Germany before the war

by baron Beyens

It was not true to say that the idea of enlarging German armaments had been prompted by the Balkan campaigns. The train had been laid for some time; the heavy war material for which credits were now demanded had already been ordered at Krupp’s, and there were other expenses to which the Government was committed. But the Balkan conflict set a bad example to the Berlin Staff. It served as a stimulus, a flick of the whip to drive the nations into a universal war. Nevertheless, the Staff wished to give the army its finishing touches before Germany came to blows with her eastern and western adversaries, and perhaps some of these finishing touches were suggested by the experience of recent military events.

Curiously enough, the Chancellor, in his expository speech of 7th April on the bill, made no allusion to Italy or to the help that she might furnish. Was this omission due to a mistaken contempt for her fighting strength? This is unthinkable; he would have taken good care not to offend an ally who was naturally sensitive. The most likely assumption is that, in showing to his hearers Austria-Hungary at grips with the new Confederates in the Balkan danger-zone, where a victory of the Dual Monarchy would inevitably have affected that Austro-Italian balance which was one of the fundamentals of the Triple Alliance, he judged it more prudent to avoid all mention of Italy. We know to-day, from the publication of the Italian Green Book, that by Article 7 of the treaty Austria-Hungary was required to come to a previous understanding with Italy, if the status quo in the Balkans should be altered through her agency, by a temporary or permanent occupation of territory; the same obligation being, of course, imposed upon Italy. We can now form a better idea of the difficulties that would have beset the entry of Italy into a general war, destined, according to the anticipations or the wishes of the Central Empires, to include the interior of the Balkans in its scope. It was wiser, therefore, to say nothing about her co-operation. Strange though it may seem, the Chancellor’s silence regarding the Latin ally aroused no comment either in the Reichstag or in the Press.

As a matter of fact, the spectre of the Balkan League, at the time when the Chancellor raised it, was anything but formidable. The danger was about to vanish in smoke, and the Confederates, instead of sharing their booty like brothers, were already bent on settling its ownership by the sword. The Chancellor must have known this, however bad his information from diplomatic sources may have been. The army bill of 1913 was the climax of a plan worked out with elaborate care; the events of the autumn of 1913 merely supplied the pretext and the staging necessary for bringing it before the world.

Yet in the spring of 1913 William II., although he had stood by his allies in the Scutari affair, did not seem to desire an immediate war. Military and family reasons combined to stay his hand. The new bill, with its financial cover, had not yet been passed in the Reichstag, and the Emperor wished to celebrate peacefully in his capital both the twenty-fifth year of his reign and his daughter’s wedding with Duke Ernest of Cumberland. Among those invited to the wedding ceremony, besides the families of the bride and bridegroom, were the sovereigns of Russia and Great Britain, owing to their ties of kinship. It was an occasion, chosen no doubt by design, for a final attempt to isolate Republican France from the monarchies of the Triple Entente. On the gala night at the opera, William II. beamed from the Imperial box, accompanied by the Empress and the bride, and with Tsar Nicholas, King George, and Queen Mary in his immediate neighbourhood. Following these came the young heir to the Guelph dynasty, whom adroit diplomacy, as well as certain leanings on his own part, had reconciled with the Hohenzollerns, although they had dethroned his grandfather. What a triumph for the German monarch, on whom Fortune seemed to have lavished all her smiles! The unforgettable picture of this almost insolent happiness brings back to our minds a close historical parallel—the famous command performances at Erfurt. There, too, a Cæsar, but a Cæsar with the conqueror’s laurels on his brow, had a throng of royalties behind him, and talked affably with an Emperor of Russia before a resplendent audience. But after Erfurt Napoleon waited four years before quarrelling with Alexander. Only a year elapsed before William II. changed the open-hearted friendliness of his guests into implacable enmity, through their resolve to champion the cause of two little peoples, the victims of a wanton aggression.

VI.

The law reviving the three years’ term of military service was the immediate answer of the Republican Government to the bill demanding such great sacrifices from the German taxpayer, in order that the crushing superiority of the Imperial armies might be assured. When all doubts as to the passing of the French bill were removed, Germany’s first thrill of surprise at this counter-blast was turned to genuine indignation—an indignation that would have been comical if the issues at stake had not been so serious. To read the Berlin papers, one would have thought that only the German Empire had the right to arm in self-defence, and that France could claim no such privilege. In certain drawing-rooms, the revival of the three years’ service was spoken of as a challenge to Germanism! A password went the round of the newspapers: dates were to be confused, and the French bill was to be represented as earlier than the German. This flagrant lie was blazoned abroad by the whole Press, with the exception of the Socialist organs, as a damning accusation against France. Dr. T. Schiemann, in the Kreuzzeitung, went so far as to maintain that the three years’ term had been forced upon M. Poincaré by the Tsar, during the visit of the President (then Foreign Minister) to St. Petersburg in the previous year. It was the price exacted by Russia for her military aid and for the upkeep of the alliance.

Whether this conscious incitement of Teuton jingoism would lead to grave results was a question that, in the eyes of a foreign observer, depended on the length of the simultaneous Parliamentary debates over the bills in Paris and Berlin. The journalistic attacks of the Germans were answered in a tone of equal asperity by the French Press. Should any regrettable incidents arise in the course of the debates, would the Republican Cabinet have enough control over French public opinion, would the Imperial Government have enough mastery over the Pan-Germans, to be able to find a prompt and friendly solution? No one has forgotten the stir caused in France, the distrust that seized hold of the public mind, when in the preceding April a Zeppelin, after flying some way over the frontier, unexpectedly came down at Lunéville. The brawl between French students and German tourists at Nancy had proved more difficult to smooth over. Fortunately, the Barthou Cabinet had not lost its head, but had managed, by rapid action, to forestall the demand for explanations and apologies which a very rabid journal, the semi-official Kölnische Zeitung, advised Herr von Jagow to demand from the Republican Government. Despite the perils of the situation, the summer supervened without bringing a catastrophe. The French and German bills were passed in a sultry political atmosphere, which already gave promise of a storm.

The malignity of William II.’s Government towards France, and its indulgence towards those who sowed bad feeling in the country, as if to reap a harvest of hate, were nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in the persistent legend regarding the cruel treatment of German soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. Nothing would have been easier than officially to deny these alleged barbarities, as well as the reports of press-gang methods employed by agents of that famous corps in Germany—in short, to silence the canting protests to which its existence gave rise. Not only did the Government omit to do this, but it even tolerated, until a formal complaint was laid, the production in a Berlin theatre of a play in which the French uniform of the legionaries was held up to ridicule. One might have compared the Foreign Legion to a poisoned lancet, kept by the authorities for the purpose of envenoming, when it pleased them, their intercourse with France.

VII.

While these dangerous frictions were the chief cause of anxiety to all who, like myself, felt that the peace of Europe hung upon Franco-German relations, it seems that at this period the attention of the European public was drawn rather to the grave events enacted in the Balkan theatre soon after the Treaty of London signed on 30th May. A new conflict was brewing in that quarter. As in previous cases, the efforts to localize it were successful, but it left behind it a leaven of spite and hatred that went on fermenting silently throughout the winter, until in the following summer it helped to produce a universal war.