To maintain its dominion over these territories, the government of Berlin is from now onward directing its energies to three sorts of manœuvres, all very astute, and very well co-ordinated, though they wear different aspects, each corresponding to each of the three territorial stages essential to the achievement of the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf.” These three stages are Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria, which last forms the bridge between the two other stages.
I.
As regards Austria-Hungary the Berlin programme may be summed up as follows: to take advantage of the occupation of the territories of the Hapsburg Monarchy by the troops of William II. in order to impose, by all possible means, both on Hungary and on Austria, a series of measures called an economic union with Germany, which would leave Austria-Hungary an appearance of independence sufficient to throw dust in the eyes of the Allies, while at the same time it would in fact subject that empire absolutely to the will of Berlin.
So far, these tactics have not succeeded in putting on a semblance of legality. Since the outbreak of war, the Pangermans of Vienna have not even dared to summon the Austrian parliament, knowing very well that the Slav and Latin deputies would protest most vehemently against the subjection of their respective countries to the German empire. At present the Germans of Vienna, while they terrorize the Austrian Slavs and try to persuade them that the Allies have forsaken them, are striving to prepare a meeting of the Reichsrath which might seem to sanction all that has been done. But the reader will understand that it is no easy matter to get up this farce, when he learns that even the Magyars, who have linked themselves closely to Germany, are beginning to resist, now that Berlin is forced to disclose those measures of enslavement, of which Hungary must feel the effects, like the other States destined to pass under the Pangerman yoke. It is said that William II.’s great Magyar accomplice, Count Tisza himself, is protesting. At all events in the Pesti Hirlap of Budapest, of 12th April, 1916, we are assured that his friend, the Senator Eugène Rakosky, has just published the following lines, which are particularly significant:
“All this Central European ferment will have no other result than compelling the Hungarians to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the Germans. They want us to make high roads for the Germans to the East. All these Central European alliances and unions mean nothing but that we are expected to sell our national soul and pass under the German yoke” (quoted by Le Temps, 19th April, 1916).
But the Allies should have no illusion on this head. The most vehement protests of the Magyars will be of no avail. The Germans are in occupation of Austria-Hungary and they have the power. They may disguise their enslavement of this vast empire under various formulas, such as extension of the Zollverein, economic union of the Central Empires, unification of the commercial laws of Austria and Germany, etc.; or they may even, as a subterfuge, to lull the fears of the Allies to sleep, give up the use of any positive formula, the final result will always be the same, the political seizure by Germany of the Hapsburg Monarchy cloaked under the decent pretext of economic measures.
To this object the Germans cling above everything else, because it has been the basis of the whole Pangerman plan since 1895, and the indispensable condition of achieving the scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf,” as the reader will find explained, with the reasons in full, in my book published fifteen years ago, L’Europe et la Question d’Autriche au seuil du XXᵉ siècle; they cling to it, too, because Germany has made war for the very purpose of effecting at least this seizure of Austria-Hungary, which is absolutely indispensable to the plans of William II.
Nothing but the complete victory of the Allies can compel Berlin to renounce this plan of domination and liberate the non-German peoples of the Hapsburg Monarchy. Meantime the Germans are taking all possible precautions against such an event. We have seen (p. 93) how already, under their pressure, the Magyars are concerting with them the economic measures to be taken in view of that future war, which is to complete the results of a peace which Berlin already thinks bound to be “imperfect.” Accordingly, the Allies cannot have the faintest doubt as to the new war which as sure as fate will follow, sooner or later, from the economic and necessarily political union of the Central Empires. In Chapter V we saw that the certain consequence of this economic union would be:
1º. To secure to Germany the spoils of war and a trade monopoly over nearly 3 millions of square kilometres containing wealth untold.
2º. On the contrary, to leave the Allies to pay all their expenses in the war, which is equivalent to condemning their peoples to ruin.