STORES OF ENGLISH COATS
11. When our troops advanced in 1914 they found, in northern France and along the Belgian frontier, great stores of English soldiers' greatcoats. According to statements by the inhabitants, these were placed there during the last years of peace. Most of the English infantrymen who were made prisoners by us in the summer of 1914 had no greatcoats; when asked why, they answered, quite naïvely: "We are to find our greatcoats in the stores at Maubeuge, Le Quesnoy, etc., in the north of France and in Belgium."
It was the same regarding maps. In Maubeuge great quantities of English military maps of northern France and Belgium were found by our men; copies of these have been shown to me. The names of places were printed in French and English, and all sorts of words were translated in the margin for the convenience of soldiers; for instance: moulin=mill, pont=bridge, maison=house, ville=town, bois=wood, etc. These maps date from 1911 and were engraved at Southampton.
The stores were established by England, with the permission of the French and Belgian Governments, before the war, in the midst of peace. What a tempest of horror would have broken out in Belgium, the "neutral country," and what a rumpus England and France would have kicked up, if we had wished to establish stores of German soldiers' greatcoats and maps in Spa, Liège, and Namur!
Among the statesmen who, besides Poincaré, particularly helped unleash the World War, the Sazonoff-Isvolsky group probably should take first rank. Isvolsky, it is said, when at Paris, proudly placed his hand upon his breast and declared: "I made the war. Je suis le père de cette guerre" ("I am the father of this war").
Delcassé also has a large share in the guilt for the World War, and Grey an even larger share, since he was the spiritual leader of the "encirclement policy," which he faithfully pushed forward and brought to completion, as the "legacy" of his dead sovereign.
I have been informed that an important rôle was played in the preparation of the World War directed against the monarchical Central Powers by the policy of the international "Great Orient Lodge"; a policy extending over many years and always envisaging the goal at which it aimed. But the German Great Lodges, I was furthermore told—with two exceptions wherein non-German financial interests are paramount and which maintain secret connection with the "Great Orient" in Paris—had no relationship to the "Great Orient." They were entirely loyal and faithful, according to the assurance given me by the distinguished German Freemason who explained to me this whole interrelationship, which had, until then, been unknown to me. He said that in 1917 an international meeting of the lodges of the "Great Orient" was held, after which there was a subsequent conference in Switzerland; at this the following program was adopted: Dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, democratization of Germany, elimination of the House of Hapsburg, abdication of the German Emperor, restitution of Alsace-Lorraine to France, union of Galicia with Poland, elimination of the Pope and the Catholic Church, elimination of every state Church in Europe.
I am not now in a position to investigate the very damaging information which has been transmitted to me, in the best of faith, concerning the organization and activities of the Great Orient Lodges. Secret and public political organizations have played important parts in the life of peoples and states, ever since history has existed. Some of them have been beneficial: most of them have been destructive, if they had to have secret passwords which shunned the light of day. The most dangerous of these organizations hide under the cloak of some ideal object or other—such as active love of their neighbors, readiness to help the weak, and poor, and so forth—in order that, with such pretexts as a blind, they may work for their real secret ends. It is certainly advisable to study the activities of the Great Orient Lodges, since one cannot adopt a final attitude toward this worldwide organization until it has been thoroughly investigated.
I shall not take up the war operations in this work. I shall leave this task all the more readily to my officers and to the historians, since I, writing as I am without a single document, would be able to describe events only in very broad outline.
When I look back upon the four arduous war years, with their hopes and fears, their brilliant victories and losses in precious blood, what is uppermost in my mind is the feeling of ardent gratitude and undying admiration for the unequaled achievements of the German Nation in arms.