The Myth of a Guilty Nation

by Albert Jay Nock

XIX

On 25 April, 1912, the German Reichstag put through its first reading a bill, with only perfunctory debate, for an increase in the German army and navy. This measure has been regularly and officially interpreted as a threat. Yet nearly a year after, on 19 February, 1913, Baron Guillaume, writing from Paris about the prospects of the Three Years Service bill, reports to the Belgian Foreign Office that the French Minister of War "does not regard the measures taken by Germany as a demonstration of hostility, but rather as an act of prudence for the future. Germany fears that she may one day have to fight Russia and France together, perhaps England too; and then any help that Austria might give her would be seriously handicapped by the fact that the Dual Monarchy [Austria-Hungary] would have to withstand a coalition of Balkan States."

Naturally. The bill was presented to the Reichstag in April, and the "coalition of Balkan States," M. Hartwig's Balkan League, had already completed its organization in February. Not only so, but the very first step taken by this exemplary organization provided for a division of spoils in the event of a successful war with Turkey; and six months after the organization of the League was concluded, it served an ultimatum upon Turkey over Albania, and in October went to war. The German Government could quite plainly see the future about to be inaugurated through this consolidation of Balkan policy into the hands of the Russian Foreign Office—any one even an attentive reader of newspapers, could see it—and it could see the vastly increased responsibility of its Austrian ally, in case of a quarrel, should it have to take on a coalition of the Balkan States instead of a single one.

Count de Lalaing reported from London, 24 February, 1918, that the British Foreign Office took the same sensible view of the German military increases as, according to Baron Guillaume, was taken by M. Jonnart. "The English press," he says, "is of course anxious to saddle Germany with the responsibility for the fresh tension caused by her schemes—a tension which may give Europe fresh reasons for uneasiness." But, he goes on—

At the Foreign Office I found a more equitable and calmer estimate of the situation. They see in the reinforcement of the German armies not so much a provocation as an admission that circumstances have weakened Germany's military position, and that it must be strengthened. The Berlin Government is compelled to recognize that it can no longer count upon being supported by the whole force of its Austrian ally, now that a new Power, that of the Balkan Federation, has made its appearance in South-eastern Europe, right at the gates of the Dual Empire.... Under these circumstances, the Foreign Office sees nothing astonishing in Germany's finding it imperative to increase the number of her army corps. The Foreign Office also states that the Berlin Government had told the Paris Cabinet quite frankly that such were the motives for its action.

The same view was publicly expressed by Mr. Lloyd George himself as late as 1 January, 1914, when he said:

The German army was vital, not merely to the existence of the German Empire, but to the very life and independence of the nation itself, surrounded, as Germany is, by other nations, each of which possesses armies as powerful as her own. We forget that while we insist upon a sixty-per-cent superiority (as far as our naval strength is concerned) over Germany being essential to guarantee the integrity of our own shores, Germany herself has nothing like that superiority over France alone, and she has of course, in addition, to reckon with Russia on her eastern frontier. Germany has nothing which approximates to a two-Power standard. She has, therefore, become alarmed by recent issues, and is spending huge sums of money on the expansion of her military resources.

Those are the words, be it remembered, of the same person who says to-day that German responsibility for the war which broke out six months after he had made the foregoing statement, is a chose jugée! The statement was made, furthermore, not only after the German bill of 25 April, 1912, but after the bill of 8 April, 1913, as well, which fixed the peace-strength of the German army at 870,000.