To plunge Europe into war for purely personal ends has always seemed in the eyes of kings a reasonable action. Frederick the Great admitted that he started the Seven Years' War by stealing Silesia from Austria for "glory," and the records of Spain and Austria are full of similar crimes.
Now that Europe has been shaken from base to summit, will the sober manhood of the twentieth century allow the present system to endure?
On the other hand, I see a great movement toward giving kingship a fresh lease of life, toward perpetuating secret diplomacy and developing clericalism. But men who have stood face to face with the living God should decide to worship henceforth after the inclination of their own hearts. Elderly gentlemen of conservative tendencies are already writing to warn the public that, however awful the chaos now prevailing, democratic rule would have made it worse. I welcome such warnings, for they are a proof that the upholders of tradition are at last aware of the slippery places over which they must so shortly tread.
If the democracy can see the truth, if its eyes refuse to be dazzled by flags, medals, and uniforms and its ears will convey each plausible speech to the brain for sober analysis, this war will not have been waged in vain.
I hold in all seriousness that it is a strife of kings. Gladstone once asked anybody to tell him how the Austrian Empire had been of any service to humanity. The aggregation of uncongenial nationalities has been kept together for the greater glory of the effete house of Hapsburg, a house whose true history, even since Kaiser Franz Josef came to the throne, could not be printed. The genius of the German people, their magnificent education, stern discipline, tireless industry and full nurseries were conquering both hemispheres, but that was not sufficient. Unless the German could pay tribute to the house of Hohenzollern and increase the Imperial prestige, progress was an egg without salt to the palate of the Potsdam hierarchy.
The fruits of forty years of labour and a generation of child-bearing were flung into the scale that the Hohenzollerns might stand more directly in the limelight.
The people whose blood was to be spilt, whose wives were to be widowed, whose wealth was to be squandered, were wilfully deceived and were driven to war as the Pharaohs drove their warrior-slaves.
Their awakening must come, and with it let us hope a further accession of strength to the Social Democracy that is the best hope of Germany.
We know that neither England nor France desired war, that Russia, whatever her interest in the great Slav-Teuton controversy, was not ready for it, and the worst to be said of the Allied Powers is that, conscious of an enormous menace, they united to destroy it. But every thinking man knows that without the ambitions of a few soldiers, statesmen (so-called), and officials this war had never come about.
I have often compared the position of republics with that of monarchies and have cited the American Republics. The United States live in peace, even the South American States, with their mixed population, their Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian blood, are seldom found long at strife.