More particularly, Germany now looks to the East. In the so-called Baltic provinces of Russia the lands to a great extent are owned by Russian subjects of German blood. The peasants are poor, servile, without education or property, an ideal field for the advance of autocracy. It is hoped to either annex these provinces boldly or to establish protectorates, which, sooner or later, at an opportune moment, will fall into German hands—just as Austria gained the consent of Europe to a protectorate over Bosnia and Herzegovina and then suddenly added them to the domains of the Hapsburgs.
The German propagandists have long been working on the people of that part of Russia known as the Ukraine. If the Ukraine can be made a separate protectorate or a semi-independent state, some day it will be easily absorbed. The autocracy has the same hope about Lithuania, at one time semi-independent. There, too, the propagandists have worked on Lithuania—all these provinces, of course, differing slightly from the races surrounding and all with a semi-independent history, as, for instance, Courland.
But all these races should think twice before they accept a momentary independence, if that autonomy is to lead them under the Prussian yoke. Whether that yoke is easy to bear or not is best answered by the Danes, Alsatians, Poles and Lorrainers who have been forcibly incorporated in the Kingdom of Prussia.
But greatest prize of all is the commercial control of Russia which the autocracy hopes to win for its merchant class. Time and again I was told in Germany that a separate peace with Russia was near and that the exploitation of Russia by the enterprising German merchants, in a short time, would repay Germany for all the losses of the war.
Would it not seem extraordinary if the language of business and commerce of the United States were French? But to-day in Russia and for years back the language of commercial business intercourse has been German. A great beginning, a great foundation it is for the eventual control, not only of the business, but the political structure of Russia. If the Germans at war with Russia have been able to split, revolutionise and divide it and put their representatives in control, what will they not be able to accomplish when peace shall bring them full liberty to circulate freely in that rich but ignorant country.
In the end, all classes in Russia will demand a strong government, and if no military dictator, no Russian Napoleon has taken in his hands the reins of government, then the German Kaiser will stand by ready to whisper to the torn people of Russia, as Napoleon III did to the French, "My Empire is Peace!"
But even if Germany evacuates France and restores the complete independence of Belgium, even if no territories are gained to the East, or protectorates or independent states carved from the body of Russia to be a later prey of Germany, Germany will have won—if from Bremen to Bagdad German influence or actual German rule is predominant in Middle Europe, the Great Central State, where the cotton of Mesopotamia, and the coal and iron of Westphalia, the copper of Servia, the oil and grain of Roumania all will contribute to the manufacturer of Germany, who, in turn, will sell his goods in that vast territory. And best of all in autocratic view, the man power of the Central Empires will be so increased that at a propitious moment, in a characteristic sudden assault, the armies of the Central Empires will invade and conquer Palestine, Egypt and India, and take what they will in Africa and Asia, while British, Japanese, and American and French navies impotently rage in useless control of the high seas.