Part 8 (1/2)

And our alliance with Austria is not a mere piece of political strategy, not an unholy alliance like that of republican France with despotic Russia or Anglo-Saxon England with Mongol j.a.pan.

Our States have a common history. We are, as far as the Austrian Germans are concerned--about a third of the population of Austria--the same people. We have, and that is perhaps the most decisive point in the alliance, nearly the same position on the surface of the globe.

We are both inland empires situated in the centre of Europe, surrounded by many different nations, all of whom may bear some grudge against us.

As long as our joint frontiers are safe we can stand back to back and face calmly any unnatural confederation like the present one.

We concluded the alliance with Austria because we wanted to safeguard ourselves against foreign attack; it has turned out the alliance has involved us in war. We might have avoided the war at present if we had broken faith with our ally.

It would not have been difficult for us to find some legal quibbles, like those which Italy, following a policy of very sober national egotism, is now earnestly exclaiming to all the world.

If we had done so we should have been knaves, but we should have been fools as well. For surely n.o.body can believe that the forces antagonistic to Germany would have ceased to act if we had left Austria in the lurch.

Neither France nor Russia nor England would have changed their policy.

They might, moreover, have tried to make Austria join in some future conspiracy against us.

There are three main causes to which the war is due:

1. The French have never forgotten their defeat in 1870 and 1871. They have always been thirsting for revenge.

2. We are at war because Russia thinks she has a mission on behalf of the Slavic world; she feels that mission can only be fulfilled by smas.h.i.+ng Germany, the bulwark of Western idea.

3. We are at war because England has returned to her old political ideals. She means to enforce anew the balance of power and she wants to cut down Germany to that normal dead-level which alone, she thinks, is consistent with her own security.

As far as our antagonism to France is concerned, we have always looked upon it as a regrettable fact which time, perhaps, might do away with.

We are just enough to understand that a country like France, with a glorious past, a gallant spirit and an undaunted courage, cannot forget the blow we dealt her forty-three years ago.

We think we have been right in retaking from her Alsace-Lorraine, belonging originally to the German Empire. But we look with a kind of envy upon her who succeeded in denationalizing the people of those provinces to such a degree that we have not yet been able to make them Germans once more.

We have always regretted that the two most civilized nations in Continental Europe should be rent asunder by an unforgotten past.

We hoped that the creation of a wonderful African empire might in the long run soothe French national feeling. We should have been always willing to come to an understanding on the existing state of affairs, but though there have been lucky statesmen in France who tried such a policy, public opinion was too strong for them. French people preferred to sacrifice the main ideas on which their republican government is based and made an alliance with Russia.

Religious, national, and political oppression in Russia against Pole, Jew, and Finn, against workingman and intellectual, is propped up by the help of liberal thinking France, whose conservatism threw a Western glamour over Russian ill-deeds.

We have regretted more than words can say it that France has annihilated herself as a power for the moral improvement of the universe by making herself a tool of the Russian Juggernaut.

We read in the papers today that after a small frontier engagement in Alsace-Lorraine the signs of mourning were taken off from the statues representing Alsatian towns on Parisian squares.

We know in our innermost hearts that they will have to be attached for a long time to come to those three emblems of human progress for which France is supposed to stand, liberty, fraternity, equality, if our arms are not successful.

We realize that the gallant spirit of the French people has furnished the mainspring which has made this war possible.

We honor her for her courage. For we know well enough that it is she alone among the partners who runs real risks. We know that she is not moved by sordid motives. But as we know her unforgiving att.i.tude, as we knew that she was helping Russia and egging her on against us; that she was instigating Britain and Belgium as well as Serb and Rumanian, we had to take her att.i.tude as what it was; as the firm policy of a patriotic and pa.s.sionate people, waiting for the moment when they could wipe out the memory of 1870, putting nationality to the front, sacrificing their own ideals of humanity.

Would France have given up this att.i.tude if we had not stood by our Austrian ally? Would she have broken her word to her Russian friend if we had been a little more conciliatory?

I think we would commit a libel on French honor and on French patriotism if we a.s.sumed that any step on our part could have prevented her from trying to redress the state of affairs produced by the events of 1871.