2. It is manifest that Germany cannot maintain a war against Europe except with the help of the Austro-Hungarian soldiers, whom she has dexterously contrived to enlist in her cause, and of whom the vast majority only fight because they are forced to do so by the brutal German Staff Officers who command them.
3. It is clear that after the peace, if Germany were to evacuate all the territories she now occupies in the East and the West, to restore Alsace-Lorraine to France, and yet to keep her hold, more or less disguised, on Austria-Hungary, Berlin would possess all the means for retaking, after a short delay, Alsace-Lorraine from France, since, as we saw in the foregoing chapter, the German hold on Austria-Hungary inevitably implies the accomplishment of the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.”
4. From this last consideration it follows that if after the peace Germany were to retain her disguised hold on Austria-Hungary, the solemn promise given by France, England, and Russia, to re-establish Serbia in its independence and its integrity, would be practically incapable of fulfilment.
5. On the contrary, if the freedom from German control of at least the majority of the Austro-Hungarian territories were assured after the peace, this would absolutely prevent for the future any aggressive revival of Prussian militarism. For by the very fact of that independence the General Staff of Berlin would be deprived of troops which are indispensable to the forcible execution of the Pangerman projects.
6. A glance at the map (p. 113) will show that in virtue of their geographical situation nothing but the freedom of the majority of the Austro-Hungarian territories from German control could enable the Allies to keep their promises to Serbia, and, by definitely breaking the backbone of the Pangerman plan, to prevent the immense danger of the “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” plan, the accomplishment of which all the Allies, without any exception (France, England, Russia, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Serbia, Montenegro) have a really vital interest to prevent. But, as we shall see at the end of the volume, their interest in this matter is also the interest of the whole civilized world.
The fact that public opinion in the Allied countries is not yet fully alive to the capital, the essential importance of the Austro-Hungarian question for the issue of the war and the future of Europe, is due to a variety of causes which must be enumerated.
In the first place, the question of Austria-Hungary, an empire composed of very complex racial and social elements, is undoubtedly very difficult to grasp.
In the next place, the lamentable want of interest in foreign affairs, which before the war prevailed in the Allied countries, is responsible for the extreme inaccuracy of those current beliefs on the subject, which the German press agents have successfully palmed off on the newspapers of the present Allies.
As a result, many people in these countries, especially in England, still imagine that Austria-Hungary, with a population of fifty millions, is a country mainly German, which is a radically false idea. This serious mistake is sometimes made, to my knowledge, even by men occupying very important posts.
Evidently a large part of the public is no longer quite so ignorant as that. Nevertheless, even for them the Austro-Hungarian question is still full of obscurities. Need we wonder at it? The official diplomatists themselves in general, whatever their personal intelligence, have been able to acquire but a very superficial insight into the internal affairs of the Hapsburg empire. The reasons for the deficiency have been already set forth (Chapter I., § 3); they include the old-fashioned means of observation and information which the diplomatists have been constrained to employ.