What they regarded as the right moment came in July, 1914. The assassination of the heir apparent to the Austrian throne by a Servian gave the rulers of Germany a pretext to make war on the world. Austria, always haughty, always greedy, always weak and blind, was simply the catspaw of the Hohenzollerns. Austria sent an overbearing message to Servia, and Russia, taking the rôle of protector of the small Balkan states, made it clear that she sided with Servia. Germany pretended to take fright and warned Russia not to attempt to oppose Austria. England and France tried to keep peace in Europe by suggesting a conference to discuss the matter. But the Kaiser of Germany and his generals did not want peace; they wanted to show the world how strong they were, they wanted the world to bow down absolutely before them; they precipitated the crisis and, pretending that they acted in self-defense, declared war on Russia, France, and England.
In the first days of August, 1914, the enemy of liberty began its march. With a ruthlessness that has no counterpart except in the acts of those barbarian hordes that swept across Europe in the Dark Ages Germany marched into Belgium, a small and peaceful country, giving as the only excuse for her wanton invasion the fact that the easiest road to France lay across that land. She expected Belgium to submit. The giant, swollen with power, would do as it pleased with the pigmy. And when the British Ambassador remonstrated with the German Chancellor over this illegal treatment of a nation that all the powers of Europe had promised to protect the Chancellor answered that the treaty of Germany with Belgium was simply “a scrap of paper.” Germany knew no treaties that opposed her desires; Germany has cared for nothing but her own selfish goal. And the great German people consented to this infamous course, because they had been taught that their first duty was blind obedience to the will of the Fatherland, which meant the will of the House of Hohenzollern. Never in history has a people,—and in this case a people that was supposed to be civilized and thoughtful,—bowed its neck so meekly to the yoke of its overlords.
But as the hordes of power-drunk Germans,—whom civilization has rightly named the Huns, in memory of those earlier barbarian invaders of western Europe,—advanced through the peaceful fields of little Belgium they found, to their great surprise, that the Belgian people did not intend to submit to such an outrage without protest. Led by their heroic king, Albert, the Belgians threw themselves in the path of the Huns and checked them for a few days. They could not save their country, but they saved precious days for the French and English, and the Huns found that their march to Paris was not the easy, triumphal progress they had planned.
Yet the German army was a mighty and effective machine in that autumn of 1914, built by men who had devoted their lives to perfecting instruments of destruction. It rolled on and on, across Belgium, southward and westward into France, crushing the small Belgian army, forcing the outnumbered British into retreat, driving back the French by sheer weight of cannon and men. The Kaiser thought to repeat the act of his grandfather and make the French sign a treaty with him at Versailles, taking more territory and wealth from them as the next step toward making the House of Hohenzollern the greatest power in the world. As the Huns drove on their over-mastering pride and self-conceit grew and grew, inflating them like over-swollen frogs, until a chorus of what the rest of the world had formerly considered intelligent professors, scientists, and writers, actually dared to announce that the German will to victory was the supreme achievement of the ages. Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, at the height of their power, never lost some sense of proportion, some human notion of justice; it was left to this Germany of 1914 to show how blind, how mad, how intolerant the mind of man can be.
Rapidly the Huns marched toward Paris; and then something happened. The French turned at bay, held, drove the invaders back. Over the ground they had crossed in triumph the Huns retreated, back and back until they had reached the line of the River Marne. And when the French General Joffre drove them back to the Marne he won one of the greatest victories for civilization in the annals of history.
Meantime Russia was attacking in the east and the Germans had to look to the protection of their own territory. Europe was now ablaze, England was training men, France was digging trenches, the flames of war, lighted by Germany’s reckless torch, were spreading across the world. Italy, true to the principles of her great leaders of the last century, Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, hating that power of Austria whose history had been one long record of deceit and enslavement, joined hands with the countries that stood for liberty and justice. The Turk, true to his nature, united with the Hun. The war raged back and forth, its battle-fields the greater part of Europe.
The issue was clearly drawn between liberty and tyranny. The Germans were now the Bourbons, the Allied Powers were the true descendants of Lafayette and Washington. The land of Lafayette lay next to the Menace and her fair breast had been the first to bear the scars of war. The land of Washington, however, lay far across the Atlantic, and one of her guiding principles had been to avoid taking part in the affairs of Europe. Some of her sons, loving Lafayette’s country for what she meant to the world, volunteered in the French army, joined the French flying corps, worked in the hospital service; but the great republic across the sea proclaimed herself a neutral, although the hopes of her people lay on the side of France and England.
But Germany knew no law, either that of Christ or man. The Sermon on the Mount, the merciful provisions of the Hague Conventions, might never have been given to the world as far as she was concerned. See what some of her writers, men supposedly human, dared to say. “Might is right and ... is decided by war. Every youth who enters a beer-drinking and dueling club will receive the true direction of his life. War in itself is a good thing. God will see to it that war always recurs. The efforts directed toward the abolition of war must not only be termed foolish, but absolutely immoral. The peace of Europe is only a secondary matter for us. The sight of suffering does one good; the infliction of suffering does one more good. This war must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible.” And another German said, “They call us barbarians. What of it? The German claim must be: ... Education to hate.... Organization of hatred.... Education to the desire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and false shame.... To us is given faith, hope, and hatred; but hatred is the greatest among them.”
This was indeed a strange religion for a nation that was supposed to have heard of the Sermon on the Mount; a religion that might have been made by Satan himself, with hate for its foundation instead of love. Yet this was the German religion; if any one dare to deny that the words of these writers truly represent Germany let him look at Germany’s acts, let him think of the treatment of Belgium, the bombing of unprotected cities and towns, the enslavement of women and children, the destruction of hospital ships and of Red Cross camps, the murder of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the Lusitania!
The submarine captain who fired the torpedo that sank the Lusitania was a true son of Germany. He sent non-combatants to their death in the sea as ruthlessly as might a demon of darkness. There was no humanity in him, nor in those who commanded the deed. But there is no act of evil that does not bear its own just consequences. The innocent men, women and children who went down with the Lusitania called forth the hate of the world on the Huns, and set America on fire with indignation. For every victim there Germany was to pay a thousandfold in time.