A scrap of paper

by Emile Joseph Dillon

And so unhesitatingly was this view adopted in Berlin that when on July 29th the German Ambassador terminated one of his despatches with the expression of his personal impression—founded, he confessed, on nothing more tangible than the manner, intonation, looks of Sir Edward Grey—that if France were dragged into war Great Britain would not remain neutral, his timid warning failed to modify the accepted dogma that England was resolved to stand by inactive and look on at the shock of mighty armies on the Continent, satisfied to play the part of mediator as soon as victory and defeat should have cleared the way for the readjustment of the map of Europe.

This amazing misjudgment can be explained without difficulty. Paradoxical though it may sound, the German Government suffered from a plethora of information. It was too well informed of what was going on in Russia, France, and Britain, and too little qualified to contemplate in correct perspective the things revealed. Take, for example, Russia. Every one of the influences to which the Tsar was supposed to be accessible, every one of the alleged weak points of the General Staff, the War Ministry, the Railway administration, the Finances, were all entered in the records and weighed among the motives for action. To the Austrian Foreign Office they were communicated by the German Ambassador, von Tschirschky, with whose own preconceived opinions of Russia’s inertness they dovetailed to perfection. All these data were at the fingers’ ends of the responsible leaders of the respective Governments, all the inferences drawn were set down as highly probable, and the final conclusion to which they pointed was that Russia would not fight under present circumstances, even if from a military point of view she could take the field, and that in any case she was sufficiently aware of her impotence to recognize her inability and bend before she was broken.

It is easy, in the light of recent events, to laugh at these deductions and to deride the naïveté of German omniscience. But on analysing the materials which Berlin statesmen had for a judgment, one discerns the reasons which led them to believe that a good prima facie case had been made out for its accuracy. One characteristic and clinching argument was advanced with an air of triumphant finality. These data, it was urged, are not theoretic assumptions formed in Germany. They are the deliberate views of competent Russians, arrived at in the conscientious discharge of their duty and uttered for the welfare of their own country. Is not that guarantee enough for the correctness of the facts alleged and the sincerity of those who advance them?

The truth is, the Berlin authorities were too well supplied with details, while lacking a safe criterion by which to measure their worth. German diplomacy is many sided, and admirably well served by a variety of auxiliary departments such as journalism, commerce, educational establishments abroad, and espionage of a discreet and fairly trustworthy character. But congruously with the tyrannical spirit of system which pervades everything German, this paramount organon for supplying the directors of the Empire’s policy with data for their guidance and goals for their many converging movements deals too exclusively in externals. Prussian diplomatists and statesmen possess a vast body of information respecting the social and political currents abroad, the condition of national defences and party governments, the antagonisms of political groups, and other obvious factors of political, military, naval, and financial strength and weakness. But these facts nowise exhaust the elements of the problem with which statesmanship is called upon to cope. There are other and more decisive agencies which elude analysis and escape the vigilant observation of the Prussian materialist. This superficial observer is bereft of a sense for the soul-manifestations of a people, for the multitudinous energies and enthusiasms stored up in its inner recesses, for those hidden sources of strength which the wanton violation of truth and justice set free, and which steel a nation to the wrenches of real life and nerve it for a titanic struggle for the right. Above all, he takes no account of a nation’s conscience, which, especially in Anglo-Saxon peoples, is in vital and continuous contact with their modes of feeling, thought, and action. He is a self-centred pedant, capable indeed of close and thorough research and of scrupulous loyalty to his own creed, but bringing to his work nothing but the materialistic maxims of a cynically egoistic school, impassioned by narrow aims, dissociated from humanity, blinded by stupid prejudices, and bereft of innate balance. It is system without soul.

Of the Russian army the Staffs of Berlin and Vienna thought meanly. “A mob in uniform,” was one description. Less contemptuous was this other: “A barracks of which only the bricks have been got together, the cement and the builders being still lacking.” Others there were—and these were the most serious appraisers—who held that in another five or six years the Russian land forces might be shaped into a formidable weapon of defence and possibly of offence. But this opinion was urged mainly as an argument against waiting. I once heard it supported tersely in the following way. The army depends upon finances rather than numbers. Without money you cannot train your soldiers. Ammunition and guns, which are essential conditions to good artillery fire, involve heavy expenditure. So, too, does rifle firing. Well, Russia’s army has had no such advantages during the years that have elapsed since her campaign against Japan. During all that time the salient trait of her financial policy has been thrift. Grasping and saving, the State has laid by enormous sums of money and has hoarded them miserly. One effect of these precautions has been the neglect of the army and the navy. At the close of the war Russia’s navy was practically without ships and her diplomacy without backbone. And since then little has been done to reinforce them.

Two hundred and fifty millions sterling were borrowed by Russia at the close of the war with Japan, it was argued. That sum may be taken roughly to represent the cost of the campaign. But it did not cover the wear and tear of the war material, the loss of the whole navy, the destruction of fortresses, barracks, guns, private property, etc., which would mount up to as much again. What was needed to repair this vast breach in the land and sea forces was another loan of at least three hundred millions sterling more. And this money was not borrowed. Consequently the rebuilding of the damaged defences was never undertaken. Only small annual credits, the merest driblets, were allotted by the Finance Ministry to the War Office and the Admiralty, and with these niggardly donations it had been impossible to repair the inroads made by the war on the two imperial services. But the Tsar’s Government, it was added, are about to turn over a new leaf. Large war credits have been voted by the Duma. Far-reaching reforms are planned for the army. Russia, awakened by Germany’s preparations and warned by the Chancellor’s allusion to the struggle between Slavs and Teutons, will make a strenuous effort to fashion her vast millions into a formidable army. This work will take at least from three to five years. We cannot afford to accord her this time, nor can we blink the fact that she will never be less redoubtable than she is to-day.

That was the theoretical side of the case. It was reinforced by considerations of a concrete nature, the criticisms of Russian experts of high standing and long experience whose alleged utterances were said to bear out the conclusion that a war waged by Russia against Germany, or even against Austria, at the present conjuncture would be suicidal. Never before, it was urged, was the Tsardom less ready from any point of view for a campaign than at the present moment. And this, it was reiterated, is the ripe judgment of Russian competent authorities whose names were freely mentioned. These men, it was stated, had strongly urged the Tsar’s Government and the Tsar himself to bear well in mind this deplorable plight of the army when conducting the foreign business of the Empire.

That the Russian Government was aware of the view thus taken in Berlin and Vienna may safely be assumed. For Russia kept her eyes open and knew more about German machinations and the assumptions on which they hinged than was supposed. Having had an opportunity of picking up ideas on the subject, she had not let it pass unutilized. Respecting one scheme she knew every detail; I allude to the intention of Austria and Germany to declare the Treaty of Bucharest a mere scrap of paper. Ever since that treaty was signed, it had been the inflexible resolve of Austria and Germany to upset it. I write this with first-hand knowledge. But even had I not had this knowledge, it might have been taken for granted on a priori grounds. The Balkan equilibrium as established by that instrument was deemed lacking in stability. Count Berchtold admitted this to the British Ambassador during the critical days. Its Servian elements were particularly obnoxious to Austria, who had refrained from annexing Turkish territory on the assumption that she would be amply repaid for her self-restraint by political and economical influence in the Peninsula.

Now, this assumption had been belied by events. Salonica was under the dominion of Greece, whose leanings towards France and Great Britain were notorious and fixed. Servia had waxed great, and was striving to add further to her power and territory at Austria’s expense. Bulgaria was sullen, and might become rebellious. Roumania, estranged from the Dual Monarchy, had seemingly moved within the political orbit of Russia. And even Turkey, abandoned to herself among these prospective enemies of the Teutonic Powers, was amenable to their suasion and to the pressure of France and England. Such a state of affairs could not be brooked by Austria-Hungary, who beheld her Slav possessions threatened in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia, nor by Germany, who feared that her road to the sea and to Asia Minor would be blocked. Accordingly the two allies decided to apply the scrap of paper doctrine to the Treaty of Bucharest, to cut up Greater Servia, bribe Bulgaria with the Macedonian provinces which King Ferdinand had lost by the treacherous attack on his allies, deprive Greece of the islands and throw them as a sop to Turkey, win over Roumania by intimidation and cajolery, and constrain her to make a block with Bulgaria and Turkey against Servia and Greece.

This preconcerted scheme had been questioned by easy-going optimists in Great Britain before the outbreak of the war. But it has been virtually acknowledged since then not only by the Austrian Government but also by the “cream of Germany’s intelligence” in a pamphlet entitled “Truth About Germany.” This statement of our enemy’s case was drawn up for American consumption by a committee which includes among its members Prince von Bülow, Herr Ballin, Field-Marshal von der Goltz, Herr von Gwinner, Professor Harnack, the theologian, Prince Hatzfeldt, Herr von Mendelssohn, Professor Schmoller, and Professor Wundt. In the chapter dealing with the last Balkan war as one of the causes of the present conflict, these gentlemen argue that the outcome of that struggle was a humiliation for the Habsburg Monarchy, and that it had been so intended by the Ministers of the Tsar. And then comes their important admission that ever since the Treaty of Bucharest, the two Teutonic allies had been diligently preparing for war.