Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,
And leave a dead unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:
This is the Happy Warrior; this is He
That every Man in arms should wish to be.
—William Wordsworth.
CHAPTER XXIII
FIFTY YEARS OF WARNING
(1864-1914)
In 1864 the Fathers of Confederation met at Quebec, while the Germans took from the Danes the neck of land through which they cut the Kiel Canal to give the German Navy a safe back way between the North Sea and the Baltic. At first sight you cannot understand why Canadian Confederation and the German attack on Denmark should ever be mentioned together. But, just as the waters of two streams in the same river system are bound to meet in the end, so Canada and Germany were bound to meet on the same battlefield when once Canada had begun to grow into a nation within the British Empire and Germany had begun to grow into an empire for whose ambitions there was no room without a series of victorious wars. After beating Austria in 1866, to win the leadership of Central Europe, Germany beat France in 1870, took Alsace and Lorraine, and made herself the strongest land-power in the world. Even then two such very different Englishmen as Cardinal Newman and John Stuart Mill foresaw the clash that was bound to come between the new empire of the Germans and the old one of the British. But most people never see far ahead, while many will not look at all if the prospect seems to be unpleasant.
Thirty years before the war (1884) Germany began to get an empire overseas. Taking every possible chance she went on till she had a million square miles and fifteen million natives. But she neither had nor could get without victorious war any land outside of Germany where she could bring up German children under the German flag. Even including the German parts of Austria there was barely one quarter-million of square miles on which German-speaking people could go on growing under their own flags; while the English-speaking people of the British Empire and the United States had twenty times as much land, fit for whites, on which to grow bigger and bigger populations of their own blood under their own flags. This meant that the new, strong, and most ambitious German Empire was doomed to an ever-dwindling future as a world-power in comparison with the British Empire. The Germans could not see why they should not have as good a "place in the sun" of the white man's countries as the British, whom they now looked on very much as our ancestors looked upon the oversea Spaniards about the time of the Armada. "Why," they asked, "should the British have so much white man's country while we have so little?"
There are only three answers, two that the Germans understand as well as we do, and one that, being what they are, they could hardly be expected to admit, though it is the only one that justifies our case. The two answers which the Germans understand are of course these: that we had the sea-power while they had not; and that, because we had it, we had reaped the full benefit of "first come, first served." But the third answer, which is much the most important, because it turns upon the question of right and wrong, is that while the Germans, like the Spaniards, have grossly abused their imperial powers, we, on the whole, with all our faults, have not.
There are so many crimes for which the Germans have to answer that this whole book could not contain the hundredth part of them. But one crime in one of their oversea possessions will be enough to mention here, because it was all of a piece with the rest. In German South-West Africa the Herreros, a brave native people, were robbed if they worked hard for the German slave-drivers, flogged till their backs were flayed if they did not, and killed if they stood up for their rights. There are plenty of German photographs to prove that the modern Germans are very like the Spaniards of Philip II and utterly unlike the kindly modern French, Italians, Americans, and British. The world itself is witness now, and its conscience is the judge. So there we shall leave our case and turn to follow the ever thickening plot of coming war.
In 1889 Britain spent an extra hundred million dollars on building new men-of-war. Next year Germany got Heligoland from Britain in exchange for Zanzibar. Heligoland is only a tiny inland off the North Sea coast of Germany. But it was very useful to the Germans as one of the main defences of the great naval base there.
In 1897 the Kaiser said, "I shall not rest till I have made my fleet as strong as my army." A year later he said, "Our future is on the water." And in 1900 the German Navy Bill passed by the German Parliament began by saying, "The German Navy must be strong enough to endanger the supremacy of even the mightiest foreign navy." What "foreign navy" could that be if not the British? In 1908 the Kaiser tried to steal a march on the too pacific British Government by writing privately to Lord Tweedmouth, the feeble civilian First Lord of the Admiralty. The First Lord represents the Navy in Parliament; and Parliament represents the People, who elect its members. So when a First Lord is a real statesman who knows what advice to take from the First Sea Lord (who is always an admiral) everything goes well; for then Parliament and the Navy work together as the trusted servants of the whole People. But Tweedmouth, feeble and easily flattered, was completely taken in by the sly Kaiser, who said Germany was only building new ships in place of old ones, while she was really trying to double her strength. It was therefore a very lucky thing that the Kaiser also tried to fool that wonderful statesman, wise King Edward, who at once saw through the whole German trick.