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OXFORD PAMPHLETS 1914
pll for tgrrmany
Or, T/^^ World's Respect well lost
Being a Dialogue, in the sa^jric-^ manner, between
Dr. PANGLOSS and M. CANDIDE
Ridenteni dicere verii,m Quid vetat?
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1914
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK
TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY
HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UN1\'ER8ITY
Walter Clinton Jackson Library
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Special Collections & Rare Books
World War I Pamphlet Collection
Gift of Greensboro Public Library
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It is very difficult to see ourselves as others see us. It is also difficult to see others as they see themselves.
Tnst because it is difficult, it is worth while attempting. Voltaire once wrote a romance called Candide. Can- dide was an ingenuous soul, who wished, but found it difficult, to believe that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He had grown to manhood in the parts of Westphalia, in the castle of the Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh. Here he had converse with one Dr. Pangloss, an ideaHst philosopher and a professional optimist. -The conversations reported by Voltaire took a wide range and touched many topics. The conver- sation here imagined, between a new (and perhaps less naif) Candide and a new (and perhaps less benevolent) Dr. Pangloss, is concerned with the political thoughts and ambitions entertained by the Germans of these latter days. It is a somewhat haphazard conversation, veering around wherever the breeze of argument happens •*p blow ; but this much at any rate may be said of its
-^heme — that it begins in geography, continues in theology, and ends with some loose history.
Dr. Pangloss. My country has suffered more than a little at the hands of physical geography. Nature has set it in the midst of Europe, in a pressure which has threatened it through the centuries, and threatens it still to-day, with a fate which philologists call elision. Germany is not a little child that lightly draws its
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breath ; it is a giant that needs plenty of air, and finds some difficulty in getting any. When a man is being crushed in a crowd, the good Samaritan cries, ' Give him air.' Air is what our Frederick the Great and our Bismarck tried to give us Germans. It is true that they pushed a little rudely ; but then, it is difficult to watch your patient choking quietly. To-day we want more air ; we want the good sea-breeze to fill our lungagH Here again we are hit by geography. England lies athwart that North Sea, which some geographers have called the German Ocean ; and South-eastern England draws so near to the Continent that she contracts the exit of that sea to a narrow bottle-neck, through which it is difficult to pass with any comfort. It is hard to fiy in the face of geography ; and yet, after all, we have our quarrel with geography.
Candida . I think I understand your metaphors, though it is difficult to see how anything short of some millions of tons of dynamite will widen the bottle-neck. Still, your explosives are great, and your explosive instruments are even greater ; and you may greatly prevail.
Dr. Pangloss. Yes — magna est Germania. And her greatness is a greatness of the mind, Candide, jeer as you may at her explosives and her explosive instru- ments. Germany is a great self-conscious nation^ spirit. She is the Republic of Plato incarnate ; for each of her citizens is content to live and die for the fulfilment of his allotted place in her scheme. We Germans are the Greeks of the modern world : ' we do not suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to him- self, for we know that they all belong to the State ; ' and we hold that ' the citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives ' .
Candide. What you say is somewhat astonishing. I
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had never thought of the Prussian Guard as the perfect guardians of Plato's Repubhc. But I see your point. When a German who is a resident ahen in another land constructs an excessively stout concrete floor for his house, he is thinking of his allotted function.
Dr. Pangloss. Yes — we carry out our philosophy without any slackness, just as we make our beautiful
^*%oods with some cheapness. But you will recognize,
"^fter all, that an ardent nationalism courses in our veins like the wine of our Rhine Valley. And great vintages have gone to the making of our nationalism — the vin- tages of 1813 and 1870, when the Lord of battles trod the wine-press in His fury. We cannot forget our Befreiungskrieg and our Einheitskrieg. when it was good to be ahve, and when our hearts sang together ' a nation once again '. And our memories run even further back than 1813 and 1870. They run as far back as the Middle Ages. We have not forgotten the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, or Otto I, or Barbarossa. We remember the days when the Christian Commonwealth of Western Europe lived under the shelter of the German aegis, and we hope for the days in which the supremacy of our nation shall once
,.^iore be the guarantee of the culture and peace of
Jburope.
Candide. And you hope, too, unless I am mistaken, to renew the old political boundaries of your mediaeval empire, and to ' recover ' the Low Countries and the old kingdom of Burgundy. You hope to make your frontiers run from the mouth of the Somme to the mouth of the Rhone. At least, I seem to remember something of the sort in the writings of some of your ' All -German ' prophets. Dr. Pangloss. The heart of our nation feeds on
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memories ; why should we not bring back to our hearts our ancient territories ?
Gandide. It is possible that they may prefer not to be brought back. But I do not understand your theory of the Holy Roman Empire. I had thought that it was a universal organization of Christ's Church militant here on earth, for the sake of justice, especially inter- national justice, and for the sake of peace, and fo|A the sake of liberty. I think I have read something of the sort in Dante.
Dr. Pangloss. Dante was an Italian ; and we follow the interpretation of history and of politics which we find in our own Treitschke. And that reminds me, by the way, of something that I was forgetting. Our nation has also its great mediaeval memories in the East, memories of which Treitschke discoursed in his Aufsatz on our Teutonic Order. We Germans were in the Middle Ages a great colonial nation. Centuries before the expansion of England, in the days of Henry the Fowler and Henry the Lion, we Germans began that Drang nach Osten which carried German farmers, German merchants, German knights, and German monks over the Elbe to the Vistula, over the Erzgebirge to Bohemia, and over the Carpathians to far Transylvania^ The illimitable East beckoned, and the romantic souW of Germany cried, ' I come.' But then, alas ! there came the Hussite wars ; and next there came the rise of Russia ; and later there came still other ways and waves of the back-wash of the Slav. For centuries we slept, until our Kaiser came, and blew a trumpet-call, ' East- ward Ho ! to far Bagdad.' And we heard, and, think- ing of the Teutonic knights and many things, we willingly followed.
Gandide. Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit business
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with romance. Your Kaiser certainly wins my vote. I confess I have often thought of him as a sort of com- pound of Henry the Lion, who opened the Baltic to German trade, and Frederick Barbarossa, who died in crusading harness. And I have sometimes wondered whether, in his Eastern tour some few years ago, he remembered how the Lion too visited Jerusalem, and ■^Jvas also entertained in high state at Constantinople, as far back as about 1170.
Dr. Pangloss. I have no doubt that he did. He if any man remembers our Middle Ages. But we are all occupied in remembering, and in hoping that the remem- bered past (suffused a little, I admit, with the glow of romantic imagination) may become the welcome future. It is we Germans who invented the fairy-tale ; and our fairy-Kaiser will lead us to a fairy-future.
Gandide. You touch, my dear Doctor ! exactly the point of my puzzlement about you. How do you com- bine your hard business realism with your faculty for seeing the world through fairy- spectacles, not as it is, but as you want to see it ? You are practical enough in daily business : you build your guns, and the emplace- ments for your guns, quite realistically ; and yet when ,^it comes to politics, where you profess to be realists, .Jyou seem to me to be the slaves of pictures. The ' England ', for instance, which you detest, and to which your poets (and poetesses) address hymns of hate, by which the English are immensely flattered — it is all a picture -England, an ogre out of a fairy-book.
Dr. Pangloss. Perhaps it is. I cannot solve your riddle. Ask Heinrich Heine, not me. I confess I am somewhat puzzled myself. We Germans are a nation incomprise, even to ourselves.
Gandide. You disarm me by your ingenuous candour.
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Dr. Pangloss. Thank you. Candour is one of our virtues, in our private life. We follow a maxim of the mediaeval law : Solus princeps fingit quod in rei veritate non est. We believe that it is the prerogative of the State to issue those Phoenician lies which, I fancy, even Plato allowed his perfect guardians to use. In private we only deceive ourselves. In public we expect our government to deceive the rest of the world. ^^
Candide. I have often noticed the liking of your modern publicists for the Prince of Machiavelli.
Dr. Pangloss. The reason is simple. The zeal of the State has eaten them up, as it ate up Machiavelli. After all, there is much similarity between the Italy of 1500, as it presented itself to Machiavelli, and the Europe of 1900, as it presents itself to most of us. The State is in either case set in the midst of many and great perils : it is full of that ' diffidence ' of which the English philosopher Hobbes wrote, and by which he meant dis- trust not of yourself, but of other people. In a word, it is full of fear ; and there is nothing more ruthless than fear. Fear says, ' Necessity knows no law ; ' fear says, Salus popidi suprema lex. If a State has only enough fear in it, Machiavelli and all his legion of maxims enter into it immediately.
Candide. I have noticed that your Treitschke brackets^ Luther with Machiavelli. Has Luther really anything to do with your politics ?
Dr. Pangloss. It is possible that he has. Lutheran- ism perhaps suffers from the defects of its merit. It insists gloriously on the spirit. ' By the faith of your spirit,' it preaches, ' and not by the works of your hands, you shall be saved.' ' Of the church of the spirit, wherein all Christians are knit together by the com- munity of their faith, ye are partakers ; take ye no
i
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thought for a bodily and visible church.' It is a fine teaching ; it is perhaps too fine. Lutheranism made the church a disembodied ghost ; and the profit all went to the State. The disembodied church was doomed to walk at the beck and call of the ' godly prince ' who controlled the religion of his region. In Lutheran Germany there was no corporate church, with its own life, its own claims, its own history, to confront the organized State. The liberty of the citizen thrives on disputes between organized churches and the organized State : the power of the Government flourishes when Church and State are happily joined in wedlock, and when in that wedlock (as the immortal Bluntschli, who was probably a good Lutheran, finely observes), ' the State is the male and the Church the female organism.' Government has accordingly fiourished among the North Germans ; it has fiourished until it has become, in these latter days quite explicitly, supra -legal and supra-moral. No doubt the magnanimous Bismarck helped the ten- dency, when he crushed the Prussian parliament and edited the Ems telegram ; but it would be unfair to Luther if we attributed too much of the m^aking of Germany to Bismarck. Bismarck's work was all the easier, because more than half of Germany was Lutheran.
Candide. 1 quite follow you. And, indeed, I should be inclined to go even further, and to say that there would be more real Kultur in Germany to-day if Bis- marck had had to fight a few more Kulturkampfe with a few more churches.
Dr. Pangloss. Possibly. At any rate an organized and independent church is a constant reminder to the State that there are limits to its power — that it cannot advance its chair too far, or else the great rushing waves of moral truth and religious life will sweep it away.
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Our State in Germany has never felt that its goings were compassed with any rules. Deprived of the criticism of churches, which might have taught it the moral bounds that it must not overpass ; harried, by the fear that sprang from constant frontier- pressure, into ruthlessly following the lawless precepts of an imagined Necessity, our State has become exlex, as it were — a voluntary outlaw from European society. Our writer J^ have told our statesmen that the State Avas the highest thing in human society, until our statesmen have had to assume, with some words of deprecation and some inconvenience, the mantle of omnipotence. It drags a little at first ; but a quarter of a century's wear has made it hang quite naturally on our Kaiser. The feel- ing of omnipotence has entered his soul : he feels a certain fellowship with the gods. Nothing happens without Zeus ; and nothing happens without his co- regent. So our State ' assumes the God, affects to nod, and seems to shake the spheres ', which nevertheless smile, and as Goethe has said, continue to fulfil their ordained orbits. It all seems blasphemous, but it is not really so. If your State is a Leviathan, a mortal God, lifted to a height from which it can disdain sub- lunary laws of morality, you must not be surprised if^' it speaks in terms of divinity. ^
Candide. I confess I have been sometimes shocked myself, when your countrymen have spoken of the German God, as if He were the property of your nation.
Dr. Pangloss. Perhaps, my dear Candide, our God is the State ; and you will admit the State is our national property — or, perhaps I had better say, we are its property. Our State is for us an ultimate and tran- scendent value. It calls on us Germans to die ; and because it is the Ultimate, we die, singing as we move
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to death, ' Grermany above all things.' Our song is always the song of the ultimate State. The State is the fundamental granite rock of the moral universe. If there is any conflict between the State and the thing (or shall we say the abstraction?) called international law, so much the worse for international law. The granite goes through the paper, and there is a hole in ^^bhe paper.
Candide. I am not sure that I like the song of the ultimate State. It sounds to me something like the song of ultimate Murder.
Dr. Pangloss. The English are like you : they do not like the song of the ultimate State. But then they move in another world of ideas than ours. They have had a very different history. They are an insular people, free from frontier-pressure and its fear ; they have never seen the hosts of Midian prowling round, or needed to fly to the State for protection. And their religious development has been different. Dissent has been a great factor in their religious life — dissent from the established church ; dissent from the State behind the established church. Dissent has been the Antigone of English history ; it has been always challenging the
JCreons of the State, and opposing to their decrees the' steadfast rights of the chapel. Dissent has influenced English practice and theory more than England knows. It has made resistance to the State a familiar idea. Your Englishman — and your Englishwoman — are alwaj^s resisting the State, whether they dislike an Education Act, or detest Home Rule, or desire the franchise. Dis- sent has always vindicated the man versus the State. That is the song of the English ; and Herbert Spencer, who sang it in a work not unknown in Bengal, was bred in dissent. There is only one thing, my dear Candide,
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that has had half the influence of dissent in EngHsh politics, and that is political economy — the political economy of Manchester.
Candide. Then England is the product of the meeting- house and Manchester ?
Dr. Pangloss. Yes. Bunyan and Cobden are its tutelary saints. Bedford Gaol and the Free Trade Hall are its shrines. It lives on the Pilgrim's Progresaj^ and the Principles of Political Economy. Just thinl^ of what Cobden has done. He vindicated the liberty of the economic man from the interference of the State. That is not our way. We Germans read List's National System of Political Economy. The unit of our economic life is not the individual, but the nation, and the benefi- cent guidance of our State has made a national system, which is no mean rival of the individualistic and volun- tary system of England. But I have not yet finished with Cobden. He wedded Free Trade to cosmopolitanism and pacificism. He buttressed the cause of internationalism with money-bags. Your Englishman talks of the comity of nations and the public law (whatever that may be) of Europe ; but his eyes are on his till. He is a good internationalist because Free Trade is a paying propo- sition, and because Free Trade flourishes best through^ the harmonious exchange of the one-sided products o^^, one-legged nations, each specializing, to the destruction of its own full life, on its own peculiar ' department '. We have a different ideal. We do not think in terms of one-legged nations : we think in terms of national self-sufficiency. We want a four-square nation, wrought without blame, active in every side of production, and living up to the full measure of the stature of a complete State. Once more our State is an ultimate — an ulti- mate in its economic life, as it is elsewhere. It must
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produce everything, and do everything, for itself ; it must find within itself all the sources of its material life, as it must find within itself all the inspiration of its spiritual life. That is why we do not dabble in inter- nationalism— the internationalism that arises from the mutual dependence of one-legged nations, which cannot walk without one another's support. We Germans
^pannot, and we will not, walk that way.
"^ Candide. I should have thought that English inter- nationalism had its moral inspiration. I should have thought that Gladstone was not really interested in the one-sided products of Bulgaria or Italy, when he cham- pioned Bulgaria and Italy.
Dr. Pangloss. That is the English cant. It is exactly the result which one might have prophesied from the union of Dissent with political economy. Dissent makes your Englishman want to feel good ; political economy makes him want to get rich. He is clever enough to satisfy both wants at one and the same time. With one eye on Heaven, he pleads the noble moral cause of Belgium ; with the other eye on his ledger, he proclaims the war against German trade. With both eyes on the main chance, he fills his pockets. There is generally a good deal of disjunction between his moral premises
Jpand his practical conclusion ; but he is not a very logical creature, and he is satisfied with the results he gets.
Candide. It may be so, Doctor. But it would aU need a long inquiry. And I should have thought that there was a certain disjunction between your professions of Culture and your solid business ambitions.
Dr. Pangloss. Why should we not have solid business ambitions ? Think of the growth of our population. Nearly a million Germans are added to our population
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every year. What are we to do with them ? Pack them in emigrant ships ? We did that for many years ; but it was not pleasant to see our own citizens expatriated, and with their cosmopoHtan instinct (for we Germans are the real cosmopolitans of the world) settling down to citizenship in alien lands. National sentiment and the growth of our industries have stopped all that. Our citizens no longer emigrate : they find^. work at home. But that only presents us with a ne^\^ problem. Our industry and our commerce have grown magnificently. They are only second to those of England. They employ all our growing population, and they maintain it in a diffused and steady comfort which England does not know. England conquered her lion's share of the trade of the world, and her great Empire, in an easy and casual way, because she had no serious rival. We Germans have conquered our modest share by steady organization and scientific effort, in the face of a thousand odds, and in hot competition with more powerful rivals. But we want markets. Our vast volume of production needs reservoirs of its own into which it can flow ; it needs watersheds of its own from which it can draw its raw materials. We want markets • — exclusive markets. England professes free trade, and maintains the open door ; but she has nevertheless irA fact large exclusive markets of her own in India and her colonies. It is true we can send our goods there as freely as England herself : it is also true that trade follows the flag, and that England keeps the bulk of that trade for herself. We Germans want our own private watersheds and reservoirs. We want them all the more, because our industry is largely built on a foundation of borrowed credit ; because we produce on a large scale, at the minimum of profit, in order to
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undercut ; and because, if we failed to sell our large volume of production, the foundation of our system would crumble.
Candide. Possibly that only proves that your system is unsound. I am not quite sure that your political economy is all that it should be, Doctor. After all, you can only sell to people who want what you have got, and who have got what you want. You cannot grow I markets like mushrooms. But proceed.
Dr. Pangloss. We want markets, and we cannot wait. It is life or death — Weltmacht oder Niedergang. Either we become a world-power, owning a sufficient supply of watersheds and reservoirs to fill and to carry our volume of production, or our seventy millions starve. That is how we Germans look at the matter. And so we have gone to work. First of all, we have built ourselves a navy. We know from the EngUsh example that the navy clears a way to exclusive markets. We know that a navy will protect our vast sea-borne commerce ; we know that a navy will make our colonial expansion possible.
Candide. But has not France achieved a vast colonial expansion since 1870, without any building of such a large navy as yours, and in fact without any great fuss at all ?
Dr. Pangloss. It is an easy step from Toulon to Algiers : it is a far cry from Kjel to
Candide. Where ?
Dr. Pangloss. That is the question. But wherever it is, it needs a great navy to get there. Our navy lies close to our heart. We know something of the influence of sea-power in history ; and we want our sea-power to influence history. Possibly there is some little grandiosity in our conceptions. We Germans love the
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colossal ; and as our army is the greatest army the world has known, we should like a navy of the same pattern. Besides Prussia stood against England in 1780 and inj^lSOl for a fairer and more equal law of the sea ; and our Treitschke has taught us that such a law can never be achieved, unless there is something of an equilibrium of sea-power. Because England has an overwhelming nsivj, she tramples the rights of neutrals ^^ under her feet. Our navy, strong enough to put inW' jeopardy even the greatest naval power, will redress the balance, and inaugurate the day of a fair international law on the seas.
Candide. I had not realized that joxx had the cause of international law so much at heart. But I am still anxious to know whither it is that you are gomg.
Dr. Pangloss. I ^Yi\l try to tell you. Our great Bismarck was not all-prescient ; and though he acquired for us, almost accidentally, most of our colonies, he did not guess the full meaning of colonial poHcy. That was reserved for our Kaiser. He steered to Weltmacht, but it was not an easy course. Bismarck had been glad to see France engaged in Africa ; he thought she would think the less of Alsace-Lorraine. The Kaiser was a httle chagrined to find her engaged so deeply and so well. Nor did our own colonial regime in Africa succeed £ any too well. Our colonists were apt to commandeer native labour too freely, and to commandeer native cattle too easily ; and the history of our dealings with the natives in South-west Africa does not make pleasant reading. But we had to expand somewhere ; and we trusted that when we ' arrived ', we should manage things better. So we became a people of seekers. We have sought here and th^re, and tapped here and there, to find a weak place in the armour of a closed
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world. We have tapped in America ; but the Monroe doctrine came to the door, and on the whole we may be said to have retired. We have tapped in Africa. History does not yet know, and I certainly do not know, what was the exact nature of our tapping in South Africa, from the daj^s of the Jameson Raid to the date of the Peace of Vereeniging. Perhaps there was no tapping at all ; perhaps nobody came to the door ; perhaps the wrong footman answered the knock. At any rate we tapped next time in North-west Africa. Morocco seemed a promising watershed and reservoir ; why should we not hope ? Bismarck might have suggested African expansion to France : autres temps, autres mceurs. We tapped ; France replied ; and England was standing round the corner. We kept the world agog with our tapping, on and ofi, for some seven years ; but somehow Morocco did not prove the weak spot of our hopes. There seemed little hope in two continents : we turned to a third. At any rate there was Asia. We found a weak spot in China ; and we settled in Kiao- Chau. But our great hope was nearer home. We looked at the valley of the Euphrates, and we saw that it was good. Here was the reservoir that might take our products, and might even take our population. Here was the colonial land. We won our railway concession from Konieh to Bagdad ; we became the good friends of the Turkish Government. We joined hands with our true ally, our briUiant second on the fencing-ground of diplomacy, Austria -Himgary. While she expanded to Salonica, we would expand to Bagdad. We remembered the Drang nach Osten, and we saw our dayspring in the East. After all, why should we not reclaim and develop the lands of Akkad and Sumeria, where civihzation saw the hght ? Why should we not
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police the troubled places, irrigate the waste desert, and on the site of the oldest culture of the world plant the new culture of Germany ?
Candide. Why not ?
Dr. Pangloss. Ask England : ask Russia : ask France : ask the eternal Balkan problem, which has hitched its creaking wagon to our star. It is a troubled world, and things are sadly complicated. What Servia has to do with Bagdad, and why Alsace-Lorraine should hangV^ together with Salonica, and why things should get so intertwined, it is very difficult to see. Sometimes, to our simple German eyes, the world seems, as our Luther sang, all devils o'er, all gaping to devour us. But perhaps it is simpler than it seems. Take France. She remembers 1870. We go about the world with Alsace-Lorraine round our necks ; and France, the irreconcilable, meets us at every turn, with her blazing eyes fixed on Alsace-Lorraine, and her sword ready to strike in our first unguarded moment. That is why Alsace-Lorraine is in Bagdad, and why, when we are leagued with Austria -Hungary, it goes with our ally to Salonica. Take England, again. Here our con- science is easier. We have no English mill-stone round our necks. It is England who picks the quarrel with us. We built our navy. Why not ? We had African/'' designs. Why not ? But England, alarmed by our^^ navy, concerned about India — whether from fright, or from jealousy, or from both — England has joined our adversaries. She has joined France to bar our way in Africa ; she has joined Russia to bar our way in Asia. She has frowned on our cherished Mesopotamian scheme : she has entrenched herself in Southern Persia to watch us with unwinking eyes, lest we ultimately threaten India. She has thrown her world-power in the scale
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against us ; and now we know that either we must go to ruin to please England, or stride to our world-power over the world-power of England. England — voild Vennemi. It is she who has hemmed us in, who * twining subtle fear and hope has woven a net of such a scope ' as goes near to enmesh our eagle's wings. She has stopped our outlets for colonial expansion, no matter I where we sought to find them : that is one count in our indictment. She has hemmed us in by a diplomatic web, against which our Kaiser and his chancellors struggled in vain in 1905, in 1909, in 1911 : that is our second count. The English web about us and around us is stifling our life.
Candide. You seem to be forgetting Russia. I thought Russia was the enemy — the new wave of the Slav back- wash that swept across your Drang nach Osten.
Dr. Pangloss. Ah ! Russia. Russia is a big lumbering giant, whom we had hoped sometimes to bully, some- times to cajole, and always to get round. But she has certainly made us feel uncomfortable for these last few years. We bullied her in 1909, when our Kaiser made a startling appearance in shining armour. She was startled into letting us have our way ; but she has never been quite so nice a neighbour since. She has re- organized her armies, and remodelled her railways, and saved large balances, and done all manner of things which one would never have expected from such a heavy- going giant. Germany used to feel like a lithe pugilist, the champion of the ring, when she thought of Russia ; and she used to fancy that Russia was a hulking eight- foot creature, who could be knocked out of breath before he had begun to hit. But nowadays there is a disconcerting suggestion of alert intelligence and rapid mobility about the Russians, which I confess I do not
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like. Indeed we are honestly afraid of -L.ussia ; and fear, as usual, has stirred up all the turbid elements in our natures. When a man is really afraid, he sinks down plumb into the abysmal depths of his old savage nature. When a nation is really afraid, it sinks as deep into its lowest instincts. Now one of our basic Teuton instincts is to give a Slav a bad name and hang him. We do not like their looks, or their clothes, or anything ^ that is theirs. And so when we became frightened of ^Hr Russia, we remembered that she was Slav, and that we had an instinctive antipathy for Slavs ; we said that we stood for high Teutonic culture against the Slav, and we told the world that here was our cause par excellence.
Candide. But I imagine that you had really a solid business grudge against Russia.
Dr. Pangloss. Certainly. Our way lay South-east- wards ; and Russia lumbered across our way. Since 1905 she has been backing Servia, and that is an offence to Austria-Hungary, whose easiest way to Salonica lies through Servia. Moreover, and that is more serious for us, the way of Russia in South-eastern Europe cuts across our way. We want to put decrepit Turkey on her legs again. Russia has always had her own ideas about Turke}^ since the days of Catherine II ; and those ideas, as yow. know, are fundamentally different \^ from ours. What has Russia to do with Servia, and why should Russia resent our services to Turkey ?
Candide. I fancy she has her reasons. The war against the Turk for the sake of the suffering Slav brother has been a long crusade, lying close to the heart of every Russian. It is a national ideal, with a tradition many hundred j^ears old at its back.
Dr. Pangloss. Well — we Germans too have our national ideal, and if it is new, it is all the more dear.
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But, after all, it is no use discussing the relations of Russia and Germany in terms of policy : the only terms that suit the case are terms of instinct, antipathy, repulsion. The repulsion is always there. We did not worry so long as the Slav was not troublesome, and did not threaten to rise into the ascendant ; we worry exceedingly now that he is troublesome and, as we think, threatening. The Slavs within our borders are vexatious enough. The Poles multiply more quickly than the Germans ; and they resist Germanization silently, haughtily, successfully. They keep themselves to themselves : they are in Germany and not of it : their very working-men will not join our ordinary trades unions, but stick to their own nationalist clubs. They grow in spite of us, and in spite of all we do to keep the schools of our Eastern provinces German and to buy back the soil for Germans. They have spread from our agricultural to our industrial provinces : they are all over Silesia : they are even in Westphalia. And behind all the Slavs within our borders is Russia.
Candide. But, if I may interrupt, I did not know that Russia and the Poles were such close friends. ■ Dr. Pangloss. Ah ! Russia is altering, and so are the Poles. Their old Litany used to be, ' From Prussian and Muscovite tyranny, good Lord, deUver us.' I fancy it is changed nowadaj^s. At any rate we feel that the Slavs are all against us. We feel our close and intimate German national Hfe threatened. Those of us who are Protestants feel our Protestantism threatened : Russia is still to-day a persecuting power, and her hand is heavy on other religions. All of us who love Civilization feel that it is threatened.
Candide. Then jon are one of those nationahsts. Doctor, who identify their own national civihzation with
22 ALL FOR GERMANY
Civilization itself. Is there not room for several national civilizations ? How can any one of them possibly be coextensive with Civihzation ? Has not Russia her own national 'civilization, which in its way and for her people is at least as valuable as any other ?
Dr. Pangloss. Too many questions spoil a dialogue. Philosophically, there is much to be said for the view that all national civilizations are different in kind, andl'^ that all are equally valuable, because each is comple- mentary to the rest. Practically each nation has quite a different idea. Each believes that Civilization is one homogeneous substance, of which it has got a monopoly, or at any rate the greatest quantity. That is the belief of us Germans, especially when we consider the Slavs. Liside our borders reign order, light, sanitation, sanity : inside the Slav borders you will find chaos, dark- ness, dirt, the realm of the unaccountable. Russia is bureaucracy tempered by barbarism ; we in Germany know what parliaments are, and what socialism means. Have you noticed that our Sociahsts are nationalists practically to a man ? Is not that a significant fact ? Gone is the old internationahsm ; gone the anti-militar- ism which was its ally. Our Sociahsts to-day will vote the sinews of war in the Reichstag, and join our army in their thousands and tens of thousands. They know the peril.
Candide. I wonder if the peril is real. Your Kaiser was much exercised about the Yellow Peril at one time. Is not the Slav peril a spectre conjured up by that Fear of which we spoke some time ago ?
Dr. Pangloss. It may be. But when you are actually seeing a spectre, as we do now, you do not calmly compare one spectre with another, or rationahze what you see : your hair just stands on end. We are in
C
ALL FOR GERMANY 23
something of that state. And while we are in that state, watching the spectre advance, England takes the spectre's arm, and gives it comfort, countenance, assis- tance. England, the chosen land of liberty, aUied with Russia ! Pro pudor I Well may the ghost of Shake- speare shudder !
Candide. I can only imagine his ghost smiling serenely lover all our pothers. And he might not be so much displeased to see England leagued with Belgium, or fighting in the Low Countries. In fact, he might tell us that it was a praiseworthy habit of the gentlemen of his day, like Sir Philip, to fare to Flanders. But we are talking the sun down the sky in the west, and supper is waiting. Our dialogue has reached the margin of satiety ; and yet I want to say a little more. I sym- pathize with much of your discourse. I see that your people is living through its romantic Elizabethan age. There is romance about the world for you Germans. Captain von Miiller and his dashing ship would have delighted Drake. You live in a mediaeval glamour : you expect fairy-tales to come true. Your veins thrill with an ardent nationalism ; you are taut and keen and poised for the conflict pro aris atque focis. Like the old Vikings, you have built your ships, and gone forth over the waves, seeking a country for settlement. But you have your defects. So had the Elizabethans. They had a bragging buccaneering habit. You have a swag- gering roisterous way of shaking your fist and rattling your sword which is not pleasant. They had a waj^ of assuming that God was the God of the English, and that they did Him service by plundering the Spaniards. You are falling into the same ways. The Elizabethans maltreated Ireland horribly : they could not understand its chaotic, untidy, delightful ways. You
24 ALL FOR GERMANY
are maltreating your Poles badly ; you have not been tender to your Alsatians. You are full of an exclusive nationalism, and you cannot or will not get inside the minds of other peoples. You have made yourselves a self-contained national world of your own, which cannot understand the outside world ; which giving no sympathy gets no sympathy, and then complains that it is misunderstood and misinterpreted. Cease to b^ ^ bad Elizabethans ; begin to be good Europeans. Do ' not go hiuiting for exclusive markets, as some of the Elizabethans went hunting for exclusive gold-fields : that is not the way of colonization or empire. True colonies grow, and they grow when men go to live in them, and to think of them as homes. Do not wed yourselves to exclusive nationalism, as did those Eliza- bethans who damned the Spaniards for dogs of Seville, and held the Irish to lie outside any conceivable Pale. True nationalism is not puffed up, and does not behave itself unseemly; true nationalism makes a nation love itself, because it can give to other nations something which they have not got, and at the same time love other nations, because they can give to it something which it does not possess.
Dr. Pangloss. You speak with enthusiasm, my dear.^ Candide ; and I like to see your eye kindle. But afteiV_, all, those Ehzabethans built an empire in their Eliza- bethan manner ; and we Germans would fain go and do likewise.
Candide. I am not sure that they did found an empire. They wedded Protestantism to piracy, but there were no children born of the marriage. Colonies were born to England, when the Pilgrim Fathers wedded Protes- tantism to honest labour. If you go and do Hkewise, who shall say you nay ? But it is not your way to go
ALL FOR GERMANY 25
forth into the wilderness with a spade and a fowhng- piece : you send your massive State ahead with a gun- boat and a supply of heavy artillery to blast you a way. Non sic itur ad astra.
Dr. Pangloss. Ah, the world was young three hundred years ago. This is the age of iron. Ironclads and eleven-inch howitzers are the modern spade and fowling- kpiece.
Candide. To you they are. I do not admire you for it. You have become an iron people — iron from the spike of your helmets to the nails of your boots. You gird yourselves with the mechanics of death ; you bristle with all the tools of destruction. You murder by mathematics, and kill by calculus. And where will it all end, Doctor ?
Dr. Pangloss. Germany will find out a way, and fulfil her destiny.
Candide. Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istis. A spade and a fowling-piece, with perhaps a pruning-hook to clear your way — and what more can you need ? True colonies grow, I tell you ; and they grow by volun- tary effort. That is the only way to empire. You need no pillar of State poHcy by day, and no pillar of military fire by night. It is an old illusion, cherished (by some neo-protectionists to-day, that the English Empire grew under State guidance.
Dr. Pangloss (reproachfully). You said supper was waiting.
Candide. It is. And it at any rate is no illusion. Let us go, and let the food fulfil its destiny — a real destiny, mark you. Doctor, not a
Dr. Pangloss. Tush !
2B ALL FOR GERMANY
{It is after supper. Candide, with a mellow good feeling, returns to the charge.)
Candide. But why did you send your eagles ravening into Belgium, Doctor ? The world would have pardoned much to you, because there is so much in you that is magnificent. But Belgium !
Dr. Pangloss. My dear Candide, the fate of Germany was at stake, and what was Belgium in the balance ? ^
Candide. But the respect of the world was at stake, and what was a strategical gain in the balance ?
Dr. Pangloss. You forget our motto : ' Germany above all things, and all for Germany.'
Candide. All for Germany, when you lose the world's respect ?
Dr. Pangloss. Yes — all for Germany, and the world's respect well lost.
[Mention has been made in the dialogue of the Eliza- bethanism of Germany. This perhaps explains German admiration and annexation of Shakespeare. It is curious, but it seems to be true, that German patriotism at present finds its sustenance in Henry V. 'Here', says Professor Brandl, ' we are still in jovial old Eng- land, before Puritanism made the British priggish and>^ greedy of gold. Everything that Shakespeare says ofV^ his Henry corresponds with the way of thinking of our Emperor.']
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