England and Germany
by Emile Joseph Dillon · English · Gutenberg #29338 · 525,797 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of England and Germany
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: England and Germany
Author: Emile Joseph Dillon
Commentator: William Morris Hughes
Release date: July 6, 2009 [eBook #29338]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29338
Credits: Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLAND AND GERMANY ***
Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
ENGLAND AND GERMANY
BY
DR. E. J. DILLON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
THE HON. W. M. HUGHES, M.P. PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA
BRENTANO'S NEW YORK
CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. LONDON
1917
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK
ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY SUFFOLK
TO
H.S.H. ALICE
PRINCESS OF MONACO
THIS PARTIAL PRESENTMENT OF THE
BEGINNINGS OF A WORLD
CATACLYSM
INTRODUCTION
Behind any human institution there stand a few men--perhaps only one
man--who direct its movement, protect its interests, or serve as its
mouthpiece. This applies to nations. If we wish to know for what a
nation stands and what are its ideals and by what means it seeks to
realise them, we shall do well to know something of the men who lead
its people or express their feelings.
It is of vital importance that we should understand the attitude of
every one of the nations--both friends and enemies--involved in this
war. For in this way only can we know what is necessary to be done to
achieve victory.
And the remarkable man who has written this book knows those who lead
the warring nations in this titanic conflict very much better than
ordinary men know their own townsmen.
Dr. Dillon has moved through the chancelleries of Europe. He has seen
and heard what has been denied to all but very few. In the Balkans,
that cauldron of racial passions which, overflowing, gave our enemies
an ostensible cause for this war, he moved as though an invisible and
yet keenly observant figure. He could claim the friendship of
Venizelos and other Balkan statesmen. He has travelled as a monk
throughout the mountain fastnesses, he has slept in the caves of
Albania. He understands the people of all the Balkans, speaks their
tongues as a native, and knows and assesses at their true value their
leaders.
At the time of the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and the
Archduchess, Dr. Dillon was in Austria, and he remained there through
those long negotiations in which Germany tenaciously clung to her
design of war.
How well he knows Germany let his book speak. His knowledge of Russia
is profound. A master of many languages, he occupied a chair at the
Moscow University for many years, and his insight into Russian
politics is deep.
In this book he speaks out of the depth of his knowledge, and tells
the people of Britain what this war means to them, and what needs to
be done before we can hope for victory. He speaks plainly because he
feels strongly.
It may be that we cannot agree with him in everything that he says.
But no one, after reading Dr. Dillon's remarkable book, will any
longer regard the war as but a passing episode. It is a timely
antidote to that fatal delusion.
For this war is a veritable cataclysm, and the future of the world
hangs upon the result. We must change our lives. Insidiously, while we
have called all foreigners brothers and sought foes amongst ourselves,
the great force of barbarism, in a new guise and with enormous power
of penetration and annexation, has worked for our undoing. This force
now stands bared, in the hideous bestiality of Germany's doctrine of
Might, and it can be defeated only by an adaptation of its methods
that will leave nothing as it was before.
Dr. Dillon's unfolding of the story of German preparation is, it will
be admitted, one of fascinating interest. Of its value as a
contribution to political and diplomatic history it is not for me to
speak. But to its purpose in keying all men to the pitch; all to a
sense of the great events in which we are taking part, I bear my
testimony. "Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually, and
psychically. And she lives in the present and future" (p. 311). And
the living force of Germany requires us to rise to the very fulness of
our powers; for as the champions of truth and right we must prove
ourselves physically and morally stronger than the champions of
soulless might.
Germany is wholly alive; but she is alive for evil. We whose purpose
is good, whose cause is justice and whose triumph is indispensable if
honest industry and human right are not to disappear from mankind, are
as yet not fully alive to the immensity and necessity of our task. We
must awaken, or be awakened, ere it be too late.
Germany is living in the present and in the future. It is a present of
determined effort, of unlimited sacrifice, of colossal hope. The
future for which she strives and suffers is a future incompatible
with those ideals which our race cherishes and reveres. Either our
philosophy, our religion and code prevail, or they fade into decay,
and Germany's aims remain. The choice is definite.
There can be no parley, no compromise with the evil thing for which
Germany fights. There is not room for both. One must go down.
We must win outright. And we can and shall win--if we bend every
thought, our whole will, our every energy, our utmost intensity of
determination to the great work. Failing this, we shall secure only a
victory equivalent to defeat. We chose the part of free men, and, when
purified by complete self-sacrifice, shall emerge from the ordeal a
great and regenerated people.
W. M. HUGHES.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY THE HON. W. M. HUGHES vii
I THE CHARACTER OF GERMANY 1
II THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF PREPARATION 7
III GERMANY AND ITALIAN FINANCE 27
IV THE ANNEXATION MANIA 37
V GERMANY AND RUSSIA 53
VI THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE ENTENTE 81
VII TEUTON POLITICS 88
VIII A MACHIAVELLIAN TRICK BY WHICH RUSSIA'S
HAND WAS FORCED 99
IX GERMAN PROPAGANDA IN SCANDINAVIA 108
X GERMANY AND THE BALKANS 116
XI THE RIVAL POLICIES 136
XII PROBLEMS OF LEADERSHIP 146
XIII PROBLEMS OF FINANCE 161
XIV READJUSTMENTS 175
XV THE POSITION OF ITALY 192
XVI ROUMANIA AND GREECE 214
XVII GERMANY'S RESOURCEFULNESS 227
XVIII THE PERILS OF PARTY POLITICS 236
XIX PAST AND PRESENT 246
XX PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE 272
XXI THE FINAL ISSUE 296
OURSELVES AND GERMANY
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTER OF GERMANY
During the memorable space of time that separates us from the outbreak
of the catastrophic struggle, out of which a new Europe will shortly
emerge, events have shed a partial but helpful light on much that at
the outset was blurred or mysterious. They have belied or confirmed
various forecasts, fulfilled some few hopes, blasted many others, and
obliged the allied peoples to carry forward most of their cherished
anticipations to another year's account. Meanwhile the balance as it
stands offers ample food for sobering reflection, but will doubtless
evoke dignified resignation and grim resolve on the part of those who
confidently looked for better things.
The items of which that balance is made up are worth careful scrutiny
for the sake of the hints which they offer for future guidance. The
essence of their teaching is that we Allies are engaged not in a war
of the by-past type in which only our armies and navies are contending
with those of the adversary according to accepted rules, but in a
tremendous struggle wherein our enemies are deploying all their
resources without reserve or scruple for the purpose of destroying or
crippling our peoples. Unless, therefore, we have the will and the
means to mobilize our admittedly vaster facilities and materials and
make these subservient to our aim, we are at a disadvantage which will
profoundly influence the final result. It will be a source of comfort
to optimists to think that, looking back on the vicissitudes of the
first twenty months' campaign, they can discern evidences that there
is somewhere a statesman's hand methodically moulding events to our
advantage, or attempering their most sinister effects. Those who fail
to perceive any such traces must look for solace to future
developments. For there are many who fancy that the economy of our
energies has been carried to needless lengths, that the adjustment of
means to ends lacks thoroughness and precision, and that our leaders
have kept over rigorously within the narrow range of partial aims,
instead of surveying the problem in its totality and enlarging the
permanent efficacy of their precautions against unprecedented dangers.
The twenty months that have just lapsed into history have done much to
loosen the hold of some of the baleful insular prejudices which
heretofore held sway over the minds of nearly all sections of the
British nation. It may well be, therefore, that we are now better able
to grasp the significance of the principal events of the war, and to
seek it not in their immediate effects on the course of the struggle,
but in the roots--still far from lifeless--whence they sprang. For it
is not so much the upshot of the first phases of the campaign as the
deep-lying causes which rendered them a foregone conclusion that force
themselves on our consideration. Those causes are still operative,
and unless they be speedily uprooted will continue to work havoc with
our hopes.
It is now fairly evident that the present war is but a violent phase
in the unfolding of a grandiose ground idea--the subjugation of Europe
by the Teuton--which was being steadily realized ever since the close
of the Franco-German campaign of 1870. It is likewise clear that,
despite her "swelled head," Germany's estimate of her ability to try
issues with all continental Europe was less erroneous than the faith
of her destined victims in their superior powers of resistance. The
original plan, having been limited to the continental states, was
upset by Great Britain's co-operation with France and Russia. But,
despite this additional drag, Germany has achieved the remarkable
results recorded in recent history. And with some show of reason she
looks forward to successes more decisive still. For in her mode of
conceiving the problem and her methods of solving it lie the secret of
her progress. But there, too, is to be found the counter-spell by
which that progress may be effectually checked; and it is only by
mastering that secret and applying it to the future conduct of the
struggle that we can hope to ward off the dangers that encompass us.
Germany is like no other State known to human history. She exercises
the authority of an infallible and intolerant Church while disposing
of the flawless mechanism of an absolute State. She is armed with the
most deadly engines of destruction that advanced science can forge,
and in order to use them ruthlessly she mixes the subtlest poisons to
corrupt the wells of truth and debase the standards of right and
wrong. And this she can do without the least qualms of conscience, in
virtue of her firm belief in the amorality of political conduct. Her
members at home and abroad, whose number is not fewer than a hundred
and twenty millions, form a political community of whose compactness,
social sense and single-mindedness the annals of the human race offer
no other example. All are fired by the same zeal, all obey the same
lead, all work for the same object. She sent and is still sending
forth missionaries of her political faith, preachers of the gospel of
the mailed fist, to every country in which their services may prove
helpful. Diplomatists, journalists, bankers, contrabandists, social
agitators, spies, incendiaries, assassins and courtesans, willing to
offer up their energies and their lives in order to circumvent,
despoil or slay the supposed enemies of their race, address themselves
each one to his own allotted task and discharge it conscientiously.
Those German colonists abroad are the eyes and arms and tongues of the
monster organism of which the brain-centre is Berlin. They endeavoured
to stir up dissension between class and class in Russia, France,
Britain, Belgium, to plant suspicion in the breast of Bulgaria and
Roumania, to create a prussophile atmosphere in Greece, Switzerland
and Sweden, and to bring pressure to bear on the Government of the
United States in the hope of fomenting discord between the American
and British peoples. They have occupied posts of influence in the
Vatican, are devoted to the Moslem Caliph, cultivate friendship with
the Senussi and the ex-Khedive of Egypt, are intriguing with the Negus
of Abyssinia, and spreading lying rumours, false news and vile
calumnies throughout the world. During the years that passed between
the war of 1870 and the outbreak of the present European struggle,
that stupendous organism contrived by those and kindred means to
possess itself of the principal strongholds of international opinion
and influence, the centres of the chief religions, the press, the
exchanges, the world's "key industries," the great marts of commerce
and the banks. It has friends at every Court, in every Cabinet, in
every European Parliament, and its agents are alert and active in
every branch of the administration of foreign lands. And while
suppleness marked their dealings with others, they were inflexible
only in their fidelity to the Teuton cause. Thus in Russia they were
conservative and autocratic in their intercourse with the ruling
spheres, and revolutionary in their relations with the Socialists and
working classes; in France and Britain they were democrats and
pacifists; in Italy they were rabid nationalists or neutralists
according to the political sentiments of their environment; in Turkey,
Morocco, Egypt and Persia staunch friends of Islam. They intrigued
against dynasties, conspired against cabinets, reviled influential
publicists, fostered strikes and tumults, set political parties and
entire states by the ears, dispelled grounded suspicions and armed
various bands of incendiaries and assassins.
But in spite of cogged dice and poisoned weapons, the comprehensive
way in which the enterprise was conceived, the consummate skill with
which it was wrought out towards a satisfactory issue, the
whole-heartedness of the nation which, although animated by a fiery
patriotism that fuses all parties and classes into one, is yet
governed with military discipline, offer a wide field for imitation
and emulation. For the changes brought about by the first phases of
the war are but fruits of seed sown years ago and tended ever since
with unfailing care, and unless suitable implements, willing hands and
combined energies are employed in digging them up and casting them to
the winds, the second crop may prove even more bitter than the first.
CHAPTER II
THE GERMAN SYSTEM OF PREPARATION
On the historic third of August when war was formally declared, its
nature was as little understood by the Allies as had been its
imminence. The statesmen who had to full-front its manifestations were
those who had persistently refused to believe in its possibility, and
who had no inkling of its nature and momentousness. Most of them,
judging other peoples by their own, had formed a high opinion of the
character of the German nation and of the pacific intentions of its
Government, and continued to ground their policy in war time on this
generous estimate, which even when upset by subsequent experience
still seems to linger on in a subconscious but not inoperative state.
At first their preparations to meet the emergency hardly went beyond
the expedients to which they would have resorted for any ordinary
campaign. In this they resembled a sea-captain who should make ready
to encounter a gale when his ship was threatened by a typhoon. Hence
their unco-ordinated efforts, their chivalrous treatment of a
dastardly foe, their high-minded refusal to credit the circumstantial
stories of sickening savagery emanating first from Belgium and then
from France, their gentle remonstrances with the enemy, their
carefully worded arguments, their generous understatement of their
country's case, and their suppression of any emotion among their own
folk akin to hatred or passion. In an insular people for whom peace
was an ideal, neighbourliness a sacred duty, and the psychology of
foreign nations a sealed book, this way of reading the bearings of the
new situation and adjusting them to the nation's requirements was
natural and fateful.
To the few private individuals who had the advantage of experience and
were gifted with political vision the crisis presented itself under a
different aspect. Some of them had foreseen and foretold the war,
basing their forecast on the obvious policy of the German Government
and on the overt strivings of the German nation. They had depicted
that nation as intellectual and enterprising, abundantly equipped with
all the requisites for an exhausting contest, fired with enthusiasm
for a single idea--the subjugation of the world--and devoid of ethical
scruple. And in the clarion's blast which suddenly resounded on the
pacific air they recognized the trump of doom for Teuton Kultur or
European civilization, and proclaimed the utter inadequacy of ordinary
methods to put down this titanic rebellion against the human race.
That has been the gist of every opinion and suggestion on the subject
put forward by the writer of these lines since the outbreak of the
war.
But even without these repeated warnings it should have been clear
that a carefully calculating people like the Germans, in whom the gift
of organizing is inborn and solicitude for detail is a passion, would
not embark on a preventive war without having first established a just
proportion between their own equipment for the struggle and the
magnitude of the issues dependent on its outcome. It was, further,
reasonable to assume that this was no mere onset of army against army
and navy against navy according to the old rules of the game, but a
mobilization by the two military empires of all their resources--military,
naval, financial, economic, industrial, scientific and journalistic--to
be utilized to the fullest for the destruction of the Entente group.
It was also easy to discern that, whichever side was worsted, the
Europe which had witnessed the beginning of the conflict would be
transfigured at its close, and that Germany would, therefore, not
allow her freedom of action in conducting the war to be cramped by
sentimental respect for the checks and restraints of a political
system that was already dead. Lastly, it might readily be inferred
that the huge resources hoarded up by the enemy during forty years of
preparation would be centupled in value by the favourable conditions
which rendered them capable of being co-ordinated and directed by a
single will to the attainment of a single end. All these previsions,
warranted then by unmistakable tokens, have since been justified by
historic events, and it is to be hoped that the practical conclusions
to which they point may sink into the minds of the allied nations as
well as of their Governments, now that nearly two years have gone by
since they were first expressed.
The earliest impression which German mobilization left upon the Allies
was that of the preventive character of this war. For it could have
had no other mainspring than a resolve to paralyse the arm of the
Entente, which, if allowed to wax stronger, might smite in lieu of
being smitten. For the moment, however, Germany was neither attacked
nor menaced. Far from that, her rivals were vying with each other in
their strivings to maintain peace. Her condition was prosperous, her
industries thriving, her colonial possessions had recently been
greatly increased, her influence on the affairs of the world was
unquestioned, her citizens were materially well-to-do, her workmen
were highly paid, her capitalists, seconding her statesmen and
diplomatists, had, with gold extracted from France, Britain and
Belgium, woven a vast net in the fine meshes of which most of the
nations of Europe, Asia and America were being insensibly trammelled.
Already her bankers handled the finances, regulated the industries and
influenced the politics of those tributary peoples. And by these
tactics a relationship was established between Germany and most states
of the globe which cut deep into the destinies of these and is become
an abiding factor of the present contest. For that reason, and also
because of the paramount influence of the economic factor on the
results of the struggle, they are well worth studying.
To her superior breadth of outlook, marvellous organizing powers, the
hearty co-operation between rulers and people, and the ease with
which, unhampered by parliamentary opposition, her Government was
enabled to place a single aim at the head and front of its national
policy, Germany is perhaps more deeply indebted for her successes
during the first phases of the campaign than to the strategy of
Hindenburg or the furious onslaughts of Mackensen. German diplomacy
has been ridiculed for its glaring blunders, and German statesmanship
discredited for its cynical contempt of others' rights and its own
moral obligations. And gauged by our ethical standards the blame
incurred was richly deserved. But we are apt to forget that German
diplomacy has two distinct aspects--the professional and the
economic--and that where the one failed the other triumphed. And if
success be nine-tenths of justification, as the Prussian doctrine
teaches, the statesmen who preside over the destinies of the Teutonic
peoples have little to fear in the way of strictures from their
domestic critics. For they left nothing to chance that could be
ensured by effort. Trade, commerce, finances, journalism, science,
religion, the advantages to be had by royal marriages, by the
elevation of German princes to the thrones of the lesser states, had
all been calculated with as much care and precision as the choice of
sites in foreign countries for the erection of concrete emplacements
for their monster guns. No detail seemed too trivial for the bestowal
of conscientious labour, if it promised a possible return. When in
doubt whether it was worth while to make an effort for some object of
no immediate interest to the Fatherland the German invariably decided
that the thing should be done. "You never can tell," he argued, "when
or how it may prove useful." For years one firm of motor-car makers
turned out vehicles with holes, the object of which no one could guess
until the needs of the war revealed them as receptacles for light
machine-guns.
Nearly two years of an unparalleled struggle between certain isolated
forces of the Allies and all the combined resources of the Teutons
ought to banish the notion that the results achieved are the fruits
only of Germany's military and naval efficiency. In truth, the
adequacy of her military and naval forces constitutes but an integral
part of a much vaster system. It has hitherto been the fashion among
British and French writers to dwell exclusively on the comprehensiveness
of the measures adopted by the Germans to fashion their land and sea
defences into destructive implements of enormous striking power and
scientific precision. But the German conception of the enterprise was
immeasurably more grandiose. It included every means of offence and
defence actually available or yet to be devised, and testifies to a
grasp of the nature of the problem which, so far as one can judge, has
not even yet been attained outside the Fatherland. As the present
situation and its coming developments present themselves as practical
corollaries of causes which the leaders of Germany rendered operative,
it may not be amiss to describe these briefly.
The objective being the subjugation of Europe to Teutonic sway, the
execution of the plan was attempted by two different sets of measures,
each of which supplemented the other: military and naval efficiency on
the one hand and pacific interpenetration on the other. The former has
been often and adequately described; the latter has not yet attracted
the degree of attention it merits. For one thing, it was
unostentatious and invariably tinged with the colour of legitimate
trade and industry. Practically every country in Europe, and many
lands beyond the seas, were covered with networks of economic
relations which, without being always emanations of the governmental
brain, were never devoid of a definite political purpose. While Great
Britain, and in a lesser degree France, distracted by parliamentary
strife or intent on domestic reforms, left trade and commerce to
private initiative and the law of supply and demand, the German
Government watched over all big commercial transactions, interwove
them with political interests, and regarded every mark invested in a
foreign country not merely as capital bringing in interest in the
ordinary way, but also as political seed bearing fruit to be
ingathered when _Der Tag_ should dawn. Thus France and Britain
advanced loans to various countries--to Greece, for instance--at lower
rates of interest than the credit of those states warranted, but they
bargained for no political gain in return. Germany, on the contrary,
insisted on every such transaction being paid in political or economic
advantages as well as pecuniary returns. And by these means she tied
the hands of most European nations with bonds twisted of strands which
they themselves were foolish enough to supply. Italy, Russia, Turkey,
Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Belgium and the Scandinavian States are
all instructive instances of this plan. Bankers and their staffs,
directors of works and factories, agents of shipping companies,
commercial travellers, German colonies in various foreign cities,
military instructors to foreign armies, schools and schoolmasters
abroad, heads of commercial houses in the different capitals, were all
so many agencies toiling ceaselessly for the same purpose. The effect
of their manoeuvres was to extract from all those countries the
wealth needed for their subjugation. One of the most astounding
instances of the success of these hardy manipulations is afforded by
the Banca Commerciale of Italy, which was a thoroughly German concern,
holding in its hands most of the financial establishments, trades and
industries of Italy. This all-powerful institution possessed in 1914 a
capital of £6,240,000 of which 63 per cent. was subscribed by Italian
shareholders, 20 per cent. by Swiss, 14 per cent. by French, and only
2-1/2 per cent. by Germans and Austrians combined! And the astounding
exertions put forward by the Germans during the first twelvemonth of
the war are largely the product of the economic energies which this
line of action enabled them to store up during the years of peace and
preparation.
The execution of those grandiose schemes was facilitated by the easy
access which Germany had to the principal markets of the globe. One of
the main objects of her diplomacy had been to break down the tariff
barriers which would have reserved to the great trading empires the
main fruits of their own labour and enterprise. By the Treaty of
Frankfort the French had been compelled to confer on Germany the
most-favoured-nation clause, thus entitling her to enjoy all the
tariff reductions which the Republic might accord to those countries
with which it was on the most amicable terms. British free trade
opened wide the portals of the world's greatest empire to a deluge of
Teuton wares and to a kind of competition which contrasted with fair
play in a degree similar to that which now obtains between German
methods of warfare and our own. Russia, at first insensible to suasion
and rebellious to threats, endeavoured to bar the way to the economic
flood on her western frontiers, but during the stress of the Japanese
war she chose the lesser of two evils and yielded. The concessions
then made by my friend, the late Count Witte, to the German
Chancellor, drained the Tsardom of enormous sums of money and rendered
it a tributary to the Teuton. But it did much more. It supplied
Germany with a satisfactory type of commercial treaty which she easily
imposed upon other nations. Germany's road through Italy was traced by
the mistaken policy of the French Government which, by a systematic
endeavour to depreciate Italian consols and other securities, drove
Crispi to Berlin, where his suit for help was heard, the Banca
Commerciale conceived, and commercial arrangements concluded which
opened the door to the influx of German wares, men and political
ideals.
A few years sufficed for the fruits of this generous hospitality to
reveal themselves. The influx of wealth and the increased population
helped to render the German army a match for the combined land forces
of her rivals, a formidable navy was created, which ranked immediately
after that of Great Britain, and a large part of Europe was so closely
associated with, and dependent on, Germany that an extension of the
Zollverein was talked of in the Fatherland, and a league of European
brotherhood advocated by the day-dreamers of France and Britain. The
French, however, never ceased to chafe at the commercial chain forged
by the Treaty of Frankfort, but were powerless to break it, while the
British lavished tributes of praise and admiration on Germany's
enterprise, and construed it as a pledge of peace. Russia, alive to
the danger, at last summoned up courage to remove it, and had already
decided to refuse to extend the term of the ruinous commercial treaty,
even though the alternative were war. That was the danger which
stimulated the final efforts of the Kaiser's Government.
Thus the entire political history of Entente diplomacy during this war
may be summarized as a series of attempts on the part of the Allies to
undo some of the effects of the masterstrokes executed by Germany
during the years of abundance which she owed to the favoured-nation
clause, British free trade and kindred economic concessions.
Interpenetration is the term by which the process has been known ever
since Count Witte essayed it in Manchuria and China.
The German procedure was simple, yet effective withal. Funds were
borrowed mainly in France, Britain, Belgium, where investors are often
timid and bankers are unenterprising. And then operations were begun.
The first aim pursued and attained was to acquire control of the
foreign trade of the country experimented on. With this object in view
banks of credit were established which lavished on German traders
every help, information and encouragement. Men of Teuton nationality
settled in the land as heads of firms, as clerks without salary,
private secretaries, foremen, correspondents, and rapidly contrived to
get command of the main arteries of the economic organism. German
manufactures soon flooded the country, because those who undertook to
import them could count on extensive credit from the institutions
founded with the money of the very nations whose trade they were
engaged in killing. In this way the competition, not only of all
Entente peoples but also of the natives of the country experimented
on, was systematically choked. And the customers of these banks,
natives as well as Teutons, became apostles of German influence.
Insensibly the great industrial concerns of the place passed into the
possession of German banks, behind which stood the German empire. A
nucleus of influential business people, having been thus equipped for
action, incessantly propagated the German political faith. German
schools were established and subsidized by the _Deutscher
Schulverein_, clubs opened, musical societies formed, and newspapers
supported or founded, to consolidate the achievements of the
financiers. On political circles, especially in constitutional lands,
the influence of this Teutonic phalanx was profound and lasting.
In all these commercial and industrial enterprises undertaken abroad
for economic gain and political influence, the German State, its
organs and the individual firms, went hand in hand, supplementing each
other's endeavours. The maxim they adopted was that of their military
commanders: to advance separately but to attack in combination. Not
only the Consul, but the Ambassador, the Minister, the Scholar, the
Statesman, nay the Kaiser[1] himself, were the inspirers, the
partners, the backers of the German merchant. Marschall von
Bieberstein once told me in Constantinople that his functions were
those of a super-commercial traveller rather than ambassadorial. And
he discharged them with efficiency. Laws and railway tariffs at home,
diplomatic facilities and valuable information abroad smoothed the way
of the Teuton trader. Berlin rightly gauged the worth of this pacific
interpenetration at a time when Britons were laughing it to scorn as a
ludicrous freak of grandmotherly government. To-day its results stand
out in relief as barriers to the progress of the Allies in the conduct
of the war.
[1] The Kaiser is one of the largest shareholders in the
great mercury mines of Italy.
Of this ingenious way of enslaving foreign nations unknown to
themselves, Italy's experience offers us an instructive illustration.
The headquarters of the German commercial army in that realm were the
offices of the Banca Commerciale in Milan. This institution was
founded under the auspices of the Berlin Foreign Office, with the
co-operation of Herr Schwabach, head of the bank of Bleichröder.
Employing the absurdly small capital of two hundred thousand pounds,
not all of which was German, it worked its way at the cost of the
Italian people into the vitals of the nation, and finally succeeded in
obtaining the supreme direction of their foreign trade, national
industries and finances, and in usurping a degree of political
influence so durable that even the war is supposed to have only numbed
it for a time.
Between the years 1895 and 1915 the capital of this institution had
augmented to the sum of £6,240,000, of which Germany and Austria
together held but 2-1/2 per cent., while controlling all the
operations of the Bank itself and of the trades and industries linked
with it.
The Germans, as a Frenchman wittily remarked, are born with the mania
of annexation. It runs in their blood. And it is not merely territory,
or political influence, or the world's markets that they seek to
appropriate. Their appetite extends to everything in the present and
future, nay, even in the past which they deem worth having. It is thus
that they claim as their own most of Italy's great men, such as Dante,
Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Galileo, and it is now asserted
by a number of Teuton writers that Christ Himself came of a Teutonic
stock.
German organisms, as well as German statesmen, display the same mania
of annexation, and the Banks in especial give it free scope. German
banks differ from French, British and Italian in the nature, extent
and audacity of their operations. It was not always thus. Down to the
war of 1870 their methods were old-fashioned, cautious and slow. From
the year 1872 onward, however, they struck out a new and bold course
of their own from which British and French experts boded speedy
disaster. Private enterprises were turned into joint stock companies,
the capital of prosperous undertakings was increased and gigantic
operations were inaugurated. Between the years 1885 and 1889 the
industrial values issued each year reached an average of 1,770 million
francs; between 1890 and 1895 the average rose to 1,880 millions, and
from 1896 to 1900 it was computed at 2,384 millions.[2]
[2] Cf. _L'Invasione tedesca in Italia_. Ezio M. Gray.
Firenze.
Of all German financial institutions the most influential and
prosperous is the Deutsche Bank. It has been aptly termed an empire
within the empire. Its capital, 250 million francs, exceeds that of
the Reichsbank by thirty millions. It is the first of the six great
German banks, of which four are known as the "D" group, because the
first letter of their respective names is D: Deutsche Bank, Dresdner
Bank, Disconto-Gesellschaft and Darmstädter Bank. The other two are
the Schaffhausenscher Bankverein and the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft.
The total capital of these six concerns amounts to 1,100 million
francs.[3]
[3] _Op. cit._, p. 113.
None of these houses is hampered by those rules, traditions or
scruples which limit the activity of British joint stock banks. They
are free to launch into speculations which, to the sober judgment of
our own financiers, must seem wild and precarious, but to which
success has affixed the hall-mark of approval. Each of the six banks
is a centre of German home industries and also of the foreign
transformations of these. To mention an industry is almost always to
connote some one of the six. Before the war broke out one had but to
gaze steadily at the beautiful facade of this or that Russian bank to
discern the Lamia-like monster from the banks of the Spree. The famous
firm of Krupps, for instance, had its affairs closely interwoven with
those of the Berliner Disconto Gesellschaft, and was more than once
rescued from bankruptcy by its timely assistance. Similar help was
afforded to the celebrated firm of Bauer which is known throughout the
world for its synthetical medicines. There were critical moments in
its existence when it was confronted with ruin. The Bank extricated
the firm from its difficulties, and the present dividend of 33 per
cent. has justified its enterprise.
In this way the latter-day German banks upset all financial
traditions, opened large credits to industries, smoothed the way for
the spread of German commerce, killed foreign competition and
seconded the national policy of their Government. As an instance of
the push and audacity of these modernized institutions, a master
stroke of the Bank of Behrens and Sons of Hamburg may be mentioned: it
bought up the entire coffee crop of Guatemala one year to the
amazement of its rivals and netted a very large profit by the
transaction.
Now as commerce is international and industry depends for its greatest
successes upon exportation, it was inevitable that the up-to-date
German banks should seek fields of activity abroad and aim at playing
a commanding part in the world's commerce. And they tried and
succeeded. For they alone instinctively divined the new spirit of the
age, which may be termed co-operative and agglutinative. It was in
virtue of this new idea that groups of States were leagued together by
Germany in view of her projected war, and it is the same principle
that impels her, before the conflict has yet been decided, to weld to
herself as many tributary peoples as she may to assist her in the
economic struggle which will be ushered in by peace. Germans first
semiconsciously felt and now deliberately hold that in all departments
of modern life, social, economic and political, our conception of
quantities must undergo a radical change. The scale must be greatly
enlarged. The unit of former times must give place to a group of
units, to syndicates and trusts in commerce and industry, to trade
unions in the labour world, to Customs-federations in international
life. That this shifting of quantities is a correlate of the progress
achieved in technical science and in means of communication, and also
of the vastness of armies and navies and of the aims of the world's
foremost peoples, is since then become a truism, realized not only by
the Germans but by all their allies.
For individual enterprise, as well as for national isolation, there is
no room in the modern world. Isolation spells weakness and
helplessness there. The lesser neutral States must of necessity become
the clients of the Great Powers and pay a high price for the
protection afforded them. Hence the maintenance of small nations on
their present basis, with enormous colonies to exploit but without
efficient means of defending them, forms no part of Germany's future
programme. And the altruistic professions of the Entente which claims
to be fighting for the rights of little States, whose idyllic
existence it would fain perpetuate, is scoffed at by the Teutons as
chimerical or hypocritical. When this war is over, whatever its
upshot, Central Europe with or without the non-German elements will
have become a single unit, against whose combined industrial,
commercial and military strivings no one European Power can
successfully compete. And the difficulties which geographical
situation has raised against effective co-operation among the Allies
in war time will make themselves felt with increased force during the
economic struggle which will then begin.
No mere tariff arrangement, but only a genuine league between all the
west European Powers and the British Empire, supplemented by a customs
union between them and the other Allies of the Entente, will then
avail to ward off the new danger and establish some rough approach to
the equilibrium which the present conflict has overthrown. The future
destinies of Europe, as far as one may conjecture from the data
available to-day, will depend largely on the insight of the Entente
nations and their readiness to subordinate national aims and interests
to those of the larger unit which will be the inevitable product of
the new order of things.
The ideal type of the industrial bank having been thus wrought out,
the Germans, whom a thoroughly commercial education had qualified for
the work, carried on vast operations with a degree of boldness which
was matched only by the thoroughness of their precautions. They
advanced money with a readiness and an open-handedness which the West
European financier set down as sheer folly, but which was the outcome
of close study and careful deliberation. They began by acquainting
themselves with the solvency of their clients, with the nature of the
transactions which these were carrying on, with their business methods
and individual abilities, and to the results of this preliminary
examination they adjusted the extent of their financial assistance.
They had secret inquiry offices to keep them constantly informed of
the condition of the various firms and individuals, and when in doubt
they demanded an insight into the books of the company which was
seldom denied them. The Spanish Inquisition was but a clumsy agency in
comparison with the perfect system evolved by these German banks,
which could at any given moment sum up the prospects as well as the
actual situation of each of their customers. It was this comprehensive
survey which warranted some of the large advances they made to
seemingly insolvent firms which afterwards grew to be the most
prosperous in the Fatherland.
The methods thus practised at home were adhered to in all those
foreign countries which the German financier, manufacturer or trader
selected for his field of operations. A bank would be opened in the
foreign capital with money advanced mainly by one of the six great
financial institutions. It would be called by some high-sounding name,
suggestive of the country experimented upon, and little by little the
German capital would be diminished to a minimum and local capital
substituted, but the supreme control kept zealously in the hands of
the Teuton directors. Industries would then be financed and finally
bought up. Others would also be financed but deliberately ruined.
Competition would in this way be effectively killed, and little by
little the life-juices of the country would be canalized to suit the
requirements of German trade, industry and politics.
If an industry in the invaded country was judged capable of becoming
subsidiary to some German industry, the Bank would maintain it for the
purpose of amalgamating the two later on, or else having the foreign
concern absorbed by the Teutonic. This was a labour of patriotism and
profit. But if the business was recognized as a formidable rival to
some German enterprise, it was doomed. The procedure in this case was
simple. The Bank advanced money readily, tied the firm financially,
rendering it wholly tributary; and then when the hour of destiny
struck, the credit was suddenly withdrawn and the curtain rung up in
the Bankruptcy Court. When this consummation became public, the
unsuspecting foreigner would ask with naïve astonishment: "How can it
be bankrupt? I understood that Germans were financing it." They were,
and it was precisely for that reason, and because it was on the way to
prosperity as a rival to some German firm, that it was suffocated.[4]
[4] Cf. _L'Invasione tedesca in Italia_, pp. 118, 119.
This ingenious system proved exceptionally effective in Brazil. It has
been said that that republic is become a dependency of Germany. What
cannot be gainsaid is that about one-third of Brazil's national
debt[5] is owing to German bankers, and the whole financial and
industrial movement of the country is swayed by the Society of
Colonization which is German, by the German Society for Mutual
Protection, by the German-Brazilian Society and by the three
Navigation Companies whose steamers ply between Brazil and the
Fatherland.[6] It is because of the far-reaching power and influence
which has accrued to Germany from this successful invasion that
Professor Schmoller of the Berlin University could write: "It behoves
us to desire at any and every cost that, by the next century, a German
land of twenty or thirty million inhabitants shall arise in Southern
Brazil. It is immaterial whether it remains part of Brazil or
constitutes an independent State or enters into close relations with
the German Empire. But without a connection guaranteed by battleships,
without the possibility of Germany's armed intervention in Brazil, its
future would be jeopardized."
[5] 1050 million francs.
[6] _Op. cit._, p. 120.
It is the Monroe doctrine that is commonly credited with thwarting
these designs on South America. But as a matter of plain fact, it is
to the British Navy and to nothing else that the credit is due. Were
it not for the known resolve of the British nation to co-operate in
case of need with the American people in their exertions to uphold
that doctrine against Germany, the Berlin Cabinet would long ago have
formally established a firm footing in Southern Brazil and the United
States Government would have been powerless to prevent it.[7]
[7] An instructive article on the subject by Mr. Moreton
Frewen appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ of February,
1916.
CHAPTER III
GERMANY AND ITALIAN FINANCE
It was in congruity with those principles and methods that the Banca
Commerciale, which had its headquarters in Milan, set itself to
discharge the complex functions of a financial, industrial, commercial
and political agency of German interpenetration in Italy.
To German customers and those Italians who imported German goods, the
Banca Commerciale allowed long credits and easy means of payment. To
all who were in need of implements, machinery, or materials for a new
enterprise, the bank "recommended" German houses, and those who were
wise construed the "recommendation" as an ultimatum. For if it was
ignored, their names were inscribed on the black books of the bank,
and by means of an efficacious system of secret dossiers, handled by a
confidential information bureau,[8] they found themselves thrust into
a "credit vacuum," boycotted by finance and condemned to bankruptcy.
All banks shunned them. Their bonds became mere scraps of paper.
Every enterprise to which they set their hands was blighted, and
nothing remained for them but to abandon their avocations or surrender
at discretion.
[8] This secret information bureau is everywhere a potent
engine of attack in German hands. It renders deliberate
libellers and defamers immune against the action of the law.
The victims feel the effects but cannot point to the cause.
The _fiches_, as the certificates are called, are couched in
conventional terms and bear no signature. In the case of
persons whom the bank desires to ruin, these documents are
sentences of commercial death.
But besides this executive of destruction there was another and still
more important board, whose work was wholly constructive. It was
commonly known as the "service of information." Its functions were to
collect at first hand all useful data about Italian commerce and
industry, to draw up tabulated reports for the use of Germans at home
engaged in trade and industry. These lists indicated current prices,
the qualities of the goods in demand, the favourite ways of packing
and consigning these, samples of manufactures, statistics of
production, the addresses of all firms dealing with Italians--in a
word, every kind of data calculated to enable German trade and
industry to compete successfully with their rivals. The manner in
which this body of information was drawn up, sifted, classified, and
made accessible, deserves unstinted admiration. To say that commercial
espionage was practised largely in the working of this comprehensive
system is but another way of stating that it was German.
The Banca Commerciale, which was the head and centre of this
organization, was, as a matter of course, called Italian. For every
similar institution, commercial, journalistic or other, which has for
its object the realization of the Teutonic plan of internationalization,
invariably wears the mask of the nationality of the country in which
it operates. And in this case the mask was supplied by Italians, on
whom the bank bestowed all the highest _honorary_ posts, while
reserving the influential ones for Germans and Austrians. Thus the
moving spirits of this vast organization were Herrn Joel, Weil and
Toeplitz, men of uncommon business capacity, who devoted all their
time and energies to the attainment of the end in view. And their
zeal, industry and ingenuity were rewarded by substantial results,
which have left an abiding mark on Italian politics and entered for a
great deal into the attitude of the nation towards the two groups of
belligerents. In a relatively short span of time foreign competition
in Italian markets was checked, German products ousted those of their
rivals, and at last the very sources of Italy's economic life were in
the hands of the Teuton, whose continued goodwill became almost a
vital necessity to the struggling nation.
Already in the year 1912 Germany stood first among Italy's customers,
whether we consider the list of her exports or that of imports. Italy
bought from that empire goods valued at 626,300,000 francs, and sold
it produce worth 328,200,000 francs; whereas Great Britain, who
supplies Italy with the bulk of her coal, exported only 577,100,000
francs worth, while her imports were valued at 264,400,000 francs. For
France the figures were 289,600,000 and 222,600,000 francs
respectively.
The method by which Italian industries were assailed, shaken, and then
purchased and controlled by this redoubtable organization, bore, as we
saw, all the marks of German commercial ethics. Sharp practice which
recognizes as its only limitation the strong arm of the penal law, is
a fair description of the plan of campaign. Against this insidious
process none of the native enterprises had the strength to offer
effective resistance. One by one they were drawn into the vast net
woven by the three German Fates--Joel, Weil and Toeplitz. The various
iron, mechanical and shipbuilding works, which represented the germs
from which native industries were to grow, were sucked into the Teuton
maelstrom. The larger and the smaller steamship navigation companies
likewise fell under the direction of the Banca Commerciale, which
permitted some of them to exist and even to thrive up to a certain
point, beyond which their usefulness to the general plan would have
turned to harm. In this way Italy's entire mercantile marine became
one of the numerous levers in the hands of the interpenetrating
German. And the importance of this lever for political purposes can
neither be gainsaid nor easily overstated.
In every little town and village which sends a quota of emigrants to
the transatlantic liners, agents of the various steamship companies
are always about and active. Being intelligent and enterprising, their
influence on local politics is irresistible, and it was uniformly
employed in those interests which it was the object of the Banca
Commerciale to further. "This institution," writes an Italian expert,
who has studied the subject with unusual care, "being the mistress of
the dominant economic organisms of the nation, makes use of them to
carry out a germanophile policy. It employs them for the purpose of
exercising a directive action in all elections, commercial, provincial
and general. Every servant of a steamship navigation company, every
purveyor of emigrants is at the same time and by the very force of
things an electoral agent. The position of arbitress and mistress of
the steamship companies carries with it possession of the keys of the
national wealth, and is consequently a formidable weapon of aggressive
competition against all industries, Italian and foreign, which are not
affiliated to those of Germany. The Banca Commerciale, having obtained
that supremacy, forced the Italian companies to lead a languishing
existence in straitened circumstances, whereas they might easily have
grown rich and flourishing. It permits our steamship companies to
subsist and even to earn somewhat, but only just enough to suffice for
the declaration of a modest dividend. That is why Italian navigation
companies levy such excessive rates of freight, why their service is
not organized in accordance with rational and latter day standards,
why they take no thought of winning foreign markets or of national
expansion.[9] They have no means of consigning merchandise at the
domicile, so that the consignees are put to enormous expense for
collection and delivery. And to make matters still worse, Italian
navigation companies are bound with those of Germany by special secret
conventions, which oblige them to abandon to their rivals certain
kinds of merchandise of the Near and the Far East."
[9] Cf. Preziosi, _La Germania a la Conquista dell' Italia_,
p. 57 fol.
If we examine the peculiarly Teuton ways of trade competition in their
everyday guise, and without the glamour of political ideals to
distract our attention, we are confronted with phenomena of a
repulsive character. For the German's keen practical sense, his
sustained concentration of effort on the furtherance of material
interests, and his scorn of ethical restraints render him a formidable
competitor in pacific pursuits and a dangerous enemy in war. His
moral sense is not so much dulled by experience as warped by
education. It may be likened to a clock which has not stopped but
shows the wrong hour. He has been taught that there are times and
circumstances when religious and ethical standards may or must be set
aside, and he arrogates to himself the right of determining them.
Without examining into stories of preternatural meanness and perfidy
which have come into vogue since the outbreak of the war, it is fair
to say that dirty tricks, destructive of all social intercourse,
formed part of the German commercial procedure in France, Britain and
Russia, the only proviso being that they were not penalized by the
criminal law of the country.
An amusing but nowise edifying instance turns upon Paris fashions.
That Berlin, like Vienna, should seek to vie with Paris in setting the
fashion of feminine finery to the world is conceivable and legitimate.
But that Germans should compete with Paris in Paris fashions connotes
a psychological frame of mind which is better understood by the
inmates of a prison than by a mercantile community. American ladies
visiting the French capital to order their gowns are astonished to
note that no fashions really new have been shown to them in the great
Paris houses. They had just seen them all in the German capital. And
the Paris models destined to be placed on the market next season turn
out to be identical with those which the fair visitors had already
inspected in Berlin and could have purchased there at a much lower
price. How this could be is explained simply. A German merchant in
continuous relations with the staffs of the Paris firms clandestinely
obtains from some of the members for a high price the models which are
still being kept secret, has them copied in large numbers in Berlin
and sold at a cheap price. True, the German workmanship lacks the
dainty finish of the Paris article, but the difference is such as
appeals only to the eye of a connoisseur.
In Italy similar phenomena were observed frequently. A firm in
Florence celebrated for special types of wooden utensils which were
never successfully imitated elsewhere was ruined by commercial
espionage. One day the proprietor engaged the services of two foreign
workmen who laboured hard and steadily for some time and then
departed, to his great regret. Six months later Germany dumped on the
Italian markets the very same articles in vast quantities, and at a
price so low that the Italian firm could not hope to compete with
them. At first, indeed, the Florence house made a valiant stand
against the invasion, but had finally to give up the fight as
hopeless. Later on the proprietor learned that the two honest-looking
workmen were first-class German engineers, whose only objects in
entering his service were to acquaint themselves with his methods,
copy his models and then strangle his trade. And these objects they
achieved to their satisfaction.[10]
[10] _L'Invasione tedesca_, p. 147.
Thus, in order to strangle concerns that compete with them
successfully, the average German merchant sticks at nothing. His maxim
is, that in trade as in all forms of the struggle for existence,
necessity knows no law. And he is himself the judge of necessity. The
history of German industry in Italy is full of instructive examples
of this disdain of moral checks, but one will suffice as a type. It
turns upon the struggle which the Teuton invaders carried on against
the Italian iron industry, which for a while held its own against all
fair competition. In their own country, the German manufacturers sold
girders at £6 10_s._ the ton. The profits made at this price enabled
them to offer the same articles in Switzerland for £6, in Great
Britain for £5 3_s._ and in Italy for £3 15_s._ Now, as the cost of
production in Germany fluctuated between £4 5_s._ and £4 15_s._ per
ton, it is evident that the dead loss incurred by the German
manufacturers on Italian sales varied between 10_s._ and £1 per ton.
But this sacrifice was offered up cheerfully because its object was
the destruction of the growing iron industry of Northern Italy and the
clearing of the ground for a German monopoly.[11] The spirit that
animates the Teuton producer, in his capacity as rival, was clearly
embodied by one of the principal manufacturers of aniline dyes in
Frankfort, who remarked to an Italian business man: "I am ready to
sell at a dead loss for ten years running rather than lose the Italian
market, and if it were necessary I would give up for the purpose all
the profits I have made during the past ten years."[12] To contend
with any hope of success against men of this stamp, one should be
imbued with qualities resembling their own. And of such a commercial
equipment the business community of Great Britain have as yet shown no
tokens.
[11] _L'Invasione tedesca in Italia_, p. 149.
[12] _Op. cit._, p. 150.
In Italy the Banca Commerciale was wont to send to every firm, whether
it had or had not dealings with it, a tabulated list of questions to
be answered in writing. The ostensible object was to obtain
trustworthy materials to serve for the Annual Review of the economic
movement in the country published every year by the Bank. In reality
the ends achieved were far more important, as we may infer from the
use to which all such information in France was put. There the
well-known agency of Schimmelpfeng, which was in receipt of a
subvention from the German Chamber of Commerce, was a centre of secret
information respecting the solvency, the prospects, the debts and
assets of every firm in France, and its tabulated information about
French commerce and industry, together with all the knowledge that had
been secretly gleaned, was duly sent to Berlin.
Russians complain somewhat tardily of the prevalence of the same
system among themselves. "Every day," writes the _Novoye Vremya_,
"fresh details are leaking out respecting a certain German firm, ideal
in its resourcefulness, which succeeded in spreading a vast net over
all Russia. It has been satisfactorily established that Germans
occupied many responsible posts in the organization, and that
these[13] officials were subjects of the German Empire. At the head of
the entire business in Russia down to a recent date was also a German
subject." The kind of information gathered by the agents of the
company, "for business purposes," is clear from a circular issued by
the firm just a fortnight before the outbreak of the war.
[13] It is an American Company for the sale of certain
machines. The Russian organ mentions all the names. For my
purpose this is unnecessary. The curious may find them in the
_Novoye Vremya_ of 5/18 August, 1915.
THE FIRM OF XYZ
"Tula,
"5/18 July, 1914.
"_District Card for the Collectors of the Circuit._
"_Form N 246._
"We have forwarded you to-day a number of cards of the printed form N
246, which you are requested to have filled in at once and placed at
the head of form 490 of the corresponding district. We draw your
attention herewith to the necessity of enumerating on the first table
of form N 246 all the villages and other places of the circuit of each
district collector, whether or no they contain debtors of ours, and of
stating in the second table the number of inhabitants. The
registration is to be done by the official charged with that part of
the work: each circuit is to be entered separately and the villages
and places it contains to be given in alphabetical order. These lists
are to be verified every six months and fresh information set out
respecting the growing number of our debtors. We request you to take
this work in hand at once and without delay.
"THE CONTROL DEPARTMENT, TULA."
When this circular was published in Moscow the general director of the
firm wrote to certain provincial newspapers pointing out that the
company is American, not German. "It is curious," a Russian journal
remarks, "that an American firm should need a map containing all the
villages and hamlets of the districts, with the number of their
inhabitants, irrespective of the presence there of the company's
debtors."[14]
[14] _Novoye Vremya_, 5/18 July, 1916.
CHAPTER IV
THE ANNEXATION MANIA
Another instructive example of the Annexation mania, as it displays
itself in German commercial undertakings, comes to us from Russia.
It is only one of many, a typical instance of a recognized method. The
Franco-Russian joint-stock company Provodnik is known throughout
Europe. It manufactures tyres and other rubber wares. The capital,
which amounted to only 700,000 roubles at the date of its foundation,
in the year 1888, had increased to 22,000,000 by the time when war was
declared. It is closely connected with another company named the
Buffalo, which has its headquarters in Riga and was promoted by the
President of the Provodnik, M. Wittenberg, together with several
Austrian capitalists. M. Wittenberg is President of both companies,
and the Provodnik has assisted the Buffalo on various occasions, even
during the war, notwithstanding the fact that the shareholders of the
Buffalo are mostly German subjects. On January 2, 1914, another
company was created, this time in Berlin, and called the "German
Provodnik." Now, according to the instructions laying down the rights
of the Board (Par. 24), wares may not be delivered on credit to any
firm or institution for the value of more than 50,000 roubles, and
not even to this amount unless the solvency of the recipient is beyond
question.
In spite of this clearly marked limitation the Board of the
Franco-Russian Provodnik, which exerted itself with unwonted zest to
supply the German Provodnik with motor-tyres shortly before the war,
opened a credit of 498,000 roubles in favour of this firm. The manager
of the warehouses of the Riga products in New York is a German subject
named Lindner. The managers in Zurich and Copenhagen are also German
subjects.[15]
[15] Their names are Johann Assman and Rudolf Meyer. Cf.
_Novoye Vremya_, 11/24 August, 1915.
It is not to be wondered at that countries like Italy and Russia, poor
in capital and industry, fell an easy prey to the ruthless German
invader, who, with the help of British, French, and even Italian and
Russian savings, suffocated the nascent industries of the respective
nations, killed foreign competition, earned large profits, obtained
control of the country's resources and an intimate knowledge of the
political secrets of their respective Governments. "Many Germans,"
wrote an Italian Review,[16] "serving in Italian establishments are in
possession of lists of the fortresses, measurements, distances,
positions of the roads and footpaths, they have found the points of
triangulation and acquired all requisite data and information about
them. And to-morrow, should war break out, they will accompany and
guide the German or Austrian invaders."
[16] _Rassegna Contemporanea._
How keen they are to make themselves conversant with matters of
political moment in the guise of honest workmen is becoming fairly
well known to day, although it may be taken for granted that if peace
were concluded to-morrow these same commercial spies would find
hospitality among some of the easy-going merchants of Great Britain,
who still refuse to believe in the obvious danger or to act upon their
belief. In November 1912 the Italian Minister of the Marine called for
tenders for the supply of silver dinner-plate for the warships. At the
critical moment, when the decision was about to be taken, the German
firm of Hermann, which has its headquarters in Vienna, reduced its
offer first by 18 per cent., then by 20, and finally by 20·13 per
cent. in order to get the order. For the order carried with it, for
the representative of the firm, Herr Forster, _the permanent right of
access_ to all naval arsenals of Italy.[17]
[17] _L'Invasione tedesca in Italia_, p. 171.
The _naïveté_ of Italy in matters of this delicate nature stands out
in jarring contrast to the habitual caution of that diplomatic nation,
and has not yet been satisfactorily explained from the psychological
point of view. One is puzzled to understand how, months after the
present war had begun, the press of Genoa could announce that the
supply of electric motors for the Italian marine and of ventilators
for Italy's fortified places on her eastern frontier had been
adjudicated to two German firms, on the ground that their tenders were
the lowest.[18]
[18] _Op. cit._, p. 171.
One of the largest automobile and motor works in the German Empire is
the Benz and Rheinische Automobil und Motoren Fabrik Actien
Gesellschaft of Mannheim. It supplies the Kaiser with his cars and has
branches everywhere. In Italy, too, it exists and flourishes. But
there the great German firm is modestly disguised under the name of
the Societá Italiana Benz. And it is so modest that in spite of its
gorgeous warehouse in the Via Floria (Rome), of its luxurious
head-office in the Via Finanze, of its well-equipped workshop for
repairing and fitting and its little army of agents actively pushing
the business all over Italy, its capital, all told, amounts only to
30,000 lire, or £1,000! The firm is managed by a German engineer whose
kith and kin are fighting in the Kaiser's army. And this German
engineer, Herr Matt, has free access to the Italian War Minister, even
now,[19] when it is question of manufacturing projectiles; and he has
continuous relations with the Italian Airmen's Brigade.
[19] Cf. _L'Idea Nazionale_. The words "even now" refer to
November 22, 1915, and may be equally true to-day.
Electricity in Italy, together with all its auxiliary trades and
industries, was, like every other lucrative enterprise, in the hands
of Germans and German Swiss. The names of the various company
directors had the usual familiar Teuton sound. When the European
conflict broke out it seemed for a moment as if all these German
concerns must come to a sudden and dire end. But just as the German
engineer Herr Matt, whose relatives are officers in the Kaiser's army,
has free access to the Italian War Minister and carries on his
business in Italy as usual, so the electrical concerns had merely to
change one or two adjectives in their trading names and were forthwith
shielded from harm. A case in point which is valuable because typical
occurred recently. The Italian Electro-technical Association published
a list of the manufacturers of electric machines and requisites in
Italy, and by way of introduction set down the following patriotic
remarks: "This list is addressed to those who at the present moment
feel it to be their duty to uphold and encourage the production and
development of materials for electricity. Importation from abroad,
which we favoured when Italian industry was still in an embryonic
stage, _degenerated especially in consequence of the action of the
Germans_, into a veritable conquest of the markets; and no weapon,
licit or illicit, was spurned to destroy our sources of production,
and suffocate our nascent initiative."
These are pathetic words. They are calculated to appeal with force to
the Italian who loves his country. But when one looks more closely
into the list of Italian producers one is disappointed to find the
same familiar names as before:[20] Allgemeine Electricitäts
Gesellschaft, Thomson Houston, the Mannesmann Tubes Co., the Italian
Brown Boveri Co., etc. The nationalist Italian press organ which first
directed public attention to these German subtleties asks pertinently:
"Were not and are not the real producers named in this list the same
who were the prime movers in the deplorable foreign conquest of the
Italian market?"[21]
[20] Felix Deutsch, Karl Zander, Otto Joel, Karl von Siemens,
Walter Boveri, Karl Kapp, etc.
[21] _L'Idea Nazionale_, September 8, 1915.
The Banca Commerciale, which was admittedly an all-powerful German
institution, and has the control, direct or indirect, of most of the
industries, the silk manufacture, metallurgical and mechanical works
of the country and of thirty-four electrical companies in Italy: which
possess a capital of 434,000,000 francs and produce energy equal to
940,000 h.p.: found itself in an unpleasant predicament as soon as the
King of Italy declared war against Austria-Hungary. But Teuton
resourcefulness solved the problem with ease and seeming thoroughness
by inducing certain German officials on the board to resign and
appointing as Italian director a gentleman known for his
philo-Germanism. But the three creators of the bank were left: Herrn
Joel, Toeplitz and Weil, and although it was affirmed solemnly that
Joel was no longer the director but M. Fenoglio, it has been publicly
proved that after the resignation of the former, the latter, before
sending a _consignment of gold to Berlin_,[22] had to ask for and
actually received the authorization of Herr Joel.[23]
[22] On May 21, 1915.
[23] _L'Idea Nazionale_, November 8, 1915.
The following brief summary of the companies and enterprises in which
the Banca Commerciale is interested may enable the British reader to
form an idea of its decisive influence on the economic and political
life of the Italian nation: they include eighteen of the largest
companies of textile industries; sixteen of the most important
companies of chemical, electrical and kindred industries; six of the
chief companies of alimentation; twenty-six transport companies;
twenty-seven of the principal companies of mechanical industries and
naval construction; six building companies; five of the chief mining
companies; twenty-eight of the largest electrical companies; and
twenty-two miscellaneous.[24]
[24] _Giornale d'Italia_, November 17, 1915.
Thus every artery and vein of the economic organism of Italy is
swathed and pressed and choked by this German isolator, which nobody
dares to pull away. For if we turn from the economic to the political
aspect of this curious phenomenon, we shall find that the companies
enumerated give work to scores of thousands of operators and
employees, through whose willing instrumentality they become vast
electoral agencies. "It is obvious," we are authoritatively assured,
"that the influence of such companies in administrative and political
elections is put forth in congruity with the interests at stake, a
circumstance which explains how it comes that many Italian politicians
and representatives are, directly or otherwise, chained to the chariot
of the Banca Commerciale and indirectly to that of Germany's
policy."[25] In Italy the deputies are, with few exceptions, the
humble servants of their constituents, and are powerless to shake
themselves free from local influences. "It is easy to infer from this
what efforts have to be made and what compromises must be acquiesced
in by those deputies whose election depends on such institutions
which, aware that money is more than ever the nerve of political
contests, subscribe to the election expenses, and assure in this way
the respectful gratitude of the parliamentary recipients of their
benefactions. And all this is executed with order and discipline.
Examples could be quoted and names mentioned."[26]
[25] Cf. Preziosi, _La Germania a la Conquista dell' Italia_,
p. 66.
[26] _Ibid._, p. 67.
The unsuspected ways in which this remarkable organization destroys,
constructs and draws its sustenance from its victims are a revelation.
Imagine a few British bankers possessed of two hundred thousand pounds
and conceiving the plan of wresting the economic markets of Italy
from Britain's rivals, building up an all-powerful organization with
Italian money, throttling Italian industries and commerce with the
help of Italian agents paid for the purpose out of the hard-earned
savings of the Italian people, and then yoking the national policy to
the interests of Great Britain. One would laugh to scorn such a mad
scheme, and set down its authors as wild visionaries. Yet that was the
programme of the little band of audacious Germans who conceived the
design of teutonizing Italy. And they had almost realized it when the
war broke out. Even the halfpence scraped together by poor emigrants
and half-starved Sicilian working-men were diverted from the savings
banks into banks of German origin, two of which held four hundred
million francs of the nation's economies a few months ago.
It was not to be expected that the domain of foreign politics should
long escape the notice or be spared the experiments of this
all-absorbing organization. What excites our wonder are the
superiority of its method and the completeness of its success. To the
thinking of Germany's leaders international politics and foreign trade
are correlates. In the Near East, where so many of Italy's interests
are now concentrated, the Societa Commerciale d'Oriente of
Constantinople, being one of the agencies of the Banca Commerciale,
was also one of the canals through which this influence passed. Under
the Italian flag and with the co-operation of Italian diplomacy, that
"little business" of Germany was conscientiously transacted which
consisted in the adaptation and employment of Italian expansion as an
instrument for Teutonic interpenetration. Whithersoever we turn our
gaze we discern, lurking under the comely vesture of Italy, the clumsy
form of the Teuton. It is amusing to reflect that the recent railway
concessions in Asia Minor, for which Italian statesmen laboured so
hard and so long, went in reality to the Banca Commerciale, which is
but a roundabout way of saying to Germany. And in order to win their
suit and have those advantages conferred on "Italy," King Victor's
Government agreed to renounce their claims for the reimbursement of
the expenses incurred during the administration of the occupied
Turkish islands. This sacrifice meant tens of millions of francs, kept
from the pockets of Italian taxpayers and handed over to the German
bankers, who spent them in promoting anti-Italian projects. The Bank
of Albania was also conceived originally as an organ of German
propaganda, and was pushed forward by the same set of agents who
induced the Italian Government to employ them as its own.
In those ways the seemingly modest little bank scheme which Friedrich
Weil with Crispi's help initiated in 1890, grew until it acquired the
influence of a State within the State. And then it began to discharge
functions unique in the history of the banking world. Its employees
became diplomatists and statesmen at a moment's notice, ended wars,
and drafted treaties. The Banca Commerciale put a stop to the campaign
against Turkey which was a thorn in the side of Teutonism and settled
the terms of peace in accordance with its own judgment. It was not an
ambassador or a minister who opened the pourparlers in Stamboul and
continued them at Ouchy, but an agent of the Banca Commerciale. It
was that same agent who immediately afterwards, in concert with
colleagues of his bank, negotiated the treaty, reporting by telegraph
to the headquarters of the bank in Milan every important conversation
he had with the Turkish delegates.[27] At a later date important
conversations between the British Foreign Office and the Consulta were
entered into in the name and for the alleged interests of Italy, but
the principal part in the drawing up of the terms of the settlement
arrived at was taken by Signor Nogara of the Societa Commerciale
d'Oriente,--the company which the concessions demanded were destined
to benefit. In fine, the parasite had thus become almost equal in
power to the body on which it battened.
[27] Signor Preziosi gives the names of those agents as MM.
Volpi, Bertolini and Nogara (_op. cit._, p. 71).
A well-known politician and member of the Italian Legislature, Di
Cesaró, narrated the following curious incident in a public speech
delivered on March 17, 1915: "An Italian Admiral, having had the
audacity to request the immediate delivery of an order for arms
manufactured by the works which are under the control of the Banca
Commerciale, was relieved of his functions within twenty-four hours,
and his place was taken by another Admiral, who by chance happened to
be the brother of one of the negotiators of the Italo-Turkish Peace of
Ouchy." And as we saw, the negotiators of that peace were officials of
the Banca Commerciale. An authority on the subject[28] wrote: "For
many years the Banca Commerciale has contrived, directly or
indirectly, according to circumstances, to take a hand in the
formation of various ministries.... As a matter of fact, on its
governing board there are seven senators, many deputies, and a
numerous host of political notabilities. It has its tentacles
everywhere, high up and low down, in Italy and abroad, in peace time
and in war time, when our native land is elated with good fortune and
when it is cast down with bad. Its hand lies heavy upon everything and
everybody. It is the arbitress in the choice of good and evil and is
under no obligation to render an account of its doings to any one....
In war time we are certain to feel greatly hampered by the meshes of
such a firmly woven net."[29] This anticipation has since come true.
[28] Professor Bondi, ex-Questor of Milan.
[29] Rivelazioni postume alle Memorie di un questore, 1913.
Cf. Preziosi, _La Germania a la Conquista dell' Italia_, p.
75 ff.
Like the vampire that soothes its victim while drawing its life-blood,
the parasitic German organism cast a spell over influential Italians
of the community and imparted to them a feeling that things were going
well with themselves and their country. Money passed from hand to
hand. Labour found remunerative employment. Towns in decay were
galvanized into new life. And all Italy was grateful. Milan, the
"moral capital" of the kingdom, where a couple of decades before the
name of Germany was execrated, became itself very largely Teutonic and
was dominated by a rich and flourishing German colony. Venice, Genoa,
Rome, Florence, Naples, Palermo and Torino, leavened in the same
plentiful degree with pushing subjects of the Kaiser, turned towards
Berlin as the sunflower towards the orb of day.
Against Austria, Italians might write and talk to their hearts'
content, but towards Germany feelings of respect verging on awe and of
gratitude bordering on genuine friendship were cherished by every
institution and leading individual in the kingdom. And when the hour
struck to wrench Italy from that monster vampire, the task was so
arduous and fraught with such danger that no Cabinet without the
insistent encouragement of the whole nation would have attempted it.
The policy of every Foreign Secretary was and still is dominated by
this unnatural relationship to the Teuton, and it came at last to be
acknowledged as a political dogma that Germany must in no case be
confounded with Austria. Indeed, it is fair to assert that the
governing circles of both countries held and hold that nothing should
be allowed to mar these friendly feelings, not even the circumstance
that Germany as Austria's ally is bound to stand by her during the
war. Hence when the friction between Italy and Austria was growing
dangerous, Germany was ready with two expedients for keeping her
friendly intercourse with the former country intact. She first assumed
the rôle of umpire between them, endeavouring to beat down the demands
of the one while spurring on the other to a higher degree of
liberality, and when her well-laid and skilfully executed plan
unexpectedly failed, in consequence of the interposition of a _deus ex
machina_, she produced a draft treaty, complete in all details, which
was to rob war between Italy and herself, if circumstances should
render it unavoidable, of all its frightfulness and savagery. The two
nations virtually said to one another: "Whatever else we may do, we
shall steer clear of mutual hostilities to the best of our ability.
But as the action and reaction of alliances may thwart our efforts and
force us into war against each other, we hereby undertake that that
war shall be but a simulacrum of the struggle that we are at present
waging against all our other adversaries. We shall respect each
other's property religiously, for we shall both stand in need of each
other when the exhausting struggle is ended and the wounds it
inflicted have to be dressed and healed. We Germans have invested
thousands of millions of francs in Italy, the one foreign country for
which we feel genuine affection. You Italians have thriven on our
commercial and industrial enterprise. Spare our property now and you
shall not rue your self-containment. After the war the Entente people
will shun us as lepers, and our only hope of finding outlets for our
commerce is through the neutral States. Now, of all the European Great
Powers, Italy is the only one qualified to render us great services of
this nature. And she will be glad of a partner whose help is free from
the alloy of jealousy or hostility. For our interests do not clash,
whereas those of Italy and the Entente Powers never can run parallel.
In the Adriatic she will find the Slavs pitted against her, in Asia
Minor the Russians, French, British, Greeks, and in the Eastern
Mediterranean the three last-named States. But at no point does
Germany cross her path. Our common hope in the future is based on our
experience of the past. It is knowledge rather than trust. We Germans
succeeded in laying the foundations of your economic strength. And now
that Austria's rivalry has ceased, we will contribute to your
political growth. With the help of our organizing talent you will
become the France of the future. Your population is already well-nigh
equal to that of the Republic. In ten years it will be more numerous,
and will still go on increasing. Tunis has been built up by Italian
toil. Nature has assigned the Mediterranean to Italy as her natural
domain. The overlordship of the Midland Sea is yours by right, and in
co-partnership with us you shall assert and enforce this right. Mind
your steps, therefore, in performing the difficult egg dance which the
European War may impose on us both. You are not, cannot be, friends of
France, closely though you are related by blood. Neither can the
French become our friends. Therefore you and we are natural allies, as
your far-sighted politicians like Crispi perceived. Even Sonnino sees
that and acknowledges it. The one political idea of his life was to
solder Italy firmly to Germany. And that is still the desire of your
aristocracy. Fight with Austria, if you must, but Italy and Germany
must not become armed enemies."
Nearly two milliards of francs of German money are invested in
commercial and industrial enterprises and immovable property in Italy,
besides the value of ships detained at Italian ports, some of which
have cargoes valued at several million francs. The Kaiser is himself
the largest shareholder in the Italian mercury mines of Monte Amiata,
his Foreign Secretary, von Jagow, is another. And they are resolved
not to relinquish their hold. That Prince von Buelow should move every
lever to save this precious pledge was natural, and that Italian
statesmen with their germanophile leanings should readily fall in with
his scheme is not to be wondered at. The Kaiser's ambassador proposed
that in the case of war each contracting party should respect the
property of the other. This formula sounds decorous. Its meaning is
profound. A treaty embodying these stipulations was agreed to and
secretly signed by Prince von Buelow and Baron Sidney Sonnino, whose
admiration for Germany embodied itself in all the more important acts
of his political career. This transaction, which the Italian
Government wisely refrained from publishing, was announced by the
Germans for reasons of their own. The impression produced by this
display of eclectic affinities so pronounced that even the world's
most ruthless war could not impair them was considerable. And it would
have been heightened if the alleged and credible fact had also been
divulged that the diplomatic instrument was ratified when Italy had
already decided upon war with Austria-Hungary. Between Italy and
Germany stands a bridge which both peoples are resolved to keep intact
at all costs. Against the facts it is useless to argue.
The struggle between Germany and Italy, therefore, should it ever
break out, would differ not merely in degree, but also, one may take
it, in kind, from the lawless and ruthless savagery which
characterizes the warfare of the Teutons against the Entente Powers. A
civilizing mute would deaden the resonance of bestial passion; and
even private property--in especial that of Germany--would be safe from
confiscation and wanton destruction, and when peace is restored the
rich mercury mines of Italy will again belong to the Kaiser and his
advisers. Last summer[30] a series of private meetings was held for
three days running in Switzerland, at which Germans of high standing
took part, for the purpose of dealing with German capital in Italy and
safeguarding it during the war. At one of the sittings it was computed
that about two milliards of francs belonging to German subjects are
buried in Italian undertakings or in house or landed property.
[30] 1915.
In November 1915 the Italian Government publicly applied one of the
provisions of the secret treaty in favour of Germany. At that moment
it was deemed necessary to commandeer German ships in Italian ports
for the service of the navy and the mercantile marine. Had it been a
question of Austrian vessels they would have been seized and utilized
without any such precautions. In virtue of §4 of the Treaty the
Italian authorities undertook to pay a monthly sum to the German
owners for the use of their steamers. That clause lays it down that
the two contracting states shall respect the enactment made by the
concluding section of Article VI of the Hague Convention concerning
the treatment of enemy merchant vessels.
This treaty, then, is no mere scrap of paper. It is a strong bridge
spanning the chasm between Italo-German friendship in the past and
Italo-German friendship after the war. To take due note of this and of
like symptoms of the coming readjustment of political and economic
forces is one of the primary duties of Entente statesmanship which one
piously hopes are being efficiently discharged.
CHAPTER V
GERMANY AND RUSSIA
Turning to our other ally, Russia, we find that she underwent a course
of treatment similar to that which well-nigh prussianized Italy. In
the Tsardom the task was especially easy owing largely to the
advantages offered to Teutonic immigrants from the days of yore, to
the German-speaking inhabitants of the Baltic provinces, to the
proselytizing German schools which flourish in Petrograd, Moscow,
Odessa, Kieff, Saratoff, Simbirsk, Tiflis, Warsaw and other centres,
to German colonies scattered over Russia and to religious sects.
During the Manchurian campaign the Commercial Treaty drafted in
Berlin, and at first denounced by Count Witte as ruinous to his
country, was agreed to and signed.[31] It was Hobson's choice. After
that the empire, which had already been a favourite and fruitful field
for Germany's experiments, became one of the most copious sources of
her national prosperity. Commercial push and political espionage were
so thoroughly fused that no line of demarcation remained visible.
[31] In June 1904.
Russia's losses were proportionate and at the time were computed at
35,000,000 marks a year. In the Tsardom the imposition of this tribute
was resented. By the Teutons their economic victory was followed by
political influence. Their agents and spies abounded everywhere. Time
passed, and as relations between the two empires grew tenser, the
danger defined itself in sharper outline to the eyes of Russian
statesmen, who resolved, however, to postpone remedial measures until
the day should come for the discussion of the renewal of the
Commercial Treaty. The knowledge that Russia would refuse either to
prolong that one-sided arrangement or to make another like it, and
that the consequences of this refusal would be disastrous to Germany's
economic and financial position, stimulated German statesmen to bring
matters to a head before Russia could back her recalcitrance with a
reorganized army, and was one of the contributory causes of the
European struggle.
Since then the war has flashed a brilliant light on the dark places of
German intrigue, and some of the sights revealed are hardly credible.
Whithersoever one turns one is confronted with the same striking
phenomenon; the preponderant influence wielded in almost every walk of
life, private and public, by institutions and individuals who in some
open or clandestine way are under German tutelage. In the sphere of
economics this is particularly noticeable. Three-fourths of Russia's
foreign trade was in German hands. Dealings between Russians and
foreigners were transacted chiefly through Germany. Imports and
exports passed principally through German offices, established
throughout the length and breadth of the Tsardom, and commercial
dealings were conducted by merchants in Berlin, Hamburg, Königsberg,
Leipzig, and other centres of the Fatherland. Merchandise was carried
in and out of the country by German railway lines, or to German ports
in German bottoms. Even American cotton and Australian wool and tallow
were disposed of in Russia by German middlemen who had them conveyed
in German steamers. On the other hand, Russian corn, sugar, spirits,
were taken to Europe by German transport firms. Intending Russian
emigrants were sought out by agents of German steamship companies,
sent to German ports and accommodated on German steamers. In brief,
whenever the Tsar's subjects had anything to sell to the foreigner or
to buy from him, their first step was to go in search of a German,
through whom the sale or purchase might be effected.
In domestic economics the same phenomenon was everywhere noticeable.
To a Russian's success in almost any commercial or industrial venture,
the co-operation of the German was an indispensable condition.
Individual enterprise might sow and governmental legislation might
water, but it was German goodwill that vouchsafed the fruit. Wherever
Russian industry showed its head, Germans flocked thither to take the
concern in hand, regulate its growth, and co-ordinate its effects with
those of other industries which were under the patronage of German
banks. It was in vain that Witte and his fellow workers threw up
barriers that seemed impassable to German enterprise. They were turned
with ease and rapidity. Thus in order to protect the textile
industries of Moscow, prohibitive tariffs were levied on textile
fabrics of German origin. But the irrepressible Teuton crossed the
frontier, established his factories in Poland, founded the
German-Jewish town of Lodz, and snapped his fingers at the Government
of the Tsar. And forthwith Lodz assumed all the characteristics of a
German city. German schools flourished there, German agents abounded,
German became the recognized language, and permission was at one time
given to German reserves there, to undergo their periodic term of
military drill for the Kaiser's army!
Of the three Entente Powers challenged by Germany in 1914, Russia was
therefore by far the worst equipped for the unwonted effort which the
European War demanded of each. For her liberty of action, and, in some
cases, even her liberty of choice, was hampered by the financial,
economic, and political network which Germany had slowly and almost
imperceptibly woven over the entire population. In the fine meshes of
this net several organs of national life were caught, immobilized and
connected with the Fatherland. And it was not until they strove to
move and discharge their functions on behalf of the Russian nation
that they became fully conscious of their plight. German intrigue and
subterranean scheming, under the mask of sympathy--now for the
autocracy, now for socialism--had effected far-reaching changes in the
Empire, which few even among observant politicians appear to have
realized. These innovations were embodied in the thraldom of Russian
banks to German financial institutions; in the splendid organization
which kept old German colonies that were scattered over the Empire in
touch with each other, and co-ordinated their action; in the eloquent
Russian advocates and influential dignitaries who contributed to the
furtherance of German ideas and interests and swayed the policy of
the State; and in the dependence of the great Russian Empire on its
enemy for munitions, and almost every other technical necessary of
war.
From the days of the great Peter this Teuton influence had been
creeping imperceptibly over the Slav race like some cancerous
soul-growth. It infused a subtle poison in the State organism, the
most appalling effects of which are only now assuming visible shape.
Two palace revolutions were brought about by a national reaction
against the predominance of this foreign influence, which was resented
by the people not merely because it was alien, but largely also
because of its unscrupulous and ruthless character. Some of the most
atrocious cruelties which students of Russian history associate with
court and political life in the Tsardom, during the best part of two
centuries, had their sources in the sheer malignity of Teuton
Ministers who spoke and acted in the name of the autocrat of the
moment. It is characteristic that the Minister Münnich, in the school
for officers which he founded in Petersburg, had Russian history
eliminated from the programme as superfluous, German history being
allowed to remain; and that out of 255 students, only eighteen studied
the Russian language, whereas 237 applied themselves to German. The
first Sovereign to rebel against this Teuton supremacy in his Empire
was the late Alexander III., who made no secret of his profound
dislike for German ways. But as the Russian proverb has it, "one man
in the field, is not a soldier." Hercules, to cleanse the Augean
stables, had need of the water of a river, and the anti-German Tsar
could not hope to make headway without the co-operation of his army of
officials, who themselves were permeated with the Teutonic spirit. And
as passive resistance was their attitude, his purging scheme was
abortive. As a matter of cool calculation, the only hope of freeing
Russia from the meshes of the German net was a war between the two
peoples. And all radical legislation had therefore to be postponed.
In the meanwhile the Germans, having organized and primed their
agents, have been teutonizing Russia cunningly and effectively. With
the precious assistance of their own kith and kin settled in the
Baltic provinces and elsewhere, they employed the never-failing
expedient of taking an active and, when possible, a leading part in
domestic Russian politics, and invariably on both sides. At the Court
they have always been well represented, and in the ranks of the
inarticulate and Parliamentary Opposition they have also been playing
a noteworthy part. In factories and other industrial and commercial
institutions they arranged strikes, called indignation meetings and
hatched conspiracies at critical junctures when it was to Germany's
interest that Russia's attention should be riveted upon home affairs.
No Parliamentary Bill could be privately drafted, no railway scheme
could be secretly discussed, no Ministerial measure could be
canvassed; nay, seldom could a confidential report be drawn up to the
Emperor himself without the knowledge of the Berlin authorities and
the occasional intervention of their agents in Petrograd. It is
interesting to note that in 1914 a secret memorandum of a highly
confidential character, from a statesman to the Tsar, found its way
to Berlin soon after it had been presented to the monarch and had a
certain influence on the decisions which led to the war.
The work of economic interpenetration carried on under the ægis of
such powerful patrons and resourceful coadjutors was greatly
facilitated by the German colonies scattered over Russia for
generations. Many of these foreigners had been invited by Catherine
II., receiving large grants of land and various privileges which
enabled them to flourish at the expense of the native population, on
which they looked down with open contempt.
At that time the extent of free land was considerable in Bessarabia,
Volhynia, and the provinces of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, Saratoff and
Samara, where down to the year 1915 entire cantons were inhabited by
Germans. In the Novouzensky canton, for example, they constituted 40
per cent. of the population, in that of Berdyansk 17 per cent. and in
the Akkerman canton 14 per cent. The inducements which had been held
out to them to settle in these fertile districts were irresistible.
Each colonist received fifty dessiatines of land,[32] extensive
pastures for cattle, grants for the journey and the cost of stocking
his farm, absolute immunity from all taxes, rates and military
service, and complete local autonomy apart from that of the Russian
community.
[32] About 107 acres.
The Germans whom these boons attracted were of two categories:
sectarians (Menonites), who eschewed military service on religious
grounds; and ne'er-do-wells, who objected to the restraints of law and
justice in the Fatherland; besides a considerable percentage of
tramps. Most of the men of the second category fared as badly in their
adopted country as they had in their native land. They gave themselves
up to intemperance and kindred vices, and their descendants still lead
a hand-to-mouth existence in the Tsardom which their privileges alone
could not better. The sectarians, on the other hand, formed a compact
co-operative body, and by dint of persevering industry and shrewdness,
made the most of their favoured position and prospered. With their
common savings they purchased such vast tracts of land from the
neighbouring gentry that in time the Russian population was
constrained to emigrate to Siberia and other distant parts of the
Empire. And when the present conflict was unchained they were in
possession of an area of fertile land bigger than Pomerania, which is
one of the largest provinces of Prussia. In the Volga country alone
they owned 879,420 dessiatines, or, say, 1,884,471 acres! In the south
of Russia there are 519 German settlements, and the area they occupy
is estimated at more than 31,252 square versts.[33] And the land of
the country gentry in the neighbouring districts was fast passing into
their hands.[34] They have their own local government, their banks
which help them to acquire Russian land, their insurance companies and
their schools. In short, they were a compact little State within the
Tsardom.
[33] One square verst is equal to 0·44 square mile.
[34] Cf. _Novoye Vremya_, October 5, 1914.
The sectarians still hold aloof from the native population. Indeed,
almost the only relations in which they stand to Russians are those
of masters and agricultural labourers. They hire Russian peasants to
till their land and they compel them to work hard for small wages.
Many of these colonies have the appearance of little German towns.
They have added industrial pursuits to agricultural, possess flour
mills, timber mills, and plough their farms with German implements.
They are aggressively German in sentiment, language, character and
Kultur.
That in brief is the history of one type of German colonization in the
Tsardom. There is another at which it may not be amiss to cast a
glance. It is of recent date and consists of German elements already
resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav
forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without
finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty
on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of
easy-going toleration on the part of the State. The German elements of
the provinces of Kurland and Livland, subjects of the Tsar though they
are, resolved after the abortive revolution of 1906 to raise a living
wall against the rising tide of Russian influence. And as is the wont
of the Teuton throughout the world, they employed Russia's men and
Russia's money to achieve their anti-Russian object. This object was
to attract some twenty thousand Germans to the province, provide them
with farms on easy terms, and look to time, the industry of the men,
the fecundity of the women and the teachings of the schools to create
a new German State in that part of the Russian Empire. It was part of
the functions of these colonists, we are frankly told by their
historiographer,[35] "to serve, even as armed defenders" against the
Russians! In no other country on the globe is such a scheme
conceivable.
[35] His name is Dr. Fritz Wertheimer. His writings are to be
found in various periodicals. The essay from which these data
are taken was published in the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, January
8, 1916.
The undertaking was organized and carried out by two brothers,
Brödrich by name, in one of whom the Tsar's Government placed implicit
confidence and evinced it by appointing him to be chief of the police
in the canton of Goldingen. In this post of trust the German leader
was able to further the anti-Russian cause materially. And he utilized
his opportunities to the utmost for the purpose during the five years
of his tenure of office. He himself travelled in search of suitable
German colonists and had numerous agents on the look-out for such. He
finally got about 13,000 to settle in Kurland and 7000 in Livland. The
Kurlandische Kreditverein advanced the necessary capital as mortgagee
of the land, and within five or six years many of the colonists had
already paid off their debts, sold their farms to other Germans and
bought untilled land in the neighbourhood for themselves. The school
was responsible for the required standard of German patriotism. The
success of the experiment exceeded the highest expectations, and
to-day the man of confidence of the Tsar's Government, Karl Robert
Brödrich, is become chief of the local administration under Wilhelm
II., and deservedly enjoys the confidence of the Kaiser's Ministers.
This type of German invasion in Russia, especially in recent years,
was carried out with a supreme disdain of the laws of the Empire
which is equally characteristic of those who display and those who
tolerate it. In virtue of a law inscribed in the Statute Book on 14/26
March 1887, foreigners are not permitted to purchase or own land
outside the cities in the provinces of Kurland and Livland, whereas in
Esthland there is no such prohibition. Yet in Esthland only 6396
dessiatines belong to Germans, whereas in the two provinces whence
they are absolutely excluded Germans possess 36,852 dessiatines and
6396 dessiatines respectively! In the territory of the Don Cossacks no
foreigner may possess land under any circumstance, yet the Germans own
there 3700 dessiatines. Again, in the provinces of Podolia and
Volhynia, where, for State reasons, the ownership of land is allowed
only to Russians, Germans purchased and own 63,831 dessiatines in the
latter province and 12,475 in the former. Altogether the amount of
Russian territory which passed into the hands of the Teutons is
enormous. In July 1915, when the inventory was not yet completed, the
area inscribed had reached the total of 2,450,000 dessiatines or about
5,250,000 acres.[36] "This figure--" we are assured--"is still far
from complete, inasmuch as a large number of data from various
provinces have not been included in it, and there are no entries at
all for the three provinces of the kingdom of Poland where military
operations are going on and where unhappily the presence of German
colonists has been utilized by the German General Staff."[37]
[36] _Novoye Vremya_, July 2, 1915.
[37] By a law sanctioned by the Tsar, in February 1915, the
German Colonists of Southern and Western Russia were obliged
to sell their land to Russian subjects, and they received ten
months' grace for the purpose.
In Poland there were well over 500,000 German colonists, besides a
large number of new-comers, whose unwritten "privileges" included, as
we saw, occasional permission to their young men liable to serve a few
weeks annually in the ranks of the German army to discharge that duty
under German officers in Russian Poland! In the Ukraine and the most
fertile districts of the Volga basin hundreds of thousands of Germans
lived, throve, and upheld the traditions as well as the language of
the Fatherland, under the eyes of tolerant local authorities.
Hard by old Novgorod, the once famous Russian republic and cradle of
the Russian State, a number of German colonists settled some 150 years
ago. The population of two of these settlements numbers several
thousand souls, descendants of the original settlers, in the fourth
and fifth generation. They had had time enough, one would think,
during that century-and-a-half to assimilate Russian ways and to
acquire a thorough knowledge of the Russian tongue. Well, these
colonists do not speak the language of the country in which they and
their forbears have been living for over 150 years! They still
consider themselves German, and if you ask them who their sovereign is
they answer unhesitatingly--Kaiser Wilhelm! During Russia's recent
military reverses, which threatened for a time to culminate in the
capture of Riga, and possibly of Petrograd as well, these parasites in
the body politic of Russia displayed their joy in various unseemly
ways, which aroused the indignation of their Slav neighbours. In one
of their schools the Russian visiting authorities were received with
demonstrations of hostility. It is usual for the portrait of the
Russian Tsar to be set up in every school in the Empire. In one of
these educational establishments it was discovered in the lavatory
with the eyes gouged out.
Long before this war Berlin had become alive to the importance of
these colonies as factors in the work of pacific interpenetration and
political propaganda. Wandering teachers from the Fatherland were
accordingly sent among them to link them up with their brethren at
home, and fan the embers of patriotism which long residence in the
Tsardom had not quenched. Little by little, the political fruits of
these apostolic labours began to show themselves: the colonists, whose
main preoccupation had been to occupy the most fertile soil in the
district, began to take over the approaches to Russia's strategic
plans, and to display an absorbing interest in Russian politics.
Several Zemstvos fell into their hands, and were practically
controlled by them, and they contrived to gain considerable influence
in the elections to the Duma.
The chance of a useful part for these German colonies to perform
having thus unexpectedly arisen on the horizon, they seized it with
promptitude and utilized it with the thoroughness that characterizes
their race. The numbers prosperity, and influence of the colonies grew
rapidly. Land that had belonged to the Russian peasantry was taken
over by the foreign parasites, and while the Tsar's Minister, were
toiling and moiling to transport hundreds of thousands of Russian
husbandmen and their families in search of land beyond the Ural
Mountains to the virgin forests of Eastern Siberia, there in the very
heart of European Russia were hundreds of thousands of intruders,
who, with the help of their German Colonial banks, were acquiring
additional tracts of land from which their native owners had been
ousted.
I pointed out this anomaly over and over again, and long before the
war I described it in review articles. The well-known German
Professor, Hans Delbrück, replied shortly afterwards, in the
_Contemporary Review_,[38] denying point-blank the truth of my
statements, which were drawn from official sources, and confirmed by
the evidence of my senses. For I had visited several of the colonies
in question. Besides these German settlements, there had also been a
number of German industrial and commercial establishments in the
Empire which, at first nowise harmful, were afterwards taken in hand
by emissaries from Berlin, linked up together, affiliated to one or
other of the great financial houses of Germany, and transformed into
redoubtable instruments of Teuton domination. Capital was subscribed,
syndicates were formed, railway-building and electro-technical
industries were organized, Russia's railways policy modified, and
metallurgical works were monopolized by the Germans. Here again
financial institutions discharged the functions of motive power. At
the beginning, about thirty million roubles were subscribed for the
creation of banks, and by dint of push, importunity, secret influence
and intrigue, these institutions received on deposit the savings of
the Russian peasant, merchant, landowner, and official, which finally
mounted up to several hundreds of millions. With this money they were
enabled to control the markets and constrain Russian institutions and
individuals to bow to their will.
[38] Cf. _Contemporary Review_, February 1911.
Contracts in Russia were appropriately drafted in the German language,
being directed to the promotion of German interests. Incipient and
even long-established Russian firms were either killed by unfair
competition or compelled to enter the syndicates and forego their
national character. Inventions and new appliances were tested,
plagiarized, and employed in the service of the Fatherland. And while
preparing for the war which was to set Germany above the
nations--_Deutschland über Alles_--these syndicates followed the
policy dictated from Berlin, sowed discord between Russian firms and
various State departments, organized strikes and paid the strikers in
competing establishments, and thus deprived the Russian State of
industrial organs on which it would necessarily have to rely in
war-time. To give but one example of this cleverly devised attack, the
cotton industry of the Tsardom was in the hands of the Germans when
war was declared. Another of the most important groups of Russian
industries is that of naphtha. When this precious liquid is dear, many
of the lesser works have to close; when it is cheap, even small
industrial enterprises are able to go on working. By way of obtaining
complete control of this vital element of Russia's industrial life,
the Deutsche Bank went to work to form a syndicate, had a number of
private wells bought up, united them in one, acquired numerous shares
in Russian oil companies, and had the manager of another German
bank--the well-known Disconto Gesellschaft--made a member of the Board
of the Russian Nobel Company.
One of the results of this ingenious deal was a sharp rise in the
prices of all the products and some of the by-products of naphtha. The
increase continued at an alarming rate, filling the pockets of the
German shareholders, whose syndicates received the oil at cost price
for their own consumption, while Russian firms were forced to acquire
it at the market value or to shut down their works. Amongst the worst
sufferers from these anti-Russian tactics were the steam-navigation
companies of the Volga, which had jealously warded off all attempts to
germanize them.
In conditions as restrictive as these, it is well-nigh impossible for
Russian industry to hold its own, much less prosper and grow. And only
the most vigorous and best-organized enterprises in the Empire, like
that of the Morozoffs in Moscow, managed to pursue their way
unscathed. In Russian Poland, where textile industries flourished, and
the total annual production was valued at 294,000,000 roubles, over
one-third of these industries belonged to the Germans, whose yearly
output amounted to more than one-half of the grand total, _i.e._, to
150,000,000 roubles.[39] In all these industrial and commercial
campaigns the German prime movers had carried out their operations
more or less openly. But where interests affecting the defences of the
Empire were concerned, caution was the first condition of success,
and, as usual, the Teutons proved supple and adaptable. By way of
levying an attack against the shipbuilding industry, they pushed shaky
Russian concerns into the foreground, while studiously keeping
themselves out of view. Thus in one case new Russian banks were
founded, and old ones in a state of decay were revived by means of
German capital and encouraged to form a syndicate with the
Nikolayeffsky shipbuilding works and certain foreign banks. An
official inquiry, presided over by Senator Neidhardt, lately revealed
the significant fact that each firm of this syndicate had bound itself
to demand identical prices for the construction of Russian ships, and
under no circumstances to abate an iota of the demand. And it was
further agreed that these prices _should be so calculated as to yield
to the members of the syndicate one hundred per cent. profit_.
[39] Cf. Duma debates of August 1914.
This allegation is not a mere inference, nor a rumour. It is an
established fact. Neither is the proof circumstantial; it consists of
the original agreement in writing signed by the authorized
representatives of the institutions concerned. The data were laid
before the members of the Russian Duma by A. N. Khvostoff.[40] Thus
the Russian peasant is taxed for the creation of a fleet, and the Duma
votes an initial credit of, say, 500,000,000 roubles for the purpose.
And if the shipbuilding companies and their financial bankers were
honest the aim could be achieved. But in the circumstances what it
comes to is that the nation must pay 500,000,000 more, in order to get
what it wants. And this tax of a hundred per cent. is levied by German
parasites on the Russian people. One might scrutinize the history of
corruption in every country of Europe without finding anything to beat
this Teutonic device, which at the same time gratified the cupidity of
the money-makers and dealt a stunning blow at the Russian State. Half
of the shares of the celebrated Putiloff munitions factory are said to
have belonged to the Austrian Skoda Works.
[40] Cf. _Novoye Vremya_, August 17, 1915.
At the outset of the present war, when Russia's needs were growing
greater and more pressing, the works controlled by Germans and
Germany's agents diminished their output steadily. In lieu of turning
out, say, 30,000 poods of iron they would produce only 5,000, and
offer instead of the remainder verbal explanations to the effect that
lack of fuel or damage to the machinery had caused the diminution.
Again, one of these ubiquitous banks buys a large amount of corn or
sugar, but instead of having it conveyed to the districts suffering
from a dearth of that commodity, deposits it in a safe place and
waits. In the meantime prices go up until they reach the prohibition
level. Then the bank sells its stores in small quantities. The people
suffer, murmur, and blame the Government. Nor is it only the average
man who thus complains. In the Duma the authorities have been severely
blamed for leaving the population to the mercy of those money-grubbers
whom German capital and Russian tribute are making rich. "Averse to go
to the root of the matter," one Deputy complained, "the Government
punishes a woman who, on the market sells a herring five copecks
dearer than the current price, yet at the same time it permits the
Governors to promulgate their own arbitrary laws regulating imports
and exports from their own provinces. In this way Russia is split up
into sixty different regions, each one of which pursues its own policy
unchecked."
The importance of the rôle played by the banks financed by German
capital in Russia can hardly be overstated. They advance money on the
crops and take railway and steamship invoices as guarantees--they are
centres of information respecting everybody who resides and everything
that goes on in the district and the province. I write with personal
knowledge of their working, for I watched it at close quarters in the
Volga district and the Caucasus with the assistance of an experienced
bank manager. Their political influence can be far-reaching, and the
services which they are enabled to render to the Fatherland are
appreciable. And they rendered them willingly. As extenders of
Germany's economic power in the Empire they merited uncommonly well of
their own kindred. Thus of Russia's total imports in the year 1910,
which were valued at 953,000,000 roubles, Germany alone contributed
goods computed at 440,000,000. These consisted mainly of raw cotton,
machinery, prepared skins, chemical products, and wool.
How steadily our rivals kept ousting the British out of Russian
markets by those means may be gathered from the following comparative
tables. The percentage of Russia's requirements supplied by the two
competing nations varied, during the fifteen years between 1898 and
1913, as follows--
_Year._ _Germany supplied._ _Britain supplied._
1898-1902 34·6 per cent. 18·6 per cent.
1903-1907 37·2 " 14·8 "
1908-1910 41·6 " 13·4 "
1911 45·4 " 12·2 "
1912 47·5 " 12·6 "
1913 49·6 " 13·3 "
In the year 1901 Germany supplied 31 per cent. of the total value of
Russia's imports; in 1905 her contribution was 42 per cent.; and the
increase went steadily forward, reaching over 50 per cent. in the year
1913. If we add to this the net profits of German industrial and
commercial undertakings in the Russian Empire, we may form a notion of
the appropriateness of the comparison which likened the Tsardom to a
vast German colony. The entire economic system of the country was
rapidly approaching the colonial type. And to these economic results
one should add the political.
It is fair to assume that at the outset the main motive of this
industrial invasion was the quest of commercial profit. Subconsciously
political objects may have been vaguely present to the minds of these
pioneers, as indeed they have ever been to the various categories of
German emigrants in every land, European and other. But in the first
instance the creation of German industries in Russia was part of a
deliberate plan to elude the heavy tariffs on manufactured goods. It
has been aptly described by an Italian publicist[41] as legal
contraband, and it supplies us with a striking example of German
enterprise and tenacity. It attained its object fully. About
three-fourths of the textile and metallurgical production in the
Tsardom, the entire chemical industry, the breweries, 85 per cent. of
the electrical works and 70 per cent. of gas production were German.
And of the capital invested in private railways no less than
628,000,000 roubles belongs to Germans. Even Russian municipalities
were wont to apply to Germany for their loans, and of the first issues
of thirty-five Russian municipal loans no less than twenty-two were
raised in the Fatherland.
[41] Virginio Gayda.
The necessity of waging war against this potent enemy within the gates
intensified Russia's initial difficulties to an extent that can hardly
be realized abroad, and was a constant source of unexpected and
disconcerting obstacles. Some time before the opening of the war, a
feeling of restiveness, an impulse to throw off the German yoke, had
been gradually displaying itself in the Press, in commercial circles,
and in the Duma. These aspirations and strivings were focussed in the
firm resolve of the Russian Government, under M. Kokofftseff, to
refuse to renew the Treaty of Commerce which was enabling Germany to
flood the Empire with her manufactures and to extort a ruinous tribute
from the Russian nation. Two years more and the negotiations on this
burning topic would have been inaugurated, and there is little doubt
in my mind--there was none in the mind of the late Count Witte--that
the upshot of these conversations would have been a Russo-German war.
For there was no other less drastic way of freeing the people from the
domination of German technical industries and capital, and the
consequent absorption of native enterprise.
When diplomatic relations were broken off, and war was finally
declared, Germany was already the unavowed protectress of Russia. And
when people point, as they frequently do, to the war as the greatest
blunder ever committed by the Wilhelmstrasse since the Fatherland
became one and indivisible, I feel unable to see with them eye to eye.
Seemingly it was indeed an egregious mistake, but so obvious were the
probable consequences which made it appear so that even a German of
the Jingo type would have gladly avoided it had there not been another
and less obvious side to the problem. We are not to forget that in
Berlin it was perfectly well known that Russia was determined to
withdraw from her Teutonic neighbour the series of one-sided
privileges accorded to her by the then existing Treaty of Commerce,
and that this determination would have been persisted in, even at the
risk of war. And for war the year 1914 appeared to be far more
auspicious to the German than any subsequent date.
Handicapped by these foreign parasites who were systematically
deadening the force of its arm, the Russian nation stood its ground
and Germany drew the sword.
Improvisation--the worst possible form of energy in a war crisis--was
now the only resource left to the Tsar's Ministers. And the financial
problems had first of all to be faced. In this, as in other spheres,
the country was bound by and to Germany, so that the task may fairly
be characterized as one of the most arduous that was ever tackled by
the Finance Minister of any country--even if we include the
resourceful Calonne. And M. Bark, who had recently come into office,
was new not only to the work, but also to the politics of finance in
general. Happily, his predecessor, who, whatever his critics may
advance to the contrary, was one of the most careful stewards the
Empire has ever possessed, had accumulated in the Imperial Bank a gold
reserve of over 1,603,000,000 roubles, besides a deposit abroad of
140,720,000 roubles. Incidentally it may be noted that no other bank
in the world has ever disposed of such a vast gold reserve.
Although one of the richest countries in Europe, Russia's wealth is
still under the earth, and therefore merely potential. Her burden of
debt was heavy. For at the outbreak of the war the disturbing effects
of the Manchurian campaign and its domestic sequel, which had cost the
country 3,016,000,000 roubles, had not yet been wholly shaken off.
And, unlike her enemy, Russia had no special war fund to draw upon. As
the national industries were unable to furnish the necessary supplies
to the army, large orders had to be placed abroad and paid for in
gold. At the same moment Russia's export trade practically ceased, and
together with it the one means of appreciably easing the strain. The
issue of paper money in various forms was increased, loans were
raised, private capital was withdrawn from the country, various less
abundant sources of public revenue vanished, and the favourable
balance of trade dropped from 442,000,000 roubles to 85,500,000.
Germany, on the other hand, possessed her war fund, in addition to
which she had levied a property tax of a milliard marks a year before
the outbreak of hostilities; she further drew in enormous sums in gold
from circulation, and generally mobilized her finances systematically.
But Russia was compelled to improvise, to make bricks without straw.
Her war on a front of two thousand versts long had to be waged with
whatever materials happened to be available. Japan--who, I have little
doubt, will be found at the close of the great struggle to have
benefited largely by her pains--exerted herself to provide munitions
for her new friend and ally. The United States, Great Britain and
France also contributed their quota. For many of these orders placed
abroad gold had to be exported, and as Russia has no other natural way
of importing gold but by selling corn, which there were no means of
transporting, a sensible depreciation of the rouble resulted. Great
Britain and France have also had to make heavy purchases abroad for
their military needs, but these two countries can still export wares
extensively and keep the payments in gold within certain limits. Even
Italy receives a noteworthy part of her annual revenue in the shape of
emigrants' remittances from abroad. But once Russia's gates were
closed and her corn had to remain in the granaries, elevators, or at
railway stations, the shortage in her revenue became absolute. During
the first three months of the year 1915 the value of Russian exports
over the Finnish frontier and the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea was
only 23,000,000 roubles, showing a falling off of about 93 per cent.,
as compared with the worth of the produce exported during the
corresponding three months of the preceding year.
It is a curious fact that part of this reduced trade continued to be
carried on with Germany for months after the war had begun. A Russian
publicist has remarked that at the opening of the campaign the voice
of the nation was heard saying: "Corn we have in plenty, and
vegetables and salt. It is we who feed Europe. Germany will therefore
starve without our corn. Our armies may retreat, but our corn will go
with them; and the more the Germans advance into Russia, the further
they are away from their bread." And in this the average Russian saw a
pledge of victory. But before six months had lapsed, the everyday man
grew indignant. For he learned that his corn was being conveyed
through Finland and Sweden into Germany, and in such vast quantities
as had never before been heard of. Here is a street scene illustrative
of this traffic and the feelings it aroused. A long string of carts
laden with flour blocks in one of the Petrograd streets leading to a
bridge over the Neva; a General walking with his wife stops one of the
drivers and asks: "Wherever are you taking the flour to?" "Where do
you suppose? Sure we're taking it to the Germans. We have to feed the
creatures. They are a bit faint." "There you see!" exclaimed the
General to his wife; "didn't I tell you? And every morning without
fail the same long line of carts blocks the streets while our corn is
being taken to the Germans!"[42] It is to be feared that this commerce
has not yet wholly ceased. For the Russians, like ourselves, are
considerate of the Germans.
[42] Cf. _Novoye Vremya_, February 24, 1915.
That that story of trading with the enemy is no idle anecdote is
evident from the circumstance, based on official Russian statistics,
that during ten months from August to May, while the war was being
waged relentlessly between the two empires, Russia bought from Germany
no less than 36,000,000 roubles' worth of manufactures. How much the
Central Empires purchased from Russia, I am unable to say. That
commerce is one of the almost inevitable consequences of improvisation
and one of the most sinister. Some months after the outbreak of the
war the Imperial Government levied a duty of a hundred per cent. on
all commodities coming from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. That
was assumed to be a prohibitive tariff. But it failed to keep out
imports from the Fatherland. In the one month of April 1915, Germany
sent 3,000,000 roubles' worth of manufactured goods into Russia, and
in May 2,500,000 roubles' worth. And the Allied Press was then
descanting on the stagnation in German trade and the starvation of the
German people. The explanation of this anomaly lies in the unforeseen
and enormous scarcity and rise of prices in the home markets. Some
metal wares--for instance, various kinds of instruments and of wire
appliances, etc.--are not to be had in Russia for love or money,
consequently a hundred per cent. duty is but a heavy tax paid by the
consumer, not an effective prohibition.[43] Since then, I am assured,
the Government has adopted stringent measures which some people
believe to have put an end to that form of trading with the enemy.
[43] Cf. _Utro Rossiyi_, August 28, 1915.
It is hard for foreigners to realize the plight to which Russia has
been reduced by the closing of her gates. As the Nile waters were the
source of Egypt's prosperity, so the abundant Russian harvests
constitute the life-giving ichor which flows in the veins of the
Russian nation. Without superfluous corn for exportation, the State
would be unable to meet its obligations, maintain its solvency, or
provide the motive power of progress. The exportation of agricultural
produce was the fountain head not only of Russia's material
well-being, but of her moral and cultural evolution: everything, in a
word, was dependent upon plentiful harvests and extensive sales of
cereals abroad. And, suddenly, the gates were closed, the corn was
stored, and the nation left without its revenue. Nobody but a Russian,
or one who has lived long in the country, can realize fully all that
this tremendous blow connotes. Parenthetically, it may be remarked
that it adds a motive, and one of the most potent, to those which
inspire the heroic sacrifices of the people, quickening the flame of
devotion to their Allied cause. Russia is now literally fighting for
her own liberty, for escape from the iron circle that shuts her off
from the sea, and isolates her from the western world in which it is
her ambition and her mission to play a helpful part.
One needs no further explanation why the Russian Government put
pressure upon M. Delcassé and Sir Edward Grey to open the Dardanelles
route for the Russian corn. Neither is it to be wondered at that while
the Allied Forces in Gallipoli were still grappling with the Turks,
the Tsar's Ministers should have thrust into the foreground the
question of Constantinople and the Straits, and insisted upon an
immediate pragmatic settlement. True, that was not statesmanship; it
was anything but political wisdom; but at any rate it was human on the
part of all concerned. If this Titanic struggle, in which Russia is
perhaps the greatest sufferer, is to bring her any palpable and
enduring advantage, this, it was urged, can take but one form--freedom
from the preposterous restraints that bar her way to the sea, and
through the sea to the outside world. This and other pleas were
powerful; but for this very reason and for the purpose of realizing
her natural striving I personally would have temporarily negatived the
Russian proposal and left nothing undone to ensure its withdrawal. For
if I were asked to point to the efficient cause of the Allies' present
lamentable plight in the Near East, I should single out this premature
arrangement and its necessary consequences. For Roumania and Bulgaria
were at the moment as bitterly opposed to Russia's overlordship in the
Dardanelles and her possession of Constantinople as were France and
Great Britain in the days of yore. And they embodied their opposition
in acts.
CHAPTER VI
THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE ENTENTE
One of the most amazing phenomena of Entente statesmanship during the
present European struggle, is the offhand readiness with which the
Governments of France and Great Britain, yielding to abstract
reasoning founded upon gratuitous assumptions, not only reversed the
policy of centuries but committed themselves to a wholly new departure
which was certain to raise up enemies to the Entente, to render its
task immeasurably more arduous, and to lessen its means of achieving
success. However well Russia deserved of her allies, however
unquestionable her claim to the city of Constantine, no less suitable
a moment could have been selected to press that claim than the spring
of 1915. The only evidence we possess that the British statesmen
primarily responsible for this capital blunder were conscious of the
fateful character of this commitment, is the extreme care they took to
have their responsibility shared by the members of the Opposition,
which at that time was not represented in the Cabinet. But even with
this indication before us, we cannot believe that even now this
premature solution of a secular problem on lines suggested by
transient episodes of a military campaign, has struck the responsible
statesmen in proportion to its specific weight, the depth of its
importance, and the nature of its consequences. To take but one of
these, we find that towards the end of the second year of the
campaign, Turkey is one of the two key-positions of the international
situation. To conclude a separate peace with that Power is become a
pressing, and would also be a feasible, task were it not that this
earmarking of Constantinople for Russia constitutes an impassable
barrier. No Turkish Cabinet would or could conclude a separate peace
and strike up friendship with the nations that are making ready to
deprive the Caliph of his capital. It would be a mistake, however, to
assume that this premature allotment of Constantinople to Russia is
the only obstacle to the conclusion of a separate peace with Turkey.
There are also hindrances of a military nature which would have to be
displaced before any decisive move in this direction could be expected
of the young Turks.
But it cannot be gainsaid that the most formidable obstacle is that.
Neither can it be questioned that that premature arrangement will, if
the Allies emerge victorious from the ordeal, thrust into the
foreground of practical politics a whole group of problems the most
delicate and dangerous that were ever yet tackled by the inadequately
equipped diplomacy of the Allied Governments. It is then that the
Entente Powers will fully realize the deluge to which they made such
haste to open the sluice-gates in the spring of 1915. And the only way
practicable out of this blind alley would be the spontaneous
abandonment by the Russian Government of the right it possesses, which
however the Allies will certainly never call in question. Whether the
Tsar's Government believes such a sacrifice necessary, and whether,
if they did, they could summon up the courage requisite to make it,
are questions which Russia's loyal allies have neither the right nor
the wish to raise. We will carry out our obligations in the letter and
the spirit. If the Russian people, in the person of their responsible
organ, should renounce for the moment the claims which we have
formally recognized and undertaken to enforce, this decision will have
been come to spontaneously and without pressure or advice from their
allies.
The extent to which the Teuton had his own way among the easy-going
Russian people is hardly to be realized. It would be certainly
inexplicable in an empire governed on national lines and conscious of
its mission. For unlimited pliancy was the quality which German
importunity evoked on the part of the highest authorities. One of many
examples is worth recording. Among all industrial enterprises the
Russian Government is most sensitive about that of high explosives.
The manufacture of these they had always rigorously reserved for their
own people, on obvious grounds. Well, the moment the Germans resolved
to break down this barrier, they found the means to do it despite the
objection raised by the Russian Press that it would be dangerous to
confide the production of high explosives to foreigners and
superlatively dangerous to confide it to prospective enemies. The
prospective enemy carried the point, and the manufacture of high
explosives was handed over to a German company, which built works for
the purpose near the Russian capital, and had its headquarters and
board of directors in Berlin![44]
[44] _Novoye Vremya_, June 24, 1915.
As in Italy, so in the Tsardom, one of the principal levers of Teuton
interpenetration was the regulation of the national trade and
industry. That is to say, these were allowed to subsist and thrive up
to, but not beyond, the point at which they were useful as adjuncts of
German enterprise. And the regulators were principally two: the Treaty
of Commerce extorted from the Tsar's Government during the
embarrassments caused by the Manchurian campaign, and the German
banks, which in the empire paraded as Russian, just as in Italy they
were decked as Italian. Many of those financial institutions were but
branches of German houses, and their methods were identical with those
of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment
offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while
discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant. And as
Italian money and Italian institutions were employed as instruments of
German interpenetration in foreign countries,[45] so Russian funds and
banks were used as helps to German interpenetration in Belgium and
other lands.
[45] For example, the Banca Franco-Italiana in Brazil.
A noteworthy instance of the ingenuity with which this intricate
mechanism was worked came to light shortly before the outbreak of the
war. In Brussels there was a branch of the Petrograd International
Bank which purported to be a purely Russian concern. But once the
Kaiser had sent his ultimatum to the Tsar's Government, the Russian
mask was doffed by the Brussels agency, which forthwith appeared in
its true colours as a potent instrument of germanization in Belgium.
There was found to be almost nothing Russian about the bank but the
name. The staff, the language spoken, the methods of business, the
political sympathies, the aims of the operations were all German. Out
of the forty-three permanent members of the staff, thirty were German
subjects, six Austrians, two German-Swiss, two Belgians, one was a
Dutchman, one Turk, and there was a solitary Russian. The moment Count
Berchtold presented his ultimatum to Serbia this "Russian" bank
refused to change any Russian banknotes on any terms and let it be
understood that they were valueless. A panic on the Belgian market was
the immediate consequence. Russian travellers had to deposit their
jewellery in pawn and pay exorbitant rates of interest on loans. The
bank itself practised a kind of usury, and advanced only sixty per
cent. of the face value of notes issued by the Imperial Bank of
Russia. When the Belgian Government, after the declaration of war,
began to tackle German espionage, this "Russian" bank was found to be
one of the strongholds of the military spies. Certain of the employees
were permanent agents of the German Military Attaché, and were at the
same time inscribed as members of the staff of the Deutsche Bank of
Berlin.
All those well-thought-out and successfully executed schemes may bear
in upon the British people some notion of what is meant by German
organization and co-ordination, and may also help them to gauge the
chances of success, military, diplomatic and economic, on which the
Allies, with their easy-going ways, their hope of somehow "blundering
through," and their lack of combination and of plan--can rely when
pitted against a mighty organism, disposing of the most redoubtable
forces ever created by human science and skill, directed by a single
mind, and served with ascetic self-abnegation and religious ardour by
over a hundred million people. The courage and faith of the Allies in
gazing for years upon this portentous engine of destruction without
making suitable provision for the day when it would be turned against
themselves, will fill future generations with amazement.
No bare enumeration of details can convey an adequate idea of the
vastness, compactness and potency of the German organization which
kept the Russian Colossus partially paralysed at home, while the
Kaiser's armies were dealing it stunning blows on the battlefield. It
is a revelation which will be followed by a new birth of the whole
political world. The German colonists, the wandering German commercial
travellers who acted as political spies, the various banks,
joint-stock companies, religious sects, journals, reviews, schools,
clubs, Lutheran pastors, and other Teuton agents, were but so many
wheels and springs of the mighty machine which was set in motion and
kept working by the political leaders in Berlin. For all these firms
and enterprises and individuals from the Fatherland scattered over the
length and breadth of the Tsardom were welded together in one vast
organism by far-seeing politicians who canalized every important
current of the nation's life and imparted to it the direction which
German interests required. No enterprise was too vast, no detail too
trivial, for the attention of these moulders of Germany's destinies.
All those activities, commercial, financial, industrial,
journalistic, religious, political, the German mind combined into a
single idea, the co-ordinate parts of which were studied and
regulated, not by party chiefs, but by qualified experts, who,
although specialists, subjected them to organic treatment. In this
respect the German may be likened to a massive sombre figure who,
surrounded by a crowd of sprightly shadowy nobodies, discoursing with
easy frivolity on grave subjects, is engrossed with the task of
destroying a great part of the frame-work of the world in order to
rebuild it after his own plan. Unfortunately the extraordinary
enlargement of interest which marks the latter-day political
conceptions, and inspires the fateful action of Germany's acknowledged
leaders, breeds in the allied peoples not so much a stern resolve to
tame that revolutionary nation at all costs, as a sentimental longing
for the return of the idyllic past, and an illusive hope that by dint
of mild Christian charity it may yet be brought back.
CHAPTER VII
TEUTON POLITICS
It is this Teutonic power of looking far ahead, this profundity of
vision, this mingled comprehensiveness and concentration, and the
marked success with which these qualities have hitherto been exercised
to the lasting detriment of the Entente nations which looked on and
naïvely applauded, that fill the thoughtful student with misgivings
about the future. True, it may not be too late for effective counter
measures. But two conditions are manifestly essential to the
successful application of any remedy: first, that its necessity should
be felt and realized; and, second, that the scrupulosity which at
present hesitates to apply drastic measures should yield to higher
considerations than those of individual delicacy of sentiment and
over-refined humanitarianism. When an individual abuses laws and
restraints which bind his fellow-men, in order to inflict a deadly
injury on them, it is meet that they should free themselves from those
checks in their dealings with him. For example, it may be
theoretically wrong, after the conclusion of the present struggle, for
our people to bear such a grudge against the individual German as
would exclude him from communion and intercourse with the nations of
the Entente. And this principle would seem to apply with greater force
to those Germans who might be willing to abandon their nationality
and identify their aims, interests and strivings with those of the
nation in which they would fain become incorporated. But when we
reflect that almost every German, whatever his calling, how profound
soever his debt of gratitude to a foreign people, considers himself
first and always a member of his own country, works for its interests
to the detriment of all others, and does not scruple to violate moral
laws and social traditions in order to betray his new friends, we may
well ask in virtue of what precept we should abstain from ostracizing
him from the British Empire. His second nationality is so often a mere
mask to enable him to perpetrate black treason, and it is so openly
thus regarded by his own Government, which upholds and solemnly
sanctions the principle, that it would be inexplicable folly on the
part of the British nation to aid and abet its enemies by admitting
them to the freedom of the community without taking effective
precautions against treason.
And yet there is a large body of men in this country, as in France and
Italy, who condemn the demand for these precautions as un-Christian
and impolitic. Such laxness is the soil in which thrives the upas tree
whose shade has so long darkened the organs of our empire and now
threatens to blight the whole organism.
An all-important feature in the controversy which has arisen over the
naturalization of German subjects is the utterly amoral view of it
which underlies the attitude of the Kaiser's Government. According to
these authorities, whose utterances and acts are decisive and final, a
German, unlike every other subject, may swear allegiance to two
states, of which one is his Fatherland, without being bound by his
oath to the other. Various reasons, including material interests, may,
it is argued, make it desirable that he should acquire citizenship in
a foreign land; and the Kaiser's Government, for the good of the
empire, recognizes this necessity and facilitates the process by a
law. This law, which was enacted in July 1913, authorizes the born
German subject, having first made known his intention and motive, to
swear allegiance to a foreign state without forfeiting, or intending
to forfeit, the rights or escaping from the duties which flow from his
German citizenship. Now this is a privilege which not even the Pope
has ever claimed the faculty of according.
From the point of view of international law this double naturalization
is inadmissible. Every individual in the community of nations is the
subject of a certain state, and only of one, and whenever the
interests of that state run counter to those of any other, he is bound
legally as well as morally to promote the former to the best of his
ability and means. The Teuton doctrine and practice are that Germans
may insinuate themselves into a country, and in the guise of loyal
citizens become conversant with its secrets, and then use them to its
hurt. In the light of this law, which was a custom long before it
became a statute, the number of Germans naturalized in various
countries grew amazingly during the past fifteen years. In France, for
example, where there were only 38,000 foreigners naturalized in the
year 1896 and 65,000 in 1901, the figure reached 90,000 in 1906 and
120,000 five years later. And of these, four-fifths were Germans and
Austrians. Many Germans first became Swiss or British subjects in
order the more easily to acquire the rights of Frenchmen. One in
particular, named Wilhelm Hellpern, first became a Belgian, then as
Willy Hellpern a British subject, and finally, with a view to
obtaining a place on the Board of the Société Française de l'Industrie
Chimique, applied for and received naturalization in France. This
"Willy" Hellpern was a representative of the Central Gesellschaft für
chemische Industrie.[46]
[46] Cf. _Hors du Joug allemand_, par Léon Daudet.
When war was declared in 1914 hundreds of Germans applied for papers
of naturalization in Switzerland, and obtained them from various
little Swiss communes which were in sore want of funds. Spies eager to
place their machinations under the protection of Swiss citizenship
found smooth ways to the desired goal. In the single canton of Zurich
demands for naturalization rose from 260 during the nine months ending
in October 1913,[47] to 732 in the corresponding nine months of 1915.
Several cases of fraud were discovered during this rapid process of
transforming foreign into Swiss citizens: one of the most salient
being that of Friedrich Wilhelm Frank, a German who had taken out his
naturalization papers in England and then decided to shake off his
acquired British citizenship for that of the Helvetian Republic. As
Frank had not been resident in Switzerland during the two years
required by the law of that country he applied and paid for a false
certificate of residence, and in this way achieved his object. But the
trick was finally discovered and the naturalization cancelled.
[47] The number for the entire year was 350.
We may protest as vigorously as we will against this infamous
troth-mongering which is destructive of international relations, and
indirectly of social intercourse, but no responsible government can
afford to ignore the necessity of guarding against its consequences.
For it is no ephemeral manifestation of temperament, nor the passing
whim of a political party or a class. The law of double citizenship,
coupled with a plenary indulgence for treason and perjury in the cause
of the Fatherland, is but the solemn consecration of a principle which
was long practised and is warmly approved by the entire German people.
The Berlin Government publicly invoked it during the latter half of
the year 1915, under circumstances which remove doubts on this score.
On one and the same day in August that year all German official and
non-official journals published a notice, which ran as follows: "It is
alleged that in neutral countries, and particularly in the United
States of America, men of German _extraction_" (the word _citizenship_
is not used, but _extraction_), "are employed as workmen, engineers or
in other capacities in the production of war munitions for our
enemies. All those who thus reinforce the military strength of our
foes, thereby make the prosecution of the war more difficult for
Germany, and not only burden themselves with a heavy load of moral
turpitude, but also expose themselves--and many of them are seemingly
unaware of this--to the operation of the German laws which punish high
treason."
In other words, subjects of, say the American Republic, who were born
there of German parents or grandparents and never acknowledged any
other government nor possessed the citizenship of any other country,
become guilty of high treason if they dare to avail themselves of the
plenitude of the rights which that citizenship confers. They may not
work for firms which supply the Allies because their fathers, or it
may be only their grandfathers, happened to be Germans. The moral
duties of German subjects still lie heavy on them, and they must
execute the Kaiser's will to-day on pain of being dealt with as
traitors to the Fatherland.
Monstrous principles and revolting procedure of this kind are
calculated to kindle a blaze of indignation in people who realize
their effects and set value on the boons of civilization or
Christianity. They are among the many new ideas which Kultur has
contributed to the stock of weapons destructive of modern society. One
might term them the asphyxiating gases of German international
politics. In keeping with these teachings and practices were the theft
of foreign passports by the German Government which handed them over
to spies, as in the case of Lody, who was executed in London in the
early part of the war. Thus the binding force of moral and of human
law is dissolved whenever it clashes with German national, military,
or commercial interests. This dogma lies at the roots of Kultur.
By the time war was declared, Germany had stretched forth her
tentacles into various lands and was draining the life-juices of many
peoples. Her footing in Italy, Russia, Belgium and France was firm.
Observant students of international politics fancied they could
determine the approximate date when, if the then rate of progress were
maintained, Germany's overlordship over Europe would be definitely
established and all armed conflicts on the Continent become
thenceforth meaningless. They were all the more puzzled at what they
set down as the egregious folly of jeopardizing the precious fruits of
forty years' well-sustained labours by precipitating a tremendous
conflict of doubtful issue. But besides the sudden temptation to
utilize a conjuncture of exceptionally favourable promise, the leaders
of the Teutonic nations felt moved to appeal to arms by certain slow,
but steady, currents which threatened to change the situation to
Germany's detriment in the space of another few years.
With the remoter causes of the Kaiser's fatal resolve, we are not now
concerned. It may suffice to know that they were numerous and that the
trend of their operation had been for a few months unmistakable. Time,
which was working wonders for the Teuton in one direction, was raising
up redoubtable enemies against him in another. For one thing Russia
was becoming transfigured. The dry bones of the nation which the
Germans often declared was good only as ethnic manure had had life and
a soul breathed into them by the great agrarian reform of which the
credit belongs to Witte and Stolypin. The latter statesman in a series
of conversations had in 1906 opened his mind to me on the subject, and
frankly avowed that the Government, having gone astray in its estimate
of the Russian peasants who turned out to be revolutionary and
anarchistic, was resolved to render them conservative by giving them
land and an interest in the maintenance of law and order. That, he
informed me, was the aim and origin of the agrarian law, and I
expounded the theory, its working and its anticipated consequences,
in a series of articles published at the time.[48]
[48] In the _Daily Telegraph_.
Down to the year 1861 the Russian serfs had been mostly bound to the
soil. They were emancipated by Alexander II., who ordered each
landowner to make over to the serfs as much of his landed property as
was being actually cultivated by these. Wherever this amount seemed
too extensive for the support of a family it was whittled down and the
residue left with the landlord. Each of the various lots thus
expropriated was given not to an individual, nor to a family, but to
the village community. Each field was cut into as many strips as there
were farms, and each farm had the use of one. Every year the peasants
had to pay a certain sum to the landlord until the land was wholly
redeemed, and liability for these payments, like the possession of the
land, was common. Hence the drunkards and the lazy paid little or
nothing. It was the community which decided when the sowing and when
the reaping should take place. The results of this system were
baneful. And little by little the more enterprising peasants who had
no motive to improve the value of the land which they were allowed for
a time to cultivate, migrated to the towns and joined the growing army
of working men.
How long this state of things would have continued, if these immediate
consequences had formed the only objection to it, is uncertain. But
the Revolution of 1905-6 rendered it wholly untenable. The peasantry,
on whom the Tsar and the Government counted for support, readily
followed the lead of every anarchist and revolutionary who dangled the
promise of free land before their eyes, and gutted or burned the
manors of the landlords. With no conception of the sacredness, nor,
indeed, of the nature of property, they seized what they could by
force, and were gravely disappointed when it was re-taken from them by
law. Stolypin's scheme, as he himself propounded it to me, was to
enable the peasant to acquire the land he tilled, and not merely the
scattered strips, but a compact farm capable of supporting himself and
his family. And the system of collective liability for payments to the
State was abolished, together with that of collective land-ownership.
This was in truth a genial reform, and the business-like way in which
it was carried out did credit to the late Minister and the people.
Even now it is far from completed, but already there are about six
million peasant farms cut out and allotted. In European Russia
approximately as many more remain to be apportioned. The effects of
this innovation were rapid and encouraging. The value of the land rose
enormously in consequence of the intenser culture and the increased
yield. Under the old arrangement Russia's harvest of cereals was
barely enough to feed the population inadequately, to supply seed and
to enable a limited amount of produce to be exported. And as this
limited amount was in practice often exceeded, the food supply of the
peasantry was cut down in proportion. At present all this has changed
for the better and changed to a greater extent than the outside world
realizes. One of the consequences of this betterment, coupled with the
decrease of drunkenness, is the greater purchasing power of the
peasant and the growth of his requirements. So beneficial and evident
were the effects of this reform, that some patriotic Russians gladly
saw their Government go to the very extreme of pliancy towards Germany
rather than run the risk of a war and the danger of a break in this
remarkable career of national regeneration. The process was noted and
gauged by the Germans, who awakened to the fact that, in a few years
more, the legend of Ilya Murometz would be exemplified in latter-day
Russia, and a Colossus arise among the nations, which would hinder the
tide of Teutondom from inundating Europe for all time.
Other considerations of a more pressing character weighed with the
statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse, whose survey of the international
situation was, at any rate, comprehensive. Renascent Russia, for
example, was, as we saw, resolved to withdraw from the German Empire
the one-sided advantages accorded by the Commercial Treaty. And as
this question would in any case become acute within two years, that
date was one of the time-limits of the European war, and I ventured to
designate it as such to two of the most prominent statesmen of the
Entente in the month of March 1914. They both went so far as to say
that my anticipation was extremely probable.[49]
[49] Count Witte went farther and fixed the end of 1915 as
the date.
However this may be, Germany, who works out her destinies by
preventive wars, and therefore never leaves the initiative to her
enemies or rivals, precipitated a conflict which would, she believed,
break out in any case within a couple of years, and for which no more
auspicious moment could be chosen than the end of July 1914, after the
Kiel Canal had been made navigable for her largest battleships and
the harvest ingathered.
The year and month of the historic event had been fixed by her leaders
a considerable time in advance, as we now know from incontrovertible
evidence. So, too, had the choice of method, which was in harmony with
the usual formula, that Germany is never the apparent aggressor, and
that it is her enemies who must be made to appear the partisans of
preventive war.
The principle was thus laid down by Bismarck when he altered King
Wilhelm's historic telegram from Ems: "Success essentially depends
upon the impression which the genesis of the war makes on ourselves
and others. It is important that we should be the party attacked."[50]
[50] _Bismarck: His Reflections and Reminiscences._
Finally, the very day was determined--and almost on the very eve it
was changed to the following day.
In connection with the date and the method I have a curious tale to
unfold which has never yet been recounted in western Europe. The
incident in some respects bears an unmistakable resemblance to the
story of Bismarck's forgery of the Ems telegram and is well worth
relating[51] and remembering. The main features are as follows.
[51] My authority for the story is the principal observer,
who was also an actor in a part of this subsidiary little
drama: A. I. Markoff, who at that time represented the
semi-official Russian Telegraph Agency, as its head
correspondent in Berlin. He himself told me the story in
Stockholm and authorized me to make it known.
CHAPTER VIII
A MACHIAVELLIAN TRICK BY WHICH RUSSIA'S HAND WAS FORCED
The world is now aware, although it can hardly be said to realize, how
closely journalism approaches to being a recognized organ of the
Imperial German Government. One of the most influential of the Berlin
journals during the past ten years has been the _Lokal-Anzeiger_. This
paper was founded by Herr Scherl, one of those clever enterprising
business men who have been so numerous, active and successful in the
Fatherland during the past quarter of a century. His journal was a
purely business concern, carried on congruously with the law of supply
and demand and keeping pace with the shifting requirements of the
public and the strongest currents in the Government. It had long
enjoyed the reputation of being a semi-official organ, and it was Herr
Scherl's ambition that it should be formally promoted to that rank. In
February 1914 he sold the paper to a group of four persons, two of
whom were Herr Schorlmeyer and Count T. Winckler, and all four were
members of the political party which looked for light and leading to
the Crown Prince and his military environment. Thus the
_Lokal-Anzeiger_ became the organ of the progressive military party,
which was exerting itself to the utmost to force the pace of the
Government towards the one consummation from which the realization of
Germany's dream of world-power was confidently expected. Among the
privileges accorded to the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ from the date of its
purchase for the behoof of the Crown Prince onward, was that of
publishing official military news before all other papers, and not
later even than the _Militär-Wochenblatt_. Consequently, it thus
became the most trustworthy source of military news in the Empire.
This fact is worth bearing in mind, for the sake of the light which it
diffuses on what follows.
War being foreseen and arranged for, much careful thought was bestowed
on the staging of the last act of the diplomatic drama in such a way
as to create abroad an impression favourable to Germany. The scheme
finally hit upon was simple. Russia was to be confronted with a
dilemma which would force her into an attitude that would stir
misgivings even in her friends and drive a wedge between her and her
ally or else would involve her complete withdrawal from the Balkans.
The latter alternative would have contented Germany for the moment,
who would then have dispensed with a breach of the peace. For it would
have enabled the two Central Empires to weld together the Balkan
States and Turkey in a powerful federation under their joint
protectorate, and would not only have simplified Germany's remaining
task, but have supplied her with adequate means of accomplishing it
against Russia and France combined. Great Britain's neutrality was
postulated as a matter of course.
Congruously with this plan, Russia was from the very outset declared
to be the Power on which alone depended the outcome of the crisis.
Upon her decision hung peace and war. On July 24, telegraphing from
Vienna, I announced this on the highest authority,[52] with a degree
of force and clearness which left no room for doubt as to the aims,
intentions and preliminary accords of the two Central Empires. I
stated that if in the course of the Austro-Serbian quarrel Russia were
to mobilize, Germany would at once answer by general mobilization and
war. For there will, then, I added, be no demobilization but an armed
conflict. Before making that grave announcement, I had had convincing
assurances and proofs that I was setting forth an absolute and
irrevocable decision arrived at by the Central Empires on grounds
wholly alien to the interests and issues which were then engaging the
Austrian and Serbian Governments, and that a bellicose mood had gained
a firm hold on the minds of the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna. Had
that deliberate statement been subjected to adequate instead of the
ordinary partial tests, the full significance of the crisis would have
been realized by the Governments of the Entente.
[52] On 24th July I received this official information. It
was published on Monday, 27th.
In the course of the negotiations which were then hastily improvised,
Germany, who strove hard to gain credit for the rôle of disinterested
peacemaker, gradually revealed herself as the chief protagonist,
whereas Austria was little more than a pawn in the game. Disguising
her eagerness to provoke one of the two desired solutions, Russia's
abandonment of Serbia or her declaration of war, Germany succeeded in
misleading the Governments of France and Britain as to her real
intentions.
While M. Poincaré was in the Russian capital proposing toasts and
drawing roseate forecasts of the future, the German Ambassador in
Paris, von Schön, was constantly in attendance at the Quai d'Orsay,
endeavouring to impress on the minds of the Acting Minister and the
permanent officials there, the sincerity of the Kaiser's eagerness for
peace and the growing danger of Russia's aggressiveness. "You and we,"
he kept saying, "are the only Continental Governments which are aware
of the magnitude of the issues and the imminence of the danger. You
and we perceive the utter folly, the sheer criminality, of plunging
Europe in the horrors of a sanguinary war for the sake of a petty
state governed by regicides and assassins. What interests have you or
we to risk the welfare of our respective nations for the behoof of the
Serbian military party whose dreams of greatness border on mania? No,
it behoves us both to do all that lies in us to calm Russia's passion
and induce her to listen to the promptings of reason and
self-interest. You, with the powerful influence which your friendship
and alliance impart to your counsels, and we by dint of example, ought
to succeed in averting this awful peril." In this tone, Herr von Schön
delivered his daily exhortations and found some willing listeners. His
specious pleading made a deep and favourable impression, and would
perhaps have led to representations by the French Government
calculated to wound the susceptibilities and perhaps estrange the
sympathies of France's ally at the most critical hour of the alliance,
had it not been for the presence at the Foreign Office of a man whose
eye was sure and whose measurement of forces, political and personal,
was accurate. That man was M. Berthelot. Gauging aright this
insidious appeal to the centrifugal forces of the political mind, he
turned a deaf ear to von Schön's suasive efforts and kept the ship of
state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the
Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately
reinforced and a formidable, because crafty, attack repulsed.
But besides attack, the Germans had also a problem of defence to
engage their attention. And, curiously enough, it appears to have been
particularly knotty in Austria. At that moment Count Berchtold was
Minister of Foreign Affairs in name, but Count Tisza, the Hungarian
Premier, was the man who thought, planned and acted for the Habsburg
Monarchy. He it was who had drawn up the ultimatum to Serbia and made
all requisite arrangements for co-operation with Germany. He was
backed by the Chief of the General Staff, Konrad von Hoetzendorff,
whose eagerness to provide an opportunity for displaying the martial
qualities of the army was proverbial. But there were others in high
places there who had no wish to see the Dual Monarchy drawn into a
European war, and who would gladly have come to an agreement with
Russia on the basis of such a compromise as Serbia's reply to the
ultimatum promised to afford. Whether, as seems very probable, this
current bade fair to gain the upper hand, it is still too soon to
determine with finality. There are certainly many indications that
this was one of the dangers apprehended in Berlin. Russia's moderation
was another. And the interplay of the two might, had Germany held
aloof, have led to a compromise. For this reason Germany did not stand
aloof.
The date fixed for the German mobilization was July 31. The evidence
for this is to be found in the date printed on the official order
which was posted up in the streets of Berlin, but was crossed out and
replaced by the words "1st of August," in writing, as there was no
time to reprint the text. It had been expected in Berlin that Russia
would have taken a decision by July 30, either mobilizing or knuckling
down. Neither course, however, had been adopted. Thereupon Germany
became nervous and went to work in the following way.
On Thursday, July 30, at 2.25 p.m. a number of newspaper boys appeared
in the streets of Berlin adjoining the Unter den Linden and called out
lustily: "_Lokal-Anzeiger_ Supplement. Grave News. Mobilization
ordered throughout the Empire." Windows were thrown wide open and
stentorian voices called for the Supplement. The boys were surrounded
by eager groups, who bought up the stock of papers and then eagerly
discussed the event that was about to change and probably to end the
lives of many of the readers. It does not appear that the Supplement
was sold anywhere outside that circumscribed district. Now in that
part of the town was situated Wolff's Press Bureau, where the official
representatives of Havas and the Russian Telegraphic Agency sat and
worked.
The correspondent of the latter agency, having read the announcement
of the _Lokal-Anzeiger_, which was definitive and admitted of no
doubt, at once telephoned the news to his Ambassador, M. Zverbeieff.
During the conversation that ensued the correspondent was requested by
the officials of the telephone to speak in German, not in Russian.
This was an unusual procedure. The Ambassador could hardly credit the
tidings, so utterly were they at variance with the information which
he possessed. He requested the correspondent to repeat the contents of
the announcement, and then inquired: "Can I, in your opinion,
telegraph it to the Foreign Office?" The answer being an emphatic
affirmative, the Ambassador despatched a message in cypher to this
effect to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. For there could be
no doubt about the accuracy of information thus deliberately given to
the public by the journal which possessed a monopoly of military news
and was the organ of the Crown Prince. The Russian correspondent also
forwarded a telegram to the Telegraphic Agency in Petrograd
communicating the fateful tidings.
Within half an hour the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs telephoned
to Wolff's Bureau to the effect that the report about the mobilization
order was not in harmony with fact, and it also summoned the
_Lokal-Anzeiger_ to issue a contradiction of the news on its own
account. This was duly done, and so rapidly that the second Supplement
was issued at about 3 p.m. The explanation given by the newspaper
staff was that they were expecting an order for general mobilization
and had prepared a special Supplement announcing it. This Supplement
was unfortunately left where the vendors saw it, and thinking that it
was meant for circulation seized on all the copies they could find,
rushed into the streets and sold them. On many grounds, however, this
account is unsatisfactory. Copies of a newspaper supplement containing
such momentous news are not usually left where they can be found,
removed and sold by mere street vendors. Moreover, the date, July 30,
was printed on the supplement, so that it was evidently meant to be
issued, as a matter of fact it was circulated only in a very limited
number of copies and in the streets around Wolff's Bureau, where it
was certain to produce the desired effect.
Half an hour later the correspondent of the Russian Agency received a
request to call at the General Telegraph Office at once. On his
arrival he was asked to withdraw his two telegrams which the Censor
refused to transmit. To his plea that so far as he knew there was no
censorship in Germany he received the reply that it had just been
instituted and now declined to pass his telegrams. "In that case," he
said, "my consent is of no importance, seeing that the matter is
already decided." Finally, he asked to have his messages returned to
him, but they would consent only to his reading, not to his retaining,
them.
The Russian Ambassador also despatched an urgent _message en clair_ to
his Government embodying the contradiction communicated by the
Wilhelmstrasse.
Now, the significant circumstance is that the Ambassador's first
telegram stating that general mobilization had been officially ordered
throughout the German Empire was forwarded with speed and accuracy and
reached the Russian Foreign Minister without delay. And this news was
communicated to the Tsar, who by way of counter-measure issued the
order to mobilize the forces of the Russian Empire. But the
Ambassador's second telegram was held back several hours and did not
reach its destination until the mischief was irremediable. That
curious incident is of a piece with the Bismarck's Ems telegram.
It is by such devices that the German Government is wont to launch
into war. The mentality whence they spring cannot be discarded in a
year or a generation, nor will any Peace Treaty, however ingeniously
worded, prevent recourse being had to them in the future. For this,
among other reasons, more trustworthy guarantees than scraps of paper
must be sought and found.
CHAPTER IX
GERMAN PROPAGANDA IN SCANDINAVIA
The same breadth of vision and efficacy of treatment were similarly
rewarded in the Scandinavian countries, where German propaganda, ever
resourceful and many-sided, was facilitated by kinship of race,
language, folklore and literature. Of the three kingdoms Sweden, the
strongest, was also the most impressible owing to the further bond of
fellowship supplied by a common object of distrust--the Russian
empire. Suspicion and dislike of the Tsardom had been long and
successfully inculcated by the German Press, from which Sweden
received her supply of daily news, and also, as is usual in such
cases, by prominent natives who, in obedience to motives to which
history is indifferent, employed their influence to spread suspicion.
Sven Hedin rendered invaluable services in this way to the Kaiser and
the Fatherland, throwing the glamour of his name over a movement of
which the ultimate tendency was national suicide. Under the auspices
of a prussophile minority of Swedish politicians, a few of whom were
supposed to favour the establishment of an absolute monarchy like that
of Prussia, a clever campaign against the Tsardom was inaugurated.
Falsehoods were concocted, imaginary dangers conjured up and described
as real, and sinister Russian designs against the independence of
Sweden and Norway were invoked as motives for energetic action. In
vain the Tsar's Government protested its friendship for Sweden and
disproved the poisonous calumnies circulated by the Germans.
In the discovery and arrest of a number of Russian military spies, who
were as active in Sweden as in other lands, and whose relations with
the Tsar's Military Attaché in Stockholm were said to be proven, these
agitators found the few solid facts that served them as the groundwork
of their fabric of suspicion and calumny.
The results of this propaganda answered the expectations of its German
and Swedish organizers. Despite the quieting assurances given by the
ex-Premier, the late Karl Staaff and M. Branting, Sweden's two
foremost statesmen, the present population was thoroughly alarmed.
They spontaneously taxed themselves for new warships, insisted that a
non-recurring war-tax identical with that of Germany should be imposed
by the State, and many called for the immediate adhesion of Sweden to
the Triple Alliance.
One of the fixed points of Russia's policy, the Swedish agitators told
their fellow-countrymen, is the acquisition of an ice-free port which
can be utilized in winter. The Baltic ports do not answer this
requirement, not only because they freeze in the cold season, but
also, and especially, because the narrow Sound can be easily blocked
by a hostile Power and Russia's ships bottled up in the Baltic. Hence
the persevering efforts she made at first to get possession of the
Dardanelles and obtain free access to the Mediterranean in war-time.
More than once she was on the very point of achieving success there,
but lack of enterprise on the part of her statesmen or a sudden
adverse change in the political conjuncture foiled this scheme, the
realization of which was put off indefinitely. The Persian Gulf was
the next object of her designs, but there, too, she encountered a
diplomatic defeat. The third goal lay in the Far East, where a new
Russian empire governed by a Viceroy and possessed of a promising
capital, was founded with every prospect of good fortune. But here,
again, defective statesmanship was followed by failure, and the
campaign against Japan closed the Far Eastern chapter for a long
while. Whither, it was asked, can Russia turn now? Recent events, M.
Sven Hedin assured his countrymen, have already answered the query.
Northwards. The great Slav Empire covets an ice-free harbour in
Norway, and until this war broke out was busily engaged in compassing
its end. At any future moment it may again start off on this
enterprise. It is the duty of patriotic Swedes to thwart this
nefarious project.
A Norwegian port, it is freely admitted, would not fulfil all Russia's
requirements. It would, for instance, leave much to be desired from an
economic point of view. The resources of the hinterland would be too
scanty. The cost of transport would be too heavy. But strategically it
would answer the purpose admirably. Now this conquest would not be
achieved without invading and annexing a portion of North Sweden as
well. For it would be impossible to keep and utilize such an
acquisition without a hinterland containing factories, workshops,
wharves, docks, stores and a fairly numerous population which, in
turn, would require corn, cattle, timber, etc. Is it credible, asked
M. Sven Hedin, that the southern boundary of this back-land could be
drawn further northwards than to the north of Ångermanland, Jämtland
and Drontheim? At bottom, then, it is the annexation of a vast slice
of Sweden proper that Russia has in view. Perhaps the first route of
the Russian army would lie on the eastern bank of the rivers Torne-älf
and Muonio-älf and lead to the Lyngen Fjord. How long would it stop
there? Step by step it would move along the coast southwards to
Drontheim. Then Norrland would be surrounded on three sides by
Russians. "Later on they would tighten the noose and strangle our
country. Are we to remain inactive during the course of events?... The
Swede in general is aware of the existence of this danger and _knows_
that it may come upon him at any moment as a reality."
In verity, no normal individual, acquainted with the political
condition of Europe, can be said to know that the peril of a Russian
invasion of Sweden exists or existed of late years. As a matter of
fact, he knows that the contradictory proposition is true.
The symptoms of Russia's alleged designs on Norway and Sweden are as
fantastic as the sweeping statements by which they are heralded. One
of them was the order issued by the Russian Government to build a
railway bridge over the Neva in Petrograd in order to link the Finnish
railway with all the other stations which are situated on the opposite
bank of that river, as though the Russian capital should be the only
one in Europe without a girdle railway and Finland the sole section
of the empire cut off from all the rest! Another of these "infallible
tokens" of Russia's machinations were the measures adopted to render
the Finnish railways, and, in particular, the Oesterbotten line,
capable of transporting Russian military trains, by enlarging the
stations, strengthening the bridges and rails, and other kindred
expedients. Further, a number of new lines were considered necessary
from a strategic point of view, one connecting Petersburg with Wasa
via Hiitola, Nyslott and Iyväskylä. Barracks were built or ordered in
Fredrikshamn, Kouvala, Lahtis and other Finnish towns, or railway
centres. All these precautions, however, are not only explicable
without the theory that Sweden and Norway are to be invaded, but they
ought to have been adopted long ago, say unprejudiced military
authorities, in the interests of Russia's home defence. Yet M. Sven
Hedin concluded his argument with the words: "When it has been further
established that the transport of Russian troops to Finland has
greatly increased--and it is affirmed that there are already about
85,000 soldiers there--and when we also bear in mind that for many
years past Sweden and likewise Norway have been visited by so-called
knife-grinders[53] from Russia, _no doubt can remain. Russia is making
ready for an onslaught on the Northern kingdoms._"
[53] Several Russian "knife-grinders" are alleged to have
been discovered in various parts of Sweden, moving from place
to place, with maps of various districts and a good deal of
money in their pockets. The Swedes declare that they are
Russian spies.
But long before Sven Hedin and his friends had begun their campaign,
the ground had been prepared from Berlin, the work of interpenetration
had made great headway, and Germany was regarded by Sweden as an elder
sister. For the economic invasion preceded the political. Statistics
of foreign trade reveal the Teuton as the exporter to that country of
over forty per cent. of the entire quantity of merchandise entering
from abroad.[54]
[54] The value of wares she sold to Sweden in 1911 is
computed at 275,423,000 krons as against 170,999,000 krons'
worth purchased from Great Britain.
Switzerland, whose position as a neutral oasis encircled by
belligerents is fraught with difficulty, has long been treated as
hardly more than an adjunct of the German empire, and many of the best
Swiss writers, far from resenting this affront, welcome it as a
compliment. Just as Americans occasionally write about "_the_ King"
when alluding to the British Sovereign, so the Swiss often fall into
the way of describing the operations of "our army," "our cause," when
alluding to the Kaiser's troops and German designs.
Several times during the progress of the war the conduct of Swiss
organizations and individuals towards the two groups of belligerents
aroused grounded misgivings in the minds of the French, British and
Italians who asked only for the observance of strict neutrality. One
remarkable instance of the pro-German leanings complained of was the
absolute and persistent refusal of the Swiss to submit to reasonable
restrictions respecting the sale to Germany and Austria of goods
exported to Switzerland by the allied countries. This refusal was all
the more significant that it came after the secret acquiescence in the
more stringent limitations which had been imposed on them by the
Germans. Thus two wholly different sets of weights and measures would
appear to have been employed by the spokesmen of the little Republic
in their dealings with the two groups of warring Powers. And it was
always Germany who obtained preferential treatment.
This bias springs from causes which are stable and deep-rooted. The
bulk of the Swiss people are frankly pro-German in their sympathies
and their military chiefs side with the Teuton on most of those
questions of principle which form the line of cleavage between him and
the allied peoples. That the end justifies the means, is one of those
axioms which the authorities of the Swiss Republic appear to have
endorsed without hesitation. In the month of March 1916 two Swiss
Colonels, Egli and de Wattenwyl, were tried on two charges which, if
proved, would, it was somewhat hastily assumed, bring down severe
retribution on their heads. It was alleged that they had communicated
to the German military authorities important telegraphic messages
intercepted on their way from the Allies. But the evidence adduced was
deemed insufficient to bear out this indictment. The other charge was
that they had regularly handed on the confidential bulletin of the
Swiss General Staff to the military _attachés_ of the Central Empires
in Berne and only to them. And the count was proven to the
satisfaction of the tribunal. Now this act admittedly constituted a
breach of neutrality. Yet the Chief of the Swiss General Staff,
Colonel Sprecher, defended the accused men on the singular ground that
their action--that is to say, a grave breach of neutrality to the
detriment of the allied nations--was excusable because of the end in
view, which was to gain in exchange useful information for the
Intelligence Department of the War Office. This plea is based on the
German military principle that the means are hallowed by the end.
It is some satisfaction, however, to note that in the Romande cantons
of the Republic a series of protests have been made against the spirit
of Prussian military amorality which, as the pleadings and the
acquittal of the two officers showed, permeates the military circles
of that little State whose very existence depends on its neutrality.
Kultur is widely diffused throughout the German-speaking cantons of
Switzerland. The German Universities of the Republic are regarded and
treated as Universities of the Fatherland and their professors
interchanged. And when we further reflect that Germany exports to
Switzerland goods to the value of 680,870,000 francs as against
347,985,000 exported by France, who stands second on the list, that
German Universities and those of German Switzerland elect their
professors indiscriminately from among candidates of both countries,
and that German is spoken in Switzerland by more than 2,500,000
inhabitants as against 796,244 who use French--one cannot affect
surprise at much that called for comment before the war and provoked
mild deprecation throughout its first phase.
CHAPTER X
GERMANY AND THE BALKANS
For two decades the Balkan States and Turkey had been objects of
Germany's especial solicitude. And with reason. For the part allotted
to them in the plan for teutonizing Europe was of the utmost moment.
The high road from Berlin to the Near East passed through Budapest and
the Balkans. And Austria, as the pioneer of German Kultur there, kept
her gaze fixed and her efforts concentrated on Salonica. Bulgaria's
goodwill had been acquired through Ferdinand of Coburg, himself an
Austro-Hungarian officer, and was maintained by Austria's energetic
championship of Bulgaria's claims against Serbia. Counts Aehrenthal
and Berchtold destined Bulgaria and Roumania to coalesce and form the
nucleus of a permanent Balkan confederation to be patronized and
protected by the Habsburgs.
But circumstance thwarted the design. And after the Balkan League had
done its work and Turkey's grasp on Europe had relaxed, Bulgaria, in
the person of Ferdinand, was brought to undo what without her lead
could not then have been achieved, to fall foul of her allies and
smash the coalition.
This incitement was unwelcome to many of Bulgaria's trusty leaders,
who, much though they might grudge Serbia's successes and rapid
growth, were of opinion that Bulgaria would be ill-advised to break
her connection with the Slav cause. But the leaders unexpectedly found
that they were being led, and led away from the natural friends of
Bulgaria by the German prince who had caused the death of Bulgaria's
greatest statesman and made no secret of his contempt for the
Bulgarian people generally. Ferdinand, assuming autocratic power,
rendered this inestimable service to the Teutons and fastened the
Bulgarian State to the Central Empires.
At some time before the outbreak of the war Ferdinand had struck up a
compact with the Central Empires which bound Bulgaria to follow their
lead. This he did at his own risk and on his own responsibility. I had
grounds for believing in the existence of some such covenant a
considerable time before the storm burst, but I had no tangible proof
of it. In July 1914, however, I knew it for certain, but without
having ascertained the particulars. When and by whom it had been
signed, and what were the main stipulations agreed upon, still
remained in the domain of speculation. I discovered, however, that
Bulgaria's hands were tied; that her mourning for lost Macedonia would
not last long; that the aims she pursued were the policy of the outlet
on four seas, and the territorial separation of Greece and Serbia;
that her rôle in the Peninsula was to be predominant; that she had
been chosen to supplant Serbia as the leading Balkan State, and would
pay tribute to the Central Empires in the shape of docility to and
ready co-operation with them; and that Roumania would, if she
continued to find favour in the eyes of the statesmen of Vienna and
Berlin, be associated with Bulgaria, but without attaining her rank or
acquiring her power.
It has since been positively asserted by M. Filipescu, an ex-Cabinet
Minister of Roumania, that "towards the mid-August 1914, when the
treaty was concluded which bound Bulgaria to Germany, the Roumanian
Minister in Berlin, M. Beldiman, had cognizance of this treaty and
apprised the Roumanian Government of the fact."[55] M. Take Jonescu,
the illustrious Roumanian statesman, has assigned a different date to
the conclusion of the agreement, but confirmed the fact of its
existence in the course of a conversation which has also been made
public.[2] He stated that the King of Bulgaria, "who is swayed more by
personal rancour than by the interests of his people, imposed his
policy on them. He allied himself with the Germans as long ago as
Spring 1914. The treaty was taken from Sofia to Berlin by an official
of the Deutsche Bank."[56]
[55] See _Le Temps_, October 31, 1915.
[56] Mr. M. Civinini of the _Corriere della Sera_. See
_Corriere della Sera_, October 11, 1915.
Whatever doubts may prevail respecting the exact date, the main fact
is established--Ferdinand bound Bulgaria to the Central Empires.
Personal interest as well as State reasons determined him to place
himself under Austro-German protection. It was at Austria's
instigation that he had spurned the advice of his official advisers,
treacherously attacked his allies and brought down defeat upon his
armies and discredit upon himself. But the Habsburg Government had
undertaken to see him through the ordeal to which he was then
subjected by his own people. The Treaty of Bucharest, which deprived
Bulgaria of Kavalla and Salonica, left the wound to fester and
Austro-Bulgarian friendship to harden into a definite alliance. None
the less Bulgaria's friendship with the Central Empires was not openly
manifested until the financial transaction was concluded between them
which made Bulgaria the creditor of Austria-Hungary shortly before the
outbreak of the war.
Economically, Bulgaria, like her neighbours, had long been a tributary
of the Central Empires. German and Austrian interests were cunningly
intertwined with Bulgarian in almost every branch of national life.
The banks, financial houses, export firms, are all under Austrian or
German control. In the army, too, despite its Russian training and
traditions, there was a party of officers whose admiration for the
war-lord ran away with their discretion. And the celebrated loan of
half a milliard francs, which Austrian financiers undertook to advance
to Bulgaria--on outrageously oppressive conditions--set the crown to
the work of many years. This transaction was not intended by either
party to be purely financial. Its political bearings were evidenced by
the circumstances in which it was negotiated and the terms on which it
was concluded. But the economic concessions insisted upon by Austria
and conceded by Bulgaria constituted of themselves a convincing proof
of the design to reduce the latter country to the position of one of
the dependents of the Central Empires.
Of all the recognized agencies for penetrating international opinion,
swaying international sentiment, and influencing international action,
one of the most abiding and decisive is that of royal courts. Yet its
value was not merely underrated by Britain, France and Russia, but was
completely ignored. And Germany, whose diplomacy, in spite of its
clumsiness and brutality, was far-sighted and assiduous in watching
for and utilizing every opportunity of smoothing the way for the
execution of the grandiose plan, purveyed almost every court and
throne in Europe with kings, queens and princesses of its own. And
those who were neither Germans by birth nor connected with Germans by
marriage were influenced by education, by military training, or at
least by a system of atmosphering which, with certain striking
examples before one, could be reduced to a few clear rules.
Roumania at the opening of the war was governed by a Hohenzollern
prince who had linked the destinies of his country with those of
Austria-Hungary as far back as the year 1880, and, having renewed the
secret convention in 1913, which for him was no mere scrap of paper,
convoked a crown council in August 1914 and proposed that Roumania
should redeem his pledge and take the field against the enemies of the
Central Empires. But King Carol's military ardour was not merely
damped but choked by a recalcitrant cabinet.
That monarch's influence as a pioneer of Teuton Kultur in Roumania can
hardly be exaggerated. An upright ruler, who discharged his duties
conscientiously, the King reckoned among these the dissipation of
native gloom by means of German light. And during his long reign he
succeeded in spreading a network of German economic interests
throughout his realm which, while raising the material level of the
nation, has reduced it to the position of a German tributary. It would
be unjust to make this a subject of reproach to the monarch who acted
up to his lights, but it would be a mistake to belittle the vast
services thus rendered by a single individual to the Teuton race, or
to overlook the degree of responsibility that attaches to the nations
now banded together, and in especial to Russia, for the sequence of
untoward phenomena which, now that they are not only seen, but felt,
and felt painfully, we naïvely deplore.
King Carol's successor is also a Hohenzollern prince whose attachment
to his Prussian fatherland is noted, whose relations with his kinsman,
the Kaiser, are cordial, but whose devotion to his subjects is
paramount. More than once since the opening of the campaign Roumania
was believed to be on the point of exchanging neutrality for
belligerency, but, on grounds which it would be unfruitful to discuss,
she abandoned the intention, if she ever harboured it. As matters now
are, the Allies are congratulating themselves on the circumstance that
she is still neutral.
The Queen of Sweden is a daughter of the most imperialistic of German
princes, the late Grand Duke of Baden and a cousin of the Kaiser, to
whom she is attached by bonds of sympathy and admiration. And her
consort the King, fascinated by the methods, the strivings, the
achievements of the Hohenzollerns, has made more than one attempt to
imitate them, but, owing partly to the opposition of the late Herr
Staaff, and largely to his own mental and moral equipment, which
point in a different direction, he felt obliged to desist.
The accomplished Queen of the Belgians and the Tsaritsa of Russia are
also both German princesses, but they form exceptions to the rule that
whichever of any two spouses is German exercises an overmas
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/29338