IV.
The Pangerman plan of 1911 (see map, p. 12) included:
1º. The formation of a great German Confederation which was to put under the absolute supremacy of the present German Empire (540,858 square kilometres and 68 million inhabitants) foreign territories situated around Germany, which form a superficies of 1,182,113 square kilometres and hold 94 million inhabitants.
The figures given (pp. 52, 56 and 61) suffice to prove that the German seizure of these territories extended at the beginning of 1916:
| Square Kilometres. | |
|---|---|
| To the West | 90,478 |
| To the East | 260,000 |
| To the South (Austria-Hungary) | 676,616 |
| Total | 1,027,094 |
Germany has therefore, so far as concerns the territories to be absorbed into the Germanic Confederation, achieved her programme in the proportion of 86%, or about nine-tenths.
2º. The absolute subordination to Germany of all the Balkan States, whose superficies is 499,275 square kilometres, holding 22 million inhabitants. We have seen above (p. 61), that the German seizure actually extends over 215,585 square kilometres. The German programme, therefore, as regards the Balkans, has been achieved in the proportion of 43%.
3º. The more or less veiled seizure by Germany of the Ottoman Empire, being 1,792,900 square kilometres, holding 20 million inhabitants. Now, early in 1916 the exclusive German influence was felt over the whole of Turkey. As regards her the German plan had therefore been achieved in the proportion of 100%.
Let us now group the figures which will enable us to show in what proportion the whole Pangerman plan of 1911 has been actually achieved by Germany:
| Provisions of the 1911 plan. Square Kilometres. | Actual achievements. Square Kilometres. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Territories to be absorbed in the great Germanic Confederation | 1,182,113 | 1,027,094 |
| 2. Balkans | 499,275 | 215,585 |
| 3. Turkey | 1,792,900 | 1,792,900 |
| Total | 3,474,288 | 3,035,579 |
These figures prove to demonstration that early in 1916 Germany had achieved the Pangerman plan of 1911 in the enormous proportion of 87%, or about nine-tenths.
This figure is graphically confirmed by the annexed map; we can see at a glance the geographical as well as superficial relations which exist between the boundaries of the plan of 1911 and the fronts occupied early in 1916 by armies exclusively subordinate to Berlin.
THE PLAN OF 1911 AND THE EXTENT OF ITS EXECUTION AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
These geographical and mathematical considerations, the importance of which cannot escape us, explain why and under what conditions Germany wished to make peace. She wished it simply because, as the Frankfurter Zeitung owned, without mincing matters, in December, 1915, the goal of the war had been reached.
Nine-tenths of the whole of the Pangerman plan of 1911 having been practically achieved, in spite of England’s intervention, which, however, had upset the German Staff’s plan, it is absolutely clear that the results obtained by Germany have been considerable in the extreme. Nothing could therefore be more to her advantage now than to succeed in putting an end to the war at a time when German influence extends unchecked over almost the whole of the invaded territories.
These statements again explain why Berlin has for such a long time been occupied with the most subtle and most complex manœuvres for the opening of peace negotiations—attempts at a separate agreement with Russia, efforts to obtain the Pope’s intervention, advances made by the pseudo-socialists of the Kaiser towards their former comrades of belligerent countries, incitements to pacificists of all neutral countries, etc. Germany would have concluded peace at the moment which was most favourable to her, so as to be able to impose on the territories which she has either conquered or controls the special status provided for each of them by the Pangerman plan. But of course Germany would only have made such treaties as were compatible with her retention of all the regions she occupied at the time. As Major Moraht said very clearly in the Berliner Tageblatt: “Our military chiefs are not in the habit of giving back what we have acquired at the price of blood and of sacrifice” (Le Matin, 27th December, 1915).
Lastly, the chief reason why Berlin wanted peace is that the prolongation of the war can only compromise and finally ruin all the results obtained by Germany.
CHAPTER IV.
SPECIAL FEATURES GIVEN TO THE WAR BY THE PANGERMAN PLAN.
I. All the great political questions of the old world are raised and must be solved.
II. As the war is made by Germany in order to achieve a gigantic scheme of slavery, it follows that it is waged by her in flagrant violation of international law.
III. A struggle of tenacity and of duplicity on the side of Berlin versus constancy and solidarity on the side of the Allies.
The Diplomatic Corps, having ignored the Pangerman plan for reasons already shown (pp. 19 et seq.), it is quite natural that the General Staffs and the public opinion of Allied countries should have been equally ignorant. From this general absence of knowledge there has resulted a vagueness and inadequacy in the view taken of the ultimate aims of Germany in the war; and in consequence the co-ordination of the Allied efforts has remained for a long while very imperfect. Each of the Allied nations, in fact, was at first so taken up with its own interests that they all lost sight of what ought to have been the common object of their common action.
The Russians entered into the struggle against the Germans especially to prevent Serbia from being crushed, and at the same time to put an end to those veiled but profoundly humiliating ultimatums which Berlin for some years has delivered to Petrograd. The Italians, specially fascinated by Trent and Trieste, have long thought that they could limit their war to a conflict with the house of Hapsburg, when in reality the only and true enemy of the Italian people—as now the latter is more and more clearly aware—is Prussian Pangermanism. As for the English, they entered the lists for two fundamental reasons: the violation of Belgium’s neutrality aroused their indignation, and a just sense of their own interests has convinced them that they could not allow France to be crushed without at the same time acquiescing in the ultimate disappearance of Great Britain. Completely unprepared for Continental war, England has very well understood from the beginning of hostilities that these might be very much prolonged, but she had not the slightest notion that British interests would be as completely threatened as they have been in Central Europe, in Turkey, in Egypt, and in India. As to the French, the German aggression immediately raised in their minds and in their hearts the question of Alsace-Lorraine. This has hypnotized them to such a degree, to their own loss, that they have too long considered the fight merely a Franco-German war, whereas they ought to have viewed the European conflagration in its full dimensions.
This piece-meal way of looking at the facts has been of the greatest disservice to all the Allies. Indeed it has had the effect of preventing them from discerning at the right time the special character which the extraordinary extent of the Pangerman plan must necessarily give to the war.