Professor von Mach, in his book, “What Germany Wants,” further explains this dilatory defense and amplifies it in a manner that is certainly unusual in an historian. He recognizes that the speech of the German Chancellor in the Reichstag on August 4th, in which von Bethmann-Hollweg admitted that the action of Germany in invading Belgium was wrong and only justified it on the ground of self-preservation, was a virtual plea of guilty by Prussia of the crime, of which it stands indicted at the bar of the civilized world.
Germany’s scholarly apologist, as amicus curiæ, then suggests that in criminal procedure, when a defendant pleads guilty, the Court often refuses to accept his plea, enters a plea of not guilty for him, and assigns counsel to defend the case. He therefore suggests that the Chancellor’s plea of guilty should be disregarded and the Court should assign counsel.
One difficulty with the analogy is that courts do not ordinarily refuse to accept a plea of guilty. On the contrary, they accept it almost invariably, for why try the guilt of a man when he himself in the most formal way acknowledges it?
The only instance in which a court does show such consideration to a prisoner is when the defendant is both poor and ignorant. Then, and only then, with a fine regard for human right, is the procedure suggested by Prof. von Mach followed.
To this humiliating position, Professor von Mach as amicus curiæ consigns his great nation. For myself, as one who admires Germany and believes it to be much greater and truer than its ruling caste or its over-zealous apologists, I refuse to accept the justification of such an absurd and degrading analogy.
The blunt acknowledgment of the German Chancellor in the Reichstag, already quoted, is infinitely preferable to the disingenuous defenses of Germany’s ardent but sophistical apologists. Fully recognizing the import of his words, von Bethmann-Hollweg, addressing the representatives of the German nation, put aside with admirable candor all these sophistical artifices and rested the defense of Germany upon the single contention that Germany was beset by powerful enemies and that it was a matter of necessity for her to perpetrate this “wrong” and in this manner to “hack her way through.”
This defense is not even a plea of confession and avoidance. It is a plea of “Guilty” at the bar of the world. It has one merit. It does not add to the crime the aggravation of hypocrisy.
After the civilized world had condemned the invasion of Belgium with an unprecedented approach to unanimity, the German Chancellor rather tardily discovered that public opinion was still a vital force in the world and that the strategic results of the occupation of Belgium had not compensated for the moral injury. For this reason he framed five months after this crime against civilization a belated defense, which proved so unconvincing that the Bernhardi plea of military necessity is clearly preferable, as at least having the merit of candor.