1º. Germany has been forced to wage the war in order to resist a coalition treacherously contrived by England. Therefore Germany, a country of intellectual, scientific, and economic activity, obliged to right for its existence, deserves the sympathies of the whole world.
2º. If the neutrals are seriously injured by the war and its prolongation the responsibility rests on the Allies, who desire to destroy the German people. The neutrals should therefore take common action and bring pressure to bear on the Allies for the purpose of inducing them to acquiesce in the German victory, thus ensuring the speedy restoration of peace.
3º. To hasten this result the neutrals, and especially the United States, ought to oppose the maritime blockade which England is maintaining, under conditions the legitimacy of which, from the point of view of international law, is open to question. By refusing to supply munitions to the Allies, the United States would put an end to the butchery and thus serve the cause of humanity.
4º. Germany is really conciliatory, she wants nothing but an equitable peace. “We Germans,” declared Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, December 11th, 1915, “do not wish to set the peoples by the ears; on the contrary each will bear his share in the peaceful labour of all and in the progress of the nations.”
5º. The neutrals ought all the more to help Germany because she is fighting to ensure for all the freedom of the seas, which at present hateful England keeps in her own hands. The Berliner Tageblatt (quoted by Le Matin of February 18th, 1916), did not scruple to assert that the achievement by Germany of her favourite scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” would secure for all nations the freedom of the sea. “If the economic mission of Germany,” said that journal, “is to guard the freedom of the road which leads from the North Sea through Central Europe to Asia Minor, and to render it more and more accessible, in the interest of all who reside along the road in question, then it is a necessary consequence of this our mission that we should have a vital interest in the sea likewise, since the Continental road in Central Europe is merely its continuation. Our interest requires that the sea shall be freed from the supremacy of a single people, that it shall be open to all honest competition.”
6º. The Allies pretended that they made war on Germany because we violated the neutrality of Belgium. This cant only serves as a cloak for their own hypocritical cupidity. It is not for the Allies to reproach Germany, seeing that they have themselves violated the neutrality of Greece.
To the Allies, who can have no doubt as to the premeditated character of the German aggression, these main arguments, on which the German propaganda rests, of course, are nothing more nor less than “colossal” lies, as absurd as they are cynical. Nevertheless we must bear in mind that repeated indefatigably under every form to Germanophile neutrals in Europe or to neutrals in America and Asia, who naturally have but vague ideas on the complex affairs of Europe, they have enabled the Germans gravely to prejudice the cause of the Allies through the moral, economic, and military effects which they have produced. Hence the Allies are deeply concerned in frustrating the world-wide German propaganda with all possible speed. Now that great object, as we shall see later on, the Allied Governments could, if they chose, very quickly accomplish by pointing to the temporary success of the Pangerman plot.
Pangermanism and the dangers which it involves for the future are now well enough known in some neutral countries, but the knowledge is still somewhat vague, it still lacks that clear definition and that sense of imminent peril which arouse strong convictions and prompt actions. But if the Pangerman plan of 1911, in all its definiteness and extent, has been ignored down to a very recent date in the Allied countries, which nevertheless above all others are interested in knowing it, we can easily understand that this nefarious plot for enslaving the whole world has not yet been fully apprehended by neutral nations. But the temporary accomplishment of the Pangerman plan in Europe, to the enormous extent of nine-tenths, furnishes the Allies with demonstrative arguments of the utmost cogency, and thus puts it in their power speedily to counteract the effect of the German lies all over the world, and to prove the danger which Pangermanism creates for all civilized States.
To achieve this object it would be enough if the Allied propaganda, which has begun to be organized, were to be co-ordinated and founded on a small number of positive arguments drawn from the results already attained by Pangermanism; for these results would reveal to everybody Germany’s long premeditation, and therefore her responsibility and the scheme of world-wide domination which she pursues.