England and Germany

by Emile Joseph Dillon

Now, these achievements and the marvellous adaptability, energy and resourcefulness which they connote, are no mean elements in Germany’s equipment for the coming economic struggle. They proclaim that the mind of the Teuton man of business is too firmly riveted on the goal to be fascinated by any special route leading towards it, and that it is sufficiently free and disengaged to turn with eager interest to any problem, however novel, with which it may be suddenly confronted. Use and want are not its masters, sluggish contentment cannot numb its activity. The customers’ requirements, nay, their whims and fancies, are ever sure to receive close attention and prompt satisfaction. The contrast between this unflagging alertness and the drowsy apathy of the British manufacturer and tradesman is an old story, which has evoked comments sharp enough, it would seem, to arouse the commercial community to a lively sense of its danger and duty. And yet there are, unhappily, cogent grounds for believing that the malady of listlessness is as malignant to-day as before the war.

Now, these organizing and inventive talents of the Teuton, as compared with the subordinate aims, fitful energies and honest but mischievous conservatism of our own leaders and people, bear witness to the same twofold talent of the German for looking far ahead and contriving expedients on the spur of the moment. Great Britain’s participation in the struggle cut off Germany from the sea and gave the two Central Empires the aspect of a beleaguered city. Hopes were entertained by the Allies that famine might reinforce the work of their armies and navies in compelling the enemy to sue for peace. About 9 per cent. of the corn used in Germany usually came from abroad, and now the interruption of the communications rendered this source of supply precarious. The soldiers, too, had to be fed on a scale of greater abundance than usual, and the prisoners of war, however poorly nourished, would consume a certain amount of corn. The first measure promulgated to meet the new conditions was a prohibition of exportation. Potato flour was employed in bread-baking. War bread was standardized for the whole Empire. The principal cities purchased vast quantities of cereals, and Prussia founded a War Corn Association for the acquisition of cereals to be stored until the ensuing spring. Expropriation was legalized. In these ways £40,000,000 worth of cereals were got together for consumption. The War Corn Association operated with a capital of £2,500,000, to which the States subscribed over one million, and the big cities one million, and the great industrial firms £450,000.[114] This corn was paid for at the highest market rates, the owners being compelled by law to declare how much they possessed. With each of these proprietors—in the first phase with 5,000,000 landowners—separate arrangements were concluded. The Association employed for the purpose nearly three thousand commissioners and five hundred other officials, and the Credit Banks made advances on the quantities sold.

Simultaneously with this home organization the other multifarious tasks of devising new weapons for the war, improving the various types of aircraft, building larger submarines and guns of greater calibre went forward with unimpaired speed. Nothing was too vast or too complicated to be undertaken, no detail was too trivial to be studied. Politics, economics, military strategy and national psychology were all cunningly interwoven in the various schemes laid for the destruction of the Allies. Russia was inveigled into continuing her trade with Germany, which, as we saw, was during the first year a nowise negligible quantity.

A piquant detail in this connection is worthy of mention.[115] It is affirmed that the Customs House authorities on the Russo-Swedish frontiers discovered to their dismay that for well over a year Germany had been receiving from Russia a large proportion of the raw materials necessary for the fabrication of asphyxiating gas. It appears that Sweden, which in peace time was wont to import from the Tsardom a certain quantity of those products, trebled its demands during the first year of the war.

Contingents of contrabandists were despatched to Greece, Spain, Morocco, Holland, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Secret stations were established for supplying submarines with the wherewithal to carry on their war against inoffensive passenger steamers. Agents were kept in the neutral countries to corrupt the local press and poison the wells of information in order to allure the neutrals into belligerency. A highly organized news-distributing bureau was equipped in Berlin with all the requisites for falsifying facts and distorting military tidings. Its branches are spread over the globe. Passports were forged at first and later on genuine ones abstracted from the Berlin Foreign Office and handed over to spies. Strikes and outrages were engineered in the United States, Italy, and Russia. The Putiloff works, which before the war were nearly falling into German hands and have since been supplying munitions for the Tsar’s army, were stricken with creeping paralysis, against which exhortations and threats were vain, and finally they had to be sequestrated by the State. Millions of dollars were expended in the United States in efforts to prevent the manufacture or the transport of munitions to the Allies. In Greece vast sums were cheerfully disbursed by Baron Schenk to work the elections and defeat Venizelos. Roumania was overrun by bands of Germans whose functions were to calumniate, vilify, corrupt and threaten. Spain has been wrought upon in like manner by a small army of Teutons abundantly supplied with the same weapons. Persia was scoured by German agitators who deployed all their talents and acquirements, their knowledge of the language and acquaintance with the native religion, to rouse the natives against Russia and Great Britain. Abyssinia, although deprived by Italy of the presence of the German “scientific expedition,” was induced by the German Minister at Adis Abeba to behave in such a way that in the month of March 1916 King Victor’s Government found it advisable to issue a decree ordering urgent fortifications to be constructed in Erythea.[116] Sweden has been provided with war news and political information free of charge by the generous Press Bureau of Berlin. In Belgium persevering exertions have been put forth to sow discord between Flemings and Walloons. In China, where a British adviser is employed by the Chief of the State, Yuan Shih Kai has turned a willing ear to the mentors from the Fatherland, with results which bear the hall-mark of Germany. In Mexico Villa’s murderous raids on American territory, instigated, it is asserted, by German emissaries, compelled United States troops to pursue him over the frontiers, and raised an issue which may be decided only by a regular campaign. Thus Teuton diplomacy, at whose failures we are so prone to rail, contrived on the one hand to pass off the assassinations of Americans on board the Lusitania as a justifiable act, and on the other to present the New Mexico murder, which was the work of a mere savage, as such an outrage on the law of nations as warrants the employment of military force.[117]

That same diplomacy, seconded by the press organization which invented facts and moulded opinion, scored successes in Bulgaria, Greece, Roumania, Switzerland, and contrived not only to keep Italy from declaring war against Germany, but to negotiate a treaty for the protection of German property there. Despite its clumsiness and arrogance and brutality, German diplomacy is unmatched as an agency for rousing popular forces in civilized and uncivilized countries into subversive excitement. It surrounded the Pope of Rome with philo-German dignitaries, gave him an Austrian as adviser, and permeated the Vatican with an atmosphere of Kultur which even pious Catholics of non-Teuton countries avoid as mephitic. It caught the Sultan and his Young Turks, Anglophile and Francophile, in its toils, and gave its warm approbation to the massacre of the Armenians. It won over the young Shah of Persia, who, with great difficulty and only after strenuous exertions, was kept from going over bodily to the Turkish camp. It bought the services of the Senussi. It is making headway with the Negus of Abyssinia. It offered a bribe to Italian socialists and found work for Italian anarchists, whose representatives were received in the palace of the Kaiser’s Ambassador in Rome. And—most difficult task of all—it reconciled, at least for a time, the interests of Bulgaria with those of Greece and Roumania.

German diplomacy has often misread foreign political situations, mistaken the trend of national opinion and sentiment and failed to achieve ends which might by dint of mere patience and quiescence have been readily accomplished. For it has no psychological standard by which to measure the nobler qualities of a foreign people, however closely it may have studied their politics, their history and their vices. Its tests are for the lower grades of human character, and with these it has indeed achieved extraordinary things.

Thus, with infinite labour the Teuton mind has grappled with the chaotic welter produced by the European war. But, besides the skilful handling of great financial and kindred problems, its assiduity in watching for and readiness to seize opportunities for dealing with the issues of lesser moment is worth noting, were it only for its value as a stimulus. One instance occurred in the very first sitting of the Reichstag after hostilities had begun. The legislature agreed to introduce a slight reform of the law, dealing with the rights of children born out of wedlock, of whom there are in Germany 185,000 a year. The Government assented to the change, which was embodied in a bill affirming the right of the illegitimate children of soldiers fallen in battle to the same pension as if their parents had been legally married. And the Reichstag passed the bill unanimously.

This solicitude about little things is most saliently in evidence in the military domain. Here nothing is neglected that can contribute to the fighting value of the units. Hence the care shown for the nourishment and comfort of the soldiers. Ruthlessly though they are sacrificed in battle, they are well looked after in the trenches, and their career is followed with interest and recorded with accuracy by their superiors. I was struck with the completeness of the information which the German War Office possesses and can produce at a moment’s notice about any individual soldier. It was brought home to me in this way. The Chief of the Berlin police had a grandson in the war who had been missed for several weeks. Desirous of obtaining particulars about his capture or death, he asked a neutral friend to obtain information from the Russians. And by way of furnishing a description he sent a printed card, which I read. It contained the name and age of the soldier, the regiment to which he belonged, the hamlet in which he was last seen, the distances that separated that hamlet from the next town and the next large city, the day, the hour and the minute when the man together with his comrades were attacked, and the number of Russians who attacked them. And all these printed particulars refer to a private soldier! Is there anything comparable to this to be found in any of the allied countries?