Watching on the Rhine

by Violet R. Markham

The militarists largely controlled the machine and were therefore in the stronger position. An autocratic form of government and an Executive divorced from all control by Parliament made the Socialist vote, large though it was, of no practical value in determining policy. The General Election of 1912, when the Socialists and Progressives who had definitely challenged the Chauvinism of the Government secured considerable gains in the Reichstag, caused dismay in military circles. It is clear that the dread of democratic control was one of the causes which impelled the soldiers to bring matters to a head. A shadow had fallen on their power which a successful war, so they thought, would dispel. Had Germany possessed a democratic constitution which would have given due weight and place to the anti-military elements, it is difficult to believe that the war would ever have occurred. It was a race between the forces making respectively for peace and for aggression, and time was on the side of the former.

The military party consequently forced the pace and precipitated the conflict. That on the outbreak of war the whole German nation, Socialists included, closed its ranks and presented a united front to the enemy is natural enough. The view of the defensive war was widespread, and German myopia could not see straight about the threatening character of the armaments which had been piled up. But between the guilt of the rulers, which is black indeed, and the guilt of the nation as a whole, wide discriminations should in justice be made. If it were not so the future outlook, dark as it is at the moment, would be quite hopeless.

The part played in the middle of this welter by the arrogant and inferior figure on the throne is not easy to determine. The Emperor was not necessarily insincere when he expressed his abstract desire for peace. But his vanity was flattered by the vision of himself as Supreme War Lord ashore and afloat of a submissive Europe. He did not necessarily want to fight. He wanted very much to be in a position which enabled him to bully. Probably the governing classes in Germany held much the same view. The Emperor lent himself to the creation of huge armies and a threatening fleet, and then expressed surprise that his perpetual sabre-rattling and histrionic performances created anger and alarm throughout Europe. Other nations refused to think that Dreadnoughts were built as pets, or that armaments were piled up for the purposes of ceremonial salutes. Having surrounded himself with material of this character, he was in all probability genuinely appalled when the inevitable explosion occurred. He had no real wish to trade with the devil, but he was always in and out of the shop, turning over the wares and listening to the flatteries of the salesman. A man of his type was bound, sooner or later, to become the tool of villains with a purpose clearer than his own.

Lord Haldane in his book Before the War has given an account, both sane and dispassionate, of the causes and forces which led up to the struggle. He analyses with admirable clarity the weakness and the strength of the German machine. In a striking passage he draws attention to a fact too little realised by the vast majority of English people, namely, that highly organised though the German nation might be on its lower levels, on the top storey not only confusion but chaos existed. Instead of a Cabinet representing the majority of an elected Parliament to whom it was bound to submit its policy, the governing body in Germany was an irresponsible group of men animated by wholly divergent ideas.

In the centre of this group was a vain, feather-headed monarch, not devoid of good impulses, and at times of generous feeling, but cursed with an instability of character which made him lend an ear first to the promptings of one counsellor and then of another. The Emperor swayed from side to side according to the fancy of the moment; at one time drawing close to the war party, at another inclining to the more sober counsels of the peace party. Such a temperament does not improve with the flight of years. Time only deepened in the Emperor’s mind the sense of his own importance in the eyes of God and man. His unstable brain was more and more bemused with ideas of power and infallibility. Already in 1891 he had caused deep resentment throughout working-class Germany by a speech to young recruits at Potsdam. He referred in acrimonious terms to the Socialist agitations, and went on to say: “I may have to order you to shoot down your relations, your brothers, even your parents—which God forbid!—but even then you must obey my commands without murmuring.” Criticism was treasonable; criticism was therefore not audible, but the words were never forgotten nor forgiven. Vanity and megalomania steer an erratic course, and the consequent vagaries of German high diplomacy kept Europe in a chronic state of nerves which deepened the general sense of anxiety and suspicion.

Since the revolution the diplomatic documents in the Berlin archives relating to the plot against Serbia, together with the Emperor’s marginal notes, have been published by order of the new German Government. The war has produced no volume more painful than that of Karl Kautsky in which these documents are set forth. The revelation is of the blackest, so far as the Emperor is concerned. His personal responsibility for creating the situation which led to the war is established beyond question. His marginal notes, always foolish and often vulgar, are almost incredible in their criminal levity. The Emperor comments, for instance, on the most solemn and impressive of Sir Edward Grey’s warnings to the German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, in the words “the low cur!” We watch this vain unstable figure flitting with a lighted torch round the powder magazine of Europe. With the lives of millions in his hand, the mediocre intelligence of the Emperor seemed unable to forecast the elementary consequences of his own acts. At the start his sole object in view was the dismemberment of Serbia and the creation of a new Balkan situation. The German Ambassador in Vienna, who counselled moderation in the demands made on the Serbian Government, was reprimanded severely. William was concerned to stir up his more sluggish ally, Austria, to warlike purpose. If Russia objected—well, never mind about Russia. The implications of a general European war do not seem to have occurred to him. When as huntsman he laid on the hounds, the magnitude of the quarry was not apparent. Later on, when the chasm into which he had dragged the world dawned before him in its appalling immensity, he shrank back aghast on the brink. But too late. The terrible vitality of deeds had taken charge of the situation and hurried on the tragedy to its final consummation.

A curious point arises not only from the study of the Kautsky documents, but of the various German memoirs which have appeared. The primary responsibility of the Emperor for staging the scene is proved beyond doubt. But he was away yachting in the weeks before the war, and it is not clear with whom the further responsibility rests for converting the Serbian intrigue into the wider act of world aggression. At this point history has further secrets to reveal. The Great General Staff were in all probability determined not to let slip so golden an opportunity, and engineered matters in the sense of war during the Emperor’s absence.

Strangely enough, Tirpitz, though ultimately more responsible for the war than any one else in Germany, did not want to fight in August 1914. His fleet was not ready and had yet to attain its maximum strength. He denounces Bethmann-Hollweg’s refusal of Sir Edward Grey’s proposed conference as a capital blunder. War at that moment should in his opinion have been averted. Germany was not sufficiently prepared. Further, the old Admiral with great shrewdness deplores the sabre-rattling against England on various occasions. Do not irritate your enemy until you are ready to fight him, was his principle.

It is a strange fact that Bethmann-Hollweg, who had always desired peace, seems to have lost his head completely in the crisis and showed a fatal obduracy which might have been expected from Tirpitz. The conference for which Sir Edward Grey pressed would in all probability have avoided the war. Bethmann-Hollweg wanted peace, yet he banged the door on the one possibility of maintaining it. One gathers the impression of a group of men groping blindly on the edge of a precipice over which finally they hurl themselves. But the hand which pushed them into decisions, certainly unwelcome to some of the actors, has yet to be revealed. We know it must in effect have come from a man or group of men among the military party. The exact personalities are not at present clear.

The German memoirs written by statesmen of the old régime, which throw so much light incidentally on the tragedy of Europe, must be read in detail in order to obtain any real appreciation of their atmosphere. Their great value lies in the fact that they make the German view of England more intelligible. We are able to measure the vast distortion of truth as it has reached the average German, and the profound misconceptions under which he labours. Exasperated though we may feel by such aberrations, we begin to understand why the rank and file of the German nation, trained from their youth in subservience to the ruling house, still believe they were the attacked, not the attackers, in the war. I have heard recently of Germans meeting pre-war English friends with personal feelings quite unchanged. The English found, however, to their bewilderment that the Germans, out of delicacy to their feelings, would not discuss the war—it must be, so they hinted, terrible for them to realise the crimes England had committed both in her unjustifiable attack on Germany and in her practical conduct of the war. Naturally as English they would desire to avoid any reference to so painful a subject.