Emile Dillon - England and Germany

It is now fairly evident that the present war is but a violent phase in the unfolding of a grandiose ground idea – the subjugation of Europe by the Teuton – which was being steadily realized ever since the close of the Franco-German campaign of 1870. It is likewise clear that, despite her “swelled head,” Germany’s estimate of her ability to try issues with all continental Europe was less erroneous than the faith of her destined victims in their superior powers of resistance. The original plan, having been limited to the continental states, was upset by Great Britain’s co-operation with France and Russia. But, despite this additional drag, Germany has achieved the remarkable results recorded in recent history. And with some show of reason she looks forward to successes more decisive still. For in her mode of conceiving the problem and her methods of solving it lie the secret of her progress. But there, too, is to be found the counter-spell by which that progress may be effectually checked; and it is only by mastering that secret and applying it to the future conduct of the struggle that we can hope to ward off the dangers that encompass us.

Germany is like no other State known to human history. She exercises the authority of an infallible and intolerant Church while disposing of the flawless mechanism of an absolute State. She is armed with the most deadly engines of destruction that advanced science can forge, and in order to use them ruthlessly she mixes the subtlest poisons to corrupt the wells of truth and debase the standards of right and wrong. And this she can do without the least qualms of conscience, in virtue of her firm belief in the amorality of political conduct. Her members at home and abroad, whose number is not fewer than a hundred and twenty millions, form a political community of whose compactness, social sense and single-mindedness the annals of the human race offer no other example. All are fired by the same zeal, all obey the same lead, all work for the same object. She sent and is still sending forth missionaries of her political faith, preachers of the gospel of the mailed fist, to every country in which their services may prove helpful. Diplomatists, journalists, bankers, contrabandists, social agitators, spies, incendiaries, assassins and courtesans, willing to offer up their energies and their lives in order to circumvent, despoil or slay the supposed enemies of their race, address themselves each one to his own allotted task and discharge it conscientiously.

Those German colonists abroad are the eyes and arms and tongues of the monster organism of which the brain-centre is Berlin. They endeavoured to stir up dissension between class and class in Russia, France, Britain, Belgium, to plant suspicion in the breast of Bulgaria and Roumania, to create a prussophile atmosphere in Greece, Switzerland and Sweden, and to bring pressure to bear on the Government of the United States in the hope of fomenting discord between the American and British peoples. They have occupied posts of influence in the Vatican, are devoted to the Moslem Caliph, cultivate friendship with the Senussi and the ex-Khedive of Egypt, are intriguing with the Negus of Abyssinia, and spreading lying rumours, false news and vile calumnies throughout the world. During the years that passed between the war of 1870 and the outbreak of the present European struggle, that stupendous organism contrived by those and kindred means to possess itself of the principal strongholds of international opinion and influence, the centres of the chief religions, the press, the exchanges, the world’s “key industries,” the great marts of commerce and the banks. It has friends at every Court, in every Cabinet, in every European Parliament, and its agents are alert and active in every branch of the administration of foreign lands. And while suppleness marked their dealings with others, they were inflexible only in their fidelity to the Teuton cause. Thus in Russia they were conservative and autocratic in their intercourse with the ruling spheres, and revolutionary in their relations with the Socialists and working classes; in France and Britain they were democrats and pacifists; in Italy they were rabid nationalists or neutralists according to the political sentiments of their environment; in Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Persia staunch friends of Islam. They intrigued against dynasties, conspired against cabinets, reviled influential publicists, fostered strikes and tumults, set political parties and entire states by the ears, dispelled grounded suspicions and armed various bands of incendiaries and assassins.

But in spite of cogged dice and poisoned weapons, the comprehensive way in which the enterprise was conceived, the consummate skill with which it was wrought out towards a satisfactory issue, the whole-heartedness of the nation which, although animated by a fiery patriotism that fuses all parties and classes into one, is yet governed with military discipline, offer a wide field for imitation and emulation. For the changes brought about by the first phases of the war are but fruits of seed sown years ago and tended ever since with unfailing care, and unless suitable implements, willing hands and combined energies are employed in digging them up and casting them to the winds, the second crop may prove even more bitter than the first.

On the historic third of August when war was formally declared, its nature was as little understood by the Allies as had been its imminence. The statesmen who had to full-front its manifestations were those who had persistently refused to believe in its possibility, and who had no inkling of its nature and momentousness. Most of them, judging other peoples by their own, had formed a high opinion of the character of the German nation and of the pacific intentions of its Government, and continued to ground their policy in war time on this generous estimate, which even when upset by subsequent experience still seems to linger on in a subconscious but not inoperative state. At first their preparations to meet the emergency hardly went beyond the expedients to which they would have resorted for any ordinary campaign. In this they resembled a sea-captain who should make ready to encounter a gale when his ship was threatened by a typhoon. Hence their unco-ordinated efforts, their chivalrous treatment of a dastardly foe, their high-minded refusal to credit the circumstantial stories of sickening savagery emanating first from Belgium and then from France, their gentle remonstrances with the enemy, their carefully worded arguments, their generous understatement of their country’s case, and their suppression of any emotion among their own folk akin to hatred or passion. In an insular people for whom peace was an ideal, neighbourliness a sacred duty, and the psychology of foreign nations a sealed book, this way of reading the bearings of the new situation and adjusting them to the nation’s requirements was natural and fateful.

To the few private individuals who had the advantage of experience and were gifted with political vision the crisis presented itself under a different aspect. Some of them had foreseen and foretold the war, basing their forecast on the obvious policy of the German Government and on the overt strivings of the German nation. They had depicted that nation as intellectual and enterprising, abundantly equipped with all the requisites for an exhausting contest, fired with enthusiasm for a single idea – the subjugation of the world – and devoid of ethical scruple. And in the clarion’s blast which suddenly resounded on the pacific air they recognized the trump of doom for Teuton Kultur or European civilization, and proclaimed the utter inadequacy of ordinary methods to put down this titanic rebellion against the human race. That has been the gist of every opinion and suggestion on the subject put forward by the writer of these lines since the outbreak of the war.