BELGIUM
HIS MAJESTY, KING ALBERT
M. DAVIGNON Minister of Foreign Affairs.
BARON VON DER ELST Secretary General to Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
COUNT ERREMBAULT DE DUDZEELE Minister at Vienna.
BARON FALLON Minister at The Hague.
BARON GRENIER Minister at Madrid.
BARON GUILLAUME Minister at Paris.
COUNT DE LALAING Minister at London.
SERVIA
HIS MAJESTY, KING PETER
M. PACHITCH Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
M. BOSCHKOVITCH Minister at London.
DR. PATCHOU Minister of Finance.
AUSTRIA
HIS MAJESTY, EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH
COUNT BERCHTOLD Minister of Foreign Affairs.
COUNT CLARY UND ALDRINGEN Minister at Brussels.
BARON GIESL VON GIESLINGEN Minister at Belgrade.
BARON MACCHIO Councilor of Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
COUNT MENSDORFF Amba.s.sador to England.
COUNT SZaPaRY Amba.s.sador to Russia.
ITALY
HIS MAJESTY, KING VICTOR EMMANUEL III.
MARQUIS DI SAN GIULIANO Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The Evidence in the Case
CHAPTER I
THE SUPREME COURT OF CIVILIZATION
Let us suppose that in this year of dis-Grace, 1914, there had existed, as let us pray will one day exist, a Supreme Court of Civilization, before which the sovereign nations could litigate their differences without resort to the iniquitous arbitrament of arms and that each of the contending nations had a sufficient leaven of Christianity or shall we say commonplace, everyday morality, to have its grievances adjudged not by the ethics of the cannon, but by the eternal criterion of justice.
_What would be the judgment of that august tribunal?_
It may be suggested that the question is academic, as no such Supreme Court exists or is likely to exist within the life of any living man.
Casuists of the Bernhardi school of moral philosophy will further suggest that to discuss the ethical merits of the war is to start with a false premise that such a thing as international morality exists, and that when once the conventionalities of civilization are laid aside the leading nations commence and make war in a manner that differs only in degree and not in kind from the methods of Frederick the Great and Napoleon, and that these in turn only differed in degree from those of Alaric and Attila. According to this theory, the only law of nations is that ascribed by the poet to Rob Roy:
"The good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can."
Does the Twentieth Century only differ from its predecessors in having a thin veneering of hypocrisy, or has there developed in the progress of civilization an international morality, by which, even though imperfectly, the moral conduct of nations is judged?
The answer can be an unqualified affirmative. With the age of the printing press, the steamship, the railroad, and the telegraph there has developed _a conscience of mankind_.
When the founders of the American Republic severed the tie which bound them to Great Britain, they stated that "_a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires_ that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
The Declaration a.s.sumed that there was a rule of right and wrong that regulated the intercourse of nations as well as individuals; it believed that there was a great human conscience, which rises higher than the selfish interests and prejudices of nations and races, and which approves justice and condemns injustice. It felt that this approval is more to be desired than national advantage. It const.i.tuted mankind a judge between contending nations and lest its judgment should temporarily err it established posterity as a court of last resort. It placed the tie of humanity above that of nationality. It proclaimed the solidarity of mankind.
In the years that have intervened since this n.o.ble Declaration, the world has so far progressed towards an enlightened sense of justice that a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" has proved an efficient power in regulating peacefully and justly the intercourse of nations. Each nation does at least in some measure fear to-day the disapproval of civilization. The time gives this proof in the eager desire of Germany to-day--despite its policy of "blood and iron"--to gain the sympathetic approval of the American people, not with the remotest hope of any practical cooperation but to avoid that state of moral isolation, in which the land of Luther now finds itself.
_The Supreme Court of Civilization does exist._ It consists of cosmopolitan men in every country, who put aside racial and national prejudices and determine the right and wrong of every issue between nations by that slowly forming system of international morality which is the conscience of mankind.
To a certain cla.s.s of German statesmen and philosophers this Court of Public Opinion is a visionary abstraction. A group of distinguished German soldiers, professors, statesmen, and even doctors of divinity, pretending to speak in behalf of the German nation, have consciously or unconsciously attempted to revive in the twentieth century the cynical political morality of the sixteenth.
As Symonds, the historian of the Renaissance, says in his _Age of the Despots_, Machiavelli was the first in modern times to formulate a theory of government in which the interests of the ruler are alone regarded, which a.s.sumes
a separation between statecraft and morality, which recognizes force and fraud among the legitimate means of attaining high political ends, which makes success alone the test of conduct and which presupposes the corruption, baseness, and venality of mankind at large.
Even the age of Cesare Borgia revolted against this philosophy and the name of Machiavelli became a byword. "Am I a Machiavel?" says the host in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, and the implication of this question indirectly manifests the revolt of the seventeenth century against the sinister philosophy of the great Florentine.
Nothing can be more amazing than that not only leading militarists of Germany but many of its foremost philosophers and teachers have become so intoxicated with the dream of Pan-Germanism that in the utmost sincerity they have espoused and with a certain pride proclaimed the vicious principles of Machiavelli in all their moral nudity. There is an emotional and mystical element in the advanced German thinker, which makes him capable of accepting in full sincerity intellectual and moral absurdities of which the more robust common sense of other nations would be incapable. The advanced German doctrinaire is the "wisest fool in Christendom." The depth of his learning is generally in the inverse ratio to the shallowness of his common sense.
Nothing better demonstrates this than the present negation by advanced and doubtless sincere German thinkers of the very foundations of public morality and indeed of civilization. They have been led with Nietzsche to revile the Beat.i.tudes and exalt the supremacy of cruelty over mercy. Indeed Treitschke in his lectures on _Politik_, which have become the gospel of Junkerdom, avowedly based his gospel of force upon the teaching of Machiavelli, for he points out that it was Machiavelli who first clearly saw that the State is power (_der Staat ist Macht_). Therefore "to care for this power is the highest moral duty of the State" and "of all political weaknesses that of feebleness is the most abominable and despicable; it is the sin against the holy spirit of politics." He therefore holds that the State as the ultimate good "cannot bind its will for the future over against other States,"
and that international treaties are therefore only obligatory "for such time as the State may find to be convenient."
To enforce the will of the nation contrary to its own solemn promises and to increase its might, war is the appointed means. Both Treitschke and Moltke conceived it as "an ordinance set by G.o.d" and "one of the two highest functions" of the State. The doctrine is carried to the blasphemous conclusion that war is an ordinance of a just and merciful G.o.d; that, to quote Bernhardi, "it is a biological necessity" and that "the living G.o.d will see to it that war shall always recur as a terrible medicine for humanity." Therefore "might is at once the supreme right and the dispute as to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war," which gives a "biologically just decision."
This means that the 42 centimeter howitzer is more moral than a gun of smaller caliber and that the justice of G.o.d depends upon the superiority of Krupp to other ordnance manufacturers.
Treitschke tells us, and the statement is quoted by Bernhardi with approval, that "the end all and be all of a state is power, and he who is not man enough to look this truth in the face should not meddle with politics." To this Bernhardi adds that the State"s highest moral duty is to increase its power and in so doing "_the State is the sole judge of the morality of its own action. It is in fact above morality or, in other words whatever is necessary is moral._"
Again we learn that the State must not allow any conventional sympathies to distract it from its object and that "conditions may arise which are more powerful than the most honorable intentions."
All efforts directed towards the abolition of war are denominated as not only "foolish but absolutely immoral." To indicate that in this prosecution of war for the increase of dominion, chivalry would be a weakness and magnanimity a crime, we are finally told that "the State is a law unto itself" and that "weak nations have not the same right to live as powerful and vigorous nations." Even as to weak nations, we are further advised that the powerful and vigorous nation--which alone apparently has the right to live--must not wait for some act of aggression or legitimate _casus belli_, but that it is justified in deliberately provoking a war, and that the happiest results have always followed such "deliberately provoked wars," for "the prospects of success are the greatest when the moment for declaring war can be selected to suit the political and military situation."
As the weak nations have no moral right to live it becomes important to remember that in the economy of Prussian Junkerdom there is only one strong race--his own. "_Wir sind die Weltra.s.se._" The ultimate goal is the super-nation, and the premise upon which the whole policy is based is that Germany is predestined to be that super-nation.
Bernhardi believes--and his belief is but the reflex of the oft-repeated boast of the Kaiser--that history presents no other possibility. "For us there are two alternatives and no third--world power or ruin" (_Weltmacht oder Niedergang_). To a.s.similate Germany to ancient Rome the Kaiser on occasion reminds himself of Caesar and affects to reign, not by the will of the people, but by divine right.
No living monarch has said or done more to revive this mediaeval fetich. To his soldiers he has recently said: "You think each day of your Emperor. Do not forget G.o.d." _What magnanimity!_