Reviewing the motives of the combatants, Austria and Germany are fighting for the prerogatives and ideals of a politico-military hierarchy; Russia is fighting for a little nation of kindred blood and identical faith which had been outrageously attacked; France is fighting in self defense and for her treaty obligations; England is explicitly fighting for the principle of neutralization. In a larger sense the various motives of the powers embattled against Austria and Germany merge in the need of a gigantic police enterprise. We have on a tremendous scale the attempt to chastise two criminally aggressive powers, which Mr. Norman Angell proposed, on a smaller and less ruinous scale, as a means towards securing peace. The spirit that animates the European coalition against the two central Empires is that a small nation should not be brutally entreated by a stronger by reason of its greater strength, nor a neutralized nation be molested by violation of its soil and slaying of its citizens. If we hold clearly in mind this police aspect of the war, we are in a position to weigh some of the possibilities.
The success of Austria and Germany would mean the extinction of what little international law and morality has been painfully built up through the centuries, the impact of the mailed fist throughout Europe, the rigid rule of a pedantic and tyrannical bureaucracy, the diminution of the variety and vitality of western civilization, the clamping upon the world for an indefinite future the most unendurable bonds of militarism. Fortunately there is small reason to dread so dire a disaster for humanity. The stars fight in their courses against those who would undo the work of time.
The success of the Triple Entente, may, as it is directed, take us far towards permanent peace, or once more establish a military tension that in its turn must produce new wars. What is all important is that the police character of this war should not be lost sight of. It is always easy for the most generous causes to sink to a level of immediate small interests—the Crusaders forgetting the Holy Sepulchre while Constantinople is being looted. Such temptations will beset the Triple Entente in the event of a triumph. Meanwhile, it may be the part of France and England to restrain the bitterness of Russia, who is engaged in a war essentially racial. It is necessary that the lesson administered to Germany and Austria be complete and convincing. Their best wishers can only desire for them a prompt and sharp chastisement. The peace of the world requires either the reduction of Germany to military impotence or a change in the arrogant temper of her ruling class.
Since the war has been occasioned by the stubborn folly of a military and diplomatic caste, the minimum of reform, is that that caste should be deposed in Austria and Germany. France set an example over forty years ago. Such deposition to be effective would apparently involve such constitutional changes that it is difficult to see how either the Hapsburg or Hohenzollern dynasty could logically survive the revolution. In the light of history neither would be missed.
Historically, the notion of a central European Empire has meant nothing but harm. Through the Middle Ages the cheap parodists of the Cæsars trafficked when they might, and fought when they must, claiming territory at large, setting race against race, and pontiff against king, raiding and looting rich neighboring lands rather than waging war, fomenting religious persecution, opposing by trickery and force the development of the new races and nationalities. Such was for centuries the record of the Holy Roman Empire. For Europe its legend has ever been baleful. Everybody knows that the House of Hapsburg inherits by direct descent this tradition, and Austria with its loose hold over many races is today a simulacrum of the Mediæval Empire, owing her new lease of life, after the Imperial idea had discredited itself, to the suppression of Hungary with the aid of Imperial Russia. In the Emperor Franz Josef we have an individual superior to his origins, but he inevitably inherited the diplomatic and military caste of advisors and administrators who have brought Austria to the present pass. The mentality of this hierarchy was fixed after the Napoleonic wars, at the moment when reaction was exaggerated, and has not changed with changing times.
At least the Austrian Empire and its ruling caste had the warrant of tradition. In Germany the tradition was recently made to order by the genius of Bismarck. The mediæval caste which Austria inherited, Germany deliberately created for herself. The Empire rose out of no instinctive need of the race, from no demand of the numerous small states and free cities, but as the clever utilization of a brilliant military triumph. What war gave, war could take away. The Empire that was proclaimed at Versailles might be terminated at Potsdam. The offence of the Empire is not its title and form but in the changing for the worse of the German character. Governments are worth just what they produce in national character. The German temper is naturally genial, thrifty, deliberate, patient, scholarly and musical. Official Germany has developed an intolerable arrogance that threatens the whole world. The Kaiser has mediævalized Germany’s ruling caste, and is the symbol of that process.
Personally I do not believe that the Triple Entente will be called upon to dispose of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties, any more than in 1871, Germany was burdened with the disposition of Napoleon III. Like causes produce like effects, and when Austria and Germany shall have awakened from red dreams of conquest, to the gray reality of defeat, they may be trusted to call to account these responsible for their humiliation.
With an Imperial Austria and Germany, the Triple Entente could only deal most sternly, always along those modern lines of penology which do not avenge the offence, but see to it that the offender be not allowed to repeat it. On the theory that the present administration of Germany and Austria is to be perpetuated, nothing less than the crippling of those powers could guarantee even a few years of peace. With a reorganized Germany and Austria, the allies could and should deal far more generously than Germany did with the bantling French Republic. Belgium, for violated neutrality should obviously be made Germany’s preferred creditor.
Into more speculative matters I will only briefly inquire. There will naturally be some readjustment of the central European map to make political and racial lines more nearly coincident. Many of the historic states which have been whipped or cajoled into the two Empires may reëmerge. A number of small neutralized states in central Europe is among the possibilities. How much of such a process the loosely articulated Austrian Empire can stand is problematical. Some kind of a coherent Germany should emerge from the disaster, and all that is most certainly and valuably German will be preserved. German victory would overwhelm it under militarism. The intellectual primacy of Germany has never depended on the legend of the Empire. It was acknowledged before the Empire was dreamed of, and would survive if the Empire were only an unblest memory. The real Germany has today only friends in the world. To many of us she is an intellectual foster mother and very dear. We hope to see her relieved of disguising mediæval frippery, and once more her radiant and edifying self. In the Kaiser’s proclamation he protests against world wide jealousy and hatred of Germany. Without mincing words, it may be admitted that the world is justly hostile to him and what he represents. He identifies himself and what he represents with Germany. When she shall have set that misunderstanding straight, she will find in the world only friends and sympathizers.
Looking to the future, and especially to the cause of peace, the war suggests certain reflections. If the war results only in a consciously suppressed Germany and Austria kept in order by the armies of the Triple Entente, nothing much will have been done. If the ruffian temper of German officialdom persists, Europe will merely have lavished once more her treasure, tears and blood in the old inconclusive way. The hope lies in a solution so just that the defeated nations may accept it, so wise that it may safely include a general reduction of armaments. The cause of peace is already the gainer by a sensational demonstration of the fallacy of the stock sophism that the only guarantee of peace is competitive arming. The way in which the little spark struck on the Danube overran Europe proves that competitive arming is not merely the ready occasion of war, but of war on the most costly and disastrous terms.