Book: The Audacious War

C >> Clarence W. Barron >> The Audacious War





For the causes of this most audacious war of 1914 one must study, not
only Germany and her imperial policy, but most particularly her
relations with Russia. These relations are very little understood in
America, but they become vital to us when open to public view.

Disregarding all the counsels of Bismarck and the previous reigning
Hohenzollerns, the present Kaiser has steadily offended Russia. War
with her within two years was inevitable, irrespective of any causes in
relation to Servia. Russia knew this and was diligently preparing for
it. Germany--the war party of Germany--knew it and with supreme
audacity determined through Austria first to smash Servia and put the
Balkan States and Turkey in alignment with herself for this coming war
with Russia.

Sergius Witte is one of the great statesmen of Russia. He formulated
the programme for the Siberian railroad and Russian Asiatic
development. The party of nobles opposed to him arranged that he
should receive the humiliation of an ignoble peace with Japan, under
which it was expected that Russia would have to pay a huge indemnity.

But when Witte arrived at the naval station at Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, to make the famous treaty with Japan, his first declaration
was, "Not one kopeck for indemnity." He won out and returned in
triumph to Russia.

But during the progress of the Japanese war Germany thrust her
commercial treaties upon St. Petersburg. Goods from Russia into
Germany were taxed while German goods went under favorable terms into
Russia, with the result that Russia has had a struggle now for ten
years to keep her gold basis and her financial exchanges.

It was Witte who was sent to Berlin to protest against these proposed
treaties and secure more favorable terms. Witte made his protest and
refused to accept the German demands. Then suddenly he received
peremptory orders from the Czar to grant all the demands of Germany.
The Czar declared Russia was in no condition to have trouble with
Germany. These commercial treaties expire within two years. Russia
many months back proposed the discussion of new terms. Germany
responded that the present treaties were satisfactory to her and he
should call for their renewal.

This meant either further humiliation to Russia or war. Russia had
already suffered the affront of being forced by Germany at the point of
the bayonet to assent to the taking by Austria of Bosnia and
Herzegovina in violation of the Treaty of Berlin. The Czar realized
many months ago that Russia must now fight for her commercial life.
She would not, however, be ready for the war until 1916.

Let Americans consider what this means--a German war over commercial
tariffs--and see what, if successful in Europe, it would lead to.

The German nation is a fighting unit under the dominion of Prussia, the
greatest war state, not only of the empire, but of the world. Having
welded Germany by the Franco-Prussian war into a nation with unified
tariffs, transportation, currency, and monetary systems, Prussia has
been able to point to the war as the cause of the phenomenal prosperity
of Germany.

It is a popular fallacy in Germany that militarism makes the greatness
of a nation. Germany's prosperity did not begin with the war of 1870.
This was only the beginning of German unity which made possible unified
transportation and later unified finances and tariffs. Several years
after the war, France, which had paid an indemnity to Germany of a
thousand million dollars, or five billion francs, was found, to the
astonishment of Bismarck, more prosperous than Germany which had thus
received the expenses of her military campaign and a dot of Spandau
Tower war-reserve moneys.

In 1875 came the great Reichsbank Act, which consolidated all the
banking power of the empire. Then came her scientific tariffs which
put up the bars here, and let them down there, according as Germany
needed export or import trade in any quarter of the earth. The German
people, on a soil poorer than that of France, worked hard and long
hours for small wages. But they worked scientifically and under the
most intelligent protective tariff the world has ever seen. In a
generation they built up a foreign trade surpassing that of the United
States and reaching $4,500,000,000 per annum. By her rate of progress
she was on the way to distance England, whose ports and business were
open to her merchants without even the full English income tax. She
built the biggest passenger steamers ever conceived of and reached for
the freight carrying trade of the world. She mined in coal and iron
and built solidly of brick and stone. She put the world under tribute
to her cheap and scientific chemistry. She dug from great depths the
only potash mines in the world and from half this potash she fertilized
her soil until it laughed with abundant harvests.

The other half she sold outside so that her own potash stood her free
and a profit besides. No nation ever recorded the progress that
Germany made after the inauguration of her bank act and her scientific
tariffs. The government permitted no waste of labor, no
disorganization of industry. Capital and labor could each combine, but
there must be no prolonged strikes, no waste, no loss; they must work
harmoniously together and for the upbuilding of the empire.

Germany did not want war except as means to an end. She wanted the
fruits of her industry. She wanted her people, her trade, and her
commerce to expand over the surface of the earth, but to be still
German and to bring home the fruit of German industry.

Germany has been at war--commercial war--with the whole world now for a
generation, and in this warfare she has triumphed. Her enterprise, her
industry, and her merchants have spread themselves over the surface of
the earth to a degree little realized until her diplomacy again slipped
and the present war followed--such a war as was planned for by nobody
and not expected even by herself. She was giving long credits and
dominating the trade of South America. She had given free trade
England a fright by the stamp, "Made in Germany." She was pushing
forward through Poland into Russia to the extent that her merchants
dominated Warsaw and were spreading out even over the Siberian
railroad. Her finance was intertwined with that of London and Paris.

In the United States she was the greatest loser. Here taxes were
lowest and freedom greatest. German blood flowed in the veins of
20,000,000 Americans and not one fourth of them could she call her own.
The biggest newspaper publisher in America, William Randolph Hearst,
figured that New York was one of the big German cities of the world.
He turned his giant presses to capture the German sentiment. He spent
tens of thousands of dollars upon German cable news, devoting at times
a whole page to cable presentations from Europe which he thought would
interest Germans. But the investment proved fruitless; he found there
was in America no German sentiment such as he had reckoned upon. He
could not increase his circulation, for the German-Americans seemed
little concerned as to what happened in Berlin or Bavaria.

Prussia learned what Hearst learned, that Germans were soon lost in the
United States. She studied this exodus and the wage question and by
various arts and organizations arrested the German emigration to
America. She saw to it that employment at home was more stable. It
was figured that if the German emigration could be centralized under
the German eagle it would be to her advantage. The question was where
to get land that could be made German. Europe has for some years
expected a German dash in Patagonia, and the Europeans outside of
Germany have taken very kindly of late years to the Monroe Doctrine.
In Africa and the islands of the sea the German colonial policy has not
been a success. Dr. Dernburg as colonial secretary has many a time
stood up in the Reichstag and warned the Germans that the home military
system and rules were not adaptable to colonization in foreign parts;
that Germans must adapt themselves to foreign countries and not attempt
at first to make their manners the standard in the colonies they
undertook to dominate.

While German colonies have not yet passed beyond the experimental
stage, German tariffs and German commerce have been great successes.

The population of Russia is 166,000,000 people. This is the latest
figure I gathered from those intimate with the government at St.
Petersburg. This is just 100,000,000 more than Germany. Germany
thinks she must trade to her own advantage with the people now crowding
her eastern border.

The example of America in putting up tariff bars against "Made in
Germany" has many advocates in England and in the rest of the world.

When France, only a few years ago, was angered that Italy should sign
up in "triple alliance" with Austria and Germany, she did not dare to
attack Italy with arms, but she did attack Italy by tariff measures,
and for a time Italy and France fought--by tariffs.

What might be the position of Germany if the American protective tariff
system were expanded over the earth? In the view of some people
tariffs, taxation, and armaments go hand in hand. There is a town in
Prussia that finished payment only twenty years ago on the indemnity
Napoleon exacted from it.

Can a country afford to develop an industrial system dependent upon an
outside world and then suddenly find the outside world closed by tariff
barriers?

When an American ambassador protested against Bismarck's discriminatory
treatment of American pork, the great chancellor asked, "What have you
to talk with? You have no army or navy." "No," said the American
ambassador, "but we have the ability to build them as big as anybody.
Do you wish to tempt us?" "No," said the German chancellor, "and your
goods shall not be discriminated against."

Dr. Dernburg has given the key to the German colonial military, tariff,
and financial policy. German unity in tariffs and transportation has
made German prosperity, and Dr. Dernburg, her former colonial secretary
and now in New York, says the mouth of the Rhine and the channel ports
must be free to Germany and that Belgium must come into tariff and
transportation union with Germany. Belgium is being taxed, tariffed,
pounded, and impounded into the German empire.

There is some difference in size between Belgium and Russia, but no
difference in principle with respect to their German relations.

"World power or downfall," Bernhardi put it.




CHAPTER III

THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF THE WAR

A State with no Morals--A Peace Treaty sundered--Where Germany fails--A
Thunderbolt.


Sending his little expedition to China the Kaiser said:--

"When you encounter the enemy you will defeat him; no quarter shall be
given, no prisoners shall be taken. Let all who fall into your hands
be at your mercy. Just as the Huns one thousand years ago, under the
leadership of Attila, gained a reputation in virtue of which they still
live in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known
in such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again dare to look
askance at a German."

Belgium was made an example of. According to the German idea she
should have accepted money and not stood in the way of German progress.

German military progress is allied with German commercial progress. It
is a mistake in the conception of Germany to imagine that she wars for
the purpose of war or for the development and training of her men.

The first principle of German "Kultur" as respects the state is that
the sole business of the government is to advance the interests of the
state. No laws having been formulated in respect to the business of a
state, the government is without moral responsibility, and the laws
applicable to individual action do not apply to the state. Individuals
may do wrong, but the state cannot do wrong. Individuals may steal and
be punished therefor, but the state cannot steal. It is its business
to expand and to appropriate. Individuals may murder and be punished
for the crime, but it is the business of the state to kill for state
development or progress.

The English-speaking conception of morality is that what applies to an
individual in a community applies to the aggregate of the individuals,
that the state is only the aggregate of the individuals exercising the
natural human functions of government for law and order.

This is entirely outside the German conception. In the German
conception a government comes down from above and not up from the
people. It is not the people who rule or govern, but the government
from above rules the people, and the people must implicitly follow and
obey; thus is national progress and human progress. The whole of
Germany believes in the government of the Kaiser: that law and war flow
down through him and that neither can be questioned by the individual.
Obedience, union, efficiency, progress, and progress through war, if
necessary, are cardinal virtues.

Germany does not desire war with Russia, but German progress requires
the continuance of present tariff relations, and if war is a means to
that desirable end, war is divine.

The murder of the Crown Prince of Austria was an incident furnishing
Germany and Austria opportunity to carry out their long-conceived
programme for the extension of their influence through the growing
state of Servia.

A treaty had been arranged between Greece and Turkey, and was to have
been signed in July, which would have settled many things in respect to
Turkey and the Balkan states. Roumania and Servia were in agreement
concerning this great measure for peace in southeastern Europe.

When all was ready for the final conference and the signatures, Austria
intervened and announced her opposition. Then suddenly followed the
bombshell of the ultimatum to Servia, timed at the precise moment to
stop the signing of this Turkish treaty.

Austrian officials admitted privately as follows, and I have it
directly from parties to the negotiations:--

"We are satisfied that Servia would punish the murderers of Prince
Ferdinand if we so requested. We are satisfied she would apologize to
Austria if we requested it. But our aims go beyond. We demand that
instead of the proposed Turkish treaty the Balkan states shall come
into union with Turkey under the influence of Austria. To accomplish
this we must accept no apology, but must punish Servia. We are
satisfied that Russia is in no financial or military position to
interfere."

Germany with its enormous spy system had secured copies of the
confidential state papers of the Czar and transmitted them to Vienna.
In these were warnings, statistics, and compilations showing all the
financial and military weaknesses of Russia: that her great gold
reserve had been largely loaned out and was not available cash on hand,
as the world had been led to believe; that it would take eighteen
months more of preparation to place her military forces in position to
defend the country; that her arms and the factories to build them were
not ready.

The plans of Austria and Germany were to line up the Balkan states,
under German political and trade influences, and then within two years
to have it out with Russia and again impose the German tariffs upon
her. If France dared to come in, it would certainly be an attack, and
Italy would, under the Triple Alliance, assist to defend Austria and
Germany. Defeating Russia, Germany could, at that time or later, crush
France in the manner in which Bismarck had said she might eventually be
crushed by Germany for Germany's progress.

Then, having made more onerous tariff treaties with France than were
exacted from her in 1870 and having extended German trade and military
influence over Russia, Germany would be in a position with her navy to
try out the long desired issue with Great Britain for the control of
the seas.

Admiral Von Tirpitz told the emperor that it must be at least two years
more before the German navy would be able to try conclusions with
England.

The German plan was to take the European countries one at a time. The
German information was that every country except Germany was
unprepared, and that information was true. She was fully prepared
except in her navy.

One of the leaders among those great business Lords of England, who sit
with the Commoners in business, but in the House of Lords as respects
legislation, said to me when I spoke of the wonderful intelligence of
Germany in research and data, scientific and political: "But, don't you
think that the Germans had too much information and too little
judgment?"

In other words, they had a stomach full of facts but no capacity to
digest them. They knew as much about Ulster and perhaps more than
London as respects facts and detailed information, but they were in no
position to pass judgment upon Ulster or the unity of the British
Empire the moment there was an attack from the outside. The Germans
have dealt in materialistic facts. But with the spirit that moulds and
makes history they are all awry. With the Germans, individuals are
units and are counted from the outside, never from the inside. That is
why her diplomacy is not only a failure, but offensive: it never
differentiates among nations and peoples according to that which is
within the mind and the heart of the people.

The German Emperor directed the Austrian ultimatum to Servia, insisting
upon stronger demands than were at first proposed. Then, turning his
back upon the scene, he was able to protest that he was not
responsible. Yet the published correspondence from every capital in
Europe now shows that the German Emperor fenced off every attempt to
get Austria to modify or postpone or discuss her demands. Germany was
ready for everything except the interference of Great Britain.

A private telephone rang at five o'clock one morning in Berlin and an
American lady was informed from a social quarter that "Something
dreadful has happened." "Something awful--something undreamed of."
The American lady quickly asked, "Has the Kaiser been assassinated?" as
the tone over the telephone indicated nothing less.

The response was, "England has declared war!"

That was the most unlooked-for step in all the German calculations.

Every spy report, every diplomatic agency, military and civil, had
reported that England was out of the running: Ireland in revolution,
India in sedition, Canada, Australia, and South Africa just ready to
break away from the British yoke.

The conception of the British empire as a federation of free peoples
governing themselves, under a constitutional monarchy, is something
incomprehensible in the German idea of government. The German idea is
of colonies attached to and paying tribute to the crown, something to
be ruled over, governed, taxed, and made to serve.

Russia might go to war exposing in the field her weakness already
spread out on paper by Russian authorities, with copies in Vienna and
Berlin; but that England or Great Britain could or would fight at this
time was an impossibility; although later England was to become "The
vassal of Germany."

And the wonderment of Germany has become the wonderment of the world.
"Roll up," said Kitchener, and 2,000,000 men sprang to arms. More than
800,000 of them are on the Continent; 1,700,000 of them are in training.

"Roll up," said Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the British Exchequer;
and $1,700,000,000 of war loan is rolling into the British Treasury, a
sum one half the national debt of England and nearly twice the national
debt of the United States.

If necessary, the number of men in arms will be doubled to 4,000,000
and the enormous subscription just made to England's war loan will be
doubled and quadrupled.

The life of the empire as respects money and men is at stake, and no
sacrifice is too great. If treaties are "scraps of paper" and neutral
states are to have no rights or protection, there is no safety in the
world, no sacredness of contracts; the world is at an end and chaos
reigns.




CHAPTER IV

PEACE PROPOSALS

The Bagdad Railroad--The English Oil Concession--The German Alliance
with Turkey--Austria the Hand of Germany--The Decay of Turkey--The New
Map.


How ridiculous are American peace proposals concerning the Audacious
War of 1914 may be judged from this announcement which I am able to
make:--

The return of the French government from Bordeaux to Paris was
determined upon from two points of view: safety and political
necessity. The French people were angered that Paris should have been
deserted, but notwithstanding the political reasons, which were more
forceful than the public will be permitted to know, the return would
not have been undertaken had not the military authorities considered
the move a safe one. How safe will be evidenced by this--that at both
Bordeaux and Paris this problem was before the authorities: "Events
have now progressed so far that it is time for the Allies to consider
what will be their terms of peace. These terms must be divided into
many classes, ranging from those in which only one of the Allies has an
interest to those in which all have an interest. Of course, the latter
will be the most complex, and it is time now to begin with the
complexities of the most far-reaching situation. This is Mesopotamia
and the Bagdad railroad."

Now who in Washington knows anything about Mesopotamia or the Bagdad
railroad? Yet here is the key of the most far-reaching problem in any
peace proposals. It is because this matter can now be settled that the
plunging of Turkey into the war by Enver Bey has made all Europe
rejoice. The Germans think Turkey is another 16 1/2-inch howitzer or
"Jack Johnson" putting black smoke over the British empire. The rest
of Europe now knows the whole of Turkey is on the table, and the
carving, it is believed, will be had with no plates extended from
either Austria or Germany. For the first time the Turkish problem can
be really settled instead of patched.

Some years ago I was astonished to learn in Europe that American
banking interests, and American contracting and engineering firms in
alliance therewith, had their eyes upon Asia Minor and the possibility
of its development by American railroad enterprise. I was astonished
to learn that some people at Constantinople had authority for the use
of the name of J. P. Morgan & Co. Indeed, a railroad concession in
Asia Minor, the details of which it is not now necessary to go into,
had been arranged, I was told, and lacked only signatures. The
American people felt that the Germans were the little devils under the
table who stayed the hand of the Sultan, and kept his pen off the
parchment. Never would the signature come down on that paper, although
declared to have been many times promised.

The English were, of course, vitally interested in any railroad
concessions in Asia Minor as opening the route to the Persian Gulf and
India. Money talks with Turkey as nowhere else. The Germans had made
a great impression upon the Bosphorus. Nobody at that point in the
geography of the world could fail to see the wonderful commercial
progress of the Germans and the military power that stood behind ready
to back it up.

A concession for a railroad from the Bosphorus to Bagdad and through
Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf finally went to Germany, and the
signature of the Sultan was at the bottom of the paper. There was, of
course, the usual Oriental compromise, and the concession for the oil
fields of Mesopotamia went to the English; but the signature of the
Sultan is still lacking to that piece of paper.

English statesmen announced that the Bagdad railroad was a purely
private enterprise, financed in Germany by people associated with the
Deutsche Bank. They had later to confess that error. Germany laughed
and later openly announced that the Bagdad railroad was a Prussian
enterprise of state. In fact, this concession, which is likely to be
famous in history when the Allies win, was handed over to the German
Emperor personally by the Sultan.

Already a thousand miles of this road have been constructed through
Asia Minor to Mosul. The concession carries the mineral rights for ten
miles on either side of the railroad, except through the oil fields of
Mesopotamia, said to be among the greatest of the oil fields of the
world. They are really part of the famous Russian oil territory
between Batum and Baku, or the Black and Caspian seas, which extends
not only south into Mesopotamia but is now being developed far to the
north in the Ural Mountains of Great Russia.

Steadily the influence of Germany progressed with Turkey, now through
one channel, now through another. When the Bulgarian war broke out, it
was German guns and German officers and German money that upheld the
Turks. The French put their money on Bulgaria by bank loans to her
treasury. The Russians backed Servia. The French laughed and so did
all Europe when the Turkish troops manned by German officers were
beaten back to Constantinople and the Bosphorus.

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