This Allied propaganda ought to be firmly established by the practical and indisputable proof afforded by the geographical superposition of the 1911 plan on the territories actually taken possession of by Germany in the course of the war; thus compared, it will be seen that the plan and its execution tally almost exactly.
RELATION BETWEEN THE PANGERMAN PLAN OF 1911 AND THE PANGERMAN GAINS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
The accompanying map exhibits this incontestable truth in a graphic form by showing the outlines of the actual German fortress compared with the outlines contemplated by the 1911 plan. According to it the German conquests were to have extended to 3,474,288 square kilometres, in addition to Germany itself. But these conquests and seizures at the beginning of 1916 were accomplished over an area of 3,035,572 square kilometres. This geographical proof is confirmed by many manifestoes which have appeared on the other side of the Rhine advocating a policy of annexation. Amongst these may particularly be noted:—
1º. The famous memorial of May 20th, 1915, which the Imperial Chancellor caused to be presented to himself by the most important associations of Germany (see p. 17).
2º. Germany’s manifest desire to get possession successively of Riga, Calais, Verdun, Belfort, and Salonika, in order to complete the plan of 1911 by holding the strategical points necessary for the preservation of the territories over which she has cast her net.
3º. The declarations made in the Reichstag on April 5th, 1916, by the Imperial Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, which lend the force of demonstration to the geographical proof.
To any plain man these declarations appear to amount to an official avowal of Germany’s intention to execute the Pangerman plan. The phrases of the Imperial Chancellor leave no room for ambiguity.
“After the war Poland will no longer be the Poland out of which the Russian usurers have been cleared.... No. Never again must Russia be able to march her armies to the defenceless frontier of East Prussia, nay, of West Prussia (thunders of applause). Just as little is it to be supposed that in the West we shall give up the lands where our people’s blood has flowed, unless we receive solid guarantees for the future. We mean to create solid guarantees in order that Belgium should not become a vassal State of England and France, that it should not be turned into an outwork against Germany from the military as well as the economic point of view.” (Loud applause.) (Quoted by Le Temps, April 8th, 1916.)
The Imperial Chancellor could not assert more categorically the territorial claims of Germany on the East and on the West. As for the claims towards the South and South-East, consequent upon Germany’s seizure of Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg made no allusion to them. His silence is intelligible. In the first place, it was too much to expect that the Imperial Chancellor should make a clean breast of the burglaries which Germany has committed on the territories of her own Allies; in the second place, Berlin affects to consider these forcible acquisitions to the South and South-East as permanent and therefore beyond the reach of discussion.