Germany before the war

by baron Beyens

V.

In order to prove to the Reichstag the necessity for the new army bill submitted to it on 18th March, the explanatory statement alleged the early victories of the Balkan League as the primary motive. Austria-Hungary, crippled by this new coalition, which probably had Russia at its back, could no longer give Germany sufficient aid; and the latter, with only her own strength to rely upon, would have to face her enemies on two opposite fronts.

It was not true to say that the idea of enlarging German armaments had been prompted by the Balkan campaigns. The train had been laid for some time; the heavy war material for which credits were now demanded had already been ordered at Krupp’s, and there were other expenses to which the Government was committed. But the Balkan conflict set a bad example to the Berlin Staff. It served as a stimulus, a flick of the whip to drive the nations into a universal war. Nevertheless, the Staff wished to give the army its finishing touches before Germany came to blows with her eastern and western adversaries, and perhaps some of these finishing touches were suggested by the experience of recent military events.

Curiously enough, the Chancellor, in his expository speech of 7th April on the bill, made no allusion to Italy or to the help that she might furnish. Was this omission due to a mistaken contempt for her fighting strength? This is unthinkable; he would have taken good care not to offend an ally who was naturally sensitive. The most likely assumption is that, in showing to his hearers Austria-Hungary at grips with the new Confederates in the Balkan danger-zone, where a victory of the Dual Monarchy would inevitably have affected that Austro-Italian balance which was one of the fundamentals of the Triple Alliance, he judged it more prudent to avoid all mention of Italy. We know to-day, from the publication of the Italian Green Book, that by Article 7 of the treaty Austria-Hungary was required to come to a previous understanding with Italy, if the status quo in the Balkans should be altered through her agency, by a temporary or permanent occupation of territory; the same obligation being, of course, imposed upon Italy. We can now form a better idea of the difficulties that would have beset the entry of Italy into a general war, destined, according to the anticipations or the wishes of the Central Empires, to include the interior of the Balkans in its scope. It was wiser, therefore, to say nothing about her co-operation. Strange though it may seem, the Chancellor’s silence regarding the Latin ally aroused no comment either in the Reichstag or in the Press.

As a matter of fact, the spectre of the Balkan League, at the time when the Chancellor raised it, was anything but formidable. The danger was about to vanish in smoke, and the Confederates, instead of sharing their booty like brothers, were already bent on settling its ownership by the sword. The Chancellor must have known this, however bad his information from diplomatic sources may have been. The army bill of 1913 was the climax of a plan worked out with elaborate care; the events of the autumn of 1913 merely supplied the pretext and the staging necessary for bringing it before the world.

Yet in the spring of 1913 William II., although he had stood by his allies in the Scutari affair, did not seem to desire an immediate war. Military and family reasons combined to stay his hand. The new bill, with its financial cover, had not yet been passed in the Reichstag, and the Emperor wished to celebrate peacefully in his capital both the twenty-fifth year of his reign and his daughter’s wedding with Duke Ernest of Cumberland. Among those invited to the wedding ceremony, besides the families of the bride and bridegroom, were the sovereigns of Russia and Great Britain, owing to their ties of kinship. It was an occasion, chosen no doubt by design, for a final attempt to isolate Republican France from the monarchies of the Triple Entente. On the gala night at the opera, William II. beamed from the Imperial box, accompanied by the Empress and the bride, and with Tsar Nicholas, King George, and Queen Mary in his immediate neighbourhood. Following these came the young heir to the Guelph dynasty, whom adroit diplomacy, as well as certain leanings on his own part, had reconciled with the Hohenzollerns, although they had dethroned his grandfather. What a triumph for the German monarch, on whom Fortune seemed to have lavished all her smiles! The unforgettable picture of this almost insolent happiness brings back to our minds a close historical parallel—the famous command performances at Erfurt. There, too, a Cæsar, but a Cæsar with the conqueror’s laurels on his brow, had a throng of royalties behind him, and talked affably with an Emperor of Russia before a resplendent audience. But after Erfurt Napoleon waited four years before quarrelling with Alexander. Only a year elapsed before William II. changed the open-hearted friendliness of his guests into implacable enmity, through their resolve to champion the cause of two little peoples, the victims of a wanton aggression.