Alsace-Lorraine cult 
 and indicated thus to the slfewd diplomats 
 of Europe what note to strike in dealing with 
 
50 The European War 
 
 France in order to charm and seduce her 
 to their purpose. 
 
 The new Empire was conscious at first of 
 danger chiefly, if not wholly, from France, 
 and shaped its policy and diplomacy to meet 
 it. It built the University at Strasburg, in- 
 troduced compulsory education for stamping 
 out the general illiteracy of the people in the 
 annexed territory, established sanitary re- 
 forms therein, improving the housing of the 
 residents of the towns and villages and clear- 
 ing away slums and the proletariat of which 
 they were the haunts, taught the peasantry 
 better methods of agriculture, and promoted 
 new industries in the towns for the profit and 
 welfare of their inhabitants. Anyone who 
 knew by personal observation, as I did, the 
 Alsace-Lorraine of 1871 and the Elsass- 
 Lothringen of forty years later, could not 
 help feeling astonishment and admiration 
 for the vast improvement of the people in 
 education, health, vigor, industry, enterprise, 
 and prosperity, within this period. 
 
 At the same time that the new Empire 
 
The Proximate Causes 51 
 
 began inaugurating these reforms for the 
 well-being of Elsass-Lothringen, it effected 
 diplomatically an understanding with Russia 
 and Austria-Hungary, in what was called 
 the "Three Emperor Alliance" of 1872, for 
 maintaining the peace of Europe. As a 
 young student in the University of Berlin, 
 I witnessed the meeting of the three Em- 
 perors, William I, Alexander II, and Francis 
 Joseph in the Lustgarten at the head of the 
 Linden between the Palace of Frederick the 
 Great and the Museum, and remember dis- 
 tinctly the high hopes for permanent peace, 
 contentment, and prosperity in Europe which 
 were expressed in connection therewith. 
 But, alas, in less than five years from that 
 promising September day, Russia blasted the 
 hopes which she had helped to raise by en- 
 tering upon the campaign for the harvesting 
 of the fatal legacy bequeathed by Peter the 
 Great to his successors, the policy of the con- 
 quest of Constantinople. The Powers stood 
 quietly by and saw her march her armies 
 almost to the gates of the City and dictate 
 
52 The European War 
 
 to the humbled Turks the Treaty of San 
 Stefano. Then they interfered, In the in- 
 terest of Europe, against this unconscionable 
 aggression, and required Russia to lay the 
 Treaty for revision before the powers gath- 
 ered In Congress at Berlin. That Congress 
 was dominated by the British Premier, Lord 
 Beaconsfield, and the German Chancellor, 
 Prince Bismarck, and It ameliorated the hard 
 terms of the Treaty and saved the Ottoman 
 Empire from destruction. 
 
 From that moment Russia began to change 
 her feeling and policy towards the German 
 Empire and to cultivate a rapprochement 
 with France. The astute Bismarck perceived 
 the change and worked with all his might 
 to check It. He did finally. In the year 1884, 
 succeed In Inducing Russia to enter with Ger- 
 many Into a neutrality agreement for a few 
 years In case either should be attacked by 
 a third power. When this period expired 
 Russia turned away from all agreements 
 with Germany and gravitated towards 
 France. 
 
The Proximate Causes 53 
 
 So soon as Bismarck became aware of 
 Russia's displeasure In 1879, he had turned 
 to Austria-Hungary and had formed with 
 the Hapsburg Empire a defensive alliance 
 directed chiefly against Russian attack. Four 
 years later, In 1883 — some writers place it a 
 little earlier — when the approach of Russia 
 to France had become clearly manifest, Italy 
 joined this Alliance, called thereafter the 
 Triple Alliance, which was now directed 
 against an attack upon either member of 
 the Alliance by either Russia or France. 
 
 The keynote of Bismarck's policy was the 
 consolidation of the German Empire as a 
 Continental European state and the pur- 
 suance of a world policy, that is a policy of 
 colonial expansion and foreign trade, only 
 in so far as It did not endanger the Conti- 
 nental position and interests of the Empire. 
 From the location of the Empire In the 
 middle of Europe, surrounded by powerful 
 states already regarding it with dislike, this 
 was most necessary. Under such conditions 
 it was most difficult to adjust properly the 
 
54 The European War 
 
 elements of such a policy. Already by 1890 
 Germany had emerged from the stage of 
 an agricultural community and was fast be- 
 coming a great manufacturing and commer- 
 cial state. This had been made necessary 
 by the rapid increase of her population, 
 which could with difficulty be supported by 
 agriculture alone upon her two hundred and 
 eight thousand square miles of territory. But 
 this change required foreign markets, and 
 Spain, France, Holland, and lastly Great 
 Britain had taught the world that the way 
 to get and preserve these was by the estab- 
 lishment of colonies. 
 
 There is no doubt that it was with consid- 
 erable apprehension that Bismarck brought 
 himself to take over some unclaimed African 
 territory and begin the establishment of a 
 German colony. He soon experienced the 
 jealous watchfulness of Great Britain, but 
 for this once he turned it to advantage in 
 yielding to British demands in South Africa, 
 acquiring as compensation for Germany the 
 island of Helgoland. This was accomplished 
 
The Proximate Causes 55 
 
 in the year of his retirement from office, 
 1890, in fact under his successor, and it cor- 
 responded with his policy of looking out first 
 for the interests of the Empire at home. 
 It was also a point gained that Great Britain 
 was induced to recognize that Germany had 
 any right to appear outside of her Conti- 
 nental boundaries. 
 
 Whether the approach of France and 
 Russia was facilitated by this event or not 
 we do not surely know, but we do know that 
 in 1894, the understanding between them 
 had ripened into a treaty, the contents of 
 which were kept secret, but which we must 
 now conclude pledged the two, at an opor- 
 tune moment, to make war upon Germany. 
 
 Germany understood the danger and 
 sought to avert it by encouraging Russia to 
 pursue her policy of expansion in Asia, hop- 
 ing thus to deliver Europe from her en- 
 croachments. Germany, therefore, supported 
 Russia in the year 1895 against Japan in 
 Russia's effort to keep Japan from the Pa- 
 cific coast at the points where Russia might 
 
56 The European War 
 
 find an ice-free port for the Pacific terminus 
 of her Siberian Railway. This irritated 
 Japan against Germany and the vindictive 
 little yellow man watched patiently for his 
 opportunity to revenge himself, which has 
 at last come. In 1898 Germany leased from 
 China some two hundred square miles of 
 territory, the port of Kiau-chau and placed 
 thus a pawn in the reach of Japan. At the 
 same time Russia leased Port Arthur at the 
 head of the Liao-tung peninsula from China 
 and created thus a point of friction between 
 herself and Japan. 
 
 From 1890 to 1898, Germany, all the time 
 in rapid development as a great manufactur- 
 ing and commercial state, had acquired not 
 over two thousand square miles of territory 
 for colonial purposes, and the most of this 
 was not intended for colonization but simply 
 for coaling and supply stations, while Great 
 Britain, France, and Russia were seizing 
 hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 
 square miles of territory by military force 
 all over the world. Germany had already 
 
The Proximate Causes 57 
 
 begun to learn, thus, that foreign trade might 
 exist without colonies, in fact was more 
 profitable without them, if only the doors of 
 all countries should be made open and kept 
 open. 
 
 For some time Germany had been looking 
 upon the Turkish Empire in Asia as a new 
 and profitable region for trade, and in the 
 year 1898 the German Emperor made his 
 famous visit to Constantinople, Damascus, 
 and Jerusalem, and in the year 1900 a Ger- 
 man company or syndicate received a con- 
 cession from the Turkish Government to 
 build and operate a railroad from Con- 
 stantinople through the middle of the 
 Turkish Empire in Asia to the Persian Gulf. 
 In the same year, 1900, the Navy Bill for 
 the systematic and continuous development 
 of the German Navy was passed by the Im- 
 perial Parliament and became law. 
 
 The German idea was that, instead of fol- 
 lowing any further the expensive and destruc- 
 tive and immoral policy of dismembering 
 the Turkish Empire, it would be more eco- 
 
^8 The European War 
 
 nomlcal, constructive, and humane to main- 
 tain its integrity, and to seek its regeneration 
 by bringing it into closer contact wtih Europe 
 and the world, through active trade, com- 
 merce, and communication. The German 
 idea was prompted not only by the desire 
 to extend German trade, not only by the 
 desire to help on the development of the 
 inhabitants of the Turkish Empire, and not 
 only by the conviction that the Turks were 
 the best fitted among all the races of the 
 Empire to govern, but also by the desire of 
 removing the Turkish question, that is, the 
 question of the partition of Turkey, as the 
 great disturbing factor of European peace, 
 from the arena of European politics; while 
 the purpose of the development of the fleet 
 was to be able to protect the rapidly growing 
 German merchant marine and commerce 
 against all possible attack and unlawful 
 interference. 
 
 Great Britain, on the other hand, evidently 
 did not understand the German idea or did 
 not trust the German intentions. Her states- 
 
The Proximate Causes 59 
 
 men appeared to apprehend that the inten- 
 tions of Germany were territorial acquisitions 
 in the Turkish Empire and naval hostility 
 to Great Britain. Great Britain had prac- 
 ticed the policy of territorial aggrandizement 
 so long as the solution of the commercial 
 question that it was very difficult for her to 
 understand that there could be any other 
 solution. 
 
 At the same time the Russian activity in 
 Asia was giving Great Britain great concern 
 about her possessions and position upon that 
 vast continent, and the support of Germany 
 to Russia in keeping Japan out of the Liao- 
 tung peninsula suggested to the British dip- 
 lomatists the existence of some more friendly 
 relations between Russia and Germany than 
 they had before this supposed. 
 
 After the accession of King Edward in 
 1 90 1 — I will not venture to say in conse- 
 quence of it — the diplomacy of Great Britain 
 towards Russia and Germany seems to have 
 been based on those suspicions. An under- 
 standing between Russia, Germany, and 
 
6o The European War 
 
 Turkey in the Asiatic question could to the 
 British mind mean just one thing, namely, 
 the shunting of Russia away from Con- 
 stantinople and from the bay of Alexan- 
 dretta and her advance from the Trans- 
 Caucasus through Persia to the Persian 
 Gulf. Here Russia would at last reach the 
 open sea and have an ice-free port. But 
 she would then flank India. This mortal 
 danger to the British Empire must, at any 
 cost, be averted. It is to this task that the 
 British diplomacy of the years between 1901 
 and 19 14 has addressed itself. 
 
 Judging from the conversations in the po- 
 litical centres of Europe, from occasional 
 statements coming from highly informed and 
 responsible sources, and from the course of 
 events during that period, the plan of the 
 British Government then formed and now 
 pursued by force of arms is the acquisition 
 of the vast territory lying between Egypt 
 and the Levant on the west and lower Persia 
 on the east, the connection of the same with 
 Egypt and the ports of the Levant by a 
 
The Proximate Causes 6l 
 
 railroad leading from Alexandria to the 
 Persian Gulf, and the establishment, prob- 
 ably at Mecca or Cairo, of a new Caliphate 
 of the Mohammedan believers, under the 
 control of the British government. This 
 would defend the British possession of India 
 In two ways, namely, from territorial aggres- 
 sion by Russia, possibly supported or coun- 
 tenanced by Germany, and from the spiritual 
 power of the Turkish Sultan as Caliph of 
 all Mohammedan believers, and It might 
 open the way some day for the acquisition 
 of all Mohammedan North Africa by the 
 British Empire. 
 
 Now how could such a gigantic plan be 
 realized? Naturally the first and entirely 
 indispensable step must be the turning of the 
 supposed new friendship between Russia and 
 Germany into hostility, and the weakening 
 of both Russia and Germany. Let us see 
 whether this was the course which Great 
 Britain pursued. It has been recently as- 
 serted by persons closely connected with the 
 German Government that In 1902 Great 
 
62 The European War 
 
 Britain offered Germany an alliance with 
 herself and Japan, the point of which was 
 directed against Russia, and that Germany 
 declined it. Japan, on the other hand, en- 
 tered into it and in less than two years began 
 the war upon Russia with the purpose of 
 driving Russia back from her outlet upon 
 the Pacific at Port Arthur and in Manchuria. 
 In this she was successful and the results 
 were most advantageous to Great Britain. 
 Russia, weakened by defeat and revolution, 
 was driven back upon Europe, that is upon 
 Germany and Austria-Hungary, and ren- 
 dered incapable of pursuing her policy of 
 expansion in Asia, and Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary were compelled to face the prob- 
 ability of Russia's resuming her traditional 
 policy of seizing Constantinople. 
 
 This first and most important step in the 
 realization of the British plan for connecting 
 Egypt and India having been thus success- 
 fully taken, the British diplomatists could 
 now advance to the second. This second step 
 was to remove the participation of France in 
 
The Proximate Causes 63 
 
 the administration of Egypt, leaving Great 
 Britain thus the sole power therein, subject 
 of course, for the moment, to the nominal 
 sovereignty of the Turkish Sultan, and at 
 the same time to gain the support of France 
 for the acquisition of the territory between 
 Egypt and Persia. The opportunity for this 
 came at the very moment of Russia's defeat 
 by Japan. 
 
 France had been for several years ma- 
 neuvering and intriguing with Spain for the 
 seizure and partition of Morocco. When 
 Great Britain became aware of these move- 
 ments in 1904, perhaps earlier, she mani- 
 fested opposition, of course, but immediately 
 improved the opportunity for getting rid of 
 the French right of participation in admin- 
 istering the finances of Egypt, and for 
 getting the consent of France for the acquisi- 
 tion of the vast territory between Egypt and 
 Persia, by agreeing to the French occupation 
 of Morocco. But Germany now stepped in 
 and demanded the submission of the Mo- 
 rocco question to a Congress of the Powers. 
 
64 The European War 
 
 France regarded this as very impertinent on 
 the part of Germany and her spirit of re- 
 venge for 1870 received a new Incitement. 
 Nevertheless Germany Insisted and the Con- 
 gress of the Nations at Algeclras was as- 
 sembled In 1906. This Congress ordained 
 the Independence and Integrity of Morocco, 
 under her own Sultan, accorded certain very 
 limited police powers to France, Spain, and 
 Switzerland therein, and decreed the open 
 door for the trade of all the nations there- 
 with. We shall see a little further on how 
 France disregarded these provisions of the 
 Algeclras Convention, and how Great Britain 
 protected her disregard of the pact. 
 
 With Russia weakened by defeat and revo- 
 lution, with her French ally dependent upon 
 British support in Africa, and with Germany 
 again apprehensive of the revival of Russia's 
 designs upon Constantinople, Great Britain 
 was now, as third step in the realization of 
 her plan, able to bring Russia to the Persian 
 Agreement of 1907, according to which 
 Russia recognized the southern half of 
 
The Proximate Causes 65 
 
 Persia as belonging to the sphere of British 
 influence, as they call it, which is nothing 
 more nor less than the preliminary to annexa- 
 tion. With this Russia gave up the route to 
 the open sea on the south through Persia 
 and the Persian Gulf. This she certainly 
 would never have done had not advantage 
 been taken of her extreme exhaustion, be- 
 cause this is the only route by which she 
 can immediately reach the open sea on the 
 south. The other routes lead only to the 
 Mediterranean, and Great Britain guards 
 both outlets of this lake into the open sea. 
 Moreover, it was to be surmised that 
 Great Britain would oppose the passage of 
 Russia from the Trans-Caucasus over 
 Armenia to the harbor of Alexandretta in 
 the northeast corner of the Mediterranean. 
 Russia once in possession of the plateau of 
 Armenia would not only command all of the 
 routes from Asia into Asia Minor, but could 
 occupy at pleasure the entire valley of the 
 Euphrates and the Tigris down to the Per- 
 sian Gulf. This would conflict with the 
 
66 The European War 
 
 British plan for annexing Mesopotamia to 
 Egypt, and would bring the two great land- 
 grabbing Empires of the world face to face 
 across the Imaginary line of the surveyor. 
 ^^^ Great Britain would certainly prefer the 
 Turk to the Russian for her neighbor. She 
 would certainly prefer to have Russia take 
 Constantinople than Armenia and Alexan- 
 dretta. In fact after the agreement of 1907, 
 and by it, Russia was brought back to the 
 conviction that her aspiration to reach the 
 sea on the south was, as to Its probable ful- 
 fillment, confined to the route through Con- 
 stantinople. But from the moment of the 
 conclusion of that Treaty of 1907, the route 
 to Constantinople, lay, as the Russians now 
 say, through Berlin. In other words, the 
 plan of Great Britain for the annexation of 
 Southeastern Turkey and Arabia to Egypt, 
 the Treaty of 1907 with Russia as to 
 Southern Persia, the German Bagdad Rail- 
 road, and the alliance of France with 
 Russia and Great Britain, left, of all the 
 great powers, united for the defense of the 
 
The Proximate Causes 67 
 
 integrity of the Ottoman Empire in the Con- 
 gress of 1878 at Berlin, only Germany and 
 Austria-Hungary, and ranged Great Britain 
 with her old foe in this question, Russia, with 
 whom she is now endeavoring to destroy and 
 despoil the Ottoman Empire, at the same 
 time that she holds the island of Cyprus in 
 trust as a basis of operations for her pledged 
 defense, especially against Russia, of the in- 
 tegrity of that Empire. 
 
 The plans were fast ripening for the blow. 
 In June of 1908 the meeting between King 
 Edward and the Czar took place on ship- 
 board near Reval in the Gulf of Finland, and 
 was almost immediately followed by that be- 
 tween the Czar and President Fallieres of 
 France at the same place. The purpose of 
 these interviews, it is understood, was to 
 arrange for intervention in the affairs of 
 Macedonia, the burning question in the rela- 
 tions between Turkey and her Balkan sub- 
 jects. Of course, the Entente Powers knew 
 that such intervention by them would meet 
 with objection from Germany and Austria- 
 
68 The European War 
 
 Hungary. Italy, the other member of the 
 Triple Alliance, had apparently given ear to 
 the seductions of Russia, exciting her aspira- 
 tions in South Tyrol and along the Dalmatian 
 Coast and influencing the feelings of the Ital- 
 ian Royal House through its connection with 
 the Princely House of Montenegro. Italy, 
 they calculated, would at least remain neutral 
 and might even be induced to abandon her 
 allies and cast her lot with them. 
 
 Then came almost like a thunderbolt out 
 of clear sky the Young Turkish revolution 
 in July, 1908. Its purpose was the establish- 
 ment of Constitutional Government. It is 
 quite evident that Great Britain was shaken 
 by it more than the other members of the 
 Entente. Great Britain probably supposed 
 that the cordiality between Germany and 
 Turkey was only a cordiality between Ger- 
 many and the Government of Abdul Hamid 
 and that the overthrow of this Government 
 and the establishment of Constitutional Gov- 
 ernment with a new Sultan or possibly Presi- 
 dent would dispel it and substitute therefor a 
 
The Proximate Causes 69 
 
 friendly feeling towards Great Britain as the 
 Mother of Parliaments. 
 
 Great Britain did not then understand at 
 all that the cordiality between Germany and 
 Turkey was based upon the conviction on the 
 part of the Turkish people that Germany 
 was only seeking their trade, while Great ^^c-*-^, ^ 
 Britain and Russia were seeking their terri- 
 tory, that it was therefore the interest and 
 purpose of Germany to observe and protect 
 Turkey's integrity and independence, while 
 it was the interest and purpose of Great Brit- 
 ain and Russia to undermine and destroy 
 them. 
 
 Whatever may have been the reason, the 
 intervention in Macedonia did not come off. 
 The claimed necessity for it seemed to be 
 forestalled by the establishment of the new 
 Constitutional Government at Constantino- 
 ple, or, more truthfully said, the pretext for 
 it was stripped of all show of respectability. 
 
 But something else did happen which 
 brought Europe to the very brink of war. 
 Bulgaria and the Austro-Hungarian province 
 
yo The ^European War 
 
 of Bosnia-Herzegovina were still subject to 
 the nominal suzerainty of the Turkish Sultan. 
 It was certainly a very slender tie. For 
 thirty years Bulgaria had been essentially an 
 independent sovereign state and for the same 
 period Bosnia-Herzegovina had been admin- 
 istered and developed and really redeemed 
 to civilization by Austria-Hungary. The ap- 
 prehension now seized upon Bulgaria and 
 Austria-Hungary that the new Turkish Gov- 
 ernment contemplated the restoration of its 
 actual supremacy over these former Turkish 
 provinces by including them in the represen- 
 tation In the new Constitutional Parliament 
 at Constantinople. 
 
 Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary forestalled 
 this danger on the selfsame day, October 5, 
 1908, by simply repudiating the suzerainty 
 of the Sultan. This suzerainty had been re- 
 served by the Berlin Congressional Act of 
 1878, that is, by the act of the great powers 
 of Europe represented in that Congress, and 
 it remained now to be seen whether they 
 would intervene and uphold the suzerainty of 
 
The Proximate Causes 71 
 
 the Sultan. It would have been out of all 
 reason for them to have done so, and they 
 did not. Austria-Hungary, however, paid the 
 Porte some ten millions of dollars indemnity. 
 But Servia made a great ado about it and 
 was backed up by Russia. This was a reve- 
 lation of the plan for holding Bosnia-Her- 
 zegovina at least in this relation until Russia 
 should be ready to tear it away by main force 
 from Austria-Hungary, either by the right 
 of might or by capturing Constantinople, suc- 
 ceeding thus to the powers of the Turkish 
 Government, and then reclaiming it through 
 the reserved suzerainty over it. It was at 
 this critical moment that Germany stepped in 
 and stayed the hand of Russia and preserved 
 the peace of Europe. The plan of the En- 
 tente shipwrecked for this once upon the un- 
 preparedness of Russia, the hesitation of 
 Great Britain, and the decision and firmness 
 of Germany. 
 
 The following year King Edward passed 
 away and the indecision of the British Gov- 
 ernment seemed to be increased by this event. 
 
72 The ^European War 
 
 This, together with the hope of at least weak- 
 ening the friendship between Germany and 
 Turkey, under the new regime, and several 
 other things, such as the supposed friendly 
 policy of the new German Chancellor, the 
 influence of the German example on the new 
 socialistic legislation of the British Parlia- 
 ment and pre-occupatlon with the Irish ques- 
 tion, seemed to modify the attitude of Great 
 Britain towards Germany in the direction of 
 a better understanding of Germany's pur- 
 poses. Especially did Great Britain seem to 
 show more comprehension of Idea that Ger- 
 many's Interests and undertakings in Turkey 
 were economic and commercial, while those 
 of Russia were territorial and political. 
 
 But these appearances were quickly dis- 
 pelled again by the movements of France in 
 Morocco. During the five years between 
 1906 and 191 1, France had been continually 
 doing little things In Morocco, which, by a 
 fair interpretation of the Algeciras Conven- 
 tion, were stretches of the powers conferred 
 upon her, and doing them under pretexts 
 
The Proximate Causes 73 
 
 which she herself created, as for example in 
 the Casablanca affair, where the French oiB- 
 cials excited the Moors by desecrating one 
 of their cemeteries and then shelled the town 
 from a warship in order to quell the riot. 
 
 Finally, in 191 1, France proclaimed that 
 the foreign residents of Fez were in great 
 danger and sent an army of some sixteen 
 thousand men to occupy the capital of Mo- 
 rocco. There was nothing wrong in Fez ex- 
 cept the French military occupation of it. 
 That was nothing more nor less than the con- 
 quest of Morocco in the face of the Algeciras 
 Convention forbidding it. Spain, one of the 
 signatories of it, immediately occupied a posi- 
 tion on the west coast of Morocco, and Ger- 
 many, another signatory, sent The Panther, 
 a little warship, to another place, Agadir, 
 not far away from the position of the Span- 
 iards. Great Britain immediately espoused 
 the French cause, although she herself was 
 one of the signatories of the ruptured Algeci- 
 ras Convention, and almost threatened Ger- 
 many with war. The British justified them- 
 
74 The ^European War 
 
 selves for this apparently strange position of 
 upholding the violator of a compact, to which 
 she herself was a signatory, against the pro- 
 test of another signatory by representing that 
 Germany was seeking at Agadir a naval base 
 for interfering with the trade between Great 
 Britain and South America. But this was 
 only the pretext. The real reason for the 
 British attitude lay a great deal deeper. It 
 was to secure the compensation to France for 
 the French withdrawal of rights In Egypt 
 and the French approval of the British plan 
 for annexing to Egypt the regions between 
 Egypt and Persia. The Germans knew this 
 well enough then, and there were many 
 among them who thought that Germany 
 should have assumed the risk of war at that 
 juncture under the Issue of upholding the 
 Algeclras Convention, but the Emperor 
 would have none of It. His diplomatists suc- 
 ceeded In settling the matter peaceably by 
 accepting from France a concession which 
 was barely sufficient to save Germany from 
 humiliation. 
 
The Proximate Causes 75 
 
 During this same time, 1911-1912, another 
 significant movement was in course of accom- 
 plishment further eastward. I mean the 
 occupation of Tripoli by Italy. It is most 
 difficult to believe that this was really sup- 
 ported or desired by Italy's allies of the 
 Triple Alliance and there is no evidence that 
 it was. It exhausted Italy's strength at the 
 same time that it exhausted Turkey's 
 strength, and made Italy and Turkey ene- 
 mies, all of which things were directly con- 
 trary to the interests of Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary, if Italy was to remain true to her 
 allies. As said in the preceding chapter, I 
 have it from excellent British authority that 
 it was Great Britain which prompted Italy to 
 this adventure, her object being to place Italy 
 in a position where, in case of a war between 
 the Powers of the Entente and the Powers of 
 the Triple Alliance, Italy would not be able 
 to discharge her duty to her allies. This is 
 entirely intelligible. It is also easy to under- 
 stand that Great Britain might prefer to 
 have Italy as her immediate neighbor in 
 
76 The "European War 
 
 North Africa rather than France. If it was 
 British diplomacy which instigated this en- 
 terprise, it was certainly a fine stroke, and 
 the British Foreign Secretary may well be 
 proud of it. Moreover, the instigation of 
 the Balkan League at this same moment by 
 Great Britain's ally, Russia, against Turkey 
 and Austria-Hungary points to the same 
 origin of Italy's Tripoli enterprise. 
 
 The final developments of the proximate 
 causes of the great catastrophe follow now 
 rapidly upon each other. While France and 
 Russia were organizing and financing the 
 Balkan League, Great Britain seemed to 
 become apprehensive of the destruction of 
 Turkey and the advance of Russia to the 
 Mediterranean. She seemed, for the mo- 
 ment, to prefer the German commercial 
 interests in Asiatic Turkey to the Russian 
 territorial projects. It is claimed that some 
 understanding with Germany about the Bag- 
 dad railroad was in process of realization. 
 Then the storm broke. The Balkan allies 
 attacked Turkey first, while it is claimed by 
 
The Proximate Causes 77 
 
 many well-informed persons that Russia in- 
 tended them to attack Austria-Hungary first. 
 During the autumn of 19 12 they were gen- 
 erally victorious and drove the Turkish 
 forces back to their last defensible line 
 before Constantinople. 
 
 At this moment, in the first days of 19 13, 
 Russian military movements from the Trans- 
 Caucasus towards Armenia were discovered. 
 Both Germany and Great Britain understood 
 them fully. They meant the seizure of a 
 broad belt of Turkish territory extending 
 through Armenia to the northeast corner of 
 the Mediterranean. They meant the destruc- 
 tion of the Turkish Empire in Asia, the de- 
 struction of the German commercial interests 
 therein, and an uncomfortable nearness of 
 Russia to Egypt and the Suez Canal. In 
 possession of the Armenian plateau, Russia 
 would be able, according to military opinion, 
 not only to reach the bay of Alexandretta, 
 but to occupy at pleasure Syria, Babylonia, 
 and Mesopotamia ; in other words, to defeat 
 the British plan for joining Egypt with 
 
78 The ^European War 
 
 Persia by the occupation of the regions lying 
 between them. 
 
 Germany again interfered at the critical 
 moment and demanded the cessation of this 
 movement. Great Britain felt that, for the 
 moment, her own interests coincided with 
 those of Germany, and Russia yielded, 
 though with a very bad grace, and with in- 
 creased anger against Germany. At the same 
 moment the ambitions of Bulgaria ruptured 
 the Balkan League and turned the war 
 against Turkey into a war between the Bal- 
 kan states. This saved Austria-Hungary for 
 the moment from the attack which the Bal- 
 kan states, following the victory over Tur- 
 key, were to have made upon her. The 
 European war appeared to be again averted 
 and Great Britain seemed to be nearing Ger- 
 many. But, alas ! it was only appearance. 
 
 Turned back by Germany from the way 
 through Armenia to the Mediterranean, Rus- 
 sia became now fully determined to revert 
 to the old policy of seizing Constantinople, 
 and Great Britain must have become con- 
 
The Proximate Causes 79 
 
 vinced that of the three ways for Russia to 
 reach the sea on the south, the one through 
 Constantinople would be least injurious to 
 British interests. Great Britain, moreover, 
 understood that Germany and Austria-Hun- 
 gary would stand across this way also, and 
 that even if Russia succeeded In overcoming 
 their opposition she would come out of the 
 struggle so exhausted that she need no longer 
 be feared, and that also Germany and Aus- 
 tria-Hungary would be weakened, one of the 
 chief points of British diplomacy. 
 
 Angered by the opposition of Germany to 
 her plan for seizing Armenia, Russia now 
 turned to her French ally and obtained from 
 her the reintroductlon of the three years' 
 term of active military service, raising the 
 peace footing of the active army to 800,000 
 or more and the promise of a new loan of 
 five hundred million dollars. 
 
 The Germans knew only too well that the 
 hour was rapidly approaching, and made 
 their own preparations to meet the increase 
 of military strength on the part of France 
 
8o The European War 
 
 and Russia. The German Government still 
 hoped, however, that the danger to British 
 interests involved in the threatened dissolu- 
 tion of the Ottoman Empire by the Russian 
 plan, either by way of Armenia or Constan- 
 tinople, might deter Great Britain from be- 
 coming the military ally of Russia and France 
 in their attack on Germany and Austria- 
 Hungary. But the German Government and 
 the German people did not sufficiently appre- 
 ciate Great Britain's fear of the German com- 
 petition in trade and commerce and of the 
 growth of the German Navy. 
 
 The British Government must have had 
 serious misgivings. The resignation of three 
 members of the Cabinet is good evidence of 
 that. But the majority of that body evi- 
 dently reached the conclusion that, after the 
 general exhaustion of the Continental Powers 
 by unrelenting war, Great Britain would be 
 better able to deal with Russia later on than 
 she was then to cope with the rapidly devel- 
 oping power and prosperity of Germany. 
 And so when the Russian puppet in the Bal- 
 
The Proximate Causes 8 1 
 
 kans touched the match to the train that had 
 thus been laid, and Austria-Hungary sought 
 to defend Its own house against the conflagra- 
 tion, the British Government encouraged 
 Servia to resist, encouraged Russia to inter- 
 fere, encouraged France to support Russia 
 and promised her own support to France. 
 This is the bare and bald truth. All the rest 
 is the diplomatic veil of deception. The his- 
 tory of the proximate causes of the war sus- 
 tains, thus, the Interpretation we have placed 
 upon the British White Paper, and is recon- 
 cilable with no other interpretation. 
 
 There are, however, still deeper causes for 
 this war which spring out of the irresistible 
 movements and purposes of that Destiny 
 which guides the world through the different 
 stages of Its civilization. Let us try to get 
 a glimpse of these. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE UNDERLYING CAUSES OF THE WAR 
 
 Q OME days ago I read an editorial in one 
 of our leading journals in which the 
 writer said that those persons who were en- 
 deavoring to explain the German point of 
 view of the great European movement now 
 realizing itself were simply beating out their 
 brains against the stone wall of American 
 public opinion. It was something for this 
 writer to acknowledge that they had any 
 brains to beat out, and I have no doubt that 
 they are all deeply grateful for the favor, for 
 they have certainly learned to appreciate 
 small favors. I do not know whether the 
 noble writer classes me among those whose 
 brains are now bespattering this adamantine 
 wall, I presume he does. But there is just 
 enough of them left in their original home 
 to evolve this thought as the keynote of this 
 chapter, namely, that there is something still 
 
 82 
 
The Underlying Causes 83 
 
 harder than this stone wall of public opinion, 
 and still harder, though in a different sense, 
 than the bombproof casemate cranium of the 
 man who wrote that editorial. That some- 
 thing is the Destiny which rules this world. 
 It is the power which puts one civilization 
 after another at the head of the column of 
 human progress in the world-historic march 
 towards universal civilization. It shall be 
 our effort in this chapter to gain a point of 
 observation from which we may determine 
 whither this column is advancing and which 
 of the Nations is, for our age, its true leader. 
 I do not think it difficult for any deep 
 reader of the world's history to satisfy him- 
 self as to the first question. Through all 
 the changes of government and empire, 
 through all of the successions of peoples and 
 nations to the leadership, and through all of 
 the turnings and windings and zigzags of the 
 course, he sees mankind ever progressing to- 
 wards a more and more general distribution 
 of the fruits of civilization, namely, intelli- 
 gence, education, character, and wealth ; and 
 
84 The lEuropean War 
 
 he sees the leadership in the march passing 
 from hand to hand In accordance with the 
 ability to bring about this wider and wider 
 distribution from age to age. 
 
 The second question, however, requires 
 more detailed. If not more exact, examina- 
 tion. Some years ago, in the company of its 
 steward, I was going over one of those mag- 
 nificent ducal estates in England, which ren- 
 der England the most beautiful spot on earth 
 to look upon. As I viewed its wonderful 
 lawns and pastures and forests, an exquisite 
 expanse for hunt, play, and recreation, I 
 asked the steward whether the products of 
 the estate supported the workers and dwell- 
 ers on it, not including the Duke and his im- 
 mediate family. He answered promptly, 
 "No." I then asked him whence the addi- 
 tional sum necessary for their support came. 
 He answered as promptly that the Duke fur- 
 nished it. I queried again of him as to where 
 the Duke procured It, whether his other coun- 
 try estates were more profitable. He replied: 
 "No," that the Duke's income was from the 
 
The Underlying Causes 85 
 
 rent of his houses in London. I pushed the 
 investigation still further and Inquired as 
 to the source of the means of the Duke's city 
 tenants enabling them to pay the Duke rent. 
 He explained that It was manufacture, trade, 
 and commerce; and when I requested to 
 know with whom this commerce and trade 
 were carried on and to whom the manufac- 
 tured products were sold, he answered again 
 unhesitatingly: "With and to the Colonies 
 as the fixed and regular course and with and 
 to the rest of the world as circumstances per- 
 mit." Still further, I asked of him whether 
 all the landlords of England were In the same 
 condition economically as the one he served, 
 and his response was In the affirmative. 
 
 From these brief but pointed replies I 
 gathered that the British economic system 
 consisted of the following fundamental ele- 
 ments: First, an upper ten to twenty thou- 
 sand — with their Immediate families we will 
 call them fifty to one hundred thousand — 
 owning the land, the houses, and the capital 
 of the British Islands, the Landlords, the 
 
86 The ^European War 
 
 Railroad Kings, the Manufacturing Lords, 
 the Shipping Lords, the Great Bankers, and 
 the Large Importers; second, the division of 
 the land in the country into vast estates, the 
 princely homes of these privileged classes, 
 and used in so great measure for the grati- 
 fication of the taste of the owners and for 
 their sport, pleasure, and recreation, as to 
 reduce the products of agriculture to about 
 one-fourth of what is necessary for the feed- 
 ing of the inhabitants of the Islands; third, 
 the gathering of the great mass of the pop- 
 ulation into cities, the centres of manufac- 
 ture, trade, and commerce, resulting in over- 
 crowding and the poverty, sickness, vice, and 
 ignorance attendant thereon, that is. In the 
 development of the slum and the proletariat; 
 fourth, a vast Colonial dominion, ever in- 
 creasing in extent, in which to dispose of the 
 manufactured products of the Islands and 
 from which to draw in exchange the agricul- 
 tural products to feed them, and from which 
 to draw also mining wealth, official salaries, 
 and liberal interest upon loaned and invested 
 
The Underlying Causes 87 
 
 capital; fifth, a vast merchant marine, suffi- 
 cient in its strength to control the trade and 
 commerce between the Islands and the Colo- 
 nial Empire in all parts of the world, and a 
 vast navy, able to sustain and protect this 
 control at will by physical force. 
 
 I communicated these thoughts substan- 
 tially as here stated to my host and asked him 
 whether it was a fair presentation of the 
 existing British economic system. He replied 
 that it was, with the modification that in prac- 
 tice Great Britain permitted free trade be- 
 tween her Colonies and other countries. I 
 said to him that Great Britain can do that 
 safely now (1887), because as a matter of 
 fact she has at this time no real competitor 
 in manufacture and commerce — but suppose 
 some successful competitor should arise? He 
 answered: "We should have to shut them 
 out by law or destroy them by force." But, 
 I inquired finally, would your Colonies ac- 
 quiesce in a protective tariff imposed by the 
 British Parliament against the rest of the 
 world for the profit of the British manufac- 
 
88 The ^European War 
 
 turer? And he replied : " Possibly not, and 
 in that case we would have to destroy our 
 competitor by physical force." 
 
 I cannot perceive that this British eco- 
 nomic system has changed substantially be- 
 tween that date (1887) and the present. Be- 
 tween then and now It has been obliged to 
 release Ireland, in large degree, from its 
 clutch, and it has introduced some features 
 of the German pension and Insurance system 
 for the relief of its proletariat. On the other 
 hand nearly two millions of square miles 
 more of the earth's surface with the people 
 inhabiting the same have been brought, 
 chiefly by fire and sword, within its control, 
 and the development of American multl- 
 millionairedom with the aspiration of the 
 members of it for British titles has opened 
 up, through International marriage, a new 
 and productive source of contribution and 
 revenue for the British nobility, tending to 
 the preservation of the system. 
 
 At the beginning of this century, Mr. 
 Chamberlain and his followers made an ear- 
 
The Underlying Causes 89 
 
 nest eifort to ward off the dangers to the 
 system of allowing other countries to trade 
 freely with the British Colonies by proposing 
 the adoption of the high protective tariff 
 principle, but were unable to make the Par- 
 liament and the people realize the situation. 
 They did not believe that any other country 
 could successfully compete with British man- 
 ufacture, and they shrank from the effect 
 upon the Colonies of an attempt to force 
 them artificially to purchase British goods. 
 And so, in spite of some preferences in favor 
 of the British products, the economic system 
 of the Empire was on August i, 19 14, sub- 
 stantially as described in general outline 
 above. 
 
 It is a general feature of political history 
 that the governmental system tends to adjust 
 itself to the economic. It is not difficult to 
 see that such an economic system as the Brit- 
 ish, having, as its keynotes, indefinite Colo- 
 nial expansion and the control of the com- 
 merce of the seas, would require, on the Gov- 
 ernmental side, an overwhelming navy, pro- 
 
90 The ^European War 
 
 fessional colonial armies, and a more and 
 more unlimited Government; a Government 
 which can act promptly and decisively and, 
 if necessary, secretly. This is precisely the 
 course taken in the recent developments of 
 the British political system. 
 
 During the last ten years, by the invention 
 and construction of the dreadnaughts, the 
 Navy has been made invincible and has won 
 for Great Britain the sovereignty over the 
 seas. At this moment no nation in the world 
 and no combination of nations venture to 
 dispute this or even to assert its or their 
 own heretofore claimed rights thereon 
 against it. At the same time the colonial 
 armies have been strengthened and disci- 
 plined and seasoned by action until they are 
 not only capable of suppressing insurrection 
 and revolt, but of extending the boundaries 
 of the Colonial Empire in all parts of the 
 world. 
 
 Lastly, the British Government has grad- 
 ually become a group of Ministers wielding 
 the unlimited powers of the majority in an 
 
The Underlying Causes 91 
 
 unlimited House of Commons. There is no 
 longer a British constitution according to the 
 American idea of constitutional government. 
 With us constitutional government is limited 
 government, government limited judicially 
 by the rights of the individual, expressed and 
 guaranteed by a written instrument, ordained 
 by the sovereign people and interpreted and 
 enforced by the courts, and limited politically 
 by the constitutional distribution of powers 
 between, and the coordination of, separate 
 and independent departments of government. 
 In this only true sense of constitutional gov- 
 ernment, the British Government is a des- 
 potism. There is no judicial body which 
 can uphold the rights of the individual 
 against an act of Parliament; in fact, against 
 an act of Parliament no Individual right ex- 
 ists. There is no Independent executive 
 which can veto, modify, check, or delay an 
 act of Parliament. And the House of Lords 
 can now no longer thwart or even modify 
 permanently the will of the House of Com- 
 mons, wielded by the majority party in that 
 
92 The European War 
 
 House, under the leadership of its Executive 
 Committee, the Cabinet of Ministers. 
 
 The Russian economic and political sys- 
 tems have more points of likeness with the 
 British than is usually conceived. Substitut- 
 ing the Czar for the almighty House of 
 Commons, and the Grand Ducal circle for 
 the Cabinet, and keeping in mind that the 
 connection of the dependencies with the nu- 
 cleus of the Empire is territorial instead of 
 oversea, and that, therefore, the necessary 
 organ of military power is a vast army in- 
 stead of an overwhelming navy, and you have 
 in substance the elements whose play and 
 interplay bring about something like the same 
 results and produce something like the same 
 policy as in the British system. At least we 
 may say that the two are admirably adapted 
 to supplement each other in the conquest of 
 the world. They possess between them now 
 nearly half of it, and if they can only agree 
 between themselves to let the one have the 
 whole of Asia and Continental Europe and 
 the other all the rest, then possibly will the 
 
The Underlying Causes 93 
 
 Millennium be ushered In and, with the Bear 
 and the Lion In loving embrace, mankind 
 may enjoy everlasting peace. 
 
 But will the God of History, the Destiny 
 which guides the world's progress, permit 
 such a travesty of the world's civilization, 
 such a mockery of the world's advancement, 
 to accomplish Itself In the twentieth century? 
 I cannot believe It. I think that this hand 
 of Destiny Is preparing something better, 
 In fact has prepared something better, some- 
 thing which shall emerge triumphant from 
 this great struggle of the nations and, chas- 
 tened and refined thereby, will, by Its example 
 and Influence, point the way for the develop- 
 ment of man. 
 
 The present organization, economic and 
 political, of the German Empire, which also 
 bears In Its constitution the more significant 
 title of the United States of Germany, is in 
 very many Important respects the opposing 
 counterpart of that of the British United 
 Kingdom and Colonial Empire. Its eco- 
 nomic system is by far the most efficient, most 
 
94 The European War 
 
 genuinely democratic which exists at the pres- 
 ent moment In the world, or has ever ex- 
 isted. There Is no great state In the world 
 today In which there Is so general and even 
 a distribution of the fruits of civilization, 
 spiritual and material, among all the people 
 as in the United States of Germany. And 
 there Is no state, great or small, In which the 
 general plane of civilization Is so high. Edu- 
 cation Is universal and Illiteracy Is completely 
 stamped out; there are no slums, no proletar- 
 iat, and no pauperism; prosperity Is univer- 
 sal; and the sense of duty is the governing 
 principle of life, public and private, from the 
 highest to the lowest. The Institutions of 
 the country are adapted and adjusted to 
 bring each Individual person Into the place 
 and sphere for which he or she Is best capaci- 
 tated, thus avoiding loss by the abrasions 
 of economic friction. 
 
 First and most fundamental of all, Ger- 
 man agriculture has been systematically de- 
 veloped, improved, and protected until it 
 has reached the highest point of productive- 
 
The Underlying Causes 95 
 
 ness known to the world. It is a land of 
 small proprietors, where relatively few great 
 estates exist and where the relatively few 
 tenant farmers hold leases of communal land 
 rather than of land in private ownership. 
 Forests are preserved for furnishing wood 
 and lumber and protecting the water courses, 
 but pasture land is limited and the greatest 
 possible area is kept under the plow. Fos- 
 tered by law, pursued with intelligence and 
 individual interest, and enriched by science, 
 the German agriculture is so intensive that 
 one acre of German land produces as much 
 as three acres of Russian land, although 
 originally poorer and more difficult to culti- 
 vate. Feed the people with home product, 
 has been the first principle of the German 
 economic system. With two hundred and 
 eight thousand square miles of territory, an 
 area not as great as our single State of 
 Texas, the United States of Germany can 
 produce all the food absolutely necessary to 
 sustain seventy millions of people. The 
 German Empire does not thus absolutely 
 
96 The ^European War 
 
 require colonies for her food necessities, nor 
 does It need the rent from city houses to 
 keep up Its farms and country estates. In 
 Germany the country supports the city more 
 than the city supports the country. 
 
 Upon this natural and healthy foundation 
 for their economic system, consciously and 
 tenaciously preserved, the Germans have 
 built their manufactures and their commerce. 
 They have built these carefully, scientifically, 
 and with unwearying Industry. They have 
 not allowed factory life to make slums of 
 their cities, nor to produce a proletariat. By 
 requiring employers to contribute with the 
 state and the employees to the establishment 
 of insurance and pension funds, they have se- 
 cured to labor Its proper share in the wealth 
 produced. And by enlisting the personal in- 
 terest of the employees In the excellence of 
 their own work, they have brought the prod- 
 ucts of their manufactures to such a degree 
 of perfection that wherever they are ad- 
 mitted they compete successfully with those 
 of any other country. 
 
The Underlying Causes 97 
 
 German commerce therefore Is not de- 
 pendent upon vast colonial possessions. De- 
 pots, coaling, and supply stations, of course, 
 It must have, and a strong navy for Its pro- 
 tection against the robbers of the sea, but 
 Germany does not find It necessary to her 
 existence to be continually grabbing the ter- 
 ritory of the world for colonial markets. The 
 open door Is all Germany needs, with the 
 excellence of her manufactures and the effi- 
 ciency of her commerce and methods of 
 trade, to assure her Indefinite Industrial ex- 
 pansion. Her economic system Is thus not 
 the system of a land-grabbing empire. In the 
 twenty years of her wonderful Industrial 
 development between the years 1890 and 
 19 10, she acquired less than two thousand 
 square miles of foreign territory, while Great 
 Britain acquired nearly two million, Russia 
 almost as much, France six to eight hundred 
 thousand, Belgium a million, and even the 
 United States of America about one hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand, and while Germany 
 acquired the bits of this small area. In about 
 
98 The ^European War 
 
 every case, by purchase or lease, all the other 
 countries seized most, if not all, of their 
 gains by military conquest. 
 
 Let us now turn to the German political 
 system and mark its points of difference from 
 that of the British Empire. In the first place 
 it is a federal union of self-governing States. 
 Such a system requires a written constitution 
 to delimit with necessary exactness the rela- 
 tive governmental spheres of the Central 
 Government and the States of the Union. 
 The German political system Is founded upon 
 such a Constitution, which was framed by 
 representatives of the governments of the 
 several States, adopted by a convention of 
 popular delegates chosen by universal man- 
 hood suffrage, and ratified by the legislatures 
 of the different States. 
 
 Besides distributing all governmental 
 power between the Imperial Government 
 and the States of the Union, it distributes 
 the powers of the Imperial Government 
 between the legislature and the executive, 
 conferring upon the Imperial Legislature 
 
The Underlying Causes 99 
 
 — a body the members of one house of 
 which are chosen by universal manhood suf- 
 frage and direct election, while those of the 
 other are appointed by the States of the 
 Union — the power to make the laws, and 
 upon the executive, the Emperor, the power 
 to execute the laws or rather to supervise the 
 execution of the laws. The German Govern- 
 ment is thus constitutionally limited govern- 
 ment, limited politically by the distribution 
 of governmental powers between the Impe- 
 rial Government and the States of the Union 
 and by the distribution of the powers of the 
 Imperial Government between the legislature 
 and the executive, and limited judicially by 
 the bills of individual rights in each of the 
 State constitutions and by the fixing of cer- 
 tain of the fundamental duties and rights of 
 the individual in the Imperial Constitution. 
 One among these duties, which must also 
 be regarded as a fundamental right, is the 
 constitutional requirement upon every able- 
 bodied male German to bear arms, and the 
 fixing of the time for which his services are 
 
loo The European War 
 
 or may be required, which also means beyond 
 which they may not be required. I call this 
 a right as well as a duty. In the Constitution 
 of the United States of America it is so 
 treated, and is declared as follows : *'A well- 
 regulated militia being necessary to the secur- 
 ity of a free state, the right of the people to 
 keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." 
 It is the German way to put the duty first and 
 treat the right as the attending incident. This 
 is the keynote to the German character, polit- 
 ical and economic as well as private. The 
 rights guaranteed to the individual by this 
 constitutional provision requiring universal 
 military service are that there shall be no 
 professional army separate from the general 
 citizenship of the Empire with separate in- 
 terests from those of that citizenship, no 
 inability on the part of that general citizen- 
 ship, springing from ignorance of the use of 
 arms, to cope with any arbitrary use by gov- 
 ernment of military power, and that there 
 shall be no power in the Government to re- 
 quire more than the Constitution prescribes. 
 
The Underlying Causes loi 
 
 The so-called German militarism turns out, 
 thus, when correctly understood, to be not 
 only a popular duty but a popular right of 
 the most fundamental and, for Germany, 
 most essential character. It originated in the 
 great efforts of Prussia to rid the German 
 States of the invasions of the first Napoleon. 
 Its spirit and purpose were, therefore, at 
 the outset, defensive, and the point of that 
 defense was first turned against France. But 
 the expulsion of the French from German 
 soil was accomplished by the aid of Russia. 
 Russia was, thereby, introduced into Ger- 
 many and her influence over the politics of 
 middle Europe became balefuUy paramount. 
 
 In the latter half of the century Russia's 
 so-called Pan-Slavic plans, the plans for the 
 disruption of the Ottoman Empire and the 
 conquest of Constantinople, began to take 
 form, and Germany now found itself com- 
 pelled to defend middle Europe against the 
 peril threatening it from the east as well as 
 from the west, and this has been its mission 
 to the present day. Down to August i, 19 14, 
 
I02 The -European War 
 
 German diplomacy, backed by German mili- 
 tarism, had been able to keep the peril from 
 the east and the peril from the west apart 
 and to give to Continental Europe such a 
 period of peace and prosperity as It had 
 never before enjoyed, but on that eventful 
 day British diplomacy triumphed over Ger- 
 man diplomacy and brought the two perils 
 together and sealed the union by British de- 
 termination to destroy the naval and com- 
 mercial power of Germany. 
 
 German militarism Is, thus, when properly 
 understood, seen to be democratic and de- 
 fensive. It Is the only kind of militarism 
 compatible with popular liberty and consti- 
 tutional government. It Is the permanent, 
 professional army in rank and file which, on 
 the other hand. Is dangerous to liberty at 
 home and given to adventure abroad. More- 
 over, German militarism has been so devel- 
 oped and regulated as to prove rather an 
 economic advantage than an economic bur- 
 den. This is owing to the fact that the 
 German army Is not simply an organization 
 
The Underlying Causes 103 
 
 for drill, discipline, and fighting, but that it 
 is also a school of general physical culture, 
 through which the average life of German 
 men has been increased by ten years and their 
 average capacity for any kind of work by 
 twenty-five per cent; that it is a school of in- 
 tellectual culture in which, besides military 
 drill and tactics, mathematics, engineering, 
 physics, geography, and sanitation are taught 
 to all the men; that it is a school of moral 
 culture which prevents demoralization and 
 dissoluteness in the young men at the most 
 critical age; that it is a school of politeness 
 in which rudeness of manners gives way to 
 habits of courtesy; and that it Is a school 
 of genuine patriotism through which the 
 spirit of provincialism is made to yield to 
 national loyalty. These educational and 
 practical compensations overbalance the eco- 
 nomic burden of German militarism and dis- 
 tinguish it from the militarism of Russia and 
 France, although they are all based upon the 
 same principle of universal military service. 
 The system of commandership Is, also, much 
 
" ^ u ^'104 The ^European War 
 
 >^ 
 
 less autocratic than In the military systems of 
 Great Britain, Russia, or France. The par- 
 ticipation in the same by the executive heads 
 of the different States of the Union and the 
 exclusive power of the Federal Council, the 
 upper house of the legislature, to authorize a 
 declaration of war, give the German system 
 a constitutional character and limitation 
 which the others do not possess at all. 
 
 Finally, the German communal and local 
 governmental organization Is the most per- 
 fect known to modern politics. It began its 
 modern development about a hundred years 
 ago with the municipal system of Stein, and 
 was completed with what is known as the 
 KreiS'Ordntinff, the provincial and district or- 
 ganization, to which we may attach the name 
 of von Gneist, though others participated In 
 Its creation. Under it the most honest, effi- 
 cient, and prosperous communal life which 
 the world has ever known has been produced 
 and developed. No slums, no illiteracy, and 
 no proletariat are to be found In any German 
 city or commune, while the control is more 
 
The Underlying Causes 105 
 
 genuinely democratic and the distribution of 
 the fruits of civilization is more even and 
 general than what prevails in any other 
 country. 
 
 To me the attempt made in Great Britain 
 and the United States to represent Heinrich 
 von Treitschke as the fashioner of German 
 institutions and policies seems, to say the 
 least, disingenuous. I knew von Treitschke 
 well. He was my teacher, and I felt great 
 admiration for his brilliant rhetorical powers 
 and his enthusiastic nationalism. I never 
 took him very seriously, and I never knew 
 that anybody else did. He said a great many 
 sound and sensible things and some extrava- 
 gant things. The sound things are, however, 
 never quoted now, but his extravaganzas are 
 developed into caricatures. He was a man 
 largely shut away from practical personal 
 intercourse with the world by his extreme 
 deafness, and was a prey to his own imagi- 
 nation. I remember distinctly a conversation 
 with him in the year 1878, in which he told 
 me that orthodox political economy was not 
 
io6 The European War 
 
 then well represented in the Berlin Univer- 
 sity, that a young teacher named Adolf Wag- 
 ner, with socialistic leanings, was guiding the 
 students astray, and that the Faculty of 
 Philosophy In the University had requested 
 him, Treltschke, to deliver a course of lec- 
 tures on political economy as an offset to 
 Wagner's Influence and that he was prepar- 
 ing the course. But those of us who are ac- 
 quainted with German Institutions know now 
 that Germany has followed Wagner, rather 
 than von Treltschke, In the development of 
 its economic Institutions, and that the demo- 
 cratic socialistic system of pensions and insur- 
 ance, through which a more even distribution 
 of wealth between capital and labor has been 
 attained In Germany than elsewhere, is to be 
 attributed, in large part at least, to Wagner 
 and not at all to von Treltschke. And yet I 
 have not seen the name of Adolf Wagner 
 mentioned a single time In any American 
 newspaper since the outbreak of this war. 
 
 Neither had vonTreitschke any more influ- 
 ence upon the development of the political 
 
The Underlying Causes 107 
 
 institutions of the Empire than of the eco- 
 nomic institutions. As I remember him, he 
 was a member of the National Liberal party, 
 and a staunch Unionist; but the leader of the 
 party at that time was Edward Lasker, who 
 certainly did a vast deal more than von 
 Treitschke in forming its principles and poli- 
 cies and in securing the legislation which that 
 party left upon the statute book of the Em- 
 pire ; and yet I have never seen the mention 
 of Edward Lasker's name in any American 
 newspaper since the outbreak of this war. 
 The man, however, who, after the forma- 
 tion of the Empire, exercised, next to Bis- 
 marck himself, the largest influence upon the 
 development of Germany's political and judi- 
 cial institutions was Rudolf von Gneist, Pro- 
 fessor and Rector in the Berlin University, 
 chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the 
 Reichstag, and teacher of Prince William, 
 now the German Emperor, in political science 
 and public law. I knew this man well also. 
 I attended his lectures and worked in his 
 seminar. He was a great student of English 
 
io8 The European War 
 
 and American institutions. He spent years 
 in England investigating the working of the 
 British Government from highest to. lowest 
 instance. He wrote the two monumental 
 works : The Administrative Law of England 
 and Self Government in England^ and it was 
 under the influence of the principles put forth 
 in these that local administration in Germany 
 has been modified and reformed in no incon- 
 siderable degree. Moreover, it was Pro- 
 fessor von Gneist who contended that the 
 German imperial courts had, from the nature 
 of written constitutional law, the power to 
 nullify any legislative act they might be called 
 upon to apply, which, in their opinion, con- 
 travened the provisions of the Constitution, 
 one of the most fundamental principles of 
 genuine constitutional government, as we 
 Americans well know. And yet I have never 
 seen the name of Professor von Gneist men- 
 tioned in any American newspaper since the 
 outbreak of this war. 
 
 Everything has been done, and done sys- 
 tematically, and done according to a seem- 
 
The Underlying Causes 109 
 
 Ingly long-matured and sinister plan to give 
 the American people not simply an errone- 
 ous^ but an absolutely false, conception of 
 German Institutions, purposes, and aspira- 
 tions. But all this is vain and futile, short- 
 sighted and injurious. As Lincoln said, 
 "You can fool all the people some of the 
 time and some of the people all the time, but 
 you cannot fool all the people all of the 
 time." The Destiny which rules this world 
 will sooner or later sweep away this veil of 
 falsehood, deceit, and hypocrisy and will 
 place that one of the two systems I have de- 
 scribed in the van of civilization's onward 
 march which will bring to mankind as a 
 ■ whole the largest store of the fruits of civili- 
 zation, most evenly distributed among all the 
 members of the human race. 
 
 This might, conceivably, be accomplished 
 through peaceable development, but in the 
 past it has been chiefly done through the up- 
 heavals of war. And it may be that this is 
 just what is happening now. It may be that 
 mankind is now being called upon to make its 
 
no The European War 
 
 selection, or, more correctly, to see the selec- 
 tion made for it through the mighty events 
 now transpiring, between the two systems 
 above delineated: on the one hand, the sys- 
 tem of the Colonial Empire, with its upper 
 ten thousand rolling in wealth, splendor, and 
 luxury and its hundreds of thousands, nay 
 millions, groveling in ignorance, want, 
 misery and crime; with its grip upon a 
 quarter of the earth's land surface and a 
 quarter of mankind of all races and colors 
 as its subjects; with its continual territorial 
 expansion through intrigue, war, and blood- 
 shed; with its sovereignty over the high 
 seas and a vast naval power to sustain it, 
 which may, at any moment, shut up the ports 
 of any other country and cut it off from any 
 communication with the outside world, and, 
 in many cases, starve it into submission to 
 its will; with its unlimited government in 
 the hands of a small group of men respon- 
 sible only to a little larger group, a small 
 group of men who do not hesitate to commit 
 the Empire in secret agreements and under- 
 
The Underlying Causes iii 
 
 Standings of the most momentous nature; 
 and with its necessity to destroy by force any 
 successful rival in the world's trade; or, on 
 the other hand, the system of national states 
 of moderate and substantially permanent 
 areas and of homogeneous populations ; with 
 constitutionally limited government partici- 
 pated in, through the federal system, by the 
 representative men of every section; with a 
 fair distribution of the fruits of civilization 
 so that there shall be no illiteracy, no pau- 
 perism and little crime ; with agriculture and 
 industry so developed and balanced that each 
 nation may substantially provide itself with 
 the necessities of life; with manufactures 
 which, by their excellence alone, will com- 
 mand markets ; with no compelling necessity, 
 therefore, for colonies and dependencies nor 
 for wars through which to acquire them ; and 
 with the whole world as an open field where 
 intelligence, capacity, honesty, and industry 
 will not be cheated by brute force of their 
 just reward. 
 
 Which of these systems now is the system 
 
112 The European War 
 
 for the twentieth century? Which will lead 
 mankind to the higher plane of civilization? 
 Which is best calculated to give mankind 
 prosperity and peace? I divine that this 
 is the great problem for the solution of which 
 Europe is now writhing in the agony of a 
 great labor pain of human development, and 
 while God grant that we may escape active 
 participation in the suffering, we cannot avoid 
 having our own interests most profoundly in- 
 volved in the outcome. Let us make sure 
 that we correctly conceive what those inter- 
 ests are and how they will be best subserved. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AMERICAN INTERESTS IN THE OUTCOME OF 
 THE WAR 
 
 T SEE the prophecy so often expressed that 
 something terrible may come to us and to 
 the world through German Militarism, while 
 British Navalism passes almost unchallenged, 
 that I wonder whether one of the qualities of 
 the prophet is that he is constituted without 
 memory. I do not think that I possess any 
 of the qualities of the prophet, certainly not 
 the one just mentioned, for I find myself al- 
 ways going back a few steps in order to get 
 direction and momentum for every new 
 spring forward. After all, this seems to me 
 the surer way. It certainly is when there is 
 such rich experience from which to draw as 
 there is upon the subject of our relation to 
 German Militarism and British Navalism. 
 
 We may say that our experience with both 
 begins with and extends through our exist- 
 
 113 
 
114 ^^^ ^European War 
 
 ence here. In our Colonial Period almost the 
 entire western border of our country was 
 occupied by Germans. It fell to them, there- 
 fore, to defend, in first instance, the colonists 
 from the attacks of the French and the In- 
 dians. They formed what was known in 
 those times as the Regiment of Royal Ameri- 
 cans, a brigade rather than a regiment, num- 
 bering some four thousand men, and the 
 bands led by Nicholas Herkimer and Conrad 
 Weiser. Many of the men composing these 
 bodies had been schooled in military tactics 
 and discipline in their German fatherland and 
 the service which they rendered in creating, 
 organizing, and drilling this little army of 
 some six thousand men cannot be overesti- 
 mated. It enabled us to resist successfully 
 the French and their Indian allies in the 
 Seven Years War, which they made upon us 
 from 1756 to 1763, and it gave us a nucleus 
 for our Revolutionary Army. At the out- 
 break of our War of Independence, Herki- 
 mer, Muhlenberg, and Schlatter gathered the 
 Germans in the Mohawk Valley and the Vir- 
 
American Interests 115 
 
 ginia Valley together and organized them 
 into companies for service. Baron von Ot- 
 tendorff, another German soldier, recruited 
 and drilled the famous Armand Legion. And 
 when Washington's first bodyguard was sus- 
 pected of treasonable sentiments and plans, 
 it was dismissed and a new bodyguard con- 
 sisting almost entirely of Germans was 
 formed. This new bodyguard was supported 
 by a troop of cavalry consisting entirely of 
 Germans, under the command of Major 
 Barth von Heer, one of Frederick the Great's 
 finest cavalry officers. This troop stood by 
 Washington during the entire war, and 
 twelve of them escorted him to Mt. Vernon 
 when he retired. 
 
 But the greatest contribution of German 
 Militarism to the cause of our independence 
 was Baron von Steuben, the famous aide de 
 camp of Frederick the Great. He came to 
 us at the most critical period of the Revolu- 
 tion, that awful winter of 1777-78, when the 
 remnant of our forces, a small band of 
 ragged, starved, and discouraged militiamen, 
 
ii6 The ^European War 
 
 were trying to keep body and soul together 
 at Valley Forge. He shared their suffer- 
 ings. He introduced the Prussian organiza- 
 tion, discipline, and drill among them. In a 
 few months he made a real army out of them, 
 which turned defeat Into victory and made 
 our Independence possible. He then pro- 
 ceeded to the south and organized and disci- 
 plined the army for General Greene. He 
 was present at the siege of Yorktown, and, 
 as the only American officer who had ever 
 witnessed the storming of a fortified place, 
 he rendered most invaluable service, and it 
 was his fortune to be in command in the 
 trenches when the British flag was hauled 
 down. 
 
 And besides Steuben, there were Baron 
 de Kalb, the most brilliant cavalry officer; 
 Johann Schott, the most efficient artillery 
 officer; General Lutterloh, the quartermaster 
 general, and Christopher Ludwig, the master 
 purveyor, all Germans, who had had the 
 training of German Militarism. It is not 
 too much to say that German Militarism 
 
American Interests 117 
 
 did probably as much as any other one thing 
 to make our final triumph over Great Britain 
 in our war for independence possible. 
 
 But we have had another and more recent 
 war for our National existence: the war of 
 1861-65, the Civil War, as we of the North 
 called it; the War between the States, as 
 they of the South called it. Let us see if 
 German Militarism played any part in that 
 great struggle, and if so, what that part was. 
 
 Everyone, even only slightly acquainted 
 with the history of this war, knows that the 
 question of first and greatest importance 
 which arose and demanded solution was that 
 of the position in the struggle of the border 
 slave States, namely: Maryland, Kentucky, 
 and Missouri. Mr. Lincoln's administra- 
 tion gave its attention most seriously and 
 anxiously to the work of holding these States 
 back from passing secession ordinances, and 
 preventing them from being occupied by the 
 armies of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 The most important among these States 
 was Missouri. It was the largest; it reached 
 
ii8 The ^European War 
 
 away up Into the very heart of the North; 
 it commanded the left bank of the Missis- 
 sippi for some five hundred miles; and the 
 great United States arsenal of the West, con- 
 taining the arms and munitions for that 
 whole section of our country, was located in 
 St. Louis. It had been stacked to its utmost 
 capacity by the Secretary of War of the pre- 
 ceding administration, Mr. Floyd of Virginia, 
 in the expectation that it would certainly fall 
 into the hands of the South. The Governor 
 of the State, C. F. Jackson, manifested the 
 stand he would take in his reply to President 
 Lincoln's requisition for Missouri's quota of 
 the first call for troops. He defied the Presi- 
 dent in the words: "Your requisition, in my 
 judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional, and 
 revolutionary in its object; inhuman and dia- 
 bolical, and cannot be complied with." 
 
 It happened most fortunately, however, 
 that the commandant of the arsenal was a 
 staunch Unionist, Nathaniel Lyon. He im- 
 mediately recognized the peril of the situ- 
 ation. He had only three men to guard the 
 
American Interests 119 
 
 arsenal and there was in the city a full com- 
 pany of secessionist militia calling themselves 
 Minute Men. Moreover, two companies of 
 the state militia composed of Germans had 
 shortly before been disarmed by the general 
 of the State militia. Under these conditions 
 Lyon turned to F. P. Blair for advice. Blair 
 was acquainted with the views and sympa- 
 thies of the inhabitants perfectly, and knew 
 that he could rely only upon the Germans to 
 save the arsenal and then the city and the 
 State for the Union. 
 
 The Germans of the city were organized 
 in Turner-Unions, in which they had, besides 
 practicing gymnastics, kept up their knowl- 
 edge of military drill and evolutions. After 
 some hesitation, during which the movements 
 of the secessionists to seize the arsenal be- 
 came more and more threatening, Lyon 
 called the German Turners into the arsenal, 
 armed them thoroughly and garrisoned the 
 place with them. Five regiments of Germans 
 were now hastily organized and armed. They 
 were the regiments commanded by Blair, 
 
I20 The 'European War 
 
 Bornstein, SIgel, Schiittner, and Salomon. 
 The arsenal and city were now safe, and 
 some thirty thousand stands of arms with 
 munitions were sent over into Illinois to arm 
 the Illinois troops for the occupation of Mis- 
 souri. This was the first great service which 
 German Militarism rendered to the cause of 
 the Union in the perilous month of April, 
 1861. 
 
 It would fill a volume to recite the services 
 which followed this throughout those terrible 
 four years, during which Union was pre- 
 served and slavery destroyed. Without the 
 Germans, who almost to a man knew military 
 drill, discipline, and organization, I do not 
 know how we could have prepared our 
 armies for the work which they were called 
 upon to do. The people of the North were 
 unaccustomed to the use of arms, knew little 
 of military organization, and were restive 
 under discipline. We had our Westpointers 
 and they were good, but far too few in 
 number to train the vast hosts of raw recruits 
 which were now called under arms. The 
 
American Interests 121 
 
 two hundred thousand native born Ger- 
 mans who served in our armies were nearly 
 all of them experienced in the use of arms 
 and accustomed to the severities of military 
 discipline. A very large proportion of these 
 were engaged as officers in teaching our men 
 to become soldiers. Among the taught were 
 nearly four hundred thousand men of Ger- 
 man descent, many of whom, through their 
 practices in their Turn-and-Schiitzen Hallen, 
 were the quickest of all our volunteers to 
 become efficient soldiers. 
 
 The German and German-American con- 
 tingent in our armies amounted thus, first and 
 last, to some five hundred thousand soldiers. 
 They were led by men such as Heinzelman, 
 Rosecrans, Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus, Willich, 
 Hartranft, Steinwehr, Wagner, Hecker, and 
 a thousand others. Mrs. Jefferson Davis, 
 the wife of the Confederate President, has 
 often said to me that without the Germans 
 the North could never have overcome the 
 armies of the Confederacy; and unless that 
 had been accomplished then, this Continent 
 
122 The ^European War 
 
 would have been, since then, the theater of 
 continuous war Instead of the home of peace. 
 
 Now let us contrast with these great 
 services of German Militarism to our inde- 
 pendence and our National existence, the 
 Injuries which British Navalism, to say 
 nothing of British Militarism, has Inflicted 
 upon us. 
 
 We will begin with the Declaration of 
 Independence, as I suppose it is still in order 
 to cite that document in these United States. 
 In it we meet the following statements: 
 "He," that is the King, the British Govern- 
 ment, "has plundered our seas, ravaged our 
 coasts, burnt our towns, cut off our trade with 
 all parts of the world." Perhaps the opinion 
 of the day may hold that we were then his 
 own and he could do with us as he would. 
 I will, therefore, not dwell longer upon the 
 treatment which we received from the British 
 Government during our Colonial period. 
 
 No sooner had we become by successful 
 resistance independent of Great Britain than 
 she began harassing us in every possible way 
 
American Interests 123 
 
 upon the sea, legally and illegally. Her war 
 ships stopped our merchantmen, no matter 
 where they were going or what they were 
 carrying, and not only took what their officers 
 termed contraband of war out of them, but 
 took our crews out of them and impressed 
 them into the British naval service under the 
 claim that they were British citizens, which. 
 In most cases at least, was not true, and 
 whether they were or not, they could not be 
 lawfully taken from American ships. The 
 British Navy went so far In this matter, as 
 to stop by force our own war ships and 
 search them for British seamen, and in 
 several cases, notably In that of our frigate, 
 the Chesapeake, June 22, 1807, actually took 
 men out of our war ships and Impressed them 
 into the service of the British Navy. 
 
 At that time Great Britain was off-and-on 
 engaged In war with France, and during such 
 periods had, of course, the right to blockade 
 the French ports and those of the allies of 
 France. But there was a law of blockade 
 which required as the condition of this situa- 
 
124 ^^^ ^European War 
 
 tion that armed vessels In sufficient power 
 to repel ordinary attempts to enter must be 
 present before the port blockaded and notice 
 must have been given of the actual existence 
 of the blockade. Great Britain paid no 
 attention to these limitations. She declared 
 all the ports of France, of her allies, and of 
 her colonies blockaded, whether they were 
 so or not, and seized American vessels, 
 among others, far out upon the high seas 
 under the claim that they were headed for 
 ports declared by Great Britain to be in a 
 state of blockade, or had upon them goods the 
 product or manufacture of countries at enmity 
 with Great Britain. The British Govern- 
 ment also issued the entirely arbitrary order 
 that trade between a country and its colonies, 
 not permitted to the ships of other nations 
 in time of peace, could not be opened to 
 them by that country in time of war between 
 that country and another power. For twenty 
 years, from 1792 to 18 12, Great Britain 
 imposed upon us all of these practices, 
 unlawfully, arbitrarily, and arrogantly until 
 
American Interests 125 
 
 finally we could stand it no longer and we 
 threw down the gage of battle. 
 
 The war began for us rather successfully, 
 almost brilliantly, on the water. Our impro- 
 vised Navy did at first excellent work, but 
 at the beginning of 18 14 we had hardly a 
 vessel of any kind left upon the sea. The 
 British fleet had, moreover, from its Govern- 
 ment the explicit and distinctly expressed 
 order "to destroy and lay waste all towns 
 and districts of the United States found 
 accessive to the attack of the British arma- 
 ments," and it followed these instructions 
 effectively. From the Bay of Fundy to 
 the Chesapeake our ports were blockaded 
 and our towns reduced to ashes, and finally 
 the City of Washington was captured by the 
 expedition up the Chesapeake, and the 
 Capitol, the President's Mansion, and the 
 public buildings were plundered and burned 
 to the ground. When we emerged from the 
 war of 1 8 12-15 we had neither navy nor 
 merchant marine and in the Treaty of 
 Peace, Great Britain renounced none of her 
 
126 The European War 
 
 arbitrary practices upon the sea. The war 
 brought little relief from the tyranny of 
 British Navallsm. 
 
 During the next forty years we constructed 
 slowly and with much difficulty our new Navy 
 and merchant marine, and in i860 there 
 was again some prospect of our becoming a 
 maritime power. Then came the outbreak 
 of the Civil War and Great Britain saw 
 again her opportunity to reduce us once 
 more to weakness. Hardly a month passed 
 before she recognized the belligerency of the 
 Southern Confederacy. The Confederacy had 
 no navy, but it had licensed some privateers, 
 which, during the first few months of the 
 rebellion, made capture of a considerable 
 number of our merchantmen. In a very 
 short time, however, these privateers were 
 all either captured by the vessels of the 
 United States Navy or were shut up in the 
 southern ports by the quite effective blockade. 
 There was no probability, therefore, that 
 any foreign power would be brought into any 
 contact whatever with the Confederacy and 
 
American Interests 127 
 
 no need, therefore, of recognizing it as 
 belligerent, or as anything. 
 
 When Mr. Charles Francis Adams, our 
 newly appointed Minister to Great Britain, 
 arrived at Liverpool on May 13, 1861, he 
 was met by this declaration of recognition by 
 the British Government of the belligerency 
 of the Southern Confederacy. He saw at a 
 glance that Lord Palmerston's Government 
 "desired," as Mr. Gladstone afterwards 
 expressed It, "the severance" — that Is the 
 separation of our country ^ — " as a diminution 
 of a dangerous power." It looked to Mr. 
 Adams as If the British recognition of the 
 independence of the Confederacy might 
 follow at any moment. The anti-Slavery 
 sentiment in England upon which he had 
 counted seemed utterly eclipsed by something 
 else and that something he soon found to 
 be nothing more elevated than commercial 
 greed. 
 
 The British Government and the British 
 nation were possessed by the prospect of 
 monopolizing the trade and commerce of 
 
128 The European War 
 
 the cotton-raising Southern Confederacy and 
 had neither eye nor ear for anything else. 
 Such motives usually seek to hide them- 
 selves behind some profession of virtue or 
 some violent indignation at the claimed 
 Iniquity of others. Mr. Adams found this 
 American Iniquity with which the British 
 Government and public were deadening the 
 consciousness of their real purpose to be 
 the caricature of the personalities of Mr. 
 Lincoln and Mr. Seward. Mr. Henry 
 Adams, the Minister's son and Private 
 Secretary, wrote: 
 
 London created a nightmare of its own, and 
 gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. Beside this 
 it placed another demon, if possible more devilish, 
 and called it Mr. Seward. In regard to these two 
 men English society seemed demented. Defense 
 was useless; explanation was vain; one could only 
 let the passion exhaust itself. One's best friends 
 were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief in 
 poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and Mr. Seward's 
 ferocity became a dogma of popular Faith. . . . 
 The London Times and all its satellites were as 
 usual doing the yellow work for the Foreign Sec- 
 
American Interests 129 
 
 retary, printing every morning in great head lines 
 the words : "Another Disastrous Federal Defeat ; " 
 and the Cabinet Ministers were calling gleefully to 
 each other that "the Federals had got another 
 licking." 
 
 The first real opportunity came to show 
 their official animus in the Trent affair in 
 November of 1861. Our Captain Wilkes 
 had read his international law concerning 
 contraband of war in British textbooks and 
 supposed that he had both British principle 
 and British precedent for taking the Con- 
 federate Envoys, Mason and Slidell, out of 
 the British merchantmen, the Trent, and 
 conveying them upon his own ship as prison- 
 ers to Boston. He had made the little 
 mistake of not bringing the Trent along too 
 and delivering ship and Envoys to the juris- 
 diction of a prize court of the United States. 
 It was enough, however, in the existing 
 temper of the British Government to lead 
 to demonstrations. 
 
 So soon as the news of Wilkes' act 
 arrived in England, although Mr. Adams 
 
130 The European War 
 
 communicated to the British Government 
 instructions to him from Washington dis- 
 avowing responsibility for the act and 
 expressing readiness to discuss the matter, 
 preparations for war were instantly begun. 
 The arsenals resounded with activity and 
 troops were embarked for America. We lib- 
 erated the Confederate Envoys promptly and 
 the British Government was obliged to see 
 this opportunity escape them. 
 
 Mr. Adams and the Washington Govern- 
 ment knew, however, from that moment 
 onward the hostile disposition which they 
 would be compelled to encounter at every 
 point. It was entirely evident to Mr. 
 Adams that the British Government, led by 
 Palmerston, Russell, and Gladstone, were 
 working, and would work, on the assump- 
 tion that the Southern Confederacy was a 
 fait accompli. He undoubtedly conveyed 
 this information to Mr. Seward, who sent 
 over our most accomplished politician, Thur- 
 low Weed, and our most accomplished 
 lawyer, William M. Evarts, to convince the 
 
American Interests 131 
 
 politicians and the people of their mistaken 
 opinion and to assist Mr. Adams in avoiding 
 the legal pitfalls which might be laid for 
 him. He needed them both. 
 
 Already during the months when the con- 
 troversy over the Trent affair was taking 
 its course, one James D. Bulloch arrived 
 in England as the agent of the Southern 
 Confederacy for securing the construction 
 and equipment of a Confederate Navy. 
 The laws of Great Britain were construed 
 to permit this, by the simple subterfuge of 
 keeping the vessel and the armament sep- 
 arate until they passed the territorial limit 
 of the British jurisdiction. And the British 
 Government did not recognize any interna- 
 tional law outside of the Acts of Parliament 
 or specific treaty obligations. 
 
 In spite of the protests of Mr. Adams 
 that Great Britain was at least violating the 
 obligations of neutrality in permitting ships 
 of war to be constructed in her ports for 
 the Confederates, who, according to Great 
 Britain's own conception of the belligerency 
 
132 The European War 
 
 of the Confederates, were our enemies, die 
 British Government allowed the work to go 
 on, until a number of cruisers of the most 
 formidable type were built and equipped and 
 let loose upon the merchant marine of 
 the United States for Its destruction, and 
 they destroyed it pretty effectually to the 
 advantage of the British carrying trade 
 upon the high seas. 
 
 Encouraged by the success of their own 
 arbitrariness and our inability to meet it 
 under the strain of our domestic conflict, the 
 British Government became more and more 
 reckless and arrogant. In the year 1863, 
 the Lairds at Birkenhead constructed a 
 number of steam rams, completely equipped, 
 inside of the jurisdiction of the British Gov- 
 ernment, for the Confederates. Mr. Adams 
 protested to Lord Russell with all the vigor 
 of his vigorous nature, but at first in vain. 
 In the midst of the controversy, however, 
 came the news of Gettysburg and VIcksburg. 
 Taking advantage of the Influence of these 
 victories over the minds of the British 
 
American Interests 133 
 
 Ministers and upon the opinion of the 
 British public, Mr. Adams addressed his 
 famous note of September 5, 1863, to Lord 
 Russell, in which he distinctly accused the 
 British Government with connivance in the 
 Confederate armaments, and closed his com- 
 munication with the words: *'It would be 
 superfluous in me to point out to your Lord- 
 ship that this is war." This was something 
 which the British Government understood, 
 and three days afterwards Mr. Adams 
 received from Lord Russell information that 
 his Government had given instructions for- 
 bidding the departure of the two Ironclads. 
 This did not, however, serve to quiet the 
 indignation of the people of the United 
 States against the British Government and 
 people, and the desire to make stiff demands 
 upon that Government and back them up 
 with the great military power with which the 
 Union emerged from the Civil War was 
 very general and very pronounced. The 
 British Government saw that we were in 
 earnest and gave consent to a treaty with 
 
134 ^^^ ^European War 
 
 us in January, 1869, which the Senate of 
 the United States regarded as no sufficient 
 promise of redress for the injuries done us, 
 and promptly rejected it. 
 
 In his message to Congress of December 
 6, 1869, President Grant denounced this 
 proposed agreement most unsparingly. He 
 said: 
 
 Towards the close of the last administration a 
 convention was signed in London for the settlement 
 of all outstanding claims between Great Britain and 
 the United States, which failed to receive the advice 
 and consent of the Senate to its ratification. The 
 time and the circumstances attending the negotia- 
 tions of that treaty were unfavorable to its accept- 
 ance by the people of the United States, and its 
 provisions were wholly inadequate for the settle- 
 ment of the grave wrongs that had been sustained 
 by this government, as well as by its citizens. The 
 injuries resulting to the United States by reason of 
 the course adopted by Great Britain during our late 
 Civil War in the increased rates of insurance, in the 
 diminution of exports and imports and other ob- 
 structions to domestic industry and production, in 
 its effect upon the foreign commerce of the coun- 
 tTYi in the decrease and transfer to Great Britain of 
 
American Interests 135 
 
 our commercial marine,* in the prolongation of the 
 war and the increased cost, both in treasure and 
 in lives, of its suppression, could not be adjusted 
 and satisfied as ordinary commercial claims which 
 continually arise among commercial nations ; and 
 yet the convention treated them as such ordinary 
 claims, from which they differ more widely in the 
 gravity of their character than in the magnitude of 
 their amount, great even as is that diiference. Not 
 a word was found in the treaty, and not an infer- 
 ence could be drawn from it to remove the sense 
 of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain 
 in our struggle for existence, which had so deeply 
 and universally impressed itself upon the people of 
 this country. Believing that a convention thus mis- 
 conceived in its scope and inadequate in its pro- 
 visions would not have produced the hearty, cordial 
 settlement of pending questions which alone is con- 
 sistent with the relations which I desire to have 
 firmly established between the United States and 
 Great Britain, I regard the action of the Senate in 
 rejecting the treaty to have been wisely taken in the 
 interests of peace and as a necessary step in the 
 direction of a perfect and cordial friendship be- 
 tween the two countries. A sensitive people, con- 
 scious of their power, are more at ease under a 
 great wrong wholly unatoned than under the re- 
 * Italics mine, J. W. B. 
 
136 The European War 
 
 straint of a settlement which satisfies neither their 
 idea of justice nor their grave sense of the grievances 
 they have sustained. 
 
 Great Britain practically ignored this 
 complaint, and another year slipped by 
 with the relations between the two countries 
 becoming more strained, when President 
 Grant, on December 5, 1870, made the 
 following communication to Congress: 
 
 I regret to say that no conclusion has been reached 
 for the adjustment of the claims against Great 
 Britain growing out of the course adopted by that 
 government during the Rebellion. The cabinet of 
 London, so far as its views have been expressed, 
 does not appear to be willing to concede that Her 
 Majesty's Government was guilty of any negli- 
 gence, or did or permitted any act during the war 
 by which the United States has just cause of com- 
 plaint. Our firm and unalterable convictions are 
 directly the reverse. I, therefore, recommend to 
 Congress to authorize the appointment of a com- 
 mission to take proof of the amount and the owner- 
 ship of these several claims, on notice to the repre> 
 sentative of Her Majesty at Washington, and tha^ 
 authority be given for the settlement of these claims 
 
American Interests 137 
 
 by the United States, so that the government shall 
 have the ownership of the private claims, as well as 
 the responsible control of all the demands against 
 Great Britain. 
 
 The President had chosen well the moment 
 to give Great Britain this warning. The 
 French Empire was In the dust and the 
 German Armies had surrounded Paris. 
 With the well-known friendship existing 
 between Germany and the United States 
 this was no time for Great Britain to risk 
 continuance of the misunderstanding with us. 
 Early in January of 1871 a special envoy 
 from the British Government, Sir John Rose, 
 appeared In Washington. The result of the 
 negotiations springing out of this advance 
 was the Treaty of Washington of 1871 
 between Great Britain and the United States, 
 according to which all the questions aris- 
 ing out of the contentions between Great 
 Britain and the United States concerning the 
 incidents of the Civil War should be referred 
 for arbitration to a Tribunal of five mem- 
 bers, one appointed by the President of the 
 
138 The European War 
 
 United States, one by the Queen of Great 
 Britain and Ireland, one by the King of 
 Italy, one by the President of Switzerland, 
 and one by the Emperor of Brazil; the ques- 
 tion of the Northwest Boundary of the 
 United States should be referred to the 
 German Emperor; and the Fisheries ques- 
 tion to a Board of three commissioners, one 
 appointed by the President of the United 
 States, one by the British Queen, and the 
 third by the President and the Queen jointly, 
 and in case they could not agree, by the 
 Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at the British 
 Court. 
 
 When the Geneva Tribunal met and the 
 United States laid its claims before it, the 
 British Government virtually declined to 
 submit to the arbitration of the claims for 
 what were termed "National and indirect 
 losses," that is " losses in the transfer of the 
 American commercial marine to the British 
 flag. In the enhanced payment of Insurance 
 and In the prolongation of the war and the 
 addition of a large sum to the cost of the war 
 
American Interests 139 
 
 and the suppression of the Rebellion." The 
 Tribunal announced that it felt constrained 
 to throw them out as not being a good foun- 
 dation in International Law for computing 
 and awarding damages. The Tribunal 
 awarded us a very moderate sum for the 
 reimbursement of direct private losses, but 
 the vastly greater national and Indirect losses 
 have never been compensated or atoned for 
 in the slightest degree. 
 
 The boundary question between the 
 United States and British Columbia sub- 
 mitted to the German Emperor was decided 
 by His Majesty In an award, announced in 
 October of 1872, sustaining the claim of the 
 United States. 
 
 On the other hand, the fisheries question 
 presents another instance of British practices 
 in diplomacy. When it came to the appoint- 
 ment of the Commissioners, the President 
 appointed one, the British Government one, 
 and the British Government proposed, as 
 the third member to be appointed by the two 
 governments conjointly, one Maurice Del- 
 
140 The ^European War 
 
 fosse, the Belgian Minister to the United 
 States. President Grant rejected Delfosse 
 on the ground that the interests of Great 
 Britain and Belgium were altogether too 
 closely allied. Great Britain would not 
 accept anybody proposed by the United 
 States, and so the choice of the third Com- 
 missioner fell, according to the provisions 
 of the Treaty, to the Austro-Hungarian 
 Ambassador at the British Court, Count 
 Beust. He should, of course, have been 
 informed by the British Government that 
 Delfosse was excluded. Whether he was 
 so informed we do not know, but he, 
 nevertheless, appointed him as the third 
 Commissioner. 
 
 Our Government was taken by surprise, 
 but Mr. Fish, our Secretary of State, felt 
 the embarrassment of resisting further the 
 appointment of the Belgian Minister in 
 Washington to be too great and acquiesced 
 with the best grace possible. Great Britain 
 had thus secured two of the three Commis- 
 sioners and they proceeded to award a 
 
American Interests 141 
 
 payment of five million five hundred thou- 
 sand dollars from our Government to Great 
 Britain. It was a high-handed procedure 
 and our Commissioner, Hon. E. H. Kellogg, 
 dissented vigorously from the decision, but 
 they had the letter of the law on us and we 
 had to submit. 
 
 Thus three times in less than a hundred 
 years of our history has Great Britain 
 destroyed our merchant marine, and we 
 have never yet recovered from the last expe- 
 rience. The competition which the Germans 
 began to set up in the seventies and eighties 
 of the last century proved a great relief to 
 us. As the German merchant marine grew, 
 freights were reduced and the comfort of 
 travel greatly improved, and we were able 
 to carry on our foreign trade and inter- 
 course profitably in foreign bottoms. But 
 now, having decided that the interests of 
 her World-Empire can no longer suffer this 
 competition. Great Britain has struck down 
 the German commerce and forbids us to buy 
 the interned ships with which to carry on 
 
142 The European War 
 
 our foreign commerce, under pain of their 
 seizure by the British Navy. 
 
 How many more instances do we need to 
 demonstrate to us that the system of Colonial 
 Empire with the dominance of the seas, and 
 the unlimited territorial expansion which it 
 claims, is not compatible with the freedom 
 and prosperity of the world? Can any 
 American with half an eye fail to see that 
 our greatest interest in the outcome of this 
 war is that the seas shall become free and 
 neutral, and that, shall they need policing, 
 this shall become international; that the 
 open door for trade and commerce shall 
 take the place of colonial restrictions or 
 preferences, or influences and shall, in times 
 of peace, be the universal principle; that 
 private property upon the high seas shall be 
 inviolable; that trade between neutrals in 
 time of war shall be entirely unrestricted, 
 and that contraband of war shall have an 
 international definition? 
 
 In the second place, what American can- 
 not see with half an eye that the destruction 
 
American Interests 143 
 
 of the German Empire and the advance of 
 Russia to the controlling place in Continental 
 Europe or even the lessening of the influence 
 of the German Empire to the advantage of 
 Russia — one of which things is bound to 
 result from the triumph of the Allies in 
 this war — would be injurious to American 
 interests and would conflict with American 
 ideals? Leaving out of account altogether 
 the close educational bonds between Ger- 
 many and the United States, closer than 
 those subsisting between us and any other 
 country, and the racial sympathies of a large 
 part of our best population, let us look at 
 the more practical and material interests 
 involved. 
 
 In the first place, the German merchant 
 marine intermediates our commerce for us 
 in larger volume than all the countries of 
 Continental Europe now at war with her, 
 and has given us more satisfactory service 
 than any of them. And, in the second place, 
 the German trade with us exceeds in amount, 
 by nearly fifty millions of dollars annually. 
 
144 T^he European War 
 
 our trade with France, Russia, Belgium, 
 Servia, and Montenegro, the five Continental 
 European nations now at war with Germany, 
 taken together. 
 
 Do we not wish to preserve this valuable 
 trade? 
 
 Do we wish to see the paralyzing hand 
 of the Muscovite laid upon this rich source 
 of income to us? 
 
 But some of our all-wise newspaper 
 editors say the German people will still be 
 there, only the German Empire, as a polit- 
 ical and governmental organization, will be 
 destroyed. But I doubt very much If the 
 German people will be there after the Ger- 
 man Empire Is destroyed. I think they will 
 stand or fall together, for the German 
 Empire is the national, self-ordalned 
 organization of the German people and 
 without It they themselves know that they 
 could not exist as a people In Middle Europe. 
 They will uphold It so long as the breath 
 of life Is In them and they will He down in 
 death wrapt In its colors before they will 
 
American Interests 145 
 
 submit to the rule of the Slav, the Gaul, 
 or the Briton. 
 
 I have, In the previous chapter, described 
 briefly what this German Empire as a gov- 
 ernmental organization Is, but to Impress 
 it more deeply upon the minds of my readers, 
 I will quote here what President Grant said 
 of It soon after Its formation, In his special 
 message of February 7, 1871, to Congress: 
 
 The Union of the States of Germany into a 
 form of government similar in many respects to 
 that of the American Union is an event that cannot 
 fail to touch deeply the sympathies of the people 
 of the United States. 
 
 This Union has been brought about by the long- 
 continued persistent efforts of the people, with the 
 deliberate approval of the governments and people 
 of twenty-four* of the German States through 
 their regularly constituted representatives. In it 
 the American people see an attempt to repro- 
 duce in Europe some of the best features of our 
 own Constitution with such modifications as the 
 history and condition of Germany seem to require. 
 The local governments of the several members of 
 
 * Twenty- five, J. JV. B. 
 
146 The European War 
 
 the Union are preserved, while the power conferred 
 upon the Chief imparts strength for the purpose of 
 self-defense, without authority to enter upon wars 
 of conquest and ambition. 
 
 The cherished aspiration for national unity which 
 for ages has inspired the many millions of people 
 speaking the same language, inhabiting a contigu- 
 ous and compact territory, but unnaturally separated 
 and divided by dynastic jealousies and the ambition 
 of short-sighted rulers, has been attained, and Ger- 
 many now contains a population of about 34,000,- 
 000, united, like our own, under one government 
 for its relation with other powers, but retaining in 
 its several members the right and power of control 
 of their local interests, habits, and institutions. 
 
 The bringing of great masses of thoughtful and 
 free people under a single government must tend 
 to make governments what alone they should be — 
 the representatives of the will and the organization 
 of the power of the people. The adoption in Europe 
 of the American system of union under the control 
 and direction of a free people, educated to self- 
 restraint, cannot fail to extend popular institutions 
 and to enlarge the peaceful influence of American 
 ideas. 
 
 Such was the organization of the German 
 Empire at the outset and such it has remained 
 
American Interests 147 
 
 to the present day. In view of all these 
 things, how can any genuine American, with 
 one grain of common sense and one spark of 
 real patriotism left in him, unless he be 
 blinded by prejudice or consumed by hypoc- 
 risy, regard with favor or even with 
 unconcern the substitution of the Muscovite 
 autocracy for this Great German system of 
 government and economy in Central 
 Europe, or the bringing of it in the slightest 
 degree under the influence of the Muscovite 
 autocracy? What American interest could 
 he imagine to be advanced by it? What 
 American idea to be furthered by it? If 
 such an American should present himself 
 before me, I confess that I would not know 
 what to say to him ; for, frankly speaking, it 
 would seem to me that he were ignoring 
 American interests altogether under some 
 sinister foreign influence. To me it seems in-- 
 disputable that every true American interest, 
 moral and material, requires the mainte- 
 nance of the German Empire in its present 
 organization and power in Middle Europe. 
 
148 The European War 
 
 Neither the veiled Autocracy of the East nor 
 the Gallic Republic of the West can be 
 spoken of on the same day with it as the pro- 
 ducer of genuine liberty, real progress, and 
 universal prosperity. 
 
 Finally, there is one more question of 
 vast importance to the people of these United 
 States involved in the outcome of this war. 
 It is this, namely : What relation is the North 
 American Continent to bear hereafter to the 
 diplomacy and wars of Europe? 
 
 We had a doctrine, which was intended 
 and, in some degree, calculated, to keep 
 the American Continents out of European 
 entanglements. It was first employed to 
 prevent Spain and Portugal from reestab- 
 lishing the colonial dependence of South and 
 Middle America upon Europe, and to pre- 
 vent Russia from extending the dependence 
 of North America upon Europe. It cer- 
 tainly helped to accomplish the first. Today, 
 of the nine millions of square miles of terri- 
 tory of South and Middle America inhabited 
 by sixty millions of people, only about two 
 
American Interests 149 
 
 hundred thousand square miles, inhabited by 
 less than ^vt hundred thousand people, are 
 colonlally dependent upon Europe. 
 
 It also accomplished its purpose in regard 
 to the second object. Nevertheless, more 
 than the half of North America territorially 
 remains today colonially dependent upon 
 Europe. We have certainly been altruistic 
 with our Monroe Doctrine. We have turned 
 and twisted and developed and exagger- 
 ated it to get Europe out of South and 
 Middle America, and yet we have per- 
 mitted the very European state, which 
 has always professed to believe in it, to 
 hold on to the half of North America and 
 to touch our own boundary for more than 
 three thousand miles. At the close of our 
 Civil War we got Russia off the Continent 
 altogether by paying her seven millions of 
 dollars for what was then regarded as a huge 
 iceberg, and it is probably the greatest diplo- 
 matic and political blunder the United States 
 ever made that it did not then get Great 
 Britain off too. The population of Canada 
 
150 The European War 
 
 at that time was only about three and a half 
 millions of people, the majority of whom, 
 probably, were inclined to annexation to 
 the United States. Moreover, it had been 
 brought quite clearly to our minds during 
 our Civil War how easily Canada might be 
 made a base of military operations against us. 
 And lastly, we had at that moment the large, 
 trained, and disciplined Army of seasoned 
 veterans with which we could have struck 
 down any physical opposition. It was an 
 opportunity lost for freeing the North 
 American Continent from colonial relations 
 to Europe, which has never returned and 
 may never return. 
 
 For more than twenty-five years, now, we 
 have been consoling ourselves with the idea 
 that the bond between Canada and Great 
 Britain had become so attenuated that it 
 might, at any moment, of itself snap asunder. 
 But to our great surprise, almost to our con- 
 sternation, we suddenly find that such is not 
 the case, that, quite to the contrary, Canada 
 is not only involved in the diplomacy and 
 
American Interests 151 
 
 politics of Europe, but In a great European 
 War. By her colonial relationship to Great 
 Britain she has been made belligerent in a 
 European War and is now therefore subject, 
 lawfully, to all the incidents of this condition, 
 one of which is that she is open to invasion 
 and conquest by the enemies of Great Britain. 
 This will not probably happen in this war, 
 but it can happen and it would be perfectly 
 regular if it did, and it will probably happen 
 in the war between Russia and Great Britain, 
 which is certain to follow this war, in case 
 the Allies are the victors. Now if this thing 
 should happen tomorrow or at any time, I 
 think it would put our neutrality to a very 
 severe test. I would not be willing to vouch 
 for its maintenance. We have not yet 
 formed any real public opinion about this 
 war. Everybody feels, but only relatively 
 few really think, and very few possess the 
 knowledge upon which to found a sound 
 judgment. What we have now is a general 
 state of excited feeling, which expresses 
 itself in epithet, vituperation, and abuse, 
 
152 The European War 
 
 which, therefore, engenders the hatreds that 
 lead to war. With such a state of feeling the 
 invasion of Canada by the enemies of Great 
 Britain would in all probability excite us, 
 however irrationally, to abandon the neutral 
 ground, abandon peace, and become bellig- 
 erent. Evidently the longer continuance of 
 any colonial relation of any part of North 
 America to Europe is not in our interests, 
 not promotive of our welfare, and if one of 
 the results of this war could be the severing 
 of this bond completely, it would be so great 
 a guarantee of our future peace and pros- 
 perity that we could well bear all the losses 
 and inconveniences which the war is now 
 imposing upon us. 
 
 But will this be effected by the triumph of 
 the Allies ? I cannot believe it. It seems to 
 me that the triumph of the Allies will bind 
 Canada still closer to the European and 
 Asiatic policy of Great Britain, through 
 comradeship in the war, participation in 
 victory and through the increasing conscious- 
 ness of the necessity for the parts of the 
 
American Interests 153 
 
 British Empire to stand together against 
 Russia In the final struggle for the possession 
 of Asia. And if Russia should win in this 
 final struggle, as I verily believe, with Ger- 
 many and Austria-Hungary destroyed and 
 with Japan as her ally, she would, then 
 Canada might be occupied by Russia or 
 Japan and be administered by a satrap from 
 Petrograd or Tokio. 
 
 As I see it, only the maintenance of the 
 German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, in 
 at least the strength and coherence which 
 they possessed on August i, 1914, as the 
 bulwark against Russian advance westward 
 and southward, will bring any peace to the 
 world and give to the North American 
 Continent any prospect of ultimate deliv- 
 erance from entanglements In European 
 politics, controversies, and wars. There is 
 little question in my mind that with the expe- 
 rience of this war our next formulation of 
 the Monroe Doctrine will be that there shall 
 be no colonial dependencies in North Amer- 
 ica on any European power. This will be 
 
[154 The ^European War 
 
 intelligible, clear cut, and reach to the root 
 of the matter. Its realization, without the 
 employment of force by us, will, however, 
 be attained only by Canada^s being brought 
 through the discouragement of defeat in this 
 present war to the consciousness of the un- 
 American nature of her present adventure 
 and its dangers to the independence and wel- 
 fare of North America. These are the 
 things which we should consider now. They 
 are the things which we will consider when 
 we emerge from the stage of emotion and 
 advance Into the stage of reflection. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE AND THE 
 CRIME AT SARAJEVO 
 
 T N the first chapter of this work I com- 
 pared the assassination of the heir to 
 the Hapsburg Throne with the supposed 
 assassination of a Vice-President of these 
 United States. The comparison proves 
 more, however, than was there claimed for 
 it. It is one thing to murder the Vice- 
 President or even the President of a Re- 
 public, but a far more serious thing to murder 
 the dynastic successor to a throne, especially 
 when the purpose is manifest to destroy the 
 dynasty itself. It may, indeed, be true that 
 the Vice-President or the President of the 
 Republic may be far more worthy individ- 
 ually, both as to intelligence, character, and 
 capacity, than the Crown Prince, and it may 
 be that the Republic is a higher form of 
 political organization than the Monarchy, 
 
 I5S 
 
156 The 'European War 
 
 but this IS not at all the question here in- 
 volved. The question is as to the effect of 
 such a catastrophe upon the security and ex- 
 istence of the state concerned. 
 
 The Republic has not only a law of suc- 
 cession to the office of Its chief magistracy, 
 but a law of election for the creation of a 
 new chief Magistrate. The Monarchy, 
 however, has only the former. The death 
 of all those persons qualified by the law of 
 succession to succeed to the powers of the 
 throne brings the state face to face with a 
 crisis for the solution of which its Constitu- 
 tion makes no adequate provision, because 
 a dynasty is an historical product. It grows 
 with the development of the state from little 
 beginnings. Its roots reach out in every di- 
 rection. Its official powers are intertwined 
 with its rights to property. With the pros- 
 perity of the state it prospers, and it suffers 
 with the adversities of the state. It gives 
 its name to the institutions and monuments of 
 the state, to Its cities and highways and 
 streets and bridges. Its deeds of glory and 
 
The Austro-Hungarian Empire 157 
 
 victory are interlaced with the state's ad- 
 vancement and Its defeats with the state's 
 decline. 
 
 All this Is peculiarly true of the Hapsburg 
 Dynasty and the Austro-Hungarlan Empire. 
 Our earliest historical knowledge of the 
 Hapsburgers Is furnished us by deeds of 
 gifts made by them to pious purposes, dated 
 In the year 1099. The donor In these, one 
 Count Werner of Hapsburg, seems to have 
 been a wealthy Swablan gentleman, nephew 
 of Bishop Werner of Strasburg, the builder 
 of the castle occupied by Count Werner, a 
 gentleman of high Ideals and philanthropic 
 turn. The Castle Hapsburg was located on 
 the river Aar some miles north of the present 
 city of Lucerne In Switzerland, and It was 
 from this centre that the power and posses- 
 sions of the Hapsburgers spread east, west, 
 north, and south. The Hapsburgers seem to 
 have been favorites with the Roman-German 
 Emperors of the Swablan House, Frederick 
 Barbarossa and Frederick 11^ and received 
 from these Emperors lands and offices. In 
 
158 The ■European War 
 
 the early part of the thirteenth century, 
 Albert, called the Wise, of Hapsburg, mar- 
 ried a relative of the Emperor Frederick II, 
 and the son of this marriage, Rudolf, became 
 German King and Roman-German Emperor. 
 From this position he was able to add the 
 Margravates of Austria, Carinthia, Car- 
 nlola, and Styria to his patrimonial posses- 
 sions, and although the imperial-royal power 
 passed for a time out of Hapsburg hands, 
 they were, and continued to be, the chief 
 family within the Roman-German Empire. 
 In 1437 Albert 11, of Hapsburg, wrested the 
 crowns of both Bohemia and Hungary from 
 the Emperor SIgismund and the next year 
 became Roman-German Emperor, which 
 great office now remained in the hands of 
 the Hapsburgers down to 1806, when the 
 Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation 
 was destroyed by Napoleon. The Haps- 
 burgers then assumed the title of Emperors 
 of Austria and proceeded to organize the 
 political system now known as the Austro- 
 Hungarlan Empire. 
 
The Austro-Hungarian Empire 159 
 
 Out of how many elements, homogeneous, 
 quasi-homogeneous, and heterogeneous, this 
 state body has been composed and what the 
 work of the Hapsburg Dynasty has been in 
 welding them and in holding them together 
 may be in some degree concluded from the 
 titles of the Hapsburg Emperor. He is 
 Emperor of Austria; King of Hungary, Bo- 
 hemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, 
 and Lodomeria; Archduke of Austria; 
 Grand Duke of Krakau; Duke of Salzburg, 
 Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Bukowina, Up- 
 per and Lower Silicia, Auschwitz and Zator, 
 Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa, and Zara; Prince 
 of Siebenbiirgen, Trent and Brixen; Mar- 
 grave of Moravia, Upper and Lower 
 Lusatia and Istria; Count of Hapsburg, 
 Tyrol, Kyburg, Gorz, Gradisca, Hohenembs, 
 Feldkirch, Bregenz and Sonnenberg; Lord 
 of Triest and Cattaro. I think I have 
 omitted some and I know that I have not 
 invented any. 
 
 It has been a prodigious work for the 
 Hapsburg Dynasty to mould the Austro- 
 
i6o The European War 
 
 Hungarian Empire from these elements and 
 It Is a really wonderful product of unity In 
 diversity which this Dynasty has wrought. 
 Instead of beating down all local Independ- 
 ence and obliterating all racial differences as 
 the French Monarchy did, for example, In 
 Its development, the Hapsburg Dynasty has 
 preserved a sphere of local Independence 
 and of racial diversity and has sought to 
 reach down to fundamental principles In 
 rights and policies upon which men of 
 different race and religion can stand, and 
 live In peace together. 
 
 If I should be asked to define the political 
 system of the Austro-Hungarlan Empire In 
 a single sentence, I would call it a confeder- 
 ation of two States each with federal govern- 
 ment. Austria Is a State composed of 
 seventeen autonomous Provinces. Each one 
 of these Provinces has Its own legislature 
 elected by the voters and exercising all legis- 
 lative power not reserved by the written 
 Constitution to the Relchrath, the national 
 legislature. The laws of the provinces are 
 
The Austro-Hungarian Empire i6i 
 
 executed by Crown appointees. The national 
 legislature, the lower house of which is cho- 
 sen by manhood suffrage of all citizens over 
 twenty-four years of age, exercises the powers 
 vested in it by the written Constitution. 
 
 Hungary is a federal union of two States, 
 Hungary proper and the State of Croatia- 
 Slavonla-Dalmatia. Each one of these 
 States has its own legislature, and this 
 body, the members of the lower house of 
 which are chosen by suffrage slightly re- 
 moved by a very small tax qualification from 
 the manhood suffrage of all citizens over 
 twenty years of age, makes local laws. In 
 order to form a national legislature for the 
 two States in union a certain number of rep- 
 resentatives from Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia 
 sit in the legislature for Hungary proper. 
 The laws of the two States separately are 
 executed by the King of Hungary and his 
 appointees, as also the laws of the Union. 
 
 These two States with federal Govern- 
 ments are then brought together in the Con- 
 federation, entitled the Austro-Hungarlan 
 
1 62 The 'European War 
 
 Empire. The bonds which hold them to- 
 gether are, first and most important, the 
 Hapsburg Dynasty, whose head is Emperor, 
 King, Archduke, Grand Duke, Prince, Mar- 
 grave, Count, and Lord in all the different 
 parts of the complex organization, and 
 second, the House of Delegations, which is 
 composed of an equal number of persons 
 chosen by the National legislatures of 
 Austria and of Hungary-Croatia. This Con- 
 federate Government has control of the 
 Foreign Affairs, and the Army and Navy of 
 the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire and 
 of the finances In so far as they are related to 
 these subjects. Finally, Bosnia-Herzegovina 
 is a territory of the Austro-Hungarian Em- 
 pire, with Its own legislature for local 
 affairs, but without any representation in 
 either the National Legislature of Austria 
 or that of Hungary-Croatia. 
 
 I consider the Austro-Hungarian Empire 
 as about the most Interesting experiment In 
 the political science of the twentieth century. 
 The nineteenth century has given us the na- 
 
The AustrO'Hungarian Empire 163 
 
 tional state based largely upon unity of race, 
 language and custom. While the system of 
 national states related to each other only 
 through treaty, international law, and di- 
 plomacy, is a vast advance over the system 
 of universal empire, there still remains the 
 danger of too great particularism, if every 
 race and linguistic idiom is to be regarded as 
 the proper foundation of a separate and 
 sovereign state. There still remains the 
 problem, therefore, of bringing together dif- 
 ferent races or fragments of different races 
 and bodies of men of different tongues, in- 
 habiting naturally connected territory, into 
 a political and governmental union, which 
 shall be free enough to preserve valuable 
 race differences, but which shall go down 
 deep enough in universal human nature to 
 find a foundation of principle broad enough 
 for men of different races to stand upon and 
 feel at home upon, and thus to develop a 
 nationality in ideals of a profounder sort 
 than that resting upon race or language, one 
 approaching nearer to the universal human. 
 
164 The European War 
 
 No great state In Europe has addressed 
 itself so assiduously and sincerely to the 
 solution of this great problem as the Austro- 
 Hungarlan Empire. It has brought together 
 German, Magyar, Czech, Pole, Slovack, 
 Moravian, Ruthenian, Croatian, Ruman, 
 Serb, Italian, and Lodin, both Christian and 
 Mohammedan, and for a full half-century 
 held them together In the bonds of a peaceful 
 empire. And It has done this not by the 
 domination of one race over the others, but 
 by a system which leaves to each race its 
 language and local customs, and secures to 
 each its due representation in the State and 
 Imperial Governments, and which seeks to 
 find principles of union so fundamentally 
 human that all races may feel their national 
 ideals and aspirations fulfilled under them. 
 
 This is what the British Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer calls a "ramshackle'* empire. I 
 have no doubt it appears so to a man accus- 
 tomed to see the British Empire governed 
 by a handful of men seated in Downing 
 street, London, who receive their authority 
 
The Austro-Hungarian Empire 165 
 
 from a body In which only forty-five millions 
 of men, Inhabiting one hundred and twenty 
 thousand square miles of territory, out of 
 the Rve hundred millions of men, occupying 
 the thirteen millions of square miles of terri- 
 tory of the British Empire, have any repre- 
 sentation at all. But it is quite evident that 
 this high British official has no appreciation 
 or even conception at all of the great prob- 
 lem of race reconciliation In the bonds of a 
 peaceful Empire, which Austria-Hungary has 
 labored so honestly and sincerely to solve, 
 and to the solution of which it has come 
 nearer than any other great state in Europe. 
 And In this great work the Hapsburg 
 Dynasty has played the leading part. I have 
 often heard it said that the Emperor Francis 
 Joseph Is the only man in all Austria-Hun- 
 gary, who can speak to every subject of the 
 Empire In his own tongue. Through mis- 
 fortune, suffering, and sorrow, frequently 
 misunderstood, and at times abused and 
 maligned, mediating, compromising, conced- 
 ing, yielding, and sacrificing, this Grand Old 
 
i66 The European War 
 
 Man has worked on for more than sixty-five 
 years to establish justice and harmony 
 between the races and tongues and religions 
 of his Empire, and no higher testimony to 
 the success of his efforts, and those of his 
 House, could be given than the united up- 
 rising of these races in this war for the 
 defense of the integrity of the Empire and 
 the protection of the Dynasty which has been 
 its creator and continues to be its chief 
 cementing bond. 
 
 Only in the light of these facts and con- 
 siderations can we fully appreciate the 
 magnitude of the crime at Sarajevo as one 
 involving, In the highest degree, not only the 
 honor but the very existence of the Austro- 
 Hungarian Empire. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 BELGIAN NEUTRALITY* 
 
 Q O much has been said about Belgian 
 neutrality, so much assumed, and it has 
 been such a stumbling block in the way of 
 any real and comprehensive understanding 
 of the causes and purposes of the great 
 European catastrophe, that it may be well 
 to examine the basis of it and endeavor to 
 get an exact idea of its scope and obligation. 
 Of course, we are considering here the 
 question of guaranteed neutrality, not the 
 ordinary neutrality enjoyed by all states not 
 at war, when some states are at war; the 
 difference between ordinary neutrality and 
 guaranteed neutrality being that no state is 
 under any obligation to defend the ordinary 
 neutrality of any other state against infringe- 
 
 * This chapter and " The German Emperor " (chapter 
 8), appeared originally in the New York Times, and are 
 reprinted here bj the courtesy of that journal. 
 
 167 
 
1 68 The European War 
 
 ment by a belligerent, and no belligerent is 
 under any specific obligation to observe it. 
 Guaranteed neutrality, is, therefore, purely 
 a question of specific agreement between 
 states. 
 
 On the 19th day of April, 1839, Belgium 
 and Holland, which, from 18 15 to 1830, 
 had formed the United Kingdom of The 
 Netherlands, signed a treaty of separation 
 from, and independence of, each other. It 
 is in this treaty that the original pledge of ^ 
 Belgian neutrality is to be found. This 
 clause of the treaty reads: ''Belgium in the 
 limits above described shall form an inde- 
 pendent neutral state and shall be bound to 
 observe the same neutrality toward all other 
 states.'' On the same day and at the same 
 place, London, a treaty, known in the history 
 of diplomacy as the Quintuple Treaty, was 
 signed by Great Britain, France, Prussia, 
 Austria, and Russia, approving and adopting 
 the treaty between Belgium and Holland. 
 A little later. May 11, the German Con- 
 federation, of which both Austria and 
 
Belgian Neutrality 169 
 
 Prussia were members, also ratified this 
 treaty. 
 
 In the year 1866 the German Confed- 
 eration was dissolved by the war between 
 Austria and Prussia, occasioned by the 
 Schleswig-Holsteih question. In 1867 the 
 North German Union was formed, of which 
 Prussia was the leading State, while Austria 
 and the German States south of the River 
 Main were left out of it altogether. Did 
 these changes render the guarantees of the 
 treaty of 1839 obsolete and thereby abro- 
 gate them, or at least weaken them and 
 make them an uncertain reliance? The test 
 of this came in the year 1870, at the begin- 
 ning of hostilities between France and the 
 North German Union. Great Britain, the 
 power most interested in the maintenance of 
 Belgian neutrality, seems to have had con- 
 siderable apprehension about it. Mr. Glad- 
 stone, then Prime Minister, said in the 
 House of Commons : " I am not able to sub- 
 scribe to the doctrine of those who have held 
 in this House what plainly amounts to an 
 
170 The European War 
 
 assertion that the simple fact of the existence 
 of a guarantee is binding on every party to 
 it, irrespective altogether of the particular 
 position in which it may find itself when the 
 occasion for acting on the guarantee arises." 
 Proceeding upon this view, the British 
 Government then sought and procured from 
 the French Government and from the Gov- 
 ernment of the North German Union sep- 
 arate but identical treaties guaranteeing with 
 the British Government the neutrality of 
 Belgium during the period of the war between 
 France and the North German Union, the 
 so-called Franco-Prussian war, which had 
 just broken out, and for one year from the 
 date of its termination. In these treaties it 
 is also to be remarked that Great Britain 
 limited the possible operation of her military 
 forces in maintaining the neutrality of Bel- 
 gium to the territory of the state of Belgium. 
 These treaties expired in the year 1872, and 
 the present German Empire has never signed 
 any treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of 
 Belgium. 
 
 ■>y*o 'f*^^ 
 
Belgian Neutrality 171 
 
 / 
 
 Moreover, between 1872 and 19 14 Bel- 
 gium became what Is now termed a world 
 power; that is, it reached a population of 
 nearly 8,000,000 people; it had a well- 
 organized, well-equipped army of over 200,- 
 000 men and powerful fortifications for its 
 own defense ; it had acquired and was holding 
 colonies covering 1,000,000 square miles of 
 territory, inhabited by 15,000,000 men, and 
 it had active commerce, mediated by its own 
 marine, with many, If not all, parts of the 
 world. Now, these things are not at all 
 compatible in principle with a specially 
 guaranteed neutrality of the state which 
 possesses them. The state which possesses 
 them has grown out of its swaddling clothes, 
 has arrived at the age and condition of 
 maturity and self-protection, and has passed 
 the age when specially guaranteed neutrality 
 is natural. 
 
 From all these considerations, I think it 
 extremely doubtful whether, on the first day 
 of August, 19 14, Belgium should have been 
 considered as possessing any other kind 
 
172 The ^European War 
 
 of neutrality than the ordinary neutrality 
 enjoyed by all states not at war, when some 
 states are at war. In fact, it remains to be 
 seen whether Belgium itself had not forfeited 
 the privilege of this ordinary neutrality 
 before a single German soldier had placed 
 foot on Belgian soil. A few months ago I 
 received a letter from one of the most prom- 
 inent professors In the University of Berlin, 
 who Is also In close contact with the Prussian 
 Ministry of Education, a man in whose 
 veracity I place perfect confidence, having 
 known him well for ten years. He wrote: 
 " Our Invasion of Belgium was prompted in 
 part by the fact that we had convincing proof 
 that there were French soldiers already In 
 Belgium, and that Belgium had agreed to 
 allow the French Army to pass over Its soil 
 in case of a war between France and us." 
 Moreover, In the British "White Paper" 
 Itself, No. 122, Is to be found a dispatch 
 from the British Ambassador In Berlin, Sir 
 E. Goschen, to Sir Edward Grey, containing 
 these words: "It appears from what he 
 
Belgian Neutrality 173 
 
 [the German Secretary of Foreign Affiairs] 
 said that the German Government consider 
 that certain hostile acts have already been 
 committed by Belgium/' The date of this 
 dispatch is July 31, days before the Germans 
 entered Belgium. 
 
 But placing these two things entirely 
 aside, as well as the new evidence found in 
 the archives at Brussels, that Belgium had 
 by her agreements with Great Britain for- 
 feited every claim to neutrality in case of a 
 war between Germany and Great Britain, evi- 
 dence the genuineness of which has now been 
 acknowledged by the British Government, 
 I find in the British "White Paper" itself. 
 No. 123, not only ample justification, but 
 absolute necessity, from a military point of 
 view, for a German army advancing against 
 France, not only to pass through Belgium, 
 but to occupy Belgium. This number of the 
 "White Paper" is a communication dated 
 August I from Sir Edward Grey to Sir E. 
 Goschen, British Ambassador in Berlin. In 
 it Sir Edward Grey informed Sir E. Goschen 
 
174 ^^^ European War 
 
 that the German Ambassador in London 
 asked him "whether, if Germany gave a 
 promise not to viblate Belgium neutrality, 
 we. Great Britain, would remain neutral," 
 and that he [Grey] replied that he "could 
 not say that," that he did not think Great 
 Britain " could give a promise of neutrality 
 on that condition alone ;" further, Sir Edward 
 Grey says: "The Ambassador pressed me 
 as to whether I could not formulate condi- 
 tions on which we would remain neutral. 
 He even suggested that the integrity of 
 France and her colonies might be guaranteed. 
 I said that I felt obliged to refuse definitely 
 any promise to remain neutral on similar 
 terms, and I could only say that we must 
 keep our hands free." 
 
 After this Sir Edward Grey declared in 
 Parliament, according to newspaper reports, 
 that Great Britain stood, as to Belgian neu- 
 trality, on the same ground as in 1870. With 
 all due respect, I cannot so understand it. In 
 1870 Great Britain remained neutral in a 
 war between the North German Union 
 
Belgian Neutrality 175 
 
 and France, and, with the North Ger- 
 man Union, guaranteed Belgium against 
 invasion by France, and, with France, guar- 
 anteed Belgium against Invasion by the 
 North German Union. On August i, 19 14, 
 the German Empire asked Great Britain to 
 do virtually the same thing, and Great /^>»^'-^*^<^ ^^ 
 Britain refused. It is, therefore, Germany ^ . \ 
 
 who stood in 19 14 on the same ground, with .^;^,„.^ AtJ^i 
 regard to Belgian neutrality, as she did in 
 1870, and it Is Great Britain who shifted her 
 position and virtually gave notice that she 
 herself would become a belligerent. It was 
 this notice served by Sir Edward Grey on 
 the German Ambassador in London on 
 August I, 19 14, which made the occupation 
 of Belgium an absolute military necessity to 
 the safety of the German armies advancing 
 against France. Otherwise they would, so 
 far as the wit of man could divine, have left 
 their right flank exposed to the advance of a 
 British army through Belgium, and there 
 certainly was no German commander so 
 absolutely bereft of all military knowledge 
 
176 The European War 
 
 or instinct as to have committed so patent 
 an error. 
 
 Belgium has Great Britain to thank for 
 every drop of blood shed by her people, and 
 every franc of damage inflicted within her 
 territory during this war. With a million 
 of German soldiers on her eastern border 
 demanding unhindered passage through one 
 end of her territory, under the pledge of 
 guarding her independence and Integrity and 
 reimbursing every franc of damage, and no 
 British force nearer than Dover, across the 
 Channel, it was one of the most inconsid- 
 erate, reckless, and selfish acts ever com- 
 mitted by a great power when Sir Edward 
 Grey directed, as Is stated In No. 155 of the <^a 
 British "White Paper," the British Envoy 
 in Brussels to Inform the " Belgian Govern- 
 ment that if pressure is applied to them by 
 Germany to induce them to depart from 
 neutrality, his Majesty's Government expect$ 
 that they will resist by any means in their 
 power." 
 
 It is plain enough that Great Britain was 
 
Belgian Neutrality 177 
 
 not thinking so much of protecting Belgium 
 as of Belgium protecting her, until she could 
 prepare to attack Germany in concert with 
 Russia and France. She was willing to let 
 Belgium, yea almost to command Belgium, 
 to take the fearful risk of complete destruc- 
 tion in order that she might gain a little time 
 in perfecting the cooperation of Russia and 
 France with herself for the crushing of Ger- 
 many, and in order to hold the public opinion 
 of neutral powers, specially of the United 
 States of America, in leash under the chiv- 
 alrous issue of protecting a weaker country, 
 which she has done little or nothing to pro- 
 tect, but which she could have effectively 
 protected by simply remaining neutral herself. 
 We Americans have been greatly confused 
 in mind in regard to the issues of this war. 
 We have confounded causes and occasions 
 and purposes and incidents until it has 
 become almost impossible for any consider- 
 able number of us to form a sound and 
 correct judgment in regard to it. But we 
 shall emerge from that nebulous condition. 
 
178 The ^European War 
 
 We are beginning to see more clearly now, 
 and it would not surprise me greatly if the 
 means used for producing our confusion 
 would some day come back, if not to plague 
 the consciences, at least to foil the purposes, 
 of their inventors. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE EXPORT OF ARMS AND MUNITIONS TO 
 BELLIGERENTS 
 
 ^T^ O one viewing the subject from a purely 
 scientific and objective standpoint, the 
 claim that an embargo by a neutral govern- 
 ment of the sale of arms and munitions of 
 war to belligerents is, under any circum- 
 stances or conditions, a violation of neutrality 
 seems either sophistical or hypocritical and 
 in either case unpatriotic. It is quite true 
 that the inconsistency in principle still exists 
 that a neutral government may not furnish 
 nor allow its subjects to furnish ships of war 
 to belligerents, but may allow its subjects 
 to furnish the guns and munitions which give 
 to vessels their formidable character as ships 
 of war. But the permission to its subjects of 
 furnishing arms and munitions to belligerents 
 is the right of the neutral government, not 
 
 179 
 
i8o The ^European War 
 
 the duty of the neutral government to the 
 belligerent. 
 
 The neutral government may permit or 
 may not permit, as it may freely choose. Its 
 duty is, that after having made its choice it 
 must accord parity of treatment to all 
 belligerents. That is, if it refuses to permit 
 sales to one it must refuse to all and if it 
 allows them to one it must allow them to 
 all, in like manner and extent. Should it 
 happen that ^conditions exist, or come to 
 exist, independent of the power or the act 
 of the neutral government, whereby any 
 belligerent does not, or even cannot, make 
 use of Jiis opportunity to procure from the 
 neutral, the neutral government is under no 
 legal obligation to take any notice of this. 
 If it be ready and willing to allow its sub- 
 jects to furnish such belligerent, it will have 
 discharged its duty of parity of treatment. 
 
 It is entirely free, however, to discontinue 
 allowing its subjects to furnish to both, and 
 neither has any right to complain if it does; 
 for, as I have said, the permitting or the 
 
The Export of Arms i8l 
 
 forbidding Its subjects to furnish is the right 
 of the neutral government to be exercised 
 by it at its own discretion and not a duty 
 to the belligerent, to be rendered to him at 
 his behest. Were this latter true, then the 
 neutral would no longer be a free state, no 
 longer sovereign. It would, in case of obli- 
 gation to permit, be bound to^ the policy 
 of the belligerent, the war policy of the* 
 belligerent. 
 
 The argument that where only one bellig- 
 erent cati take advantage of the permission 
 to procure, the neutral government must 
 continue to allow Its subjects to furnish, 
 on the ground that it would otherwise be 
 depriving the belligerent of an advantage 
 which the belligerent himself had won, 
 or on the ground that it would thereby 
 assist the other belligerent, is manifest 
 sophistry and, if advanced by the neutral, 
 is only a pretext for favoring the one bellig- 
 erent. It Is one of the most fundamental 
 rules of international law that indirect con- 
 sequences are not to be taken into account. 
 
i82 The ^European War 
 
 It was this principle which prevented us 
 from getting anything out of Great Britain 
 at Geneva in 1872, except the reimburse- 
 ment of direct private losses. The hundred- 
 fold greater indirect losses have never been 
 atoned for in the slightest degree. 
 
 If by any twist of logic, ceasing to help 
 one belligerent directly can be held to be 
 helping the other, then this latter assistance 
 is indirect and is not taken into account in 
 diplomatic or international reasoning or acts. 
 And when we go over into the domain of 
 morals, certainly, if there are two courses 
 legally open to the neutral, one of which 
 helps directly only one of the belligerents 
 but the other helps both directly or neither, 
 the neutral should follow the latter course. 
 
 At the present time and under present con- 
 ditions only Great Britain and her allies can 
 profit by our government's permitting the 
 free sale of arms and munitions. These 
 conditions are not of our government's mak- 
 ing, and it does not in law need to take any 
 notice of them, provided it be ready and 
 
The Export of Arms 183 
 
 willing to allow Great Britain's enemies to be 
 furnished in the same degree and measure. 
 It is surely difficult to determine whether pri- 
 vate parties are ready and willing to furnish 
 both belligerents or not until the actual test 
 should be made and made in each separate 
 case. The majority of those now furnishing 
 arms and munitions to Great Britain and her 
 allies, under the permission of this govern- 
 ment, are undoubtedly doing so, purely and 
 simply, for the dollars there are in it. Such 
 persons would undoubtedly furnish them to 
 the enemies of Great Britain, or to His 
 Satanic Majesty himself, if the opportunity 
 offered and the payments were satisfactory. 
 There are some who, besides the dollar 
 inducement, desire to assist Great Britain and 
 her allies against their enemies, and would 
 probably find some way of avoiding the sale 
 of arms and munitions to such enemies should 
 the occasion arise. This would be unneutral, 
 but how could it be dealt with? 
 
 Still further, there are unquestionably a 
 few who think that by furnishing arms and 
 
184 The ^European War 
 
 munitions to Great Britain and her allies 
 alone the war may be shortened. Such per- 
 sons also would probably find some way to 
 avoid furnishing the enemies of Great Britain 
 with the means of warfare, which, as I have 
 said, would be unneutral indeed, but difficult, 
 if not impossible, to deal with. 
 
 Finally, there is one man, so far as I know 
 only one, who has assumed the firm, cour- 
 ageous, unselfish, and humane stand that he 
 and his company will take no advantage of 
 the permission of our Government to furnish 
 arms and munitions to the belligerents in 
 this war and has distinctly and definitely re- 
 fused to fill any orders offered him. This 
 man is Charles R. Bryson, President of the 
 Electro-Steel Company of Pittsburgh, Penn- 
 sylvania. Mr. Bryson says: 
 
 We believe that the time is at hand when any 
 firm or individual who accepts a contract to fur- 
 ther add to the horrible slaughter now going on in 
 Europe will do so to his own disgrace. 
 
 These words should be printed in gold 
 and in letters large enough and upon a tower 
 
The Export of Arms 185 
 
 high enough to be seen all over these United 
 States. Mr. Bryson is right not only from 
 the point of view of highest humanitarian- 
 ism, but from every other point of view, 
 practical and legal. It will bring no perma- 
 nent gain to this country in dollars and cents 
 to furnish the means for killing and maiming 
 the men and destroying the property of Eu- 
 rope, thus lessening and crippling our legiti- 
 mate trade with Europe in times of peace. 
 It will not secure victory for Great Britain 
 and her allies nor enable them to shorten 
 the war that they alone can take advantage 
 of the permission of our government to 
 procure arms and munitions here, while their 
 enemies cannot. We may reasonably con- 
 clude that Germany and her allies will not 
 be able to invade the British Islands, and 
 will not probably undertake to go much 
 further into Russia, but they will, in all prob- 
 ability, hold the line substantially as now 
 fixed so long as they desire, and there is no 
 power on the face of the earth sufficient 
 to crush the German Empire. At the begin- 
 
1 86 The European War 
 
 ning of the War in 1756, Frederick the 
 Great had fivt millions of souls to draw from 
 and his enemies one hundred millions, and 
 yet he waged war against them seven years 
 and came out victorious. Today, the Ger- 
 man Empire has alone seventy millions of 
 souls to draw from and with its allies one 
 hundred and sixty millions, while its enemies 
 have all together not really three hundred 
 millions of equal capacity. If Prussia could 
 triumph over twenty to one in 1763, cannot 
 that same Prussia, better prepared, more 
 united and far more capable, hold her own 
 against less than two to one in 19 15? No, 
 the furnishing of arms and munitions of war 
 to Great Britain and her allies by the people 
 of the United States will only prolong the 
 war without altering the final result. 
 
 I verily believe that, except for that aid, 
 the war would be very near its end, if not 
 practically over, today; and I agree with 
 Mr. Bryson that any man in this country who 
 furnishes further the implements of death 
 and destruction to the belligerents in this war 
 
The Export of Arms 187 
 
 will do so, "to his own disgrace.'* Mr. 
 Bryson is also entirely right in assuming that 
 he and his company do not violate the neu- 
 trality of the country in refusing to furnish 
 arms and munitions of war to belligerents 
 under any circumstances or conditions, nor 
 would his government do so in forbidding 
 them to be furnished. The contrary view 
 is not only false as having no basis in interna- 
 tional law, not only unpatriotic as subordi- 
 nating the policy of our country to the war 
 policy of a foreign country, but it is promo- 
 tive of hypocrisy as turning the scales be- 
 tween conscience and dollars now balancing 
 in the minds of many fairly honest men. 
 
 If men wish to sell arms and munitions of 
 war to the belligerents for the dollars that 
 are in it, let them say so. They have the 
 legal right to do so, so long as the govern- 
 ment permits it. If they wish to do this in 
 order to help one belligerent against another, 
 let them say so, for while this appears un- 
 neutral, there is no way to reach it, so long 
 as our own government permits it. But let 
 
1 88 The ^European War 
 
 us not encourage men to take refuge under 
 the view that they must do so to preserve 
 neutrality for that is false, unpatriotic, and 
 hypocritical. Neither the individual nor the 
 nation nor the government can, in the eye 
 of God or in the eye of history, escape the 
 guilt of having aided in the prolongation of 
 this terrible war by seeking shelter under any 
 such flimsy pretext, any such patent subter- 
 fuge. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE GERMAN EMPEROR 
 
 TT is often said by historians that no truly 
 great man is ever really understood by 
 the generation, and in the age, for which he 
 labors. Many instances of the truth of this 
 statement can be easily cited. Two of the 
 most flagrant have come within the range of 
 my own personal experience. The first was 
 the character of Abraham Lincoln as de- 
 picted by the British press of 1860-64 and 
 as conceived by the British public opinion of 
 that era. Mr. Henry Adams, son and pri- 
 vate secretary of Mr. Charles Francis 
 Adams, our Minister Plenipotentiary to 
 Great Britain during that critical era in our 
 history, writes in that fascinating book of his 
 entitled The Education of Henry J dams: 
 
 London was altogether beside itself on one 
 point, in especial; it created a nightmare of its 
 
 189 
 
190 The ^European War 
 
 own, and gave it the shape of Abraham Lincoln. 
 Behind this it placed another demon, if possible 
 more devilish, and called it Mr. Seward. In regard 
 to these two men English society seemed demented. 
 Defense was useless; explanation was vain. One 
 could only let the passion exhaust itself. One's best 
 friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the 
 belief in poor Mr. Lincoln's brutality and Seward's 
 ferocity became a dogma of popular faith. 
 
 Adams relates further that the last time 
 he saw Thackeray at Christmas of 1863 they 
 spoke of their mutual friend, Mrs. Frank 
 Hampton of South Carolina, whom Thack- 
 eray had portrayed as Ethel Newcome, and 
 who had recently passed away from life. 
 Thackeray had read in the British papers 
 that her parents had been prevented by the 
 Federal soldiers from passing through the 
 lines to see her on her death-bed. Adams 
 writes : 
 
 In speaking of it Thackeray's voice trembled and 
 his eyes filled with tears. The coarse cruelty of 
 Lincoln and his hirelings was notorious. He never 
 doubted that the Federals made a business of 
 
The German Emperor 191 
 
 harrowing the tenderest feelings of women — partic- 
 ularly of women — -in order to punish their oppo- 
 nents. On quite insufficient evidence he burst into 
 reproach. Had he (Adams) carried in his pocket 
 the proofs that the reproach was unjust, he would 
 have gained nothing by showing them. At that 
 moment Thackeray, and all London society with 
 him, needed the nervous relief of expressing emo- 
 tions; for if Mr. Lincoln was not what they said 
 he was, what were they? 
 
 Mr. Lincoln sent over our most skillful 
 politician, Thurlow Weed, and our most able 
 constitutional lawyer, William M. Evarts, 
 and later our most brilliant orator, Henry 
 Ward Beecher, followed, for the purpose of 
 bringing the British people to their senses 
 and correcting British opinion, but all to little 
 purpose. Gettysburg and VIcksburg did far 
 more toward modifying that opinion than the 
 persuasiveness of Weed, the logic of Evarts, 
 or the eloquence of Beecher, and It took 
 Chattanooga, the March to the Sea, and Ap- 
 pomattox to dispel the Illusion entirely. 
 
 Today we are laboring under a no less 
 singular delusion than were the English in 
 
192 The European War 
 
 1862. The conception prevailing in Eng- 
 land and In this country concerning the phys- 
 ical, mental, and moral make-up of the 
 German Emperor Is the monumental carica- 
 ture of biographical literature. I have had 
 the privilege of his personal acquaintance 
 now for nearly ten years. I have been 
 brought Into contact with him in many 
 different ways and under many varying con- 
 ditions ; at Court and State functions, at uni- 
 versity ceremonies and celebrations, at his 
 table, and by his fireside surrounded by his 
 family, when in the midst of his officials, 
 his men of science, and personal friends, and, 
 more instructive than all, alone in the Im- 
 perial home in Berlin and Potsdam and In 
 the castle and forest at Wilhelmshohe. With 
 all this experience, with all this opportunity 
 for observation at close range, I am hardly 
 able to recognize a single characteristic 
 usually attributed to him by the British and 
 American press of today. 
 
 In the first place, the Emperor is an im- 
 pressive man physically. He Is not a giant 
 
The German Emperor 193 
 
 in stature, but a man of medium size, great 
 strength and endurance, and of agile and 
 graceful movement. He looks every inch a 
 leader of men. His fine gray-blue eyes are 
 peculiarly fascinating. I saw him once 
 seated beside his uncle, King Edward vii., 
 and the contrast was very striking, and 
 greatly in his favor. 
 
 In the second place, the Emperor is an 
 exceedingly intelligent and highly cultivated 
 man. His mental processes are swift, but 
 they go also very deep. He is a searching 
 inquirer, and questions and listens more than 
 he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense 
 and sometimes astonishing. He manifests 
 interest in everything, even to the smallest 
 detail, which can have any bearing upon 
 human improvement. I remember a half- 
 hour's conversation with him once over a 
 cupping-glass, which he had gotten from an 
 excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saal- 
 burg, near Homburg. 
 
 He always appeared to me most deeply 
 concerned with the arts of peace. I have 
 
194 The ^European War 
 
 never heard him speak much of war, and 
 then always with abhorrence, nor much of 
 military matters; but improved agriculture, 
 invention, and manufacture, and especially 
 commerce and education in all their ramifica- 
 tions were the chief subjects of his thought 
 and conversation. I have had the privilege 
 of association with many highly intelligent 
 and profoundly learned men, but I have 
 never acquired as much knowledge, In the 
 same time, from any man whom I have ever 
 met, as from the German Emperor. And 
 yet, with all this real superiority of mind 
 and education, his deference to the opinions 
 of others Is remarkable. Arrogance is one 
 of the qualities most often attributed to him, 
 but he is the only ruler I ever saw In whom 
 there appeared to be absolutely no arro- 
 gance. He meets you as man meets man 
 and makes you feel that you are required to 
 yield to nothing but the better reason. 
 
 In the third place, the Emperor impressed 
 me as a man of heart, of warm affections and 
 of great consideration for the feelings and 
 
The German Emperor 195 
 
 well-being of others. He can not, at least 
 does not, conceal his reverence for, and de- 
 votion to, the Empress, or his love for his 
 children, or his attachment to his friends. 
 He always speaks of Queen Victoria and of 
 the Empress Friedrich with the greatest 
 veneration, and once when speaking to me of 
 an old American friend who had turned upon 
 him, he said that it was difficult for him to 
 give up an old friend, right or wrong, and 
 impossible when he believed him to be in the 
 right. His manifest respect and affection for 
 his old and tried officials, such as Lucanus 
 and zu Eulenburg and von Studt and Beseler 
 and Althoff, give strong evidence of the 
 warmth and depth of his nature. His con- 
 sideration for Americans, especially, has 
 always been remarkable. It was at his sug- 
 gestion that the exchange of educators be- 
 tween the universities of Germany and of 
 the United States was established, and it 
 has been his custom to be present at the 
 opening lecture of each new incumbent of 
 these positions at the University of Berlin, 
 
196 The European War^ 
 
 and to greet him and welcome him to his 
 work. He is also the first to extend to these 
 foreign educators hospitality and social 
 attention. 
 
 To any one who has experienced his hearty 
 welcome to his land and his home, the asser- 
 tion that he is arrogant and autocratic is so 
 far away from truth as to be ludicrous. 
 Again I must say that I have never met a 
 ruler, in monarchy or republic, in whom gen- 
 uine democratic geniality was a so predomi- 
 nant characteristic. 
 
 But the characteristic of the Emperor 
 which struck me most forcibly is his pro- 
 found sense of duty and his readiness for 
 self-sacrifice for the welfare of his country. 
 This is a general German trait. It is the 
 most admirable side of German nature. And 
 the Emperor is, in this respect especially, 
 their Princeps. I remember sitting beside 
 him one day, when one of the ladies of his 
 household asked me if I were acquainted 
 with a certain wealthy, ultra-fashionable New 
 York social leader. I replied, by name only. 
 
The German Emperor i()j 
 
 She pressed me to know why not more 
 nearly, why not personally. And to this I 
 replied that I was not of her class; that I 
 could not amuse her, and that I did not ap- 
 prove of the frivolous and demoralizing 
 example and influence of one so favorably 
 circumstanced for doing good. The Em- 
 peror had heard the conversation, and he 
 promptly said: "You know in Germany we 
 do not rate and classify people by their ma- 
 terial possessions, but by the importance of 
 the service they render to country, culture, 
 and civilization." One of his sons once told 
 me that from his earliest childhood his father 
 had instilled into his mind the lesson that 
 devotion to duty and readiness for sacrifice 
 were the cardinal virtues of a German, espe- 
 cially of a Hohenzollern. His days are 
 periods of constant labor and severe dis- 
 cipline. He rises early, lives abstemiously, 
 and works until far into the night. There 
 is no day laborer in his entire Empire who 
 gives so many hours per diem to his work. 
 His nature is manifestly deeply religious and. 
 
198 The 'European War 
 
 in every sentence he speaks, evidence of his 
 consciousness that the policeman's club can- 
 not take the place of religious and moral 
 principle is revealed. His frequent appeal 
 for Divine aid in the discharge of his duties 
 is prompted by the conviction that the 
 heavier the duty the more need there is of 
 that aid. 
 
 He undoubtedly has an intense desire, 
 almost a passion, for the prosperity and 
 greatness of his country, but his conception 
 of that prosperity and greatness is more 
 spiritual and cultural than material and com- 
 mercial. More than once have I heard him 
 say that he desired to see Germany a wealthy 
 country, but only as the result of honest and 
 properly requited toil, and that wealth 
 acquired by force or fraud was more a curse 
 than a blessing, and was destined to go as 
 it had come. His conception of the greatness 
 of Germany is as a great intellectual and 
 moral power rather than anything else. Its 
 physical power he values chiefly as the cre- 
 ator and maintainer of the conditions neces- 
 
The German Emperor 199 
 
 sary to the production and influence of this 
 higher power. I have often heard him 
 express this thought. 
 
 And in spite of this terrible war, the re- 
 sponsibility for which is by so many erro- 
 neously laid at his door, I firmly believe him 
 to be a man of peace. I am absolutely sure 
 that he has entered upon this war only under 
 the firm conviction that Great Britain, 
 France, and Russia have conspired to destroy 
 Germany as a world power, and that he is 
 simply defending, as he said in his memo- 
 rable speech to the Reichstag, the place which 
 God had given the Germans to dwell on. 
 For seven years I myself have witnessed the 
 growth of this conviction in his mind and 
 that of the whole German Nation as the evi- 
 dences of it have multiplied from year to 
 year until at last the fatal hour at Sarajevo 
 struck. I firmly believe that there is no soul 
 in this wide world upon whom the burden 
 and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily 
 rest as upon the German Emperor. 
 
 I have heard him declare with the greatest 
 
200 The European War 
 
 earnestness and solemnity that he considered 
 war a dire calamity; that Germany would 
 never during his reign wage an offensive war, 
 and that he hoped God would spare him 
 from the necessity of ever having to conduct 
 a defensive war. For years he has been 
 conscious that British diplomacy was seeking 
 to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance 
 of Latin, Slav, and Mongol under British 
 direction, and he sought in every way to 
 avert it. He visited England himself fre- 
 quently. He sent his Ministers of State 
 over to cultivate the acquaintance and friend- 
 ship of the British Ministers, but rarely 
 would the British King go himself to Ger- 
 many or send his Ministers to return these 
 visits. 
 
 More than once have I heard him say that 
 he was most earnestly desirous of close 
 friendship between Germany, Great Britain, 
 and the United States, and had done, was 
 doing, and would continue to do, all in his 
 power to promote it, but that while the 
 Americans were cordially meeting Germany 
 
The German Emperor 201 
 
 half way, the British were cold, suspicious, 
 and repellent. 
 
 I know that the two things which are giv- 
 ing him the deepest pain in this world- 
 catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of 
 his own kindred and people, are the enmity 
 of Great Britain and the misunderstanding 
 of his character, feelings, and purposes in 
 America. To remedy the first we here can 
 do nothing, but to dispel the second is our 
 bounden duty; and I devoutly hope that 
 other evidence may prove sufficient to do 
 this to the satisfaction of the minds of my 
 countrymen than was necessary to convince 
 the British nation that the great-hearted 
 Abraham Lincoln was not a brute nor the 
 urbane William H. Seward a demon of 
 ferocity. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, 
 in Great Britain, 127- 
 133, 189-191. 
 
 Administrative Law of 
 England, The, 108. 
 
 Algeciras Congress, 64, 
 
 72-74. 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine, reclaimed 
 by Germany, 49; helped 
 by Germany, 50. 
 
 American, people deceived 
 in regard to Germany, 
 109; interests in the 
 outcome of the Euro- 
 pean war, 1 13-154; trade 
 and German merchant 
 marine, 143, 144; ships 
 destroyed by Great Bri- 
 tain, 122-132 ; navy, 
 125, 126. 
 
 Arms and munitions, ex- 
 port of to belligerents, 
 179-188. 
 
 Austro-Hungarian empire, 
 plots against, 5-n; and 
 the Sarajevo crime, 4-17, 
 155-166; and the Franco- 
 German war, 47. 
 
 Austria-Hungary, rulers 
 and government, 155- 
 166; union estates, 158- 
 
 166; political system, 
 160-166. 
 
 Balkans, and Russian de- 
 signs, 2; war with Tur- 
 key, 13. 
 
 Balkan League, formed, 
 76; attacks Turkey, 76, 
 
 77- 
 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, in the 
 Congress at Berlin, 52. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, 
 sent to England by Mr. 
 Lincoln, 191. 
 
 Belgium, its neutrality, 
 and invasion, 38-41 ; 
 and the treaty of 1839, 
 48 ; land-grabbing, 97 ; 
 neutrality of, 167-178; 
 separates from Holland, 
 168; quintuple treaty, 
 168; a world power, 
 170, 171 ; invasion by 
 Germany, 172; dealings 
 with Great Britain, 172, 
 173; and the British 
 White Paper, 172-176; 
 German view of the in- 
 vasion, 172, 173. 
 
 Bismarck, in the Congress 
 at Berlin, 52; and 
 
 203 
 
204 
 
 Index 
 
 Russo-German neutral- 
 ity, 52; forms alliance 
 with Austria-Hungary, 
 53; and the Consolida- 
 tion of the German era* 
 pire, S3; acquires Hel- 
 goland, 54. 
 
 Bosnia-Herzegovina, and 
 Turkey, 70, 71. 
 
 British Government, 89- 
 92. 
 
 British White Paper, 1-44; 
 and the invasion of Bel- 
 gium, 172-176. 
 
 Bryson, Charles R., re- 
 fuses to fill orders for 
 munitions of war, 184, 
 185. 
 
 Bulgaria, repudiates rule 
 of Sultan, 70. 
 
 Canada and the United 
 States, 149, 154; rela- 
 tions with Great Bri- 
 tain, 150-154. 
 
 Civil War, assistance 
 given by Germans to 
 the North, 1 17-122. 
 
 Colonial dominion, Great 
 Britain's, 85-90, no, 
 in; Germany's, 97, 98; 
 British system of, 142. 
 
 Constantinople, and Rus- 
 sia, in 1879, 51, 52, 66", 
 and the Balkan war, 77, 
 
 Czar of Russia and Triple 
 Entente, 67. 
 
 Destiny, and world prog- 
 ress, 81, 83, 93, 109. 
 
 Dreadnaughts, England's, 
 90. 
 
 Diplomatic papers ana- 
 lyzed, 3, 4. 
 
 Economic system, 84-90. 
 Education of Henry 
 
 Adams, The, 189. 
 Edward VH, 59, 67, 71. 
 Egypt and Great Britain, 
 
 63. 
 
 England, and German/s 
 commercial growth, 2 ; 
 mobilizes fleet, 33; and 
 the neutrality of Bel- 
 gium, 36-40, 42; army 
 mobilizes, 44; opposes 
 France, 45, 47; jealous 
 of Germany, 54; appro- 
 priates new territory, 56 ; 
 and its ducal estates, 
 84-88. 
 
 Evarts, William M., sent 
 to England by Mr. Lin- 
 coln, 191. 
 
 Export of arms and mu- 
 nitions to belligerents, 
 179-188. 
 
 Fallieres, President, 67. 
 Fisheries award, 139, 140. 
 
Index 
 
 205 
 
 France, and Alsace-Lor- 
 raine, 2; the leading 
 state of Europe, 45; 
 1870 war with Germany, 
 46, 49; makes treaty 
 with Russia, 55; appro- 
 priates territory, 56 ; 
 and Morocco, 6z, 64, 72^ 
 73; land-grabbing, 97. 
 
 Francis Joseph, Emperor, 
 life and influence, 159. 
 
 Franco-Prussian war of 
 1870-71, 46. 
 
 Free trade, England and, 
 87-89. 
 
 Geneva tribunal, 138. 
 
 German empire, its for- 
 mation, 45, 48, so, 53. 
 
 Germany and the Austro- 
 Servian trouble, 14-44 ; 
 and the neutrality of 
 Belgium, z^, z7, 38; 
 Faces war with three 
 powers, 40; reforms in 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 50, 51; 
 and colonial expansion, 
 53» 54; supports Russia 
 in Asia, 55; develop- 
 ment in manufacture 
 and commerce, 56; lim- 
 ited colonial posses- 
 sions, 56; opens trade 
 with Turkey, 57, 58; 
 and Bagdad railroad, 
 
 57; growth of navy, 57; 
 and the Morocco ques- 
 tion, 6z, 64; defeats 
 Entente plans, 71; in- 
 terferes to save Turkey, 
 78; prepares for emer- 
 gency, 79, 80; economic 
 and political systems, 
 93-99; agriculture, 94, 
 95; commerce, 97; mil- 
 itarism, 100-104; com-= 
 munal and local gov- 
 ernment, 104, 105 ; and 
 von Treitschke, 106, 
 107; and Wagner, 106; 
 and Lasker, 107; and 
 von Gneist, 107, 108; 
 system of national 
 states. III; Emperor 
 William 139; 'his life 
 and character, 189-200 ; 
 merchant marine, value 
 to United States, 143, 
 144; as a governmental 
 organization, 145-148 ; 
 support to United 
 States in war crises, 
 1 13-122; and treaties 
 with Belgium, 168-178; 
 probabilities of success 
 in the war, 185, 186; 
 war strength, 186; Ger- 
 man loyalty to country, 
 144, 196. 
 German confederation, its 
 disrupture, 45. 
 
2o6 
 
 Index 
 
 Gneist, von, Rudolf, 107, 
 108. 
 
 Grant, Ulysses, on the 
 claims against Great 
 Britain, 134-137; on the 
 German government, 
 145, 146. 
 
 Great Britain, and Ger- 
 many's trade with Tur- 
 key, 58, 59; and Rus- 
 sian activity in Asia, 59; 
 fears Russian advance, 
 60; plans growth of 
 empire in the East, 60, 
 61, 66; offers alliance 
 with Germany and Ja- 
 pan, 62; treaty with Ja- 
 pan, 62; and Egypt, 63; 
 and Morocco, 63, 64; 
 opposes Russian plans 
 in the East, 65, 66', 
 backs France in Mo- 
 rocco, yz, 74; exclu- 
 sive rights in Egypt, 74; 
 efforts to weaken the 
 Triple Alliance, 75, 76; 
 jealous of German trade 
 and navy, 80; encour- 
 ages Servia to resist 
 Austria, 81 ; and France 
 to support Russia, 81 ; 
 supports France, 81 ; de- 
 pendent on colonies, 85- 
 90 ; economic system, 
 85-90; government, 90- 
 94; land-grabbing, 97; 
 
 navalism, endangers 
 America and United 
 States, 122-133; and the 
 United States war 
 claims, 134-141 ; de- 
 stroys American mer- 
 chant marine, 141 ; and 
 German commerce, 141 ; 
 its government, 164, 
 165; and the neutrality 
 and invasion of Bel- 
 gium, 168-178. 
 Grey, Sir Edward, i, 12, 
 14, 15; and the Aus- 
 tro-Hungarian empire 
 and Servia, 13-44; and 
 the beginning of the 
 war, 41-44, 173-176. 
 
 Hapsburg family, history 
 and character, 155-166. 
 
 Helgoland, acquired by 
 Germany, 54. 
 
 Hungary, relation to Aus- 
 tria, 161, 162. 
 
 India and the Russian ad- 
 vance, 60. 
 
 Italy and the Triple Alli- 
 ance, 12; and Tripoli, 
 12; opposes France, 46, 
 47; joins the Triple Al- 
 liance, 53 ; occupies 
 Tripoli, 75. 
 
 Japan inimical to Ger- 
 many, 55, 56. 
 
Index 
 
 207 
 
 Kiao-chow, Germany in 
 
 China, 56. 
 Kreis-ordnung, 104, 105. 
 
 Lasker, Edward, 107. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, British 
 view of during the Civil 
 War, 128, 129, 189-181. 
 
 MacDonald, J. Ramsey, 
 denounces Lord Grey, 
 
 43. 
 
 Manufacture and com- 
 merce, of Germany, 95, 
 96. 
 
 Mason and Slidell, 129, 
 130. 
 
 Mensdorff, Count, 14, 15. 
 
 Mexico, and the Huerta 
 government, 10. 
 
 Militarism, German, 100- 
 104; assistance given by 
 to the United States, 
 1 13- 122. 
 
 Monroe Doctrine, 148-154. 
 
 Morocco, 62,, 64, 72, 7Z- 
 
 Narodna Odbrana society, 
 5. 
 
 Navalism, British, 1 13 ; 
 destroys American ship- 
 ping, 122- 141. 
 
 Neutral governments, and 
 export of munitions of 
 war, 179-188. 
 
 Norman, C. H,, and Lord 
 Grey, 44- 
 
 North, cause of in Civil 
 War would have failed 
 without German sup- 
 port, 121. 
 
 Northwest Boundary ques- 
 tion, 138. 
 
 Occasions of the war of 
 1914, 1-44. 
 
 Panther, The, sent to 
 
 Agadir, yz- 
 Proximate causes of the 
 
 war, 45-81. 
 
 Revolutionary war, assist- 
 ance given by Germans 
 to American side, 114- 
 116. 
 
 Russia, and the Balkans, 
 2; and the Austro-Hun- 
 garian-Servian question, 
 16-44 ') mobilizes her 
 troops, 31, 32; crosses 
 German frontier, 34 ; 
 and the Franco-German 
 war, 46; war with Tur- 
 key, SI, 52; turns from 
 Germany to France, 52; 
 treaty with France, 55; 
 obtains Port Arthur, 56; 
 moves against Turkey, 
 i9I3j 77-79; and the 
 French army increase, 
 
208 
 
 Index 
 
 79; economic and po- 
 litical systems, 92; land- 
 grabbing, 97 ; perils 
 Europe, loi ; plans 
 against Turkey, loi ; 
 danger in her domi- 
 nance, 143. 
 
 San Stefano, treaty of, 
 
 52. 
 
 Sarajevo crime, 4, 13, 80, 
 81; and the Austro- 
 Hungarian empire, 155- 
 166. 
 
 Sazonof and the Entente, 
 27, 28. 
 
 Self Government in Eng- 
 land, 108. 
 
 Servia and the Sarajevo 
 crime, 4-14. 
 
 Seward, Secretary, British 
 view of during Civil 
 War, 190. 
 
 Southern Confederacy, 
 supported by Great Bri- 
 tain, 126-132. 
 
 Steuben, Baron von, serv- 
 ice to America in the 
 Revolution, 115, 116. 
 
 "Three Emperor Alliance," 
 
 51. 
 Treaty of Washington, 
 
 137. 
 Treitschkc, von, Heinrich, 
 
 105, IQ6k 
 
 Trent afifair, 129, 130. 
 
 Triple Alliance, formed, 
 53; and Italy, 12; and 
 Triple Entente, 13. 
 
 Triple Entente, 3, 12, 67. 
 
 Tripoli, and the Italian 
 expedition, 12 ; occu- 
 pied by Italy, 75. 
 
 Turkey, saved by Con- 
 gress at Berlin, 52; and 
 German trade, 57, 58. 
 
 Underlying causes of the 
 war, 82-112. 
 
 United States, and Huerta, 
 10; public opinion in 
 about the war, 177-178; 
 and the export of arms 
 and munitions of war, 
 179-188; and the "Mon- 
 roe Doctrine," 148-154; 
 and Canada, 149-154; 
 delusion in regard to 
 the German Emperor, 
 191. 
 
 Wagner, Adolf, 106. 
 
 War, occasions of the 
 European, 1-44; proxi- 
 mate causes of the, 45- 
 81 ; underlying causes 
 of the European, 82-112. 
 
 Washington, George, his 
 bodyguard of Germans, 
 115. 
 
Index 
 
 209 
 
 Weed, Thurlow, sent to 
 England by Mr. Lin- 
 coln, 191. 
 
 William, Emperor, 107 \ 
 decides boundary ques- 
 tion in favor of United 
 States, 139; the man 
 
 and emperor, 189-200 ; 
 friendship for United 
 States, 200, 201. 
 
 Young Turk revolution, 
 
'5 "* 1 Q Q A 
 
 • A. 7 7 ^-' 
 

 % 
 
 
 
 .'^^ 
 
 .(J 
 
 '^ 
 
 
 
 
 x> . 
 
 \" l- w 
 
 
 
 \' * 
 
 I 
 
 ^/ 
 
 ^, 
 
 'H 
 
 
 .0^ 
 
 •'^ 
 
 
 
 cS^.. 
 
 r-> 
 
 8 I 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 if, ' ^ V 
 
 x^^e< 
 
 If 
 
 •"oo 
 
 Y^iM^^ ^^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 !/ I \ " ^ N.^ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 »0' . ~^ Treatment Date: u^Y ^qq, 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATIOM 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (724) 779-2111 
 

 ^P 
 
 
 
 <J- ,\v 
 
 -S^<^» 
 
 
 t^- 
 
 
 v^ 
 
 ->>. V^'^ 
 
 x^-^ "''^ 
 
 » %4 
 
 
 •^. .^^^ 
 
 
 '^^^ 
 
 .^N^ 
 
:^PW^^ I 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 007 629 503 7 § 
 
 iiiii 
 
 • ..^^r n it ih" « If 8