A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

The German Chancellor is equally unfortunate in his references to the “Colonial Empire.” So far from British policy having been “recklessly egotistic,” it has resulted in a great rally of affection and common interest by all the British Dominions and Dependencies, among which there is not one which is not aiding Britain by soldiers or other contributions or both in this war.

With regard to the matter of treaty obligations generally, the German Chancellor excuses the breach of Belgian neutrality by military necessity—at the same time making a virtue of having respected the neutrality of Holland and Switzerland, and saying that it does not enter his head to touch the neutrality of the Scandinavian countries. A virtue which admittedly is only practised in the absence of temptation from self-interest and military advantage does not seem greatly worth vaunting.

To the Chancellor’s concluding statement that “To the German sword” is entrusted “the care of freedom for European peoples and States,” the treatment of Belgium is a sufficient answer.

Passing summarily in review the causes of the war touched upon in the foregoing pages, the reader will have discerned that the true interest of the story of the scrap of paper lies in the insight it affords the world into the growth, spread, and popularization of the greatest of human conceptions possible to a gifted people, whose religious faith has been diverted to the wildest of political ideals and whose national conscience has been fatally warped. For the Germans are a highly dowered, virile race, capable, under favourable conditions, of materially furthering the progress of humanity. In every walk of science, art, and literature they have been in the van. Their poetry is part of the world’s inheritance. Their philosophy at its highest level touches that of ancient Greece. Their music is unmatched. In chemistry and medicine they have laboured unceasingly and with results which will never be forgotten. Into the dry bones of theology they have infused the spirit of life and movement. In the pursuit of commerce they have deployed a degree of ingenuity, suppleness, and enterprise which was rewarded and may be summarized by the result that, during the twelve years ending in 1906, their imports and exports increased by nearly one hundred per cent.

But the national genius, of which those splendid achievements are the fruits, has been yoked to the chariot of war in a cause which is dissolvent of culture, trust, humanity, and of all the foundations of organized society. That cause is the paramountcy of their race, the elevation of Teutonism to the height occupied among mortals by Nietzsche’s Over-man, whose will is the one reality, and whose necessities and desires are above all law. Around this root-idea a vast politico-racial system, partaking of the nature of a new religion, has been elaborately built up by the non-German Prussians, and accepted and assimilated by a docile people which was sadly deficient in the political sense. And it is for the purpose of forcing this poisonous creed and its corollaries upon Europe and the world that the most tremendous war of history is now being waged. This remarkable movement had long ago been studied and described by a few well-informed and courageous British observers, but the true issues have been for the first time revealed to the dullest apprehension by the historic episode of the scrap of paper.

It is only fair to own that the Prussianized Germans have fallen from their high estate, and become what they are solely in consequence of the shifting of their faith from the spiritual to the political and military sphere. Imbued with the new spirit, which is impatient of truth when truth becomes an obstacle to success, as it is of law when law becomes a hindrance to national aims, they have parted company with morality to enlist in the service of a racial revival based on race hatred. Pan-Germanism is a quasi-religious cult, and its upholders are fanatics, persuaded of the righteousness of their cause, and resolved, irrespective of the cost, to help it to triumph.

The non-German State, Prussia, was the bearer of this exclusively Germanic “culture.” It fitted in with the set of the national mind, which lacked political ideals. Austria, however, occupied a position apart in this newest and most grandiose of latter-day religions. She was but a tool in the hands of her mighty co-partner. “The future,” wrote the national historian Treitschke, “belongs to Germany, with whom Austria, if she desires to survive, must link herself.” And the instinct of self-preservation determined her to throw in her lot with Prussianized Germany. But even then, it is only fair to say that Austria’s conception of her functions differed widely from that of her overbearing Mentor. Composed of a medley of nationalities, she eschewed the odious practice of denationalizing her Slav, Italian, and Roumanian peoples in the interests of Teutondom. One and all they were allowed to retain their language, cultivate their nationality, and, when feasible, to govern themselves. But, congruously with the subordinate rôle that fell to her, she played but a secondary part in the preliminaries to the present conflict. Germany, who at first acted as the unseen adviser, emerged at the second stage as principal.

We cannot too constantly remember the mise en scène of the present world-drama. Germany and Austria were dissatisfied with the Treaty of Bucharest, and resolved to treat it as a contemptible scrap of paper. They were to effect such a redistribution of territory as would enable them to organize a Balkan Federation under their own auspices and virtual suzerainty. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand offered them a splendid opening. On pretext of punishing the real assassins and eradicating the causes of the evil, Austria was to mutilate Servia and wedge her in among Germanophile Balkan States. The plan was kept secret from every other Power, even from the Italian ally—so secret, indeed, that the Russian Ambassador in Vienna was encouraged to take leave of absence, just when the ultimatum was about to be presented, which he did. The German Kaiser, while claiming to be a mere outsider, as uninitiated as everybody else, was a party to the drafting of the ultimatum, which, according to his own Ministers, went the length of demanding of Servia the impossible. That document was avowedly intended to provoke armed resistance, and when it was rumoured that the Serbs were about to accept it integrally, Austrians and Germans were dismayed. It was the Kaiser himself who had the time-limit for an answer cut down to forty-eight hours in order to hinder diplomatic negociations; and it was the Kaiser’s Ministers who, having had Sir Edward Grey’s conciliatory proposals rejected, expressed their sincere regret that, owing to the shortness of the time-limit, they had come too late.

When the Belgrade Government returned a reply which was fitted to serve as a basis for an arrangement, it was rejected by the Austrian Minister almost before he could have read it through. While the Kaiser in his letter to the Tsar, and the Imperial Chancellor in his talks with our Ambassador, were lavishing assurances that they were working hard to hold Austria back, the German Ambassador in Vienna, through whom they were thus claiming to put pressure on their ally, was openly advocating war with Servia, and emphatically declaring that Russia would have to stand aside. At the same moment Germany’s military preparations were secretly being pushed forward. But Austria, perceiving at last that the Germans’ estimate of Russia’s weakness was unfounded, and she herself faced with the nearing perils of an awful conflict with the great Slav Empire, drew back and agreed to submit the contentious points to mediation. Thereupon Germany sprang forward, and, without taking the slightest account of the Servian question, presented twelve-hour ultimatums to Russia and to France. Thus the thin pretension that she was but an ally, bound by the sacredness of treaty obligations to help her assailed co-partner, was cynically thrown aside, and she stood forth in her true colours as the real aggressor.

In her forecast of the war which she had thus deliberately brought about the sheet-anchor of her hope of success was Great Britain’s neutrality. And on this she had built her scheme. Hence her solicitude that, at any rate, this postulate should not be shaken. Her infamous offer to secure it was one of the many expedients to which her Kaiser and his statesmen had recourse. But they had misread the British character. Their fatal misjudgment marks the fundamental divergence in ethical thought and feeling between the “culture” of Teutonism and the old-world civilization represented by Great Britain. They lack the ethical sense with which to perceive the motives which inspired the attitude of this country. They are able to understand and appreciate a war of revenge or a war of conquest, but they are incapable of conceiving the workings of a national mind which can undertake a costly and bloody war merely to uphold the sacredness of a treaty—a war for a mere scrap of paper.