My questioner wished to know if sans Belgium, sans Lusitania the position of Germany would be better.
That question was highly hypothetical. I replied that an opinion in that direction would not be worth much in view of the fact that it could not cover the actual causes of the war and its present aspects, of which the case of Belgium and the work of the submarine were but mere incidents.
"Seen objectively, I should say that the invasion of Belgium and the use of the submarine against merchantmen has merely intensified the world's dislike of much that is German. I doubt that much would have been different without Belgium and without the Lusitania," was my reply. "This war started as a struggle between gluttons. One set of them wanted to keep what it had, and the other set wanted to take more than what it had already taken."
Not very long afterward General Falkenhayn, the former German chief of staff, then commander of the Ninth German Army against the Roumanians, asked a similar question at dinner in Kronstadt, Transylvania. He, too, failed to understand why the entire world should have turned down its thumb against the Germans. My reply to him was more or less the same.
A regular epidemic of introspective reasoning seemed to be on. At the Roumanian end of the Törzburger Pass I lunched a few days later with Gen. Elster von Elstermann. He also wanted to know why the Germans were so cordially hated. Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen, whose guest I was at Heltau, at the head of the Vörös Torony gorge, showed the same interest.
"It seems that there is nothing we can do but make ourselves respected," he said, tersely. "I am one of those Germans who would like to be loved. But that seems to be impossible. Very well! We will see! We will see what the sword can do. When a race has come to be so thoroughly detested as we seem to be, there is nothing left it but to make itself respected. I fear that in the future that must be our policy."
I made the remark that possibly it was not the race that was being detested. The general is a Bavarian—at least, he was commanding Bavarian troops.
"So long as these shouters can make common cause with autocratic Russia, they have no reason to fasten upon the Prussians every sin they can think of. I am not one of those who think that everything in Germany is perfect. Far from it. We have more faults than a dog has fleas. Never mind, though! To lie down and beseech mercy on our knees is not one of these faults."
I believe that Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen spoke for the army on that occasion without knowing it. What he said was the attitude of the vast majority of officers and men.
Shortly before I had interviewed Baron Burian, then Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on that and related subjects. I will state here that he was the most professorly foreign minister I have met. His voice never rose above the conversational tone. Though a Magyar, he was evenness of temper personified.