CONCLUSION.
ASOVEREIGN, coming at an early age to the most conspicuous throne in Europe, already too sure of his own talents, fretting with impatience to rule without restraint or guardianship, pacific both by instinct and by reason, but of a helmeted and mail-clad pacifism, which loved to vent itself in needless threats. The same prince, twenty-five years later, puffed up with pride over the marvellous expansion of his country (in which he had certainly borne his share by keeping the peace), but gradually won over to the schemes of conquest and of domination whispered into his ear; ill-informed, for want of accurate reports and of personal discernment, as to the state of public feeling among his neighbours, and as to their capacity for resistance; ready, without any qualms, to seize the first opportunity of starting a war in which victory seemed to him certain and the risks hardly worth counting; the responsible author, since he wields a despotic sway, of all the horrors and disasters around us, bred by the relentless militarism and the boundless ambition of a dynasty that deems itself called upon to govern the world.
A royal family, void of prestige or distinction, obscured by the shadow that the dazzling personality of the Emperor cast behind it, although one figure strove hard to emerge from the darkness—the restless, carping, bellicose Crown Prince. Federal rulers enjoying a mere puppet sovereignty, and acquiescing in their subaltern rôle, from fear of vanishing altogether from the German stage, a stage now too narrow to let them stand by the side of their Cæsar. Statesmen as powerless to make their counsels prevail as to defend the Imperial policy, over which, perhaps, their conscience smote them at times. A Reichstag split up into too many groups and parties, and divided on all questions save that of the timeliness of this war, the Conservatives hoping thereby to strengthen their influence and the Socialists expecting to gain, as the price of their zealous support, those political liberties that they were unable to win by main force.
A disciplined, credulous, and hard-working nation, concerned above all with earning its daily bread, pacific for the most part, or rather indifferent to foreign affairs, until the day when, on the strength of official assurances, it believed itself to be attacked, and in peril of losing its work, its national honour, its very existence. A lying vision, yet hard to banish from its gaze; an erroneous belief, which will drive it, until the bitter end, to face the most dire suffering and to endure the most cruel sacrifices. The future will teach us whether it will not demand later on a heavy reckoning from those who have played it false.
A minority drawn from the intellectual and governing castes, dreaming of victory and aggrandisement, with a passionate desire to see the colossal fabric of German supremacy towering to the heavens, steeped in a limitless hatred or disdain for those who have not the honour to be Germans. From the very opening of hostilities, the morbid conceit of the scholars and men of science was unveiled in clear outlines through those amazing manifestoes on the rights that the superior science, organization, strength, and culture of Germany empower her to claim. In my opinion, however, it would be a mistake to look upon this select band as typical of the nation, just as it would be wrong to make all Germany answerable for the misdeeds of her brutal soldiery, and for the frightful war waged by the military and naval chiefs.
Disheartening rebuffs to German and Austro-Hungarian diplomacy both in Morocco and the Near East, where, despite all the efforts of Berlin and Vienna, there arose a state of things inimical to the spread, nay even to the prestige, of Germanism. As a result of these checks, a vast increase of military preparations, while at the same time the war parties in Germany (and in Austria-Hungary too) raged and clamoured more than ever—warning symptoms, to which public opinion abroad, misled by the peaceful solution of the previous crisis, paid but a half-hearted attention.
All these causes, individual or collective, whirling us abruptly—on the morrow of a murder that a little police precaution would have averted—to the brink of an abyss in which the freedom of Europe has come near to being engulfed for ever....