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BRITAIN versus GERMANY
An Open Letter to
Professor EDUARD MEYER, Ph.D., LL.D.,
of the University of Berlin.
Author of " England, her National and Political Evolution
and the War with Germany."
The Right Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P.
Author of^^The Evolution of States^*
« IVar and Civilization^* " The Germans" etc.
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
PRICE SIXPENCE
BRITAIN versus GERMANY
BRITAIN versus GERMANY
■ An Open Letter to
Professor EDUARD MEYER, Ph.D., LL.D.,
of the University of Berlin.
Author of "England, her National and Political Evolution,
and the War with Germany."
The Right Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON, M.P.
Author of-"- 'The Evolution of States^'
" War and Civilization^'' " The Germans^'' etc.
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
LONDON: ADELPPII TERRACE
1917
L \A
DMx
CONTENTS
Chapter Pa^c
I. Introductory 7
II. English and German Political Evolution ... 14
III. English and German Civilization 34
IV. England's International Bias ... ... ... 57
V. The Causation of the \\'ak ... ... ... Sy
VI. The Way of the War : Its Consequences ... loi
•i'j4H;)()
BRITAIN versus GERMANY
An Open Letter to
PROFESSOR EDUARD MEYER,
of Berlin.
Chapter I
INTRODUCTORY
|EIN HERR,
I observe that your book, "England,"
fei^ijE^is has been translated and published in the
United States by the firm of Ritter & Company,
of Boston, who warmly recommend it in a preface
in which they assert that "the Americans, who,
as a whole, are readers of English literature only,
have practically received their impressions of
England and the English people exclusively from
English sources — the insider's favourable view of
his own state and his own people." This allega-
tion indicates about as deep a knowledge of
American life as most Prussian pronouncements
do of English ; but it need not detain us. The
Americans are well able to speak for themselves.
I merely take the occasion of the issue of your
book in English to criticize it with the seriousness
proper to an examination of any work of a scholar
and historian of your distinction.
As one of 3^our former British readers and
admirers, I was specially interested in your per-
7
8 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
formancc, at the outset. Wm were a student of
social evolution, at least in antiquity ; and in
your youth you knew something of British and
American life. As you have told us, you were for
two years — 1875-6 — a tutor in the family of
Sir Philip Francis, the British Consul-General at
Constantinople ; and vou have given a vivid
account of the sufferings endured by an educated
German from the moment he sets foot on Ameri-
can soil till the moment he leaves it. You had
earned, too, the reputation of being a man of large
views and original historical grasp. It is true you
exhibited from time to time, in your greatest
work, the significant German tendency to reduce
historical generalization to verbiage in terms of
racial theories. I well recollect the astonishment
with which I read, for instance, your generaliza-
tion of the social history of ancient Italy — a point
to which I shall recur later. In spite of such
startling lapses, however, 3'ou handled ancient
history to a large extent in a scientific spirit ; and
I have often profited by your research.
When, then, I first heard that you had gone
the way of the Harnacks and the Euckens,
unpacking your mouth with words, as Hamlet
has it, seeking to shroud German national crime
and military failure in a vapour of vituperation,
my first sensation was one of pure surprise. The
next, I am half ashamed to confess, was one of
— shall I say ? — malicious satisfaction. "So their
better brains also are overthrown," I mentally
commented. Von Harnack and Eucken I had
never put in that category. Von Harnack is to
BRI'IAIX I'ERSl'S GERM AX y c,
Baur, in point of thinking power, what Eucken is
to Hegel. Hackel is now a very old man ; and,
as a specialist^ in natural science, with no quali-
tication as a humanist, he counts for little wlien
he takes to political doctrine. His verdict on the
action and policy of a people is about as valuable
as would be mine on the life of the Radiolaria.
But you had been a student of societies and their
growths ; you ranked, in my opinion, above
Mommsen in that sphere ; and you comft)rted
yourself as did poor Hackel.
A study of \'()ur performance, then, is of some
critical importance, and I desire so to handle it.
To this end, I will abstain from putting in the
forefront of my critique any such account of your
race and country as you give in your "Fore-
word," where you assert that "English gentlemen
do not shrink from any crime, not even from that
of assassination, if only appearances can be pre-
served" ; and that when you first wrote those
words you were "fully informed of a plot made
by the English Foreign Ofhce to assassinate Sir
Roger Casement." For these assertions the sole
proof you offer is an unverified document which
purports to plan the capture of Sir Roger Case-
ment. When, later, I shall have something to say
of the crimes of your Government, I shall offer
rather stronger evidence. In this connection I will
merely point out that it is not an English or a
French or a Russian manual that lays down the
following principles : —
"International law is in no way oj^posed to the
exploitation of the crimes of third ]);irties (assas-
±0 mUTAIN VERSUS GERMANY
sination, incendiarism, robbery, and the like) to
the prejudice of the enemy. . . . The necessary
aim of war gives the beUigerent the right and
imposes upon him, according to circumstances,
the duty not to let slip the important, it may be
the decisive, advantages to be gained by such
means."
That is the teaching of the manual on "The
Usages of War on Land," issued by the Great
General Staff of the German Army. It is the same
authority that observes:— "A prohibition by
international law of the bombardment of open
towns and villages which are not occupied by the
enemy or defended was put into vv^ords by The
Hague Regulations, but appears superfluous, since
modern militar}^ history knows of hardly any such
case." That defect, you are aware, no longer
exists. Perhaps, on the whole, you had better
have avoided such topics.
Indeed, your whole book raises a preliminary
question as to the state of the German official
mind. After the date appended to your preface,
but some time before the publication of your
book, there appeared in Switzerland the German
work " J'Accuse," written by a German born and
bred, in which the deliberate causation of the
war by the German and Austrian Governments is
set forth with the deadliest completeness. It is a
stone wall of proof against your idle reiteration of
the charge that "England" was the instigator of
the war. Yet I can hear of no official German
attempt to rebut that demonstration ; if there be
one, it has not reached the other belligerent and
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY ii
tieutral countries as yours has done. Instead of
answering the carefully drawn and completely
documented charges of j^our own countryman,
you have compiled, evidently with official coun-
tenance, what in German is called a Schimpfwerk,
a work of abuse, vilifying the eneni}' instead of
meeting the enemy's indictment.
The character of your tactic is made clear, once
for all, when we recall that the official German
Weissbuch, setting forth Germany's diplomatic
case, expressly declares that the guilty Power is
Russia. "How Russia and her Ruler betrayed
Germany's confidence and thereby made the
European War " is the sub-title. No sooner has
England entered than you announce that it is she
who "made the war." We are evidently dealing
with polemists bent on something else than
truth-telling. In the meantime, however, it is
desirable that your book should be examined, in
these pages, in the temper of the study rather
than in that of the court-martial or even of the
police-court. You claim, of course, to write as
beseems an historian, and I to write as beseems
a critic. Is it not well, then, that we should
preserve at least the semblance of the temper of
the study before we come to the business of
summing-up ?
A recollection of the figure cut by Von Harnack,
and Eucken, and Hackel, and other infuriated
old German gentlemen — to whose attitude you so
edifyingly assimilate in your preface — confirms me
in my preference for another metlicxl. \'niirs is to
create by a series of aspersive cliaplers as \yA(\ :m
12 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
impression as you can achieve of English Hfe and
history in general, by way of winning, if possible,
a hostile verdict on England as the real cause of
the present war. A scrupulous judge, surely,
would have sought a verdict on the merits of the
case. But I will foUow you in your course.
You begin your book with a singularly bald and
jejune survey of English political history from the
reign of Henry VII to the nineteenth century.
As a summary of centuries of life it revives in me
the question I have sometimes put to myself in
reading your and other German histories of
antiquity: — "What is the real content and the
veridical value of these nutsheh summaries of
whole ages of evolution ? " and I fear that hence-
forth that question will always haunt me when
I read you. However, as you know little of
English history, you doubtless did well to be very
summary. As you once wrote: "In history
generally, where we have no firm ground under-
foot, a too-little is better than a too-much." *
The trouble is that in your opening chapter you
have achieved both, as I shall try to show you.
You will, I doubt not, pardon me if I give my own
English renderings or summaries of your words.
Your translator, laudably anxious to make a
German style move in an American manner, has
treated 3'our book with a friendly freedom which
on my part would be presumptuous. If you will
compare the second, third, and fourth para-
graphs of the translation with your German, you
will see that your propositions have been gently
* Geschichte des Alterthums, cd. 1884, Vorwort, p. vii.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 13
but firmly transmuted into more readable form.
I cannot guess what you will think of the manipu-
lation of your sentence on the divine right of
kings (which I give in the next chapter) into two,
of which the second runs :— "That it [monarchy]
may be free ever to uphold the right, Us poioer
must he unlimited, and it cannot therefore be
responsible to man, but to God alone."
That would perhaps please the Kaiser even
more than what 30U have written ; but it is
hardly for me to lend myself to such transmuta-
tions. I prefer to follow your own utterance, at
the cost of dullness. Taking your book as a whole,
I find that your exposition falls into five logical
movements, so to speak. You do not so divide
it, but I propose so to deal with it, under the
heads : —
I
The special political evolution of England ;
The defects of English civilization ;
The bias of England in international politics;
The causation of the World War ;
Its course, and the probable consequences.
I shall try to exhibit it in its true inwardness.
Chapter II
ENGLISH AND GERMAN POLITICAL
EVOLUTION
N order to understand rightly England's
I place in world-history and the motives
which have led her into war with Germany,
you tell us, "we must clearly reahze that England's
political development has taken exactly the
opposite direction to that of the continental
States." On the Continent, the duaHstic organiza-
tion of the Middle Ages, in which the Overlord
and the Estates were generally at strife, passed
into monarchy pure and simple, the Estates
lapsing into impotence and oblivion. "Thus was
established the monarchic State,* and with it the
State-conception of the modern monarchy." And
the typical continental monarchy not only sub-
dued the chaos of mediaeval anarchy, but secured
"law and order, security, and well-being" ; where-
fore it "claims the authority of a higher Divine
Right ; the power of the ruler comes forward as
Kingship by the Grace of God, which shapes law
and possesses the law-giving power in the fullest
degree, and therefore is responsible to no human
being, but only to the Godhead." Let us not
linger over the question of the amount of law and
order that had been secured in Germany by the
common run of its Princes, with " Faustrecht "'
* Fiirstenstaat. Your translator renders this " state sovereignty,"
which must puzzle Americans. The translation of your^ Staatsrecht
(p. 17), again, by " Common Law," is rather staggering, and creates
some mystery as to your meaning
14
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 15
in full blast down to the time of Luther. Let us
try to see what you are driving at.
At the very outset, 3^our case is divided against
itself. Formally, you set out to show that England
began her unique and evil course when she
chanced to preserve the early forms of self-
government in an age in which all the continental
States lost them. Later, 3'ou are driven to avow
that as a result she was in much better case than
they in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
What, then, becomes of your formula ? Your
position would now appear to be that it was better
to lose free institutions for centuries and then
create them afresh than to develop on English
lines. If it be not that, you have no theory left
as regards the point from which you start to
"explain" English iniquity.
Your starting-point is that England is a solitary
case, in that she preserved her free institutions as
aforesaid. This is in itself a bad historical blunder,
the result of your preoccupation with the case of
Germany. In a footnote you have confessed that
in the Netherlands things went even further than
in England, the Estates triumphing there "over
the monarchic tendencies of the Spanish King-
ship." So the Dutch and we are partners in
reprobation, though you leave them, after the
footnote, to their own consciences ; and it hardly
needed your severe asj)ersions on American life to
indicate that you think the democratic cvolutic^n
of the United States as lamentable as that of
England. As for the Swiss, I infer that you iind
their case too hopeless even for a footnote refer-
i6 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
ence. Italy, it would seem, you consider to have
been saved from herself by her happy subjection
in the sixteenth century to Spain, whose career
was such a triumph of progress — intellectual,
moral, and scientific--till she became infected by
parliamentarism a century ago.
Supposing your first touchstone to be the true
one, it would still seem desirable, on the part of a
professedly scientific historian like yourself, that
such a thesis should have been a Httle elaborated.
To say that England is a solitary case in Europe ;
to add in a footnote a mention of the Netherlands
as another case ; to ignore altogether the salient
case of Switzerland ; and to leave us asking
whether the subjection of Greece by Turkey and
of Italy by Spain were fortunate examples of the
saving grace of the autocratic as against the
"parliamentary" principle, does not look like the
proceeding of an historian with his wits about him.
At first, by your express thesis and your pro-
cedure of disparagement of even early English
parliamentarism, you set us asking whether you
think it worked worse than did the Fiirstenstaat
in Germany from the Reformation onwards ;
whether you think the Thirty Years' War pro-
moted civilization ; and whether you admire the
German spectacle from 1650 to 1750. But it does
not appear that you really do. Your general
formula is speedily thrown overboard ; the
"unique case" is forgotten ; and we are presented
with a "diametrically opposite" thesis, as you
yourself might say.
In your section on "The English Idea 0
BRITAIN J'ERSrS GERMANY i;
Freedom" you avow that, bad as is the EngHsh
parUamentary system to-day, it worked weU "in
the time of its estabUshment (!) and development
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, above
all because it guarded the personal freedom of the
citizens and called a portion of the population
... to participate in public life, thereby strength-
ening the foundations of the activity of the
governing power.. Thereby came free play in
commercial life and the resulting increase in the
means of developing the State and the nation.
But since then the English State organization has
been long passed by ; and since the beginning of
the nineteenth century England has fallen into
the rear, and has slowly and against the grain
and therefore only imperfectly caught up what
in other States has long been much more fully
developed."
What has become noic of the primary thesis ?
It is now declared that while England was a
solitary case (which she was not !), she did very
well. The uniqueness of- her case, remember, was
the first fact posited by you as explaining her
political course and her special share in bringing
about the present war. You now tell us that
England has long ceased to be a solitary case,
having fallen far in the rear of other States ;
which means, 1 suppose, that she is more
mediae vally dualistic than not only (Germany, but
Russia, France, (Turkey ?), Holland, and the
Scandinavian States. Belgium, you incidentally
observe, is the most backward of all the northern
ICuropean States. That, of course. After \-our
i8 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
national crime against her, you are bound to
insist upon her unworthiness. We can now always
count upon that procedure from Germans. But
supposing this pleasing proposition to be granted,
what becomes of your account of England as
having evolved in "exactly the opposite" way to
that of the continental States ? And, further, if
she is thus far in the rear of political evolution,
and as inefficient and incompetent as you allege,
how comes it' that she is able, as you affirm, to
upset the hves of all the other States, which are
so much more highly progressive ? She first went
wrong, you say, through being ahead ; latterly
she is still worse through being behind. Have you
ever read iEsop's Fables ?
All that is clear is that the foundation and
formula of your opening have already gone to
pieces. The "solitary case" has vanished. And
as regards the past, down to the nineteenth
century, we are left with the fact that not England
but Germany is the awful example. While France
and England can each cite twenty remembered
and distinguished names in literature for each of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, you have
not one between Hans Sachs and Leibnitz. I do
not say this by way of taunt. I utterly repudiate
the pseudo-principle 3^ou lay down in regard to
the civilization of ancient Italy, that what a
people does not do, it proved that it could not do.
I am simply discussing your nugatory thesis. For
the rational historian, a nation's evolution is a
resultant of the organism and the conditions. You
allege that a certain condition is bad, and the
contrary good. Where does your evidence begin ?
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY i^
The plain fact is that the "soUtary case" in the
pohtical evolution of Western Europe is that of
Germany. While every other State has followed,
sooner or later, the footsteps of England on the
path of constitutional government, Germany has
remained essentially mediaeval, unfree, uncon-
stitutional. The promises held out by the Prussian
Government to its own patriots in 1814-5 were
never fulfilled ; the Prussian constitution is to
this day a fraud, in which democracy is stultified ;
and the Imperial constitution accepted by the
German States in 1870 is one of Prussian hege-
mony, assented to by them partly in a state of
war fever, partly in despair of anything better.
The system under which the Prussian Kaiser is
uncontrolled master of war, peace, and imperial
taxation is one that has been abandoned by every
other Western European people.
It is in keeping with your logic that as you go
on you nevertheless treat the adoption of a
parliamentary system of some sort as a necessary
development for civihzed States. After a time
you actually boast that Germany has universal
male suffrage and that Britain has not. Once
more, what has become, then, of your thesis ? Is
it that you find comfort in reflecting that in
Prussia the suffrage is stultified by the system of
representation which preserves class supremacy in
the Diet, while for the Empire the Reichstag is
powerless to impose any policy on the Kaiser's
Chancellor ? You are entitled so to argue. But
do you ? All that you make clear is your hope
that in Germany the political power will never
20 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
lie in the hands of the representatives of the
people.
Whether England is too democratic or too
undemocratic is a question as to which you evi-
dently cannot make up your mind. In turn you
take up every possible position. Her monarchy
Was once absolutist, and 3^et was not ; the pow^er
of the Crown was destroyed, and yet Edward VII
was able to raise it to unheard-of heights ; he
determined the whole course of recent inter-
national politics, and yet he was finally a failure ;
the Cabinet completely dominates Parliament, and
yet Parliament retains its monstrous control over
taxation, and all members individually are ruled
by their constituents ; the country is swayed by
the caucus, and yet a small minority always turns
the elections ; the mob rules, and still England is
the most aristocratically ruled country in the
world. Thus do you blindl}^ throw your missiles
in all directions.
On one point, however, you are comparatively
clear. In your chapter on "The English Idea of
the State and the English Idea of Freedom" you
expound anew your conviction that Britain has
developed in a "diametrically opposite" direction
to that of foreign States in respect to the British
notion of the idea of the State : —
"England, or let us say the United Kingdom,
has no conception of the idea of the State as it
has been evolved on the Continent" [or, "let us
say," in Germany alone?] "in relation to the
regal power. For us, not only in political thought
but intimately in the experience of every citizen,
BRITAIX \'ERSrS (.ERM.LW 21
the State is th'e highest expression of the collective
unity of all the powers of the people included in
the boundaries of the realm in active efficiency
{active Wirksamkeit !), the indispensable expression
of the life and the activit}' of every individual,
and therefore entitled and bound to secure from
each the fullest devotion for the carrying out of
its task. . . . The State and its organ, the
Government, is bound to stand free and indepen-
dent of all the conflicts of individuals, of classes,
of economic groups, of parties ; and as against
these to represent the interests and problems of
the whole. . . . It is something much higher than
any of these groups, and infinitely more than
merely the aggregate of all the individuals in-
cluded in it ; it has a hfe of its own ; its task is
unending ; its existence is in theory — if it be not
destroyed by force from outside — eternal, all
generations, backwards and forwards, co-operating
towards a unity, to a mighty historical entity.
This idea of the State, which for us is bound up with
our flesh and blood, is not only unknown to the
English constitution, but is wholly alien to the
thought of theEnglishman and alsoof the American."
After tliis dithyramb, you avow that both
Britain and the United States have ne\-ertlieless
attained to the notion of unified State action, the
latter achieving it as against the |)rin(ii)le of
State-sovereignty through the Cix'il War ; so
that Britain pursues an energetic foreign policy
and has a "strong national feeling." Hut tor all
that, you tell u^, it is with us, as with all States
governed by Parliaments, alwaxs a ipicstion of
22 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
majorities and minorities, never of a definite unity
of the State. "So it is explained that the unitary
State-idea does not exist in England. The word
' State ' is not translatable in English : there is
no possibility of rendering it in an equivalent,
embodying the idea. The Englishman knows only
on one side 'the Empire,' which is something
much wider . . . and on the other side 'the
Government,' which is something much narrower.
Instead of a unified State ruling over parties, party
rules." Hence constant changes in British foreign
policy — except in so far as it does not change!
Finally, "like the idea and the word 'State,'
the Englishman lacks the idea and the word
'Fatherland.' . . . The Englishman has indeed a
'home,' but no 'fatherland.' The feeling which
the German connects with this word, which signi-
fies for him his highest and holiest possession, and
frees and stirs all the deepest sentiments of his
soul, is to him entirely foreign." We cannot
understand, 3^ou inform us, your national song,
"Deutschland fiber alles, fiber alles in der Welt,"
in which, by a puerile misconception, we see
an aspiration towards world-dominion. At the
same time you inform us that "Britannia rules
the waves" is an assertion of England's mission
to supremacy on all oceans, as against the aspira-
tion of any other people "to maintain its inde-
pendence in the world and in general to signify
something as a national unit." This aspiration, you
say, our popular song treats as an injury to
English interests and a crime against humanity.
I have never met with a more remarkable
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 23
exhibition of self-deception, or a more idle display
of verbal sophistry b}- a writer of distinction. The
puzzle is to know what you think you are proving.
That Germans now in general worship with
human sacrifices the abstraction of the State, we
knew. That is our indictment. It is the claim of
a resultant moral superiority that eludes our
powers of comprehension. Broadly speaking, the
Briton's concrete idea of the State is that of a
commonweal in which he shares, paying his.
taxes and voting with the idea of improving the
total Hfe ; while the German's is that of a great
machine to which he belongs and in whose army
he must serve when a quarrel is picked with any
other State. As you expressly argue, the British
power of aggression is small : the Navy, the
typical British force, is essentially one of defence.
The German is essentially one of aggression. How,
then, should the latter elicit the less aggressive
frame of mind ?
If the argument is to turn on popular songs,
can you explain to yourself or to us why " Deutsch-
land liber alles" is now habitually (or was, earlier
in the war) sung b}-' German soldiers as a battle
song ? We knew well enough that it was originally
a call to national unity, as against the ruinous
particularism, the internecine hatreds which left
the German States bloodily divided against each
other in the Napoleonic wars, some zealously
aiding him against the rest. "Deutschland," then,
was to be the ruling thought, as against the old
separatism. But what had tJiat idea to do with the
entr}^ into Brussels ? Was it still necessary that
24 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Bavarians and Saxons and the rest should strive
to forget their old hate of Prussia ?
Your argument from a popular chorus to the
conclusion that Britannia is bent on dominating
all other nations comes delightfully from ^the
spokesman of the State that championed Austria
in her attempt to crush Serbia, that herself
bludgeoned innocent Belgium, and that warned
the small States, by the mouth of Herr von Jagow,
that their day is over. As you have not named one
instance in which Britain has interfered with the
freedom of the seas in peace during the past
hundred years, we can at once draw the proper
inference. Britain's crime, as we all know, is to
put her fleet between you and France when you
plan to attack, as Germany put her "shining
armour" between Russia and Austria when
Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But your most memorable performance is your
dissertation on "State" and "Fatherland." It
recalls, at first, the criticism of Dr. Guttmann, in
the Frankfurter Zeitung, that your knowledge of
the English language is very imperfect. But there
must be more in it than that. Supposing even
that "the State" were not as much discussed here
as in Germany, in a hundred books carrying the
word in their titles, could you really suppose that
the notion is excluded from English consciousness
by the fact that here parties can aspire to Govern-
ment, while with you the\' cannot ? Is not the
very fact t)f party strife an extra reason for
insisting in debate on the interests of "the
country" ? When you are good enougli to admit
BRITAIX ]'ERSrS GERMAXY
~?>
that there is a "str(^ng national feehng" in
England, do you attach any idea to what \-ou
say ? You reahze. apparently, that "England" is
very determined in this war to beat German\-.
What, then, do you think is meant in English by
the phrase "For England's sake" ? The Govern-
ment's sake ? The part^^'s sake ?
Your theorem about the word "Fatherland."
I confess, wellnigh baffles serious discussion. It
suggests a wrangle between the children of ri\'al
villages as to the merits of their respective idioms.
Apparently you suppose that when an English
poet sings of " England, my own," or an American
repeats "My country, 'tis of thee," he is thinking
just of a quantity of land, with towns and houses
on it, whereas your ineffable countrymen soar
into the empyrean of the high and holy when,
over beer and sausage, they say "Fatherland."
As regards the educated class, it is a somewhat
modern development, is it not ? Lessing, you may
remember, observed that that kind of sentiment
was a noble weakness which he was glad to be
without. Goethe, vou may also remember, wrote
of "the eternal blundering complaint, 'We have
no Fatherland, no patriotism,' " and commented :
"From the patriotism of the Romans, God deliver
us ! " And it was Schiller who declared that mere
love of country was important only "to unlearned
nations — to the youth of the world."
Those renowned Germans would clearly not
have acclaimed y(jur State could they have fore-
seen it in the spirit ; and their great contem-
porary, Kant, was one of the first to see and say
26 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
that while nations regarded only their own inter-
est, and kings were uncontrolled masters, there
would never be secure peace in the world. So far
from praying for a world of apotheosized States,
he 3^earned for a Republic of the World. You will
tell us that you have changed all that. But,
granted that you have, are you sure that the
other nations, which were, nations long before
yours, may not also retain the love of country
which in them is innate and not inoculated ? Are
you not jealous .of the Dutch, who speak both of
"Vaderland" and "Moderland," "going you one
better," as they say in the United States ?
German patriotism has the rawness of a new
cult. At a time when Germania was a world of
internecine strife, Englishmen knew "the common-
weal," which relatively ethical expression meant
for them both "State" and "Fatherland." Be-
coming part of their instinctive natures, it has not
latterly had to be employed as a toast or a war-
cry. But the instinct has not changed. I am really
not concerned to explain to 3^ou that "my
countr}^" means just what "la patrie" does ; and
just what "Fatherland" does, or "Motherland."
"The land of my fathers" was an English expres-
sion before your German Fatherland-State was
welded ; and it carries memories which are non-
existent for Germans. A professed scholar who
does not spontaneously understand all this is on
that side mentally and spiritually defective :
there is no other way of describing him, unless we
say "war-mad." I doubt whether it is worth
while to point out to 3'ou the counter-sense vou
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 27
are creating in your general case. You do not
appear to deny that the French, with their love of
la patrie, are as much as England the enemies of
German}'. What is the connection, then, between
the English psychology- and the war at this
point ? And if the English are, as you say, devoid
of the conception alike of "the State" and "the
Fatherland," wh}' did 3^our diplomatists ever
attempt to have any dealings with them ? Clearty,
having a fundamentally different psychology,
they could have no community of ideas with you.
Could they even be relied upon to have the same
multiplication table ? I will confess to suspecting
that there is one radical difference between the
two populations. The English capacity for talking
nonsense is finite : the German infinite.
That is the conclusion suggested by 3'our
theorem about "the State." But there is really a
special psychological fact behind your dithy-
ramb. The idea of "the State" is an old battle-
ground in England. Hobbes fought thereon when
Germany, shattered into three hundred segments,
had been hurled back to barbarism by the Thirty
Years' War ; and, ever since, students have been
operating over it. But the effect of Hobbes's
doctrine here was to set men on their guard against
a wholly non-moral conception of the State, an
idolatrv of a "Leviathan" without a heart or a
mind. In France, the "I'Etat, c'cst mot" of
Touis XIV had a similar effect. Rousseau worked
at the problem before your philosophers took it
up ; and, whatever his fallacies, he kept hold of
the fact that the essential thing in "the State" is
28 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
just the good life of its people, considered as part
of the human race.
In Germany, you have not yet attained to that
simple conception. Your "State-idea" is just the
idea of the tribe, physically expanded to cover a
"Reich," but morally expanded not at all. You
have but blended the hundred particularisms of
Germany into one German particularism as against
non-Germany. The new cult is not yet fifty years
established : hence its primitive character. One
of its founders, Hegel, began political life as a
champion of Napoleon, and but for the chances of
war might have remained a good Caesarean under
Napoleon's flag. The same ethic and the same
temper, turned to German account, give us the
German State-Fetish. Your ideal, as revealed by
your culture-class iu' this war, is to affirm 3^our
national superiority to all other nations, and your
determination to impose your will on Europe. We
shall see this in the most exact detail when we
come to your account of the causation of the w^ar.
For the present I am dealing with ^^our theory.
The French and English peoples, being morally
ruled in the main by common sense and common
honesty, avoid building up an ideal of the State
which is only a menacing magnification of the
ideal of the fighting tribe. They know that "the
State" is simply the aggregate of national organi-
zation, representing what the majority have so
far enacted. Your exposition, stripped of its
verbiage, tells in effect that "the State" is the
Imperial, Government, culminating in the Kaiser.
All your rhetoric about something, independent of
IIRITAIX \ERSUS (iHRMAXY 2()
parties, something apart from majorities and
minorities, means just that in your Reichstag
there is one official fixture, that ver\' poor phe-
nomenon, the Chancellor. As your own jurist,
Jellinek, tells you : "The State can exist merely
through its organs : imagine the organs away,
there does not remain a State as the operator of
those organs, but merely a juristic nullity "
(Nichts). Your State is, finally, just the power of
Germany, wielded by its War-Lord. Delbriick
has avowed that Prussian officers "would never
tolerate the rule of a War- Minister drawn from
the Reichstag." Such is the true inwardness of
your precious "State."
You tell us that we cannot "understand" this
marvellous psychological development of yours.
It is really not in the least difficult for outsiders to
understand ; in fact, it is only outsiders who can
explain it. An English writer gave the rationale
of the matter long ago : —
"Instil from his earliest infancy into man the
idea that he belongs to another, is the property of
another ; let everything around proceed upon
this idea ; let there be nothing to interfere with it,
or rouse suspicion in his mind to the contrary,
and he will yield entirely to that idea. He will
take his own deprivation of right, the necessity of
his own subservience to another, as a matter (jf
course. And that idea of himself will keep him in
order. He will grow u}) with the im})ression that
he has not the right of'owncrship in iiimself, in his
passions, any m-ore than he has in his work, lie
will thus be coerced from within himself, but not
30 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
by himself ; i.e. not by any active faculty of self-
command, but by the passive reception of an
instilled notion which he has admitted into his
own mind, and which has fastened upon him so
strongly that he cannot throw it off."*
The passage is worth the attention of your-
psychologists ; let them improve upon it if they
can. The German State-idea is simply a manipu-
lation of the feudal idea, carried by j^ou in Prussia
to a great height, though not higher than it was
carried in Zululand under Cetewayo. For the
name of the chief or overlord has been necessarily
substituted the name of the State, but the resul-
tant is an abstraction behind which the overlord
operates much more effectually than he did in
the Middle Ages. The old German Kaisers were
generally powerless just because the function was
avowedly embodied in the man. Your Kaiser is
at a pinch all-powerful just because you call the
power which he embodies and dominates "the
State," and because the abstraction is really
believed by the many to be the object of it all.
The illusory abstraction which you have thus
created, you alone among modern nations may be
said to have deified, very much as Athens made
Athene out of the idea of itself. But your ideal is
no Pallas : it is much more the Assur that Assyria
made out of its abstraction. Of course, you think
yours the noblest of all hypostases. So did the
Assyrians.
In a word, the countries now confronting
Germany, even the more imperfectly developed
*Mozley, Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, 1877, pp. 42, 43.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 31
among them, have in general transcended ahke
tribaUsm and feudahsm, and seek an international
life in which nation shall respect nation. Until
this is brought about, until all the nations realize
that a nation is to a nation what an individual is
to an individual within a nation, a felloif, bound
by a law of reciprocity, there is no security for
mankind. You avowedly tolerate no such con-
ception. Kant proclaimed it ; Hegel repudiated
it ; and Treitschke, growing more and more of an
immoralist as he grew Prussianized, has for your
generation made the anti-moral ideal the current
one. Have you not told us that for 3^ou the wholly
self-regarding State is the highest conception —
the earthly infinite ? Have not all your mouth-
pieces for half a century proclaimed that you are
the nation, without peer ? That is just what other
people have learned to shrink from saying. Over
a century ago, Burke, whom you rather ignorantty
extol, spoke in a certain mood of "the great
mysterious incorporation of the human race." It
is a recognition of that ideal that governs the ideal
of the State in the nations that are now lighting
Germany.
Of course, you have occasional glimpses of the
idea. While you officially sink all (ierman
humanity in a Germandom which is, as you would
say, "wholly foreign" to humanit}^ in general,
you begin to have dark visions of a "Giitter-
dammerung," a Twilight of the Gods, in which all
civilization is in jeopardy as a result of the German
cult of the German Self. What is to become of
the polity of the nations, of the general civiliza-
32 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
tion of Europe ? you ask at tlie close of your book.
You may well ask it last ; it is the last thought to
reach the German intelligence. But is it not
rather incongruous with your dithyramb about
"the State," the ineffable, the earthly infinite,
the all-sufficient, the political Absolute ? Can
anything else really matter ?
Sooth to say, you are beginning to learn the
Nemesis of Egoism even as the child learns it, if
one can speak of your people in terms of anything
that is innocent. It always needed hell-fire to
teach them collectively any vital social lesson.
It took thirty 3^ears of mutual massacre to teach
them religio-political toleration. The Napoleonic
w^ars could not bring them to political unity.
Their appointed Moses, Bismarck, rightly realized
that only over a blood sacrifice could they ever be
got even formally to fraternize. Only when wading
in a sea of their owti blood, it seems, can they
begin to think of the welfare of a collective
humanity that is greater than their State.
To speak thus ma}^ to some look like a mere
answering of your railing with railing. But I am
not forgetful of my negation of your vain pro-
nouncement about ancient Italy. To her, you
wrote, however she might energize in politics
and law, "there was denied the capacity to shape
a culture [Cultur, not Kultur !] for herself, to
energize independently and creatively in the sphere
of art, poetry, religion, and science."* Before
writing that, you had expressly argued that
Greece developed her culture only under the
* Geschichle des Alterthums, ii, ed. 1893, p. 530.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMAX\\ 33
stimulus of foreign culture ; and that Western
Greece, though as richly endowed by nature as
the eastern parts, failed to develop simply because
"here there lacked the foreign stimulation."*
When I write on German evolution, I do not say
that Germans ha^'e been denied the capacity to
shape a culture for themselves, though their
culture, like other cultures in general, is mainly
derivative ; and theirs is in a special degree
derivative from those of Italy, I^^rance, and
England. As little do I say that they are racially
incapable of transcending tribalism. I simpl}' say
that they have not yet done it, and that it is their
retrograding tribalism and feudalism that have
dragged us all into the World War.
Attaining political unity last of all among the
leading nations, they are still ci\-ically in the
barbarian stage, worshipping a Tribal God ("Gott
mit Uns"), and kneeling to their Kaiser as to his
vicegerent. Holding the creed of barbarism, they
do its deeds. That it is a creed recently re-learned
at the hands of their professors does not alter the
fact, as it does not alter the infernal consequences.
* Geschickte des Alterthums, ii, ed. 1893. p. 155.
Chapter III
ENGLISH AND GERMAN CIVILIZATION
I "^I'JjOLLOWING your national practice of
I ^^ vilifying the opponent before you come to
1.^^ the issue as to what he and you have just
done, you devote several sections to the defects
of English life and civilization as 3^ou see them.
These sections illustrate th€ state of mind to which
a German historian can sink. In time of peace,
even you, I suppose, would recoil from a battle of
mud-throwing. Civilized men in general, at least
outside of Germany, had been supposed to have
reached the perception that civilization at its best
was terribly defective ; that all countries had
much to learn and to do ; and that each did well
to learn from the others. It is significant that in
Germany, the country whose civilization is most
largely derivative, which only in the past two
generations has got rid of the dirt of the Middle
Ages, and which owes most to the culture-
example of neighbour lands, there has always
been and is now the maximum amount of boasting
about its native superiority.
In France and in England, for generations past,
the national effort has been directed to social
reconstruction, political reconstruction going on
as a means to that end. It would be difficult to
name an eminent English writer of the past
seventy or eighty years who has not gravely
criticized ' English civilization, and who did not
"34
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 35
owe some of his influence to such criticism.
Coleridge, Carlyle, Mill, Ruskin, Spencer, Arnold,
Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning,
George Eliot, Morris, Morley — all have abundantly
criticized the national life in all its aspects. Since
the beginning of the present century, the tendency
is more than ever pronounced. In all political
parties, social reconstruction has become the
absorbing thought. To say this is to say that all
recognize grave defects in the national life. So
far, your case is given 3^ou ready made. Even in
Germany, with your ritual of boasting, you have
a certain undercurrent of criticism, as you well
may, since your literature reveals a social corrup-
tion not to be matched in an}^ western land.
But what has all this to do with the question of
who is responsible for the World War ? This, of
course, that you hope to get a verdict by vihfica-
tion before you come to the real issue. But from
whom ? To write your book for Germans was
surely a task of supererogation. The "Hymn of
Hate" was being roared all over Germany before
your book appeared. Your book was surely
written for neutrals — unless it was written for us
in England, on which view you are grown puerile
indeed. Now, educated neutrals know that in
England there is far more competent criticism of
EngHsh social blemishes than you can supply. In
England, no educated man dreams of denying that
the criticism of home hfe by leading writers is
beneficial, though it has been said of Mill anrl
Arnold that they exhibited "the bias of .-inti-
patriotism."
36 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
We did not need you, then, to tell us that we
need reforms ; that alongside of wealth we have
poverty ; that there is a Highland question ; that
there is an Irish question. These things we
anxiously discuss, in w^ar time as in peace time.
Your characteristic attempt to turn them to the
discredit of the British people invites the question
whether you think the modern handling of the
Irish question is on a level with the Prussian
handling of the Pohsh. No one could conceive of
a present-day British Government officially flog-
ging thousands of Irish children as your school-
masters in Poland have flogged Polish children to
make them say their prayers in German, and
further sentencing their parents to long imprison-
ments for making a protest. After generations of
dragooning, your Danes, your Poles, and your
Alsatians, are more anti-Prussian than ever. Of
course, this wdll not disturb Prussian self-sufft-
ciencv. Goethe tells that in his day there was an
old German gentleman who said : "Even in God
I find defects." It is only in the imperialized
Germany of our da}^ that there are none — in the
opinion of her academics.
But what then ? The superiority of German
Kultur was pleaded in 191 4 as a defence of German
massacres and rapes in Belgium, and the plea
appealed to nobod}' . Even the notoriously musical
character of the German speech is not a proof that
the German people, or the academics, or the
Government officials, are truthful. You used to
write a good deal better than you write now ; but
even in old days your style could not atone for a
HRITAIN I'hRSLS (,hRMA\) ^7
bad sophism. What is the relevance i»l xour
argument from English defects ?
The most important part of your indictment,
I suppose, is your tirade against the Enghsh con-
ception of freedom, which is so different from the
German. I admit that that is so, and that it has
its hmitations. We are not accustomed, for
instance, to ask a foreigner traveUing in our trains
in peace time a set of questions about his pri\ate
affairs, and his income, and his earnings, as (teste
me) you do in Germany. I do not say that we
might not learn from 3'ou in these matters. We
are still an unduly shy people, though we ha\'e our
exceptions. Not having been under the thumb of
the police and the drill-sergeant for centuries, we
are still apt to be restive under extensions of
Government control. But in war time we have
learned to put up with a great deal, having regard
to the necessity of bringing Germany to her knees.
When, however, you come to the question of
mental freedom you are an extremely bad witness.
You tell us that when 3'ou were a tutor in the
family of Sir Philip Francis you one day expressed
the wish to read Mill "On Liberty," and that he
told you it was quite unnecessary for a German to
do so : "what it seeks to do for England you liad
reached in Germany a hundred years ago." If
Sir Philip said that, he made a very ignorant
pronouncement ; and you must excuse us for not
thinking your account of the episode absohitclN'
trustworthy without corroboration. Mill's hook is
very much more than a plea for free thought : it
discusses at some length the tlieor\' of tlie State,
38 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
upon which you perorate ; and it much behoved
you to study his argument, though it is incon-
clusive. But still more astray is the criticism as
regards Germany.
At the date of which you speak, a hundred years
had not elapsed since Kant's mouth had been
closed by State authority. When Wilhelm von
Humboldt in 1791 wrote his book on the State
(which inspired Mill's, and which also you might
profitabty peruse), it could not find a publisher.
In Heine's opinion, all the German philosophers
and their ideas would have been suppressed by
wheel and gallows but for the intervention of
Napoleon in 1805. German}^ indeed gained a large
measure of speculative freedom in her universities
by reason of their very number ; but Fichte had
no very happy time ; and the ostensible freedom
of the university chairs has never precluded a
very real repression of serious heresy. Feuerbach
was turned out of academic life ; Bruno Bauer's
brother Edgar was sent to prison in 1843 for four
years, on account of a pamphlet on "The Strife of
Criticism with Church and State." Biichner was
turned out of his chair of clinic at Tubingen in
1855 for publishing his "Force and Matter."
Eduard Zeller found himself driven from scientific
theology to specialism in the histor}^ of philosophy
by the* professional ban on innovating thought ;
and Albert Schwegler was in the same fashion
driven from the theological field to work on the
history of Rome.
You ought to know these things. If you will
read Zeller's preface to his book on the Acts of the
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 30
Apostles you may learn something of the state of
mental freedom in Germany about the time you
were born. From Albert Schweitzer and from
Hausrath you may learn how Strauss's life was
darkened by clerical and official persecution, and
how one of the three old friends who spoke at his
burial, being an official, was denounced by the
Swabian clergy for having spoken kindly of a
heretic. Much more serious than that, however,
is the virtual suppression, in your public and
academic life, of all serious criticism on living
issues. Your ethicists, even twenty 3^ears ago,
notoriously did not dare to speak out ; for nigh
fifty 3^ears, almost, no German ethical writing has
counted for anything in Europe. In the words of
Mr. Owen Wister, an American writer who
eulogized the successes of German civilization
before the war, but saw its deadly defects : —
"They blindly swallowed the sham that
Bismarck gave them as universal suffrage. They
swallowed extreme political and military re-
straint. They swallowed a rigid compulsion in
schools, which led to the excess of child suicide
that I have mentioned. They swallowed a state of
life where outside the indicated limits almost
nothing was permitted, and almost everything
was forbidden. . . . Intellectual speculation was
apparently unfettered ; but he who dared philo-
sophize about Liberty and the divine right of
Kings found it was not."
He goes on to say something of the decline of
your music, and the degradation of your literature,
to which much might be added. But it will be
40
BRITAIN VERSUS (.ERMANY
more strictly relevant to point to your official
statistics of prosecutions' for Beamtenheleidigung,
contempt of officials. In the work "An Australian
in Germany" (1911), whose author resided there
as a teacher for something over two years, I
read : — "During the time I have been in Germany
the Hst of cases of fine or imprisonment inflicted
on journaHsts and others for commenting on
officials' actions would fill several pages." The
same work indicates that far more heres^'-hunting
was recently going on among the German clergy
than among the Enghsh. Doubtless you have a
"freer Sunday" ; but I have read that when your
Kaiser once told some recruits at Potsdam that
"only good Christians could be soldiers," and your
chief comic paper pubhshed thereupon a cartoon
in which Satan removed from heaven, as his
property, Alexander, Hannibal, Csesar, Napoleon,
and Frederick, the editor was sent to prison for
two months.
Striving to understand what you mean by free-
dom in any general sense, I note your diatribe
against American life : —
"From the moment he lands on the New York
pier to the moment he leaves it, the educated
German feels himself under a constraint that is to
him strange and antipathetic, but which he
cannot evade. Everywhere he comes up against
firmly fixed usages and dominating notions which
demand that he shall absolutely submit to them,
and which curtail his rights of personality, his
inner freedom. He who really knows America will
recognize as the special problem presented to him
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMAXY 41
by that 'land of contrasts,' that of coni]neiiending
how this people is inspired with the belief that it
is a free people, or rather the free people, when it
really lies under a burdensome compulsion, which,
however, having grown up thereunder and re-
garding it as a matter of course, it does not
perceive to be a burden ; under the constraint of
countless traditionally sanctified conceptions in
social life and, above all, in the field of religion,
which fetter free expression of opinion and
independent thinking ; under the constraint of
' public opinion ' and what passes for such, making
itself dail}^ felt in the intolerable plague of the
obtrusive interviewer and the incursion of pub-
licity in all the private affairs of the individual and
his family (as to which nobody is secure that next
day the grossest trumped-up charges will not
appear against him in the newspaper, from which
he has no means of protection) ; and, further,
under the frightful tyranny of organized labour
and the domination of an unscrupulous crowd of
'politicians' which rule State and community,
and which the ordinary American regards as an
unavoidable evil, letting it multiply as it will.
' Politicians are despised in this country ' ; but he
gives them a free hand."
To offer you condolences might suggest sym-
pathy. Personally, I have found life as free in the
United vStates as elsewhere ; the restraints of
which you speak being of the same order as
subsist in your own country, and far less stringent.
It is much safer to criticize the President with
them than to criticize the Kaiser with you ;
42 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
and 1 doubt whether anything" would have hap-
pened to you if 3^ou had courteously explained the
superiority of the German political system to the
American. Perhaps you preferred other methods.
In most' countries one has to take a little care not
to tread upon people's corns ; and in yours there
subsists a law forbidding mutual criticism among
religious sects. But I prefer to leave it to Ameri-
cans to speak for themselves. I will merely say,
in this connection, that many thousands of your
countrymen seem to prefer American life to
German, as thousands more prefer English ; and
that I have heard of a German who could hardly
contain his delight when he got back to New
York after a visit to the Fatherland. He jumped
upon the driver's platform of a car, and when the
driver cursed him for getting in the way he
"could have hugged him," as he afterwards
avowed. All that, I admit, is very un-German.
Evidently the idea of "freedom" varies greatly
from land to land.
An American, like a Briton, knows that he has
a one-vote control in politics, and knows that it
counts. If the vote of his party altered the
majorities in the Legislature, or the tenure of the
Presidential chair, and yet no change happened,
he would certainly feel outraged. In Germany,
where no vote in the Reichstag can alter the
Chancellor's policy, you are well pleased with your
"freedom." Doubtless politicians are abused in
all countries ; it happens, alas, even in the
Fatherland. Is it not Prince von Biilow who has
declared that Germans are the worst politicians
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 43
in the world ? We outsiders can give the explana-
tion : where politicians count for nothing in policy
the\^ are necessarily inept. But \'ou appear to feel
that under a constitution which excludes all
control by the nation, either of policy or taxation,
you are secured a kind of "freedom" which does
not subsist among the English-speaking races.
What you mean, I confess, I still cannot divine.
There is certainly no more criticism either of
Church or State, religion or Government, beliefs
or doctrines, in German}^ than in Britain. No
eminent German — certainh' not Strauss - — ever
said with impunit\- such things about Christianity
and theism as have been said with perfect im-
punity by Arnold, Spencer, and Swinburne, to
say nothing of the avowed militant freethinkers.
No German critic of religion ever had the popu-
larity and status of the American Ingersoll.
Certainly, bigotry still operates, as it does in
Germany ; but apart from the comparative free-
dom of your university professors to undermine
the creeds they ostensibly support, I have never
been able to see any special freedom of speech or
thought in Germany. In Britain there is a "con-
science clause" for parents who object to having
the orthodox religion taught to their children in
the schools. In Germany there is no such thing.
Even if things were as you say, it would still be
impossible to see what bearing such charges have
on the question of Britain's entrance into the
World War. If the question of relative freedom
arises at all in this connection, it must surely be
on the political side of things : and 1 am unable
44 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
to find in your book a single relevant argument
—unless it be a false assertion — going to show
that the alleged lack of public freedom in Britain
could in any way affect British relations with
Germany. You yourself allege a general British
hatred of your country. You grossly err as to pre-
war feeling ; though certainly there was no appre-
ciable amount of opinion, even among Socialists,
against the war from the moment of the invasion
of Belgium. Whether the amount of peace feeling
among German Socialists would under any system
of representation have overruled German Chau-
vinism I do not pretend to say.
Your most specific assertion in regard to free-
dom of political speech in Britain is that while
there are no prosecutions for lese majesU, "every
infraction of the 'privileges' of Parliament, every
attack on Parliament and its Acts, was and is still
relentlessly prosecuted and punished with heavy
and degrading penalties : an unsparing criticism
of Parliament, which in continental States passes
as a matter of course, is still not permitted in
England ; and he who ventures upon it must
very carefully choose and weigh his words." A
more ludicrously false account of the case was
never penned even in Germany. Prosecutions for
infringement of the "privileges" of Parliament
are latterly very rare, being laid only for special
technical offences ; and the culprit usually
escapes with, at most, a slight penalty on pleading
contrition. And such prosecutions never take place
in respect of "criticism of Parliament or its Acts."
Any journalist can criticize Parliament or any of
BKITAIX VERSUS CERMAXY 45
its Acts to his heart's content ; it is done ever\-
day. You evidently hsLve not the faintest compre-
hension of what " privileges of Parliament " means.
If you wrote ancient history as you write modern,
your tenure of your Chair would soon be in danger.
Equally absurd is your solemn statement that
any member can cause the expulsion of strangers
from the galleries during a sitting of Parliament
by announcing that he "spies strangers." That
usage of an age in which most of the continental
States had no semblance of a Parliament at all is
now resorted to only by wa}^ of dealing with a
disturbance or securing a "secret session" such
as you have had of late in the Reichstag — a very
rare event in the British Parliament. Do you
seriously suggest that any Legislature should be
deprived of the power to hold such a session ? If
you do not — and I do not see how you can — your
remarks on the subject amount only to another
irrelevant display of ignorant malice.
To the same order belong your remarks as to
the opposition which in the past has been made to
reforms in England. If in any country important
reforms were ever made without opposition ; if in
Germany there had not been furious opposition to
all reforms, political or social, made since the time
of Napoleon, your words might be worth answer-
ing. But even you, I suppose, will liardly pretend
that the abolition of serfage in Prussia in the early
years of the nineteenth century was accomplished
without resistance. Do you happen to romeniber
that in 1819 Stein and Gneisenau were put under
police supervision ?
46 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Such attacks as yours reveal the consciousness
of "a bad case." To meet your tissue of petty
aspersions with a hst of the sins against freedom
in German hfe would be an easy enough task. The
imprisonment of journalists for a jest about the
Holy Coat of Treves or about the Kaiser's the-
ology ; the ten thousand punishments of men,
women, and children, for Ihe majesfe^ in respect of
irreverence to the Kaiser and for Beamtenhe-
leidigung ; the endless imprisonments of Socialists,
from Bebel and Liebknecht — these alone would
make a sufficient answer to your unctuous claims.
But on this whole matter of comparing the general
aspects of civilization in the two countries, I
decline to follow your lamentable lead. In war
time, apparently, the Berlin Chair of History
becomes a department of Wolff's Bureau. In
other civilized countries such work as yours is not
undertaken by men of letters.
If, however, you want to know how 3/our
vituperation can be countered, you should try to
procure an English book called "Degenerate
Germany." But I ought to warn you that it may
drive you either to frenzy or to despair. For
every pebble of spite you throw, here are a dozen
hearty half-bricks. The horrors of German his-
tory, from the Thirty Years' War onwards ; the
backwardness of 3^our civilization ; 3^our gross-
ness ; 3^our table manners ; your crime ; your
vice ; le vice allemand ; your satyrs ; your volup-
tuaries ; your sexual perverts ; your corrupt and
decadent literature ; your physical degeneracy ;
your brutalized and depraved officer caste — you
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 47
will find it all handled here with a malice equal to
your own ; and all more or less documented,
W'hich can hardl}^ be said of your farrago. When
the book appeared here it was condemned by all
the decent journals : not that they doubted its
general truth, but that that is not in Britain an
accepted style of polemic either in war or peace.
You, I gather, have had a more favourable recep-
tion for your w^ork in Germany. I wall just say,
then, that if you care to see your abuse met with
abuse plus criminal statistics, police reports, and
abundant extracts from German and other w^orks
illustrating German manners, morals, and de-
generation, you may find it in the w-ork I have
mentioned.
If you want something more readily obtainable
in war time, you might do well to read a few of
the novels on Army life which have made such a
sensation in Germany in recent years. I have read
several — with an effort. They are poor novels, as
all German novels now seem to be ; but they are
a terrible offset to your polemic of alternate
panegyric of the German Army and abuse of the
British. The latter kind of aspersion is pitiful
enough to make your friends uneasy. The "con-
temptible httle army" had broken the rush of a
German one five times its strength ; its cavalry
had ridden through yours wherever they met ;
and you take your academic revenge by vilifying
its personnel. On this head I will not trouble you
with a defence. The future histories of this war
will tell the tale of the stand that broke the rush
of your hosts to Paris and to Calais. German
48 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
historians will doubtless continue to get comfort
from aspersing the little army that did so much
to foil them. The history of other nations will tell
the tale of the massacres wrought by your heroes
upon unarmed citizens in Belgium and France,
the slaughter of old and young — men, women, and
children — the devilries, the robbery, the rapes, the
incendiarism. Your writers will continue to deny
it all : the neutral world, faced by the collected
evidence, will estimate you accordingly. The
trouble for you is that the record is so largely
made up of facsimiles of pages from German
diaries, and by neutral testimony.
Those testimonies are quite enough for me ; and
I proffer no indictment beyond what they conve}^
As to the character of your own Army, I am
content to refer you (i) to your German "Army
novels," which have drawn a far worse picture of
it than was ever drawn by aliens in time of peace.
They make intelligible what your armies have
done in war. For the rest, I am content to cite
the published extracts from the diary of Private
Becker, 6th Company, Ersatz Battalion, 3rd Foot
Guards, Landsturm, who in civil life had been
Professor of Latin in the Bonn Gymnasium, and
who served on the Eastern front in August-
September, 1915. Of a long transcript taken from
the diary found upon his person, I have elsewhere
published extracts.* The}^ record (i) the habitual
brutality of the non-commissioned officers to the
younger recruits ; (2) the habitual under-feeding
of the men, while the officers — commissioned
"War and Qioilization, 1916, p. 1^0.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 49
and non-commissioned — feed themselves (where
possible) abundantly, the latter "sticking close to
the travelling kitchens" ; the former "stealing
bread and wine from the wagons," though all the
while "drawing big rations." Further, (3) the
officer in command of the company, also the
section leaders and the non-commissioned ofhcers,
stay behind, while the sections and groups without
leaders attack an enemy position in an "indes-
cribable jumble," suffering "heavy losses." Three
weeks later (4) the officer commanding the com-
pany gets the Iron Cross ; (5) a week later he is
drunk for an entire day.
This is a transcription from the diar\- of a
German Professor serving as a private. I invent
nothing and exaggerate nothing. It seems a
sufficient reph- to your aspersions and your
correlative claims. The summing-up is, in the
Professor's words, that "the German soldier has
no personality : he is a machine." If I were to
recite British narratives of German villainies in
war I could fill a volume. But 1 make no use of
such evidence. I am content to take German
testimony as to the degradation of the German
soldier and the morale of the officer class, adding
only that I believe there are many naturall\' good
men in both classes.
But is not the essential worthlessness of your
whole polemic in this connection revealed by one
sentence ? In the third section of your fust
chapter you tell us that "a mercenary arm\' can
be held together only by rigid discipline"— this
by way of aspersing the English Arm\-. Now,
50 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
when your Army was accused of committing a
multitude of foul deeds in Belgium, what was the
German answer to the charge ? It was that the
"iron discipline" of your Army made impossible
such savagery and licence as were alleged to have
taken place. So that "rigid discipline" is the
damning mark of a "mercenary" army ; and it is
also the regular boast of the German Army ! Is it
not well, in such an undertaking as yours, to
preserve some small semblance of judicial
decency ? Is it well that the world should see the
Berlin Professor of History carrying on criticism
in this fashion ?
Certainly your Army still preserves, for certain
purposes, a good deal of its "iron discipline." An
American reporter, officially welcomed to witness
the efficiency of one German army on its passage,
has told that he "only once" saw a German officer
slash a soldier twice across the face with his whip
for forgetting to salute him. And Private Becker
has recorded in his diary how hungry soldiers "are
tied to trees for eating [? stealing] biscuits and
apples," while well-fed officers steal "bread and
wine from the wagons." Discipline, for certain
purposes, is evidently still cherished. Private
Becker tells how Captain B , after a repulsed
attack in which his regiment lost 170 men,
muttered: "It is stupid to attack so strong a
position." "All the same," adds the diarist,
"that did not prevent him from firing on his own
men." We have many accounts of the strict
concern for discipline with which 3^our officers
march behind their troops, revolver in hand, like
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 51
Captain B . The British disciphne, I admit,
is different. But you are the first Prussian writer
whom I have kno\\-n to suggest that rigid mihtary
disciphne is a British specialty. We used to be
taught that rigid disciphne was a German inven-
tion. Savagely brutal discipline certainly was.
To which position do you propose to hold ?
Of one of your subsidiar}^ miscarriages I cannot
here forgo mention. In a footnote ^'ou obser\'e
that among the mass of the English and a great
part of the people of the United States "the
blind belief in the letter of the Bible far exceeds
anything in the most orthodox circles of Ger-
many, and this not seldom among men who in
other fields think very freely and independently."
You explain that the habit of treating religion
thus as a thing apart enables the British people to
ignore religious and moral considerations when
they conflict with the interests of the individual
or the State. This comes indeed deliciously from
the colleague of Von Harnack, who has pro-
claimed to pious Germany that the invasion of
Belgium was a parallel to, and was justified bv,
David's eating of the shewbread !
It was, I learn, another leading light of German
theology, Dr. G. Adolf Deissmann, Professor of
Theology at Berlin, and author of " Bible
Studies," a work of high scholarly ])retensions,
who early in 1915 published an interpretation of
tlie vision of the four horses in the A])ocalypse,
showing that the white h(jrse, which "went forth
conquering and to conquer," is Germany ! When
similar things are said by provincial clergymen in
i
52 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
England, educated English people smile. It is
among the foremost professional scholars of
Germany that they are produced and acclaimed.
And it is only in Germany that preachers and
theologians can acclaim the war as a splendid
expression and excitation of religious feeling, and
can announce that "God is a Pan-German" ;
"God is not neutral." It is only fair, however, to
add that one preacher is recently reported to have
been prosecuted for saying that "God is not a
Pan-German."
To be told by you, after these things, that
British religion is hypocritical, is indeed edifying.
One thing 3/ou may be said to have proved for us
afresh, that the ordinary moral standards have
practically disappeared from German academic
life. In another of those footnotes in which you so
particularly shine you state that when your ships
bombarded Scarborough and West Hartlepool in
December, 1914, the English loudly complained
of the act of bombarding an unfortified seaport,
and at the same time announced that the forts of
West Hartlepool had returned the fire. This
appears to you to be a striking display of incon-
sistency. Do you, then, suppose that Scarborough
and West Hartlepool are the same place ? Or do
you argue that if a place with a fort fires when
bombarded the German Navy is thereby justified
in bombarding an entirely unfortified place ?
Some such theory, perhaps, underlay the German
massacres in Belgium, when crowds of women and
children were shot down on the rumour that
"some one has fired." It is interesting to find a
BRITAIN \'ERSUS GERMAXY 5;
Professor of History apph'ing that princi|)k' in
the way you do.
The facts are simple. One division of your
raiders attacked Scarboroui^li, which has no fort ;
another attacked XMiitb}-, which has no fort ;
and the Hartlepools, which have one old fort,
with a battery of small and antiquated guns,
which were duly fired. You will doubtless be
gratified to learn that your naval heroes killed far
more women, children, and babies at the Hartle-
pools than they did at Scarborough or at Whitb}-.
Your remarkable comment on the episode reveals
the thorough sympathy between your academic
class and }'our naval authorities. The latter
selected seaside resorts for bombardment because
they were undefended. Had vScarborough and
Whitby and the Hartlepools possessed modern
defences, they would not have been attacked.
And yet it was your Baron Marschall von
Biberstein who at The Hague Conference of 1907
said this :—
"Military proceedings are not regulated solely
by the stipulations of international law. There
are other factors — conscience, good sense. A sense
of the duties which the principles of humanity
impose will be the surest guide for the conduct of
seamen, and will constitute the most effectual
safeguard against abuse. The officers of the
German Navy — I say it with emphasis will
always fulfil in the strictest manner duties which
flow from the unwritten law of liinn.-mil\ anrl
civilization."
And now it is the scholarly country man of
54 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Baron Marschall who affects to convict us of
inconsistenc}' when we denounce the dastardly
bombardment of undefended Scarborough and
mention that the old fort at Hartlepool did what
it could with its old guns. Some day, perhaps,
your countrymen will be surprised to think that
you should have dwelt on these things. You
might leave it to us to remember them. I never
had any doubt about the defeat of Germany from
the moment when your rush on Paris was herded
back ; but when I read the news of that raid on
Scarborough, and when I saw next morning the
companies of volunteer recruits in the London
streets multiplied fivefold, I knew with a deeper
certaint}' what the end would be. If we have to
fight till we are in rags, we will out-stay your
State. And this heightens my interest in your
demonstration of the defects of English civiliza-
tion.
Perhaps the best summing-up of the issue is that
the country whose scholars so laboriously — and
incompetently — go about to indict her enemies
for incivilization, is the country which, when
one of her submarines had sunk the non-com-
batant Lusitania, drowning hundreds of women
and children, made the occasion one for a festival
in its schools, and celebrated the event with
rejoicings, even as far away as the German club
in Chicago. In view of all that, your polemic
about the inferiority of non-German civilizations
savours somewhat of low comedy.
Boasting, we know, is the specialty of the
savage, and no civilized nation boasts with the
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
:)D
systematic zest of yours. On the eve of Jena, \our
Prussian officers were boasting that the French
would run away at the sight of them. As soon as
Napoleon was down by the help of Russia and
Britain, the boasting recommenced, and it has
been in crescendo ever since. That gives us our
clue. Not onty was Germany the last of the
Western Powers to undergo modern civilization
(Herder, you remember, wrote : "the inhabitants
of German}/ a few centuries ago were Pata-
gonians" ; and Goethe said something similar),
but Prussia was one of the last States in Germany
to exhibit the influence in average life. Consulting
the Prussian criminal statistics of last century,
I find that of the seven provinces of Old Prussia,
Prussia proper was nearly the worst. In 1822 it
was the worst. Whereas in Pomcrania, in respect
of crimes against persons, the proportion was one
criminal to 2,634 persons, in Prussia it was one in
1,242. In 1819 it was one in 1,044, only Posen
having a worse percentage. In 1825, with one
criminal to 2,749 persons in Pomerania, there was
one to 1,433 in Prussia, Posen again being the
onty State that was worse. During 1835, when
the population of Berlin was about 250,000, the
number of German civilians arrested by the police
was 10,134 ; so that about one in 25 of the inhabi-
tants spent some part of that year in prison.
I do not pursue this line of investigation. I
merely indicate these facts as being historical])
suggestive in a much broader way than are your
random impeachments of Englisli life. If oiglity
years ago Prussia was, witli one small cxcfplioii.
56 HRITAIN VERSVS CERMANY
by far the most criminally given of all the Old
Prussian provinces, we can understand the effects
in war to-day of the predominance of Prussia in
German life.
Chapter IV
ENGLAND'S INTERNATIONAL BIAS
^OMING to your sections on British foreign
policy, I involuntarily recall how in 1814
■j^ Count F. L. Stolberg wrote to the pub-
lisher Perthes apropos of the attempts of the
German revolutionaries of that time to blacken
England. He called her "that country whose
constitution secures the liberty of the individual
and the welfare of the nation more than any that
ever existed, while at the same time it is the
bulwark of the independence of every other
country in Europe ; defeats every attempt to
subjugate any continental country ; has no desire
- — can have none — to make conquests in Europe ;
and has just freed the whole of Europe from the
hardest and most ignominious yoke. To reproach
England with acting from selfish motives is to
reproach her with having her welfare inextricably
bound up with our existence, her freedom with
our independence, no less than our freedom with
her independence."
That was written before Waterloo ; and Perthes
agreed — Perthes, to whom Niebuhr was already
pre.'Lching, in the Prussian manner, your gospel of
the gixat State, "in which a full and free life is
now alone possible." At the same time, other
Germans were writing that "Prussia is actuated
solely by the thought of her own personal interest,
and her own aggrandizement."
57
58 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
That period in Germany's history you naturally
pass over, commenting merel}^ that in resisting
German demands for the dismemberment of pre-
Revolution France in 1814, England sought "that
Germany's strength should remain as much as
possible restricted, so that she should not grow
into a commercial rival." Thus you reach the
conception of "the ruthless selfishness of English
policy." Your proof in detail is interesting. On
page go you inform us that in the great wars from
the eighteenth century onwards " a ground prin-
ciple of English polic}^ came clearly to light, which
up to the present has always ruled her : she
allied herself with the weak States of the Con-
tinent, in order to light the stronger" — a curious
kind of evidence of her selfishness. On page 102,
however, you announce that "she was powerful
only against the weak and the timid : for a
serious war she betrayed a deep-rooted aversion,
only too well grounded in her inner organization."
Thus do you continue to exhibit the critical
rectitude of 3^our method and the unity of your
thought.
Now, I am not at all concerned to maintain,
even as against such a critic, that British foreign
policy in the past was not as a rule addressed to
what seemed to be the national interest, or even
to deny that in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries it was at times unscrupulous. It never,
indeed, attained to the cynicism of Frederick ;
but it acted on Bismarck's principle that all
nations seek their own interest. And it was not
always just. English historical literature abounds
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 59
in impeachments of past British poHcw Past
EngUsh misgovernment of Ireland has been as
severely arraigned by Englishmen as by Irishmen ;
and a great English party is pledged to secure for
Ireland Home Rule. Can you say anything similar
in regard to Prussia's dragooning of the Poles,
the Danes of Schleswig, and the people of Alsace ?
But our self-criticism does not end there. Our
fathers' treatment of Holland under Charles II
and later ; our beginnings of empire in India ;
our policy in the Crimean War ; our opium wars
with China — these and other matters you will find
discussed in our books in a fashion to which
Prussian historiography offers no parallel. I do
not remember to have seen a Prussian history of
the Seven Years' War in which Frederick's
brutal aggression was otherwise than gingerly
criticized. Ranke, who was always so fluently
moral in censure of the acts of French kings,
when he came to deal with the deeds of Frederick
simply declined to discuss the question of his
claim to Silesia, pronouncing that "happily this
is not the task of the historian." Such is the
ethical operation of the Prussian mind.
I will waive, then, the task of answering in
detail your edifying characterizations of all
English foreign policy. One item will suffice as a
sample: your assertion that in 1839 "^" ^he
midst of peace Aden was torn from Turkey." In
1839 Aden was held by an independent sultan, as
it had been since 1735, when the sheikh of Lahej
threw off his allegiance to the Sultan of Sana (who
had held the supremacy after the Turks relin-
6o BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY *
quished their conquests in Yemen) and founded
an independent line. When in 1837 a ship under
British colours was wrecked near Aden, her cargo
was plundered and her passengers cruelly ill-
used. On being challenged b}^ the Bombay
Government, the Sultan agreed to make com-
pensation, and also to sell his town and port.
When an agent of the Bombay Government went
to carry through the transaction, the Sultan was
deceased, and his son, now in power, declined to
fulfil his father's undertakings. Then an expedi-
tion was sent, and the place was annexed. Turkey
had nothing to do with the matter.
This is the unvarnished truth as against your
untruth in one clause ; and to deal with the whole
series of your charges would take a great deal
more space than they are worth, especially seeing
that no educated person in Britain pretends to
think the entire foreign policy of his country in
the past is at all points strictly defensible. A vital
difference between Britain and Germany is that
the former aims at the purification of international
morality, and the latter at its annihilation. I
prefer to come to your main argument. You
allege not only that Britain's policy was always
self-seeking, but that this made her generally
distrusted and detested — at least (such is your
delightfully Prussian way of putting it), after she
began in the second half of last century to show
a disinclination for great wars.
Here, to begin with, one has to challenge 3^our
veracity. Despite the talk of your revolutionaries,
the majority of the people of the anti-Napoleonic
liRIfAIX \I{RSL'S (rliRMAXY hi
States in German}' were friendly and grateful to
England for a generation after 1814. Spam was
not unfriendly after England had helped her to
throw off the yoke of Napoleon. Portugal has
remained friendly. Greece seemed rather grateful
than otherwise for being helped to secure her
independence ; and even Turke}' regarded Eng-
land as her friend until recent years^as she well
might, after the Crimean War, waged by France
and England in her defence, and after the Berlin
Treaty. Curiously enough, even now, in Austria
there is said to be much less hatred of England
than in Germany. Hungarians, again, used to
speak habitualh' of England with friendship,
having known something of English sympath}' ;
and though it was France that freed Italy from
Austria, Italians, like Hungarians, recognized that
they had always had the sympath}^ of the island
kingdom in their struggles. Bulgaria, too, used to
be grateful for Gladstone's championship, though
gratitude is not a Bulgarian specialty ; and the
other Balkan peoples have not shown themselves
distrustful of Britain.
So far, then, 3^our argument from the general
detestableness of England refuses to march. It is
true that during the Boer War there was much
anti-British feeling on the Continent. As Prince
von Billow has so candidly informed us, Germany
then refrained from attacking us only because her
Navy was not yet strong enough. It is one of the
mcjst edifying things in history to realize that the
nation which bludgeoned Belgium in km 4 \vas
quite indignant in 1899 against P.riliiiii on (he
62 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
score of the Boer War, in which the Boers com-
mitted the mistake of declaring war first. You are
much chagrined to note that the hostihty of the
other continental States on that score had died
down years ago. Did it ever occur to you to ask
yourself why that happened ?
The answer is not difficult. It was because
within five or six years of the close of the war the
British Government granted complete self-govern-
ment to the former Boer States. The result of that
example of benighted British Parliamentarism is
that not only did the mass of the Dutch stocks in
South Africa stand fast to the British connection
in spite of all German blandishments in 1914-15,
but that the two renowned Boer generals, Botha
and Smuts, have taken a leading part in driving your
countrymen out of their former possessions in Africa.
And now we come to grips with your general thesis,
I need hardly ask you whether you think any
one believes that Germany, had she conquered the
Boer States, would have given them self-govern-
ment. You would scorn to pretend such a thing.
But, you see, these things count. No sensible
Afrikander believed for one moment that the
victory of Germany in this war could mean any-
thing but the subjection of this people to a
strictly despotic German rule. Between Britain
and Germany there is thus one vital difference.
Britain is known to do things for freedom and
Germany is not. Outside of the empire, half a
dozen small States regard Britain as having done
them a good turn. Could you name any country
that takes that view of Germany ?
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 63
This is the simple test that puts in the category
of absurdity your arraignment of British foreign
polic}' in the past. Britain has some old misdeeds
to answer for. Germany has nothing else ! Once,
in a moment of expansion, when out of office,
Gladstone declared that no man could lay his
finger on any spot in Europe and say that there
Austria had done a good deed. It was an indis-
cretion, seeing that we were then at peace with
Austria ; but it was not an untruth. And if that
can truly be said of Austria, what is to be said of
Prussia ? An unselfish deed by that State is not
recorded in any earthly chronicle. Her whole
history is one of rapacious aggrandizement ; her
policy never for an instant had any higher motive
than avarice : of all modern European Powers
she has been the most shameless in aggression ;
and she has latterly inoculated with her character
the German Empire.
These issues, observe, are not of my raising.
Nobody in Britain ever pretended that the guilt
of Germany in this war was to be proved b\' a
catalogue of Prussia's political crimes. It was not
the Allies who claimed privilege of Kultur for an
act of gross international wickedness. It was the
academics of Germany. The Allies, like the bulk
of the rest of the world, have said all along that
the question of the guilt of this war is a jierfectly
open and simple one. They have tabled all their
documents and defied sane mankind to lind any
but on^ verdict. The issue has been patient I \- and
dispassionately expounded, step by stej), in ;i
multitude of writings bv Britisli as by Im-cikIi and
()4 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Italian writers. These expositions said nothing
whatever of Germany's past. They were judicial
documents. The country that in this dispute has
from the first resorted alternatively to vilification
and self-laudation sufficiently indicates the state
of its consciousness. A litigant who can rationally
and juridically defend himself does not spend time
in libelling the ancestors of his opponent and
assuring the jur\- of his own moral and mental
superiority.
Since, however, you have appealed to the
character test, to the character test we will go.
We shall not falsify German history : malice
could hardly hope to outgo the reality. We start
with the Prussian State as Frederick the Great
found it, a people bred like sheep and ruled like
dogs, and we follow its aggrandizement. The
seizure of Silesia, at his outset, is an act of national
burglary not to be matched in modern history :
it belongs to the polity of the Assyrians and the
Redskins. It led in due course to the Second
Silesian War and the Third or Seven Years' War,
an inferno of misery that recalled the devastation
of the war of Thirty Years, the last great German
act in the tragedy of civilization. In his first war,
wiiich he began by tearing up a national treaty as
your Government has torn its "scrap of paper"
in regard to Belgium, Frederick thrice betra3^ed
his allies.
Prussia had thus found her first great man, the
forerunner of Napoleon, the criminal type. of the
man of military genius ; and for his efficiency he
has been haloed as the national hero. His chief
BRITAIN VERSUS GERM AX Y 65
victories were won over a woman ; and with all
his efficiency he was saved from rnin at the end of
the Seven Years' War only by the death of the
Russian Tsarina and the accession of her crazy
son, who was Frederick's admirer. But that does
not affect the Prussian worship of Frederick ; and
it is from his worshippers, Treitschke and the rest,
that there comes the charge of national self-
seeking against Great Britain. After inflicting
untold miseries alike on his own people and on
their antagonists, he became of necessity much
concerned for peace ; and thenceforth a profession
of peace-seeking also becomes part of the ritual of
national self-glorification. The next Prussian
triumph was the Partition of Poland. Already,
presumabty, there was a Prussian love of Father-
land. Through Frederick, it operated to the
acquisition of another people's Fatherland. For
the First Partition there was the sorry excuse that
the territories taken by Prussia liad three cen-
turies before been under German dominion.
German they had never really been ; and the
Teutonic Knights had themselves been invaders
among a Slav people, who actually sought the
protection of Poland against their Teutonic
oppressors. There was further the pretext that
in 1772 Poland was anarchic. But in the case of
the Second Partition, carried out b\' iMcdcriik's
successor in 1793, the last excuse was not a\'ail-
able ; and Frederick William 111, who had
actually made a treaty of alliance with Poland in
1790, gave as the pretext for his treachery an
alleged dissemination in Poland of "the spirit of
66 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
French democracy and the principles of that
atrocious sect." The self-pity of the Prussians
during their and their king's later sufferings under
Napoleon never induced any self-reproach for his
treachery to Poland and his annexation of fresh
Polish territory. Yet the Prussian King had
pledged himself by the treaty of 1790 to protect
Poland from foreign interference "at any time or
in any manner."
It is pleaded that Danzig, which was annexed
in that episode, was a German city. But it was a
Hanse city, whose freedom had been guaranteed
in 1767 by five Powers, including Prussia, and it
had not the slightest wish to be annexed to
Prussia. The very pretence in regard to Danzig is
the condemnation of the seizure of Thorn and
Posen. Prussian ethic condones and eulogizes the
whole procedure of the Partitions of Poland as
having been in the interest of Prussia. It is the
same moralists who profess to contemn Britain
as a State always pursuing its own interest. You,
I presume, have nothing to say against the
robberies and the treacheries of either Frederick
or his successor, or, for that matter, against
Austria, whose Empress, as Frederick observed,
"wept, but took," and later even forestalled
Frederick William III by annexing Zips. You
would really have been well advised to leave the
histor}'' of the eighteenth centur}- out of your
survey. The Partition of Poland has become a
byword for international iniquit}^ ; and in that
iniquit}'' Prussia was the efficient mover.
Your charge of self-seeking in foreign policy
BRITAIN VERSUS GERM AX) 67
doubtless holds good against England in respect
of her support of Frederick against Austria and
France. The motive was a desire to help the
"Protestant State" that was in danger of being
crushed by the Franco-Russo-Austrian combina-
tion. British subsidies and Anglo-Hanoverian
forces accordingly saved him at one stage as
Russian reversal of policy saved him at another.
It ma}^ or ma}^ not have been a moral impulse
that moved George III at his accession to with-
draw British support, while faithfully stipulating
in 1762-3 for the cession by France of all Prussian
territory in French possession. It may have been
a simple common-sense recognition of his absolute
faithlessness to his allies. However that might be,
Frederick, the most shameless of all treaty-
breakers, furiousty denounced Britain for openl}^
and justifiably deciding to withdraw from an
alliance by which she gained nothing. At any
moment that suited him, he would have thrown
over Britain or any other ally, as he had cheated
one ally after another in the First Silesian War,
to make an advantageous peace with any enemy.
The one ethical principle for him. was that Prussia
must receive the fidelity she never gave ; and that
simple principle has become the gist of German
thought on international questions. For Prussia,
"the end justifies the means," be it in stealing
Silesia or in partitioning Poland. Treitschke has
no difficulty over that issue. But that any other
State should consult its own interests, even with-
out resort to crime, is a thing no! to be cndnred.
The fate met l)v Prussia twent\' years alter
68 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Frederick's death is a revelation of the true
inwardness of the State poHcy of mihtarism,
calculated aggression, and autocratic "efficiency."
Rule b}/ divine right, with no ray of hope for self-
government, and no smallest opening for indivi-
dual political initiative, reduced Prussia in half a
generation to a state of utter impotence. Begin-
ning by an insolent and inept intervention in the
affairs of revolutionary France, in which she was
shamefully defeated, her Government in its rela-
tions with Napoleon played a pitiable role of
vacillation, cowardice, and fear. The great army,
on which had been spent the bulk of the national
revenue for a century, ruled by an arrogant and
incompetent officer caste, broke like paste-board
at Jena, to which it had gone with a litany of
boasts of coming victory ; and for six years
Prussia drank the cup of humiliation to the dregs.
The example of Spain, which made an instant and
unfaltering resistance to the invader of which
Prussia was collectively incapable, and for which
half of Germany had no wish, gradually inspired
her patriots, and with the help of Russia and
Britain the great oppressor was overthrown.
Then Prussia resumed her autocratic and mili-
tarist course, all the aspirations of her democrats
being trodden under foot with the promises that
had been made to them ; and instead of a general
evolution towards international fraternity there
began a new progression in autocracy and mili-
tarism, heading towards new aggression, new
aggrandizement, and finally to the World War.
For Germany, the wheel has gone full circle. All
BRITAIX \liRSLS (./iRMAXV 6()
her progress — intellectual and material- has been
subordinated to the non-moral cult of the State,
of Power, of national vainglory. Everything — the
thought of the philosophers, the research of the
scholars, the education of the people, the skill of
the men of science, the enterprise of the mer-
chants and captains of industr}/ — has gone to
build up a Napoleonic State, worshipped as at
once the abstraction and the concentration of
racial pride and national lust of dominion.
The national destin}- was determined by
Bismarck. Always there were men in Germany
who yearned for a nobler way of life than that of
subjection to autocracy. They aspired eagerly in
1814 and for 3'ears thereafter ; they aspired again
in 1848, when the initiative of democracy in
France had again stirred the waters. But the}' la}'
under the curse of inherited unhtness. Never
having had any training in self-government, the\-
were utterly unprepared to begin at the point at
which they proposed to begin. And so Bismarck
a-nd his school triumphed, and the Frederician
policy was recommenced. First the attack on
Denmark and the annexation of Schleswig-
Holstein, with the complicity of Austria ; next
the war to humiliate Austria, leaving her, how-
ever, intact, to keep her quiet when the war witli
France should come ; then deliberate preparation
and no less deliberate provocation of the war with
France, who had submitted her destinies to a
Caisar who was incompetent.
Thus was achieved the Prussian (heani ol
suprcma(-\' in Cicrniiinv, ;iiu1 ni no ollici- \v:i\-
70 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
could it"^ be attained while Prussia stood deter-
minedly in the way of any true federal union.
Your assertion that in 1848 England "stood on
the side of the opponents" of the German move-
ment for national unity is a sample of your
method. England did nothing, and could do
nothing, in the matter. You yourself admit that
she always sympathized with Liberal movements
in Germany : that is part of your grievance against
her. Prussia was determined that there should be
no union save one in which she was dominant.
She could have had union at an}^ time on a federal
basis, bad as was her reputation in Germany for
absolute self-seeking. But she always lived up to
her reputation. It was always a Prussian adminis-
tration that she offered to the German peoples.
On the eve of Jena, boasting how they would put
down Napoleon, the Prussian officers passing
through Gotha "behaved as if in a conquered
country," with all the insolence and licence of
their caste. In Napoleon's place, they would have
done all that Napoleon and his marshals did. The
Napoleonic policy of universal plunder was their
ideal : it is the German military ideal to-day. It
was only the military triumph over France in
1870 that reconciled the other German States to
an empire which meant the barely disguised
perpetual domination of Prussia. They made their
bed, and they have lain on it. Under a constitu-
tion which gives them no real power over their
own destiny, they have been but the instruments
of traditional Prussianism.
And this is the summing-up on the issue you
BRITAIN VERSUS GERM AW 71
have raised as to the comparati\'e political evolu-
tion of the British and the German States. During
the nineteenth century, the self-governing States
have been advancing not only in civilization and
well-being, but in international moralitw The
conception of self-interest, as inevitable in national
as in individual life, has been gradually modified
in international as in social life. The law of
reciprocit}', which is the foundation of all ethic,
has been continually widened. The habit of
boasting, long ostracized in private life, has been
in non-German countries restrained in public life.
Conscious of their imperfections, the nations have
increasingly substituted self-improvement for self-
praise, and they had for a generation past been
more and more concerned to guard against war.
Those menaced by Germany naturally drew
together ; but still they hoped for better things
than Armageddon. In the case of the last Balkan
wars, British statesmanship was acknowledged by
the German Government to have preserved the
peace among the great Powers.
Meantime, what has been the development of
Germany ? No one could glean an idea of it from
your book. You tell us in the customary manner
that the German people, from the Kaiser down-
wards, desired above all things peace. Meaning
what ? A peace, apparently, in which (ierman\'
could impose her will on Euro]:>e. Here are your
own words (page 135) : —
"Thus had Germany in the shortest time
developed . . . into a mighty and as|Mring
empire, that already through its commanding
72 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
importance {Schwergewicht) exacted respect and
could always enforce it. For England she became
more and more the chief competitor. That in the
affairs of the Continent Germany spoke the
decisive word, and by her Army preserved the
peace (!) of the Continent and made impossible
the wars between European Powers which were so
advantageous to England's expansion, had to be
submitted to."
When, then, wars did take place in Europe, it
was b}^ Germany's wish. The essential thing
was that Germany should always "speak the
decisive word," and "enforce respect" to her
decisions.
Meanwhile, what decisions was she preparing ?
The student of German political literature of the
past dozen years is faced by a whole literature to
which you make no allusion. I refer to the litera-
ture of Pan-Germanism. I do not ask you to take
m}^ account of it : I refer you to the summary of
its propaganda given in the work of the American
Professor Roland G. Usher, first published in 1913.
With that literature there is absolutely nothing
comparable in the modern world. French ofiicers
might from time to time produce a book on the
next war ; and English romancers might occa-
sionally follow suit ; but here is a literature
permeating a nation, and representing an ideal of
universal conquest which had its devotees in all
classes. You may tell me that it was not govern-
mental, and that it did not represent the feeling
of the nation. What, then, do you make of the
work^of Professor Ottfried Nippold, " Der Deutsche
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 73
Chauvinismus," published in 1914 ? Hero are his
words : —
"Chauvinism has grown enormously in Ger-
many during the last decade. This fact most
impresses those who have returned to (Germany
after living for a long time abroad. Many such
Germans have expressed to me their surprise at
the change which has come over the soul of the
nation in recent 3'ears ; and I myself can say from
experience how astonished I was, on returning to
Germany after long absence, to see this })sycho-
logical transformation.
"Hand in hand with this outspoken hostility
to foreign countries are conjoined a one-sided
exaltation of war and a war mania such as would
have been regarded as impossible a few years ago.
. . . These people not only incite the nation to
war, but systematically educate the nation to a
desire for war. War is pictured not as a possi-
bility that may come, but as a necessity that
must come, and the sooner the better. . . . From
the idea of a defensive war for urgent reasons the
Chauvinists have advanced with the utmost
facility to the idea of an offensive war for no
reason at all ; and they flatter themselves that
the German nation has undergone the same
transformation."
Against that testimony, what credence do \ nu
think is to be attached to your pretence that the
German nation above all others desired peace ?
That the better men in Germany [)r()teste(l, we
know; tluMr verv protests are the proof nl the
spread of tlie mania. "Never," wrote the e(hloi
74 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
of the Neue Rundschau in April, 1913, "never
was the idea of an offensive war so vigorously or
so criminally played with as in recent years."
And all the while the militarists were explaining
that there must be not merely war, but conquest.
Laymen like Medical Councillor Dr. W. Fuchs
eloquently explained that "war is the only
means of saving us [Germans] as a nation from
the physical enfeeblement and demoralization
which to-day imminently threaten us" {Die Post,
January 28, 1912). But the mihtarists were more
practical. In March of 1913, General Wrochem
told the new German Defence Association that
" a progressive nation like ours needs more
territory, and if this cannot be obtained by
peaceable means it must be obtained by war."
And in January of the same year. General von
Liebert told a Pan-Germanist congress at Hamburg
that "nations which increase in population must
carry on imperialistic policy and a polic\' of power
aiming at territorial expansion. A people which
has increased like the Germans is bound to carry
on a continuous policy of expansion."
Such was the prevalent gospel in 1913, in which
year, we know, the Austrian Government, in
concert with the German, desired to make war on
Serbia. That multitudes of your merchant class
desired war no less than your militarists and your
aristocrats is notorious. In what other European
country did men openly reckon on the national
wealth to be obtained by new indemnities to be
extorted by war from defeated antagonists ?
That your Kaiser had long hesitated about pro-
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 75
Yoking the contlagration is doubtless true. That
he had begun to give way to the general clamour
in 191 1 is, however, no less true ; and in that
year war would have broken out were it not, as
vou are aware, that the Berlin bankers were
financially unprepared.
What, then, remains of your case, thus far,
against English development as making for a
planned war with Germany ? Had Britain shown
an}/ desire for new territorial acquisitions ? The
German grievance was that she needed none : it
was Germany that for ever sought expansion ;
and there you are at one with the Pan-Germanists.
You Ire bitter against Caprivi for his conviction
that expansion in Africa was valueless. Your
Crown Prince latterly seems to have agreed with
him ; for it was he, was it not, who declared a
few years ago that you had not a colony "worth
twopence" ? Your trade with civilized countries
was, in point of fact, enormously more profitable
than any you could do with your African colonies.
But the dream of Weltherrschaft had captured
your nation ; and the Pan-Germanists carried all
before them.
You admit that the British Government re-
peatedly made overtures to the German for a
joint restriction of naval armaments, the last
being for a " fieet-hoHday-year " ; and you com-
ment that it "fell through as impracticable
despite the strong sympathy (starken Entgegen-
kommens) of Germ.any." You know that this is
untrue. You know that Prince von Hiilow liad
declared that no scheme whatever could be
76 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
devised for a reduction of armaments that would
be acceptable to his Government. And you your-
self go on to declare that "no independent Great
Power can bind itself in this way in matters vital
to its independence, and thereby give a foreign
State the right of control over its measures and
war material, even apart from the fact that
according to English usage it was perfectly certain
that England would get round the agreement by
one or other of the formulas she has always at
hand, and that Germany would be the dupe." So
the "strong" disposition of Germany to accede is
your figment ? May one further ask, in this con-
nection, why, with such "perfect certainty" as to
England's treachery, the German Government
was at any point surprised, as it professed to be,
at England's hostile action ?
The rest of your case consists in a strenuous
assertion that, conscious of her military weakness,
England grew more and more afraid of the
"German peril"; that in countless publications
the dangers of a German invasion were set forth ;
and that "even as in France, in the whole popular
literature and in the school-books, down to the
little children's copy-books, the Germans were
pictured as bloodthirsty barbarians, who shrank
from no cruelt}^ and no crime. The Government
did its part to stimulate and spread this frame of
mind," and so forth. Upon this it may suffice to
cite the comment of Dr. Guttm^ann in the Frank-
furter Zeitung : — "I hereby testify, in so far as
England is concerned, that this is not true ; that
this is a wide generalization from a few solitary
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMAXY
/ /
examples." Dr. Guttmann knows England : yon
do not. And this raises the question : Upon
what kind of information do you found \'our
aspersions in general ?
In a passage in which 3'ou parade some of your
crudest psychology and sociology, you enlarge
first on the "arrogance and conceit" of the
English, then on "the deep-rooted lack {tief
eingewurzelter Mangel!) of mental elasticity"
which, "as a result of the fixed traditions of
English culture and education," has "become an
important characteristic of the nation." They are
so unteachable that even their study of foreign
languages in recent years has had no effect what-
ever. They cannot understand the ideas and
institutions of other countries ; and so forth.
But after this tirade you go on to avow that "it
would be a serious error on our part to suppose
that in Germany a deeper comprehension [of
foreign affairs] is extended through a wider circle
[than that of the well-informed English]. Especi-
ally of England and North America and their
ideas and life-conditions, so widely divergent from
our own, a reall}^ penetrating knowledge is limited
to a very narrow circle. Our daily Press is almost
entirely uninformed on the subject, and brings us
only scanty and inadequate news. Very often,
indeed, we find among highly educated (iermans
the most incredible judgments and opinions."
Whether this startling confession of German
ignorance of British and American life was
intended to suggest that, after accusing us of
arrogance and conceit, you could at a pincli hv
78 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
modest, I will not stay to inquire. I rather go on
to note your avowal that this ignorance of British
affairs is the heavy penalty for "the inconceiv-
ably short-sighted and narrow-minded school
policy of the Prussian Government, which, having
no perception of the true needs of life and the
problems they set up, has completely neglected
English in the higher schools, and in the collegiate
schools treats it as a completely subordinate and
merely optional secondary subject." You add that
ignorance of English is a very grave injur}/ to the
students leaving those colleges, hampering and
even almost arresting their development, seeing
that alike in the fields of philosophy, history, and
natural science, American literature has attained
an ever-increasing importance.*
The outcome is, you avow, that a knowledge of
English is much commoner in your middle and
even in your lower classes than in those responsible
for the guidance of the intellectual life. "How
little distinguished is our diplomacy for knowledge
of foreign affairs, how little it is thereby prepared
and able to keep in touch with and to influence
powerful circles abroad, we have constantly seen
in recent decades, as well as in the pre-history of
the war, and even during its progress." It would
appear, then, that in respect of inacquaintance
with each other's affairs England and Germany
are in your opinion on one footing. But you
collect yourself to affirm that while your ruling
classes know next to nothing of us we know still
* Your translator has modcstlv omitted this testimonial to American
scholarship.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 79
less of you. We lay under a "total ignorance" of
Germany, a "complete incapacity" to understand
your prevailing ideas., and "the therefrom arising
national and military institutions" ; whence our
"monstrous undervaluing" of your mihtary
power, your organization, "and, above all, the
living national feeling" that inspires you. Your
residual proposition, then, would seem to be that
"in the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed is
king."
It will not, I fear, gratify you to know that we
realty had a very high estimate of your military
strength and organization, and knew perfectly
that in entering on this war we were probably
beginning the greatest struggle in which our
nation ever engaged. But such is the fact. And
as the question at issue now seems to be. Which
of the two nations made the greatest miscalcula-
tion in regard to the fighting power of the other ?
I propose to offer rather better testimony as
against Germany than you offer as against
Britain. In that regard you place your usual
rehance on asseveration. That you personally
considered the fighting power of Britain to be
contemptible, as apart from the Navy, you show
us all along. The only obscurity on that point is
the co-existence of so much exasperation with so
much contempt. Since we are so weak, wh>' all
that fury over our intervention? Leaving tlit^
riddle unsolved, I come to the question of the
German forecasts of the course of the war. Your
severe indictment of your diplomatic scTvicc
seems at the very outset to indicate that in \"ur
8o BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
opinion your department of Foreign Affairs was
very ill-informed. And it certainly was.
Let me again present to you a German pro-
nouncement, made, I think, in April, 1915, by
Der Tag, the German journal which in the first
month of the war exclaimed: " Herr Gott, sind
diese Tage schdnl" ("Lord God, how lovely are
these days"). Eight months served to bring
disenchantment to this extent : —
"So many of our calculations have deceived us !
We expected that British India would rise when
the first shot was fired in Europe ; but in realit}^
thousands of Indians came to fight with the
British against us. We anticipated that the whole
British Empire would be torn to pieces ; but the
colonies appear to be closer than ever united with
the mother country. We expected a triumphant
rebellion in South Africa, yet it turned out nothing
but a failure. We expected trouble in Ireland ;
but, instead, she sent her best soldiers against us.
We anticipated that the party of ' peace at any
price' would be dominant in England ; but it
melted away in the ardour to fight against
German}^ We reckoned that England was
degenerate and incapable of placing any weight
in the scale, yet she seems to be our principal
enemy.
"The same has been the case with France and
Russia. We thought that France was depraved
and divided, and we find that they are formidable
opponents. We believed that the Russian people
were far too discontented to fight for their Govern-
ment, and we made our plans on the supposition
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 8i
of a rapid collapse of Russia ; but, instead, she
mobilized her millions quickly and well, her
people are full of enthusiasm, and their power is
crushing. Those who led us into all those mistakes
and miscalculations have laid upon themsehes a
heavy responsibility."
In the last sentence you would seem entirely to
concur ; ma}' we, then, infer that you assent to
the entire jeremiad ? It really matters little
whether you do or not. The world knows that it
broadly and accurately sets forth the prevailing
expectations in Germany. And, to come to the
vital point, this avowal is the annihilation of all
your rhetoric about the peaceful purposes of
Germany. These miscalculations as to what was
going to happen to the British Empire were not
mere hasty estimates framed after the ist of
August, 1914. They were the estimates that had
been current in Germany for years, the estimates
upon which your Government and your militarists
and the mass of your people were not merely
confident of the impotence of Britain, but eager
to demonstrate it by war. When some of them
began after the first failures to raise the plaint
that Germany had been "forced into the war,"
Herr Maximihan Harden in his journal gaxc them
the lie, praying that the Teutonic devil might
strangle such whimperers. "We wanted this
war," was his truthful declaration.
It is quite true that your Government (hd nol
want to have Britain on their liands at the sanw
time with France and Russia. Tliat goes without
saying. They despised the power of Ital\' ; \m{
82 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
they naturally did not want to fight four Powers
at once. No, in the German calculation, Britain's
turn should have come either sooner or later. The
naval situation prevented its coming sooner, as
Prince von Biilow has avowed. You would have
attacked in 1900 if you dared. But in view of the
pleasing practice in your Navy of drinking to
"The Day" of war with England, and all those
estimates of British impotence avowed b}^ Der
Tag, and revealed by the whole course of German
intrigue in India, Ireland, and South Africa, the
general disposition in Germany to crush the
British Empire is just as certain an historic fact as
the war itself. Your pretences to the contrary are
surely very idle when your very partisans in the
neutral countries — for instance. Professor Steffens,
in Sweden — vehemently claim that Germany was
bound to destroy the power of Britain.
So your indictment of Britain as war-guilty
beforehand by reason of the evolution of her
foreign policy has come to nothing. After asserting
that her practice in the eighteenth century was
to attack great continental Powers, and that she
has adhered to that policy down to the present,
you declare that in the nineteenth she was bold
only against the weak. You appear to think that
you salve this contradiction by asserting further
that she thought Germany weak — an absurdity
too gross for contradiction. At the same time 3^ou
afhrm that her consciousness of military impotence
made her dread Germany's power ! Every con-
ceivable proposition finds its place in your farrago
of blind aspersion. The sole semblance of support
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 83
for your imputation of designs of conqut-si is the
citation of the fact that Britain showed herself
ready to stand by France against a wanton (ierman
attack. That we not merely admit, but avow.
On the other hand, your own avowal concurs
with a mass of German testimony in positing the
growing determination of modern Germany to
dominate the world, and the habitual calculation
of the possibilities. The gross folly of that calcula-
tion is a result not merely of that essential ignor-
ance of foreign conditions which you angrily
impute to your own governing class, but of the
spirit of overweening arrogance that inspires
the German view^ of things in general. On the side
of political science, your people approximate to
the level of the Chinese of a century back, or, for
that matter, to the Ariovistus of Caesar's day.
You remember : Ariovistus ad postulata Cessans
pauca respondit : de suis virtutibus multa prcedicavit.
In one of the hundred boasts with which, in
the German manner, you punctuate your book,
you announce that "the Englishman" is wholly
devoid [everything is "wholly" with you] of that
concern to frame a theor}' of the uni\'ersal which
is inborn in every German. It is true that j^ou
have that predilection, alike in philosophy and in
sociology. In a space of forty years you had
at least five outstanding philosophies -Kant's,
Fichte's, Schelling's, Hegel's, Sch()})enhauer's, each
destroying those which went before. What is now
current among you, I do not pretend to say.
They were all, broadly speaking, ideal construc-
tions of the cosmos in terms of the ego ; antl as
84 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
that is equally the principle of your racial sociol-
ogies it may be that the political predilection has
for the time swallowed up the other. The fact
remains that it is latterly your national habit to
sum up the communities of mankind as you used
to sum up the cosmos. And you do it with the
same perfect confidence in your power to realize
all things in your inner consciousness.
I somewhat fear lest I follow in 3^our footsteps
in thus summarizing one German stream of
tendency. You are all so ready to sum up the life
of any other country, and you are mostly so
ignorant of your own. But this really does seem
to explain itself. You of the academic class are
all specialists, ill-related to the totality of things ;
and yet you must generalize on the totality of
things. You are a specialist in ancient history ;
and you now set 3'ourself to generalize that of
modern England, incidentally producing fifty
generalizations on the whole life of a great nation
which you know mainly through books, German
newspapers, and German gossip. Is it not in this
very fashion that your governing class reached
those egregious forecasts of what was to happen
to the British Empire as soon as Germany gave
the push ? Are you really in a position to reproach
your diplomatists ? On page 187 you inform us
that Mr. Charles Trevelyan resigned his position
"at the same time that his father. Sir George
Trevelyan, . . . left the Cabinet." Sir George
Trevelyan withdrew from parliamentary life in
1897. Your diplomatists could hardly beat that,
could they ?
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 85
The fundamental trouble, learned sir, is just the
national vice of systematic self-praise. .Nothing
more surely undermines a man's judgment of
others than a cultivated vanity ; and still more
fatal to sound judgment of mankind in general is
the eternal iteration by a people of its own praise.
That has been the Germans' rule of life for over a
hundred years. The very backwardness of their
civilization set them upon comforting themselves,
first by boasting of their past, and then by boast-
ing of their present as soon as they felt they had
one. "The old national vice of self-laudation"
was imputed to them by a highly sympathetic
English critic seventy years ago. How things
went after 1870 I need not recall to you. Making
up 3'our minds in advance that 3^ou are at once the
salt of the earth, and the sun, moon, and stars
thereof, how could 3/0U possibly have a "pene-
trating knowledge" of any other nation, any other
State ? How is knowledge of anything to be
acquired in a vertigo of vanit}^ ?
In the process of auto-intoxication you have
wholly lost the mental leadership of Europe.
Nobody now talks of new German philosophy.
German energies have indeed been abundantly
addressed to the practical side of life, with impor-
tant results ; but that inner life for which the
practical life ultimately exists (according to
civilized ideals) seems in Germany to have
descended to the physical plane. Tn other lands,
the idea of national greatness has more and more
taken the form of an ideal of national good life,
to which peace is indispensable. In yours, it has
86 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
more and more meant expansion, territory,
Weltmacht, Weltherrschaft, supremacy in arms, the
power to dictate, the dominion of the holy Ger-
manic stock over all other races. Your people
have produced a whole library of such doctrine in
the past twenty years. That way national mad-
ness lies ; and the fit came in 1914.
Thus have we followed you step by step in your
polemic, everywhere finding irrelevance, self-con-
tradiction, nugatory vituperation, defect of evi-
dence. At last we come within sight of the issue
which a justice-loving investigator would have put
in the front and not at the back of his inquiry —
the issue as to who actually forced this war on
Europe. If " England" were the guilty party, why
not show as much in terms of the documents of the
war ? If she were guilty, what matter her
national blemishes, her past, her inferiority to a
Germany which is superior to everything earthly ?
The guilt of causing the World War is surely great
enough to swallow up every other : you yourself
say as much. And yet only after 175 large pages
of historical preliminaries do you come to the
point, to which you devote seventeen, whereafter
you resume the congenial task of simple vitupera-
tion. To the real issue, then, let us come.
Chapter V
THE CAUSATION OF THE WAR
^J^^S \vc approach the real issue, voiir pre-
Elrn'^ cursory narrative more and more reveals
^sfaUil the fact you are concerned to conceal,
namely, that for years before 1914 the German
Government and the German nation were becom-
ing more and more determined on a European
war — or, rather, series of wars. You reveal as
much by your crescendo of anger. The policy of
Edward VH, the Entente with France and
Russia, the military conversations with Belgium
— all constitute in your eyes a damning indict-
ment. Vou represent them as plans for a general
attack on Germany, knowing very well that they
were strictly defensive. They were the simple
outcome of the obvious determination of Germany
to become the World Power, with the "decisive
word" on sea as well as on land, mistress of the
very life of Great Britain as she was mistress on
the Continent. And you reveal that you know
this : you expressly insist on Britain's conscious-
ness of her real danger from German power. All
you omit to mention is the voluminous literature
of German aspirations. The anger of (Germany at
Britisli foreign policy long before 1914 you reveal
all along. Then Germany was by your axowal in
a consciously hostile attitude. "N'our counter-
asseveration that slic was lull of ix'accful S(Miti-
.S7
88 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
ment is simple counter-sense. I have already
indicated the facts of the case.
On the real issue, I will first of all simply state
your case as you put it, and, assuming it to be
true, draw the plain inferences. Nothing else is
required to expose Germany's guilt.
England, France, and Russia, you say, had
completed their arrangements for a war in the
spring of 1914. A war of what kind ? Of attack
on Germany ? Upon what pretext ? All the
menaces of war since 1871 had come from Ger-
many. It was she who threatened it to France in
igo6, to Russia in 1908, to France again in 1911,
when she made ready for the rush, only to be
held back by her bankers. On what grounds did
you expect the Entente to declare war ? You do
not on that point give us a single hint. You
proceed, perforce, to deal with the actual origina-
tion of the war — Austria's ultimatum to Serbia.
It has taken you long to reach it, but there 3^ou
at last arrive on page 179.
And this is your argument. By the Austrian
ultimatum, Russia was given the choice of letting
Serbia fall or going to war in her defence. For her
to yield to Austria, as you avow, would have
meant recognizing Austria's supremacy in the
western part of the torso of the Balkan peninsula
— a tolerably stiff proposition, as you admit. On
the other hand, you contend, the subjection of
Serbia was necessary to Austria's "existence,"
now that the Serbian agitators had taken to
assassination. The proper course, then, was for
Russia to stand aside and let Austria work her
BRITAIX ]'ERSUS GERMANY 89
\\ill on Serbia. And this, you feel sure, she would
have been able to do if only England had refused
to be a part\' to the war. Russia would have
given wa\' to Germany's menace as she did
perforce in 1908, when Austria annexed Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and Russia was still too weak
and disorganized after the Japanese War to fight.
Russia yielding, Austria would have done as she
wished with Serbia, and we should all have lived
happy ever after. That is your case !
I really desire no more damning indictment
of the Austro-German alliance. What you call
"peace" is the peace of European submission
to everv Austro-German aggression. Once the
Central Powers were supreme in the Balkans, they
could proceed to their further designs. The
Bagdad Railway, as their Pan-Germanists pro-
claimed, would put them in a position to seize
Egypt, whereafter they could absorb Turkey. At
that stage Britain would presumably be a com-
paratively easy morsel. But even at the start,
the "existence" of Germany, as you and your
statesmen inform us, called for the subjection of
Belgium. As it was Russia's duty to stand by and
see Serbia subjected, so it was ours to stand by
and see Belgium bludgeoned. How long it would
take to make the seizure of Holland necessary for
Germany's "existence" you do not inform us;
but, enlightened on that subject by your Pan-
Germanist literature, we can guess. The necessity
would certainly not have been long delayed. And
then would have come "The I)a\" for reckoning
with England.
90 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
It is quite unnecessary to argue the latter point.
Your express positions in regard to Serbia and
Belgium are absolutely sufficient ; and there can
be no more overwhelming proof of the madness
that has seized the German mind than your
assumption that these positions constitute a
tenable case. Perhaps, indeed, I do you personally
an injustice. The fashion in which you hurry over
this — the real issue — suggests that perhaps you
know as well as I do the monstrosity of your
argument. You speak of what you call the "cool
effrontery" of Lord Grey's handling of his terrible
dilemma. I will not pretend to impute coolness
either to you or to any other champion of Ger-
many. As for effrontery, the only ground for
hesitation about applying the epithet is the
fashion in which, as aforesaid, you hurry over the
real issue in seventeen pages after spending 170 in
preliminary irrelevance. Perhaps the accurate
description would be "suppressed shame."
It is after your avowal that the Kaiser's speech
on June 20 indicated the near approach of war
that 3'^ou make this egregious assertion : —
"The German Under-Secretary went so far [in
striving to avert war] as to explain to the English
Ambassador that the German Government had
not prompted the hurried return of the Kaiser
from his northern summer trip, which was ex-
pected on the evening of July 26th, and that they
regretted it because 'thereby disquieting rumours
might arise.' " And you add the footnote :
"The German Kaiser had undertaken this journey
in spite of the murder of the heir to the Austrian
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 91
throne, and had not yet cut it short, in order to
show all the world that Germany stood aloof from
the negotiations and was making no military
preparations, but was quietly awaiting the course
of events."
Such is your official lesson, dul}' recited. 1
doubt whether an}- intelligent neutral will feel
complimented by your assumption that stuff of
this kind will serve to hoodwink neutrals in
general. The make-beheve of the Kaiser and the
German Foreign Office is too gross to deceive a
child ; and you contrive to make the farce still
worse by obliviously confessing elsewhere that
on June 20 the Kaiser had made up his mind that
war was at hand. Had he then gone to the north
to tr}' to recover a peaceful frame of mind ?
Would it not be well to stick to one line of fiction
at a time ?
Yours is indeed a pitiable position. With what
semblance of conviction, I wonder, did you frame
your proposition that the assassination at Serajevo
had made it necessary to Austria's "existence" to
lay her hand on Serbia ? You were, of course,
aware that Austria had formally proposed to Italy
that the Triple Alliance should make war on
Serbia in 1913. You will doubtless deny this ; but
if you will turn to your book you will find that on
page 179 you expressly admit that the assumption
of a coming war was made in Germany before
the assassination. When at the launching of
the ship Bismarck at Hamburg on June 20 the
Kaiser repeated, "with a rising emphasis," Prince
Bismarck's phrase : "We Germans fear God, and
92 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
nothing else in the world," his words, you avow,
left hardly a doubt that war was at hand. Quite
so. Multitudes of Germans had been expecting it
for a year and more. And you had further revealed,
in your immediately previous remarks on the
damage to German prestige that had accrued
from the Turco-Bulgarian War, your conviction
that Germany needed somehow to reaffirm herself.
The assassination at Serajevo was simply seized on
as a pretext either for the war determined on or
for a blow at the prestige of Russia and a de-
cisive imposition of Pan-German power on the
Balkans.
Whether Germans really believe that Russia
and France would not have gone to war if Britain
had remained neutral, I am not greatly concerned
to inquire. You all pay extraordinar}^ compli-
ments to Britain's influence, after all your declama-
tion about her effeteness, her impotence, her
cowardice. Some Russian statesmen, on the other
hand, seem to have held that if Britain had
definitely declared from the first that she would
join in any Russian resistance to Austro-German
aggression, German}^ would have given way.
These generalizations, obviously, are alike incap-
able of proof. Even if war could have been staved
off in 1914, the evolution of Germany was fatally
advancing in the one direction. The growth of
Chauvinism which so startled and alarmed Pro-
fessor Nippold was going on at an accelerating
rate. A nation which could put forward, through
its scholars, such a plea as you advance in regard
to the general duty of letting Austria work her
JiRlTAIX VERSCS CliRMAW 93
will on Serbia, and such a plea as your literati
framed for German Kultur as justif3'ing the
atrocious invasion of Belgium, had passed the
point of rational recovery.
The more carcfulty your pleas are weighed,
the more monstrous are they seen to be. If ever
there was an international case in human history
in which a settlement was feasible, it was the
case of the assassination at Serajevo. Serbia's
acquiescence in Austria's demands was carried to
the very verge of utter national humiliation : it
surprised all observers. Were it not for the plain
fact that Austria's ultimatum w^as meant to bring
about either war or abject submission, every sane
man in Europe would have counted on a settle-
ment on some of the lines suggested by the Allies.
But, as you avow, all efforts for peace were
frustrated b}' "the determination of the Vienna
Cabinet to take no backward step."
Here we come to our last issue. You in effect
suggest German regret that Vienna was- so in-
flexible. No German document has ever been
produced to show that Berlin put any pressure on
Vienna to modify its demands ; but you quaintly
cite an intercepted letter of the Belgian charge
d'affaires at Petrograd, to the effect that both
there and at Vienna Germany had tried "ever}-
means to prevent a general conflict." What, pray,
does that mean ? We know very well that Ger-
man}/ did not want a general conflict at that
moment. She wanted a walk-over for Austria.
But (lid she press Austria to limit her demands ?
On \'our own ))rinciples, it was her duty to do so.
94 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
That is to say, if it was Britain's duty to try to
deter Russia from fighting, it was Germany's duty
to try to deter Austria. And, may I ask, do you
really expect us -to believe that Austria would
have persisted if Germany had said she would not
back her up against Russia ?
You considerately spare us that flight of
dialectic. You in effect confess that Germany
would not put pressure upon Austria. Here are
your words (page i8i) : —
"England . . . urged a conference of England,
France, Germany, and Italy, which should make
proposals of mediation. This proposal was, of
course, unacceptable : it would be a heavy humilia-
tion for Austria and also for Germany if the
Hapsburg monarchy, of which the existence was
threatened in the gravest degree and mortalty
injured (!), were to come before the Forum of
Europe practicahy in the character of one
accused (!), on an equal footing with the Murderer-
State Serbia, and there let herself be pressed to
make concessions."
Now, at last, all the cards are on the table.
Once more we learn that Germany held that
Austria ought to have her way with Serbia. If
the assassination of a prince or dignitary [or why
not a simple citizen ?] of State A by a subject of
that State is supposed to result from the machina-
tions of somebody in State B, the former, being
thus mortally injured "in its existence," is
entitled to demand to be let take over the poHce
and judicial system of State B, because to ask it
to accept any sort of arbitration would be to
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 95
propose to put it on the same footing with a
Murderer-State.
To comment upon this masterpiece of Germanic
ethic and jurisprudence would be to disturb the
moral and literary effect. I will merel}' point the
moral. When I first saw it seriously maintained
that the assassination at Serajevo was reall}^
brought about by the machinations of the agents
provocateurs of Austria, known to have been other-
wise abundantly active in Serbia, I was strongly
incredulous. Even Austrian corruption did not
seem capable of such Satanism as that. But when
I read (i) your vindication of Austria's insistence
on the absolute submission of Serbia, and your
deliberate attribution of the guilt of the murder
(2) to the Serbian State, and (3) finally to Russia
("Russia was the really guilty one, and had
instigated the Serbians to their procedure" :
page 180), I see something like a juridical com-
pulsion to take up the point of view indicated.
If Austria and Germany indict at once the Serbian
and the Russian Governments for the crime, there
is only one way of settling the question. The
world-jury, if it is to consider your charges, must
inquire at the same time whether the Austrian
police engineered an assassination which, by your
account, gave Austria an absolutely irreducible
case for demanding the surrender of Serbia. That
which seemed incredible, your polemic raises to
the plane of the credible.
Pending the possible inquest which may one
day disclose the facts, we must be content for the
present to sum up over your proposition that
96 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Austria could not be put to the humiliation of a
peaceful settlement, that her war ought to have
been permitted, and that the real peace-breaker
was England, which encouraged Russia and
France to shield Serbia, and wickedly declined to
let Germany bludgeon Belgium, where no Teu-
tonic prince had chanced to be assassinated.
On that our debate ends. Let the issue go so to
the world, to posterity, by all means. I have no
misgiving about the verdict.
It will simply be that Austria was Germany's
tool, and that, whatever were the true inwardness
of the assassination, that event was fixed upon as
the pretext for a course which must either pre-
cipitate war at once or ensure its early outbreak.
"Quite striking," you observe (page 192), "is the
fact that Austria, the ostensible originator of the
war, immediately upon the last decisive negotia-
tions was already thrust into the background :
the Governments and the peoples were fighting
not against Austria's seizure of the Balkan
peninsula, but against the German Empire and
the German people." Precisely so. Germany was
the real mover ; and your formulas about the
impossibility of humiliating Austria and Germany
by asking Austria to arbitrate would be merely
nauseous if they were not so exquisitely absurd.
Austria would never have forced war but for
Germany's backing. The war was engineered
between them ; and there remains in Austria's
regard only the memory of her startled percep-
tion, at the last moment, that after all her bullying
she was to be taken at her word, and was to put
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 97
at stake her own existence for Germany's
behoof.
By your account, the first move in the World
War took place because Austria must not be
humiliated when she made a monstrous demand.
She has since had humiliations enough added to
her long historical list — the humihation, in par-
ticular, of seeing her invading army driven out of
little Serbia by the Serbians, and Serbia re-
occupied only by Germany's help. Had that and
other things been foreseen, we should not have
had the present war. The world is paying its
immeasurable penalty because Austria has been,
as of old, contemptible, and Germany more than
ever insane. The wrecking of European peace is
your joint work. On a simple survey of your own
case, any honest jurist would be driven to pro-
nounce that you are collectively either the most
iniquitous politicians or the worst controversialists
in Europe. The true summing-up is that you are
both. The destruction among you of all sense of
international reciprocity has entailed the perver-
sion of the reasoning faculty.
If any rational neutral had any doubt as to
Germany's having planned the war, he would
find his solution in the simple fact that German}^
was prepared for the war in every way save one.
Her land armament was overwhelmingly strong,
especially in great artillery. The one vital point
at which she was utterly unprepared was her food
supply. You tell us that she knew herself to be
surrounded by unscrupulous enemies who were
preparing to make war on. her. How, then, came
98 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
she to omit the very kind of preparation which
was so essential to defence ? There is only one
answer. Her Government had not the slightest
expectation of being attacked. It had planned an
aggression, and it expected to make that aggres-
sion with triumphant success. Shortage of food
supervened precisely because invasion by others
had never been dreamt of.
And this disappearance at once of scruple and
of judgment was yet again illustrated by the act
of your Government in disseminating the report
that hostilities had been begun by French
aviators who dropped bombs on the Niirnberg
railways. That absolutely false assertion was
actually given by your Government as one of the
grounds of its formal declaration of war against
France. And we now know from an indiscretion
of your own Press that no such incident ever
took place. The Magistral of Niirnberg has
avowed to Privy Councillor Riedel that all
reports of the kind are false ; and Professor
Schwalbe has confessed as much in the Deutsche
M edizinische Wochenschrift of May i8, igi6.
But that particular report had been officially
circulated by the Bavarian Hoffman Agency at
the outbreak of the war, and officially endorsed
by your Government as aforesaid ; and we now
learn from an American professor who was then
in Germany that the story, which at first men-
tioned Neuenberg, was next day altered by the
substitution of Niirnberg. The purpose of the
fabrication was obvious : it was to make the
German people believe that the war was one of
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 99
defence ; and the same purpose, of ^ course,
dictated the falsehood in the official declaration
of war against France. But in this matter, as in
the oversight about the food supply, 3'our Govern-
ment failed to look ahead. It now stands con-
victed of systematic mendacity.
I am well aware that there were some men in
Germany who sought international peace. I have
had correspondence with some of them. Unhap-
pily, they constituted by far the feeblest peace-
party in Europe. When some of us hoped to
attain reduction of naval armaments by securing
the abolition of capture of commerce at sea in
naval war, we appealed to them to try to bring
the question before the general German public.
They answered, quite truly, that they could do
no good by such an attempt. In Germany, sec-
tional public opinion is quite powerless against
official policy ; and the German Government was
determined to have no arrest of armaments. Even
German Socialists angrily proclaimed that we must
be content "to see equality of power on sea as
it existed on land." The latter statement was
absolutely false. Germany habitually boasted
that she had a preponderance of power on land.
A German preponderance or even equality of
power at sea, on the other hand, meant that
Germany would have Britain at her mercy. It is
upon the over-sea derivation of half of the British
food supply that you base all your hopes of
destroying us. And we knew what destruction by
Germany means.
That there are Chauvinists in Britain as else-
100 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
where, nobody denies. But so little anti-German
war propaganda has there ever been in Britain
that your controversialists to this day cite an
article which appeared in a London weekly
journal in 1897. That article, which was vehe-
mently condemned at the time by practically
all who saw it, we now have the strongest reason
for suspecting to have been inserted at German
instigation. It was in all probability a base
trick of the German Government to secure
easy passage for its Navy Bill in the Reichstag.
On the general question of British feeling, I state
what is known to all neutrals with any real know-
ledge of English life when I say that no British
Government could ever have had the consent of
Parliament or the nation to a war of aggression
on Germany. While there would have been in
any case a strong disposition to aid France in a
war of defence, nothing short of the foul invasion
of Belgium could have reconciled the mass of the
nation even to that. A war of joint-aggression no
British Government would have dared to propose.
It is German deeds that have made Britain the
determined enemy of Germany,
(^
Chapter VI
THE WAY OF THE WAR:
ITS CONSEQUENCES
|VEN before you go about to execrate the
conduct of the war on the British side you
put us in possession of the keynotes of
your discourse. After mentioning that your
Chancellor "openly and honourably avowed" that
in the invasion of Belgium "a wrong had been
done, and international law violated," you go on
to cite "his addendum, that the German Govern-
ment knew that France had planned the invasion
of Belgium." What your Chancellor really said
was this: "It is true that the French Govern-
ment declared at Brussels that France would
respect Belgian neutrality as long as her adversary
respected it. We knew, however, that France
stood ready for an invasion." Belgium told Ger-
many that she had no fear of a French invasion.
Britain had received the express pledge of France
that she would not invade Belgium. And you your-
self confess that nobody believed the Chancellor's
assertion concerning France save those who were
wholly pro-German. Yet you pretend to believe it.
You complete the revelation of your intellec-
tual ethic by declaring, as the Chancellor declared
in his speech, that " Germany was under a necessity
in which she must use any means of defence
against the villainous attack" — the attack, that is,
that she had forced by insisting on backing up
lOI
102 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Austria's claim to occupy'^Serbia. If, then, any
means were justified, why waste our time with the
ever-repeated falsehood that France was about to
invade Belgium ? On your principles and the
Chancellor's, it did not matter whether she was or
not. As he put \t. he could only consider "how to
hack his way thro h."
From thi-,, a^i *. ! e infamies committed in
Belgium logically ■ • wed. The "necessity"
which justified a i .r ^ : ous attack on a neutral
nation by a Power \. ;. i. .vas pledged to guarantee
its safetv is xh^ L'-: o the contingent crimes.
Massacres of Vvomen and children, systematic,
incendiari-m iT-stial devastation, drunken rape,
and robberjy , wtc all serviceable as tending to
terrorize the Belgian people. In the German
manner, you speak of the unarmed victims as
making "treacherous" attacks on your soldiers.
The most searching investigations have proved
that the alleged attacks were the drunken alarms
raised by j^our ow^n troops, who in a multitude of
cases fired at random, thus arousing a panic cry
that man hat geschossen. Some of your more
intelligent mouthpieces, met with the evidence of
foul crimes spontaneously committed by German
soldiers, tell us that in every army there are some
criminal types. True ; but did not the commission
of these crimes justify the Belgian people, could
they have done it, in destroying your whole force
by any means in their power ? Do you think that
any "effrontery" that men ever achieved can
compare with that with which you ascribe
"treachery" to a people whose land, whose
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 103
homes, whose women, your army was violating ?
The double treachery is j'ours, and yours alone.
You broke j^our nation's pledged faith ; and 3'our
officers brought false accusations to cover their
own shame. The official whitewashing inquir\'
raised by your Government contains not one hint
of inquiry as to the possible effects of drunken-
ness among your soldiers, though their drunken-
ness was open and notorious.
The simple history of the German epidemic of
massacre in Belgium apportions the guilt. By the
testimony of neutrals who were on the spot, it
absolutely ceased at a given moment. That is to
say, it was stopped by military order. That is to
say, it had been previously permitted by military
order. And on German principles, wh}^ not ?
"Necessity knows no law," 3'our Chancellor had
officially declared. Your official manual of
Kriegsbrauch lays it down, along with certain
exquisitely hypoQritical pretences which I shall
discuss later, that it is not enough to make war
on the combatant forces and fortresses of a
hostile State. "Equally strong endeavour must
be made to destroy its entire intellectual and
material resources. The claims of humanit}^ the
sparing of human lives and of property, may be
considered only in so far as the nature of war
permits." That is to say, the spirit of the nation
must be destroyed. It was on that principle that
your commanders doomed to death the whole
inhabitants of villages — men, women, and chil-
dren— on the charge that "they" had been
telephoning to the enemy.
104 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
Before we come to your attempts to transfer
your infamies to British shoulders, let us consider
for a moment your comments on the Kaiser's
insolence to the British Ambassador before he left
Berlin. You tell us that Herr von Jagow "made
excuses" for the stoning of the British embassy
by the Berlin mob. No fair critic would ascribe to
a Government the deeds of a city mob ; but you
— after telling a childish story about coppers
thrown in the street — avow that the Kaiser, in
expressing his "regret" at the occurrence, at the
same time told the Ambassador that he might
gather from it what the German people thought
of England. This you applaud. It reveals at once
the national standard of chivalry in war. You do
not mention, but I will recall for you, the other
episode of the treatment of the French Ambas-
sador, who was forced to leave Berlin for Denmark
by a special train for which, during the course of
the journey, he was compelled .to pay, collecting
the money from his suite. The only fit comment
on these official proceedings is the word applied to
them by the French — canaillerie. With such
notions of official decency revealed to us in the
official dealings of your Government with ambas-
sadors (with which you may usefully contrast the
calmly courteous procedure of the French and
British Governments) we are prepared for German
conduct in war.
It now becomes doubly piquant to find you
imputing to "the English" a newly barbarous
way of fighting, exhibiting a "moral decadence."
Surely that is not imputed only at this stage ?
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 105
Had you not been charging them with decadence
during a period of centuries, and in particular
throughout the nineteenth ? Your demonstration
is in keeping with the charge. It begins with the
inane assertion that the British Fleet, "contrary
to all expectation, was completely held back,"
whereas it had been commonly boasted in England
that the German Fleet would be destroyed the
day after war was declared. You forget ; that
was the formula supplied by 3'our agents
provocateurs in 1897, or framed at their con-
genial solicitation. Sane men in England knew
well enough that 3'our fleet would stay in
port, at most sallying out now and then at
a venture. I will not ask you whether the
British Fleet has ever withdrawn when your fleet
was in sight ; or which fleet it was that fled from
the Battle of Jutland, when yours claimed a
"victory" that somehow had no effect on the
blockade. I simply wonder whether any boasting
quite so hollow as yours was ever done by any
German from the days of Ariovistus.
So far as I can gather from your incoherent
vituperation, your charge of "decadence" is
supposed by you to be supported by assertions of
savage practices in land war. You naturally do
not mention that at the Battle of Heligoland
British crews actually saved drowning German
sailors while a German aeroplane was dropping
bombs on them. In British histories of the war,
the bombing is ascribed to misconception ; and
the German Navy is credited with having made a
brave fight. If disparagement of one's enemy is a
io6 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
proof of superior morality, the moral victory may
be said to lie with you.
When we come to your details concerning the
war on land, we actually find you claiming to
show that England is not only "just as ruthlessly
brutal as ever," but more so, owing to the fact
that she is capturing all the German colonies.
Thus, you say, "a powerful and beneficent work
of civilization is being trodden down." I gather
that in your opinion your colonies ought to have
been left alone. You are justified in destroying
Louvain and trying to destroy Rheims, but we
ought to have left wild Africa to the beneficent
administration of German officers, some of whom
are wont to flog their native concubines. One is
moved to ask what your cultured countrymen
would have done had they got the upper
hand in Africa. Do you suggest that they
would have held their hands off the colonies
of other European nations ? You really carry
absurdity at times to a point at which discussion
is paralyzed.
More intelligible, but hardly more felicitous, is
your explosion of righteous fury over the fact that
Japan had joined the Allies against you ; and that
the Allies further have employed natives of India
and North Africa at the Western front. Specu-
lating as to what moral theory underlies your
declamation, I recall that the German manual
of Kriegsbrauch contains this passage : —
"All means of warfare may be used without
which the purpose of war cannot be achieved. On
the other hand, every act of violence and destruc-
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 107
tion which is not demanded by the purpose of
war must be condemned."
After this characteristic piece of verbiage, which
defines nothing, and leaves the soldier to make his
own definitions and do as he will, the manual
continues : —
"Among the means of warfare which are not
permissible are : The use of poison against
individuals and against masses of the enemy, the
poisoning of wells or of food, and the spreading of
infectious diseases ; murder in every form ; the
use of arms or missiles which cause unnecessary
suffering ; the killing of incapacitated wounded
men and prisoners ; the killing of soldiers who
have laid down their arms and have surrendered
themselves."
Now, every one of the things here hypocritically
forbidden has been done repeatedly by your
combatants in the present war — unless it be that
"use of poison against individuals" is deliber-
ately meant to permit wholesale poisoning. Wells
were poisoned by them in Africa ; and wells
and streams have been poisoned by them on the
Western front in Europe. Statements as to
the dropping of poisoned sweets and bacilli
of glanders in Rumania have still to be
investigated, so I leave them in doubt. But
"murder in every form" was practised by
your troops in Belgium and in France : we
have the evidence in diaries found on German
prisoners of war or on their dead bodies ; the
facsimiles have been published. "The use of arms
or missiles which cause unnecessary suffering," if
io8 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
it means anything at all, covers the systematic
use of poison-gas, invented by your Army
chemists and habitually employed by your armies.
The killing of prisoners, wounded and unwounded,
was in the earlier stages of the war practised in
hundreds of cases by your forces. In the diary of
Reservist Reinhard Brenneisen, Fourth Company,
ii2th Regiment, Miilhausen, an evidently loyal
German, there occurs, under date iVugust 21, 1914,
this passage, which has been facsimiled : —
"There came a Brigade Order that all French,
whether wounded or not, who fell into our hands
should be shot. No prisoners were to be made."
As to the similar treatment of British prisoners
we have collected much evidence, with which I
will not here trouble you. You in effect suggest
that you would hardly dispute it, since you tell us
(page 199) that your soldiers fight the English
"with embittered hatred," regarding them "quite
differently from the French and the Russians."
Seeing that your officers at one time actually
issued Brigade Orders to kill all French prisoners,
wounded or unwounded, it is a little difficult to
understand how they discriminate ; but evidence
given by Dutch journalists as to the exploits of
some of your soldiers in the way of spitting in the
faces of wounded British prisoners, and otherwise
maltreating them in course of railway transit, is
partly explanatory. It is only fair to add that
there is abundant British evidence as to the
frequent exhibition of good feeling by Saxon
troops, who do not as a rule emulate the Prussian
ideals in war.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 109
As against the kind of evidence I have laid
before you, I find in your book absolutely nothing
to explain your assertion that "of the frightful
barbarization that the war soon underwent, the
English are much more guilty than the French."
If so, the French have had their reward from you,
have they not, for their humanity ? It was
doubtless on that score that your troops mas-
sacred or burned all, or nearly all, the inhabitants
of certain French villages, as German soldiers'
diaries testify. Your statement that the French
taught the English the ruse of putting up a white
flag and then firing on the approaching enemy
soldiers is, I suppose, an oversight, to say nothing
of its being a fable. You ought surely to have laid
the guilt on the islanders ! But the special bar-
barism of the English, it appears from the context
of your assertion, consisted in interning Germans
resident in Britain ! You say this "drove you to
reprisals," to which you were "much disinclined."
I content myself with remarking that you know
this to be fable in excelsis. One day, perhaps, we
may learn from you whether the infamous policy
of your Government, in the matter of wholesale
deportation and enslavement of thousands of men
and women from Belgium, France, and Poland, is a
"reprisal" for the internment of Germans in Eng-
land, where they are kept in comfort and safety.
Meantime, we come to that matter of employing
"coloured" troops. Your manual of Kriegsbrauch
does not discuss "colour" ; but it puts the case
thus : —
" Closely connected with means of warfare which
no BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
are not permissible is the employment of uncivi-
lized and barbarian peoples in European war.
Considered from the point of view of right, it is
evident that no State can be prohibited to employ
troops taken from its non-European colonies.
However, with the modern tendency to humanize
warfare and to diminish the sufferings caused by
war, the employment of soldiers who lack the
knowledge of civilized warfare (!), and who con-
sequently perpetrate cruelties and inhumanities
prohibited by the customs of war (! !), cannot be
reconciled. The employment of such troops is as
inadmissible as is the use of poison, murder, etc.
The employment of African and Mohammedan
Turcos by France in 1870 was undoubtedly a
lapse from civilized into barbarous warfare,
because these troops could have no understanding
for European and Christian civilization, for the
necessity of protecting property, and of safe-
guarding the honour of men and women."
History, I trust, will not lose sight of that
incomparable pronouncement. Without dwelling
on the pathos over the perversity of the French in
1870, I am driven to inquire why, exactly, your
authorities think African troops unfitted for the
employment of poison-gas, which, I gather, is not
poison, since it is gas, and, above all, German
gas ? Do the}^ feel that coloured troops could not
be relied on to vie with German in their historic
practice of depositing ordure in enemy furniture
and on enemy food which they cannot carry off
with them ? Is it their idea that Turcos would not
be capable of the system of massacre and murder
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY iii
carried out by your troops in Belgium ? Or is the
whole immortal passage simply an indirect way
of saying that since the Germans have no Turcos
to bring, it is wrong for their opponents to bring
them ?
Of course, I do not forget that 3-ou now have
Turcos of your own on the south-eastern front.
In view of that, it seems a bad oversight on the
part of your authorities to leave standing in the
Army manual a passage which explains that the
employment of Turcos in war is unworthy of a
Christian State. Perhaps the passage has been
amended in the later editions. You will reply,
perhaps, that French Turcos are not the same
thing as German-trained Turks. But are we, then,
to assume that all of you in Germany agree with
Count Reventlow in acclaiming the unimaginable
massacre of three-quarters of a million of non-
combatant Armenians — men, women, children,
and babes — by your Turkish allies ?
One of these days, I fancy, your people may
desire to forget alike their rhodomontade about
the wickedness of bringing Turcos into Christian
wars and the monstrous horrors of their own
Turkish alliance. But one cannot be sure. About
twenty years ago I conversed in New York with
a Prussian, an ex-officer, about the way your
armed officers have of running their swords
through any unarmed civilian who may chance
to jostle against them in a German restaurant.
1 cited a recent case. He looked at me with
unfeigned astonishment, and earnestly explained :
" But that was honour ! " I have no doubt that he
112 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
was an honourable man in everything uncon-
nected with mihtarism, the rights of human beings
against officers, and the rights of non-Germans
against Germans. He was simply, like you and
the majority of educated Germans, a man in
whom the capacity for sane moral thinking as
regards a large area of life had been destroyed.
It is that specialty of German Kultur that
explains another historic record which will be
remembered as long as men remember the World
War. I refer to the celebrated address of your
illustrious Kaiser in 1900 to the German troops
about to be dispatched for the expedition to
Pekin. The immortal part runs as follows : —
"When you meet the foe, you will defeat him.
No quarter will be given and no prisoners will be
taken. Let all who fall into your hands be at
your will. Just as the Huns one thousand years
ago, under the leadership of Etzel (Attila), gained
a reputation in virtue of which they still live in
historical tradition, so may the name of Germany
become known in such a manner in China that no
Chinaman would ever again dare to look askance
at a German."
When that was published a flush of shame and
anger passed over Europe. British officers grim-
aced in disgust ; and I daresay some German
soldiers who heard the message were ashamed.
But in the mass the Kaiser's officers and soldiers
obeyed him. We have sickening records — English,
French, and German — of the savageries com-
mitted in order to show the heathen Chinese how
Christian Germans reprobate the savageries of
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 113
their savages. Because Chinese miscreants had
behaved as such, guiltless Chinese, women as well
as men — it is always so in German history — were
slaughtered by the hundred. From all these
infamies the Japanese contingent stood scrupu-
lousty aloof. And now 3- ou edify us by holding up
your hands in horror at the entrance of Japanese
into a Christian war ! And 3^ou are evidently
quite serious. You have nothing but eulogy for
your Kaiser, the "Prince of Peace," as some of
you call him. And I suppose even the Socialists
have forgotten how he once told them that if he
ordered them to shoot their fathers, sons, and
brothers, it was their business to obe}^ Verily, a
lover of peace ! You, an old scholar, boast of the
fact that in your State it is left to the will of one
man to decide whether there shall be war or
peace. This was the man.
It is now doubly edifying to go back to your
section on "Edward VII and the Hatred of
Germany" and read this (page 151) : —
"In reality we are dealing in fact (sic) with a
struggle of life and death between two State-
forms, one retrograde and no longer efficient,
and one which has advanced far beyond it and
attained the mightiest efficiency. Either Ger-
many, the German State with its organization
and ideas that live in it, will in this war be so
annihilated that it cannot recover, or England,
in order still to count in the world for something,
must change its ideas from the bottom upwards,
and accept the State-form developed on the
Continent (!), which has found in the German
114 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
State its most consummate and therefore its most
powerfully efficient form."
I have no serious objection to your description
of what is happening as between Britain and
Germany, that is, as distinguished from a des-
cription of the causation of the war and on
account of the totality of the forces engaged. You
are fighting (unhappily for you !) France and
Russia as well as Britain ; so there must be more
in the matter than you say. You happen to have
every kind of State in the field against you : the
Tsardom,* Japan, the French Republic, the Portu-
guese, and the constitutional monarchies of
Belgium, Serbia, and Britain. And your account
of Germany as simply the completest evolution
of the "continental" State-form is really too
amusing. What, now, of Holland and Switzer-
land, and France and Norway, and Sweden and
Denmark ? Are you under the impression that
all the kings in Europe are in the position of your
Kaiser, ruling unrestrainedly over servile sham-
Parliaments ; and do you really believe that
France and Switzerland are on the way to such a
Caesarism as yours ? Have you consulted any
German-Swiss professors on the subject ? Or are
you merely giving them a hint in advance of the
fate that Germany is planning for their republic ?
However that may be, I suspect that you are
at one point nearer the truth than you suppose.
Your mediaeval Kaiserdom, which you adore as
* Since this was written the Tsardom has fallen, a free Russia
carries on its war, and a free United States has taken up the gauntlet
of Germany I
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 115
the height of pohtical evolution, is in a fair way
to be shaken to its foundations b}^ this war. I do
not rate highly the capacity of the German people,
thus far, for taking their destinies in their own
hands. Your Socialists, who boast on that theme
as the rest of you boast on others — boasting being
for you all a psychological necessity — are hardly
the people to make a revolution. You remember
Rebel's description of his and your countrymen as
a people of lackeys ? They were sufficiently so to
stultify his memorable prediction that his party
would be in power in 1897. But it is doubtful
whether even the German Kultur system of
Kaiser, drill-sergeant, schoolmaster, reptile press,
and adoring professor, can wholly destroy the
principle of self-determination in a people ; and
the probability is that your mediaeval system will
have to denaturalize itself and fall into line with
the general march of man. The chances are that
"government of the people, by the people, for the
people," will not perish from the earth at the
hands of the worshippers of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
As you sa}^ one State-form must give way. It
will be yours.
You seem to me to show some misgivings on
the subject yourself. We are now in the third
year of the war ; and in the first, with all the
customary German parade of confidence, you
shivered now and then with apprehension. In
your closing section you draw for us a delightful
picture of the death-grapple between Carthage
and Rome — Carthage being England ; though
time was when a German could see the protot\^pe
ii6 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
of England in Rome. It is indiscreet, is it not, to
alter the parallelism ? The author of the
Geschichte des Alterthums can hardly venture to
deny that it was the Romans who said : " Delenda
est Carthago" ; that it was they who were deter-
mined to rule the world ; and that they picked
the last quarrel expressly in order to annihilate
the rival State. You even confess that in the
First Punic War, about Sicily, on which you found
your parallel, "Rome was the aggressor," whereas,
of course, it was not Germany that forced the war
about Serbia ! Then you ask "Whether the out-
come will be the same, who will dare to prophesy ? "
Who, indeed ! But you make an attempt, rather
half-heartedly.
You take great comfort from the statement of
Polybius that Carthage failed because there "the
people" were allowed too much share in the
government. Had you been writing at this point
the history of antiquity, and not a Schimpfwerk
against England, you would have recalled your
own dictum that Carthage was essentially an
aristocracy, and pointed out that "the people"
had no share in the government, only property-
owners having a vote. You would further have
noted that Polybius wrote to flatter the Romans ;
and that he gives a whole series of utterly dis-
parate reasons for the fall of Carthage, the last
being a mere negation of those which went before.
You would further perceive that if concentration
of political power in few hands is to be reckoned
the secret of militar}^ success, Pyrrhus and
Antiochus and Mithridates ought each to have
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 117
crushed Rome ; and that if "mercenary" armies
spelt ruin, imperial Rome, with her "mercenary"
forces, ought not to have existed for a day.
In your pleasing parallel, Germany is to play
Rome's part to the extent of defeating Britain at
sea. That was your hope at the beginning of 1915.
At the beginning of 1917 it hardly looks as if it
would be realized, does it ? If you will read
Wilhelm Roscher, who wrote his Politik (1892)
not to champion Caesarism, but to demonstrate
how Csesarism runs to ruin, you will find him
explaining that Hannibal clearly had 7iot the
command of the sea, which is rather a bad augury
for Germany, is it not ? You may note also
Roscher's proposition that Caesarism is always
much more efficient for attack than for defence.
Apply that generalization to Germany's present
case, and you will not find much comfort in the
prospect. We are now nearing the last grapple.
Happily for your deluded people, the triumph of
the Allies will not mean the utter annihilation
that ended the Punic Wars. It will mean that the
State which aimed at world-dominion will hence-
forth have to pursue the works of peace, in a
world which will never more let it leap at the
throat of Europe.
Facing this prospect, you begin to grow tearful
about the terrible dangers to civilization that the
present war sets up. There we can all agree with
you. It is a new note in German literature. In
the twenty years before 1914 could you at any
time have got ten German professors to warn the
German nation that their dream of world-dominion
ii8 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
was a deadly delusion ; that their militarism was
heading for destruction ; and that the "next w^ar"
of which they were so constantly babbling would
mean a drain of blood, a harvest of hatreds, that
would impoverish and enfeeble and darken the
life of Europe for generations ? Had you a single
statesman who dreamt of telling them that the
hope of the world lay in the restriction of arma-
ments ? You profess to repudiate Bernhardi. Did
any of your statesmen ever repudiate him ?
What have you yourself been telling us in your
parrot-rote repetition of the pretence that Ger-
man}^ did not force the war ? That "Austria must
not be humiliated" by asking her to arbitrate;
and that Germany w^ould be humiliated with her
if she were not allowed to crush Serbia by war !
You have raised the devil, and you tearfully
deplore the difficulty of laying him. "So many of
our finest youth killed ; such a terrible rupture of
the culture life of Europe ; such a danger of a
decline of Western civilization and a preponder-
ance of Eastern, just as happened through the
triumph and the world- dominion of Rome." Even
so. But even after the war broke out, were not
\^our scholars busy telling us that it is German
Kultur that leads the world, and that all others
ought to go down before it ? The road that began
with the devilish invasion of Belgium seemed very
fair to you all then. It was not the abominable
slaughter of the people of an innocent nation that
first disturbed your complacency. It was the
beginning of the awful death-roll of your own sons.
War is seen to be evil when it goes against Ger-
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 119
many — Germany, that has been singing Hosanna
to Herself in the Highest for six-and-forty years
of insolent ostentation of power, and that has six
times in that period shaken her "mailed fist" in
the face of France and Russia.
Yes, the tide of blood is still rising. A million
German men, including thousands of your best,
have been destroyed in little over two years, and
three millions more stricken and maimed, because
"Austria must not be humiliated" by being asked
to keep the peace. Myriads of boys- — innocent,
full of promise, capable of inestimable service —
have been crushed like weeds because your
philosophers have taught, and your preachers
preached, and your statesmen determined, that
war is a "purifier," an invigorator of national life.
Your preachers are preaching it now, while the
million broken mothers and wives are bowed over
their dead. Even you may find that your Schimpf-
werk is not German enough, not patriotic enough,
inasmuch as it finally deplores — howbeit with
concern mainly for Germany's death-roll — the
general danger to civilization, and does not duly
proclaim that it is in the supremacy of Germany
that civilization consists.
Certainly you can plead that you have done
your best. With the blood of mangled Serbia on
Austria's hands, and Belgium's on yours, you
have vociferated to the last that "international
law has been destroyed by England." Since you
wrote, your Government has outgone all the
crimes of Napoleon by its deportation and en-
slavement of the non-combatants of Belgium,
120 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
France, and Poland. Whatever may be the
mihtary fate of Germany, she will not soon be
shaken in her self-righteousness. The paean of
self-praise that began in the eighteenth century
appears likely to endure through the twentieth.
The violators of Belgium will go on proclaiming
that they are an injured people. On two successive
pages you tell us of the "impassable chasm" that
has been dug between Germany and Britain,
making reconciliation impossible, and then pro-
ceed to express the "hope" that "personal
relations between individual scholars" of the
belligerent Powers will be resumed — this after you
have told your former Russian friends that if you
and they live to the age of Methuselah you will
never again meet in a friendly conference !
It is quite possible. You have perhaps observed
that nobody has asked you for reconciliation. The
one basis upon which the German people collec-
tively can ever again be really welcome in a
European Concert will be a basis of repentance, a
consciousness of national guilt, a recognition that
it was their national egoism and insolence that
brought about the World War. And for the
Germans of the present generation any such
confession of sin seems impossible. Boasting has
become the breath of your nostrils : your first
national concern will be to find something new to
boast about. And that will probably stand in the
way of your participation in international con-
gresses of any kind. A German who, like the
author of "J'Accuse," avows the truth, while
continuing to love his people like a true patriot.
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 121
will receive the respect and the S3^mpathv of all
honourable men. There is no nation whose sons
have not cause to confess some national sin in the
past. But the author of "J' Accuse" has few
German adherents ; and if 3'our individual scholars
propose to continue the insensate pretence that
everybody has been guilty of the war save
Germany, they are certainly not likely to have
man}^ foreign correspondents.
The hope of the world lies not in the German}'
of this generation. Your Chancellor, with exquisite
fatuity, lately announced that Germany was pre-
pared to "put herself at the head of" a League of
the Nations for preserving peace in Europe. Even
for purposes of a professedly desired organization
of peace, Germany must be "at the head." You
cannot realize, I suppose, how these revelations of
German arrogance affect the rest of the world.
For your own part, you had in advance declared
that Germany would be no party to any European
peace or organization. What you wrote was
this :—
"Buried are all the dreams of the well-meaning
visionaries concerning an eternal peace of the
nations and an international arbitration tribunal
that should make war impossible : dreams which
in America, grown so completely effeminate in its
temper, found so wide an applause. . . . Instead
of everlasting peace, a series of long and bloody
wars will be the mark of the new century, even if
Germany should now win a complete victory and
again become the safeguard of peace for the
world. . . . The era of internationalism is past,
122 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
and will never return : instead of it the national
rivalries, the struggle of the nations one with
another, no longer merely in peaceful competition
but on a far larger scale in war, will become ever
more intense and relentless. We Germans have
long enough given ourselves up to the folly of
believing it possible by friendly overtures to win
the honest friendship of other nations, to over-
come all obstacles, and to win recognition on an
equal footing of the free use of our strength within
the limits set by the rights of others. But now the
veil has fallen from our eyes : not only the attack
of our open enemies, but perhaps in a still higher
degree the attitude of the neutrals has shown us
that we were wandering in illusions and pursued
impracticable dreams. . . . Henceforth there must
and can be for us only one object, and that is to
devote ourselves to our people and its needs. . . .
It would be a sin against our nation were we again
to follow the path of internationalism."
So all the world has its warning. It is now
avowed that in spite of all your self-certified
virtues and the unrelieved criminality of England,
even the neutrals do not take a favourable view of
vour case. You accordingly propose to give up
seeking peace, and set about preparing for a
century of wars. It is doubtless what many of
you would like to do, especially those who will not
be in the fighting. But even if your people should
remain so besottedly servile as to be ready to let
3^our Government of Divine Right send them
again to the shambles, 3-0U will find that the world
will not permit it. The Allies, who have lost their
BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY 123
millions as you have lost yours, who have seen the
fabric of their civilization shattered b}/ your crime,
will not leave it in the power of a perverted nation
again to endanger the general life of man. Hence-
forth the German Wolf will be chained.
The United States, insolently pronounced by
you effeminate because its people care for peace,
will in all likelihood take its share in the world's
task of saving civilization. Even as I write these
words, there comes the news of your Government's
virtual ultimatum to theirs — a manifesto which
some think is planned with the view of compelling
it to declare war, and enabling the Germanic
Powers to say that if they now surrender it will be
because they have all the world against them.
However that may be, the time is perhaps near
when the carnival of carnage which your Kaiser
opened will be ended, and your guilty race will be
compelled to pay what penalties are payable,
what reparation is possible as against the mainly
irreparable evil you have wrought.
It is after that last invocation of the Gods of
Hate that you shed your final tears over the
dangers to European civilization which you see
looming up on all hands. But you take care to
conclude with another blast on the true German
trumpet, and to proclaim to your countrymen that
they must maintain inviolably "our military
organization, the organization of our economic
life, which secures to us subsistence independently
of the foreigner [! this after declaring that England
was wickedly trying to starve you !], and a
powerful, independent monarchy, standing'][above
124 BRITAIN VERSUS GERMANY
all parties, a monarchy whose beneficent creative
power, combining all the forces of the nation in
one living unit}^ we found at the outbreak of the
war overwhelmingly strong in the fullest command
of all material [exactly !], and daily find so in the
course of the war,"
Great is Dagon of the Philistines ! Whatever is
to happen to civilization, you can claim that you
have done nothing to help it. To the stupendous
crime of your nation you have added your pitiable
contribution — a worthless book.
Printed in Great Britain by The Menpes Printing &> Engraving Co., Ltd.,
Craven House, Kingsway, London, W.C. 2.
Pamphlets on the War
Why Britain is in the War
And What She Hopes from the Future.
A Speech by the Rx. Hon. Viscount Grey of Fallodon.
Crown 8vo. 20 pp. Price One Penny.
Britain Transformed. New Energies iiijstraied.
Crown 8vo. 38 pp., with illustrations. Price Sixpence.
Britain's Case Against Germany.
A Letter to a Neutral. By the late Rev. H. M. Gwatkin.
Crown 8vo. 15 pp. Price One Penny.
German Truth and a Matter of Fact.
By the Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson, M.P.
Crown 8vo. 10 pp. Price One Penny.
The Belgian Deportations.
By Arnold J. Toynbee, with a Statement by
Viscount Bryce.
Demy 8vo. 96 pp. Price Sixpence.
The German Note and the Reply of the Allies.
Demy 8vo. 12 pp. Price One Penny.
The Villain of the World-Tragedy.
A Letter to Professor Ulrich V. Wilamowitz
Mollendorf. By William Archer.
Demy 8vo. 46 pp. Price Twopence.
The Workers' Resolve.
An Interview with Mr. W. A. Appleton.
Crown 8vo. 8 pp. Price One Penny.
Neutrals and the War.
An Open Letter to Heer L. Simons.
By the Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson, M.P.
Demj^ 8vo. 32 pp. Price Twopence.
The Ottoman Domination.
Reprinted from "The Round Table." ,
Demy 8yo. 20 pp. Price One Penny.
The Men Who Tidy Up.
By One who has served in a British Labour Battalion.
Demy 8vo. 16 pp. Price One Penny.
T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.,
1, ADHLPHI TERRACE, LONDON.
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