There can be little doubt that Prof. Gustave Lanson, the distinguished literary historian, voiced the sentiments of the vast majority of his countrymen when in a lecture, delivered some years ago at Harvard, he stated that France could not and would not reorganize the peace of Frankfurt as a final settlement, and that the one aim of the French policy of the last forty years had been to force Germany to reopen the Alsace-Lorraine question.
If there were people in Germany inclined to overlook or to minimize this constantly growing menace from France, their eyes must have been opened when in 1912 the French Government, having previously abolished the one-year volunteers, raised the duration of active military service for every Frenchman from two years to three, and, in addition to this, called out in the Autumn of 1913 the recruits not only of the year whose turn had come, namely, the recruits born in 1892, but also those born in 1893. This was a measure nearly identical with mobilization; it was a measure which clearly showed that France would not delay much longer striking the deadly blow. For no nation could possibly stand for any length of time this terrific strain of holding under the colors its entire male population from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth year. No wonder that the Paris papers were speaking as long ago as the Summer of 1912 of the regiments stationed in the Eastern Departments as the "vanguard of our glorious army," and were advocating double pay for them, as being practically in contact with the enemy.
The second foe now threatening the destruction of Germany is England. Can it truly be said that England's hostility has been brought about by German aggression? True, Germany has built a powerful navy; but so have Japan, the United States, France, and even Italy. Has England felt any menace from these? Why, then, is the German Navy singled out as a specially sinister threat to England? Has German diplomacy during the last generation been particularly menacing to England? Germany has acquired some colonies in Africa and in the Far East. But what are Kamerun and Dar-es-Salaam and Kiao-Chau compared with the colonial possessions of the other great powers? Where has Germany pursued a colonial aggressiveness that could in any way be compared with the British subjugation of the South African republics or the Italian conquest of Tripoli or the French expansion in Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco, or the American acquisition of the Philippines?
Her Open-Door Policy.
Wherever Germany has made her influence felt on the globe she has stood for the principle of the open door. Wherever she has engaged in colonial enterprises, she has been willing to make compromises with other nations and to accept their co-operation, notably so in the Bagdad railway undertaking. And yet, the colonial expansion of every other nation is hailed by England as "beneficial to mankind," as "work for civilization"; the slightest attempt of Germany to take part in this expansion is denounced as "intolerable aggression," as evidence of the "bullying tendencies of the War Lord."
What is the reason for this singular unfairness of England toward Germany, of this incessant attempt to check her and hem her in? Not so much the existence of a large German Navy as the encroachment upon English commerce by the rapidly growing commerce of Germany has made Germany hateful to England. The navy has simply added to this hate of Germany the dread of Germany. But if there had been no German Navy, and consequently no dread of Germany, this hate of Germany might have come to an explosion before now. For the history of the last 300 years proves that England has habitually considered as her mortal enemy any nation which dared to contest her commercial and industrial supremacy—first Spain, then Holland, then France, and now Germany. As long as German firms, by the manufacture of artificial indigo, keep on ruining the English importation of indigo from India, and as long as the German steamship lines keep on outstripping the prestige of the English boats, there can be no real friendship between England and Germany. Although England has repeatedly proposed to Germany naval agreements, these agreements were avowedly meant to perpetuate the overwhelming preponderance of England's fighting power, so that she would at any moment be in a position to crush German commercial rivalry for all time. She apparently thinks that this moment has now come.
That Germany's third implacable enemy, Russia, is clearly the aggressor, and not the defender of her own national existence, need hardly be demonstrated. She poses as the guardian of the Balkan States. But is there any case on record where Russia has really protected the independence of smaller neighboring countries? Has she not crushed out provincial and racial individuality wherever she has extended her power? Is it not the sole aim of her national policy to Russianize forcibly every nationality under her sway?
In Finland she has gone back on her solemnly pledged word to maintain the Finnish Constitution, and is ruthlessly reducing one of her most highly developed provinces to the dead level of autocratic rule. In her Baltic provinces she is trying to destroy, root and branch, whatever there is left of German culture. Wherever the Russian Church holds dominion intellectual blight is sure to follow.
To think, therefore, that Russia would promote the free development of a number of independent Balkan States under her protectorate is to shut one's eyes to the whole history of Russian expansion. No, Russian expansion in the Balkans means nothing less than the extinction of all local independence and the establishment of Russian despotism from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.