III.
The preparation of the Pangerman plan has required for over twenty years a huge propaganda among the German masses as well as a world-wide organization. How is it that this plan has been ignored in its nature and in its extent by the diplomats of France, England and Russia? Such, however, has been the case, for otherwise the war could not have come upon these three powers as a surprise. We deal here with a matter which at first sight seems improbable and which, therefore, needs explanation.
The diplomatic agents of the Allies are certainly not inferior personally to those of William II., but the Kaiser’s foreign service, as a whole, includes novel instruments of observation and influence by which, for the last twenty years, the Government of Berlin has seconded its official diplomacy without allowing the connexion between it and them to transpire. None of the Allied countries have employed similar instruments, the result being that the Entente is considerably inferior in this department of foreign policy.
The Pangerman plan is founded on a very exact knowledge of all political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems, not only of Europe, but of the whole world; the Germans have acquired that knowledge by means of an intense labour of over twenty-five years. But this task has not been performed by the official German diplomats; it has been carried out either by the members of the Alldeutscher Verband, the Pangerman Union, or by the agents of the German secret service, which has been enormously extended. These agents might be called connecting links between the regular spies and the official diplomats; Baron von Schenk, who worked at Athens from 1915-1916, is a sample of that category of agents who have studied methodically all the root questions of the Pangerman plan, who have prepared means to delude the minds of neutrals, to paralyze the revolt of the Slavs in Austria-Hungary, to corrupt all such neutral individuals or neutral newspapers as were susceptible of corruption, etc. After these numerous agents had made their reports, and when once these had been examined and summarized, they were sent to the Wilhelmstrasse, to the great German General Staff, whose concerted operations are always so combined as to answer both to political and to military needs. At the same time the reports reached William II.’s private study, and his brain was thus able to store up all technical means necessary for the achievement of his plan of domination.
Was the diplomatic corps of the Allies so well served that it could grasp in its universal significance the immense work of preparation accomplished by the secret Pangerman agents? Indeed, they were not properly supplied with the right tools for such a task, and we shall see why it was so.
First of all it is necessary to dispel a false notion which “the man in the street” has of diplomacy. He fondly thinks that diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combinations, fashion History. Now the experience of centuries shows that as a general rule diplomats merely chronicle History but do not make it. My teacher, Albert Sorel, neatly expressed that truth by saying: “Diplomats are History’s attorneys.” In fact, the diplomacy of any country helps to prepare and to fashion history only when there happens to be at its head a great man of large and just ideas, who knows how to apply these ideas by all the means available in his time.
It is a strange fact and worthy of notice, that such a great man is rarely, if ever, a professional diplomat. For example, Richelieu, Napoleon, Palmerston, Disraeli, Cavour, Bismarck, who all prepared and fashioned History, were not trained diplomatists. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Fortune has endowed any of our Allied countries, either before or since the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand lines, the diplomatic affairs of the Entente. The latter therefore has been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials, and who as such await instructions from higher quarters, and these instructions are very often found wanting.
Besides, the diplomacy of the Allies, not being seconded, like that of Germany, by novel means of observation, can only obtain the information it needs by methods still so old-fashioned that they are almost identical with those used a century ago. They are totally inadequate to point out the sequence of ideas or the rapid development of events which in Central Europe and the Balkans have been, as will be seen, the immediate causes of the war; nor are the means employed by our diplomats at all sufficient if they wish to recognize what forms the whole chain of the Pangerman organization. Just because this organization is huge, just because it is so complex, its total importance cannot be properly gauged unless the connecting links between the varied elements are clearly perceived.
The typical professional diplomat lives in a world of his own. Either his information comes from the office or it is second-hand; it rarely is reached by direct observation of people or facts. The secretaries at the Embassies divide their time between office work, copying documents in copper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant enough but confined to a particular and narrow set. Few of the secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside, fewer still travel in the interior of the land in order to study it.
The events which have led to the European conflagration spring from two main causes: the stupendous scope of the German ambitions and the progress of the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan nationalities. Now both these factors have been revealed on many occasions, by purely local events which, to a keen observer, would have betrayed most significantly the end in view, but they have occurred for the most part in places far removed from capital cities, and to appreciate fully their importance would have needed direct observation on the spot.
This is quite contrary to the tradition followed by official diplomats. Those of the Entente had not, at their disposal, agents who could go and, for instance, hear the numerous lectures given by the Pangerman propaganda, and who could have procured and translated for them the illuminating pamphlets of the Alldeutscher Verband. Also they had no means of getting into personal touch with the party leaders, either Slav or Latin, of Austria-Hungary; often these leaders were men without a place in parliament, frequently without fortune or social rank; all they had was their national ideal, their strength of conviction, but they were real and novel forces, for they acted on the popular masses with whom they were in complete intellectual sympathy.
As the diplomatic corps of the Entente was not provided with that indispensable aid—an organization of secondary agents of observation—they have been reduced to accept information of a superficial and incomplete nature. Often it was merely provided by press cuttings and even those were frequently from papers written in a tongue which the diplomats could not read; at best these cuttings were without any connecting link and quite insufficient to warn them of the approach of a great peril. We must add that in diplomatic circles of all periods—unless they are led by some eminent man—there are certain formulas current, such as: “No fuss,” “it is necessary to wait and see,” “we must not believe that it has happened,” which have had a baneful influence. The result has been a sceptical attitude which in diplomatical circles passes for essential and in good taste. If we add to this frame of mind the absence of varied, direct and coherent information, we can understand how it was that before the war, when any one tried to persuade a professional diplomatist that William II.’s political aim was nothing short of the establishment of German supremacy over the whole world, he was soon set down as a visionary with a head stuffed full of groundless suspicions.
Finally, we must realize that the system by which a diplomat is sent from pillar to post, often to the antipodes, every four or five years, is not conducive to the acquirement of a general and exact knowledge, founded on documentary evidence, of events still in progress, in a wide zone, so complex and so difficult to study as Central Europe and the Balkans.
These various considerations help us to understand why, during the twenty-five years which preceded the war, no diplomat of the Allies has been able to grasp the total Pangerman plan in its nature and in its extent, though possibly a few of them may have indicated in their reports now and then some local Pangerman act which aroused suspicion. These considerations explain also, at least in part, the failure of the diplomatic corps of the Entente in the Balkans.
To sum up, allied official diplomats are not personally inferior to German official diplomats, but the latter have an enormous advantage over their colleagues of the Entente in knowing the general plan of the Berlin policy, in knowing, each in his own post, in what direction to proceed and what must be done or prevented in order to attain the final end. During the last twenty-five years the Kaiser’s foreign policy has been constructive and framed on a definite plan, while the diplomats of the Allies, reflecting the policy of their Governments without concrete plans, have been hampered, because they believed obstinately in Peace, in a vague and stagnant defensive. On the other hand, the allied diplomacy, regarded as an instrument of observation, confined to old-fashioned methods, is like an ordinary magnifying glass which shows nothing but the largest objects. On the contrary, the German foreign policy, thanks to the new, busy and secret organs, by which the German diplomacy has been seconded, may be compared to a workshop provided with powerful microscopes by which facts can be studied not only in their general aspect, but also in their most minute details, details which often are not without their importance.
Finally, the allied diplomacy, regarded as an instrument of action, still clinging to antiquated traditional methods, may be compared to an army which possesses only field guns, while the foreign diplomacy of Germany, in its totality, is comparable to an army equipped both with heavy and with field artillery.
CHAPTER II.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
I. Why the Treaty of Bukarest suddenly raised a formidable obstacle to the Pangerman plan.
II. How it was that the internal state of Austria-Hungary drove Germany to let loose the dogs of war.
III. General view of the causes of the war.
Although the Pangerman plan is unquestionably the chief ultimate cause of the war, yet when William II. started it in August, 1914, he did so for nearer and for secondary reasons which we must examine carefully if we wish to have a clear view of events.