THE PANGERMAN PLOT UNMASKED

THE PANGERMAN PLOT
UNMASKED

BERLIN’S FORMIDABLE PEACE-TRAP OF
“THE DRAWN WAR”

BY
ANDRÉ CHÉRADAME

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
THE EARL OF CROMER, O.M.

WITH MAPS

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1917

Copyright, 1916, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Published January, 1917

All Rights Reserved

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

As will be understood from the author’s preface, M. Chéradame’s book was published in Paris in the summer of this year, before the important occurrences in the Balkans accompanying and following Roumania’s entrance into the war. In issuing this translation no consideration of these events has been added; but their bearing on M. Chéradame’s forecast will be noted by the reader.

The maps have been reproduced direct from the French edition, without translating the names into English, as they answer their purpose perfectly well in their present form.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

MAPS

INTRODUCTION.

By the Earl of Cromer, O.M.

My reasons for commending M. Chéradame’s most instructive work to the earnest attention of my countrymen and countrywomen are three-fold.

In the first place, M. Chéradame stands conspicuous amongst that very small body of politicians who warned Europe betimes of the German danger. The fact that in the past he proved a true prophet gives him a special claim to be heard when he states his views as regards the present and the future.

In the second place, I entertain a strong opinion that M. Chéradame’s diagnosis of the present situation is, in all its main features, correct.

In the third place, in spite of the voluminous war literature which already exists, I greatly doubt whether the special aspect of the case which M. Chéradame wishes to present to the public is fully understood in this country; neither should I be surprised to hear from those who are more qualified than myself to speak on the subject that the same remark applies, though possibly in a less degree, to the public opinion of France.

It is essential that, before the terms of peace are discussed, a clear idea should be formed of the reasons which led the German Government to provoke this war. It is well that, if such a course be at all possible, those who are personally responsible for the numerous acts of barbarity committed by the Germans should receive adequate punishment. But attention to points of this sort, however rational and meritorious, should not in any degree be allowed to obscure the vital importance of the permanent political issues which call loudly for settlement. Otherwise, it is quite conceivable that a peace may be patched up, which may have some specious appearance of being favourable to the Allies, but which would at the same time virtually concede to the Germans all they require in order, after time had been allowed for recuperation, to renew, with increased hope of success, their attempts to shatter modern civilization and to secure the domination of the world.

M. Chéradame explains—and I believe with perfect accuracy—the nature of the German objective. It is, in his opinion, to lay secure and stable foundations for the system known as Pan-Germanism. What is Pan-Germanism? It may be doubted whether all that is implied in that term is fully realized in this country. One interpretation may be given to the word, which is not merely innocuous, but which may even reasonably appeal to the sympathies of those who approve of the new map of Europe being constituted with a view to applying that nationalist principle, which finds almost universal favour in all democratic countries. It cannot be too distinctly understood that the political programme now advocated by Germany has no sort of affinity with a plan of this sort. The Germans contend not only that all those who are generally denominated Germans by the rest of the world should be united, but that all who are of what is termed “German origin” should be brought into the German fold. Moreover, they give to this latter phrase an expansion and a signification which is condemned and derided by all who have paid serious attention to ethnological studies. This, however, is far from stating the whole case. The object of the German Government is to effect the whole or partial Germanization of countries inhabited by races which cannot, by any conceivable ethnological process of reasoning, be held to be of German stock. In fact, M. Chéradame very correctly describes Pan-Germanism when he says that its object is to disregard all questions of racial and linguistic affinity and to absorb huge tracts of country the possession of which is considered useful to advance Hohenzollern interests. In other words, what they wish is to establish, under the name of Pan-Germanism, a world system whose leading and most immediate feature is the creation of an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the North Sea.

That this project has for a long while past been in course of preparation by the Kaiser and his megalomaniac advisers cannot for a moment be doubted. When, in November, 1898, William II. pronounced his famous speech at Damascus, in which he stated that all the three hundred millions of Mohammedans in the world could rely upon him as their true friend, the world was inclined to regard the utterance as mere rhodomontade. It was nothing of the sort. It involved the declaration of a definite and far-reaching policy, the execution of which was delayed until a favourable moment occurred and, notably, until the Kiel Canal was completed. The whole conspiracy very nearly succeeded. In spite of their careful attention to detail, their talent for organization, and their elaborate preparations to meet what appears to them every contingency which may occur, the Germans seem to have a constitutional inability to grasp the motives which guide the inhabitants of other countries. A very close analogy to the mistake made by the Kaiser is to be found in an incident of recent English history. It is alleged, I know not with what truth, that when, in 1886, Lord Randolph Churchill resigned his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury’s administration, he “forgot Goschen,” who, as it will be remembered, was speedily nominated to succeed him. The Kaiser forgot England. For various reasons, which are too well-known to require repetition, he and his advisers were firmly convinced that England would not join in the war. The programme was, first, to destroy the power of France and Russia, and then, after that had been done, to fall upon England. In one sense it was fortunate that the Germans committed the gross international crime of invading Belgium. Had they not done so, it is quite possible that the English nation would not have woke up to the realities of the situation. As it was, however, it became clear, even to the most extreme pacificists, that honour and interest alike pointed to the necessity of decisive action. Thus as M. Chéradame indicates, the original German plan was completely upset. The advance on Paris had to be stayed. But the programme, which was the result of long and deliberate contemplation, has by no means been abandoned. On the contrary, with the adhesion of the Bulgarians, who will eventually, unless the Allies secure a decisive victory, become the victims of Pan-Germanism, and also that of the Turks, who were manœuvred into the war by an adroit and absolutely unscrupulous diplomacy, a very considerable portion of the plan has already been put into execution.

M. Chéradame states with great reason that France, Italy, Russia, England, and all the minor Powers are vitally interested in frustrating the German project of establishing their dominion from the Persian Gulf to the North Sea. He also warns us against making a separate peace with either Austria-Hungary or Turkey, both of these Powers being merely vassals of Germany. He is very clearly of opinion that the mere cession of Alsace-Lorraine to France and the rehabilitation of Belgium cannot form the foundations of a durable peace. If peace were concluded on this basis, the Germans would have achieved their main object, and, as Herr Harden pointed out last February, even if Germany was obliged, under pressure, to cede Alsace-Lorraine, there would still be seventy millions of Germans firmly determined to regain possession of those provinces at the first suitable opportunity. In fact, the realization of the German project, although accompanied by certain temporary disabilities from the German point of view, would eventually enable Germany to strangle Europe.

I need not dwell upon all the proposals set forth by M. Chéradame with a view to the frustration of this plan, but the corner-stone of his programme is similar to that advocated with great ability in this country by Mr. Wickham Steed and Mr. Seton Watson. It is to create a Southern Slav State, which will afford an effectual barrier to German advance towards the East. It is essential that the immense importance of dealing with the territories of the Hapsburgs as a preliminary to a final settlement of all the larger aspects of the Eastern question should be fully realized. It constitutes the key of the whole situation.

For these reasons, I hope that M. Chéradame’s work, which develops more fully the arguments which I have very briefly stated above, will receive in this country the attention which it certainly merits. I should add that the book is written in a popular style, and that M. Chéradame’s arguments can be easily followed by those who have no special acquaintance either with Eastern policy or with the tortuous windings of Austrian and German diplomacy during the last quarter of a century.

Cromer.

September 4, 1916.

PREFACE.

The Pangerman plot is the only cause of the war. It is, in fact, the cause at once of its outbreak and of its prolongation till that victory of the Allies has been won which is indispensable to the liberty of the world. In this book I propose to demonstrate this truth by a series of documents, precise, clear, and intelligible to all. The fate of every man in the allied countries, and even in some of the countries which are still neutral, really depends on the issue of the formidable war now being waged. This cataclysm, unprecedented in history, let loose by Prussianized Germany, will have infinite reverberations in every sphere, reverberations which will affect every one of us individually for good or, alas! too often for ill. Every one, therefore, has a direct interest in knowing clearly why these inevitable reverberations of the immense struggle will be produced, and on what fundamental conditions those of them which bode ill for the Allies, and are yet but imperfectly understood, can and must be avoided. Hence every one of the Allies should acquire an exact notion of the present realities. Once fortified by the evidence, his opinion will become a force for the Allied Governments; it will then contribute to the victory and to the imposition of the conditions necessary for the peace.

In writing this popular book my aim has been to bring home, even to those who are least versed in foreign affairs, the formidable problems raised by the war. In my opinion this work is addressed to women quite as much as to men. The reading of it may perhaps bring not only instruction but consolation to those whose affections have been so cruelly wounded. When they comprehend better by what an atrocious plan of slavery the world is threatened, they will understand more fully for what a sublime, what a stupendous cause their husbands, their sons, their plighted lovers, are fighting or dying with such heroic self-sacrifice. May that larger understanding of the formidable events now occurring yield to the women of the Allies at least some alleviation of their sufferings.

But if this book is a popular work, I beg my readers to remark that it is not the result of a hasty effort, vamped up by a mere desire to treat of the moving, the tragic subject of the hour. The book is, indeed, the logical conclusion of a labour on which I have been engaged for twenty-one years. As my readers have an interest in knowing how far they may trust me, they will allow me to explain to them how I was led to concentrate my studies on the Pangerman policy of Germany, what has been the result of my efforts, and how they are linked together.

In former days I was the pupil of Albert Sorel at the Free School of Political Science. That great master was good enough to admit me to his intimacy; and he brought to light and maturity the latent and instinctive propensity which I had for foreign politics. My practical studies abroad led me to Germany in 1894, just at the time when the Pangerman movement had begun. As the movement was manifestly the modern development of the Prussianism of the Hohenzollerns, I was then extremely struck by its importance. The movement appeared to me so threatening for the future that I resolved to follow all the developments of the Pangerman plot, which was already the consequence of the movement, and which from 1895 onward had taken definite shape. The task which I thus laid on myself was at once arduous, vast, and thrilling, for from that time it was certain that the Germans based their political and military Pangerman plan on a study of all the political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems not only of Europe but of the whole world. In truth, the intense labour accomplished in the cause of Pangermanism by the Germans in the last twenty-one years has been colossal. They have carried it out everywhere with a formidable tenacity and a methodical thoroughness which will be the astonishment of history. Indisputably, the Pangerman plan, which is the result of this gigantic effort, is the most extraordinary plot which the world has ever witnessed.

I made the study of that plot for twenty-one years the work of my life, convinced as I was, in spite of the scepticism which long greeted my efforts to give warning of the peril, that the study would serve a useful purpose one day.

The study has necessitated very many and very long journeys of inquiry. I was obliged in fact to go and learn, on the spot, at least the essential elements of the complex problems mentioned above, which have been the base of the Pangerman plan, in order that I might be able to grasp the most distant ramifications of the Prussian programme for dominating the world.

This obligation led me to sojourn in very different countries. That the reader may have an idea of at least the material extent of my inquiries, I will indicate the number of the towns in which I have been led to work for the purpose of discovering the constituent elements, direct and indirect, of the Pangerman plan.

The United States, 14; Canada, 11; Japan, 11; Corea, 4; China, 11; Indo-China, 19; British India, 24; Spain, 1; Italy, 4; Belgium, 6; Luxemburg, 1; Holland, 5; Switzerland, 4; England, 8; Greece, 2; Bulgaria, 4; Roumania, 3; Serbia, 8; Turkey, 3; Germany, 16; Austro-Hungary, 18.

In these towns, according to the requirement of my studies, I passed days, weeks, or months, often on repeated occasions. I endeavoured, so far as the opportunities and the time admitted of it, to enter into direct relations with the acting ministers, the leaders of the various political parties, the diplomatists and the consuls, both French and foreign, some heads of states, influential journalists, officers of repute, military and naval attachés, well-informed merchants and manufacturers. It was thus that, by means of information of many sorts drawn from the most diverse sources, and checked by comparison with each other, I have attempted to set forth the Pangerman political and military plan.

Since 1898 I have endeavoured to draw the attention of the public to the immense danger which that plan was laying up for the world, as my former works testify, particularly L’Europe et la Question d’Autriche au seuil du XXe Siècle, which appeared in 1901, therefore fifteen years ago, and contained an exposition, as precise as it was then possible to make it, of the Pangerman plan of 1895, summed up in the formula “Hamburg to the Persian Gulf”; also Le Chemin de fer de Bagdad, published in 1903, wherein I set forth the danger of that co-operation between Germany and Turkey, which was then only nascent, but which we see full-fledged to-day.

I attempted also by numerous lectures to diffuse among the public some notion of the Pangerman peril. I did not content myself with warning my countrymen. I am proud to have been one of the first Frenchmen to preach a cordial understanding between France and England at a time when there was perhaps some merit in doing so. I deemed it, therefore, a duty to inform the British public, so far as it lay in my power, that the Pangerman peril concerned Great Britain quite as much as France. In 1909 the Franco-Scottish Society kindly invited me to lecture to its members at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. I seized the opportunity, and took for the subject of my lectures, “The problem of Central Europe and universal politics.”

The Aberdeen Free Press, of May 8th, 1909, summed up very exactly as follows the substance of what I said, seven years ago, to my British hearers:

“ ... The lecturer attached enormous importance to the Pan-German movement, which he regarded as the decisive factor in the situation, and he pointed out that the propaganda which had gone on in Germany and in Austria was part of a great policy to extend the boundaries of the German State and dominate middle and south-eastern Europe. The rapport personnel established in recent years between Berlin and Vienna pointed, he said, to the conclusion that Germany and Austria were working hand in hand. In the recent Balkan crisis he described Aehrenthal as playing a partie de poker, in which his bluff had been crowned with success. The off-set to the Pan-German movement was to be found in the Triple Entente between England, France and Russia, and it followed from a consideration of European politics that the questions confronting England with regard to the supremacy of the sea were intimately bound up with the question which concerned the land powers of Europe. In particular, the speaker thought that the Pan-German aspirations would be effectually combatted by the growing social and political development of the various minor Slav peoples in the south-east of Europe. The development of these peoples was a thing which it was with the interests of England, France and Russia to encourage to the utmost.”

My Scottish hearers gave me a very kind reception, of which I have preserved a lively recollection. But truth compels me to declare that I had the impression that the great majority of them did not believe me. I strongly suspect that they then saw in me simply a Frenchman, who, moved by the spirit of revenge, tried above all to stir up the British public against Germany. The impression did not discourage me any more than many similar instances of want of success. In 1911 the Central Asian Society did me the honour of inviting me to express my views in London (22nd March) on the Bagdad railway. I used this fresh opportunity to expound a method of Franco-English co-operation which seemed to me necessary to parry the dangers of the near future.

“Such is,” I then said, “broadly speaking, the affair of Bagdad. The most moderate conclusion which, in my judgment, inevitably follows is that from beginning to end the logical and methodical spirit of Germany has got the better of the French, English, and Russian interests, which have been compromised by our slowness to grasp the importance of the problem confronting us, and by the lamentable want of cohesion between the diplomacies of the three countries.

“The lesson apparently to be drawn from these considerations is, that for the future we ought no longer to be satisfied with a hand-to-mouth policy and with seeking solutions only when the difficulties take an acute form.

“If we wish to serve and defend our interests effectually, we must, as Talleyrand said, keep the future in mind, and learn something of that German method of which the good results are incontestable.

“So far as the eye can range to the visible political horizon, the essential interests of England, France, and Russia are in agreement; it is, therefore, to all appearance, absolutely necessary that the men who exercise an influence on public opinion in this country, in France, and in Russia, should enter into personal relations in order to discuss the great national interests which they have in common, and to adopt a useful line of conduct, while there is yet time. Such a course would be effectual, because it would be determined before the decisive events instead of after them, that is to say, when it is too late.

“Were we to adopt this method, which after all is very simple, the future attempts of our adversaries against our interests would encounter effectual obstacles, and we should no longer have to regret miscarriages such as those of which the Bagdad affair is an example.”

Has the method thus recommended been followed? Apparently not; otherwise could France and England have been surprised by the war?

My propaganda having had little practical result, I endeavoured at least to keep myself well informed of the events that were happening.

In December, 1913, and January, February, and March, 1914, I made new and minute inquiries in Central Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey, and these inquiries were of particular value to me. The truth is, that the treaty of Bukarest of August 10th, 1913, by reason of its far-reaching and important consequences, had completely upset the former state of affairs, so much so that without my journey of 1914, I should certainly have been unable to understand the new situation. In the course of my journey I set myself to apply, with great rigour, my method of research, which consists essentially in trying to see the situations as they are, without preconceived ideas, while listening to all opinions in order to compare them afterwards and extract, if possible, the average truth. In Serbia, in Greece, in Turkey, in Roumania, in Bulgaria, where for a long time I had been in personal relations with people of many different sorts, I was able to have long talks with persons in the most diverse walks of life. In particular, I had the good fortune to be graciously received by the sovereigns and princes of the Balkans: King Peter of Serbia (23rd December, 1913), Prince Alexander, heir of Serbia (December, 1913), King Constantine (25th January, 1914), Prince Nicholas of Greece (28th January), King Charles of Roumania (18th February), Tsar Ferdinand (28th February), Prince Boris, heir of Bulgaria (29th February). If I record the audiences which these high personages were so good as to grant me, it is because they were really not commonplace. These sovereigns and princes knew that I had long studied their country impartially, and they consented to speak with me of the great interests which guided their policies. During these various audiences, which lasted from half an hour to two hours, I heard many points of view of real importance set forth. No doubt each of my various interlocutors only said to me what he wished to say; but, thanks to the multiplicity of the opinions expressed and to the variety of my sources of information, I was able at least to construct a general picture of the true Balkan situation, and to connect it afterwards with the problem of Central Europe and the general policy of Germany.

This inquiry, which in returning I completed in Hungary and Austria, convinced me that, contrary to the opinion which has been held down to quite recent times in many Allied circles, the treaty of Bukarest by no means constituted an injustice, as the Allies have supposed—a belief which has been the source of most of their mistakes in the Balkans in 1915. On the contrary, the treaty of Bukarest, particularly because it for the first time drew Roumania out of the German orbit, appeared to me the most astonishingly favourable event which had happened on the Continent since 1870, and which was entirely in accordance with the interests of France, England, and Russia. The consequences of this treaty formed in fact, as we shall see, the most effectual arrangement that could be conceived for arresting the Pangerman danger and maintaining peace in Europe. But this pacific dam to keep back the Pangerman flood was only possible on condition that the Entente powers held themselves ready for war, which would probably have sufficed to prevent it, and that at the same time they resolutely and unanimously supported Greece, Roumania, and Serbia.

On the other hand, the check which the treaty of Bukarest gave to the Pangerman plan in Europe, appeared to me so pregnant with consequences that I considered it highly probable that the Government of Vienna, instigated by that of Berlin, would not shrink from war for the purpose of undoing the treaty of Bukarest, with its far-reaching effects, at the earliest possible moment, unless the other powers put themselves on their guard. On my return to France I tried to explain the imminence of the danger, but no one would believe it.

In truth, German aggression caught the present Allied countries napping for the following fundamental reason. No doubt, before the war, Pangermanism, as a doctrine, was well enough known in some circles, but the political and military Pangerman plan, the application of which has been pursued methodically by the government of Berlin since the opening of hostilities, had not been studied and taken very seriously except by an extremely small number of private persons in France, England, and Russia.

The efforts made by these private persons to convince the men at the helm in the now Allied countries of the awful danger ahead, were vain. The principal reason why their warnings fell unheeded was this. When by the help of documents they explained that William II.’s ultimate aim was the establishment of German supremacy on the ruins of all the great powers, they were taken for crazy dreamers, so chimerical did such formidable projects appear.

That is why among the Allies the political and military Pangerman plot was ignored in its true character and its extent, down to the outbreak of war. This lack of knowledge in France is proved by a statement in Le Temps of 16th December, 1915. Before the war, “we did not believe in the possibility of a war, and we took no pains to prepare for that redoubtable event.” It was absolutely the same in England, as was demonstrated by the complete surprise of Great Britain at the German aggression.

More than that, the Kaiser’s entire plan has continued to be misunderstood in the Allied countries down to a date which seems quite recent. In fact, Sir Edward Carson, when explaining his resignation in the House of Commons, November 2nd, 1915, said: “I hope that the new plan of campaign has been definitely settled, for while I was a member of the Cabinet, the Cabinet had no plan” (quoted by Le Temps, 4th November, 1915).

But if the Pangerman plan had been known in London, the English and consequently the French would certainly have long ago adopted the counter-plan which could not have failed to destroy it; for the Pangerman plan consists of such definite and precise elements that the mere recognition of them at once suggests the means of frustrating it; in particular, the advantages and the necessity of the Salonika expedition, which has been so sharply opposed and so tardily undertaken, would have been understood from the beginning of 1915, when M. Briand recommended it in principle. Besides, as anybody may convince himself, if the Pangerman plan had been fully known, it is highly probable that the Allies would never have perpetrated the blunders which they have committed in the Balkans, the Dardanelles, and Serbia. It appears that the magnitude of the Pangerman plan, and particularly the part which is masked behind the pretended “drawn game,” has not even yet been clearly apprehended in many circles which imagine themselves well acquainted with the aims pursued by Germany in the war. In fact, quite recently, in France and in England, certain important organs, though not, it is true, of an official character, have argued that since Germany means to extend her Zollverein to Austria-Hungary, the Allies ought to form a powerful economic league with the view of combatting the Austro-German union after the war. But as we shall see, the question really could not, except by some deplorable inadvertence, be stated in these terms in the Allied countries. No connexion should be voluntarily established by them between the economic union of the Allies, however natural it may be, and the economic union of Central Europe. In truth, to permit the future extension of the German Zollverein to Austria-Hungary, in other words, to acquiesce in that economic alliance, under any form, between the two Central empires, which has formed the base and condition of the whole Pangerman plot for twenty-one years (the plot of 1895), would be to permit implicitly the seizure by Germany of fifty millions of inhabitants, of whom nearly three-fourths are not Germans; the inevitable consequence, as I shall prove, would be to accept the German supremacy over the Balkans and Turkey. Now it is manifest that such results would be in absolute contradiction to the declarations of the Allied governments, which have proclaimed that their object in waging the war has been to destroy Prussian militarism and not, consequently, to allow such a new state of things as the seizure, direct or indirect, of Austria-Hungary by Germany, which would multiply her power ten-fold.

The fact that such “inadvertences” can still be committed, after twenty months of war, in circles which, though not official, are nevertheless important, suffices to prove that the widest possible publicity of the Pangerman plot throughout the great masses of the enlightened public in the Allied countries is really needful, if not indispensable. It is also extremely desirable that neutrals should know exactly what the Pangerman plot is in its nature and in its extent. In particular, those Americans who imagine that they can stand aloof from the present formidable conflict, will then clearly understand that their future liberty really depends on the victory of the Allied soldiers, who are fighting not only for their own independence, but in reality for the independence of the whole civilized world, and particularly for that of the United States.

I earnestly trust that the English edition of this book may contribute to bring about this result. Its object is to inform public opinion exactly, so far as the English tongue is spoken, as to the Berlin plot for the domination of the globe. Moreover, an exact knowledge of the Pangerman political and military plot throws a flood of light on all the essential problems of the war: it brings out the deep-seated cause of the war; it explains the immediate causes, which are still almost unknown; it shows why it is indispensable to the freedom of the world that the Allies should achieve, not a hollow and treacherous peace, but a complete victory resulting in the destruction of Prussian militarism, which alone can put an end to the great armaments in Europe and ensure a really lasting peace.

In order that the demonstration may be as convincing as possible, I shall refrain, as far as I can, from giving my readers my own personal opinions and impressions. I shall do my utmost, above all, to lay before them exact documents and arguments intelligible to all, thus furnishing them with facts which will enable them to form a judgment for themselves.

In any case, this work has no other aim than to speak the truth, and to serve a cause the justice of which will appear more and more manifest to a world long deceived by the energetic and astute propaganda of Germany.

5th August, 1916.

PROLOGUE.
PANGERMANISM AND WILLIAM II.

I. The Pangerman Doctrine.

II. The Kaiser as originator of the Pangerman plan.

The Germans are truly methodical people. In every department of life their plans are based on a theory; it may be a true one or a false one, but once they have conceived it they forge ahead with bull-dog tenacity. It is therefore necessary for us to grasp the exact meaning of the Pangerman doctrine, for the whole universal Pangerman plot, both political and military, springs from that tenet.

I.

THE POLES IN THE EAST OF GERMANY.

It might be supposed that the expression Pangermanism embodies the theory in virtue of which the Germans claim to annex only the regions inhabited by dense masses of Germans, on the borders of the Empire, which, after all, would be in accordance with the principle of nationalities.

But Pangermanism has by no means such a restricted and legitimate aim. Again, it might be thought that its object was to gather within the same political fold the peoples who are more or less Germanic by origin. Such a claim would of itself be quite inadmissible. But Pangermanism is more than that. It is really the doctrine, of purely Prussian origin, which aims at annexing all the various regions, irrespective of race or language, of which the possession is deemed useful to the power of the Hohenzollerns.

THE DANES IN PRUSSIA.

It was in the name of Pangermanism, a theory bred of cupidity and wanton greed, that Prussia charged the Parliament of Frankfort to claim as German lands the Eastern Provinces, where in reality the Slavs predominate to such an extent, that they still contain a population of about four million Poles.

It was in the name of Pangermanism that in 1864 Prussia seized that part of Schleswig which was entirely Danish.

THE GERMANS AND THE NON-GERMANS IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

It is in the name of Pangermanism that Austria-Hungary has been for long the object of German covetousness, although the Germans in that country are in a very small minority. Statistics show 12 millions of Germans against 38 millions of non-Germans, and that must be above the mark, for we have to remember that German statistics systematically exaggerate the number of Germans dwelling in the Hapsburg Monarchy.

Already in 1859 the Augsburg Gazette avowed the object of Germany’s designs on Austria with absolute cynicism:

“We loudly declare that if Austria[1] were not a member of the Confederation; if it were not Austria who happened to be the legitimate owner of these non-German regions, it would be the duty of the German nation to conquer them at all costs, because they are absolutely necessary for her development and for her position as a great power.”

The future Marshal von Moltke, also inspired by Pangermanism, had written, as far back as 1844: “We hope that Austria will uphold the rights and protect the future of the Danube lands, and that Germany will finally succeed in keeping open the mouth of her great rivers” (see V. Moltke Schriften, t. II., p. 313).

The author of a pamphlet published in 1895, i.e. exactly twenty-one years ago, inspired by this doctrine of fraud and protected by the Alldeutscher Verband, the most powerful Pangerman Society, after expounding the main plan of future annexations, concludes with simple effrontery thus:

No doubt the newly-constituted Empires will not be peopled merely by Germans, but: “Germans alone will govern; they alone will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the Army and in the Navy; they alone will have the right to become landowners; thus they will acquire the conviction that, as in the Middle Ages, the Germans are a people of rulers. However, they will condescend so far as to delegate inferior tasks to foreign subjects subservient to Germany” (see Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950, published by Thormann und Goetsch, Berlin, p. 48).

Identity of race and language served for a long time to justify Pangermanism; but the facts we have shown and the explicit declarations we have quoted prove clearly that race and language were merely a pretext for the diffusion of the Pangerman doctrine inspired by Prussia. If we dissect this doctrine we find it is composed of cupidity both political and economic. The truth is that Pangermanism is a scheme of piracy to be carried on for the benefit of the Prussian monarchy. Its object is, by successive and indefinite expansions of territory to include within the same boundaries, at first economic but afterwards political, such lands and such peoples as are likely to prove a profitable possession to the Hohenzollerns themselves and to their main support, the German aristocracy.

To sum up, Pangermanism is a doctrine of international burglary, and therefore it is exactly the reverse of the principle of nationality, that noble idea ushered into the world by the French Revolution.

II.

From the Pangerman doctrine the military and political Pangerman plot was bred and stage-managed by William II. Outside of Germany, the Kaiser was looked upon, for a long time, as a peace-loving monarch. It is difficult to explain how such a very serious error could have arisen. Shortly after his accession in 1888, William II. was secretly hatching that plot which so recently has caused the European conflagration, and subsequently, by his public utterances, he has clearly showed his Pangerman tendencies.

On August 28th, 1898, in reply to the Burgomaster of Mayence’s speech, the Kaiser declared that his wish was to keep inviolate the heritage bequeathed by his “immortal grandfather.” “But,” added William, “I can only reach that goal if our authority firmly keeps sway over our neighbours. For this object the unity and the co-operation of every German tribe is required.” On the 4th October, 1900, William II., on laying the foundation stone of the Roman Museum of Saalburg, again said:

“May our German Fatherland become in the future as strongly united, as powerful, as wonderful as was the Roman universal empire; may this end be attained by the united co-operation of our princes, of our peoples, of our armies and of our citizens, in order that in the times to come it may be said of us as it used to be said of yore: Civis Romanus sum.”

On the 28th October, 1900, speaking at an officers’ mess, William II. affirmed: “My highest aim is to remove whatever separates our great German people.” Now, in September, 1900, at Stettin, the Kaiser had just declared: “I have no fear of the future. I am convinced that my plan will prove successful.” In the Kaiser’s mind the whole matter was summed up in the chief formula of Pangerman domination: From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf. To accomplish this object the Kaiser had decided to forge closer and still closer links between Austria-Hungary and Germany. In order to consolidate his supremacy over the Balkan peoples he reckoned on the co-operation of such of their Kings as were Germanic by origin (Bulgaria and Roumania), or on others who were strongly influenced by Germany—in reality by himself.

Thus he arranged the marriage of his own sister, Sophia, in 1889, with the heir of the Throne of Greece, King Constantine of to-day. Finally, almost immediately after his accession he had begun to think of showering his Imperial favours on the Turks and the Musulmans; this was with the object of seizing the Ottoman Empire, later on, and of making use of the Mahometans of the whole world as a mighty lever against all other powers.

On November 8th, 1898, at Damascus, William II. pronounced the famous words, the full significance of which is only made clear now that we have seen the German action develop in Turkey and Persia, and that we have learnt about William’s endeavours to cause an agitation among the Musulmans of Egypt, India and China:

“May His Majesty the Sultan, as well as the three hundred millions of Musulmans who venerate him as their Khalifa, be assured that the German Emperor is their friend for ever.”

The adulation of the sanguinary Sultan Abdul-Hamid proved of practical use to William II. He obtained on the 27th November, 1899, the first concession of the Bagdad railway; now that railway, although still unfinished, has just been utilized by the German offensive both against Russia and England.

All over his Empire William II. had encouraged the formation of military and naval leagues—which number millions of members who, for the last twenty years have carried on an incessant propaganda in favour of such German armaments by land and sea—as were wanted by the Kaiser.

Again, William II. encouraged the creation of the Alldeutscher Verband. This association or Pangerman Union, counts among its members a large number of important and influential persons, and at the door of this society must be laid the most overwhelming responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Founded in 1894, it has organized thousands of lectures besides scattering broadcast millions of pamphlets to spread Pangerman notions and to get the masses of the people to favour schemes of aggrandizement. It was due to the Alldeutscher Verband that all the Germans living outside the Empire were formed into a systematic organization for the present war; this being specially the case in Austria and in the United States.

Is it possible to believe that such an autocrat as William II. had not desired this end? How could three powerful associations, with ever-growing means of action, have carried on a most costly, as well as a most violent propaganda, in a police-ridden country like Germany, unless they had been approved of by the authorities usually so meddlesome or so vigilant?

As to the hour of the war, who set the clock going, if it were not the Kaiser? As a matter of fact he put the hands of the dial forward (see Chapter II).

From November, 1913, onward, the Kaiser was busy preparing for early hostilities; he was aware that the enlargement of the Kiel Canal would be complete by July, 1914—therefore he arranged to be ready by that date, and as we know war was declared on August 1st, i.e., a few days after the completion of the Kiel Canal. The Arch-Duke Francis-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austria-Hungarian throne, tempted by the Kaiser, is dazzled by the mirage of great profits which were to accrue from a joint action of the Central Powers. In April, 1914, the Kaiser goes on a visit to the Archduke at Miramar, near Trieste. Again he meets him at Konopischt in June, 1914, and is then accompanied by von Tirpitz, that notorious Chief of Pirates, that submarine Corsair. Now comes the right moment for drafting the bold main lines of the combined action of the German and Austrian forces by land and sea. The murder of the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, on June 28th, 1914, made no change in the Kaiser’s plans, it merely precipitated events by furnishing an excellent pretext for intervention against Serbia. Thus the criminal action of the Kaiser stands revealed; for twenty-five years he had been elaborating the Pangerman plan.

According to Baron de Beyens, who before the war was Belgian Minister at Berlin, “it has been maintained that William II. was an unconscious tool in the hands of a caste and of a party who needed war in order to assert their own power. William has, indeed, listened to them, but he has lent them an ear because their designs chimed in with his own. In the judgment of history it is he who is doomed to bear the responsibility for the disasters by which Europe has been overwhelmed” (Baron Beyens, L’Allemagne avant la guerre, p. 41, G. Van Oest, Paris).

For twenty-five years, and by order of the Kaiser, a violent Pangerman propaganda had been carried on throughout the Empire; therefore, let there be no mistake, William II., in declaring war, was supported in his decision, not only by the influential circles of German opinion, but by the large majority of the German people. A very notorious German, Maximilian Harden, has explicitly acknowledged this fact in his review Zukunft of November, 1914:

“This war has not been forced on us by surprise; we have desired it, and it was our bounden duty thus to desire it. Germany wages war because of her immutable conviction that greater world expansion and freer outlets are due to her by right of her own works” (quoted by Le Temps, 20th November, 1914).

Having thus formed and perfected for twenty years the Pangerman plot of a European conflagration, William II. had the prodigious audacity to declare, in his Manifesto to the German people (August 1st, 1915), after drenching Europe with streams of blood for a whole year: “Before God and before History, I swear that my conscience is clear. I did not desire war.”

CHAPTER I.
THE PANGERMAN PLAN.

I. The Pangerman plan of 1911.

II. The stages by which it has been effected.

III. Why it has been ignored.

I.

The Pangerman plot in its broad outlines was laid as early as 1895, but since that date events have happened throughout the world, which encouraged Pangermans to enlarge the structure of their scheme.

In 1898 the Fashoda incident almost caused a breach between France and England. In 1905 Japan compelled Russia to sign peace after a long war which exhausted all the Tsar’s military resources and disturbed the balance of power in Europe for a long time to the advantage of Germany. In 1909 the Vienna Government, under cover of the veiled ultimatum which Berlin sent to the Tsar, carried out the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, countries which are almost entirely peopled by Serbians. This seizure of a huge Slav territory was a great triumph for Germanism. On November 3rd, 1910, at the Potsdam meeting, the Kaiser obtained from the Tsar’s Government the abandonment of all opposition to the completion of the Bagdad railway. England and France took up the same attitude. On July 1st, 1911, the Kaiser ventured on the Agadir episode, which was clearly an attempt to force a quarrel on France. It led to the Franco-German treaty of November 4th, 1911, which ceded to Germany 275,000 square kilometres of the French Congo, while at the same time the commerce of Morocco was heavily mortgaged in favour of Germany.

These various events deeply injured the interests of France, England and Russia; but these powers preferred to submit to the hardest sacrifices rather than undertake the dreadful responsibility of letting loose a fearful war on Europe. The Pangermans misread this attitude as a sign of weakness, and of a desire to keep the peace at all costs; and accordingly they were encouraged to entertain high hopes of huge success in a near future. That is why the original Pangerman plan of 1895, considerably altered, became the perfected plan of 1911.

THE PANGERMAN PLAN OF 1911.

This plan of 1911 (see map) provided in Europe and in Western Asia:

1º. The establishment, under German rule, of a vast Confederation of Central Europe, comprising:

This confederation was thus to group under German supremacy

of whom only 77 millions are Germans and 85 millions non-Germans.

2º. The absolute subordination of the Balkan countries (containing 499,275 square kilometres and 22 millions of non-Germans) to the Great Central European Confederation. The Balkan States to become mere satellites of Berlin.

3º. Germany’s political and military seizure of Turkey, which was afterwards to be enlarged by the annexation of Egypt and Persia. It was provided that Turkey should be dealt with in two successive stages. During the first, the handful of “Young Turks” who have ruled the Ottoman Empire since 1908, and who play the German game, were to remain in power merely as figure-heads. Turkey was to retain a nominal independence during this phase, though in reality she was to have been tied to Germany by a treaty of military alliance. Under pretence of effecting reforms, numerous German officials were to be placed at the head of all the Ottoman administrations, and that would have paved the way for the second stage. The latter had for its aim the putting of Turkey, with her 1,792,000 square kilometres and her 20 millions of non-German inhabitants, under the strict protectorate of Germany, to say nothing of the subject provinces, Egypt and Persia.

The Germanic Confederation of Central Europe was to form a huge Zollverein or Customs Union. Treaties of Commerce of a special character imposed on the Balkan States and on subjected Turkey would have provided for Great Germany an economic outlet and reserved for her exclusively those vast regions.

Finally, we can sum up the Pangerman plan of 1911 in four formulas:

Berlin—Calais; Berlin—Riga; Hamburg—Salonika; Hamburg—Persian Gulf.

The union of the three groupings—Central Europe, Balkan States and Turkey—would have placed under the predominating influence of Berlin 4,015,146 square kilometres and 204 millions of inhabitants, of whom 127 millions were to be ruled directly or indirectly by merely 77 millions of Germans.

This continental Pangerman plan of 1911 was to have been completed by colonial conquests of great magnitude, of which an account is given at the end of Chapter V.

William II. was well aware that such a project could only become an enduring reality if all other great powers disappeared from the face of the earth. The Kaiser had therefore positively resolved, when hatching his Pangerman plot, to accomplish the destruction of five great powers. It is necessary to grasp fully this fundamental truth, if we wish to understand the nature of the present war. It was foreseen that Austria-Hungary would disappear by her absorption under cover of entrance into the German Zollverein. France and Russia were to have been totally ruined by means of a furious preventive war which would entirely destroy their military forces. England was to be put out of action by a subsequent operation, which would have been an easy matter when once France and Russia had been dismembered and reduced to utter impotence. As to Italy—destined to become a vassal state—she was not considered as being capable of hindering in the least the Pangerman ambitions. One of the Kaiser’s agents for propagating this scheme wrote in 1900: “Italy cannot be looked upon as a rival for she is too incompetent in warfare” (Deutschland bei Beginn des 20 Jahrhunderts, p. 53. Military publishers, R. Felix, Berlin, 1900).

It must be added that the Pangerman plot of 1911 did not include war with England. When he declared hostilities in August, 1914, William II. was convinced that England would take no share in them, at least not immediately. The Kaiser had laid every conceivable kind of trap to add fuel to the flames of all internal English disturbances and to deceive the London Cabinet. At one moment he almost succeeded in his endeavours. England’s decision to participate without delay in the struggle only hung by a thread, but that thread was broken. If England had tarried, if she had tarried only for a few days, German landings in Normandy, Brittany, and as far as Bordeaux would have been effected. France being thus rendered quickly powerless on all sides, the English intervention would have proved futile at a later stage, and the Pangerman plan of 1911 would thus have been fully achieved. But in going to war just at the right moment and in controlling the sea, Great Britain has, while saving herself, furnished to civilized humanity the means of avoiding the Prussian yoke. The initial German plan has truly been upset by English intervention following on the respite gained by the splendid resistance of Belgium in arms.

But the Germans are clever, they are stubborn and crafty. Adapting themselves to new conditions thrust on them, they are still endeavouring to make an enormous profit out of the war. We must, therefore, try to understand what operations they have devised for carrying out, even now, the Pangerman plot almost in its entirety.

II.

As it is necessary to open the eyes of neutrals, many of whom have been misled by the German propaganda, we must try to expose very clearly the inner workings of the Pangerman plot as it is revealed to us in the searchlight of facts.

From 1892 down to the outbreak of the War, that is to say, for twenty-two years, the Pangerman movement has developed with ever growing intensity; a multitude of publications, giving full details of the plan, were scattered among the German people, in order to excite in them the greed of conquest and so prepare them for the struggle through the allurement of plunder. Of these publications two are of special importance: first, the pamphlet published under the auspices of the Alldeutscher Verband: namely, Grossdeutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950 (Thormann und Goetsch, Berlin, 1895), which gives the Pangerman plan of 1895: second, the book of Otto Richard Tannenberg: Grossdeutschland, die Arbeit des 20ᵗᵉⁿ Jahrhunderts (Bruno Volger, Leipzig-Gohlis, 1911), which gives all suitable details of the plan of 1911.

Unfortunately, although this Pangerman literature is very considerable, full of documentary evidence and spread broadcast among the masses by most powerful associations, whose patrons are the highest authorities in the land, few people outside of Germany would believe in its extreme importance. But now the facts speak for themselves. The reality, the extent, and the successive stages of the Pangerman plan of 1911 are shown by:

1º. The course which Germany has taken since August 1st, 1914, in her political and military operations which have for their object not, as many have supposed, the obtaining of securities, but the annexation of territories in the manner set forth in Tannenberg’s book, and more or less in accordance with the plan of 1911.

2º. The memorial delivered on May 20th, 1915, to the German Chancellor by the League of Agriculturists, the League of German Peasants, the Provisional Association of Christian German Peasants, now called the Westphalian Peasants’ Association, the Central German Manufacturers’ Union, the League of Manufacturers, and the Middle-Class Union of the Empire (see Le Temps, 12th August, 1915). The importance of this document cannot be overrated, for it is issued by the most powerful associations of the Empire, including all the influential elements of the German nation, specially the agrarians and the iniquitous Prussian squires. Now the purport of that memorial, as will be shown, is to demand all such annexations mentioned in the Pangerman plan of 1911, as the development of military operations has so far rendered feasible. Any one who knows Germany can hardly doubt that this memorial was not handed in to Bethmann-Hollweg without a previous understanding with him. Doubtless it was intended that this document should seem to exercise an overmastering pressure of public opinion on William II.’s government. But if the ideas expressed in this memorial reflect, as they certainly do, the wishes of influential German circles, it is also unquestionable that they correspond very closely to the scheme of aggrandizement, which William II. has been nursing for over twenty years.

3º. The declarations made at the sitting of the Reichstag of the 11th December, 1915, prove the exactitude of this statement. The Imperial Chancellor said:

“If our enemies will not submit now, they will be obliged to do so later on.... When our enemies shall offer us such peace proposals as are compatible with the dignity and security of Germany we shall be ready to discuss them.... But our enemies must understand that the more unrelentingly they wage war, the higher will be the guarantees exacted.”

Bethmann-Hollweg could hardly have spoken more explicitly, but his diplomatic game was naturally to unmask Germany’s enormous pretensions only bit by bit, in order that the eyes of neutrals should not be opened to the Pangerman monster in all its horror until the last moment. But hardly had the Chancellor finished his speech than the Deputy Spahn explained the real drift of it with great precision:

“We await,” said Herr Spahn, “the hour which will allow of peace negotiations which will safeguard in a permanent way and by all means, including the needful territorial annexations, all military economic and political interests of Germany in its total extent.”

The thundering applause which greeted these words proves that they echoed the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of the German deputies, who at that moment still believed that it was possible for Germany to achieve enormous annexations.

III.

The preparation of the Pangerman plan has required for over twenty years a huge propaganda among the German masses as well as a world-wide organization. How is it that this plan has been ignored in its nature and in its extent by the diplomats of France, England and Russia? Such, however, has been the case, for otherwise the war could not have come upon these three powers as a surprise. We deal here with a matter which at first sight seems improbable and which, therefore, needs explanation.

The diplomatic agents of the Allies are certainly not inferior personally to those of William II., but the Kaiser’s foreign service, as a whole, includes novel instruments of observation and influence by which, for the last twenty years, the Government of Berlin has seconded its official diplomacy without allowing the connexion between it and them to transpire. None of the Allied countries have employed similar instruments, the result being that the Entente is considerably inferior in this department of foreign policy.

The Pangerman plan is founded on a very exact knowledge of all political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems, not only of Europe, but of the whole world; the Germans have acquired that knowledge by means of an intense labour of over twenty-five years. But this task has not been performed by the official German diplomats; it has been carried out either by the members of the Alldeutscher Verband, the Pangerman Union, or by the agents of the German secret service, which has been enormously extended. These agents might be called connecting links between the regular spies and the official diplomats; Baron von Schenk, who worked at Athens from 1915-1916, is a sample of that category of agents who have studied methodically all the root questions of the Pangerman plan, who have prepared means to delude the minds of neutrals, to paralyze the revolt of the Slavs in Austria-Hungary, to corrupt all such neutral individuals or neutral newspapers as were susceptible of corruption, etc. After these numerous agents had made their reports, and when once these had been examined and summarized, they were sent to the Wilhelmstrasse, to the great German General Staff, whose concerted operations are always so combined as to answer both to political and to military needs. At the same time the reports reached William II.’s private study, and his brain was thus able to store up all technical means necessary for the achievement of his plan of domination.

Was the diplomatic corps of the Allies so well served that it could grasp in its universal significance the immense work of preparation accomplished by the secret Pangerman agents? Indeed, they were not properly supplied with the right tools for such a task, and we shall see why it was so.

First of all it is necessary to dispel a false notion which “the man in the street” has of diplomacy. He fondly thinks that diplomats, while preparing clever and mysterious combinations, fashion History. Now the experience of centuries shows that as a general rule diplomats merely chronicle History but do not make it. My teacher, Albert Sorel, neatly expressed that truth by saying: “Diplomats are History’s attorneys.” In fact, the diplomacy of any country helps to prepare and to fashion history only when there happens to be at its head a great man of large and just ideas, who knows how to apply these ideas by all the means available in his time.

It is a strange fact and worthy of notice, that such a great man is rarely, if ever, a professional diplomat. For example, Richelieu, Napoleon, Palmerston, Disraeli, Cavour, Bismarck, who all prepared and fashioned History, were not trained diplomatists. Unfortunately, it does not seem that Fortune has endowed any of our Allied countries, either before or since the war, with a head capable of leading, on grand lines, the diplomatic affairs of the Entente. The latter therefore has been only served by those diplomats who are mere officials, and who as such await instructions from higher quarters, and these instructions are very often found wanting.

Besides, the diplomacy of the Allies, not being seconded, like that of Germany, by novel means of observation, can only obtain the information it needs by methods still so old-fashioned that they are almost identical with those used a century ago. They are totally inadequate to point out the sequence of ideas or the rapid development of events which in Central Europe and the Balkans have been, as will be seen, the immediate causes of the war; nor are the means employed by our diplomats at all sufficient if they wish to recognize what forms the whole chain of the Pangerman organization. Just because this organization is huge, just because it is so complex, its total importance cannot be properly gauged unless the connecting links between the varied elements are clearly perceived.

The typical professional diplomat lives in a world of his own. Either his information comes from the office or it is second-hand; it rarely is reached by direct observation of people or facts. The secretaries at the Embassies divide their time between office work, copying documents in copper plate hand, or social functions, pleasant enough but confined to a particular and narrow set. Few of the secretaries know the language of the country in which they reside, fewer still travel in the interior of the land in order to study it.

The events which have led to the European conflagration spring from two main causes: the stupendous scope of the German ambitions and the progress of the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan nationalities. Now both these factors have been revealed on many occasions, by purely local events which, to a keen observer, would have betrayed most significantly the end in view, but they have occurred for the most part in places far removed from capital cities, and to appreciate fully their importance would have needed direct observation on the spot.

This is quite contrary to the tradition followed by official diplomats. Those of the Entente had not, at their disposal, agents who could go and, for instance, hear the numerous lectures given by the Pangerman propaganda, and who could have procured and translated for them the illuminating pamphlets of the Alldeutscher Verband. Also they had no means of getting into personal touch with the party leaders, either Slav or Latin, of Austria-Hungary; often these leaders were men without a place in parliament, frequently without fortune or social rank; all they had was their national ideal, their strength of conviction, but they were real and novel forces, for they acted on the popular masses with whom they were in complete intellectual sympathy.

As the diplomatic corps of the Entente was not provided with that indispensable aid—an organization of secondary agents of observation—they have been reduced to accept information of a superficial and incomplete nature. Often it was merely provided by press cuttings and even those were frequently from papers written in a tongue which the diplomats could not read; at best these cuttings were without any connecting link and quite insufficient to warn them of the approach of a great peril. We must add that in diplomatic circles of all periods—unless they are led by some eminent man—there are certain formulas current, such as: “No fuss,” “it is necessary to wait and see,” “we must not believe that it has happened,” which have had a baneful influence. The result has been a sceptical attitude which in diplomatical circles passes for essential and in good taste. If we add to this frame of mind the absence of varied, direct and coherent information, we can understand how it was that before the war, when any one tried to persuade a professional diplomatist that William II.’s political aim was nothing short of the establishment of German supremacy over the whole world, he was soon set down as a visionary with a head stuffed full of groundless suspicions.

Finally, we must realize that the system by which a diplomat is sent from pillar to post, often to the antipodes, every four or five years, is not conducive to the acquirement of a general and exact knowledge, founded on documentary evidence, of events still in progress, in a wide zone, so complex and so difficult to study as Central Europe and the Balkans.

These various considerations help us to understand why, during the twenty-five years which preceded the war, no diplomat of the Allies has been able to grasp the total Pangerman plan in its nature and in its extent, though possibly a few of them may have indicated in their reports now and then some local Pangerman act which aroused suspicion. These considerations explain also, at least in part, the failure of the diplomatic corps of the Entente in the Balkans.

To sum up, allied official diplomats are not personally inferior to German official diplomats, but the latter have an enormous advantage over their colleagues of the Entente in knowing the general plan of the Berlin policy, in knowing, each in his own post, in what direction to proceed and what must be done or prevented in order to attain the final end. During the last twenty-five years the Kaiser’s foreign policy has been constructive and framed on a definite plan, while the diplomats of the Allies, reflecting the policy of their Governments without concrete plans, have been hampered, because they believed obstinately in Peace, in a vague and stagnant defensive. On the other hand, the allied diplomacy, regarded as an instrument of observation, confined to old-fashioned methods, is like an ordinary magnifying glass which shows nothing but the largest objects. On the contrary, the German foreign policy, thanks to the new, busy and secret organs, by which the German diplomacy has been seconded, may be compared to a workshop provided with powerful microscopes by which facts can be studied not only in their general aspect, but also in their most minute details, details which often are not without their importance.

Finally, the allied diplomacy, regarded as an instrument of action, still clinging to antiquated traditional methods, may be compared to an army which possesses only field guns, while the foreign diplomacy of Germany, in its totality, is comparable to an army equipped both with heavy and with field artillery.

CHAPTER II.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.

I. Why the Treaty of Bukarest suddenly raised a formidable obstacle to the Pangerman plan.

II. How it was that the internal state of Austria-Hungary drove Germany to let loose the dogs of war.

III. General view of the causes of the war.

Although the Pangerman plan is unquestionably the chief ultimate cause of the war, yet when William II. started it in August, 1914, he did so for nearer and for secondary reasons which we must examine carefully if we wish to have a clear view of events.

I.

Up to 1911, when Tannenberg published the programme of annexations, all previous great events had favoured William II.’s aims; but from 1912 onward events suddenly raised very serious and quite unexpected obstacles to the execution of the Pangerman plan.

In 1912, Italy conquered Libya at the cost of Turkey and against the will and pleasure of Berlin. Again in 1912 Greece, Montenegro, Serbia and Bulgaria became united against the Ottoman Empire; this also was contrary to the will and pleasure of Berlin. What was quite unexpected by the Kaiser’s Staff was the victory of the Balkan peoples over the Turks. As Germany had upheld the latter she felt profoundly humiliated. Then, in order to hinder the foundation of an efficient Balkanic Confederation—that is, one constituted on the principle of a fair balance—Vienna, and above all, Berlin, used as their tool the Tsar Ferdinand’s well-known ambition to establish Bulgarian supremacy in the peninsula. Accordingly instigated by the Germanic powers, the Bulgarians in June, 1913, attacked their allies, the Serbians and Greeks. But once more the Kaiser’s calculations were upset. Roumania, escaping for the first time from German leading strings, intervened against Bulgaria, which was struggling with her former allies, and thus Bulgaria was vanquished. Now, the new condition of things which arose from the Bukarest treaty of August 10th, 1913, suddenly formed a formidable obstacle to the Pangerman scheme in the East, and this is the reason:

The treaty of Bukarest created in the peninsula two groups of states sharply opposed to each other. The first was formed of the beaten and sullen participants in the Balkan wars, Bulgaria and Turkey. The second group was composed of those peoples who had benefited by the wars and were satisfied with the result, to wit, Roumania, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. These four last states, seeing that their vital interests had become closely bound together by the territorial annexations made at the cost of the common enemy, had joined all their forces to insure the maintenance of the Bukarest treaty which they considered inviolable.

On the other hand, this sharp division of the Balkan States into two groups whose interests were diametrically opposed, reacted deeply on general European politics. The force of events led the conquered states of 1912 and 1913, Turkey and Bulgaria, to support Germanism in the Balkans; on the contrary, Roumania, as well as Serbia, Montenegro and Greece, because of their recent acquisitions, were leaning more and more towards the Triple Entente, quite contrary to the views of Berlin and at the cost of Turkey, which even then was bound hand and foot to Germany.

THE ANTIGERMANIC BARRIER IN THE BALKANS AFTER THE TREATY OF BUKAREST (10th August, 1913).

Previous to the Balkan wars the Triple Entente enjoyed an influence in the peninsula, vastly inferior to that of Germany; after the treaty of Bukarest, however, the Entente found support in that group of states which was most powerfully organized and which presented (see map) a very solid barrier to the accomplishment of Pangerman designs in the East.

This new order of things lashed Berlin into a fury which though outwardly restrained was none the less intense because the only group (Turkey and Bulgaria) which was still under German influence, was bound to remain for a very long time to come practically impotent and powerless to make singly any attempt against the other group which favoured the Entente.

Indeed, Turkey, which in her defeats had lost almost the whole of her military stores, could hardly, at the beginning of 1914, put 250,000 men under arms. Her financial difficulties were such that, if left to her own resources, it would have taken her many years to replace her military power on a solid basis.

Bulgaria was in a similar financial predicament. Besides, if she had taken action it would have been at great risk to herself, in as much as those states which profited by the Bukarest Treaty (Roumania, Serbia and Greece), surrounding as they do (see the arrows of the map) Bulgaria on three sides, could then have delivered a concentric attack on Sofia.

Finally, great was the disproportion of men eligible for the army or capable of bearing arms between the two groups.

These figures, taken in conjunction with the geographical situation, show clearly that, left to its own resources, the Germanophile group could attempt no attack on the Entente group.

The new balance of military forces in the Balkans which was the outcome of the Bukarest treaty, therefore reduced almost to naught Germany’s power of intrigue in the Peninsula.

Had peace reigned for a few years, the new Balkan situation would have been consolidated and the obstacle to Pangerman ambition in the East would have been still more serious. It was for these varied reasons that Berlin decided to intervene directly. Without doubt Serbia was the pivot on which turned the new Balkanic equilibrium. It was therefore decided to destroy her without delay, kindling at the same time the European conflagration, and thus by one single blow to accomplish the plan of 1911.

The Bukarest treaty was signed on the tenth of August, 1913. On November 6th, 1913, King Albert of Belgium was at Potsdam, and the Kaiser said to him that in his opinion war with France was near and unavoidable (see Baron Beyen’s L’Allemagne avant la Guerre, p. 24).

From this survey it follows that, if the treaty of Bukarest, through its consequences, proved disastrous to the Pangerman aims, it was, on the contrary, extremely advantageous to the powers of the Triple Entente, for it brought to their side the majority of the Balkanic forces.

Unfortunately the diplomacy of the Entente had not even a notion how favourable the situation was to them. This ignorance was due to the old-fashioned methods of observation still used by diplomats which prevented them from believing in the Pangerman scheme, and which also hindered them from entertaining general and correct views of the varied problems which form such a tangle in that large territorial zone. Indeed, though one of the immediate causes of the war was Germany’s wish to upset the Bukarest treaty, because the consequences of that treaty ruined the Pangerman aims in the East, the Triple Entente powers were no sooner at war with Germany than they did all in their power during ten months to cancel in like manner the consequences of the Bukarest treaty; for that was in fact the result of the Entente’s ingenuous wish to satisfy Bulgaria at all costs. Theoretically, the attempt inspired by the noble thought of avoiding the horrors of war in the Balkans, was just, but in practice it was an impossibility owing to the fierce hatred the Bulgarians entertain towards their conquerors of 1913, and above all towards the Serbians.

What is certain is that the diplomacy of the Allies, during the first year of war, followed such a policy in the Balkans that, evidently without knowing it, they played entirely into the hands of Berlin.

II.

Not only were the consequences of the Bukarest treaty disastrous to Pangerman ambitions in the Balkan peninsula, they also, to the boundless fury of William II., considerably accelerated that internal political evolution of Austria-Hungary which of itself had already threatened to upset all his plans.

Unfortunately the notions held about Austria-Hungary in France, and above all, in England, have far too long been of a very vague nature. Public opinion in France and England was totally unable to grasp the situation, when war broke out. It was incapable of seeing the important part played during the war, and to be played after the war, by the populations living in the Hapsburg Monarchy. The vast majority of these peoples devoutly pray for the victory of the Triple Entente, for they only fight against it because they are forcibly constrained to do so. At heart they look to the victory of the Allies for deliverance from a hateful yoke which has weighed on them heavily for centuries. That is why it is of the utmost importance to educate public opinion in the allied countries as to the actual racial facts in Austria-Hungary. Then it will be clearly understood of what abominable treason Francis Joseph was guilty against his peoples; then it will be clearly understood also that as these peoples were more and more inclined, before the war, to lean to the side of France and England, quite as much as to that of Russia, William II. had a strong additional motive for precipitating hostilities.

THE NATIONALITIES IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

The nine different nationalities who live in the Hapsburg Monarchy can be divided into four races:

In a political sense the Germans and Magyars, forming a total of 22 millions, have agreed since 1867 to exercise and maintain for their own profit the supremacy over the Slavs and Latins, although these latter form the majority of the subjects of the Monarchy, since they constitute a group of 28 million inhabitants.

Now, it is needful to note and it is important to remember, that the figures which I quote, are incorrect, because they are those furnished by the Government statistics at Vienna and at Budapest by German and Magyar officials. These have their instructions to use various artful tricks for falsifying systematically the true statistics in favour of their own races, in order to contribute by that stratagem to the maintenance, as long as possible, of the supremacy held by the Germans and the Magyars. In truth, there are in Austria-Hungary far less than 22 million Germans and Magyars, and far more than 28 Slavs and Latins. What again is certain, is that for centuries the Slavs and Latins have been oppressed in Austria-Hungary in the most odious fashion by a feudal aristocracy, who engross enormous landed properties, and who exercise in the Hapsburg Monarchy as baneful a social influence as that of the Junkers in Prussia.

With the exception of the Polish aristocracy of Galicia and a small group of Ruthenes, who since 1867 joined hands with the Germans, all these Slavs and Latins have been endeavouring to the very utmost, especially for the last thirty years, to obtain, in accordance with modern justice, such political rights as are proportionate to their numbers. In that way they hope to win for themselves in the Monarchy the legal majority that is their due, by reason of their being human flesh and blood liable to be taxed and to be called on for service at the will of the Government.

These tendencies have long excited extreme alarm in William II. and his Pangermans. This is readily understood, for, if the political power, in the Hapsburg Monarchy, were vested, as justice demands, in the Slavs and Latins, who hate Prussianism, that in itself would have been the ruin of the Kaiser’s plan for the economic absorption of Austria-Hungary. Yet this very absorption is indispensable to William II. if he is to carry out his inadmissible plans of exclusive influence in the Balkans and in the East. His game has therefore been, especially since 1890, to say, in the main, to Francis Joseph and to the Magyars: “Above all, do not concede the claims of your Slav and Latin subjects. Keep up absolutely the Germano-Magyar supremacy. I will uphold you, with all my power, in your struggle with the Slav-Latin elements.” For a long time these tactics of the Kaiser were successful but they were on the point of breaking down a short time before the war.

In spite of the most ingenious and cynical obstacles raised by the Germans and Magyars the culture of the Slavs and Latins kept growing; their national organizations kept progressing; also they were much more prolific than their political rivals. All these conditions together gave Francis Joseph and his henchmen at Budapest increasing trouble in their efforts to resist the enlarged demands of their Latin and Slav subjects. Berlin had already become anxious on that score, when the mental effervescence stirred up among the Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary by the result of the Bukarest treaty suddenly changed for the worse the outlook of the Pangerman scheme.

As a matter of fact, almost the whole of the 28 million Slav and Latin subjects of the Hapsburgs had been roused to enthusiasm by the victories of the Slavs in the Balkans in 1912, and by the success of Roumania in 1913; for they saw, above all, in these events, the triumph of the principle of nationality, that is, their very own cause. Hence they became more than ever determined in their endeavours to obtain from Vienna and Budapest those political rights, proportionate to their number, which the Germano-Magyars persisted in refusing, although of late years that refusal had lost much of its energy.

If peace had been maintained, the effect of the Bukarest treaty on Austria-Hungary would have lent irresistible force to the claims of the Slav and Latin subjects of Francis Joseph. On the other hand, Roumania, exulting in her annexation of the Bulgarian Dobrudja, cast longing eyes on Transylvania, and hoped to secure it at the expense of Hungary. The moment appeared opportune when a thorough transformation of the Hapsburg Monarchy might be effected, and that transformation seemed relatively so near that Roumania already looked upon Transylvania as a ripe fruit which merely needed gathering.

If this new order of things resulting from the treaty of Bukarest had been allowed to develop fully, the influence of Germanism would have been infallibly ruined in the Hapsburg Monarchy, just as had happened in the Balkans. Under the growing pressure of her Slav and Latin elements the partition, or at any rate, the evolution towards federation of Austria-Hungary would have become a necessity. This federalism would not have affected the frontiers of the Hapsburg Dominions, but it would necessarily, and without doubt, have given political preponderance to the Slav and Latin elements, which were the most numerous and the most prolific. Now, those elements form an enormous majority, which was and is resolutely hostile to any alliance with Germany. Thus, progressively, the Hapsburg Monarchy in evolution would have become more and more independent of Berlin in regard to her foreign policy, and as it gradually shook itself free from its bondage to Berlin, it would, as a necessary consequence, have drawn closer and closer to Russia, France and England. Thus Germany would have been deprived of the artificial prop which she has found at Vienna and at Budapest ever since the days of Sadowa through the Germano-Magyar predominance. Finally, as a result of peaceful development, William II. would have been confronted by a state of things in Austria-Hungary which would have opposed a far more formidable barrier to his oriental ambitions than that which was created in 1913 in the Balkans, as a consequence of the treaty of Bukarest.

If we bear in mind the powerful and extraordinarily important series of after-effects which must have followed on the new situation produced by the treaty of Bukarest and its inevitable influence on the 28 million Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary, we can readily understand that had the European peace been maintained, the chances of executing the Pangerman plan would have been totally and simultaneously ruined in Turkey, in the Balkans, and in Austria-Hungary; that is to say in the three territorial zones which, as will be seen from Chapter III, constituted by far the most important part of the regions mapped out for Pangerman operations in the plan of 1911.

Thus we see how the internal evolution of Austria-Hungary had reached a point at which, as the result of the treaty of Bukarest, it was just about to escape for ever from the influence of Berlin; this would have broken the pivot on which all the Pangerman combinations revolved. It was that consideration which decided William II. to make war at once.

III.

The Allies will, in accordance with the general principles of justice, bring Germany to account for her unheard of crimes, and will exact a full reparation for the enormous moral and material injuries which she has done them. Therefore it is necessary to set forth the causes of the war by a general survey of the facts, to the end that in the eyes of the civilized world, it may be clearly demonstrated that Germany must pay, and legitimately so, the price of a responsibility which, in all justice, should rest on her and on her alone.

To understand the practical necessity of such a survey, if we are to influence the opinion of neutrals, it is needful to bear in mind that all discussions which, so far, have been held on the causes of war, have been merely based on diplomatic documents published by the various belligerents, and that these documents merely refer to facts which preceded the outbreak of war only by a few weeks. But in a discussion which turns on a multitude of texts, belonging to different dates, all more or less near each other, and therefore liable to be confused, nothing is easier than for subtle, interested and dishonest reasoners like the Germans, to interpret the same facts in different ways, and so to arrive at conclusions diametrically opposed to the truth. In fact, this is exactly what has happened.

Thanks to its intense intellectual mobilization, which has been foreseen and carried out as powerfully as its military mobilization, Germany has succeeded, by fallacious interpretations of diplomatic documents, in profoundly misleading neutrals, even honest neutrals, as to the real responsibility for the outbreak of war. Nothing could give a better idea of the effect thus produced by Germany than the following remarks of the Swiss Colonel Gortsch published in the Intelligenzblatt of Berne:

“The events which happened at the end of July have convinced every reasonable man that Germany has been provoked to war, and that the Emperor William II. has waited long before he took up this challenge. History will lay the main guilt of the war and its intellectual responsibility on England; Russia and France will be considered as her accomplices.... It is the British policy, openly and selfishly free from any scruples, which has caused the World-War” (quoted by the Echo de Paris, 3rd January, 1916).

This is exactly the proposition which Bethmann-Hollweg wishes neutrals to believe. It is an absurd proposition to be entertained by any one who knew England intimately in the years before the war. During that period the leaders of the British Government were led by the one guiding thought—pleasant enough in itself, but entirely inaccurate—that war would not occur, since Great Britain did not wish war. The whole foreign policy of Great Britain has been inspired by this conception. It explains the attitude of extreme conciliation taken by the London Cabinet towards Germany at the time of the annexation of Bosnia and of Herzegovina (1909), during the Balkan wars (1912-1913), and also when it came to the question of the Bagdad railway, which most obviously threatened the road to India. The Liberal Cabinet of London reflected the dominant British opinion, which believed implicitly in Lord Haldane’s assurances. He was considered, though quite wrongly so, to have a most perfect knowledge of Germany, and in a speech at Tranent he affirmed to his countrymen: “Germany has not the slightest intention of invading us” (quoted by the Morning Post, 16th December, 1915). Up to the declaration of war, Sir Edward Grey, always inclined to believe in the acumen of his friend Lord Haldane, had resorted to every conceivable combination which might have allowed peace to be maintained if William II. had really wished to maintain it. Finally, does not the total unpreparedness of England for a continental war, which has been evident since the outbreak of hostilities, furnish the best proof of her sincerely pacific intentions before the war?

Other neutrals, and even some Frenchmen, still think that the struggle is a result of the so-called Delcassé policy. They say: “The Emperor William frequently tried to show himself friendly to France. If his advances had been accepted, war would have been avoided.” It is undeniable that at certain moments William II. has tried to draw France into his own orbit, but it was precisely in order the better to insure the accomplishment of the Pangerman plan, which has been his main pre-occupation ever since his accession. The present military events show clearly that if France had been beguiled by the smile of the Berlin tempter, any further efficient coalition of the great powers against Germany would have been a sheer impossibility. As to France, if she had believed in William II. she would not have suffered from war, for war would have been useless for German ends. Indeed, without a struggle, France would have practically been reduced to such a state of absolute slavery as has never yet been achieved in history except as the result of a totally ruinous war. Facts which have come to light enable us to convince ourselves by the most indisputable evidence, that such would have been the outcome of a “reconciliation” between France and Germany. We now know to what extent the Germans had already gained a footing in the greater part of the organic structure of French finance and industry. If the Paris Government had come to terms with Berlin nothing could have stopped the total pacific permeation of France by Germany. Little by little France would have ceased to be her own mistress; at the end of a few years she would have been exactly in the same position as Austria-Hungary, unable to free herself unaided from the Prussian hug.

Finally, can we believe for a moment that, had France carried out such a policy of “conciliation” with Berlin, it would have induced William II. to relinquish his dreams of domination? On the contrary, his easy capture of France in full enjoyment of peace, would merely have whetted the hereditary appetites of the Hohenzollerns. Had France once been disposed of by reason of her pacific permeation by Germany, the bulwark which she now forms against the Prussian domination would have been broken. The execution of the rest of the Pangerman plan, at the expense of Russia and England, could then have been effected without encountering any insuperable obstacle.

It is therefore not the policy called after M. Delcassé which has caused the war. M. Delcassé will have quite enough to answer for in regard to the application of his policy before and during war, without being reproached for a general principle which evidently was theoretically sound.

In upholding the alliance with Russia, in bringing about the slackening of tension with Italy, in achieving the Entente Cordiale, M. Delcassé has followed a policy, the principles of which are just. Actual events prove it convincingly.

Having laid bare the fallacy of the German argument, let us now, for the benefit of honest neutrals, attempt to give a general view of the true causes of the war, and to indicate their sequence. Let us distinguish between the deep-seated and the immediate causes of the struggle.

The war can be traced to a single deep and remote cause, namely, the will of William II. to achieve the Pangerman plan; all secondary causes, that is to say, the economic ones, spring from it. One aim of the Pangerman plan was actually to put an end to the enormous difficulties which Germany had created for herself by the hypertrophy of her industries, and by thus upsetting the proper balance which had formerly existed between her agricultural and her industrial productions.

The truth of this deep-seated and unique cause of the war is demonstrated by:

1º. The intellectual preparation, in all domains, of the Pangerman plan for twenty-five years.

2º. Such explicit and ancient avowals as the following. In 1898 Rear-Admiral von Goetzen, an intimate friend of the Kaiser, being at Manilla, said to the American, Admiral Dewey, who had just destroyed the Spanish fleet before Manilla: “You will not believe me, but in about fifteen years my country will begin war. At the end of two months we shall hold Paris; but that will only form one step towards our real goal—the overthrow of England. Every event will happen exactly at its proper time, for we shall be ready and our enemies will not” (quoted by the Echo de Paris, 24th September, 1915, from the Naval and Military Record).

3º. The material facts of world-wide preparation, obviously for war, made several months previous to its outbreak, but not till the Kaiser had decided to start it, that is, towards November, 1913. (Proofs: declaration of William II. on 6th November, 1913, to King Albert of Belgium; interview of the Kaiser with the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, April, 1914, at Miramar, and in June, 1914, at Konopischt, where Admiral Tirpitz accompanied the Kaiser.)

These material facts are endless, but it will suffice to recall the following as truly significant, because they have required a long and complicated effort: first, the organization for the victualling of the piratical German cruisers on all the seas of the globe, in view of a long war of piracy; and second, the preparation of the revolt against England in South Africa.

The immediate causes which decided William II. to precipitate the war are:

1º. The defeat of Turkey in 1912 by Italy and the Balkan peoples—a defeat which, by threatening Berlin influence in Constantinople, endangered the hold which Germany already had on the Ottoman Empire.

2º. The consequences of the Bukarest treaty, which in 1913 had erected automatically a formidable barrier against the Pangerman pretensions in the Balkans.

3º. The internal evolution of Austria-Hungary, which, because of the steady progress made by the Latin and Slav subjects of Francis Joseph, threatened shortly to free the Hapsburg Monarchy from the tutelage of Berlin.

THE THREE BARRIERS OF ANTIGERMANIC PEOPLES IN THE BALKANS AND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

The facts of the last two groups would have completed in Central Europe and in the Balkans the three anti-German barriers indicated on the map (see p. 43) by deep black lines. Now, these barriers would have hindered once and for ever the achievement of the Pangerman plan.

To parry these blows only one resource remained to William II., and that was war—“the national industry of Prussia,” as Mirabeau used to say, and his very pithy and apt remark has been too long forgotten.

CHAPTER III.
HOW FAR THE PANGERMAN PLAN WAS CARRIED OUT AT THE BEGINNING OF 1916.

I. German pretensions in the West.

II. German pretensions in the East.

III. German pretensions in the South and South-East.

IV. General view of the execution of the Pangerman plan from 1911 to the beginning of 1916.

In this chapter we shall inquire what relation existed between the actual gains and the pretensions of the Pangermans at the beginning of 1916, and those which were foreseen in the 1911 plan. In order to be quite explicit we shall analyse successively those gains and pretensions in the west, east, south, and south-west. This analysis will enable us finally to present a general view of the execution of the Pangerman plan at the period under consideration.

I.

The map (p. 46) sums up Prussianized Germany’s pretensions which she still expected to carry out west of the Rhine at the beginning of 1916.

The best way to prove this intention is by means of extracts from the memorial sent by the most powerful German associations on May 20th, 1915, to the Imperial Chancellor (quoted by Le Temps, 12th August, 1915). I have mentioned (see page 18) why this document must be looked upon as of extremely exceptional importance.

THE GERMAN CLAIMS IN THE WEST (Beginning of 1916).

As to what concerns Belgium the memorial says:

“Because it is needful to insure our credit on sea and our military and economic situation for the future in face of England, because the Belgian territory, which is of the greatest economic importance, is closely linked to our principal industrial territory, Belgium must be subjected to the legislation of the Empire in monetary, financial and postal matters. Her railways and her water courses must be closely connected with our communications. By constituting a Walloon territory and a Flemish territory with a preponderance of the Flemish, and by putting into German hands the properties and the economic undertakings which are of vital importance for dominating the country, we shall organize the government and the administration in such a manner that the inhabitants will not be able to acquire any influence over the political destiny of the German Empire.”

In a word, it is slavery that is promised to the Belgians. In order to prove clearly that this means exactly the achievement of the plan Berlin had elaborated for twenty-five years, it is important to notice that the fate of the annexed populations, meted out in the above memorial, is exactly the same fate mentioned in the pamphlet published under the auspices of the Alldeutscher Verband, the Pangerman Union, wherein the Pangerman plan of 1895 is set forth (see the text already quoted, p. 4).

The only difference to be noticed in the evolution of the Pangerman ideas between 1895 and 1916 is that after their experience with the Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary, the Germans deem it possible and advantageous, by an application of Prussian methods of terrorism, to compel non-Germans to fight for the benefit of Pangermany; true, these people shudder with horror at the notion, but stiffened by a strong infusion of Germans, they are forced to march to the shambles in order to secure slavery and bread for their families under the German yoke.

“As to France,” continues the memorial of the 20th May, 1915, to the Imperial Chancellor, “always in consideration of our position towards England, it is of vital interest for us, in respect of our future on the seas, that we should own the coast which borders on Belgium more or less up to the Somme, which would give us an outlet on the Atlantic Ocean. The Hinterland, which it is necessary to annex at the same time, must be of such an extent that economically and strategically the ports, where the canals terminate, can be utilized to the utmost. Any other territorial conquest in France, beyond the necessary annexation of the mining basins of Briey, should only be made in virtue of considerations of military strategy. In this connection, after the experience of this war, it is only natural that we should not expose our frontiers to fresh enemy invasions by leaving to the adversary fortresses which threaten us, especially Verdun and Belfort and the Western buttresses of the Vosges, which are situated between those two fortresses. By the conquest of the line of the Meuse and of the French coast, with the mouths of the canals, we should acquire, besides the iron districts of Briey already mentioned, the coal districts of the departments of the Nord and of the Pas de Calais. This expansion of territory, quite an obvious matter after the experience obtained in Alsace-Lorraine, presupposes that the populations of the annexed districts shall not be able to obtain a political influence on the destiny of the German Empire, and that all means of economic power which exist on these territories, including landed property, both large and middling, will pass into German hands; France will receive and compensate the landowners.”

In order to justify these formidable annexations the memorial of the 20th May, in harmony with the frank cynicism of the Pangerman doctrine, adduces no argument but the convenience of Prussia and the profitableness of the booty to be got.

“If the fortress of Longwy, with the numerous blast furnaces of the region, were returned to the French, and if a new war broke out, with a few long range guns the German furnaces of Luxemburg (list of which is given) would be paralyzed in a few hours.... Thus about 20% of the production of crude iron and of German steel would be lost....

“Let us say, bye the bye, that the high production of steel derived from the iron-ore gives to German agriculture the only chance of obtaining the phosphoric acid needed when the importation of phosphates is blockaded.

“The security of the German Empire, in a future war, requires therefore imperatively the ownership of all mines of iron-ore including the fortresses of Longwy and of Verdun, which are necessary to defend the region.”