Coming to the Russians themselves, we find whole sections of them as badly disposed towards their Government as the Jews, the Poles, and the Finns. The industrial population is one seething mass of disaffection. Rebellion is smouldering among them, and needs only a puff of wind, such as a European war would supply in abundance, to break out into flame.[6] Before Russia could decide to go to war she would have to station one army corps in Finland, another in Poland, and a third and fourth in the interior to keep order among the restless peasants, who have their own aims and grievances, which would have to be considered if war broke out. In a word, Russia is bound hand and foot. She cannot make a warlike move. And if her diplomatists speak as though she contemplated such a step, it will be nothing more than bluff.
Moving along this line of reasoning, the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna reached the comforting conclusion that they had nothing to fear from the Tsardom. And that was the crucial point that had needed elucidation. For if the Tsar’s Government remained inactive while Servia was being punished and Turkey and Bulgaria bribed, there would be no cause to apprehend a hitch. Certes, no European Power would risk hostilities to help Servia out of a tight place, or, indeed, to bring about any change in the map of the Balkans. The only interference possible must come from the Tsardom, and if that Empire were indeed paralysed, opposition from the group of three Powers would be eliminated. And it was clear that Russia was, for the moment at any rate, paralysed in almost every organ. The Tsar, the Duma, the army, the War Office, the Finance Ministry, the ethnic elements of the Empire, held each other in check.
That this was the theory held in Berlin, and with a trifle less tenacity and conviction in Vienna, I know. I can also aver that the principal grounds on which it was based were those which I have set forth. And although it is idle now to speculate on what might have been under conditions that were not realized, I think one may fairly hazard the conjecture that if it had been proved to the satisfaction of the statesmen of Austria that their inferences and the half-truths or undiluted errors from which they drew them were indeed erroneous, and that Russia’s forbearance would not stretch as far as the meditated aggression nor her resources prove as limited as her enemies’ theories assumed, the ultimatum to Servia would have been worded by Austria, acting alone and in accordance with international usage, and the demands it embodied would have been whittled down to the maximum of what could reasonably have been exacted.
But Germany was literally too well informed and too little qualified to determine the bearings of the overwhelming mass of materials for a judgment which were laid before her. While immersing herself in so-called facts, she left out of sight the soul of the nation, with whose holiest possessions she was about to tamper. Despite her undoubted gifts of observation and analysis, Prussianized Germany is entirely lacking in the psychological sense. She deals with the superficial, the obvious. As though a nation’s history were the resultant of a sequence of lifeless events, of outward changes! As though the inherited streams of racial impulse, of national volition, of patriotic, irrepressible energy went for nothing in the equation! As though the latent forces and tendencies of centuries would not be brought into far resonant action by the rousing of slumbering passion, by the fire-flames which the shock of war must kindle! In all her minute calculations, Prussia’s materialistic leaders lost sight of the spiritual, of the ideals that haunt a nation’s soul and infuse into it in moments of stress a superhuman strength capable of working miracles. The wild enthusiasm dormant in the Russian race, but ready to start into life and action for the support of a heroic cause, constitute an algebraical x for the Prussian calculator, who can measure only coarse energies and brutal forces.
CHAPTER IV
FORCING THE QUARREL
Prussian logic having thus triumphantly proved that the one prospective enemy must remain quiescent, drew the obvious conclusion that the other Powers of the Entente would not move a finger to baulk Austria of her prey. And this was an all-important factor in the reckoning of the Teutonic States. Russia’s active participation in the war would perhaps entail, besides the onrush of her own countless swarms, the co-operation of France, whereas the fundamental axiom of Prussia’s war policy was to seek to try issues with each member of the Entente separately, and for this purpose to force such a quarrel, now upon one, now upon the other, as would leave the interests of that member’s allies untouched for the time being. A further device was to constrain the enemy formally to play the part of aggressor, so as to provide a convenient bridge for the allies to withdraw within the sphere of benevolent neutrality. This latter precaution was not adopted towards Russia, the reason being the aforesaid conviction that, come what might, Russia’s inactivity was a foregone conclusion. There are convincing grounds for my statement that this consideration supplied the motive for the Kaiser’s amendment to the Austrian ultimatum, limiting the time given to Servia for reflection to forty-eight hours[7] and for according to the Russians only twelve hours to demobilize.
Austria-Hungary, whose quarrel with Servia was the little well-spring from which the world-stream of armies took its source, showed herself some degrees less confident than her Prussian ally. Her statesmen were swayed by an instinctive forefeeling that some great element of the Russian problem was still unaccounted for and might suddenly spring up and upset all calculations. Tabulated figures and copies of the reports of certain pessimistic Russian public men carried conviction to their minds, but failed to dispel irrational fears. This despondent frame of mind was intensified by the knowledge that if the punitive expedition against Servia were to culminate in a European war, the Dual Monarchy stood to lose more than her ally. And if fortune should prove adverse, the Habsburg Monarchy would, in all probability, go to pieces.
To the members of the Vienna and Budapest Cabinets, therefore, caution seemed more imperatively demanded than to their Berlin colleagues. No effort, however, was spared by the German Ambassador in Vienna, von Tschirschky, to bring vividly home to Counts Berchtold and Tisza the utter disorganization of the Russian finances, armies, railways, and administration, and to dissipate their ineradicable misgivings. But in spite of the Ambassador’s incessant exertions, there was ever present to the Austro-Hungarian mind a residue of doubt and disquietude which stood in jarring contrast to the insolent demands embodied in the amended ultimatum. And after that document had been presented in Belgrade, and the desired answer received from the Servian Premier, Pasitch, the anxiety of Austria’s statesmen threw a still darker cloud over the vista that opened before them.
If Russia were to remain neutral during the punishment of Servia, it was plain that France, too, would keep quiet. Her Government had no concern with the way in which the Balkan equilibrium was established; it cherished no sympathies with Bosnian assassins, and it had no spare funds for military ventures. Still less were the French people desirous of embarking on a European struggle for aims which could not be made plausible to the average bourgeois taxpayer. French money had been poured into Russia in never-ending streams, but that streams of French blood should follow it was inconceivable to the mind of the people. This line of reasoning was unanswerable. Given Russia’s neutrality, then France’s quiescence was unquestionable. But suppose the premisses turned out to be a mistake? Assuming, as during those anxious days Austrians sometimes did, that Russia, belying all calculations, rose up and girded her loins for battle, what then? The Republic would assuredly throw in its lot with the Tsardom. Of that it would be rash to doubt. Now, what this would mean to the two Central military States was the next question which it behoved them to put clearly and solve fully. And this is how they did it.
France (it was argued) is in the last phase of political decadence. Comfort, luxury, self-indulgence, and the financial means to procure these are the goal of her latter-day strivings. She has no faith, no moral or religious ideals, no lofty aspirations, no generous ambitions. Her enthusiasms are burnt out, her thirst for military glory is stilled by historic memories. She possesses territory enough to absorb whatever energies she may still have left. Contented to live as she now is, her one desire is to be undisturbed. Above all else, she loathes the idea of a war which would bereave her of her material well-being and force her to put forth strenuous exertions for which she no longer has the heart. Her population, and therefore the race itself, is being systematically sacrificed to this love of ease. Peace, universal peace, is the French ideal to-day, and pacificism the form in which it is popularized for the man in the street. Look at the debates on the introduction of the three years’ military service in the Republic, and compare the reception accorded to that measure by the nation with the way in which the German race received, nay, welcomed, the sacrifices imposed by the recent war-tax. The truth is, France is undergoing a process of rapid decay. The martial spirit that flashed forth during the French Revolution and nerved the nation to withstand the world was the last flicker before extinction. The people of France is dying of self-indulgence.