I.
The very vastness of the Pangerman plan of 1911, demonstrated beyond dispute by the facts that have come to light, suffices to prove that Berlin meant to solve for her own profit, at one single blow, all the great political questions latent in the old world.
THE GREAT POLITICAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE WAR.
The claims of Germany on the East, shown on the accompanying map by the thinner black line, raised the question of Poland in its immense extent and in all its complexity. The claims of Germany towards the West, also shown on the map by the thinner black line, involved the independence of Holland, of Belgium, of Luxemburg, of France, threatened with the loss of vital territories. Further, towards the West the German aggression has brought forward the question of Alsace-Lorraine from the French point of view. Moreover, since Germany aims at establishing her absolute supremacy from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, in order to stretch her political tentacles to the Far East and to the whole world by means which will be shown in Chapter V. the present war compels the powers to face the whole Eastern question (Balkans and Turkey, shown on the map by similar black lines), and also the whole question of Austria. (Used in this sense the expression Austria indicates the whole of the Hapsburg Dominion, that is, the territory enclosed by a thick black line.) In short, the whole of the great foreign questions are raised at one blow before the world by the aggression of the Berlin Government.
The Germans, having studied thoroughly for a very long time all these problems, have also provided for each of them a solution in accordance with their most cynical interests. The result is that all these political problems, raised simultaneously, form a tangled skein, and that the Allies will never be really victorious till they can compel the Germans to accept those solutions of the great problems which by the nature of things must be the direct contrary of those foreshadowed by Berlin. The Eastern question which is now raised in Europe is no longer the old orthodox question but a Prussianized Eastern question coloured in all its aspects by the present and future ambitions of the Hohenzollerns. In the same way the question of modern Austria is no longer the old Austrian question which consisted in the traditional struggle of the Hapsburgs with their various nationalities. What the Allies have now to consider in Central Europe is the question of Austria Prussianized by means of two essential facts: the covert but exclusive influence which Berlin has increasingly exercised over Vienna, especially for the last fifteen years, and the hold which the Hohenzollerns have got by means of the war over the whole of the Hapsburg Monarchy, which includes 28 millions of Slav and Latin populations bowed under the yoke, with no hope of deliverance except through the crushing of Prussian militarism.