Part 3 (1/2)

And with rejoicing they greeted ”the day.” It was to bring them, as one German in an important position here expressed it to me, in August, 1914, ”a merry war and victory before the year is out.”

IV

Truly, history affords no parallel to the spiritual poisoning and the resulting horrible trans.m.u.tation of a whole people, such as Prussianism wrought in the incredibly short period of one generation.

Nor would I believe that such a dreadful phenomenon could possibly take place were it not for the evidence of my own eyes and my own ears.

My observations led me to think, however, that Prussianism had reached the crest of its influence some years before the war and that liberal tendencies were beginning to make headway against it.

There were many men in Germany before the war who were opposed to and saw the dangers arising from militarist ambition and jingo teaching and raised their voices against them in warning. There was the ever-increasing Socialist vote which--although Socialism in the German Empire does not mean what it means in Russia and amongst the extremists in our country--did mean opposition to Junker methods and reactionary tendencies.

I am by no means sure that the very growth and spread of that liberal spirit did not have some influence in causing the militarist clique to precipitate the war, as throughout history autocracy has resorted frequently to the unity-compelling force of war in order to arrest, divert and thwart liberalism and independence.

To deceive the German people, and steel them to patriotic determination and sacrifice, the Prussian rulers and their spokesmen affirmed at the beginning of the war, and have kept reaffirming ever since with nauseating reiteration and disgusting hypocrisy, that theirs was a _defensive war_, forced upon them by wicked and envious neighbours. A defensive war, indeed!

Let me review very rapidly the circ.u.mstances which surrounded the beginning of the war. Austria, after the friction of long standing between the two countries, which had reached its culminating point in the murder of the Austrian heir-apparent, sent an ultimatum to Serbia.

The conditions of that ultimatum, although unexampled in their severity and sweeping demands, were accepted by Serbia almost in their entirety.

Austria insisted on acceptance to the very letter, unconditional and absolute, within twenty-four hours or war, whereupon Russia declared that, if war was thus forced upon little Serbia, she would stand by her. After much backing and filling, at the last minute, Austria shrank from the calamity of a world conflagration and declared herself ready to enter into friendly negotiations with Russia. The frightful danger which threatened the world seemed to be on the way of being removed.

But the Prussian militarist party, seeing in their grasp the opportunity for which they had planned and plotted these thirty years, were not willing to let it go by, and they did not shrink from the catastrophe which was involved.

Heretofore Austria had held the centre of the stage and Germany had professed herself unable to interfere. But when Austria was on the point of receding, Germany did interfere, and, on the plea of the menace of the Russian mobilization (a mobilization which there is reason to suspect was deliberately provoked through machinations from Berlin), started the war by an ultimatum to Russia, which was tantamount to declaring war, on the very day on which Austria yielded.

Let it be remembered that whatever menace the Russian mobilization may have contained was infinitely greater against Austria than against Germany, and yet Austria, on the last day in July, 1914, declared herself ready to negotiate.

I know something from actual and personal experience of the plotting of the Prussian war party, and how for a full generation they had endeavoured again and again to bring about a situation which would force war upon the world. I know of my personal knowledge that the stage was set for it six or seven years ago in connection with the Agadir episode.

I know that the Pan-Germans meant to have a footing in South America, and, once there, would have threatened and had prepared to threaten, this very country of ours.

I know that Austria, in 1913, meant to conquer Serbia, and so informed her then ally, Italy, believing that she could do so with impunity.

And I know that Austria did not believe that her ultimatum to Serbia in July, 1914, would bring on a serious war.

I know it, because the week following the outbreak of the war I saw a letter just arrived from a gentleman in high position in Austria, connected with the Austrian Foreign Office, in which, writing to New York under date of about July 20, 1914, he said:

”We are now pa.s.sing through a nerve-wearing time because of our difficulty with Serbia, but by the time this letter reaches you everything will be all right again. The Serbians have been intriguing against us these many years, and this time they must be settled with for good and all. We shall go in and take Belgrade, but inasmuch as we have given a.s.surance to Russia that we shall not permanently interfere with the integrity and independence of Serbia, and inasmuch as neither Russia nor her allies are ready to fight, the whole thing will be a military promenade and will have no serious consequences.”

A defensive war! Was it a defensive war which Prussianism was thinking of when it declined England's repeated offer for a reduction by both countries of the building of wars.h.i.+ps; when it refused at the last Hague conference to discuss the limitation of standing armies and armaments; when Germany--alone amongst the great nations--rejected our offer of a treaty of arbitration?

Years before the war, Nietzsche, than whom no man had greater influence in shaping the trend of German thought in the past thirty years, wrote:

”You shall love peace as a means to prepare for new wars. You say that a good cause may hallow even war, but I say to you that it is a good war which hallows every cause.”

On July 29, 1914, the well-informed German newspaper, _Vorwaerts_, declared:

”The camarilla of war-lords is working with absolutely unscrupulous means to carry out their fearful designs to precipitate a world war.”