Part 31 (1/2)

Take you the pick of your fighting men Trained in all warlike arts, and then Make of them all a human wedge To break and shatter your sacred pledge; You may fling your treaty lightly by, But that ”sc.r.a.p of paper” will never die!

It will go down to posterity, It will survive in eternity.

Truly you hate with a lasting hate; Think you you will escape that hate?

”Hate by water and hate by land; Hate of the head and hate of the hand.”

Black and bitter and bad as sin, Take you care lest it hem you in, Lest the hate you boast of be yours alone, And curses, like chickens, find roost at home _IN GERMANY!_

England Caused the War

By T. von Bethmann-Hollweg, German Imperial Chancellor.

_Following is the full text of the speech delivered by the German Chancellor at the session of the Reichstag in Berlin on Dec. 2, 1914:_

The Emperor, who is absent with the army, has charged me to transmit his best wishes and cordial greetings to the German Reichstag, with whom he is known to be united till death in the stress of danger and in the common concern for the weal of the Fatherland.

Our first thought goes out to the Kaiser and the army and navy--our soldiers who are fighting for the honor and greatness of the empire.

Full of pride and unshakable confidence, we look to them and to our Austro-Hungarian comrades in arms, who are firmly united to us, to fight great battles with brilliant bravery.

Our most recent ally in battle who has been obliged to join us is the Ottoman Empire, which knows well that with the destruction of the German Empire it, too, would lose its national right to control its own destiny. As our enemies have formed a powerful coalition against us, they will, I hope, find that the arm of our brave allies reaches the weak spots in their world position.

On Aug. 4 the Reichstag expressed the firm resolution of the whole people to undertake the war which had been forced upon them and to defend their independence to the utmost.

Since then great deeds have been accomplished. The incomparable gallantry of our troops has carried the war into the enemy's country.

There we still stand firm and can regard the future with every confidence, but the enemy's resistance is not broken.

We are not yet at the end of our sacrifices. The nation will continue to support those sacrifices with the same heroism as. .h.i.therto, for we must and will fight to a successful end our defensive war for right and freedom. We will then remember how our defenseless compatriots in hostile countries were maltreated in a manner which is a disgrace to all civilization. The world must learn that no one can hurt a hair on the head of a German subject with impunity.

It is evident to us who is responsible for this--the greatest of all wars. The apparent responsibility falls on those in Russia who ordered and carried out the mobilization of the Russian Army; the real responsibility, however, falls on the British Government. The Cabinet in London could have made the war impossible if it had without ambiguity declared at Petrograd that Great Britain would not allow a Continental war to develop from the Austro-Servian conflict.

Such a declaration would also have obliged France to take energetic measures to restrain Russia from undertaking warlike operations. Then our action as mediators between Petrograd and Vienna would have been successful, and there would have been no war.

But Great Britain did not act thus. Great Britain was aware of the bellicose machinations of the partly irresponsible but powerful group around the Czar. She saw how the ball was rolling, but placed no obstacle in its path. In spite of all its a.s.surances of peace London informed Petrograd that Great Britain was on the side of France and, consequently, on the side of Russia.

The Cabinet of London allowed this monstrous worldwide war to come about hoping, with the help of the Entente, to destroy the vitality of England's greatest European compet.i.tor in the markets of the world.

Therefore, England and Russia have before G.o.d and men the responsibility for the catastrophe which has fallen upon Europe. Belgian neutrality, which England pretended to defend, was nothing but a disguise.

On the evening of Aug. 2 we informed Brussels that we were obliged, in the interest of self-defense and in consequence of the war plans of France, which were known to us, to march through Belgium, but already, on the afternoon of the same day, Aug. 2, before anything of our action in Brussels could have been known in London, the British Government promised France unconditional a.s.sistance in case the German fleet should attack the French coast. Nothing was said about Belgium neutrality.

How can England maintain that she drew the sword because we violated Belgian neutrality? How could the British statesmen, whose past is well known, speak at all of Belgian neutrality? When, on Aug. 4, I spoke of the wrong which we were committing with our march into Belgium it was not yet established whether the Belgian Government at the last moment would not desire to spare the country and retire under protest to Antwerp. For military reasons I cannot go into whether there was the possibility of such a development on Aug. 4.

As to the guilt of the Belgian Government, many indications were already known at that time, but there were no positive and written proofs. Now, however, that it is demonstrated by doc.u.ments found in Brussels how the Belgians surrendered their neutrality to England the entire world knows two facts.

One is that when our troops on the night of Aug. 3-Aug. 4 entered Belgian territory they were on the ground of a State which had given up its neutrality long ago. The other is that, not for the sake of the neutrality of Belgium, which she had herself undermined, did England declare war on us, but because she believed that she would be able to master us with the help of two great Continental powers.

Since Aug. 2, since her promise to a.s.sist France, England was no longer neutral, and was actually at war with us, and the argument that the declaration of war was a sequel to the violation of Belgian neutrality is nothing but a piece of play-acting performed to mystify the English people and neutral States.

Now that the Anglo-Belgian war plans are unveiled in their smallest details, the policy of British statesmen is branded before the tribunal of history for all time.