On the other hand, as Germany has nothing whatever to gain by a prolongation of the war, she will continue to aim at a rupture of the Coalition by means of every possible political manœuvre. It is clear that the defection of one of the principal Allies would necessarily place all the others in vastly more difficult positions for continuing the struggle. Assuming that such a thing were to happen, the Germans could, indeed, hope to discuss peace on the base of the territories which they actually occupy. They will therefore repeat and increase their bids for a separate peace with one or other of their adversaries. When once their position becomes very difficult the Germans, so as to shatter at all cost the Coalition, will make propositions of separate peace to one of the Allies, offering that one country almost complete satisfaction in the hope that, swayed perhaps by a section of their people who have grown weary of war, that Allied country will lay down her arms.
The Allied State which, contrary to its plighted faith, should separately treat with Berlin, would soon be punished for its infamy. By allowing Germany to conclude peace more or less on the basis of the territories she at present holds, the traitor State would find itself afterwards confronted by a formidable German Empire, and would inevitably become one of its first victims.
The Germans will perhaps try to play on the Allies the “armistice trick.” Here, again, we should have a cunning calculation founded once more on the weariness of the combatants. It is, indeed, conceivable that a simple armistice might end in allowing Germany to hold finally most of her actual territorial acquisitions; but it could so end only by means of a manœuvre which we must now expose.
No doubt they must make at Berlin the following calculation, which theoretically has something to be said for it: “If an armistice were signed, the Allied soldiers would think: ‘They are talking, therefore it means peace, and demobilization will soon follow.’ Under these conditions the effect will be the moral slackening of our adversaries.” The Germans could not ask for anything better. They would open peace negotiations with the following astute idea. To understand the manœuvre we must remember the proposals of peace which that active agent, Dr. Alfred Hermann Fried, of Vienna, was charged to throw out as a sounding-lead on the 27th December, 1915, in an article of the Nouvelle Gazette de Zurich, which made a great stir. These proposals were mixed up with provisoes, which would allow the discussion to be opened or broken off at any moment desired. For example, Belgium would preserve her independence, but “on condition of treaties, perhaps also of guarantees, which would render impossible a repetition of the events of 1914.” The occupied departments of France would be restored unconditionally to France, but “some small rectifications of frontiers might perhaps be desired in the interests of both parties” (Journal de Genève, 29th December, 1915). Assuming that the Allies committed the enormous mistake of discussing peace on such treacherous terms, Germany still entrenched behind her fronts, which would have been rendered almost impregnable, would say to the Allies, “I don’t agree with you. After all you cannot require of me that I should evacuate territories from which you are powerless to drive me. If you are not satisfied, continue the war.” As, while the negotiations were pending, all needful steps would have been taken by the German agents to aggravate the moral slackening of the soldiers of such Allied countries as might be most weary of the struggle, the huge military machine of the Entente could not again be put in motion as a whole. The real result would be, in fact, the rupture of the Anti-Germanic Coalition, and finally the conclusion of a peace more or less based on actual occupation. Berlin’s goal would thus have been reached.
Finally, when the “armistice trick” shall have also failed, and the situation of Germany shall have grown still worse, we shall see Berlin play her last trump. Petitions against territorial annexations will be multiplied on the other side of the Rhine. In an underhand way they will be favoured by the Government of Berlin, which will end by saying to the Allies: “Let us stop killing each other. I am perfectly reasonable. I give up my claims on such of your territories as are occupied by my armies. Let us negotiate peace on the basis of the ‘drawn game.’”
The day when this proposal will be made, the Allies will have to face the most astute of the Berlin tricks, the most alarming German trap. At that moment the tenacity, the clearsightedness, and the solidarity of the Allies must be put forth to the utmost. To show the extreme necessity of this, in the case supposed, I must baffle the German manœuvre in advance by proving clearly in the following chapter that the dodge of the drawn game, if it succeeded, would mask in reality a formidable success for Germany and an irreparable catastrophe for the Allies and for the freedom of the world.
CHAPTER V.
THE DODGE OF THE “DRAWN GAME” AND THE SCHEME “FROM HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF.”
I. What would really be the outcome of the dodge called the “Drawn Game.”