Right Above Race

by Otto H. Kahn

Would not Germany have become uneasy had Russia suddenly announced a policy of concentrating an enormous fleet in the Baltic? (The parallel, though, is far from perfect, in that for you, sea power is not nearly as vital an element as it is and must be for England.)

Your naval policy, together with the arguments which the German Government's spokesmen adduced for it, and the above-mentioned manifestations and agitations, caused very serious and lasting apprehensions in England. They gradually drove her to the Entente with France, and through it, unfortunately perhaps, but necessarily, also with Russia—not as an offensive, but as a defensive measure.

Let me say, in parenthesis, that in the interest of England and France and of the peace of the world, I have always felt inclined to doubt the wisdom of this grouping, however comprehensible and natural it was under the circumstances. Likewise, I have always doubted the wisdom of the creation of your enormous fleet—a view which was shared by some of your best political thinkers and which appears to have been justified by results.

2. The genesis of the war lay in the fixed idea by which Austria was possessed, since her foreign Minister Aehrenthal succeeded in reaping easy and questionable but profitable laurels some years ago, that she could and ought to adopt a "dashing" policy. There is nothing more dangerous than the foolish and reckless daring of feebleness, when, as happens at times, it is suddenly seized with a mania for heroics.

In fact, as I gleaned from a letter received here within a few days of the outbreak of the war and originating from a particularly authoritative source in Vienna, Austria entirely failed to realize the portentous significance and the inevitable consequences of her unheard-of ultimatum to Serbia.

She believed that she would be left undisturbed to play the conqueror at the expense of that poor little country. Unfortunately, Germany did not see fit to put a stop to that extremely dangerous playing with fire. On the contrary, the German Ambassador in Vienna seems to have encouraged it, actively and deliberately.

3. When finally the crisis had come, with all its terrible meaning, Austria's nerves, at the very last moment, began to give way. She wavered in the face of a world catastrophe.

But your Junkers and other jingoes neither wavered nor hesitated. They saw in their grasp the opportunity for which they had been plotting these many years and they were not minded to let it escape them. They considered the moment peculiarly propitious because of the internal preoccupations of England and France.

And they succeeded in sweeping the German Government off its feet as well as the sober and sensible thinking majority of the German people. They succeeded in rushing your Government and people into the belief that the Russian mobilization signified a menace dangerous to Germany's very existence, and that every day of delay in meeting that danger might mean disastrous consequences.

This was not the first time that an attempt had been made by that party to bring the Kaiser and his people suddenly face to face with a situation which they meant should spell war—a war which they felt certain would end in a quick and decisive German victory. Of at least one flagrant example of such manœuvring I have personal knowledge.