This attitude on her part quickly brought about our declaration of war against her. It is important that Americans should realize the similarity in the two situations and the likeness of the Austrian action of 1914 to that which our own Government took in 1898.
As soon as Austria had rejected as unsatisfactory Servia's reply to her ultimatum she prepared to undertake a punitive armed expedition against Servia, and Russia at once declared that she would rank herself as Servia's protector.
Indeed, without any further parley, and to give effect to this threat, Russia immediately mobilized her army. Since then it has been averred that this mobilization had been in progress for several weeks previous to Servia's rejection of the Austrian ultimatum.
This made it obligatory upon Germany to go to Austria's aid, under the provisions of their treaty of alliance, although she was well aware that such an action would bring France into the conflict under the terms of her alliance with Russia. Indeed, an unsatisfactory reply had been received from France as to the latter's intentions, but Germany endeavored to secure at least an assurance of England's neutrality. This proved to be impossible.
How the German Government could indulge for a moment in the hope that in a war with Russia and France on the one side and Germany and Austria on the other, England could be induced to remain neutral passes comprehension, but that it did believe this seems a certainty.
The English Government, no doubt, correctly felt that without the aid of its immense resources, and particularly without the operations of its great navy against Germany and Austria, the latter nations would find it not so very difficult a task to dispose of both Russia and France.
English statesmen very promptly must have become alive to the probability that a Germany which had subdued Russia and France, and thus had made itself master of the Continent, would be unlikely long to tolerate a continuance of England's world leadership.
So, even if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated, other reasons would have been found by England for joining France and Russia in the war against Germany, for England would not risk, without any effort to protect them, the loss of her continued domination of the high seas and her undisputed possession of her vast colonial empire.
Germany Fighting for Life.
I am not defending the violation of Belgian neutrality. This, undeniably, was a most unjustifiable action, in spite of German claims that she was forced into it by the necessities of the situation. But I am explaining that, even had it not occurred, still England would have gone to war.
That was the situation.
Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.
Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland. Seventy million people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be crushed, probably not subdued.
And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world, since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.
Is it not apparent, therefore, that these nations, if left to themselves, inevitably must continue the war until one side or the other, or both, shall become exhausted--an eventuation which may be postponed not for mere months but for years?
In our own civil war Grant for almost two years stood within a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles of Richmond, the heart of the Confederacy, and was not able to sufficiently subdue Lee's forces to enable him to get possession of the city until the complete exhaustion of the Confederacy's resources in men and money had been accomplished.
[Illustration: VISCOUNT JAMES BRYCE
_(Photo from George G. Bain.)_
_See Page 477_]
[Illustration: DR. BERNHARD DERNBURG
_(Photo by Campbell Studios.)_
_See Page 487_]
[Illustration: DAVID STARR JORDAN
_See Page 502_]
[Illustration: JOHN GRIER HIBBEN
_(Photo by McManus.)_
_See Page 503_]
While that situation may not offer a true parallel in all respects to that in which we find the belligerent forces in the present European war, it nevertheless may be taken as a precedent proving that frontal encounters of powerful opponents generally do not yield final results until actual exhaustion compels one side or the other to abandon hope.
Such an exhaustion hardly can be expected within measurable time on the part of either one or the other of the combatants in the existing European conflict, and this means the probable continuation for a long period of the merciless slaughter which has marked the last few months.
We hold up our hands in horror at the stories of human sacrifices in the early ages when, after all, these were, perhaps, less brutal and less appalling than the wholesale slaughter of the flower of these warring peoples of which we now read almost daily.
As I see the situation there really are only three contestants in the war--England, Russia, and Germany. France, Belgium, and Austria are important auxiliaries, but they are playing to a certain extent secondary roles.
England's real object is the utter defeat of Germany--nothing more nor less than that--and if this is accomplished England will have control of Europe. It must be remembered that the English Government and English people frequently have asserted that they would not be satisfied with mere defeat of Germany's armed forces, but that her power must be permanently paralyzed.
If England should accomplish this, with Germany, its army and its navy, thus wholly out of the way, no one would be left for England to fear in future upon the high seas.
That might be the chief significance of England's complete victory, and its complete significance would be that every nation in the world would have to do the British bidding, for should any one refuse she could completely destroy its commerce and shut off its overseas supplies.
In the cases of most nations overseas supplies include material vital to the continuance of life and happiness; to every nation, in these days of a developed and habitual foreign trade, overseas supplies are actually essential, even when they do not necessarily include meats and wheat and other foodstuffs.
The effect upon the United States of such an English victory would be most disastrous.
The alliance between England and Japan is likely to be permanent. That is something which Americans cannot afford to forget for a moment.
England needs Japan in the Far East, especially as an ally in case of need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous, if not collapse.
Such a permanent alliance would have this consequence upon us, that without even the probability of difficulties with either England or Japan--and, personally, I do not believe that such a probability need be feared--we nevertheless year after year would be compelled to increasingly prepare for what may be defined as the disagreeable possibility of the eventuation of a disagreeable possibility.
Certainly we should be under the necessity of notably and, therefore, very expensively, increasing our naval armament; we should be under the necessity of large expenditures for coast defense.
Corollary military cost would be enormous and burdensome. The preparation which would be imposed on us as a necessity by such a permanent alliance would be sufficiently extensive and expensive to burden our people heavily and handicap our national progress.
It might involve, perhaps, even a greater hardship in our case than militarism has involved in Germany. It is improbable that the average American realizes the part which absence of such burdens has played in our national development so far; it would be difficult for the average American who has not studied the whole subject carefully to estimate accurately the part which the imposition of such a burden would be sure to play in our future.
We have been measurably a free people. If we were under the necessity of supporting vast military and naval establishments we should be that no longer, no matter how completely we adhered to our democratic political system and ideals. It is not Kings, but what they do, which burdens countries, and the most burdensome, act of any King is to load his country up with non-productive, threatening, and expensive war machinery.
The Real Peril.
I fear that the American people as a whole have visualized only slightly, if at all, the real peril involved in this contingency; but I cannot feel otherwise than sure that soon they must awake to the great danger that militarism and navalism may be imposed upon them through no fault of their own.
American impulses trend away from armament toward peaceful development along industrial lines, but even now political leaders in Washington begin to see what may be coming. The propositions which already have been made for considerable increases in our naval and military forces may be regarded as only the forerunners of what is to be expected later.
My sympathies and interests, in other words my patriotic sentiments, are definitely American. I must repeat that I am of German origin, and that as regards the present struggle I am pro-German, yet it would be impossible for me to say that I am anti-English, although I am anti-Russian for reasons that are obvious.
I already have expressed the belief that the complete humiliation of England would be disastrous to us. Now, it seems to me that if Germany should be completely successful, if she should be able to wear out the Allies, break down France, hold Russia in check, and cripple or even invade England, (which many German leaders actually believe can be done, incredible as it may seem to us,) Germany would acquire a position such as never has been held by any nation since the beginning of history. Not even the power of the Roman Empire would approach it.
The advance which has marked the development of every means of communication, transportation, manufacturing, &c., since Rome's day would give Germany, in the case of such an eventuation, a power which would have been inconceivable to the most ambitious Roman Emperor. It would make her a menace not only to her immediate neighbors, but to the entire globe.
Could she be trusted with such power? Notwithstanding my personal sympathies, which I have taken pains to clearly outline, I must admit that I cannot think so. The German character is not only self-reliant, which is admirable, but it readily becomes domineering, particularly when in the ascendency.