THE
NEW MAP OF EUROPE

(1911-1914)

THE STORY OF THE RECENT EUROPEAN
DIPLOMATIC CRISES AND WARS AND OF
EUROPE'S PRESENT CATASTROPHE

BY

HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, PH.D.

AUTHOR OF "THE FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE",
"PARIS REBORN," ETC.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916

COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
THE CENTURY CO.

Published, November, 1914
Second Edition, March, 1915
Third Edition, August, 1915
Fourth Edition, December, 1915

To
MY CHILDREN
CHRISTINE ESTE of Adana,
LLOYD IRVING of Constantinople,
and
EMILY ELIZABETH of Paris.
Born in the midst of the wars and changes that this book describes,
may they lead lives of peace!

There are general causes, moral or physical, which act in each State, elevate it, maintain it, or cast it down; every accident is submitted to these causes, and if the fortune of a battle, that is to say a particular cause, has ruined a State, there was a general cause which brought it about that that State had to perish by a single battle.

MONTESQUIEU.

CONTENTS

I. [Germany in Alsace and Lorraine]
II. [The "Weltpolitik" of Germany]
III. [The "Bagdadbahn"]
IV. [Algeciras and Agadir]
V. [The Passing of Persia]
VI. [The Partitioners and their Poles]
VII. [Italia Irredenta]
VIII. [The Danube and the Dardanelles]
XIX. [Austria-Hungary and her South Slavs]
X. [Racial Rivalries in Macedonia]
XI. [The Young Turk Régime in the Ottoman Empire]
XII. [Crete and European Diplomacy]
XIII. [The War between Italy and Turkey]
XIV. [The War between the Balkan States and Turkey]
XV. [The Rupture between the Allies]
XVI. [The War between the Balkan Allies]
XVII. [The Treaty of Bukarest]
XVIII. [The Albanian Fiasco]
XIX. [The Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Servia]
XX. [Germany Forces War upon Russia and France]
XXI. [Great Britain Enters the War]
[Index]

MAPS

I. [The Balkan Peninsula according to the Treaties of San Stefano, Berlin, Lausanne, and Bukarest]

II. [Partitions of Poland]

III. [Europe in 1911]

IV. [Europe in Africa in 1914]

V. [Belgium and the Franco-German Frontier]

VI. [Europe in 1914]

FOREWORD

On a July day in 1908, two American students, who had chosen to spend the first days of their honeymoon in digging the musty pamphleteers of the Ligue out of the Bodleian Library, were walking along the High Street in Oxford, when their attention was arrested by the cry of a newsboy. An ha'penny invested in a London newspaper gave them the news that Niazi bey had taken to the Macedonian highlands, and that a revolution was threatening to overthrow the absolutist régime of Abdul Hamid. The sixteenth century was forgotten in the absorbing and compelling interest of the twentieth.

Two weeks later the students were entering the harbour of Smyrna on a French steamer which was bringing back to constitutional Turkey the Young Turk exiles, including Prince Sabaheddine effendi of the Royal Ottoman House. From that day to this, the path of the two Americans, whose knowledge of history heretofore had been gained only in libraries, has led them through massacres in Asia Minor and Syria, and through mobilizations and wars in Constantinople, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, and Albania, back westward to Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France, following the trail of blood and fire from its origin in the Eastern question to the great European conflagration.

On the forty-fourth anniversary of Sedan, when German aëroplanes were flying over Paris, and the distant thunder of cannon near Meaux could be heard, this book was begun in the Bibliothèque Nationale by one of the students, while the other yielded to the more pressing call of Red Cross work. It is hoped that there is nothing that will offend in what is written here. At this time of tension, of racial rivalry, of mutual recrimination, the writer does not expect that his judgments will pass without protest and criticism. But he claims for them the lack of bias which, under the circumstances, only an American—of this generation at least—dare impute to himself.

The changes that are bringing about a new map of Europe have come within the intimate personal experience of the writer.

If foot-notes are rare, it is because sources are so numerous and so accessible. Much is what the writer saw himself, or heard from actors in the great tragedy, when events were fresh in their memory. The books of the colours, published by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the countries interested, have been consulted for the negotiations of diplomats. From day to day through these years, material has been gathered from newspapers, especially the Paris Temps, the London Times, the Vienna Freie Press, the Constantinople Orient, and other journals of the Ottoman capital. The writer has used his own correspondence to the New York Herald, the New York Independent, and the Philadelphia Telegraph. For accuracy of dates, indebtedness is acknowledged to the admirable British Annual Register.

I am indebted to my friends, Alexander Souter, Litt.D., Professor of Humanity in Aberdeen University, and Mrs. Souter, for reading the proofs of this book and seeing it through the press in England. In the United States, the same kind office has been performed by my brother, Henry Johns Gibbons, Esq., of Philadelphia.

As this book goes to press for the third American edition, I wish to express my thanks to readers in Great Britain, America, France, Germany, and Australia for suggestions and corrections, and in particular to Baron Shaw of Dunfermline, to whom I owe the idea of the map that has been added to face the title-page.

PARIS, July, 1915.

THE
NEW MAP OF EUROPE

The New Map of Europe

CHAPTER I
GERMANY IN ALSACE AND LORRAINE

The war of 1870 added to the German Confederation Alsace and a large portion of Lorraine, both of which the Germans had always considered theirs historically and by the blood of the inhabitants. In annexing Alsace and Lorraine, the thought of Bismarck and von Moltke was not only to bring back into the German Confederation territories which had formerly been a part of it, but also to secure the newly formed Germany against the possibility of French invasion in the future. For this it was necessary to have undisputed possession of the valley of the Rhine and the crests of the Vosges.

From the academic and military point of view, the German thesis was not indefensible. But those who imposed upon a conquered people the Treaty of Frankfort forgot to take into account the sentiments of the population of the annexed territory. Germany annexed land. That was possible by the right of the strongest. She tried for over forty years to annex the population, but never succeeded. The makers of modern Germany were not alarmed at the persistent refusal of the Alsatians to become loyal German subjects. They knew that this would take time. They looked forward to the dying out of the party of protest when the next generation grew up,—a generation educated in German schools and formed in the German mould by the discipline of military service.

That there was still an Alsace-Lorraine "question" after forty years is a sad commentary either on the justice of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany or on the ability of Germany to assimilate that territory which she felt was historically, geographically, and racially a part of the Teutonic Empire. In 1887, when "protesting deputies" were returned to the Reichstag in overwhelming numbers, despite the governmental weapons of intimidation, disenfranchisement, and North German immigration, Bismarck was face to face with the one great failure of his career. He consoled himself with the firm belief that all would be changed when the second generation, which knew nothing of France and to which the war was only a memory, peopled the unhappy provinces.

But that second generation came. Those who participated in the war of 1870, or who suffered by it, were few and far between. The hotheads and extreme francophiles left the country long ago, and their place was taken by immigrants who were supposed to be loyal sons of the Vaterland. Those of the younger indigenous brood, whose parents had brought them up as irreconcilables, ran away to serve in the French foreign legion, or went into exile, and became naturalized Frenchmen before their time of military service arrived. And yet the unrest continued. Strasbourg, Metz, Mulhouse, and Colmar were centres of political agitation, which an autocratic government and Berlin police methods were powerless to suppress.

The year 1910 marked the beginning of a new period of violent protest against Prussian rule. Not since 1888 was there such a continuous agitation and such a continuous persecution. The days when the Prussian police forbade the use of the French language on tombstones were revived, and the number of petty police persecutions recorded in the local press was equalled only by the number of public demonstrations on the part of the people, whose hatred of everything Prussian once more came to a fever-heat.

Let me cite a few incidents which I have taken haphazard from the journals of Strasbourg and Metz during the first seven months of 1910. The Turnverein of Robertsau held a gymnastic exhibition in which two French societies, those of Belfort and Giromagny, were invited to participate. The police refused to allow the French societies to march to the hall in procession, as was their custom, or to display their flags. Their two presidents were threatened with arrest. A similar incident was reported from Colmar. At Noisseville and Wissembourg the fortieth annual commemoration services held by the French veterans were considered treasonable, and they were informed that they would never again be allowed to hold services in the cemetery. At Mulhouse the French veterans were insulted by the police and not allowed to display their flags even in the room where they held their banquet. At the college of Thann a young boy of twelve, who curiously enough was the son of a notorious German immigrant, whistled the Marseillaise and was locked up in a cell for this offence. The conferring of the cross of the Legion of Honour on Abbé Faller, at Mars-la-Tour, created such an outburst of feeling that the German ambassador at Paris was instructed to request the French Government to refrain from decorating Alsatians. A volunteer of Mulhouse was reprimanded and refused advancement in the army because he used his mother-tongue in a private conversation. On July 1st, twenty-one border communes of Lorraine were added to those in which German had been made the official language. On July 25th, for the first time in the history of the University of Strasbourg, a professor was hissed out of his lecture room. He had said that the Prussians could speak better French than the Alsatians. The most serious demonstration which has occurred in Metz since the annexation, took place on Sunday evening, January 8, 1910, when the police broke up forcibly a concert given by a local society. The newspapers of Metz claimed that this was a private gathering, to which individual invitations had been sent, and was neither public nor political. The police invaded the hall, and requested the audience to disband. When the presiding officer refused, he and the leader of the orchestra were arrested. The audience, after a lively tussle, was expelled from the hall. Immediately a demonstration was planned to be held around the statue of General Ney. A large crowd paraded the city, singing the Sambre-et-Meuse and the Marseillaise. When the police found themselves powerless to stop the procession without bloodshed, they were compelled to call out the troops to clear the streets with fixed bayonets.

These incidents demonstrated the fact that French ideals, French culture, and the French language had been kept alive, and were still the inspiration of the unceasing—and successful—protest of nearly two million people against the Prussian domination. The effervescence was undoubtedly as strong in Alsace-Lorraine "forty years after" as it had been on the morrow of the annexation. But its francophile character was not necessarily the expression of desire for reunion with France. The inhabitants of the "lost provinces" had always been, racially and linguistically, as much German as French. Now that the unexpected has happened, and reunion with France seems probable, many Alsatians are claiming that this has been the unfailing goal of their agitation. But it is not true. It would be a lamentable distortion of fact if any such record were to get into a serious history of the period in which we live.

The political ideal of the Alsatians has been self-government. Their agitation has not been for separation from the German Confederation, but for a place in the German Confederation. A great number of the immigrants who were sent to "germanize" Alsace and Lorraine came to side with the indigenous element in their political demands. If the question of France and things French entered into the struggle, and became the heart of it, two reasons for this can be pointed out: France stood for the realization of the ideals of democracy to the descendants of the Strasbourg heroes of 1793; and the endeavour to stamp out the traces of the former nationality of the inhabitants of the provinces was carried on in a manner so typically and so foolishly Prussian that it kept alive the fire instead of extinguishing it. Persecution never fails to defeat its own ends. For human nature is keen to cherish that which is difficult or dangerous to enjoy.

To understand the Alsace-Lorraine question, from the internal German point of view, it is necessary to explain the political status of these provinces after the conquest, and their relationship to the Empire, in order to show that their continued unrest and unhappiness were not due to a ceaseless and stubborn protest against the Treaty of Frankfort.

When the German Empire was constituted, in 1872, it comprehended twenty-five distinct sovereign kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and free cities, and in a subordinate position, the territory ceded by France, which was made a Reichsland, owned in common by the twenty-five confederated sovereignties. The King of Prussia was made Emperor of the Confederation, and given extensive executive powers. Two assemblies were created to legislate for matters affecting the country as a whole. The Bundesrath is an advisory executive body as well as an upper legislative assembly. It is composed of delegates of the sovereigns of the confederated states. The lower imperial house, or Reichstag, is a popular assembly, whose members are returned by general elections throughout the Empire. In their internal affairs the confederated states are autonomous, and have their own local Parliaments. This scheme, fraught with dangers and seemingly unsurmountable difficulties, has survived; and, thanks to the predominance of Prussia and the genius of two great emperors, the seemingly heterogeneous mass has been moulded into a strong and powerful Empire.

In such an Empire, however, there never has been any place for Alsace-Lorraine. The conquered territory was not a national entity. It had no sovereign, and could not enter into the confederacy on an equal footing with the other twenty-five states. The Germans did not dare, at the time, to give the new member a sovereign, nor could they conjointly undertake its assimilation. Prussia, not willing to risk the strengthening of a south German state by the addition of a million and a half to its population, took upon herself what was the logical task of Baden or Wurtemberg or Bavaria.

So Alsace-Lorraine was an anomaly under the scheme of the organization of the German Empire. During forty years the Reichsland was without representation in the Bundesrath, and had thus had no real voice in the management of imperial affairs. By excluding the "reconquered brethren" from representation in the Bundesrath, Germany failed to win the loyalty of her new subjects. Where petty states with a tithe of her population and wealth have helped in shaping the destinies of the nation, the Reichsland had to feel the humiliation of "taxation without representation." It was useless to point out to the Alsatians that they had their vote in the Reichstag. For the Bundesrath is the power in Germany.

Nor did Alsace-Lorraine have real autonomy in internal affairs. The executive power was vested in a Statthalter, appointed by the Emperor, and supported by a foreign bureaucracy and a foreign police force. Before the Constitution of 1911, there was a local Parliament, called the Landesausschuss, which amounted to nothing, as the imperial Parliament had the privilege of initiating and enacting for the Reichsland any law it saw fit. Then, too, the delegates to the Landesausschuss were chosen by such a complicated form of suffrage that they represented the Statthalter rather than the people. And the Statthalter represented the Emperor!

In the first decade after the annexation, Prussian brutality and an unseemly haste to impose military service upon the conquered people led to an emigration of all who could afford to go, or who, even at the expense of material interest, were too high-spirited to allow their children to grow up as Germans. This emigration was welcomed and made easy, just as Austria-Hungary encouraged the emigration of Moslems from Bosnia and Herzegovina. For it enabled Bismarck to introduce a strong Prussian and Westphalian element into the Reichsland by settling immigrants on the vacant properties. But most of these immigrants, instead of prussianizing Alsace, have become Alsatians themselves. Some of the most insistent opponents of the Government, some of the most intractable among the agitators, have been those early immigrants or their children. This is quite natural, when we consider that they have cast their lot definitely with the country, and are just as much interested in its welfare as the indigenous element.

The revival of the agitation against Prussian Government in 1910 was a movement for autonomy on internal affairs, and for representation in the Bundesrath. The Alsatians wanted to be on a footing of constitutional equality with the other German States. One marvels at the Prussian mentality which could not see—either with the Poles or with the Alsatians—that fair play and justice would have solved the problems and put an end to the agitation which has been, during these past few years especially, a menace on the east and west to the existence of the Empire.

Something had to be done in the Reichsland. The anomalous position of almost two million German subjects, fighting for their political rights, and forming a compact mass upon the borders of France, was a question which compelled the interest of German statesmen, not only on account of its international aspect, but also because of the growing German public sentiment for social and political justice. The Reichstag was full of champions of the claims of the Alsatians,—champions who were not personally interested either in Alsace-Lorraine or in the influence of the agitation in the Reichsland upon France, but who looked upon the Alsace-Lorraine question as a wrong to twentieth-century civilization.

On March 14, 1910, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg announced to the Reichstag that the Government was preparing a constitution for Alsace-Lorraine which would give the autonomy so long and so vigorously demanded. But he had in his mind, not a real solution of the question, but some sort of a compromise, which would satisfy the confederated states, and mollify the agitators of the Reichsland, but at the same time preserve the Prussian domination in Alsace-Lorraine. In June, Herr Delbrück, Secretary of State for the Interior, was sent to Strasbourg to confer with the local authorities and representatives of the people concerning the projected constitution. It was during this visit that the Alsatians were disillusioned. A dinner, now famous or notorious, whichever you like, was given by the Statthalter, to which representative (!) members of the Landesausschuss were invited. At this dinner the real leaders of the country, such as Wetterlé, Preiss, Blumenthal, Weber, Bucher, and Theodor,—the very men who had made the demand for autonomy so insistent that the Government could no longer refuse to entertain it—were conspicuous by their absence. Those bidden to confer with Herr Delbrück in no way represented, but were on the other hand hostile to, the wishes of the people.

We cannot go into the involved story of the fight in the Reichstag over the new Constitution. The Delbrück project was approved by the Bundesrath on December 16, 1910, and debated in the following spring session of the Reichstag. Despite the warnings of the deputies from the Reichsland, and the brilliant opposition of the Socialists, the Constitution given to Alsace-Lorraine, on May 31st, was a pure farce. In no sense was it what the people of the Reichsland had wanted, although representation in the Bundesrath was seemingly given to them. The new Constitution preserved the united sovereignty of the confederated states, and its delegation to the Emperor, who still had the power to appoint and recall at will the Statthalter, and to initiate legislation in local matters. A Landtag took the place of the Landesausschuss. The Upper Chamber of the Landtag consists of thirty-six members, representing the religious confessions, the University and other bodies, the supreme court of Colmar, and the municipalities and chambers of commerce of Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Metz, and Colmar, to the number of eighteen; and the other eighteen chosen by the Emperor. The Lower Chamber has sixty members, elected by direct universal suffrage, with secret ballot. Electors over thirty-five possess two votes, and over forty-five three votes.

By forcing this Constitution upon Alsace-Lorraine, the interests of Prussia and of the House of Hohenzollern were considered to the detriment of the interests of the German Empire. A glorious opportunity for reconciliation and assimilation was lost. The Emperor would not listen to the admission of Alsace-Lorraine to the Bundesrath in the only logical way, by the creation of a new dynasty or a republican form of government, so that the Alsatian votes would represent a sovereign state. Prussia in her dealings with Alsace-Lorraine, has always been afraid, on the one hand, of the addition of Bundesrath votes to the seventeen of Bavaria, Saxony, Baden, and Wurtemberg, and on the other hand, of the repercussion upon her internal suffrage and other problems with the Socialists.

Since 1911, the eyes of many Alsatians have been directed once more towards France as the only—if forlorn—hope of justice and peace. What words could be found strong enough to condemn the suicidal folly of the German statesmen who allowed the disappointment over the Constitution to be followed by a series of incidents which have been like rubbing salt into a raw wound?

The first Landtag, in conformity to the Constitution of 1911, was elected in October. It brought into life a new political party, called "The National Union," led by Blumenthal, Wetterlé, and Preiss, who united for the purpose of demanding what the Constitution had not given them—the autonomy of Alsace and Lorraine. This party was badly beaten in this first election. But its defeat was not really a defeat for the principles of autonomy, as the German press stated at the time. The membership of the new Landtag was composed, in majority, of men who had been supporters of the demand for autonomy, but who had not joined the new party for reasons of local politics. Herr Delbrück had given universal suffrage (a privilege the Prussian electorate had never been able to gain in spite of its reiterated demands) to the Reichsland in the hope that the Socialists would prevent the Nationalists from controlling the Alsatian Landtag. Many Socialists, however, during the elections at Colmar and elsewhere, did not hesitate to cry in French, "Vive la France! A bas la Prusse!"

The Prussian expectations were bitterly deceived. The Landtag promptly showed that it was merely the Landesausschuss under another name. The nationalist struggle was revived; the same old questions came up again. The Government's appropriation "for purposes of state" was reduced one-third, and it was provided that the Landtag receive communication of the purposes for which the money was spent. The Statthalter's expenses were cut in half, and a bill, which had always been approved in previous years, providing for the payment of the expense of the Emperor's hunting trips in the Reichsland, failed to pass.

In the spring of 1912, the Prussians showed their disapproval of the actions of the new Landtag by withdrawing the orders for locomotives for the Prussian railways from the old Alsatian factory of Grafenstaden near Strasbourg. This was done absolutely without any provocation, and aroused a violent denunciation, not only among the purely German employés of the factory and in the newspapers, but also in the Landtag, which adopted an order of the day condemning most severely the attitude of the Imperial Government towards Alsace-Lorraine, of which this boycott measure was a petty and mean illustration.

The indignation was at its height when Emperor Wilhelm arrived in Strasbourg on May 13th. Instead of acting in a tactful manner and promising to set right this wrong done to the industrial life of Strasbourg, the Emperor addressed the following words to the Mayor:

"Listen. Up to here you have known only the good side of me; it is possible that you will learn the other side of me. Things cannot continue as they are: if this situation lasts, we shall suppress your Constitution and annex you to Prussia."

This typically Prussian speech, which in a few lines reveals the hopelessly unsuccessful tactics of the German Government towards the peoples whom it has tried to assimilate the world over, only served to increase the indignation of the inhabitants of the Reichsland; in fact, the repercussion throughout all Germany was very serious.

The arbitrary threat of the Emperor was badly received in the other federated states, whose newspapers pointed out that he had exceeded his authority. It gave the Socialists an opportunity to attack Emperor Wilhelm on the floor of the Reichstag. Four days after this threat was made, an orator of the Socialist party declared

"We salute the imperial words as the confession, full of weight and coming from a competent source, that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punishment that one can threaten to impose upon a people for its resistance against Germany. It is a punishment like hard labour in the penitentiary with loss of civil rights."

This speech caused the Chancellor to leave the room with all the Ministry. On May 22d, the attack upon Emperor Wilhelm for his words at Strasbourg was renewed by another deputy, who declared that if such a thing had happened in England, "the English would shut up such a King at Balmoral or find for him some peaceful castle, such as that of Stemberg or the Villa Allatini at Salonika."

The answer of the Landtag to Emperor Wilhelm's threat was the passing of two unanimous votes: one demanding that hereafter the Constitution could not be modified except by the law of the country and not by the law of the Empire, and the other demanding for Alsace-Lorraine a national flag.

One could easily fill many pages with illustrations of senseless persecutions, most of them of the pettiest character, but some more serious in nature, which Alsace and Lorraine have had to endure since the granting of the Constitution. Newspapers, illustrated journals, clubs and organizations of all kinds have been annoyed constantly by police interference. Their editors, artists, and managers have been brought frequently into court. Zislin and Hansi, celebrated caricaturists, have found themselves provoked to bolder and bolder defiances by successive condemnations, and have endured imprisonment as well as fines. Hansi was sentenced to a year's imprisonment by the High Court of Leipsic only a month before the present war broke out, and chose exile rather than a Prussian fortress.

The greatest effort during the past few years has been made in the schools to influence the minds of the growing generation against the "souvenir de France" and to impress upon the Alsatians what good fortune had come to them to be born German citizens.

Among the boys, the influence of this teaching has been such that over twenty-two thousand fled from home during the period of 1900-1913 to enlist in the Foreign Legion of the French Army. The campaign of the German newspapers in Alsace-Lorraine, and, in fact, throughout Germany, was redoubled in 1911. Parents were warned of the horrible treatment accorded to the poor boys who were misguided enough to throw away their citizenship, and go to be killed in Africa under the French flag. The result of this campaign was that the Foreign Legion received a larger number of Alsatians in 1912 than had enlisted during a single year since 1871!

Among the girls, the German educational system flattered itself that it could completely change the sentiments of a child, especially in the boarding-schools. Last year the Empress of Germany visited a girls' school near Metz, which is one of the best German schools in the Reichsland. As she was leaving, she told the children that she wanted to give them something. What did they want? The answer was not sweets or cake, but that they might be taught a little French!

Since 1910, the German war budget has carried successively larger items for the strengthening of forts and the building of barracks in Metz, Colmar, Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Neuf-Brisach, Bischwiller, Wissembourg, Mohrange, Sarrebourg, Sarreguemines, Saarbruck, Thionville, Molsheim, and Saverne. The former French provinces have been flooded with garrisons, and have been treated just as they were treated forty years ago. The insufferable spirit of militarism, and the arrogance of the Prussian officers in Alsatian towns, have served to turn against the Empire many thousands whom another policy might have won. For it must be remembered that by no means all the inhabitants of the Reichsland have been by birth and by home training French sympathizers. Instead of crushing out the "souvenir de France," the Prussian civil and military officials have caused it to be born in many a soul which was by nature German.

The most notorious instance of military arrogance occurred in the autumn of 1913 in Saverne. Lieutenant von Forstner, who was passing in review cases of discipline, had before him a soldier who had stabbed an Alsatian, and had been sentenced to two months' imprisonment. "Two months on account of an Alsatian blackguard!" he cried. "I would have given you ten marks for your trouble." The story spread, and the town, tired of the attitude of its garrison, began in turn to show its contempt for the Kaiser's soldiers. Windows in von Forstner's house were broken. Every time officers or soldiers appeared on the streets they were hooted. Saverne was put under martial law. Threats were made to fire upon the citizens. One day Lieutenant von Forstner struck a lame shoemaker across the forehead with his sword. The affair had gone so far that public sentiment in Germany demanded some action. Instead of adequately punishing von Forstner and other officers, who had so maddened the civil population against them, the German military authorities gave the guilty officers nominal sentences, and withdrew the garrison.

All these events had a tremendous repercussion in France. It is impossible to exaggerate the ill-feeling aroused on both sides of the Rhine, in Germany, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in France by the persecutions in the Reichsland. Only one who knows intimately the French can appreciate their feeling—or share it—over the Zislin and Hansi trials, the Saverne affair, the suppression of the Souvenir Français, the Lorraine Sportive and other organizations, and the campaign against the Foreign Legion. It has given the French soldiers in the present war something to fight for which is as sacred to them as the defence of French soil. The power of this sentiment is indicated by the invasion of Alsace, the battle of Altkirk, and the occupation of Mulhouse at the beginning of August. The French could not be held back from this wild dash. Strategy was powerless in the face of the sentiment of a national army.

The Alsatian leaders themselves have seen the peril to the peace of Europe of the German attitude towards their country. They did not want France drawn into a war for their liberation. They were alarmed over the possibility of this, and desired it to be understood that their agitation had nothing international in it. The attitude of all the anti-Prussian parties may be summed up in the words of Herr Wolff, leader of the Government Liberal party, who declared that "all the inhabitants of the Reichsland had as their political ambition was only the elevation of Alsace-Lorraine to the rank of an independent and federated state, like the other twenty-five component parts of the German Empire." Their sincerity and their desire to preserve peace is proved by the motion presented by the leaders of four of the political groups in the Reichsland, which was voted on May 6, 1912, without discussion, by the Landtag:

"The Chamber invites the Statthalter to instruct the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine in the Bundesrath to use all the force they possess against the idea of a war between Germany and France, and to influence the Bundesrath to examine the ways which might possibly lead to a rapprochement between France and Germany, which rapprochement will furnish the means of putting an end to the race of armaments."

The mismanagement of the Reichsland has done more than prevent the harmonious union of the former French provinces with Germany. It has had an effect, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated, upon nourishing the hopes of revenge of France, and the resentment against the amputation of 1870. On neither side of the Vosges has the wound healed. The same folly which has kept alive a Polish question in eastern Prussia for one hundred and twenty-five years, has not failed to make impossible the prussianizing of Alsace and Lorraine. The Prussian has never understood how to win the confidence of others. There has been no Rome in his political vision. As for conceptions of toleration, of kindness, and of love, they are non-existent in Prussian officialdom. Nietzsche revealed the character of the Prussian in his development of the idea of the übermensch. The ideal of perfect manhood is the imposition of one will on another will by force. Mercy and pity, according to Nietzsche, were signs of weakness, the symbols of the slave.

Under the circumstances, then, we are compelled after forty-five years to revise our estimate of Bismarck's sagacity. His genius was limited by the narrow horizon of his own age. He did not see that the future Germany needed other things that France could give far more than she needed Alsace and Lorraine. In posterity, Bismarck would have had a greater place had he, in the last minutes of the transactions at Versailles, given back Alsace and Lorraine to France, waived the war indemnity, and asked in return Algeria or other French colonies.

But would it have been different under Germany in the French colonies? A Herrero, employed in the Johannesburg mines, wrote his brother in German South-West Africa: "The country of the English is truly a good country. Even if your superior is present, he doesn't strike you, and if he strikes you and goes thus beyond legal limits, he is punished like anyone else."

CHAPTER II
THE "WELTPOLITIK" OF GERMANY

When the transrhenane provinces of the old German Empire were added to France in the eighteenth century, the assimilation of these territories was a far different proposition from their refusion into the mould of a new German Empire in 1871. In the first place, the old German Empire was a mediæval institution which, in the evolution of modern Europe, was decaying. Alsace and Lorraine were not taken away from a political organism of which they were a vital part. The ties severed were purely dynastic. In the second place, the consciousness of national life was awakened in Alsace and Lorraine during the time that they were under French rule, and because they shared in the great movement of the birth of democracy following the French Revolution.

France, then, by the Treaty of Frankfort, believed that she had been robbed of a portion of her national territory. The people of the annexed provinces, as was clearly shown by the statement of their representatives at Bordeaux, did not desire to enter the German Confederation.

Germany failed to do the only thing that could possibly have made her new territories an integral part of the new Empire, i.e. to place Alsace-Lorraine upon a footing of equality with the other states of the Confederation, and make their entry that of an autonomous sovereign state. Consequently, neither in France nor in the Reichsland was the Treaty of Frankfort accepted as a permanent change in the map of Europe. Germany has always been compelled, in her international politics, to count upon the possibility of France making an attempt to win back the lost provinces. She has sought to form alliances to strengthen her own position in Europe, and to keep France weak. France, the continued object of German hostility, has found herself compelled to ally herself with Russia, with whom she has never had anything in common, and to compound her colonial rivalries in Africa with her hereditary enemy, Great Britain. This is the first cause of the unrest in Europe that has culminated in a general European war.

The second cause is the Weltpolitik of Germany which has brought the German Empire into conflict with Great Britain and France outside of Europe, and with Russia in Europe.

On the map of Europe, Russia, Great Britain, and France are, in 1914, practically what they were in 1815. The changes, logical and in accordance with the spirit of centralization of the nineteenth century, have transformed middle and south-eastern Europe. The changes in south-eastern Europe have been effected at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, and have been a gradual development throughout the century, from the outbreak of the Greek revolution in 1822 to the Treaty of London in 1913. In middle Europe, during the twelve years between 1859 and 1871, the three Powers whose national unity, racially as well as politically, was already achieved at the time of the Congress of Vienna, were brought face to face with three new Powers, united Germany, united Italy, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

The nineteenth century has been called the age of European colonization. Europe began to follow its commerce with other continents by the imposition of its civilization and its political system upon weaker races. Checked by the rising republic of the United States from encroaching upon the liberties of the peoples of North and South America, there have been no acquisitions of territory by European nations in the western continents since the Congress of Vienna. European expansion directed itself towards Africa, Asia, and the islands of the oceans. There was no Oriental nation strong enough to promulgate a Monroe Doctrine.

In extra-European activities, Great Britain, France, and Russia were the pioneers. That they succeeded during the nineteenth century in placing under their flag the choicest portions of Africa and the backward nations of Asia, was due neither to the superior enterprise and energy, nor to the greater foresight, of the Anglo-Saxon, French, and Russian nations. They had achieved their national unity, and they were geographically in a position to take advantage of the great opportunities which were opening to the world for colonization since the development of the steamship and the telegraph.

But the other three Powers of Europe came late upon the scene. It has only been within the last quarter of a century that Germany and Italy have been in the position to look for overseas possessions. It has only been within the last quarter of a century that Austria, finding her union with Hungary a durable one, has been able to think of looking beyond her limits to play a part, as other nations had long been doing, in the history of the outside world.

By every force of circumstances, the three new States—threatened by their neighbours, who had looked with jealous, though powerless, eyes upon their consolidation—were brought together into a defensive alliance. The Powers of the Triple Alliance drifted into a union of common general aims and ambitions, if not of particular interests, against their three more fortunate rivals, who had been annexing the best portions of the Asiatic and African continents while they were struggling with internal problems.

Oceans of ink have been wasted upon polemics against the peace-disturbing character of the Triple Alliance. Especially has Germany and her growing Weltpolitik been subject to criticism, continuous and untiring, on the part of the British and French press. But the question after all is a very simple one: the three newer Powers of Europe have not been willing to be content with an application in practical world politics of the principle that "to him that hath shall be given." Germany and Italy, transformed under modern economic conditions into industrial states, have been looking for outside markets, and they have wanted to enjoy those markets in regions of the globe either actually under their flag or subjected to their political influence. In other words, they have wanted their share in the division of Africa and Asia into spheres under the control of European nations.

Is a logical and legitimate ambition to play a part in the world's politics in proportion to one's population, one's wealth, one's industrial and maritime activity, necessarily a menace to the world's peace? It has always been, and I suppose always will be, in the nature of those who have, to look with alarm upon the efforts of those who have not, to possess something. Thus capital, irrespective of epoch or nationality or of religion, has raised the cry of alarm when it has seen the tendency for betterment, for education, for the development of ideals and a sense of justice on the part of labour. In just the same way, Russia with her great path across the northern half of Asia and her new and steadily growing empire in the Caucasus and central Asia; France with the greater part of northern and central Africa, and an important corner of Asia under her flag; and Great Britain with her vast territories in every portion of the globe, raised the cry of "Wolf, Wolf!" when the Powers of the Triple Alliance began to look with envious eye upon the rich colonies of their neighbours, and to pick up by clever diplomacy—and brutal force, if you wish—a few crumbs of what was still left for themselves.

The result of these alarming ambitions of the Triple Alliance has been the coming together of Russia, France, and England, hereditary enemies in former days but now friends and allies, in the maintenance of the colonial "trust."

The great cry of the Triple Entente is the maintenance of the European equilibrium. For this they have reason. Europe could know no lasting peace under Teutonic aggression. But is there not also to the account of the Triple Entente some blame for the unrest in Europe and for the great catastrophe which has come upon the world? For while their policy has been the maintenance of the European equilibrium, it has been coupled with the maintenance of an extra-European balance of power wholly in their favour.

The sense of justice, of historical proportion, and the logic of economic evolution make one sympathize, in abstract principle, not only with the Weltpolitik of Germany, but also with Austria-Hungary's desire for an outlet to the sea, and with Italy's longing to have in the Mediterranean the position which history and geography indicated ought to be, and might again be, hers.

But sympathy in abstract principle is quite another thing from sympathy in fact. In order to appreciate the Weltpolitik of Germany, and be able to form an intelligent opinion in regard to it—for it is the most vital and burning problem in the world to-day—we must consider it from the point of view of its full significance in practice in the history of the world.

Bismarck posed as the disinterested "honest courtier" of Europe in the Congress of Berlin. The declaration he had made, that the whole question of the Orient "was not worth the finger bone of a Pomeranian grenadier," was corroborated by his actions during the sessions of the Congress. We have striking illustrations of this in the memoirs of Karatheodory pasha, who recorded from day to day, during the memorable sessions of the Congress, his astonishment at the indifference which Bismarck displayed to the nationalities of the Balkans, and to the complications which might arise in Europe from their rivalries.

Bismarck did not see how vital was to be the Balkan question with the future of the nation he had built. Nor did he see the intimate relationship between the economic progress of united Germany and the question of colonies. One searches in vain the speeches and writings of the Iron Chancellor for any reference to the importance of the two problems, in seeking the solution of which the fabric of his building is threatened with destruction.

Perhaps it is easy for us, in looking backwards, to point out the lack of foresight which was shown by Bismarck in regard to the future of Germany. Forty-five years later, we are able to pass in review the unforeseen developments of international politics and the amazing economic evolution of contemporary Europe. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that much attention and thought should have been given by the maker of modern Germany to the possible sphere that Germany might be called upon to play in the world outside of Europe.

For we must remember that the new Germany, after the Franco-Prussian War, was wholly in an experimental stage, and that the duty at hand was the immediate consolidation of the various states into a political and economic fabric. There was enough to demand all the attention and all the genius of Bismarck and his co-workers in solving these problems. Cordial relationship with Austria had to be reëstablished. The dynasties of the south German kingdoms and of the lesser potentates, whose names still remained legion in spite of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, had to be carefully handled. There were four definite internal problems which confronted Bismarck: the relationship of the empire to the Catholic Church; the reconciliation of the different peoples into a harmonious whole; the establishment of representative government without giving the strong socialistic elements the upper hand; and the development of the economic wealth of Germany.

There was little time to think of Germany's place in the world's politics. In foreign affairs, it was considered that the exigencies of the moment could be met by adopting a policy of conciliation towards both Russia and Austria, and the winning of the friendship of Italy. The Kulturkampf, the creation of the Bundesrath under Prussian hegemony, and the formation of the Triple Alliance and the events connected with them, are important in an analysis of Germany's international politics. Unfortunately we cannot bring them into the scope of this book. We can mention only the various factors that have been directly responsible for giving birth to what is called the Weltpolitik.

These factors are the belief of the German people in the superiority of their race and its world-civilizing mission; their connotation of the word "German"; the consciousness of their military strength being disproportionate to their political influence; the rapid increase of the population and the development of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the empire; and the realization of the necessity of a strong navy, with naval bases and coaling-stations in all parts of the world, for the adequate protection of commerce.

The belief of the German people in the superiority of their race and its world-civilizing mission is a sober fact. It pervades every class of society from the Kaiser down to the workingman. It is heralded from the pulpit, taught in the schools, and is a scientific statement in the work of many of Germany's leading scholars. The anthropologist Woltmann said that "the German is the superior type of the species homo sapiens, from the physical as well as the intellectual point of view." Wirth declared that "the world owes its civilization to Germany alone" and that "the time is near when the earth must inevitably be conquered by the Germans." The scientific book—a serious one—in which these statements occur was so popular that it sold five editions in three years! Paulsen remarked that "humanity is aware of, and admires, the German omnipresence." Hartmann taught that the European family is divided into two races, male and female, of which the first, of course, was exclusively German, while the second included Latins, Celts, and Slavs. "Marriage is inevitable." Goethe expressed in Faust the opinion that the work of the Germans was to make the habitable world worth living in, while Schiller boasted, "Our language shall reign over the whole world," and that "the German day lasts until the end of time." Schiller also prophesied that "two empires shall perish in east and west, I tell you, and it is only the Lutheran faith which shall remain." Fichte, one hundred years ago, exhorted the Germans to be "German patriots, and we shall not cease to be cosmopolitan." Heine believed that "not only Alsace and Lorraine, but all France shall be ours."

To show the German state of mind towards those whom they have not hesitated to provoke to arms, the remarkable teaching of Hummel's book, which is used in the German primary schools, is a convincing illustration. Frenchmen are monkeys, and the best and strongest elements in the French race asserted to be German by blood. The Russians are slaves, as their name implies. Treitschke's opinion of the British is that "among them love of money has killed all sentiment of honour and all distinction of just and unjust. Their setting sun is our aurora." One of the leading newspapers of Germany recently said: "The army of the first line of which Germany will dispose from the first day of the mobilization will be sufficient to crush France, even if we must detach a part of it against England. If England enters the war, it will be the end of the British Empire, for England is a colossus with feet of clay."

The Kaiser has been the spokesman of the nation in heralding publicly the belief in the superiority of the German people, and its world mission. It was at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Empire that the scope of the Weltpolitik was announced by Wilhelm II. He said:

"The German Empire has become a world empire (ein Weltreich). Everywhere, in the most distant lands, are established thousands and thousands of our compatriots. German science, German activity, the defenders of the German ideal pass the ocean. By thousands of millions we count the wealth that Germany transports across the seas. It is your duty, gentlemen, to aid me to establish strong bonds between our Empire of Europe and this greater German Empire (dieses grëssere Deutsche Reich) ... May our German Fatherland become one day so powerful that, as one formerly used to say, Civis romanus sum, one may in the future need only to say, Ich bin ein deutscher Burger."

At Aix-la-Chapelle, on June 20, 1902, he revealed his ambition in one sentence, "It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." Just before leaving for the visit to Tangier in 1905—the visit which was really the beginning of one of the great issues of the present war—he said at Bremen: "If later one must speak in history of a universal domination by the Hohenzollern, of a universal German empire, this domination must not be established by military conquest.... God has called us to civilize the world: we are the missionaries of human progress." This idea was developed further at Münster, on September 1, 1907, when the Kaiser proclaimed: "The German people will be the block of granite on which our Lord will be able to elevate and achieve the civilization of the world!"

This attitude of mind is as common among the disciples of those wonderful leaders who founded the international movement for the solidarity of interests of labour, as it is among the aristocratic and intellectual elements of the nation. The German Socialist has proclaimed the brotherhood of man, and the common antagonism of the wage-earners of the world against their capitalistic oppressors. But, for all his preaching, the German Socialist is first of all a German. He has come to believe that the mission of Socialism will be best fulfilled through the triumph of Germanism. This belief is sincere. It is a far cry from Karl Marx to the militant—or rather militarist—German Socialist, bearing arms gladly upon the battlefields of Europe to-day, because he is inspired by the thought that the triumph of the army in which he fights will aid the cause of Socialism.[[1]]

[[1]] While the Landtage of the German states are mostly controlled by Conservative elements, owing to restricted suffrage, the Reichstag is one of the most intelligently democratic legislative bodies in the world. Its social legislation is surpassed by that of no other country. During thirty years the Socialist vote in Germany has increased one thousand per cent. It now represents one-third of the total electorate. But the Socialists are to a man behind the war.

There is a striking analogy between the German Socialist of the present generation and the Jacobins of 1793. The heralders of Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité fought for the spread of the principles of the Revolution through God's chosen instruments, the armies of France, and were carried away by their enthusiasm until they became the facile agents for saddling Europe with the tyranny of Napoleon. Love for humanity was turned into blood-lust, and fighting for freedom into seeking for booty and glory. Are the profound thinkers of the German universities, and the visionaries of the workingmen's forums following to-day the same path? Does the propagation of an ideal lead inevitably to a blind fanaticism, where the dreamer becomes in his own imagination a chosen instrument of God to shed blood?

There is undoubtedly an intellectual and idealistic basis to German militarism and to German arrogance.

Their connotation of the word "German" has led the Germans to look upon territories outside of their political confines as historically and racially, hence rightfully, virtually, and eventually theirs. A geography now in its two hundred and forty-fifth edition in the public schools (Daniel's Leitfaden der Geographie) states that "Germany is the heart of Europe. Around it extend Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Holland, which were all formerly part of the same state, and are peopled entirely or in the majority by Germans."

When German children have been for the past generation deliberately taught as a matter of fact—not as an academic or debatable question—that Deutschland ought to be more than it is, we can understand how the neutrality of their smaller neighbours seems to the Germans a negligible consideration. No wonder the soldiers who ran up against an implacable enemy at Liège, Namur, and Charleroi thought there must be a mistake somewhere, and were more angered against the opposition of those whom they regarded as their brothers of blood than they later showed themselves against the French. No wonder that the sentiment of the whole German nation is for the retention of Belgium, their path to the sea. It was formerly German. Its inhabitants are German. Let it become German once more!

But to the Germans there are other and equally important elements belonging to their nation outside of the states upon the confines of the empire. These are the German emigrants and German colonists in all portions of the world. In recent years there has come to the front more than ever the theory that German nationality cannot be lost by foreign residence or by transference of allegiance to another State: once a German, always a German.

Convincing proof of this is found in the new citizenship law, sanctioned with practical unanimity by the Reichstag and Bundesrath, which went into effect on January 1, 1914. According to Article XIII of this law, "a former German who has not taken up his residence in Germany may on application be naturalized." This applies also to one who is descended from a former German, or who has been adopted as the child of such! According to Article XIV, any former German who holds a position in the German Empire in any part of the world, in the service of a German religious society or of a German school, is looked upon as a German citizen "by assumption." Any foreigner holding such a position may be naturalized without having a legal residence in Germany. The most interesting provision of all is in Article XXV, section 2 of which says: "Citizenship is not lost by one who before acquiring foreign citizenship has secured on application the written consent of the competent authorities of his home state to retain his citizenship."

Germany allows anyone of German blood to become a German citizen, even if he has never seen Germany and has no intention of taking up his residence there; and Germans, who have emigrated to other countries, secure the amazing opportunity to acquire foreign citizenship without losing their German citizenship.

The result of this law, since the war broke out, has been to place a natural and justifiable suspicion upon all Germans living in the countries of the enemies of Germany. It is impossible to overestimate the peril from the secret ill-will and espionage of Germans residing in the countries that are at war with Germany. There are undoubtedly many thousands of cases where Germans have been honest and sincere in their change of allegiance, but how are the nations where they have become naturalized to be sure of this? A legal means has been given to these naturalized Germans to retain, without the knowledge of the nation where their oath of allegiance has been received in good faith, citizenship in Germany.

German emigration and colonization societies, and many seemingly purely religious organizations for "the propagation of the faith in foreign lands," have been untiring in their efforts to preserve in the minds of Germans who have left the Fatherland the principle, "once a German always a German." The Catholic as well as the Lutheran Church has lent itself to this effort. Wherever there are Germans, one finds the German church, the German school, the Zeitung, the Bierhalle, and the Turnverein. The Deutschtum is sacred to the Germans. One cannot but have the deepest respect for the pride of Germans in their ancestry, in their language, in their church, and in the preservation of traditional customs. There is no better blood in the world than German blood, and one who has it in his veins may well be proud of it: for it is an inheritance which is distinctly to a man's intellectual and physical advantage. But, in recent years, the effort has been made to confuse Deutschtum with Deutschland. Here lies a great danger. We may admire and reverence all that has come to us from Germany. But the world cannot look on impassively at a propaganda which is leading to Deutschland über alles!

When we take the megalomania of the Germans, their ambition to fulfil their world mission, their belief in their peculiar fitness to fulfil that mission, and their idea of the German character of the neighbouring states, and contrast the dream with the reality, we see how they must feel, especially as they are conscious of the fact that they dispose of a military strength disproportionate to their position in mondial politics. Great Britain, with one-third less population, "the colossus with the feet of clay," owns a good fourth of the whole world; France, the nation of "monkeys," which was easily crushed in 1870, holds sway over untold millions of acres and natives in Africa and Asia; while Russia, the nation of "slaves," has a half of Europe and Asia.

The most civilized people in the world, with a world mission to fulfil, is dispossessed by its rivals of inferior races and of inferior military strength! The thinking German is by the very nature of things a militarist.

But even if the logic of the Weltpolitik, under the force of circumstances, did not push the German of every class and category to the belief that Germany must solve her great problems of the present day by force of arms, especially since her military strength is so much greater than that of her rivals, the nature of the German would make him lean towards force as the decisive argument in the question of extending his influence. For from the beginning of history the German has been a war man. He has asserted himself by force. He has proved less amenable to the refining and softening influences of Christianity and civilization than any other European race. He has worshipped force, and relied wholly upon force to dominate those with whom he has come into contact. The leopard cannot change his spots. So it is as natural for the German of the twentieth century to use the sword as an argument as it was for the German of the tenth century, or, indeed, of the first century. We cannot too strongly insist upon this fatal tendency of the German to subordinate natural, moral, legal, and technical rights to the supremacy of brute force. There is no conception of what is called "moral suasion" in the German mind. Although some of the greatest thinkers of the world have been and are to-day Germans, yet the German nation has never come to the realization that the pen may be mightier than the sword. Give the German a pen, and he will hold the world in admiration of his intellect. Give him a piano or a violin, and he will hold the world in adoration of his soul. But give him a sword, and he will hold the world in abhorrence of his force. For there never was an übermensch who was not a devil. Else he would be God.

But the Weltpolitik has had other and more tangible and substantial causes than the three we have been considering. It is not wholly the result of the German idea that Germany can impose her will upon the world and has the right to do so. The power of Germany comes from the fact that her people have been workers as well as dreamers. The rapid increase of the population and development of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the empire have given the Germans a wholly justifiable economic foundation for their Weltpolitik.

United Germany, after the successful war of 1870, began the greatest era of industrial growth and prosperity that has ever been known in the history of the world. Not even the United States, with all its annual immigration and opening up of new fields and territories, has been able to show an industrial growth comparable to that of Germany during the past forty years. In this old central Europe cities have grown almost over night. Railways have been laid down, one after the other, until the whole empire is a network of steel. Mines and factories have sprung into being as miraculously as if it had been by the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp. The population has increased more than half in forty years.

It was as her population and her productive power increased far more quickly and far beyond that of her neighbours, that Germany began to look out into the extra-European world for markets. She had reached the point when her productivity, in manufacturing lines, had exceeded her power of consumption. Where find markets for the goods? German merchants, and not Prussian militarists, began to spread abroad in Germany the idea that there was a world equilibrium, as important to the future of the nations of Europe as was the European equilibrium. Germany, looking out over the world, saw that the prosperity of Great Britain was due to her trade, and that the security and volume of this trade were due to her colonies.

Who does not remember the remarkable stamp issued by the Dominion of Canada to celebrate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria? On the mercatorial projection of the world, the British possessions were given in red. One could not find any corner of the globe where there were not ports to which British ships in transit could go, and friendly markets for British commerce. The Germans began to compare their industries with those of Great Britain. Their population was larger than that of the great colonial power, and was increasing more rapidly. Their industries were growing apace. For their excess population, emigration to a foreign country meant annual loss of energetic and capable compatriots. Commerce had to meet unfair competition in every part of the world. Outside of the Baltic and North Seas, there was no place that a German ship could touch over which the German flag waved.

It was not militarism or chauvinism or megalomania, but the natural desire of a people who found themselves becoming prosperous to put secure and solid foundations under that prosperity, that made the Germans seek for colonies and launch forth upon the Weltpolitik.

The first instance of the awakening on the part of the German people to a sense that there was something which interested them outside of Europe, was the annexation by Great Britain in 1874 of the Fiji Islands, with which German traders had just begun, at great risk and painstaking efforts, to build up a business. This was the time when the Government was engaged in its struggles with the Church and socialism, and when the working of the Reichstag and the Bundesrath was still in an experimental stage. Nothing could be done. But there began to be a feeling among Germans that in the future Germany ought to be consulted concerning the further extension of the sovereignty of a European nation over any part of the world then unoccupied or still independent. But Germany was not in a position either to translate this sentiment into a vigorous foreign policy, or to begin to seize her share of the world by taking the portions which Great Britain and Russia and France had still left vacant.

German trade, still in its infancy, received cruel setbacks by the British occupation of Cyprus in 1878 and of Egypt in 1883, the French occupation of Tunis in 1881, and the Russian and British dealings with central Asia and Afghanistan. The sentiment of the educated and moneyed classes in Germany began to impose upon the Government the necessity of entering the colonial field. The action in Egypt and in Tunis brought about the beginning of German colonization. Bismarck had just finished successfully his critical struggle with the socialists. The decks were cleared for action. In 1882, a Bremen trader, Herr Lüdritz, by treaties with the native chiefs, gained the Bay of Angra-Pequena on the west coast of Africa. For two years no attention was paid to this treaty, which was a purely private commercial affair. In 1884, shortly after the occupation of Egypt, a dispute arose between the British authorities at Cape Town and Herr Lüdritz. Bismarck saw that he must act, or the old story of extension of British sovereignty would be repeated. He telegraphed to the German Consul at Cape Town that the Imperial Government had annexed the coast and hinterland from the Orange River to Cape Frio.

Other annexations in Africa and the Pacific followed in the years 1884-1886. In Africa, the German flag was hoisted over the east coast of the continent, north of Cape Delgado and the river Rovuma, and in Kamerun and Togo on the Gulf of Guinea. In the Pacific, Kaiser Wilhelm's Land was formed of a portion of New Guinea, with some adjacent islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomon Islands, and the Marshall Islands were gathered in. Since those early years of feverish activity, there have been no new acquisitions in Africa, other than the portion of French Congo ceded in 1912 as "compensation" for the French protectorate of Morocco. In the Pacific, in 1899, after the American conquest of the Philippines, the Caroline, Pelew, and Marianne groups and two of the Samoan Islands were added.

In China, Germany believed that she had the right to expect to gain a position equal to that of Great Britain at Hongkong and Shanghai, of France at Tonkin, and Russia in Manchuria. She believed that it was just as necessary for her to have a fortified port to serve as a naval base for her fleet as it was for the other Powers, and that by a possession of territory which could be called her own she would be best able to get her share of the commerce of the Far East. From 1895 to 1897, Germany examined carefully all the possible places which would serve best for the establishment of a naval and commercial base. At the beginning of 1897, after naval and commercial missions had made their reports, a technical mission was sent out whose membership included the famous Franzius, the creator of Kiel. This mission reported in favour of Kiau-Chau on the peninsula of Shantung in north China.

When negotiations were opened with the Chinese, the answer of the Chinese Government was to send soldiers to guard the bay! The Kaiser, in a visit to the Czar at Peterhof in the summer of 1897, secured Russian "benevolent neutrality." The murder of two missionaries in the interior of the province, on November 1st of the same year, gave Germany her chance. Three German war vessels landed troops on the peninsula, and seized Kiau-Chau and Tsing-Tau. After five months of tortuous negotiations, a treaty was concluded between Germany and China on March 6, 1899. Kiau-Chau with adjacent territory was leased to Germany for ninety-nine years. To German capital and German commerce were given the right of preference for every industrial enterprise on the peninsula, the concession for the immediate construction of a railway, and the exclusive right to mining along the line of the railway. Thus the greater part of the province of Shantung passed under the economic influence of Germany.

The entry of Japan into the war of 1914 is due to her desire to remedy a great injustice which has been done to Japanese commerce in the province of Shantung by the German occupation, to her fear of this naval base opposite her coast (just as she feared Port Arthur), and probably to the intention of occupying the Marianne Islands, the Marshall Islands, and the Eastern and Western Carolines, in order that the Japanese navy may have important bases in a possible future conflict with the United States.

When Germany leased Kiau-Chau, she declared solemnly that the port of Tsing-Tau would be an open port, ein frei Hafen für allen Nationen. But Japanese trade competition soon caused her to go back on her word. She conceived a clever scheme in 1906, by which the Chinese customs duties were allowed to be collected within the Protectorate in return for an annual sum of twenty per cent. upon the entire customs receipts of the Tsing-Tau district. In this way, she is more than recompensed for the generosity displayed in allowing German goods to be subject to the Chinese customs. She reimburses herself at the expense of the Japanese! Berlin could not have been astonished at the ultimatum of August 15th from Tokio.

There has always been much opposition in Germany to the colonization policy of the Government, the dissatisfaction over the poor success of the attempts at African colonization led Chancellor Caprivi to state that the worst blow an enemy could give him was to force upon him more territories in Africa! The Germans never got on well with the negroes. Their colonists, for the most part too poor to finance properly agricultural schemes, lived by trading. Like all whites, they cheated the natives and bullied them into giving up their lands. In South-West Africa, a formidable uprising of the Herreros resulted in the massacre of all the Germans except the missionaries and the colonists who had established themselves there before the German occupation. The suppression of this rebellion took more than a year, and cost Germany an appalling sum in money and many lives. But it cost the natives more. Two thirds of the nation of the Herreros were massacred: while only six or seven thousand were in arms, the German official report stated that forty thousand were killed. The Germans confiscated all the lands of the natives.

In 1906, after twenty-one years of German rule, there were in South-West Africa sixteen thousand prisoners of war out of a total native population of thirty-one thousand. All the natives lived in concentration camps, and were forced to work for the Government. In commenting upon the Herrero campaign, Pastor Frenssen, one of the most brilliant writers of modern Germany, put in the mouth of the hero of his colonial novel the following words: "God has given us the victory because we were the most noble race, and the most filled with initiative. That is not saying much, when we compare ourselves with this race of negroes; but we must act in such a way as to become better and more active than all the other people of the world. It is to the most noble, to the most firm that the world belongs. Such is the justice of God."

German opposition has been bitter also against the occupation of Kiau-Chau. For traders have claimed that the political presence of Germany on the Shantung peninsula and the dealings of the German diplomats with the Pekin court had so prejudiced the Chinese against everything German that it was harder to do business with them than before the leasehold was granted. They actually advocated the withdrawal of the protectorate for the good of German commerce!

But German pride was at stake in Africa after the Herrero rebellion. And in China, Kiau-Chau was too valuable a naval base to give up. In 1907, a ministry of colonies was added to the Imperial Cabinet. Since then the colonial realm has been considered an integral part of the Empire.

At every point of this colonial development, Germany found herself confronted with open opposition and secret intrigue. The principal strategic value of south-west Africa was taken away by the British possession of Walfisch Bay, and of east Africa by the protectorate consented to by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the British Crown. Togoland and Kamerun are hemmed in by French and British possession of the hinterland. The Pacific islands are mostly "left-overs," or of minor importance. In spite of the unpromising character of these colonies, the commerce of Germany with them increased from 1908 to 1912 five hundred per cent., and the commerce with China through Kiau-Chau from 1902 to 1912 nearly a thousand per cent.

And yet, in comparison to her energies and her willingness—let us leave till later the question of ability and fitness—Germany has had little opportunity to exercise a colonial administration on a large scale. She must seek to extend her political influence over new territories. Where and how? That has been the question. Most promising of all appeared the succession to the Portuguese colonies, for the sharing of which Great Britain declared her willingness to meet Germany halfway. An accord was made in 1898, against the eventuality of Portugal selling her colonies. But since the Republic was proclaimed in Portugal, there has been little hope that her new Government would consider itself strong enough to part with the heritage of several centuries.

For the increase of her colonial empire, Germany has felt little hope. So she has tried to secure commercial privileges in various parts of the world, through which political control might eventually come. We have already spoken of her effort in China. Separate chapters treat of her efforts in the three Moslem countries, Morocco, Persia, and Turkey, and show how in each case she has found herself checkmated by the intrigues and accords of the three rich colonial Powers.

Long before the political union of the German States in Europe was accomplished, there were German aspirations in regard to the New World, when Pan-Germanists dreamed of forming states in North and South America.

These enthusiasts did not see that the Civil War had so brought together the various elements of the United States, the most prominent and most loyal of which was the German element, that any hope of a separatist movement in the United States was chimerical. As late as 1885, however, the third edition of Roscher's Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung stated that "it would be a great step forward, if the German immigrants to North America would be willing to concentrate themselves in one of the states, and transform it into a German state." For different reasons Wisconsin would appear to be most particularly indicated.

As early as 1849, the Germans commenced to organize emigration to Brazil through a private society of Hamburg (Hamburger Kolonisationverein), which bought from the Prince de Joinville, brother-in-law of Dom Pedro, vast territories in the state of Santa Catharina. There the German colonization in Brazil began. It soon extended to the neighbouring states of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. There are now about three hundred and fifty thousand Germans, forming two per cent. of the population. In no district are they more than fifteen per cent. However, in Rio Grande, there is a territory of two hundred kilometres in which the German language is almost wholly spoken; and a chain of German colonies binds Sao Leopoldo to Santa Cruz.

Among the Pan-Germanists, the three states of southern Brazil have been regarded as a zone particularly reserved for German expansion. The colonial congress of 1902 at Berlin expressed a formal desire that hereafter German emigration be directed towards the south of Brazil. An amendment to include Argentina was rejected. The decree of Prussia, forbidding emigration to Brazil, was revoked in 1896 in so far as it was a question of the three states of Paraná, Santa Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul.

It has not been very many years since diplomatic incidents arose between Brazil and Germany over fancied German violation of Brazilian territory by the arrest of sailors on shore. But Germany has not entertained serious hope of getting a foothold in South America. Brazil has increased greatly in strength, and there is to-day in South America a tacit alliance between Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to support the American Monroe Doctrine. Germany found, when she was trying to buy a West India island from Denmark, that she had to reckon not only with Washington, but also with Buenos Ayres, Rio, and Santiago.

Finding herself so thoroughly hemmed in on all sides, in the New World and in the Old World, by alliances and accords directed against her overseas political expansion, modern Germany has repeated the history of the Jews. Deprived of some senses, one develops extraordinarily others. Deprived of civil and social rights for centuries, the Jews developed the business sense until to-day their wealth and influence in the business world are far beyond the proportionate numbers of their race. Deprived of the opportunity to administer and develop vast overseas territories, the Germans have turned to intensive military development at home and extensive commercial development abroad, until to-day they are the foremost military Power in Europe, and are threatening British commercial supremacy in every part of the globe.

The German counterpart of the British and French and Russian elements that are directing the destinies of vast colonies and protectorates is investing its energy in business. During the past generation, the German campaign for the markets of the world has been carried on by the brightest and best minds in Germany. There have been three phases to this campaign: manufacturing the goods, selling the goods, and carrying the goods. German manufactures have increased so greatly in volume and scope since the accession of the present Emperor that there is hardly a line of merchandise which is not offered in the markets of the world by German firms.

Articles "made in Germany" may not be as well made as those of other countries. But their price is more attractive, and they have driven other goods from many fields. One sees this right in Europe in the markets of Germany's competitors and enemies. Since the present war began, French and British patriots are hard put to it sometimes when they find that article after article which they have been accustomed to buy is German. In my home in Paris, the elevator is German, electrical fixtures are German, the range in my kitchen is German, the best lamps for lighting are German. I have discovered these things in the past month through endeavouring to have them repaired. Interest led me to investigate other articles in daily use. My cutlery is German, my silverware is German, the chairs in my dining-room are German, the mirror in my bathroom is German, some of my food products are German, and practically all the patented drugs and some of the toilet preparations are German.

All these things have been purchased in the Paris markets, without the slightest leaning towards, or preference for, articles coming from the Fatherland. I was not aware of the fact that I was buying German things. They sold themselves,—the old combination of appearance, convenience, and price, which will sell anything.

That I am unconsciously using German manufactured articles is largely due to the genius of the salesman. It is a great mistake to believe that salesmanship is primarily the art of selling the goods of the house you represent. That has been the British idea. It is today exploded. Is it because the same type as the Britisher who is devoting his brains and energy to solving the problems of inferior people in different parts of the world is among the Germans devoting his energies to German commerce in those same places, that the Germans have found the fine art of salesmanship to be quite a different thing? It is studying the desires of the people to whom you intend to sell, finding out what they want to buy, and persuading your house at home to make and export those articles. From the Parisian and the Londoner, and the New Yorker down to the naked savage, the Germans know what is wanted, and they supply it. If the British university man is enjoying a position of authority and of fascinating perplexity in some colony, and feels that he has a share in shaping the destinies of the world, the German university man is not without his revenge. Deprived of one sense, has he not developed another—and a more practical one?

The young German, brought up in an overpopulated country, unable to enter a civil service which will keep him under his own flag—and remember how intensely patriotic he is, this young German, just as patriotic as the young Frenchman or the young Britisher,—must leave home. He is not of the class from which come the voluntary emigrants. His ties are all in Germany: his love—and his move—all for Germany. So he becomes a German resident abroad, in close connection with the Fatherland, and always working for the interests of the Fatherland. He goes to England or to France, where he studies carefully and methodically, as if he were to write a thesis on it (and he often does), the business methods of and the business opportunities among the people where he is dwelling. He is giving his life to put Deutschland über alles in business right in the heart of the rival nation, and he is succeeding. During October, 1914, when they tried to arrest in the larger cities of England the German and Austrian subjects they had to stop—there was not room in the jails for all of them! And in many places business was paralyzed.

In carrying the products of steadily increasing volume to steadily growing markets, Germany has been sensible enough to make those markets pay for the cost of transport. Up to the very selling price, all the money goes to Germany. The process is simple: from German factories, by German ships, through German salesmen, to German firms, in every part of the world—beginning with London and Paris.

Germany's merchant marine has kept pace with the development of her industry. Essen may be the expression of one side of modern Germany, which is said to have caused the European war. But one is more logical in believing that Hamburg and Bremen and the Kiel Canal have done more to bring on this war than the products of Krupp. During the last twenty-five years the tonnage of Germany's merchant marine has increased two hundred and fifty per cent., a quarter of which has been in the last five years, from 1908-1913. There are six times as many steamships flying the German flag as when Wilhelm II mounted the throne. In merchant ships, Germany stands today second only to Great Britain. The larger portion of her merchant marine is directed by great corporations. The struggle against Great Britain and France for the freight carrying of outside nations has been most bitter—and most successful. Before the present war, there was no part of the world in which the German flag was not carried by ships less than ten years old.

With the exception of Kiau-Chau, the colonies of Germany have never been of much practical value, except as possible coaling and wireless stations for the German fleet. But here also the opposition of her rivals has minimized their value. Walfisch Bay and Zanzibar have, as we have already said, lessened the strategical value of the two large colonies on either side of the African continent. In the division of the Portuguese colonies agreed to by Great Britain, it was "the mistress of the seas" who was to have the strategic places—not part of them, but all of them, the Cape Verde Islands, Madeira, and the Azores.

As Germany's commerce and shipping have so rapidly developed, the seeking for opportunities to extend her political sovereignty outside of Europe has not been so much an outlook for industrial enterprise as the imperative necessity of finding naval bases and coaling stations in different parts of the world for the adequate protection of commerce. The development of the German navy has been the logical complement of the development of the German merchant marine. Germany's astonishing naval program has kept pace with the astonishing growth of the great Hamburg and Bremen lines. Germany has had exactly the same argument for the increase of her navy as has had Great Britain. Justification for the money expended on the British navy is that Great Britain needs the navy to protect her commerce, upon which the life of the nation is dependent, and to guarantee her food-supplies. The industrial evolution of Germany has brought about for her practically the same economic conditions as in Great Britain. In addition to the dependence of her prosperity upon the power of her navy to protect her commerce, Germany has felt that she must keep the sea open for the sake of guaranteeing uninterrupted food-supplies for her industrial population. It must not be forgotten that Germany is flanked on east and west by hereditary enemies, and has come to look to the sea as the direction from which her food supplies would come in case of war.

This last factor of the Weltpolitik, the creation of a strong navy, must not be looked upon either as a provocation to Great Britain or as a menace to the equilibrium of the world. If it has brought Germany inevitably into conflict with Great Britain, it is because the navy is the safeguard of commerce. The Weltpolitik is essentially a Handelspolitik. The present tremendous conflict between Great Britain and Germany is the result of commercial rivalry. It is more a question of the pocket-book than of the sacredness of treaties, if we are looking for the cause rather than the occasion of the war. It has come in spite of honest efforts to bring Great Britain and Germany together.

Lord Haldane, in February, 1912, made a trip to Berlin to bring about a general understanding between the two nations. But while there was much discussion of the question of the Bagdad Railway, Persian and Chinese affairs, Walfisch Bay, and the division of Africa, nothing came of it. On March 18th, Mr. Churchill said to the House of Commons: "If Germany adds two ships in the next six years, we shall have to add four; if Germany adds three, we shall have to add six. Whatever reduction is made in the German naval program will probably be followed here by a corresponding naval reduction. The Germans will not get ahead of us, no matter what increase they make; they will not lose, no matter what decrease they make." This was as far as Great Britain could go.

In the spring of 1912, the British fleet was concentrated in the North Sea, and an accord was made with France for common defensive action in the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, during M. Poincaré's trip to Petrograd, an accord was signed between France and Russia for common naval action in time of war.

The Pan-Germanic movement in recent years has not been a tool of the Government, but rather a party, including other parties, banded together more than once to oppose the German Government in an honourable attempt to preserve peace with the neighbours in the west.

It is a tremendous mistake—and a mistake which has been continuously made in the French, British, and American press since the beginning of the war—to consider the Weltpolitik as an expression of the sentiments of the German Emperor and his officials. Since it was forced upon Bismarck against his will, Pan-Germanism has been a power against which the Emperor William II has had to strive frequently throughout his reign. For it has never hesitated to force him into paths and into positions which were perilous to the theory of monarchical authority. The Kaiser has resented the pressure of public opinion in directing the affairs of the Empire. Pan-Germanism has been a striking example of democracy, endeavouring to have a say in governmental policies. The Naval and Army Leagues, the German Colonial Society, and the Pan-Germanic Society are private groups, irresponsible from the standpoint of the Government. They have declared the governmental programs for an increase in armaments insufficient, and have bitterly denounced and attacked them from the point of view exactly opposite to that of the Socialists. The Pan-Germanic Society refused to recognize the treaty concluded between Germany and France after the Agadir incident. Said Herr Klaas at the Hanover Conference on April 15, 1912: "We persist in considering Morocco as the country which will become in the future, let us hope the near future, the colony for German emigration." The same intractable spirit was shown in Dr. Pohl's address at the Erfurt Congress in September, 1912.

We hear much about the Kaiser and the military party precipitating war. A review of the German newspapers during the past few years will convince any fair-minded reader that German public opinion, standing constantly behind the Pan-Germanists, has frequently made the German Foreign Office act with a much higher hand in international questions than it would have acted if left to itself, and that German public opinion, from highest classes to lowest, is for this war to the bitter finish. It is the war of the people, intelligently and deliberately willed by them. The statement that a revolution in Germany, led by the democracy to dethrone the Kaiser or to get him out of the clutches of the military party, would put an end to the war, is foolish and pernicious. For it leads us to false hopes. It would be much nearer the truth to say that if the Kaiser had not consented to this war, he would have endangered his throne.

The principle of the Weltpolitik, imposed upon European diplomacy by the German nation in the assembling of the Conference of Algeciras, was that no State should be allowed to disturb the existing political and territorial status quo of any country still free, in any part of the world, without the consent of the other Powers. This Weltpolitik would have the natural effect, according to Karl Lamprecht, in his Zur Jüngsten Deutschen Vergangenheit, of endangering a universal and pitiless competition among the seven Great Powers in which the weakest would eventually be eliminated.

CHAPTER III
THE "BAGDADBAHN"

In the development of her Weltpolitik, the most formidable, the most feasible, and the most successful conception of modern Germany has been the economic penetration of Asiatic Turkey. She may have failed in Africa and in China. But there can be no doubt about the successful beginning, and the rich promise for the future, of German enterprises in the Ottoman Empire.

The countries of sunshine have always exercised a peculiar fascination over the German. His literature is filled with the Mediterranean and with Islam. From his northern climate he has looked southward and eastward back towards the cradle of his race, and in imagination has lived over again the Crusades. As long as Italy was under Teutonic political influence, the path to the Mediterranean was easy. United Italy and United Germany were born at the same time. But while the birth of Italy threatened to close eventually the trade route to the Mediterranean to Germany, the necessity of a trade route to the south became more vital than ever to the new German Confederation from the sequences of the union.

When her political consolidation was completed and her industrial era commenced, Germany began to look around the world for a place to expand. There were still three independent Mohammedan nations—Morocco, Persia, and Turkey. In Morocco she found another cause for conflict with France than Alsace-Lorraine. In Persia and Turkey, she faced the bitter rivalry of Russia and Great Britain.

The rapid decline of the Ottoman Empire, and the fact that its sovereign was Khalif of the Moslem world, led German statesmen to believe that Constantinople was the best place in the world to centre the efforts of their diplomacy in the development of the Weltpolitik. Through allying herself with the Khalif, Germany would find herself able to strike eventually at the British occupation of India and Egypt, and the French occupation of Algeria and Tunis, not only by joining the interests of Pan-Islamism and Pan-Germanism, but also by winning a place in Morocco opposite Gibraltar, a place in Asia Minor opposite Egypt, and a place in Mesopotamia opposite India.

The certainty of economic success helped to make the political effort worth while, even if it came to nothing. For Asia Minor and Mesopotamia are countries that have been among the most fertile and prosperous in the whole world. They could be so again. The present backward condition of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia is due to the fact that these countries have had no chance to live since they came under Ottoman control, much less to develop their resources proportionately to other nations. The natives have been exploited by the Turkish officials and by foreign holders of concessions. Frequently concessions have been sought to stop, not to further, development. If there have been climatic changes to account for lack of fertility in Asia Minor, this is largely due to deforestation. Ibn Batutah, the famous Moorish traveller of the first half of the fourteenth century, and Shehabeddin of Damascus, his contemporary, have left glowing accounts of the fertility and prosperity of regions of Asia Minor, now hopelessly arid, as they existed on the eve of the foundation of the Ottoman Empire. Not only have all the trees been cut down, but the roots have been torn up for fuel! One frequently sees in the markets of Anatolian towns the roots of trees for sale. The treatment of trees is typical of everything else. The country has had no chance. In Mesopotamia, the new irrigation schemes are not innovations of the twentieth century, but the revival of methods of culture in vogue thousands of years before Christ.

The Romans and Byzantines improved their inheritance. The Osmanlis ruined it.

In addition to sunshine and romance, political advantages, and prospects of making money, another influence has attracted the Germans to the Ottoman Empire. There is a certain affinity between German and Osmanli. The Germans have sympathy with the spirit of Islam, as they conceive it to be interpreted in the Turk. They admire the yassak of the Turk, which is the counterpart of their verboten. The von Moltke who later led Prussia to her great victories had at the beginning of his career an intimate knowledge of the Turkish army. He admired intensely the blind and passive obedience of the Turk to authority, his imperturbability under misfortune and his fortitude in facing hardship and danger. "Theirs not to reason why: theirs but to do and die" is a spirit which German and Turk understand, and show, far better than Briton, with all due respect to Tennyson. A Briton may obey, but he questions all the same, and after the crisis is over he demands a reckoning. Authority, to the Anglo-Saxon, rests in the body politic, of which each individual is an integral—and ineffaceable—part.

The Turkish military and official cast is like that of the Germans in three things: authority rests in superiors unaccountable to those whom they command; the origin of authority is force upholding tradition; and the sparing of human life and human suffering is a consideration that must not be entertained when it is a question of advancing a political or military end. I have seen both at work, and have seen the work of both; so I have the right to make this statement. For all that, I have German and Turkish friends, and deep affection for them, and deep admiration for many traits of character of both nations. The trouble is that the people of Germany and the people of Turkey allow their official and military castes to do what their own instincts would not permit them to do. The passivity of the Turk is natural: it is his religion, his background, and his climate. The passivity of the German is inexcusable. He will not exorcise the devil out of his own race. It must be done for him.

In 1888, a group of German financiers, backed by the Deutsche Bank, which was to have so powerful a future in Turkey, asked for the concession of a railway line from Ismidt to Angora. The construction of this line was followed by concessions for extension from Angora to Cæsarea and for a branch from the Ismidt-Angora line going south-west from Eski Sheir to Konia. The extension to Cæsarea was never made. That was not the direction in which the Germans wanted to go. The Eski Sheir-Konia spur became the main line. The Berlin-Bagdad-Bassorah "all rail route" was born. The Germans began to dream of connecting the Baltic with the Persian Gulf. The Balkan Peninsula was to revert to Austria-Hungary, and Asia Minor and Mesopotamia to Germany. The south Slavs and the populations of the Ottoman Empire would be dispossessed (the philosopher Haeckel actually prophesied this in a speech in 1905 before the Geographical Society of Jena). Russia would be cut off from the Mediterranean. This was the Pan-Germanist conception of the Bagdadbahn.

From the moment the first railway concession was granted to Germans in Asia Minor, which coincided with the year of his accession, Wilhelm II has been heart and soul with the development of German interests in the Ottoman Empire. His first move in foreign politics was to visit Sultan Abdul Hamid in 1889, when he was throwing off the yoke of Bismarck. This visit was the beginning of an intimate connection between Wilhelmstrasse and the Sublime Porte which has never been interrupted—excepting for a very brief period at the beginning of the First Balkan War. The friendship between the Sultan and the Kaiser was not in the least disturbed by the Armenian massacres. The hecatombs of Asia Minor passed without a protest. In fact, five days after the great massacre of August, 1896, in Constantinople, where Turkish soldiers shot down their fellow-citizens under the eyes of the Sultan and of the foreign ambassadors, Wilhelm II sent to Abdul Hamid for his birthday a family photograph of himself with the Empress and his children.

In 1898, the Kaiser made his second voyage to Constantinople. This voyage was followed by the concession extending the railway from Konia to the Persian Gulf. It was the beginning of the Bagdadbahn in the official and narrower sense. After this visit of the Kaiser to Abdul Hamid, the pilgrimage was continued to the Holy Land. At Baalbek, there is a stone of typically German taste, set in the wall of the great temple, to commemorate the visit of the man who dreamed he would one day be master of the modern world. If this inscription seems a sacrilege, what name have we for the large gap in the walls of Jerusalem made for his triumphal entry to the Holy City? The great Protestant German Church, whose corner-stone was laid by his father in 1869, was solemnly inaugurated by the Kaiser. As solemnly, he handed over to Catholic Germans the title to land for a hospital and religious establishment on the road to Bethlehem. Still solemnly, at a banquet in his honour in Damascus, he turned to the Turkish Vali, and declared: "Say to the three hundred million Moslems of the world that I am their friend." To prove his sincerity he went out to put a wreath upon the tomb of Saladin.

Wilhelm II at Damascus is reminiscent of Napoleon at Cairo. Egypt and Syria and Mesopotamia have always cast a spell over men who have dreamed of world empires; and Islam, as a unifying force for conquest, has appealed to the imagination of others before the present German Kaiser. I have used the word "imagination" intentionally. There never has been any solidarity in the religion of Mohammed; there is none now; there never will be. The idea of community of aims and community of interests is totally lacking in the Mohammedan mind. Solidarity is built upon the foundation of sacrifice of self for others. It is a virtue not taught in the Koran, nor ever developed by any Mohammedan civilizations. The failure of all political organisms of Mohammedan origin to endure and to become strong has been due to the fact that Mohammedans have never felt the necessity of giving themselves for the common weal. The virility of a nation is in the virile service of those who love it. If there is no willingness to serve, no incentive to love, how can a nation live and be strong?

The revelation of Germany's ambition by the granting of the concession from Konia to the Persian Gulf, and the application of the German financiers for a firman constituting the Bagdad Railway Company, led to international intrigues and negotiations for a share in the construction of the line through Mesopotamia. It would be wearisome and profitless to follow the various phases of the Bagdad question. Germany did not oppose international participation in the concession. The expense of crossing the Taurus and the dubious financial returns from the desert sections influenced the Germans to welcome the financial support of others in an undertaking that they would have found great difficulty in financing entirely by their own capital. The Bagdadbahn concession was granted in 1899: the firman constituting the company followed in 1903.

Russia did not realize the danger of German influence at Constantinople, and of the eventualities of the German "pacific penetration" in Asia Minor. She adjusted the Macedonian question with Emperor Franz Josef in order to have a free hand in Manchuria, and she made no opposition to the German ambitions. She needed the friendly neutrality of Germany in her approaching struggle with Japan. Once the struggle was begun, Russia found herself actually dependent upon the goodwill of Germany. It was not the time for Petrograd to fish in the troubled waters of the Golden Horn.

The situation was different with Great Britain. The menace of the German approach to the Persian Gulf was brought to the British Foreign Office just long enough before the Boer crisis became acute for a decision to be made. Germany had sent engineers along the proposed route of her railway. She had neglected to send diplomatic agents!

The proposed—in fact the only feasible—terminus on the Persian Gulf was at Koweit. Like the Sultan of Muscat, the Sheik of Koweit was practically independent of Turkey. While showing deference to the Sultan as Khalif, Sheik Mobarek resisted every effort of the Vali of Bassorah to exercise even the semblance of authority over his small domain. In 1899, Colonel Meade, the British resident of the Persian Gulf, signed with Mobarek a secret convention which assured to him "special protection," if he would make no cession of territory without the knowledge and consent of the British Government. The following year, a German mission, headed by the Kaiser's Consul General at Constantinople, arrived in Koweit to arrange the concession for the terminus of the Bagdadbahn. They were too late. The door to the Persian Gulf was shut in the face of Germany.

Wilhelm II set into motion the Sultan. The Sublime Porte suddenly remembered that Koweit was Ottoman territory, and began to display great interest in forcing the Sheik to recognize the fact. A Turkish vessel appeared at Koweit in 1901. But British warships and British bluejackets upheld the independence of Koweit! Since the Constitution of 1908, all the efforts of the Young Turks at Koweit have been fruitless. Germany remains blocked.

British opposition to the German schemes was not limited to the prevention of an outlet of the Bagdadbahn at Koweit. In 1798, the East India Company established a resident at Bagdad to spy upon and endeavour to frustrate the influence of the French, just beginning to penetrate towards India through the ambition of Napoleon to inherit the empire of Alexander. Since that time, British interests have not failed to be well looked after in Lower Mesopotamia. After the Lynch Brothers, in 1860, obtained the right of navigating on the Euphrates, the development of their steamship lines gradually gave Great Britain the bulk of the commerce of the whole region, in the Persian as well as the Ottoman hinterland of the Gulf. In 1895, German commerce in the port of Bushir was non-existent, while British commerce surpassed twelve million francs yearly. In 1905, the market was shared about equally between Great Britain and Germany. In 1906, the Hamburg-American Line established a service to Bassorah. British merchants began to raise the cry that if the Bagdadbahn appeared the Germans would soon have not only the markets of Mesopotamia but also that of Kermanshah. The Lynch Company declared that the Bagdadbahn would ruin their river service, and their representations were listened to at London, despite the absurdity of their contention. The Lynches were negotiating with Berlin also. This mixture of politics and commerce in Mesopotamia is a sordid story, which does not improve in the telling.

The revolution of 1908 did not injure the German influence at Constantinople as much as has been popularly supposed. The Germans succeeded during the first troubled year in keeping in with both sides through the genius of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, in spite of the Bosnia-Herzegovina affair. Germany was fortunately out of the Cretan and Macedonian muddles, in which her rivals were hopelessly entangled. Mahmud Shevket pasha was always under German influence, and the Germans had Enver bey, "hero of liberty," in training at Berlin. German influence at Constantinople succeeded also in withstanding the strain of the Tripolitan War, although it grew increasingly embarrassing as the months passed to be Turkey's best friend and at the same time the ally of Italy! During the first disastrous period of the war of the Balkan Allies against Turkey, it seemed for the time that the enemies of Germany controlled the Sublime Porte. But the revolver of Enver bey in the coup d'état of January, 1913, brought once more the control of Turkish affairs into hands friendly to Germany. They have remained there ever since.

Germany strengthened her railway scheme, and her hold on the territories through which it was to pass, by the accord with Russia at Potsdam in 1910.

The last clever attack of British diplomacy on the Bagdadbahn was successfully met. In tracing the extension of the railway beyond Adana, it was suggested to the Department of Public Works that the cost of construction would be greatly reduced and the usefulness of the line increased, if it passed by the Mediterranean littoral around the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta. Then the control of the railway would have been at the mercy of the British fleet. When the "revised" plans went from the Ministry of Public Works to the Ministry of War, it was not hard for the German agents to persuade the General Staff to restore the original route inland across the Amanus, following the old plan agreed upon in the time of Abdul Hamid. More than that, the Germans secured concessions for a branch line from Aleppo to the Mediterranean at Alexandretta, and for the construction of a port at Alexandretta. The Bagdadbahn was to have a Mediterranean terminus at a fortified port, and Germany was to have her naval base in the north-east corner of the Mediterranean, eight hours from Cyprus and thirty-six hours from the Suez Canal! This was the revenge for Koweit.

A month before the Servian ultimatum, Germany had contracted to grant a loan to Bulgaria, one of the conditions of which was that Germany be allowed to build a railway to the Ægean across the Rhodope Mountains to Porto Laghos, and to construct a port there, six hours from the mouth of the Dardanelles. There was a panic in Petrograd.

The events in Turkey since the opening of the war are too recent history and as yet too little understood to dwell upon. But the reception accorded to the Goeben and Breslau at the Dardanelles, their present[[1]] anomalous position in "closed waters" in defiance of all treaties, the abolition of the foreign post-offices, the unilateral decision to abrogate the capitulations—all these straws show in which direction the wind is blowing on the Bosphorus. A successful termination of the German campaign in France, which at this writing seems most improbable (in spite of the fact that the Germans are at Compiègne and their aëroplanes pay us daily visits), would certainly draw Turkey into the war—and to her ruin.[[2]]

[[1]] October, 1914.

[[2]] This chapter was written before the sudden and astonishing acts of war by Turkey in sinking a Russian ship and bombarding Russian Black Sea ports on October 29, 1914.

On the other hand, the German reliance upon embarrassing the French and British in their Moslem colonies through posing as the defenders of Islam and Islam's Khalif has not been well-founded. On the battlefield of France, thousands of followers of Mohammed from Africa and Asia are fighting loyally under the flags of the Allies. The Kaiser, for all his dreams and hopes, has not succeeded in getting a single Mohammedan to draw his sword for the combined causes of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Islamism. Have the three hundred million Moslems forgotten the declaration of Damascus?

In seeking for the causes of the present conflict, it is impossible to neglect Germany in the Ottoman Empire. As one looks up at Pera from the Bosphorus, the most imposing building on the hill is the German Embassy. It dominates Constantinople. There has been woven the web that has resulted in putting Germany in the place of Great Britain to prevent the Russian advance to the Dardanelles, in putting Germany in the place of Russia to threaten the British occupation of India and the trade route to India, and in putting Germany in the place of Great Britain as the stubborn opponent of the completion of the African Empire of France. The most conspicuous thread of the web is the Bagdadbahn. In the intrigues of Constantinople, we see develop the political evolution of the past generation, and the series of events that made inevitable the European war of 1914.

CHAPTER IV
ALGECIRAS AND AGADIR

In 1904, an accord was made between Great Britain and France in regard to colonial policy in northern Africa. Great Britain recognized the "special" interests of France in Morocco in exchange for French recognition of Great Britain's "special" interests in Egypt. There was a promise to defend each other in the protection of these interests, but no actual agreement to carry this defence beyond the exercise of diplomatic pressure. The accord was a secret one. Its exact terms were not known until the incident of Agadir made necessary its publication in November, 1911.

But that there was an accord was known to all the world. Germany, who had long been looking with alarm upon the extension of French influence in Morocco, found in 1905 a favourable moment for protest. Russia had suffered humiliation and defeat in her war with Japan. Neither in a military nor a financial way was she at that moment a factor to be reckoned with in support of France. Great Britain had not recovered from the disasters to her military organization of the South African campaign. Her domestic politics were in a chaotic state. The Conservative Ministry was losing ground daily in bye elections; the Irish question was coming to the front again.

German intervention in Morocco was sudden and theatrical. On March 31, 1905, a date of far-reaching importance in history, Emperor William entered the harbour of Tangier upon his yacht, the Hohenzollern. When he disembarked, he gave the cue to German policy by saluting the representative of the Sultan, with peculiar emphasis, as the representative of an independent sovereign. Then, turning to the German residents in Morocco who had gathered to meet him, he said: "I am happy to greet in you the devoted pioneers of German industry and commerce, who are aiding in the task of keeping always in a high position, in a free land, the interests of the mother country."

The repercussion of this visit to Tangier in France and in Great Britain was electrical. It seemed to be, and was, a direct challenge on the part of Germany for a share in shaping the destinies of Morocco. It was an answer to the Anglo-French accord, in which Germany had been ignored. Great Britain was in no position to go beyond mere words in the standing behind France. France knew this. So did Germany. After several months of fruitless negotiations between Berlin and Paris, on June 6th, it was made plain to France that there must be a conference on the Moroccan question.

M. Delcassé, at that time directing with consummate skill and courage the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, urged upon the Cabinet the necessity for accepting Germany's challenge. But the Cabinet, after hearing the sorrowful confessions of the Ministers of War and Navy, and learning that France was not ready to fight, refused to accept the advice of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. M. Delcassé resigned. A blow had been struck at French prestige.

For six months the crisis continued in an acute stage. The chauvinistic—or shall we say, patriotic?—elements were determined to withstand what they called the Kaiser's interference in the domestic affairs of France. But France seemed isolated at that moment, and prudence was the part of wisdom. M. Rouvier declared to the Chamber of Deputies on December 16th: "France cannot be without a Moroccan policy, for the form and direction which the evolution of Morocco will take in the future will influence in a decisive manner the destinies of our North African possessions." France agreed to a conference, but won from Germany the concession that France's special interests and rights in Morocco would be admitted as the basis of the work of the conference.

On January 17, 1906, a conference of European States, to which the United States of America was admitted, met to decide the international status of Morocco. For some time the attitude of the German delegates was uncompromising. They maintained the Kaiser's thesis as set forth at Algiers: the complete independence of Morocco, and sovereignty of her Sultan. But they finally yielded, and acknowledged the right of France and Spain to organize in Morocco an international police.

The Convention was signed on April 7th. It provided for: (1) police under the sovereign authority of the Sultan, recruited from Moorish Moslems, and distributed in the eight open ports; (2) Spanish and French officers, placed at his disposal by their governments, to assist the Sultan; (3) limitation of the total effective of this police force from two thousand to two thousand five hundred, of French and Spanish officers, commissioned sixteen to twenty, and non-commissioned thirty to forty, appointed for five years; (4) an Inspector General, a high officer of the Swiss army, chosen subject to the approval of the Sultan, with residence at Tangier; (5) a State Bank of Morocco, in which each of the signatory Powers had the right to subscribe capital; (6) the right of foreigners to acquire property, and to build upon it, in any part of Morocco; (7) France's exclusive right to enforce regulations in the frontier region of Algeria and a similar right to Spain in the frontier region of Spain; (8) the preservation of the public services of the Empire from alienation for private interests.

Chancellor von Bülow's speech in the Reichstag on April 5, 1906, was a justification of Germany's attitude. It showed that the policy of Wilhelmstrasse had been far from bellicose, and that Germany's demands were altogether reasonable. The time had come, declared the Chancellor, when German interests in the remaining independent portions of Africa and Asia must be considered by Europe. In going to Tangier and in forcing the conference of Algeciras, Germany had laid down the principle that there must be equal opportunities for Germans in independent countries, and had demonstrated that she was prepared to enforce this principle.

When one considers the remarkable growth in population, and the industrial and maritime evolution of Germany, this attitude cannot be wondered at, much less condemned. Germany, deprived by her late entrance among nations of fruitful colonies, was finding it necessary to adopt and uphold the policy of trying to prevent the pre-emption, for the benefit of her rivals, of those portions of the world which were still free.

Neither France nor Spain had any feeling of loyalty toward the Convention of Algeciras. However much may have been written to prove this loyalty, the facts of the few years following Algeciras are convincing. After 1908, Spain provoked and led on by the tremendous expenditures entailed upon her by the Riff campaigns began to consider the region of Morocco in which she was installed as exclusively Spanish territory. French writers have expended much energy and ingenuity in proving the disinterestedness of French efforts to enforce loyally the decisions of Algeciras. But they have explained, they have protested, too much. There has never been a moment that France has not dreamt of the completion of the vast colonial empire in North Africa by the inclusion of Morocco. It has been the goal for which all her military and civil administrations in Algeria and the Sahara have been working. To bring about the downfall of the Sultan's authority, not only press campaigns were undertaken, but anarchy on the Algerian frontier was allowed to go on unchecked, until military measures seemed justifiable.

In a similar way, the German colonists of Morocco did their best to bring about another intervention by Germany. Their methods were so despicable and outrageous that they had frequently to be disavowed officially. In 1910, the German Foreign Office found the claims of Mannesmann Brothers to certain mining privileges invalid, because they did not fulfil the requirements of the Act of Algeciras. But the Mannesmann mining group, as well as other German enterprises in Morocco, were secretly encouraged to make all the trouble they could for the French, while defending the authority of the Sultan. The Casablanca incident is only one of numerous affronts which the French were asked to swallow.

Great Britain had her part, though not through official agents, in the intrigues. There is much food for thought in the motives that may, not without reason, be imputed to the publication in the Times of a series of stories of Moroccan anarchy, and of Muley Hafid's cruelties.

In the spring of 1911, it was realized everywhere in Europe that the Sultan's authority was even less than it had been in 1905. The Berber tribes were in arms on all sides. In March, accounts began to appear of danger at Fez, not only to European residents, but also to the Sultan. The reports of the French Consul, and the telegrams of correspondents of two Paris newspapers, were most alarming. On April 2d, it was announced that the Berber tribes had actually attacked the city and were besieging it. Everything was prepared for the final act of the drama.

A relief column of native troops under Major Bremond arrived in Fez on April 26th. The very next day, an urgent message for relief having been received from Colonel Mangin in Fez, Colonel Brulard started for the capital with another column. Without waiting for further word, a French army which had been carefully prepared for the purpose, entered Morocco under General Moinier. On May 21st, Fez was occupied by the French. They found that all was well there with the Europeans and with the natives. But, fortunately for the French plans, Muley Hafid's brother had set himself up at Mequinez as pretender to the throne. The Sultan could now retain his sovereignty only by putting himself under the protection of the French army. Morocco had lost her independence!

Germany made no objection to the French expeditionary corps in April. She certainly did not expect the quick succession of events in May which brought her face to face with the fait accompli of a strong French army in Fez. As soon as it was realized at Berlin that the fiction of Moroccan independence had been so skilfully terminated, France was asked "what compensation she would give to Germany in return for a free hand in Morocco." The pourparlers dragged on through several weeks in June. France refused to acknowledge any ground for compensation to Germany. She maintained that the recent action in Morocco had been at the request of the Sultan, and that it was a matter entirely between him and France.

Germany saw that a bold stroke was necessary. On July 1st, the gunboat Panther went to Agadir, a port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. To Great Britain and to France, the dispatch of the Panther was represented as due to the necessity of protecting German interests, seeing that there was anarchy in that part of Morocco. But the German newspapers, even those which were supposed to have official relations with Wilhelmstrasse, spoke as if a demand for the cession of Mogador or some other portion of Morocco was contemplated. The Chancellor explained to the Reichstag that the sending of the Panther was "to show the world that Germany was firmly resolved not to be pushed to one side."

But in the negotiations through the German Ambassador in Paris, it was clear that Germany was playing a game of political blackmail. The German Foreign Office shifted its claims from Morocco to concessions in Central Africa. On July 15th, Germany asked for the whole of the French Congo from the sea to the River Sanga, and a renunciation in her favour of France's contingent claims to the succession of the Belgian Congo. The reason given to this demand was, that if Morocco were to pass under a French protectorate, it was only just that compensation should be given to Germany elsewhere. France, for the moment, hesitated. She definitely refused to entertain the idea of compensation as soon as she had received the assurance of the aid of Great Britain in supporting her against the German claims.

On July 1st, the German Ambassador had notified Sir Edward Grey of the dispatch of the Panther to Agadir "in response to the demand for protection from German firms there," and explained that Germany considered the question of Morocco reopened by the French occupation of Fez, and thought that it would be possible to make an agreement with Spain and France for the partition of Morocco. On July 4th, Sir Edward Grey, after a consultation with the Cabinet, answered that Great Britain could recognize no change in Morocco without consulting France, to whom she was bound by treaty. The Ambassador then explained that his Government would not consider the reopening of the question in a European conference, that it was a matter directly between Germany and France, and that his overture to Sir Edward Grey had been merely in the nature of a friendly explanation.

Germany believed that the constitutional crisis in Great Britain was so serious that the hands of the Liberal Cabinet would be tied, and that they would not be so foolhardy as to back up France at the moment when they themselves were being so bitterly assailed by the most influential elements of the British electorate on the question of limiting the veto power of the House of Lords. It was in this belief that Germany on July 15th asked for territorial cessions from France in Central Africa. Wilhelmstrasse thought the moment well chosen, and that there was every hope of success.

But the German mentality has never seemed to appreciate the frequent lesson of history, that the British people are able to distinguish clearly between matters of internal and external policy. Bitterly assailed as a traitor to his country because he advocates certain changes of laws, a British Cabinet Minister can still be conscious of the fact that his bitterest opponents will rally around him when he takes a stand on a matter of foreign policy. This knowledge of admirable national solidarity enabled Mr. Lloyd George on July 21st, the very day on which the King gave his consent to the creation of new peers to bring the House of Lords to reason, at a Mansion House banquet, to warn Germany against the danger of pressing her demands upon France. The effect, both in London and Paris, was to unify and strengthen resistance. It seemed as if the Panther's visit to Agadir had put Germany in the unenviable position of having made a threat which she could not enforce.

But the ways of diplomacy are tortuous. Throughout August and September, Germany blustered and threatened. In September, several events happened which seemed to embarrass Russia and tie her hands, as in the first Moroccan imbroglio of 1905. For Premier Stolypin was assassinated at Kiev on September 14th; the United States denounced its commercial treaty with Russia on account of the question of Jewish passports; and the Shuster affair in Persia occupied the serious attention of Russian diplomacy. Had it not been for the splendidly loyal and scrupulous attitude of the British Foreign Office towards Russia in the Persian question, Germany might have been tempted to force the issue with France.

German demands grew more moderate, but were not abandoned. For members of the House of Commons, of the extreme Radical wing in the Liberal party, began to put the British Government in an uncomfortable position. Militarism, entangling alliances with a continental Power, the necessity for agreement with Germany,—these were the subjects which found their way from the floor of the House of Commons to the public press. A portion of the Liberal party which had to be reckoned with believed that Germany ought not to have been left out of the Anglo-French agreement. So serious was the dissatisfaction, that the Government deemed it necessary to make an explanation to the House. Sir Edward Grey explained and defended the action of the Cabinet in supporting the resistance of France to Germany's claims. The whole history of the negotiation was revealed. The Anglo-French agreement of 1904 was published for the first time, and it was seen that this agreement did not commit Great Britain to backing France by force of arms.

Uncertainty of British support had the influence of bringing France to consent to treat with Germany on the Moroccan question. Two agreements were signed. By the first, Germany recognized the French protectorate in Morocco, subject to the adhesion of the signers of the Convention of Algeciras, and waived her right to take part in the negotiations concerning Moroccan spheres of influence between Spain and France. On her side, France agreed to maintain the open door in Morocco, and to refrain from any measures which would hinder the legitimate extension of German commercial and mining interests. By the second agreement, France ceded to Germany, in return for German cessions, certain territories in southern and eastern Kamerun.

There was a stormy Parliamentary and newspaper discussion, both in France and Germany, over these two treaties. No one was satisfied. The treaties were finally ratified, but under protest.

In France, the Ministry was subject to severe criticism. There was also some feeling of bitterness—perhaps a reaction from the satisfaction over Mr. Lloyd George's Mansion House speech—in the uncertainty of Great Britain's support, as revealed by the November discussions in the House of Commons. This uncertainty remained, as far as French public opinion went, until Great Britain actually declared war upon Germany in August, 1914.

In Germany, the Reichstag debates revealed the belief that the Agadir expedition had, on final analysis, resulted in a fiasco. An astonishing amount of enmity against Great Britain was displayed. It was when Herr Heydebrand made a bitter speech against Great Britain, and denounced the pacific attitude of the German Government, in the Reichstag session of November 10th, that the Crown Prince made public his position in German foreign policy by applauding loudly.

The aftermath of Agadir, as far as it affected Morocco, resulted in the establishment of the French Protectorate, on March 30, 1912. The Sultan signed away his independence by the Treaty of Fez. Foreign legations at Fez ceased to exist, although diplomatic officials were retained at Tangier. France voted the maintenance of forty thousand troops in Morocco "for the purposes of pacification." The last complications disappeared when, on November 27th, a Franco-Spanish Treaty was signed at Madrid, in which the Spanish zones in Morocco were defined, and both states promised not to erect fortifications or strategic works on the Moroccan coast.

But the aftermath of Agadir in France and Germany has been an increase in naval and military armaments, and the creation of a spirit of tension which needed only the three years of war in the Ottoman Empire to bring about the inevitable clash between Teuton and Gaul. Taken in connection with the recent events in Alsace and Lorraine, and the voting of the law increasing military service in France to three years, the logical sequence of events is clear.

CHAPTER V
THE PASSING OF PERSIA

The weakness of the Ottoman Empire and of Morocco served to bring the colonial and commercial aspiration of Germany into conflict with other nations of Europe. The recent fortunes of Persia, the third—and only other—independent Mohammedan state, have also helped to make possible the general European war.

The first decade of the twentieth century brought about in Persia, as in Turkey, the rise of a constitutional party, which was able to force a despotic sovereign to grant a constitution. The Young Persians had in many respects a history similar to that of the Young Turks. They were for the most part members of influential families, who had been educated in Europe, or had been sent into exile. They had imbibed deeply the spirit of the French Revolution from their reading, and had at the same time developed a narrow and intense nationalism. But to support their revolutionary propaganda, they had allied themselves during the period of darkness with the Armenians and other non-Moslems. As Salonika, a city by no means Turkish, was the foyer of the young Turk movement, so Tabriz, capital of the Azerbaidjan, a city by no means Persian, was the centre of the opposition to Persian despotism.

Young Turks, Young Persians, Young Egyptians, Young Indians, and Young Chinese have shown to Europe and America the peril—and the pity—of our western and Christian education, when it is given to eastern and non-Christian students. They are born into the intellectual life with our ideas and are inspired by our ideals, but have none of the background, none of the inheritance of our national atmosphere and our family training to enable them to live up to the standards we have put before them. Their disillusionment is bitter. They resent our attitude of superiority. They hate us, even though they feign to admire us. Their jealousy of our institutions leads them to console themselves by singling out and forcing themselves to see only the weak and vulnerable points in our civilization. Educated in our universities, they return to their countries to conspire against us. The illiterate and simple Oriental, who has never travelled, is frequently the model of fidelity and loyalty and affection to his Occidental master or friend. But no educated non-Christian Oriental, who has travelled and studied and lived on terms of equality with Europeans or Americans in Europe or America, can ever be a sincere friend. The common result of social contact and intellectual companionship is that he becomes a foe,—and conceals the fact. Familiarity has bred more than contempt.

The Young Persians would have no European aid. They waited, and suffered. Finally, after a particularly bad year from the standpoint of financial exactions, the Moslem clergy of the North were drawn into the Young Persia movement. A revolution, in which the Mohammedan mullahs took part, compelled the dying Shah, Muzaffereddin, to issue a decree ordering the convocation of a medjliss (committee of notables) on August 5, 1906. This improvised Parliament, composed only of delegates of the provinces nearest the capital, drafted a constitution which was promulgated on New Year's Day, 1907. The following week, Muzaffereddin died and was succeeded by his son, Mohammed Ali Mirza, a reactionary of the worst type.

Mohammed Ali had no intention of putting the Constitution into force. A serious revolution broke out in Tabriz a few weeks after his accession. He was compelled to acknowledge the Constitution granted by his father. In order to nullify its effect, however, the new Shah called to the Grand Vizierate the exiled Ali Asgar Khan, whom he believed to be strong enough to overrule the wishes of the Parliament. The Constitutionalists formed a society of fedavis to prevent the return to absolutism. At their instigation, Ali Asgar Khan was assassinated. The country fell into an anarchic state.

Constitutional Persia, as much because of the inexperience of the Constitutionalists as of the ill-will of the Shah, was worse off than under the despotism of Muzaffereddin. There was no money in the treasury. The peasants would not pay their taxes. One can hardly blame them, for not a cent of the money ever went for local improvements or local government. Throughout Persia, even in the cities, life was unsafe. The Persians, no more than the Turks, could call forth from the ranks of their enthusiasts a progressive and fearless statesman of the type of Stambuloff or Venizelos. In their Parliament they all talked at once. None was willing to listen to his neighbour. It may have been because there was no Mirabeau. But could a Mirabeau have overcome the fatal defects of the Mohammedan training and character that made the Young Persians incapable of realizing the constitutionalism of their dreams? Every man was suspicious and jealous of his neighbour. Every man wanted to lead, and none to be led. Every man wanted power without responsibility, prestige without work, success without sacrifice.

It was at this moment that one of the most significant events of contemporary times was helped to fruition by the state of affairs in Persia. Great Britain and Russia, rivals—even enemies—in western and central Asia, signed a convention. Their conflicting ambitions were amicably compromised. Along with the questions of Afghanistan and Thibet, this accord settled the rivalry that had done much to keep Persia a hotbed of diplomatic intrigue like Macedonia ever since the Crimean War.

In regard to Persia, the two Powers solemnly swore to respect its integrity and its independence, and then went on to sign its death warrant, by agreeing upon the question of "the spheres of influence." In spite of all sophisms, this convention marked the passing of Persia as an independent state. Persia is worse off than Morocco and Egypt. For one master is better than two!

Here enters Germany. For many years German merchants had looked upon Persia as they looked upon Morocco and Turkey. Here were the legitimate fields for commercial expansion. Probably there were also dreams of political advantages to be gained later. In their dealings with the three Moslem countries that were still "unprotected" when they inaugurated their Weltpolitik, the Germans had been attentive students of British policy in the days of her first entry into India and to Egypt. There were many Germans who honestly believed that their activities in these independent Moslem countries would only give them "their place under the sun," and a legitimate field for the overflow of their population and national energy, but that it would also be a distinct advantage to the peace of the world. Great Britain and Russia and France had already divided up between them the larger part of Asia and Africa. In the process, Great Britain had recently come almost to blows with both her rivals. If Germany stepped in between them, would this not prevent a future conflict? But the rivals "divided up." Germany was left out in the cold. It is not a very far cry from Teheran and Koweit and Fez to Liège and Brussels and Antwerp. Belgium is paying the bill.

The Anglo-Russian convention of August 31, 1907, was the first of three doors slammed in Germany's face. The Anglo-French convention of April 8, 1904, had been an attempt to do this. But by Emperor William's visit to Tangiers in 1905, Germany got in her foot before the door was closed! In Persia there was no way that she could intervene directly to demand that Great Britain and Russia bring their accord before an international congress.

Germany began to work in Persia through two agencies. She incited Turkey to cross the frontier of the Azerbaidjan, and to make the perfectly reasonable request that the third limitrophe state should be taken into the pourparlers which were deciding the future of Persia. Then she sent her agents among the Nationalists, and showed them how terrible a blow this convention was to their new constitutionalism. Just at the moment when they had entered upon a constitutional life, Great Britain and Russia had conspired against their independence, went the German thesis.

If only there had been a sincerity for the Constitution in the heart of the Shah, and an ability to establish a really constitutional régime in the leaders of Young Persia, the Anglo-Russian accord might have proved of no value. But—unfortunately for Persia and for Germany—the Shah, worked upon skilfully by Russian emissaries and by members of his entourage, who were paid by Russian gold, attempted a coup d'état against the Parliament in December, 1907. He failed to carry it through. With a smile on his lips and rage in his heart, he once more went through the farce of swearing to be a good constitutional ruler. But in June, 1908, he succeeded in dispersing the Parliament by bombarding the palace in which it sat.

It would be wearisome to go into the story of the revolts and anarchy in all parts of Persia in 1908 and 1909. After a year of fighting and Oriental promises, of solemn oaths and the breaking of them, the constitutionalists finally drove Mohammed Ali from Teheran in July, 1909. The Shah saved his life by taking refuge in the Russian legation. A few days later, he took the road to exile. He has since reappeared in Persia twice to stir up trouble in the north. On both occasions, it was when the Russians were finding it hard to justify their continued occupation of the northern provinces.

Mohammed Ali was succeeded by his son Ali Mirza, a boy of eleven years, who was still too young to be anything more than a mere plaything in the hands of successive regents.

The civil strife in Persia gave Great Britain and Russia the excuse for entering the country. In accord with Great Britain, Russia sent an expedition to occupy Tabriz on April 29, 1909. Later, Russian troops occupied Ardebil, Recht, Kazvin, and other cities in the Russian sphere of influence. Owing to the anarchy in the south during 1910, Great Britain prepared to send troops "to protect the safety of the roads for merchants." This was not actually done, for conditions of travel slightly ameliorated. But Persia has rested since under the menace of a British occupation.

Every effort made to bring order out of chaos in Persia has failed. Serious attempts at financial reform were undertaken by an American mission, under the direction of a former American official in the Philippine Islands.

The new American Treasurer-General would not admit that the Anglo-Russian accord of 1907 was operative in Persia. One day in the summer of 1911, I was walking along the Galata Quay in Constantinople. I heard my name called from the deck of a vessel just about to leave for Batum. Perched on top of two boxes containing typewriters, was a young American from Boston, who was going out to help reform the finances of Persia. I had talked to him the day before concerning the extreme delicacy and difficulty of the task of the mission whose secretary he was. But his refusal to admit the political limitations of Oriental peoples made it impossible for him to see that constitutional Persia was any different, or should be treated any differently, from constitutional Massachusetts.

From the sequel of the story, it would seem that Mr. Shuster had the same attitude of mind as his secretary. He refused to appoint fiscal agents in the Russian "sphere" on any other ground than personal fitness and ability. Russia protested. Mr. Shuster persisted. A march on Teheran to expel the Americans was threatened. Persia yielded and gave up the American mission—and her independence.

When Germany saw that the Russian troops had entered northern Persia with the consent of Great Britain, and had come to stay, there was nothing for her to do but to treat with Russia.

In November, 1910, when the Czar was visiting the Kaiser, Russian and German ministers exchanged views concerning the ground upon which Germany would agree to the fait accompli of Russia's exclusive political interests in Northern Persia, and the Russian military occupation. Satisfactory bases were found for an agreement between Russia and Germany concerning their respective interests in Persia and Asiatic Turkey. The Accord of Potsdam, as it is called, was made in the form of a note presented by the Russian Government to Germany, and accepted by her. Russia declared that she would in no way oppose the realization of the project of the Bagdad railway up to the Persian Gulf, and that she would construct to the border of Persia a railway to join a spur of the Bagdad railway from Sadije to Khanikin. In return for this, Germany was to promise not to construct railway lines outside of the Bagdad railway zone, to declare that she had no political interest in Persia, and to recognize that "Russia has special interests in Northern Persia from the political, strategic, and economic points of view." The German Government was to abandon any intention of securing a concession for a trans-Persian railway. On the other hand, Russia promised to maintain in Northern Persia the "open door," so that German commercial interests should not be injured.

The accord between Russia and Germany was badly received everywhere. France feared that Germany was trying to weaken the Franco-Russian alliance. Great Britain did not look with favour upon a recognition by Russia of German interests in Asiatic Turkey. The Sublime Porte felt that Russia and Germany had shown a disregard for the elementary principles of courtesy in discussing and deciding questions that were of tremendous importance to the future of Turkey without inviting the Sublime Porte to take part in the negotiations. Turkey in the Potsdam accord was ignored as completely as Morocco had been in the Algeciras Convention and Persia in the Russo-British accord.

The Potsdam stipulations brought prominently before Europe the possible significance of Germany's free hand in Anatolian and Mesopotamian railway constructions. It also aroused interest in the possibility of an all-rail route from Calais to Calcutta, in which all the Great Powers except Italy would participate.

The trans-Persian and all other railway schemes in Persia came to nothing. Between 1872 and 1890 twelve district railway projects had received concessions from the Persian Government. One of these, the Reuter group, actually started the construction of a line from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. A French project for a railway from Trebizond to Tabriz had gained powerful financial support. All these schemes were frustrated by Russian diplomacy. In 1890, Russia secured from the Persian Government the exclusive right for twenty-one years to construct railways in Northern Persia. Needless to say, no lines were built. Russia had all she could do with her trans-Siberian and trans-Caucasian schemes. But she deliberately acted the dog in the manger. By preventing private groups from building railways in Persia which she would not build herself, Russia has retarded the economic progress, and is largely responsible for the financial, military, and administrative weakness, of contemporary Persia. By the accords of 1907 with Great Britain and 1911 with Germany, Russia secured their connivance in still longer continuing this shameful stagnation. To this day no railroad has been built in the Shah's dominions.

Just a month before the outbreak of the European war, the boy Shah of Persia was solemnly crowned at Teheran. It was an imposing and pathetic ceremony. The Russians and British saw to it that full honour should be given to the sovereign of Persia. The pathos of the event was in the fact that the Russian and British legations at Teheran paid the expenses of the coronation. The Shah received his crown from the hands of his despoilers. A similar farce was enacted a little while before in Morocco. Turkey alone of Moslem nations remains.

The last effort of Persia to shake off the Russian octopus was made on October 8, 1914, when Russia was requested once more to withdraw her troops from the Azerbaijan. The Russian Minister at Teheran, without going through the form of referring the request to Petrograd, answered that the interests of Russia and other foreign countries could be safeguarded only by the continued occupation. To this response his British colleague gave hearty assent.

The importance of the passing of Persia is two-fold. It shows how in one more direction Germany found herself shut out from a possible field of expansion. Through the weakness of Persia, Great Britain and Russia, after fifty years of bitter struggle, were able to come to a satisfactory compromise. It was in Persia that their animosity was buried, and that co-operation of British democracy and Russian autocracy in a war against Germany was first envisaged. The failure of the Persian constitutional Government was a tremendous blow to Germany. It strengthened the bases of the Triple Entente. For the events of 1908 and 1909 put the accord to severe test, and proved that it was built upon a solid foundation. The agony of one people is often the joy of another. Has Persia suffered vicariously that France may be saved?

CHAPTER VI
THE PARTITIONERS AND THEIR POLES[*]

[*] This chapter has not been written without giving consideration to the Russian point of view. There is an excellent book on Russia since the Japanese War (from 1906 to 1912) by Peter Polejaïeff.

When Russia, Austria, and Prussia partitioned Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, there were at the most six million Poles in the vast territory stretching from the Baltic nearly to the Black Sea. Of these a large number, especially in Eastern Prussia and in Silesia, had already lost their sense of nationality. Poland was a country of feudal nobles, whose inability to group under a dynasty for the formation of a modern state, made the disappearance of the kingdom an inexorable necessity in the economic evolution of Europe, and of ignorant peasants, who were indifferent concerning the political status of the land in which they lived.

To-day there are twenty million Poles. Although they owe allegiance to three different sovereigns, they are more united than ever in their history. For their national feeling has developed in just the same way that the national feeling of Germans and Russians has developed, by education primarily, and by that remarkable tendency of industrialism, which has grouped people in cities, and brought them into closer association. This influence of city life upon the destinies of Poland comes to us with peculiar force when we realize that since the last map of Europe was made Warsaw has grown from forty thousand to eight hundred thousand, Lodz from one thousand to four hundred thousand, Posen from a few hundreds to one hundred and fifty thousand, Lemberg and Cracow from less than ten thousand to two hundred thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand respectively. These great cities (except Lodz, which Russia foolishly allowed to become an outpost of Pan-Germanism in the heart of a Slavic population) are the foyers of Polish nationalism.

The second and third dismemberments of Poland (1793 and 1795) were soon annulled by the Napoleonic upheaval. The larger portion of Poland was revived in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. The Congress of Vienna, just one hundred years ago, made what the representatives of the partitioning Powers hoped would be a definite redistribution of the unwelcome ghost stirred up by Napoleon. Poznania was returned to Prussia, and in the western end of Galicia a Republic of Cracow was created. The greater portion of Poland reverted to Russia, not as conquered territory, but as a separate state, of which the Czar assumed the kingship and swore to preserve the liberties. The unhappiness, the unrest, the agitation, among the Poles of the Muscovite Empire, just as among the Finns, came from the breaking of the promises by Russia to Europe when these subjects of alien races were allotted to her.

The story of modern Poland is not different from that of any other nationalistic movement. A sense of nationality and a desire for racial political unity are not the phenomena which have been the underlying causes of the evolution of Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, in Germany, in Poland, in Alsace-Lorraine, in Finland, among the various races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Balkan Peninsula, as well as in Turkey and Persia, the underlying cause of political agitation, of rebellions and of revolutions has been the desire to secure freedom from absolutism. Nationalism is simply the tangible outward manifestation of the growth of democracy. There are few national movements where separatism could not have been avoided by granting local self-government. Mixed populations can live together under the same government without friction, if the lesser races are granted social, economic, and political equality. But nations that have achieved their own unity and independence through devotion to a nationalistic movement have shown no mercy or wisdom with smaller and less fortunate races under their domination. The very methods that European statesmen have fondly believed were necessary for assimilation have proved fatal to it.

The Polish question, as we understand it to-day, has little connection with the Polish revolutions of 1830 and of 1863. These movements against the Russian Government were conducted by the same elements of protest against autocracy that were at work in the larger cities and universities throughout Europe during the middle of the nineteenth century. Nationalism was the reason given rather than the cause that prompted. The revolutions were unsuccessful because they were not supported by the nation. The mass of the people were indifferent to the cause, just as in other countries similar revolutions against despotism failed for lack of real support. The apathy of the masses has always been the bulwark of defence for autocracy and reactionary policies. Popular rights do not come to people until the masses demand them. Education alone brings self-government. This is the history of the evolution of modern Europe.

The Poles as a nation began to worry their partitioners in the decade following the last unsuccessful revolution against Russia. To understand the contemporary phases of the Polish question, it is necessary for us to follow first its three-fold development, as a question of internal policy in Russia, Germany, and Austria. Only then is its significance as an international question clear.

THE POLES SINCE 1864 IN RUSSIA

The troubles of Russia in her relationship to the Poles have come largely from the fact that the distinction between Poland proper, inhabited by Poles, and the provinces which the Jagellons conquered but never assimilated, was not grasped by the statesmen who had to deal with the aftermath of the revolution. What was possible in one was thought to be possible in the other. What was vital in one was believed to be vital in the other. In the kingdom of Poland, as it was bestowed upon the Russian Czar by the Congress of Vienna, there were massed ten million Poles who could be neither exterminated nor exiled. Nor was there a sound motive for attempting to destroy their national life. The kingdom of Poland was not an essential portion of the Russian Empire, and was not vitally bound to the fortunes of the Empire. So unessential has the kingdom of Poland been to Russia, and so fraught with the possibilities of weakness to its owner, that patriotic and far-sighted Russian publicists have advocated its complete autonomy, its independence or its cession to Germany. Because it was limitrophe to the territories occupied by the Poles of the other partitioners, there was constantly danger of weakening the defences of the empire and of international complications. Through failing to treat these Poles in such a way that they would be a loyal bulwark against her enemies, Russia has done irreparable harm to herself as well as to them.

The Polish question in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine was a totally different matter. These provinces had been added to Russia in her logical development towards the west and the south-west. Their possession was absolutely essential to the existence of the Empire. Their population was not Polish, but Lithuanian, Ruthenian, and Russian. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the acquisition of these territories made possible the entrance of Russia into the concert of European nations. They had been conquered by Poland during the period of her greatness, and had naturally been lost by her when she became weak. In these portions of Greater Poland, the Poles were limited to the landowning class, and to the more prosperous artisans in the cities and villages. They were the residue of an earlier conquering race that had never assimilated the country. They had abused their power, and were heartily disliked. These provinces were vital to Russia, and she was able to carry out the policy of uprooting the Poles. Their villages were burned, their fortunes and their lands confiscated, the landed proprietors deported to Siberia, and others so cruelly persecuted that, when their churches and schools were closed and they found themselves forbidden to speak their language outside of their own homes, they emigrated. In Lithuania, the Lithuanian language was also proscribed. The Russians had no intention of blotting out a Polish question in order to make place for a Lithuanian one.

Where the Poles were few in number, these measures, which were exactly the same as the Poles had employed themselves in the same territories several centuries before, were successful. The peasants were glad to see their traditional persecutors get a taste of their own medicine. It was not difficult to make these provinces Russian. They have gradually been assimilated into the Empire. In all fairness, one can hardly condemn the Russian point of view, as regards the Poles in Lithuania, Podolia, and the Ukraine. Only youthful Polish irredentists still dream of the restoration of the Empire of the Jagellons.

In the kingdom of Poland, the situation was entirely different. This huge territory had been given to Russia by the Congress of Vienna upon the solemn assurance that it was to be governed as a separate kingdom by the Romanoffs. There was no thought in the Congress of Vienna of the disappearance of the Poles as a separate nationality from the map of Europe. But the autonomy of Poland was suppressed after the rebellion of 1830.

After the rebellion of 1863, Russia tried to assimilate the kingdom of Poland as well as the Polish marches. The repression was so severe that Polish nationalism was considered dead. The peasants had been indifferent to the movement. Not only had they failed to support it, but they had frequently shown themselves actually hostile to it.

It was because the nobles and priests were believed to be leaders of nationalistic and separatist movements, not only in Poland but in other allogeneous portions of the composite Empire, that Czar Alexander II emancipated the serfs. The policy of every autocratic government, when it meets the first symptoms of unrest in a subject race, is to strike at their church and their aristocracy. The most efficient way to weaken the power of the nobles is to strengthen the peasants. Alexander himself may have been actuated by motives of pure humanity, but his ministers would never have allowed the ukase to be promulgated, had they not seen in it the means of conquering the approaching revolution in Poland. For the moment it was an excellent move, and accomplished its purpose. The Polish peasants were led to believe that the Czar was their father and friend and champion against the exactions of the church and landowner. Was not their emancipation proof of this?

But in the long run the emancipation of the serfs proved fatal to Russian domination in Poland. For the advisers of Alexander had not realized that freemen would demand and attend schools, and that schools, no matter how careful the surveillance and restrictions might be, created democrats. Democrats would seize upon nationalism to express their aspiration for self-government. The emancipation of the serfs, launched as a measure to destroy Poland, has ended in making it. Emancipation created Polish patriots. It was a natural and inevitable result. The artificial aid of a governmental persecution helped and hastened this result. The Irishman expressed a great truth when he said that there are things that are not what they are.

A flock of hungry Russian functionaries descended upon Poland in 1864. They took possession of all departments of administration. The Polish language was used in courts only through an interpreter, and was forbidden as the medium of instruction in schools. No Polish signs were tolerated in the railways or post-offices. In the parts of the kingdom where there were bodies of the Lithuanians, their nationalism was encouraged, and they were shown many favours, in contradiction to the policy adopted towards the Lithuanians of Lithuania. Catholics who followed the Western Rite were forced to join the national church. There was a clear intention to assimilate as much as possible the populations of the border districts of Poland.

After thirty years of repression, Russia had made no progress in Poland. In 1897, Prince Imeretinsky wrote to the Czar that the policy of the Government had failed. Polish national spirit, instead of disappearing, had spread remarkably among the peasant classes. The secret publication and importation of unauthorized journals and pamphlets had multiplied. The number of cases brought before the courts for infraction of the "law of association," which forbade unlicensed public gatherings and clubs, had so increased that they could not be heard. Heavy fines and imprisonment seem to have had no deterring effect.

Could Russia hope to struggle against the tendencies of modern life? Free press and free speech are the complement of education. When men learn to read, they learn to think, and can be reached by propaganda. When men increase in prosperity, they begin to want a voice in the expenditure of the money they have to pay for taxes. When men come together in the industrial life of large cities, they form associations. No government, no system of spies or terrorism, no laws can prevent propaganda in cities. From 1864 to 1914, the kingdom of Poland has become more Polish than ever before in her history. Instead of a few students and dreamers, fascinated by the past glories of their race, instead of a group of landowners and priests, thinking of their private interests and of the Church, there is awakened a spirit of protest against Russian despotism in the soul of a race become intelligently nationalistic.

The issue between Russia and her Poles has become clearer, and for that reason decidedly worse, since the disastrous war with Japan. The Poles have demanded autonomy in the fullest sense of the word. The Russians have responded by showing that it is their intention to destroy Poland, just as they intend to destroy Finland. There is an analogy between the so-called constitutional régimes in Russia and Turkey. In each Empire, the granting of a constitution was hailed with joy by the various races. These races, who had been centres of agitation, disloyalty, and weakness, were ready to co-operate with their governments in building up a large, broad, comprehensive, national life upon the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But in both Empires, the dominant race let it soon be understood that the Constitution was to be used for a destructive policy of assimilation. In the Ottoman Empire, the Constitution was a weapon for destroying the national aspirations of subject races. In Russia it has been the same.

After the Russo-Japanese War, Czar Nicholas and his ministers had their great opportunity to profit by the lessons of Manchuria. But the granting of a constitution was a pure farce. Blind to the fact that the enlightened Poles were interested primarily in political reforms, and in securing equity and justice for the kingdom of Poland, instead of for the advancement of a narrow and theoretical nationalistic ideal, the Russians repulsed the proffered loyalty of the Poles to a free and constitutional Russian Empire. In the second Duma, Dmowski and other Polish deputies unanimously voted the supplies for strengthening the Russian army. They stated that the Poles were willing to cast their lot loyally and indissolubly with constitutional Russia. Were they not brethren, and imbued with the same Pan-Slavic idea? Was it not logical to look to Russia as the defender of all the Slavs from Teutonic oppression?

But Poland, like Finland, was to continue to be the victim of Russian bureaucracy and of an intolerant nationalism which the Russians were beginning to feel as keenly and as arrogantly as the Prussians. Is the Kaiser, embodying the evils of militarism, more obnoxious and more dangerous to civilization than the Czar, standing for the horrors of bureaucratic despotism and absolutism? Have not the Armenian massacres, ordered from Constantinople, and the Jewish pogroms, ordered from Petrograd, associated Christian Czar with Mohammedan Sultan at the beginning of the twentieth century?

The first deliberate violation of the integrity of the kingdom of Poland was sanctioned by the Russian Duma in the same session in which it approved violation of Russian obligations to Finland. A law separating Kholm from the kingdom of Poland was voted on July 6, 1912. The test of the law declared that Kholm was still to be regarded as a portion of the kingdom of Poland, but to be directly attached to the Ministry of the Interior without passing by the intermediary of the Governor-General of Warsaw; and to preserve the Polish adaptation of the Code Napoléon for its legal administration, but to have its court of appeal at Kief.

The elections of 1913 from the kingdom of Poland to the Duma gave a decided setback to the party of Dmowski, who had so long and so ably pled for a policy of Pan-Slavism through accommodation with Russia. The law concerning Kholm had been the response of the Duma to Dmowski's olive branch. The moderates were discredited. But the failure of the radical nationalists to conciliate the Jewish element caused their candidates to lose both at Warsaw and Lodz.

The birth of an anti-Semitic movement has been disastrous to Polish solidarity during recent years. The Polish nationalists suspected the Jews of working either for German or Russian interests. They were expecially bitter against the Litvak, or Lithuanian and south Russian Jews, who had been forced by Russia to establish themselves in the cities of Poland. Poland is one of the most important pales in the Empire. The Jewish population is one-fifth of the total, and enjoys both wealth and education in the cities. Their educated youth had been courageous and forceful supporters of Polish nationalism. Before the Russian intrigues of the last decade and the introduction of these non-Polish Jews, there had never been a strong anti-Semitic feeling in Poland. The Polish protests against the encroachment of the Russians upon their national liberties have been greatly weakened by their antagonism to the Jews. The anti-Semitic movement, which has carried away both the moderate party of Dmowski and the radical nationalists, as was expected, has played into the hand of Russia.

The Muscovite statesmen, while endeavouring to use the Balkan Wars for the amalgamation of south Slavic races under the wing of Russia against Austria have treated the Poles as if they were not Slavs. During 1913 and the first part of 1914, the policy of attempting to russianize the Poles has proved disastrous to their feeling of loyalty to the Empire. The government announced definitely that the kingdom of Poland would be "compensated" for the loss of Kholm by a law granting self-government to Polish cities. This promise has not been kept. The municipal self-government project presented to the Duma was as farcical in practical results as all democratic and liberal legislation which that impotent body has been asked to pass upon.

THE POLES SINCE 1867 IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

The disappearance of Austria from Germany after the battle of Sadowa led to the organization of a new state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We must divorce in our mind the Austria before 1867 from the Austria-Hungary of the Dual Monarchy. The political situation changed entirely when Austrians and Hungarians agreed to live together and share the Slavic territories of the Hapsburg Crown. Austria no longer had need of her Galicians to keep the Hungarians in check. But there was equally important work for them to do.

The Austrians have always treated the Poles very well. Galicia, which had been Austria's share in the partition of Poland, was given local self-government, with its own Diet, and proper representation in the Austrian Reichsrath. Poles were admitted in generous numbers to the functions of the Empire.