The Allies did not go to Greece to take possession of the country, as the Germans did to Belgium. The Allies went to Greece to assist their ally Serbia, which, moreover, was the ally of Greece, and to oppose the spoliation of Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, and Turkey, by Germany. The treaties which give Turkey, France, England, and Russia the right of protecting the Hellenic constitution, greatly endangered by German influences at Athens, are sufficient to justify, on the ground of international law, the presence of the Allies in Greece. But it is necessary, further, to state clearly that they are there in virtue of a still higher right, that of safeguarding the collective liberty of the nations. A comparison will enable us to appreciate this point of view, the statement of which is perhaps novel. According to the civil law, private property is inviolable. But if any man, passing a garden which the right of private property forbids him to enter, sees on the other side of the garden a ruffian in the act of murdering a person for the purpose of robbing him, he not only has a moral right, but is in duty bound to cross the garden to help his fellow who is in danger of his life. There is not a court of justice in the world that would blame the worthy and courageous citizen for having violated the rights of private property in succouring his fellow man. But the Allies went to Salonika with exactly the same intention. They have passed through Greece in order to seize by the throat the Pangerman ruffian who is violently robbing Austria-Hungary, the Balkans, and Turkey; who is destroying by millions in these countries the Antigermanic civil populations; who, shrinking from no crimes, however heinous, claims to lay hands on riches untold, and to secure his illgotten gains by capturing the whole region from Vienna to the Persian Gulf, which would furnish Germany with the means of maintaining her world-wide dominion (see p. 106).
Now, as my readers have been able to see for themselves, there is, by reason of the temporary success of the Pangerman plot, abundance of unimpeachable arguments, numerical, geographical, ethnographical, in support of these conclusions. These irrefragable arguments are therefore calculated to make the greatest impression on neutrals, because they are of a nature to appeal to their higher feelings and at the same time to show how their own interests are jeopardized. If the Allied propaganda is once co-ordinated and fortified by these arguments, set forth methodically, the moral, economic, and military effects, which the German propaganda has undoubtedly produced to the advantage of Germany, would soon be annulled, and the Allies would justly reap similar advantages, which would hasten the victory.
III.
Henceforth the Allies and the neutral states must bear constantly in mind not only Germany’s present gains on the East and on the West, but also her Pangerman gains as a whole.
The accompanying map furnishes the justification of this conclusion. It is obvious that the German gains on the West and the East, important as they are, are relatively small by comparison with the enormous seizures which Germany has effected at the expense of Austria-Hungary, of half the Balkans, and of Turkey. We must fully understand that these countries, especially Austria-Hungary, though they are allies of Germany, are nevertheless as truly under the German heel as Belgium, Poland, or the invaded departments of France. There is therefore good ground for making no distinction between the Pangerman gains achieved by Germany at the cost of her open enemies (France and Russia) and those which the Government of Berlin has treacherously effected at the expense of her own allies, like Austria-Hungary.
What the Allies and the neutral states have to consider is the Pangerman gains taken as a whole, in order to discriminate those which are calculated to upset the balance of power in the world, and consequently to establish German supremacy.
THE PANGERMAN GAINS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.
Now it is certain that if Germany were to give up her gains in the East and the West, while maintaining her seizures in the South and South-East, her power would at that moment be formidably increased as compared with what it was before the war. That, therefore, would be an indisputable and enormous victory for Pangermanism. The sketch map, inserted below, represents this truth in a graphic form. From Berlin radiate the lines on which are stretched the threads of that immense spider’s web which covers the whole of the enormous Pangerman gains achieved by Germany in the course of the war. These gains she has been able to effect by means of
1º. The very skilful political turn which she has adroitly given to her military operations.