In writing this popular book my aim has been to bring home, even to those who are least versed in foreign affairs, the formidable problems raised by the war. In my opinion this work is addressed to women quite as much as to men. The reading of it may perhaps bring not only instruction but consolation to those whose affections have been so cruelly wounded. When they comprehend better by what an atrocious plan of slavery the world is threatened, they will understand more fully for what a sublime, what a stupendous cause their husbands, their sons, their plighted lovers, are fighting or dying with such heroic self-sacrifice. May that larger understanding of the formidable events now occurring yield to the women of the Allies at least some alleviation of their sufferings.
But if this book is a popular work, I beg my readers to remark that it is not the result of a hasty effort, vamped up by a mere desire to treat of the moving, the tragic subject of the hour. The book is, indeed, the logical conclusion of a labour on which I have been engaged for twenty-one years. As my readers have an interest in knowing how far they may trust me, they will allow me to explain to them how I was led to concentrate my studies on the Pangerman policy of Germany, what has been the result of my efforts, and how they are linked together.
In former days I was the pupil of Albert Sorel at the Free School of Political Science. That great master was good enough to admit me to his intimacy; and he brought to light and maturity the latent and instinctive propensity which I had for foreign politics. My practical studies abroad led me to Germany in 1894, just at the time when the Pangerman movement had begun. As the movement was manifestly the modern development of the Prussianism of the Hohenzollerns, I was then extremely struck by its importance. The movement appeared to me so threatening for the future that I resolved to follow all the developments of the Pangerman plot, which was already the consequence of the movement, and which from 1895 onward had taken definite shape. The task which I thus laid on myself was at once arduous, vast, and thrilling, for from that time it was certain that the Germans based their political and military Pangerman plan on a study of all the political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems not only of Europe but of the whole world. In truth, the intense labour accomplished in the cause of Pangermanism by the Germans in the last twenty-one years has been colossal. They have carried it out everywhere with a formidable tenacity and a methodical thoroughness which will be the astonishment of history. Indisputably, the Pangerman plan, which is the result of this gigantic effort, is the most extraordinary plot which the world has ever witnessed.
I made the study of that plot for twenty-one years the work of my life, convinced as I was, in spite of the scepticism which long greeted my efforts to give warning of the peril, that the study would serve a useful purpose one day.
The study has necessitated very many and very long journeys of inquiry. I was obliged in fact to go and learn, on the spot, at least the essential elements of the complex problems mentioned above, which have been the base of the Pangerman plan, in order that I might be able to grasp the most distant ramifications of the Prussian programme for dominating the world.
This obligation led me to sojourn in very different countries. That the reader may have an idea of at least the material extent of my inquiries, I will indicate the number of the towns in which I have been led to work for the purpose of discovering the constituent elements, direct and indirect, of the Pangerman plan.
The United States, 14; Canada, 11; Japan, 11; Corea, 4; China, 11; Indo-China, 19; British India, 24; Spain, 1; Italy, 4; Belgium, 6; Luxemburg, 1; Holland, 5; Switzerland, 4; England, 8; Greece, 2; Bulgaria, 4; Roumania, 3; Serbia, 8; Turkey, 3; Germany, 16; Austro-Hungary, 18.
In these towns, according to the requirement of my studies, I passed days, weeks, or months, often on repeated occasions. I endeavoured, so far as the opportunities and the time admitted of it, to enter into direct relations with the acting ministers, the leaders of the various political parties, the diplomatists and the consuls, both French and foreign, some heads of states, influential journalists, officers of repute, military and naval attachés, well-informed merchants and manufacturers. It was thus that, by means of information of many sorts drawn from the most diverse sources, and checked by comparison with each other, I have attempted to set forth the Pangerman political and military plan.