The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 14

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 14

As to Turkey, her fortunes shrank steadily. At the end of the Balkan

War she retained only 1,900,000 subjects in Europe, inhabitants of

the district around Adrianople. She was becoming a distinctly Asiatic

power, and the sultan must have felt that his hold on Constantinople

was precarious. At the same time, as we shall see later on, Great

Britain had secured a foothold on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and

Russia was extending her influence in Persia, two threats from the

eastward. Any far sighted Turk could see that his country was in danger

of being crushed in a vise of foreign aggression. To which of the great

states should Turkey turn for that protection which had long been her

safety? Not to Russia, whose ambition was for Constantinople itself,

nor to Great Britain, who seemed to desire the Euphrates Valley, and

who was safely established in Egypt. In her extremity she listened to

the suggestions of German wooers, who promised industrial development,

railroads, and financial aid. Here was laid the foundation of

Turko-German sympathy which was to be very important in the Great War.

 

After a calamity has occurred it is easy to point out the course by

which it might have been avoided. It seems certain that if we stood

again where the world stood in 1914 we should not do what we did in

1914. So we can see in what respects the events of the Balkan history

went wrong. But the men who settled the crises of the past were not

able to see what we see. They had the same blindness for the future

that we have for that which lies before us now. They fumbled their

problems as most men fumble problems, as we shall, perhaps, go on

fumbling until the end of time. It is asking much to expect that

statesmen shall be as wise as we who review their deeds.

 

But there are great facts in history which it is possible to know and

use with profit. One of them is the incompetency of the principle

of the Concert of Europe to deal with a situation like that we have

reviewed in the Balkans. Concert predicates a group of satisfied great

states, without over-reaching ambitions, who are willing to unite

their efforts to restrain small states, or even one large state, from

a course which shall force the rest of the world into conflict. When

a group of great states have united to carry out a certain policy,

and another tries to restrain the first group, concert is in great

danger of breaking down. That was the situation in the Balkans. These

states were drawn into the whirl of general European politics, and they

intensified its velocity at one particular corner, so that what may

be contemplated as a harmonious rotary movement broke into a twisting

tornado. If, when the present war is over, the nations of the world

undertake to go on under the old system, trusting to concert as the

means of avoiding war, there is no reason to expect that the future

will be less turbulent than the past.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

 

GERMAN IDEALS AND ORGANIZATION

 

 

When wars begin between nations we usually see the leaders of thought

on each side busy developing distrust among their own citizens for the

people against whom they are fighting. In accordance with this fact,

the people of the United States have read a great deal since August,

1914, to make them think very unkindly of Germany.

 

This chapter is not a plea for the Germans, and I agree that they did

unnecessarily cruel and impossible things in Belgium. It is not to be

denied that they played a most unwise part in the war game, when they

tried to steal a march on France by invading through Belgium, a thing

they were pledged not to do. It pays to keep faith; and when a nation

does not keep faith other nations have no recourse but to treat it as

if it were a pirate. If they do otherwise, the whole game will become

a pirate’s game, and good faith will disappear from international

relations. If Germany may violate Belgium at will, why may she not

violate Switzerland, Holland, or any other state that stands in her

way; and who would not expect her to do it, if no powers faced her that

were willing and able to dispute her will?

 

It is not improbable that German leaders understood this as well as we

who now pass it under review. They must have made their calculations on

arousing the opposition of the world and proceeded with the expectation

that they would gain so much by their sweep through forbidden Belgium

that they could defy the world. And if things had gone well for them,

the calculation would have been well made. For if Germany had carried

France off her feet and placed her in a position to offer no further

menace during the next ten years, and if she had dealt a similar blow

to Russia, what power could have checked her in the future decade? By

glancing at the situation in Europe today we may see how an intrenched

Germany defies the united and unwhipped world. How much more might she

not have had her way, if the thrust through Belgium had succeeded!

 

Let us suppose that the game of bad faith had proved successful as

planned, what would have been the result? Probably Great Britain would

have wakened slowly to her peril, but her position was such that she

could have done nothing. Her fleet would have been useless against an

enemy that rules on land. Her army could not have met the combined

Teutonic armies, and she would have had no allies. Meanwhile, Germany

and Austria at their leisure could have digested the Balkans and

drawing Turkey into their net could have established a “Mittel-Europa”

that would have left the rest of the world at their mercy. These were

alluring stakes to play for, and it is not hard to see how a nation

whose leaders have thrown aside the homely motto that “Righteousness

exalteth a nation” would be willing to take a chance in order to obtain

them.

 

When we think of such things as these we are in danger of concluding

that they represent the real Germany. We look back to that Germany of

the past which we saw in our youth, whose music we have heard all our

lives, whose Goethe we have read, whose scholarship we have built upon,

and whose toys have amused us and our children through many decades

and ask ourselves whether or not we were mistaken in our ideas of

Germany. Are there two Germanies, and if so, which is the true Germany?

Probably the answer is that each is the real Germany manifesting

herself in different moods. Fundamentally we have an intense and

emotional people, swayed in one instance by artistic emotions, in

another by the love of exact research for facts, in another by the

feeling of domesticity, and in still another by the powerful impulse

of a great national egoism. They are a people who can love much,

hate much, play much, sacrifice much, and serve well when called

into service. In their war-maddened mood they have stained a fair

reputation, and they are now trying to think that the stain will not

matter if they can only fight through to victory. But nations are like

men in this that however successful one may become personally he never

gets to be so great that he can afford to carry a tarnished reputation.

 

Let us turn to the Germany of old and see if we cannot observe the

process by which she came to her present state of mind. While I realize

that it is absolutely necessary for the world to crush her attempt

to rule Europe, I cannot find it in my heart to hate her. She has

risen to such a state of efficiency in social organization and in the

capacity to spread the light of civilization that she commands respect

from thinking foes. It is the duty of the world to chasten the spirit

of arrogance out of her, but to leave her sound and able to deal with

the future in that way in which she is so well fitted to play a strong

and beneficial part. If ever a great people needed the discipline of

disaster to teach them that nations, like men, should do to others as

they wish others to do to them, that nation is the Germany of today. To

understand in what way this splendid state has run away from its past

we shall have to glance at its history in the recent past.

 

For a point of departure let us take the Seven Years’ War. This

struggle was the result of the ambition of young Frederick, a strong

and unethical king of Prussia. When he came to the throne he found

that a parsimonious father had left him a full treasury, an excellent

army, and a united kingdom, while fate had sent the neighboring state

Austria, a young woman for ruler and an army that was not formidable.

It was a favorable opportunity to seize Silesia, which Prussia

considered necessary to her welfare, and to which she had the flimsiest

pretense of right. The rapacity of Frederick, her king, cannot be

justified on moral grounds, and it threw Europe into commotions for

which nearly a quarter of a century was needed for settlement. The last

phase of this quarter-of-a-century was the Seven Years’ War, 1756-1763.

By the time it began Frederick of Prussia was looked upon by his

neighbors as a menace to Europe; and Austria, France, and Russia united

to crush him. He had a friend in Great Britain, who was generally found

among the foes of France. In the great war he waged through seven years

he fought off foes first on one side and then on the other until the

war ended at last with Prussia still unconquered.

 

If hard and valiant fighting and solicitude for the welfare of his

country could redeem the error of the invasion of Silesia the Seven

Years’ War would relieve Frederick, whom posterity calls “Frederick

the Great,” of all odium on account of the thoughtless way in which

he began his wars. Unlike the present kaiser, he began a long reign

rashly and ended it wisely. Administrative reforms and a policy of

peace with his neighbors made his last years a period of happiness for

Prussia.

 

But Silesia fixed a firm hold on the Prussian imagination. Long

justified as an act necessary to the safety of the Fatherland, and

therefore permissible, it has given sanction for the idea that wrong

may be done that good shall result, if only the state is to be

benefitted. It is a false doctrine, and it can do nothing but lead to

wars. Nations are under the same obligations to do right as individuals.

 

The next phase of German history which has interest for us in

connection with this study is that which lies between the years 1806

and 1813. It was a period of deep humiliation at the hands of Napoleon.

The small states were huddled together in a Confederation which was, in

fact, a tool of the Emperor of France, and Prussia lay like a trembling

and crushed thing in his hand. No living man who hates Germany for the

deeds of the present war could wish her a worse fate than Napoleon

inflicted on her after the battle of Jena in 1806. He insulted the

king, burdened the people with requisitions, and limited their armies.

It was the acme of national shame for the nation that is now so strong.

 

The cause of these woes was the lack of organization, and perhaps

Napoleon did the nation a service when he beat the Prussians into a

realization of it. No nation is so poor that it has not reformers who

see in what way its evils may be corrected. In the days that preceded

the calamities of which I speak Prussia had her prophets crying to deaf

men. Misfortune opened the ears of the rulers so that the prophets