THE GREAT POLITICAL QUESTIONS RAISED BY THE WAR.
The claims of Germany on the East, shown on the accompanying map by the thinner black line, raised the question of Poland in its immense extent and in all its complexity. The claims of Germany towards the West, also shown on the map by the thinner black line, involved the independence of Holland, of Belgium, of Luxemburg, of France, threatened with the loss of vital territories. Further, towards the West the German aggression has brought forward the question of Alsace-Lorraine from the French point of view. Moreover, since Germany aims at establishing her absolute supremacy from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf, in order to stretch her political tentacles to the Far East and to the whole world by means which will be shown in Chapter V. the present war compels the powers to face the whole Eastern question (Balkans and Turkey, shown on the map by similar black lines), and also the whole question of Austria. (Used in this sense the expression Austria indicates the whole of the Hapsburg Dominion, that is, the territory enclosed by a thick black line.) In short, the whole of the great foreign questions are raised at one blow before the world by the aggression of the Berlin Government.
The Germans, having studied thoroughly for a very long time all these problems, have also provided for each of them a solution in accordance with their most cynical interests. The result is that all these political problems, raised simultaneously, form a tangled skein, and that the Allies will never be really victorious till they can compel the Germans to accept those solutions of the great problems which by the nature of things must be the direct contrary of those foreshadowed by Berlin. The Eastern question which is now raised in Europe is no longer the old orthodox question but a Prussianized Eastern question coloured in all its aspects by the present and future ambitions of the Hohenzollerns. In the same way the question of modern Austria is no longer the old Austrian question which consisted in the traditional struggle of the Hapsburgs with their various nationalities. What the Allies have now to consider in Central Europe is the question of Austria Prussianized by means of two essential facts: the covert but exclusive influence which Berlin has increasingly exercised over Vienna, especially for the last fifteen years, and the hold which the Hohenzollerns have got by means of the war over the whole of the Hapsburg Monarchy, which includes 28 millions of Slav and Latin populations bowed under the yoke, with no hope of deliverance except through the crushing of Prussian militarism.
II.
The Pangerman plan finally gives to the struggle which it has initiated a character of sanguinary horror without parallel in history.
In short, William II., after having roused by means of Pangerman propaganda amongst his people violent desires of conquest and plunder, has declared war with the fixed idea that it will lead in Europe and in Turkey to the supremacy of 77 millions of Germans, over 127 millions of non-Germans. The small but violent Prussophile Camarilla of Vienna, a group of Magyar aristocrats in league with Count Tisza, a handful of pseudo young Turks bought by Berlin, have been the Kaiser’s accomplices. Finally, it is these few men alone who have drawn into war 50 million Austro-Hungarians and 20 million Ottomans, that is, 70 million belligerents, the vast majority of whom certainly did not wish for a sanguinary conflict. From all this it is clear that these peoples were betrayed into the war by their Kings or their Turco-Magyar governments.
The origin as well as the object of the war make it therefore the most cruelly reactionary enterprise conceivable. It is so to such a degree that those who in France are called reactionaries and who compared to the Prussian Junkers are great Liberals, find themselves in close agreement with the most ardent Socialists in desiring the total ruin of an enterprise which, if successful, would put the modern world back into the Middle Ages in the most odious fashion. But this time it would be a mediæval state of things made immutable through the force of the most modern science, which would stop the clock of progress. The death-dealing electric current which runs in the metallic wires actually forming an impassable barrier between Belgium and Holland forms a perfect symbol of what the Pangerman prison would be for those who do not belong to the German nationality.
On the other hand, the very fact that they pursue a plan of gigantic and unheard of slavery has logically led the Germans, first cynically to violate all the laws of war between belligerents, and then systematically to commit abominable crimes against common law, whether at the expense of neutrals whom they would terrorize, such as the factory hands of the United States, or at the expense of the unhappy civil populations of the “burglared” regions, populations whose sufferings are indescribable. The events resulting from Pangerman terrorism are so numerous and so unutterably atrocious that historians will find the greatest difficulty in painting the Dantesque picture of all these crimes in their colossal horror. Undoubtedly the Germans wage war in a manner which assimilates them to vulgar burglars and assassins, and therefore to common criminals. They have thus placed themselves beyond the pale of humanity, and those who outside of Germany knowingly help them in their task of enslaving Europe are nothing more or less than accomplices and should be dealt with as such.