My Four Years in Germany

by James W. Gerard

It was Stresemann who on May thirtieth, 1916, said in the Reichstag referring to President Wilson as a peacemaker, "We thrust the hand of Wilson aside." On the day following, the day on which the President announced to Congress the breaking of diplomatic relations, news of that break had not yet arrived in Berlin and Herr Stresemann on that peaceful Sunday morning was engaged in making a speech to the members of the National Liberal party in which he told them that as a result of his careful study of the American situation, of his careful researches into American character and politics, he could assure them that America would never break with Germany. As he concluded his speech and sat down amid the applause of his admirers, a German who had been sitting in the back of the room rose and read from the noon paper, the "B. Z.", a despatch from Holland giving the news that America had broken relations with Germany. The political skill and foresight of Herr Stresemann may be judged from the above incident.

The Socialists, or Social Democrats, more properly speaking, have shown themselves in opposition to the monarchical form of government in Germany. This has put them politically, militarily and socially beyond the pale.

After a successful French attack in the Champagne, I heard it said of a German woman, whose husband was thought to be killed, that her rage and despair had been so great that she had said she would become a Social Democrat; and her expression was repeated as showing to what lengths grief had driven her. This girl was the wife of an ordinary clerk working in Berlin.

The Social Democrats are not given offices, are not given titles: they never join the class of "Rat," and they cannot hope to become officers of the army. Did not Lieutenant Forstner, the notorious centre of the Zabern Affair, promise a reward to the first one of his men who in case of trouble should shoot one "of those damn Social Democrats"?

There is, therefore, no refuge at present politically, for the reasonable men of liberal inclinations; and it is these liberal men who must themselves create a liberal party: a party, membership in which will not entail a loss of business, a loss of prospects of promotion and social degradation.

There are many such men in Germany to-day; perhaps some of the conservative Socialists will join such a party, and there are men in the government itself whose habits of mind and thought are not incompatible with membership in a liberal organisation. The Chancellor himself is, perhaps, at heart a Liberal. He comes of a banking family in Frankfort and while there stands before his name the "von" which means nobility, and while he owns a country estate, the whole turn of his thought is towards a philosophical liberalism. Zimmermann, the Foreign Secretary, although the mental excitement caused by his elevation to the Foreign Office at a time of stress, made him go over to the advocates of ruthless submarine war, lock, stock and barrel, is nevertheless at heart a Liberal and violently opposed to a system which draws the leaders of the country from only one aristocratic class. Dr. Solf, the Imperial Colonial Minister, while devoted to the Emperor and his family is a man so reasonable in his views, so indulgent of the views of others, and indulgent without weakness, that he would make an ideal leader of a liberalised Germany. The great bankers, merchants and manufacturers, although they appreciate the luscious dividends that they have received during the peaceful years since 1870, nevertheless feel under their skins the ignominy of living in a country where a class exists by birth, a class not even tactful enough to conceal its ancient contempt for all those who soil their hands business or trade.

In fact such a party is a necessity for Germany as a buffer against the extreme Social Democrats.

At the close of the war the soldiers who have fought in the mud of the trenches for three years will most insistently demand a redistricting of the Reichstag and an abolition of the inadequate circle voting of Prussia. And when manhood suffrage comes in Prussia and when the industrial population of Germany gets that representation in the Reichstag out of which they have been brazenly cheated for so many years, it may well be that a great liberal party will be the only defence of private property against the assault of an enraged and justly revengeful social democracy.

The workingmen of Germany have been fooled for a long time. They constitute that class of which President Lincoln spoke, "You can fool some of the people all of the time"; and the middle class of manufacturers, merchants, etc. have acquiesced in the system because of the profits that they have made.

The difficulty of making peace with Germany, as at present constituted, is that the whole world feels that peace made with its present government would not be lasting; that such a peace would mean the detachment of some of the Allies from the present world alliance against Germany; preparation by Germany, in the light of her needs as disclosed by this war; and the declaration of a new war in which there would be no battle of the Marne to turn back the tide of German world conquest.