It was that, just exactly that, which Germany wanted to know. Irish troubles might make it impossible for England to do so. And in that case both Russia and France might be already considered as crushed. What chance had they against that huge military machine? It was as if a man with a shot-gun set out to attack an adversary with a repeating rifle. And, apart from that, there was the German fleet. Supposing England was not taking a hand, how the great Deutschland Dreadnoughts would sweep down the Channel, and reduce Calais and Boulogne and Dieppe and Havre to ruins! Deutschland could land its armies where it chose in France, while other armies, sweeping through Belgium, drove the French before them. Of course, there was some sort of obsolete document which forbade an invader to set foot on that silly little soil. That mattered nothing. Germany might or might not take the trouble to declare war on Belgium, in order to get at France.
But if England came in?
There was no question of “sympathies” now. That topic which had so disturbed his wife had long vanished from his consciousness, and he wanted only to make clear to his mind the interests on which he could with the least possible risk stake his money. For the instinct of making money had been his since he first sat on the office-stool, and it was not for sixteen years after that that he had thought of domestically satisfying his home needs. He had always had a kindly, affectionate heart, and, since he first met Aline, that general affection had been concentrated and consecrated into passion for her. Apart from money, he wanted nothing else but her. But in this moment interest, not affection and sympathy, directed the gnawing of his nails.
There was going to be war: of that he made no doubt whatever. And a very little thought convinced him that if there was war, England would somehow have to be in it, whatever the anxieties of the Irish question might be. For if she did not come in now, the day—der Tag itself—was assuredly not far off when France and Russia would be annihilated, and, when once that was done, who could doubt that Germany would turn her victorious arms against the real enemy, the one Power that stood between her and the dominion of the world. Sooner or later England must fight, for Germany had decreed the Armageddon, but was she going to fight now?
That was precisely what Germany wanted to know, and unless Hermann Gurtner was much mistaken, the German Ambassador’s view was that she was not. Had he shared that belief, he would drain out without delay from his English interests every penny of his millions, for with France and Russia crushed, even the Empire founded upon the seas could not single-handed resist that tremendous war-machine of the Fatherland. At its ease it could march through India and through Egypt, and with its fleet free in the oceans of the world, it could reduce that awful little focus of world-power, confined in two insignificant islands, one of which already reeked with sedition, to a compass commensurate with its acres. Stupid as the English were, they would realize that.
The more he let this all stew and simmer in his brain, the less capable he felt of believing that England would stand aside. She might or might not consider that her treaty obligations compelled her to intervene, but she would surely see that her only chance of defeating Germany lay in joining and assisting the Entente now and without delay. Otherwise she would have to bear the full weight of the invincible land-empire alone.
Perfidious she always was, but she had a terribly good notion as to how to take care of herself. And with her perfidiousness, there was strangely mingled some quixotic sort of instinct, that would compel her to the sane course. None knew better than he that Germany, having declared war on France, would sweep through Belgium in order to attack her on her vulnerable front. Belgium would quite certainly appeal to England on the violation of her treaty-protected territory, and it was exactly that sort of call that this impossible, selfish and quixotic nation was apt to listen to. For himself he saw no reason for the existence of little Powers; the sooner they were absorbed, one way or the other, in the great States the better, for the time was passed for the existence of such little vineyards of Naboth. England would come in....
Till this moment it was entirely the consideration of his interests that had absorbed him, but suddenly, like a great tidal wave sweeping in from a calm ocean, his sympathies declared themselves and submerged everything else. “Der Tag” had dawned; faint and dim in the East were the lines of morning that portended the day for which all good Germans had been watching since their consciousness of the greatness of their nation had awoke in them. And before the sun that illumined “Der Tag” declined from the zenith, all the world would have forgotten what war or the strife of nations meant, since they would have basked in the peace and prosperity that had come to the unquiet planet, as soon as Germany fulfilled her destiny, and owned the seas and the continents of the earth. There would be years of trouble first, for selfish and arrogant nations must suffer the penalties of their wilful blindness, and be winnowed like chaff in the great pure wind that should scatter their pretensions, and purge their pride; but he did not doubt that at the end the world would pass into possession of his Fatherland.
Yes: the day was dawning. The selfish, incompetent mistress of the seas, who proclaimed that the seas were free so long as her navy had complete command of them, must give place to a nobler possessor, under whose rule they would be free because there was none to enslave them, but the master of sea and land alike. The time had come for the cessation of the old civilizations and ownerships warring one against another, and protecting themselves by treaties and their silly signatures. Treaties must be torn up, rules that had applied to the protection of separate States must have no meaning now, since separate States, with their rights and their boundaries, would soon become dead relics of the past. All means, treachery and feigned surrender, Red Cross to protect a battery of guns, slaughter or torture of prisoners, piracy by sea, firing on unarmed vessels—all and every device of the kind was not allowable only but laudable and noble, in order, as swiftly as possible, to secure for the world the æons of serenity and peace that should come with the German domination of the planet. Deutschland über Alles!
His sympathies had shot up like a star-shell, and made their signal. Whether or no his wife knew where her sympathies lay, he, in this silent hour before dawn, had made his choice. But that did not stand in the way of his making more millions also, and with a re-invigorated spirit, he put the lid on his sympathies, and turned to his interests.