II.
From the Pangerman doctrine the military and political Pangerman plot was bred and stage-managed by William II. Outside of Germany, the Kaiser was looked upon, for a long time, as a peace-loving monarch. It is difficult to explain how such a very serious error could have arisen. Shortly after his accession in 1888, William II. was secretly hatching that plot which so recently has caused the European conflagration, and subsequently, by his public utterances, he has clearly showed his Pangerman tendencies.
On August 28th, 1898, in reply to the Burgomaster of Mayence’s speech, the Kaiser declared that his wish was to keep inviolate the heritage bequeathed by his “immortal grandfather.” “But,” added William, “I can only reach that goal if our authority firmly keeps sway over our neighbours. For this object the unity and the co-operation of every German tribe is required.” On the 4th October, 1900, William II., on laying the foundation stone of the Roman Museum of Saalburg, again said:
“May our German Fatherland become in the future as strongly united, as powerful, as wonderful as was the Roman universal empire; may this end be attained by the united co-operation of our princes, of our peoples, of our armies and of our citizens, in order that in the times to come it may be said of us as it used to be said of yore: Civis Romanus sum.”
On the 28th October, 1900, speaking at an officers’ mess, William II. affirmed: “My highest aim is to remove whatever separates our great German people.” Now, in September, 1900, at Stettin, the Kaiser had just declared: “I have no fear of the future. I am convinced that my plan will prove successful.” In the Kaiser’s mind the whole matter was summed up in the chief formula of Pangerman domination: From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf. To accomplish this object the Kaiser had decided to forge closer and still closer links between Austria-Hungary and Germany. In order to consolidate his supremacy over the Balkan peoples he reckoned on the co-operation of such of their Kings as were Germanic by origin (Bulgaria and Roumania), or on others who were strongly influenced by Germany—in reality by himself.
Thus he arranged the marriage of his own sister, Sophia, in 1889, with the heir of the Throne of Greece, King Constantine of to-day. Finally, almost immediately after his accession he had begun to think of showering his Imperial favours on the Turks and the Musulmans; this was with the object of seizing the Ottoman Empire, later on, and of making use of the Mahometans of the whole world as a mighty lever against all other powers.
On November 8th, 1898, at Damascus, William II. pronounced the famous words, the full significance of which is only made clear now that we have seen the German action develop in Turkey and Persia, and that we have learnt about William’s endeavours to cause an agitation among the Musulmans of Egypt, India and China:
“May His Majesty the Sultan, as well as the three hundred millions of Musulmans who venerate him as their Khalifa, be assured that the German Emperor is their friend for ever.”
The adulation of the sanguinary Sultan Abdul-Hamid proved of practical use to William II. He obtained on the 27th November, 1899, the first concession of the Bagdad railway; now that railway, although still unfinished, has just been utilized by the German offensive both against Russia and England.
All over his Empire William II. had encouraged the formation of military and naval leagues—which number millions of members who, for the last twenty years have carried on an incessant propaganda in favour of such German armaments by land and sea—as were wanted by the Kaiser.
Again, William II. encouraged the creation of the Alldeutscher Verband. This association or Pangerman Union, counts among its members a large number of important and influential persons, and at the door of this society must be laid the most overwhelming responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Founded in 1894, it has organized thousands of lectures besides scattering broadcast millions of pamphlets to spread Pangerman notions and to get the masses of the people to favour schemes of aggrandizement. It was due to the Alldeutscher Verband that all the Germans living outside the Empire were formed into a systematic organization for the present war; this being specially the case in Austria and in the United States.
Is it possible to believe that such an autocrat as William II. had not desired this end? How could three powerful associations, with ever-growing means of action, have carried on a most costly, as well as a most violent propaganda, in a police-ridden country like Germany, unless they had been approved of by the authorities usually so meddlesome or so vigilant?
As to the hour of the war, who set the clock going, if it were not the Kaiser? As a matter of fact he put the hands of the dial forward (see Chapter II).
From November, 1913, onward, the Kaiser was busy preparing for early hostilities; he was aware that the enlargement of the Kiel Canal would be complete by July, 1914—therefore he arranged to be ready by that date, and as we know war was declared on August 1st, i.e., a few days after the completion of the Kiel Canal. The Arch-Duke Francis-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, tempted by the Kaiser, is dazzled by the mirage of great profits which were to accrue from a joint action of the Central Powers. In April, 1914, the Kaiser goes on a visit to the Archduke at Miramar, near Trieste. Again he meets him at Konopischt in June, 1914, and is then accompanied by von Tirpitz, that notorious Chief of Pirates, that submarine Corsair. Now comes the right moment for drafting the bold main lines of the combined action of the German and Austrian forces by land and sea. The murder of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, on June 28th, 1914, made no change in the Kaiser’s plans, it merely precipitated events by furnishing an excellent pretext for intervention against Serbia. Thus the criminal action of the Kaiser stands revealed; for twenty-five years he had been elaborating the Pangerman plan.
According to Baron de Beyens, who before the war was Belgian Minister at Berlin, “it has been maintained that William II. was an unconscious tool in the hands of a caste and of a party who needed war in order to assert their own power. William has, indeed, listened to them, but he has lent them an ear because their designs chimed in with his own. In the judgment of history it is he who is doomed to bear the responsibility for the disasters by which Europe has been overwhelmed” (Baron Beyens, L’Allemagne avant la guerre, p. 41, G. Van Oest, Paris).
For twenty-five years, and by order of the Kaiser, a violent Pangerman propaganda had been carried on throughout the Empire; therefore, let there be no mistake, William II., in declaring war, was supported in his decision, not only by the influential circles of German opinion, but by the large majority of the German people. A very notorious German, Maximilian Harden, has explicitly acknowledged this fact in his review Zukunft of November, 1914:
“This war has not been forced on us by surprise; we have desired it, and it was our bounden duty thus to desire it. Germany wages war because of her immutable conviction that greater world expansion and freer outlets are due to her by right of her own works” (quoted by Le Temps, 20th November, 1914).
Having thus formed and perfected for twenty years the Pangerman plot of a European conflagration, William II. had the prodigious audacity to declare, in his Manifesto to the German people (August 1st, 1915), after drenching Europe with streams of blood for a whole year: “Before God and before History, I swear that my conscience is clear. I did not desire war.”
CHAPTER I.
THE PANGERMAN PLAN.
I. The Pangerman plan of 1911.
II. The stages by which it has been effected.
III. Why it has been ignored.