III.
On January 19th, 1916, in the Reichstag, Deputy Martin stated that “The German nation would be very ill-pleased if Germany were to restore the territories she now occupies” (Le Temps, 21st January, 1916). This sentence summarizes the opinion prevalent beyond the Rhine.
In their endeavours to retain the greater part of the territories occupied by them at the beginning of 1916 the Germans have combined military measures with political manœuvres.
THE GERMAN FORTRESS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
They have entrenched themselves tremendously on all fronts which the Allies could possibly attack. By the accumulation everywhere of defensive works, machine-guns and heavy artillery, the Germans hope to counter-balance the losses of their troops and thus to persevere in their resistance to the allied attacks, till the enemy grow weary of the dreadful struggle. The experience of the war having proved how extremely difficult it is to pierce strongly fortified lines, the German Headquarters Staff appears to have taken this knowledge as the base of the following calculation:
“We have achieved nine-tenths of the annexations on which we counted; only Calais, Verdun, Belfort, Riga and Salonika are wanting. We will try to obtain possession of these places if opportunity offers; if not, in order to avoid excessive risks, we shall remain everywhere in Europe on a keen defensive, but we will pretend, all the time, to wish to take the offensive, so as to mislead our adversaries. If the Franco-English insist on concentrating their efforts, above all against our lines of the Western front, as these lines are manifold and very strong, the enemy losses will be such, that even if they succeed in throwing us back, they will finally be so utterly exhausted as to be unable to cross the Rhine. Therefore, they will be powerless to dictate peace to Germany.”
Surely the Allies, taught by experience, can foil this probable calculation of their antagonists by well managed, simultaneous attacks on the whole accessible circuit of the German fortress. In fact this is what the Allies seem more and more inclined to do.
The indented line on the map (p. 72) shows what a strange shape is assumed by the enormous territories which build up that fortress. For alimentary purposes it is victualled, firstly, by the resources of non-German countries which are occupied and most thoroughly drained, and secondly by importations; which come through the channel of neutral countries—Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Roumania, and Switzerland—which have responded, more or less liberally, whether voluntarily or not, to the pressing applications of Germany.
On the other hand, thanks to the passage through the Balkans, the German fortress, early in 1916, had a wide open door on Persia, the Caucasus, Central-Russian Asia, Afghanistan, India and Egypt. After having armed all the Moslems on whom they could lay hands, and who were able to shoulder a gun, the German Staff reckoned on striking at Great Britain and Russia in all these directions. The successes obtained by the Tsar’s troops in Eastern Turkey have, since then, baffled these projects.
On the other hand, as Germany has nothing whatever to gain by a prolongation of the war, she will continue to aim at a rupture of the Coalition by means of every possible political manœuvre. It is clear that the defection of one of the principal Allies would necessarily place all the others in vastly more difficult positions for continuing the struggle. Assuming that such a thing were to happen, the Germans could, indeed, hope to discuss peace on the base of the territories which they actually occupy. They will therefore repeat and increase their bids for a separate peace with one or other of their adversaries. When once their position becomes very difficult the Germans, so as to shatter at all cost the Coalition, will make propositions of separate peace to one of the Allies, offering that one country almost complete satisfaction in the hope that, swayed perhaps by a section of their people who have grown weary of war, that Allied country will lay down her arms.
The Allied State which, contrary to its plighted faith, should separately treat with Berlin, would soon be punished for its infamy. By allowing Germany to conclude peace more or less on the basis of the territories she at present holds, the traitor State would find itself afterwards confronted by a formidable German Empire, and would inevitably become one of its first victims.
The Germans will perhaps try to play on the Allies the “armistice trick.” Here, again, we should have a cunning calculation founded once more on the weariness of the combatants. It is, indeed, conceivable that a simple armistice might end in allowing Germany to hold finally most of her actual territorial acquisitions; but it could so end only by means of a manœuvre which we must now expose.
No doubt they must make at Berlin the following calculation, which theoretically has something to be said for it: “If an armistice were signed, the Allied soldiers would think: ‘They are talking, therefore it means peace, and demobilization will soon follow.’ Under these conditions the effect will be the moral slackening of our adversaries.” The Germans could not ask for anything better. They would open peace negotiations with the following astute idea. To understand the manœuvre we must remember the proposals of peace which that active agent, Dr. Alfred Hermann Fried, of Vienna, was charged to throw out as a sounding-lead on the 27th December, 1915, in an article of the Nouvelle Gazette de Zurich, which made a great stir. These proposals were mixed up with provisoes, which would allow the discussion to be opened or broken off at any moment desired. For example, Belgium would preserve her independence, but “on condition of treaties, perhaps also of guarantees, which would render impossible a repetition of the events of 1914.” The occupied departments of France would be restored unconditionally to France, but “some small rectifications of frontiers might perhaps be desired in the interests of both parties” (Journal de Genève, 29th December, 1915). Assuming that the Allies committed the enormous mistake of discussing peace on such treacherous terms, Germany still entrenched behind her fronts, which would have been rendered almost impregnable, would say to the Allies, “I don’t agree with you. After all you cannot require of me that I should evacuate territories from which you are powerless to drive me. If you are not satisfied, continue the war.” As, while the negotiations were pending, all needful steps would have been taken by the German agents to aggravate the moral slackening of the soldiers of such Allied countries as might be most weary of the struggle, the huge military machine of the Entente could not again be put in motion as a whole. The real result would be, in fact, the rupture of the Anti-Germanic Coalition, and finally the conclusion of a peace more or less based on actual occupation. Berlin’s goal would thus have been reached.
Finally, when the “armistice trick” shall have also failed, and the situation of Germany shall have grown still worse, we shall see Berlin play her last trump. Petitions against territorial annexations will be multiplied on the other side of the Rhine. In an underhand way they will be favoured by the Government of Berlin, which will end by saying to the Allies: “Let us stop killing each other. I am perfectly reasonable. I give up my claims on such of your territories as are occupied by my armies. Let us negotiate peace on the basis of the ‘drawn game.’”
The day when this proposal will be made, the Allies will have to face the most astute of the Berlin tricks, the most alarming German trap. At that moment the tenacity, the clearsightedness, and the solidarity of the Allies must be put forth to the utmost. To show the extreme necessity of this, in the case supposed, I must baffle the German manœuvre in advance by proving clearly in the following chapter that the dodge of the drawn game, if it succeeded, would mask in reality a formidable success for Germany and an irreparable catastrophe for the Allies and for the freedom of the world.
CHAPTER V.
THE DODGE OF THE “DRAWN GAME” AND THE SCHEME “FROM HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF.”
I. What would really be the outcome of the dodge called the “Drawn Game.”
II. The financial consequences for the Allies of this so-called “Drawn Game.”
III. The Allies and the scheme “From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.”
IV. Panislamic and Asiatic consequences of the achievement of the scheme “From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.”
V. Consequences for the world of the achievement of the scheme “From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.”
If the Allies really wish, as their Governments have often proclaimed, to put an end to the peril of Prussian militarism, they must resolutely face the facts as they are, even when these are unpalatable to their self-esteem. They must understand fully that the chance of carrying out the Pangerman plan rests in a large measure on the ignorance of the Allies. Berlin knew that before the war the countries now allied were unaware of the totally new face which within recent years has been put on all the political problems of the Balkans and Austria-Hungary by the labours of Pangermanism and the movement of nationalities. Undoubtedly that ignorance of the Allies has been as minutely studied and appraised as were their military deficiencies; the conviction that the Allies did not understand how to grapple with the situation has certainly contributed to Berlin’s decision to unloose the dogs of war. Now, the dodge of the “Drawn Game,” the last trump of the Berlin Government, is a fresh gamble based on the ignorance of the Allies about foreign affairs.