Part 7 (2/2)

Ping Pong!

I cannot say--I do not know Whether the boys would have it so; But if by chance We should engage in carnage grim, And harm, alas! should come to him-- Would they feel sorrow then, or bliss, The while they heard the bullets hiss Ping Pong, Ping Pong, Ping Pong?

Tools of the Russian Juggernaut

By M.J. Bonn.

Prof. Bonn is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Munich and German Visiting Professor to the University of California. The following article by him was published on Aug.

8, 1914, in the first week of war.

As long as hostile censors muzzle truth there is no use in discussing the European military situation. Where the ingenuity of American newspaper men has failed it would be presumptuous for any one to try.

But the question, Why are we at war? can be answered fairly well by anybody conversant with the facts of the European situation.

We are not at war because the Emperor, as war lord, has sent out word to his legions to begin a war of world-wide aggression, carrying into its vortex intellectual Germany, notwithstanding all her peaceful aspirations.

I may fairly claim to be a representative of that intellectual Germany which comes in now for a good deal of sympathy, but I must own that intellectual Germany, as far as I know about her, thoroughly approves of the Emperor's present policy.

She approves of it not on the principle merely ”Right or wrong, my country”; she does so because she knows that war has become inevitable, and that we must face that ordeal when we are ready for it, not at the moment most agreeable to our enemies. If intellectual Germany wants to develop the moral and intellectual qualities of the German people she can do so only if there is peace--real peace--not endangered by the fear of some sudden and treacherous aggression.

We approve of the war because we realize that such a peace was no longer possible. Some of our critics are trying to show that we wanted a war, as we wanted the colonial empire of France.

We have, indeed, refused the demand made by England as the price for her neutrality--that we should not be allowed to take any part of France's colonial domains, even in case of complete victory.

We refused this stipulation, not because we were after those colonies, but because a so-called neutral power tried to impose conditions upon us she would never have dreamed of asking from France.

If we were hankering after conquest we would have made war long ago. We would have done so during the Morocco crisis, when Russia had not yet recovered from the j.a.panese war; when Turkey was still a mighty empire, ready to take our side, overawing the Balkan States and threatening Russia; when Rumania was our ally and when France, trying to swallow up the independent States of Morocco, but put herself morally in the wrong.

We refrained from war not because England supported France. The developments of the last week have shown that we are ready to face England, too, when needs must be. We decided for peace because we were convinced that no amount of colonial aggrandizement could compensate us for the dangers and horrors of a big European war.

Our diplomatic methods during those days may have been brusque and annoying, but our aim was peace. Though we are held up continually as the disturber of European peace, driven on by a mad desire for territorial aggrandizement, we are the only big European nation which has not increased her territory during the last twenty-five years.

Russia tried to steal the Far East and is now going half shares with England in Persia. England annexed the Boer republics and is playing with Russia for the Persian States.

France has taken Morocco; Italy, Tripoli; Austria-Hungary has formally annexed Bosnia.

Even little Servia, who is praised just now as the most just and G.o.d-fearing nation, has succeeded in wresting a large part of Macedonia, inhabited by Bulgarians, from her Bulgarian allies.

The only conquest we went in for was an exchange of a strip of West Africa, which we got from France as a kind of hush money, for her Morocco policy, England, Italy, and Spain having taken their payment in advance.

We have led no war of aggression for new territories, and we are held up to moral contempt by all those nations who have taken their shares.

We went to war because we had to keep faith with Austria. We do not and we did not approve of every step our ally has taken. But our idea of a faithful alliance is not that you can chuck your partner whenever he has made a mistake, but that you must stick to him through good and evil.

You may upbraid him privately if you dislike his methods; you may give him a fair warning, but as long as your bargain exists you must stick to it.

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