After the crisis of Agadir, M. Georges Bourdon visited Germany to
make an inquiry for the Figaro newspaper into the state of
opinion there. His mission belongs to the period between Agadir and the
outbreak of the first Balkan war. He interviewed a large number of
people, statesmen, publicists, professors, politicians. He does not sum
up his impressions, and such summary as I can give here is no doubt
affected by the emphasis of my own mind. His book,[1] however, is now
translated into English, and the reader has the opportunity of
correcting the impression I give him.
Let us begin with Pangermanism, on which M. Bourdon has a very
interesting chapter. He feels for the propaganda of that sect the
repulsion that must be felt by every sane and liberal-minded man:—
Wretched, choleric Pangermans, exasperated and unbalanced,
brothers
of all the exasperated, wretched windbags whose tirades, in all
countries, answer to yours, and whom you are wrong to count your
enemies! Pangermans of the Spree and the Main, who, on the other
side
of the frontier, receive the fraternal effusions of Russian
Pan-Slavism,
Italian irredentism, English imperialism, French nationalism!
What is it
that you want?
They want, he replies, part of Austria, Switzerland, Flanders,
Luxemburg, Denmark, Holland, for all these are “Germanic” countries!
They want colonies. They want a bigger army and a bigger navy. “An
execrable race, these Pangermans!” “They have the yellow skin, the dry
mouth, the green complexion of the bilious. They do not live under the
sky, they avoid the light. Hidden in their cellars, they pore over
treaties, cite newspaper articles, grow pale over maps, measure angles,
quibble over texts or traces of frontiers.” “The Pangerman is a
propagandist and a revivalist.” “But,” M. Bourdon adds, “when he shouts
we must not think we hear in his tones the reverberations of the German
soul.” The organs of the party seemed few and unimportant. The party
itself was spoken of with contempt. “They talk loud,” M. Bourdon was
told, “but have no real following; it is only in France that people
attend to them.” Nevertheless, M. Bourdon concluded they were not
negligible. For, in the first place, they have power to evoke the
jingoism of the German public—a jingoism which the violent patriotism
of the people, their tradition of victorious force, their education,
their dogma of race, continually keep alive. And, secondly, the
Government, when it thinks it useful, turns to the Pangermans for
assistance, and lets loose their propaganda in the press. Their
influence thus waxes and wanes, as it is favoured, or not, by
authority. “Like the giant Antaeus,” a correspondent wrote to M.
Bourdon, “Pangermanism loses its force when it quits the soil of
government.”
It is interesting to note, however, that the Pangerman propaganda
purports to be based upon fear. If they urge increased armaments, it is
with a view to defence. “I considered it a patriotic duty,” wrote
General Keim, “in my quality of president of the German League for
Defence, to demand an increase of effectives such that France should
find it out of the question to dream of a victorious war against us,
even with the help of other nations.” “To the awakening of the national
sentiment in France there is only one reply—the increase of the German
forces.” “I have the impression,” said Count Reventlow, “that a warlike
spirit which is new is developing in France. There is the danger.” Thus
in Germany, as elsewhere, even jingoism took the mask of necessary
precaution. And so it must be, and will be everywhere, as long as the
European anarchy continues. For what nation has ever admitted an
intention or desire to make aggressive war? M. Bourdon, then, takes
full account of Pangermanism. Nor does he neglect the general
militaristic tendencies of German opinion. He found pride in the army,
a determination to be strong, and that belief that it is in war that
the State expresses itself at the highest and the best, which is part
of the tradition of German education since the days of Treitschke. Yet,
in spite of all this, to which M. Bourdon does full justice, the
general impression made by the conversations he records is that the
bulk of opinion in Germany was strongly pacific. There was apprehension
indeed, apprehension of France and apprehension of England. “England
certainly preoccupies opinion more than France. People are alarmed by
her movements and her armaments.” “The constant interventions of
England have undoubtedly irritated the public.” Germany, therefore,
must arm and arm again. “A great war may be delayed, but not prevented,
unless German armaments are such as to put fear into the heart of every
possible adversary.”
Germany feared that war might come, but she did not want it—that,
in sum, was M. Bourdon's impression. From soldiers, statesmen,
professors, business men, again and again, the same assurance. “The
sentiment you will find most generally held is undoubtedly that of
peace.” “Few think about war. We need peace too much.” “War! War
between us! What an idea! Why, it would mean a European war, something
monstrous, something which would surpass in horror anything the world
has ever seen! My dear sir, only madmen could desire or conceive such a
calamity! It must be avoided at all costs.” “What counts above all here
is commercial interest. All who live by it are, here as elsewhere,
almost too pacific.” “Under the economic conditions prevailing in
Germany, the most glorious victory she can aspire to—it is a soldier
who says it—is peace!”
The impression thus gathered from M. Bourdon's observations is
confirmed at every point by those of Baron Beyens, who went to Berlin
as Belgian minister after the crisis of Agadir.[2] Of the world of
business he says:—
All these gentlemen appeared to be convinced partisans of
peace....
According to them, the tranquillity of Europe had not been for a
moment
seriously menaced during the crisis of Agadir.... Industrial
Germany
required to live on good terms with France. Peace was necessary
to
business, and German finance in particular had every interest in
the
maintenance of its profitable relations with French finance.[3]
At the
end of a few months I had the impression that these pacifists
personified
then—in 1912—the most common, the most widely spread, though
the least
noisy, opinion, the opinion of the majority, understanding by the
majority, not that of the governing classes but that of the
nation
as a whole (p. 172).
The mass of the people, Beyens held, loved peace, and dreaded war.
That was the case, not only with all the common people, but also with
the managers and owners of businesses and the wholesale and retail
merchants. Even in Berlin society and among the ancient German nobility
there were to be found sincere pacifists. On the other hand, there was
certainly a bellicose minority. It was composed largely of soldiers,
both active and retired; the latter especially looking with envy and
disgust on the increasing prosperity of the commercial classes, and
holding that a “blood-letting would be wholesome to purge and
regenerate the social body”—a view not confined to Germany, and one
which has received classical expression in Tennyson's “Maud.” To this
movement belonged also the high officials, the Conservative parties,
patriots and journalists, and of course the armament firms, deliberate
fomenters of war in Germany, as everywhere else, in order to put money
into their pockets. To these must be added the “intellectual flower of
the universities and the schools.” “The professors at the universities,
taken en bloc, were one of the most violent elements in the
nation.” “Almost all the young people from one end of the Empire to the
other have had brought before them in the course of their studies the
dilemma which Bernhardi summed up to his readers in the three words
'world-power or decadence.' Yet with all this, the resolute partisans
of war formed as I thought a very small minority in the nation. That is
the impression I obstinately retain of my sojourn in Berlin and my
excursions into the provinces of the Empire, rich or poor. When I
recall the image of this peaceful population, journeying to business
every week-day with a movement so regular, or seated at table on
Sundays in the cafes in the open air before a glass of beer, I can find
in my memories nothing but placid faces where there was no trace of
violent passions, no thought hostile to foreigners, not even that
feverish concern with the struggle for existence which the spectacle of
the human crowd has sometimes shown me elsewhere.”
A similar impression is given by the dispatch from M. Cambon, French
Ambassador to Berlin, written on July 30, 1913.[4] He, too, finds
elements working for war, and analyses them much as Baron Beyens does.
There are first the “junkers,” or country squires, naturally military
by all their traditions, but also afraid of the death-duties “which are
bound to come if peace continues.” Secondly, the “higher
bourgeoisie”—that is, the great manufacturers and financiers, and, of
course, in particular the armament firms. Both these social classes are
influenced, not only by direct pecuniary motives but by the fear of the
rising democracy, which is beginning to swamp their representatives in
the Reichstag. Thirdly, the officials, the “party of the pensioned.”
Fourthly, the universities, the “historians, philosophers, political
pamphleteers, and other apologists of German Kultur.” Fifthly,
rancorous diplomatists, with a sense that they had been duped. On the
other hand, there were, as M. Cambon insists, other forces in the
country making for peace. What were these? In numbers the great bulk,
in Germany as in all countries. “The mass of the workmen, artisans and
peasants, who are peace-loving by instinct.” Such of the great nobles
as were intelligent enough to recognize the “disastrous political and
social consequences of war.” “Numerous manufacturers, merchants, and
financiers in a moderate way of business.” The non-German elements of
the Empire. Finally, the Government and the governing classes in the
large southern States. A goodly array of peace forces! According to M.
Cambon, however, all these latter elements “are only a sort of
make-weight in political matters with limited influence on public
opinion, or they are silent social forces, passive and defenceless
against the infection of a wave of warlike feeling.” This last sentence
is pregnant. It describes the state of affairs existing, more or less,
in all countries; a few individuals, a few groups or cliques, making
for war more or less deliberately; the mass of the people ignorant and
unconcerned, but also defenceless against suggestion, and ready to
respond to the call to war, with submission or with enthusiasm, as soon
as the call is made by their Government.
On the testimony, then, of these witnesses, all shrewd and competent
observers, it may be permitted to sum up somewhat as follows:—
In the years immediately preceding the war the mass of the people in
Germany, rich and poor, were attached to peace and dreaded war. But
there was there also a powerful minority either desiring war or
expecting it, and, in either case, preparing it by their agitation. And
this minority could appeal to the peculiarly aggressive form of
patriotism inculcated by the public schools and universities. The war
party based its appeal for ever fresh armaments on the hostile
preparations of the Powers of the Entente. Its aggressive ambition
masqueraded, perhaps even to itself, as a patriotism apprehensively
concerned with defence. It was supported by powerful moneyed interests;
and the mass of the people, passive, ill-informed, preoccupied, were
defenceless against its agitation. The German Government found the
Pangermans embarrassing or convenient according as the direction of its
policy and the European situation changed from crisis to crisis. They
were thus at one moment negligible, at another powerful. For long they
agitated vainly, and they might long have continued to do so. But if
the moment should come at which the Government should make the fatal
plunge, their efforts would have contributed to the result, their
warnings would seem to have been justified, and they would triumph as
the party of patriots that had foretold in vain the coming crash to an
unbelieving nation.
[Footnote 1: “L'Enigme Allemande,” 1914.]
[Footnote 2: See “L'Allemagne avant la guerre,” pp. 97 seq. and 170
seq. Bruxelles, 1915.]
[Footnote 3: A Frenchman, M. Maurice Ajam, who made an inquiry among
business men in 1913 came to the same conclusion. “Peace! I write that
all the Germans without exception, when they belong to the world of
business, are fanatical partisans of the maintenance of European
peace.” See Yves Guyot, “Les causes et les consequences de la guerre,”
p. 226.]
[Footnote 4: See French Yellow Book, No. 5.]