"The German Empire has become a world empire (ein Weltreich). Everywhere, in the most distant lands, are established thousands and thousands of our compatriots. German science, German activity, the defenders of the German ideal pass the ocean. By thousands of millions we count the wealth that Germany transports across the seas. It is your duty, gentlemen, to aid me to establish strong bonds between our Empire of Europe and this greater German Empire (dieses grëssere Deutsche Reich) ... May our German Fatherland become one day so powerful that, as one formerly used to say, Civis romanus sum, one may in the future need only to say, Ich bin ein deutscher Burger."
At Aix-la-Chapelle, on June 20, 1902, he revealed his ambition in one sentence, "It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." Just before leaving for the visit to Tangier in 1905—the visit which was really the beginning of one of the great issues of the present war—he said at Bremen: "If later one must speak in history of a universal domination by the Hohenzollern, of a universal German empire, this domination must not be established by military conquest.... God has called us to civilize the world: we are the missionaries of human progress." This idea was developed further at Münster, on September 1, 1907, when the Kaiser proclaimed: "The German people will be the block of granite on which our Lord will be able to elevate and achieve the civilization of the world!"
This attitude of mind is as common among the disciples of those wonderful leaders who founded the international movement for the solidarity of interests of labour, as it is among the aristocratic and intellectual elements of the nation. The German Socialist has proclaimed the brotherhood of man, and the common antagonism of the wage-earners of the world against their capitalistic oppressors. But, for all his preaching, the German Socialist is first of all a German. He has come to believe that the mission of Socialism will be best fulfilled through the triumph of Germanism. This belief is sincere. It is a far cry from Karl Marx to the militant—or rather militarist—German Socialist, bearing arms gladly upon the battlefields of Europe to-day, because he is inspired by the thought that the triumph of the army in which he fights will aid the cause of Socialism.[[1]]
[[1]] While the Landtage of the German states are mostly controlled by Conservative elements, owing to restricted suffrage, the Reichstag is one of the most intelligently democratic legislative bodies in the world. Its social legislation is surpassed by that of no other country. During thirty years the Socialist vote in Germany has increased one thousand per cent. It now represents one-third of the total electorate. But the Socialists are to a man behind the war.
There is a striking analogy between the German Socialist of the present generation and the Jacobins of 1793. The heralders of Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité fought for the spread of the principles of the Revolution through God's chosen instruments, the armies of France, and were carried away by their enthusiasm until they became the facile agents for saddling Europe with the tyranny of Napoleon. Love for humanity was turned into blood-lust, and fighting for freedom into seeking for booty and glory. Are the profound thinkers of the German universities, and the visionaries of the workingmen's forums following to-day the same path? Does the propagation of an ideal lead inevitably to a blind fanaticism, where the dreamer becomes in his own imagination a chosen instrument of God to shed blood?
There is undoubtedly an intellectual and idealistic basis to German militarism and to German arrogance.
Their connotation of the word "German" has led the Germans to look upon territories outside of their political confines as historically and racially, hence rightfully, virtually, and eventually theirs. A geography now in its two hundred and forty-fifth edition in the public schools (Daniel's Leitfaden der Geographie) states that "Germany is the heart of Europe. Around it extend Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Holland, which were all formerly part of the same state, and are peopled entirely or in the majority by Germans."
When German children have been for the past generation deliberately taught as a matter of fact—not as an academic or debatable question—that Deutschland ought to be more than it is, we can understand how the neutrality of their smaller neighbours seems to the Germans a negligible consideration. No wonder the soldiers who ran up against an implacable enemy at Liège, Namur, and Charleroi thought there must be a mistake somewhere, and were more angered against the opposition of those whom they regarded as their brothers of blood than they later showed themselves against the French. No wonder that the sentiment of the whole German nation is for the retention of Belgium, their path to the sea. It was formerly German. Its inhabitants are German. Let it become German once more!
But to the Germans there are other and equally important elements belonging to their nation outside of the states upon the confines of the empire. These are the German emigrants and German colonists in all portions of the world. In recent years there has come to the front more than ever the theory that German nationality cannot be lost by foreign residence or by transference of allegiance to another State: once a German, always a German.