German Problems and Personalities
CHARLES SAROLEA
LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1917
All rights reserved
This man saw the present war; he saw that Belgium would be invaded by Germany; he saw that the Germans hated England with a profound and bitter hate; that German diplomatic blunders had placed that nation in almost complete isolation in the world; that the Triple Alliance was really only a Dual Alliance, popular feeling in Italy becoming increasingly hostile to Austria and to Prussia; that Germans felt their culture to be superior to the civilization of the rest of the world, and themselves to be a superior race, with the right to rule other peoples; that Prussianism and Junkerism and militarism were in complete control of the German soul; that Germany had ambitions for world empire, a recurrence of “the old Napoleonic dream”; that the danger to European peace lay with Germany and not with England; that Germans believed war to be essentially moral and the mainspring of national progress; that the whole German people had become Bismarckian; that the Germans hoped to obtain by a victory over England that shadowless place in the sun toward which they began to leap when they beat France in 1870.
The seer who thus saw is Dr. Charles Sarolea, who recently came to the United States in the interests of his country, one of the most distinguished of Belgian scholars, a friend of King Albert, holder of Belgian decorations and honours from British learned societies, for the last fourteen years Belgian Consul in Edinburgh, and for the last twenty-one years head of the French and Romance Department at the University of Edinburgh. His vision was set out in “The Anglo-German Problem,” written in 1912, now published in an authorized American edition, perhaps the most accurate forecast which has been penned of to-day’s conflict, and certainly one of the most exact analyses of the German nation made before the world learned, since last August, to know it as it is—as Sarolea, master delineator of a nation’s character, drew it. Clear, sane, calm, logical, strong—such is Dr. Sarolea’s book, with its “rare perspicacity” and “remarkable sense of political realities,” in the words of King Albert’s appreciation of the work.
Charles Sarolea
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FOOTNOTES:
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III.
FOOTNOTES:
I.—We are Drifting into War.
II.—The Strength of Anti-British Feeling in Germany.
III.—War the German Ideal and the German Idol.
IV.—Why Germany has kept the Peace.
V.—The Political Preparation of War.
VI.—The Imaginary German Grievances.
VII.—The Pacific Meaning of the Entente.
VIII.—German Megalomania.
IX.—German Self-Assertion.
X.—Germany stands for Reaction.
XI.—Prussia controls Germany.
XII.—Why Prussia has enslaved Germany.
XIII.—The German Reichstag as a Debating Club.
XIV.—The Servility of the German Universities and of the Churches.
XVII.—German Socialism making for Reaction and War.
XVIII.—Is the Kaiser making for Peace or for War?
XIX.—Belgium the Achilles Heel of the British Empire.
XX.—The Neutrality of Belgium will be violated.
XXI.—The Coming War will be a Political and Religious Crusade.
XXII.—The Nature of the Coming War.
FOOTNOTES:
THE CURSE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN
I.—Royalties made in Germany.
II.—The Significance of the Hohenzollern Dynasty.
III.—Landmarks in Hohenzollern History.
IV.—A Dynasty of Upstarts.
V.—Prussia as an Upstart State.
VI.—The Prussian State is not a German State.
VII.—Prussia as a Military State.
IX.—Prussia as a Feudal State.
X.—Prussia as a Despotic State.
XI.—The Hohenzollern as the Champions of Protestantism.
XII.—How the German People were subjected to Prussia.
XIII.—Judgment on the Hohenzollern State.
FOOTNOTES:
THE GERMAN WAR-TRIUMVIRATE
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VI.
I.—Treitschke as the Representative Prussian.
II.—Treitschke’s Personality.
III.—Treitschke as a Writer.
IV.—Treitschke as a Clear and Original Thinker.
V.—The Prussian State the Centre of Treitschke’s Literary Activities.
VI.—Treitschke’s Treatise on Politics.
VII.—Prussia the Sole Standard of Political Values.
X.—Treitschke’s Hatred of the Jews.
XXIV.
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V.
THE APOTHEOSIS OF GOETHE
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VII.
VIII.
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FOOTNOTES:
THE NEGLECT OF GERMAN
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THE GERMAN RACE HERESY AND THE WAR
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FOOTNOTES:
A SLUMP IN GERMAN THEOLOGY
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FOOTNOTES:
RUSSIA AND GERMANY
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VIII.
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XII.
XIII.
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VI.
THE SILENCE OF HERR VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG
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V.
THE COMING REVOLUTION IN GERMANY
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VI.
VIA PACIS
THE PRIVATE MORALITY OF THE PRUSSIAN KINGS
FREDERICK WILLIAM II.: THE HOHENZOLLERN POLYGAMIST
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VIII.
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XII.
XIII.
XIV.