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 warships; 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."
In October, 1914, three months after the outbreak of the war, Maximilian Harden, one of the ablest and most influential of German publicists, wrote:
"Let us renounce those miserable efforts to excuse the actions of Germany in declaring war. It is not against our will that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic adventure. The war has not been imposed upon us by others and by surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to will it. We decline to appear before the tribunal of united Europe. We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone counts and no other--one principle which contains and sums up all the others--_might_."
I could go on for hours quoting similar views and sentiments from the utterances of leading German writers and educators before and since the war. It is worth mentioning, though, that Maximilian Harden has seen a new light, and for some time has been courageously speaking and writing in a very different strain. There are a number of influential men in Germany who, like him, have undergone a change of mind and heart. Strong and outspoken a.s.sertions of liberal sentiment and independent aspirations have found utterance in that country in the course of the last six months, such as have not been heard within its frontiers these many years.
A defensive war! There are certain telegrams (generally unknown in Germany, even to this day) from Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, to the British Amba.s.sador in Germany, sent during the week preceding the outbreak of the war in Europe, which by themselves are conclusive testimony to the contrary. In these messages, the British Foreign Minister went almost on his knees to beg Germany to consent to a conference in order to avoid war.
He went to the utmost limits in promising benevolent consideration for Germany"s view-point and wishes, then and in the future, and he stated that if Germany would put forward any reasonable proposition honestly calculated to maintain peace, England would support it with all of its influence, and if France and Russia would not fall in line England would promptly separate itself from these two countries.
These overtures and pleas met with no response from the Masters of Germany. They declared war.
It is probably true that the Russian Pan-Slavists had planned war sooner or later, just as the Pan-Germans did. War might _perhaps_ have come then or at some other time, even if the Prussian rulers had not precipitated it. But the fact remains that it was the Imperial German Government which _did_ declare war. For having antic.i.p.ated that "perhaps," and resolved it according to their own plans and wishes, for that, their initial crime, and for those which followed, the rulers of the German people will have to answer before the judgment seat of G.o.d and history. Upon them rests the blood-guilt for this dreadful catastrophe which has befallen the world.
V
A few days ago I read a poem addressed to Germany, of which these lines have remained in my memory:
"Oh, land of now, oh, land of then, Dear G.o.d, the dreams, the dreams of men!
Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate, Where are the things which made you great?"
The things which made Germany great are not dead, and the world cannot afford to allow them to die. They belong to the immortal possessions of the human race.
They have pa.s.sed, for the time being, alas, out of the keeping of the ma.s.s of the German people, whose glorious inheritance they were.
They are now in the keeping of that minority, not, perhaps, very great as yet, but growing steadily, of men in Germany itself from whose eyes the scales have begun to fall. They are in the keeping of all the nations who appreciate and cherish and are determined to maintain those great and high things which the civilized world has attained through the toil, sacrifice and suffering of its best in the course of many centuries. And, above all, they are in the keeping of the ten or fifteen millions of Americans of German descent.
As that great American of German birth, Carl Schurz, and many other brave and high-minded Germans--my own father, I am proud to say, among them--in 1848 stood in arms against Prussian oppression, for liberal ideas and right and truth and freedom, so do we stand now. In fighting for the cause of America as loyal Americans, we are fighting at the same time for the deliverance of the country of our birth from those unrighteous powers which hold it enthralled and feed upon its soul.
If ever a nation entered a war after having maintained infinite forbearance in the face of grave menace and dangers and the most intolerable affronts, and from motives as pure and high as the great blue dome of heaven, America is that nation.
We seek no reward whatsoever of a material nature. We seek no "place in the sun"--to use the German Chancellor"s term--except the sun of liberty, and that we do not seek selfishly, but to share with all the world.
America is not waging a war of vengeance, notwithstanding all the injuries and measureless provocations that we have received. We have lighted a fire to purify, not to burn at the stake.
America is incapable of hating an entire people, but we do hate, we are fighting and we shall fight with every ounce of our might, the spirit which has power over the people of Germany, and which, if it were to prevail--as, under G.o.d, it never will--would destroy liberty, justice and plighted faith. It was not the people of Great Britain which America fought in the War of the Revolution, but the spirit and the ruling caste which then held sway over them. America fought then for an ideal and for liberty and independence, and sacrificed blood and treasure and suffered and endured and won. And so it will be now.
The spirit of Prussianism and the spirit of Americanism cannot live in the same world. One or the other must conquer.
In the mad pride of its contempt for democracy, Prussianism has thrown down the gauntlet to us. We have taken up the challenge and now stand arrayed by the side of the other freedom-loving nations of the world, giving our fresh strength and our boundless resources to them, who, heroically striving, have borne the heat and burden of a dreadfully long and exhausting struggle, yet stand unwearied, erect and resolute.
The enemy is of formidable strength. But even if he were far stronger than he is, even if we did not have the men and the means which are ours, even if our comrades-in-arms had not demonstrated their superb and indomitable prowess, still must our cause prevail--for there is fighting with us a force which has ever proved itself stronger than any other power on earth, and again and again has triumphed over overwhelming odds. That force, G.o.d-inspired, death-defying and unconquerable, is the soul of man.
And when--Heaven grant it may be soon!--the soul of the German people will have freed itself from the sinister powers that now keep it in ban and bondage, when it will have found again the high impulses and aims of its former self, when it will once more understand and speak the universal language of humanity and right, then, in G.o.d"s own time there will be peace.
FRENZIED LIBERTY