My Four Years in Germany

by James W. Gerard

The nobles of Prussia are always for war. The business men and manufacturers and shipowners desire an increasing field for their activities. The German colonies were uninhabitable by Europeans. All his life the glittering Emperor and his generals had planned and thought of war; and the Crown Prince, surrounded by his remarkable collection of relics and reminders of Napoleon, dreamed only of taking the lead in a successful war of conquest. Early in the winter of 1913-14, the Crown Prince showed his collection of Napoleana to a beautiful American woman of my acquaintance, and said that he hoped war would occur while his father was alive, but, if not, he would start a war the moment he came to the throne.

Since writing the above, the American woman who had this conversation with the Crown Prince wrote out for me the exact conversation in her own words, as follows: "I had given him Norman Angell's book, 'The Great Illusion,' which seeks to prove that war is unprofitable. He (the Crown Prince) said that whether war was profitable or not, when he came to the throne there would be war, if not before, just for the fun of it. On a previous occasion he had said that the plan was to attack and conquer France, then England, and after that my country (the United States of America); Russia was also to be conquered, and Germany would be master of the world."

The extraordinary collection of relics, statues, busts, souvenirs, etc., of the first Napoleon, collected by the Crown Prince, which he was showing at the time of the first of these conversations to this American lady, shows the trend of his mind and that all his admiration is centred upon Napoleon, the man who sought the mastery of the world, and who is thought by admirers like the Crown Prince to have failed only because of slight mistakes which they feel, in his place, they would not have made.

If the Germans' long preparations for war were to bear any fruit, countless facts pointed to the summer of 1914 as the time when the army should strike that great and sudden blow at the liberties of the world.

It was in June, 1914, that the improved Kiel Canal was reopened, enabling the greatest warships to pass from the Baltic to the North Sea.

In the Zeppelins the Germans had arms not possessed by any other country and with which they undoubtedly believed that they could do much more damage to England than was the case after the actual outbreak of hostilities. They had paid great attention to the development of the submarine. Their aeroplanes were superior to those of other nations. They believed that in the use of poison gas, which was prepared before the outbreak of the war, they had a prize that would absolutely demoralise their enemy. They had their flame throwers and the heavy artillery and howitzers which reduced the redoubtable forts of Liege and Namur to fragments within a few hours, and which made the holding of any fortresses impossible.

On their side, by the imposition of a heavy tax called the Wehrbeitrag or supplementary defence tax, they had, in 1913, increased their army by a number of army corps. On the other hand, the law for three years' military service voted in France had not yet gone into effect, nor had the law for universal military service voted by the Belgian Chambers. Undoubtedly the Germans based great hopes upon the Bagdad railway which was to carry their influence to the East, and even threatened the rule of England in Egypt and India. Undoubtedly there was talk, too, of a Slav railroad to run from the Danube to the Adriatic which would cut off Germany from access to the Southern Sea. Francis Deloisi, the Frenchman, in his book published before the great war, called "De la Guerre des Balkans à la Guerre Européenne," says, "In a word, the present war (Balkan) is the work of Russia, and the Danube Asiatic railway is a Russian project. If it succeeds, a continuous barrier of Slav peoples will bar the way to the Mediterranean of the path of Austro-German expansion from the Black Sea to the Adriatic. But here again the Romanoffs confront the Hapsburgs, the Austro-Serb conflict becomes the Austro-Russian conflict, two great groups are formed, and the Balkan conflict becomes the European conflict."

Another reason for an immediate war was the loan by France to Russia made on condition that additional strategic railways were to be constructed by the Russians in Poland. Although this money had been received, the railways had not been constructed at the time of the opening of the Great War. Speaking of this situation, the Russian General Kuropatkin, in his report for the year 1900, said, "We must cherish no illusions as to the possibility of an easy victory over the Austrian army," and he then went on to say, "Austria had eight railways to transport troops to the Russian frontier while Russia had only four; and, while Germany had seventeen such railways running to the German-Russian frontier, the Russians had only five." Kuropatkin further said, "The differences are too enormous and leave our neighbours a superiority which cannot be overcome by the numbers of our troops, or their courage."

Comparing the two armies, he said, "The invasion of Russia by German troops is more probable than the invasion of Germany by Russian troops"; and, "Our Western frontier, in the event of a European war, would be in such danger as it never has known in all the history of Russia."

Agitation by workmen in Russia was believed in Germany to be the beginning of a revolution. Illuminating figures may be seen in the gold purchase of the German Imperial Bank: in 1911, 174,000,000 marks; in 1912, 173,000,000 marks; but in 1913, 317,000,000 marks.