CHAPTER VI GERMAN MISCALCULATIONS

In the world's play-house there are a number of prominent and well-placed seats, which the instinct of veneration among mankind insists on reserving for Super-men; and as mankind is never content unless the seats of the super-men are well filled, 'the Management'—in other words, the press, the publicists, and other manipulators of opinion—have to do the best they can to find super-men to sit in them. When that is impossible, it is customary to burnish up, fig out, and pass off various colourable substitutes whom it is thought, may be trusted to comport themselves with propriety until the curtain falls. But those resplendent creatures whom we know so well by sight and fame, and upon whom all eyes and opera-glasses are directed during the entr'-actes, are for the most part not super-men at all, but merely what, in the slang of the box-office, is known as 'paper.' Indeed there have been long periods, even generations, during which the supposed super-men have been wholly 'paper.'

Of course so long as the super-men substitutes have only to walk to their places, to bow, smile, frown, overawe, and be admired, everything goes safely enough. The audience is satisfied and the {54} 'management' rubs its hands. But if anything has to be done beyond this parade business, if the unexpected happens, if, for instance, there is an alarm of fire—in which case the example set by the super-creatures might be of inestimable assistance—the 'paper' element is certain to crumple up, according to the laws of its nature, being after all but dried pulp. Something of this kind appears to have happened in various great countries during the weeks which immediately preceded and followed the outbreak of war, and in none was the crumpling up of the supermen substitutes more noticeable than in Germany.

The thoroughness of the German race is no empty boast. All the world knows as much by experience in peace as well as war. Consequently, people had said to themselves: "However it may be with other nations, in Germany at all events the strings of foreign policy are firmly held in giant fingers." But as day succeeded day, unmasking one miscalculation after another, it became clear that there must have been at least as much 'paper' in the political high places of Germany as elsewhere.

Clearly, although this war was made in Germany, it did not at all follow the course which had been charted for it in the official forecasts. For the German bureaucracy and general staff had laid their plans to crush France at the first onset—to crush her till the bones stuck out through her skin. And they had reckoned to out-general Russia and roll back her multitudes, as yet unorganised—so at least it was conceived—in wave upon wave of encroaching defeat.

Having achieved these aims before the fall of the leaf, Germany would have gained thereby another {55} decade for the undisturbed development of wealth and world-power. Under Prussian direction the power of Austria would then be consolidated within her own dominions and throughout the Balkan Peninsula. At the end of this interval of vigorous recuperation, or possibly earlier, Germany would attack England, and England would fall an easy prey. For having stood aside from the former struggle she would be without allies. Her name would stink in the nostrils of Russia and France; and indeed to the whole world she would be recognised for what she was—a decadent and coward nation. Even her own children would blush for her dishonour.

That these were the main lines of the German forecast no man can doubt, who has watched and studied the development of events; and although it is as yet too early days to make sure that nothing of all this vast conception will ever be realised, much of it—the time-table at all events—has certainly miscarried for good and all.


THE TIME-TABLE MISCARRIES

According to German calculations England would stand aside; but England took part. Italy would help her allies; but Italy refused. Servia was a thing of naught; but Servia destroyed several army corps. Belgium would not count; and yet Belgium by her exertions counted, if for nothing more, for the loss of eight precious days, while by her sufferings she mobilised against the aggressor the condemnation of the whole world.

The Germans reckoned that the army of France was terrible only upon paper. Forty-five years of corrupt government and political peculation must, according to their calculations, have paralysed the {56} general staff and betrayed the national spirit. The sums voted for equipment, arms, and ammunition must assuredly have been spirited away, as under The Third Empire, into the pockets of ministers, senators, deputies, and contractors. The results of this régime would become apparent, as they had done in 1870, only in the present case sooner.

War was declared by the Third Napoleon at mid-July, by William the Second not until August 1; but Sedan or its equivalent would occur, nevertheless, in the first days of September, in 1914 as in 1870. In the former contest Paris fell at the end of six months; in this one, with the aid of howitzers, it would fall at the end of six weeks.

Unfortunately for this confident prediction, whatever may have been the deficiency in the French supplies, however dangerous the consequent hitches in mobilisation, things fell out quite differently. The spirit of the people of France, and the devotion of her soldiers, survived the misfeasances of the politicians, supposing indeed that such crimes had actually been committed.


It was a feature of Bismarck's diplomacy that he put a high value upon the good opinion of the world, and took the greatest pains to avoid its condemnation. In 1870, as we now know, he schemed successfully, to lure the government of Napoleon the Third into a declaration of war, thereby saddling the French government with the odium which attaches to peace-breakers.[1] But in the case of the present war, {57} which, as it out-Bismarcked Bismarck in deliberate aggressiveness, stood all the more in need of a tactful introduction to the outside world, the precautions of that astute statesman were neglected or despised. From the beginning all neutral nations were resentful of German procedure, and after the devastation of Belgium and the destruction of Louvain, the spacious morality of the Young Turks alone was equal to the profession of friendship and admiration.

CRUELTIES IN BELGIUM

The objects which Germany sought to gain by the cruelties perpetrated, under orders, by her soldiers in Belgium and Northern France are clear enough. These objects were certainly of considerable value in a military as well as in a political sense. One wonders, however, if even Germany herself now considers them to have been worth the abhorrence and disgust which they have earned for her throughout the civilised world.

In nothing is the sham super-man more easily detected than in the confidence and self-complacency with which he pounces upon the immediate small advantage, regardless of the penalty he will have to pay in the future. By spreading death and devastation broadcast in Belgium the Germans hoped to attain three things, and it is not impossible that they have succeeded in attaining them all. They sought to secure their communications by putting the fear of death, and worse than death, into the hearts of the civil population. They sought to send the countryside fleeing terror-stricken before their advance, choking and cumbering the highways; than which nothing is ever more hampering to the operations of an army in retreat, or more depressing to its spirits. But chiefly they desired to set a ruthless object-lesson before the {58} eyes of Holland, in order to show her the consequences of resistance; so that when it came to her turn to answer a summons to surrender she might have the good sense not to make a fuss. They desired in their dully-calculating, official minds that Holland might never forget the clouds of smoke, from burning villages and homesteads, which the August breezes carried far across her frontiers; the sights of horror, the tales of suffering and ruin which tens of thousands of starved, forlorn, and hurrying fugitives brought with them when they came seeking sanctuary in her territories. But if the Germans gained all this, and even if they gained in addition the loving admiration of the Young Turks, was it worth while to purchase these advantages at such a price? It seems a poor bargain to save your communications, if thereby you lose the good opinion of the whole world.


What is of most interest to ourselves, however, in the long list of miscalculations, is the confidence of Germany that Britain would remain neutral. For a variety of reasons which satisfied the able bureaucrats at Berlin, it was apparently taken for granted by them that we were determined to stand out; and indeed that we were in no position to come in even if we would. We conjecture that the reports of German ambassadors, councillors, consuls, and secret service agents must have been very certain and unanimous in this prediction.

According to the German theory, the British race, at home and abroad, was wholly immersed in gain, and in a kind of pseudo-philanthropy—in making money, and in paying blackmail to the working-classes in order to be allowed to go on making money. {59} Our social legislation and our 'People's Budgets' were regarded in Germany with contempt, as sops and shams, wanting in thoroughness and tainted with hypocrisy.

English politicians, acting upon the advice of obliging financiers, had been engaged during recent years (so grossly was the situation misjudged by our neighbours) in imposing taxation which hit the trader, manufacturer, and country-gentleman as hard as possible; which also hit the working-class hard, though indirectly; but which left holes through which the financiers themselves—by virtue of their international connections and affiliations—could glide easily into comparative immunity.

From these faulty premisses, Germans concluded that Britain was held in leading-strings by certain sentimentalists who wanted vaguely to do good; and that these sentimentalists, again, were helped and guided by certain money-lenders and exploiters, who were all very much in favour of paying ransom out of other people's pockets. A nation which had come to this pass would be ready enough to sacrifice future interests—being blind to them—for the comforts of a present peace.

The Governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions were largely influenced—so it was believed at Berlin—by crooks and cranks of various sorts, by speculators and 'speculatists,'[2] many of them of foreign origin or descent—who preached day in and day out the doctrine that war was an anachronism, vieux jeu, even an impossibility in the present situation of the world.

[2] 'Speculatists' was a term used by contemporary American writers to describe the eloquent theorists who played so large a part in the French Revolution.

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The British Government appeared to treat these materially-minded visionaries with the highest favour. Their advice was constantly sought; they were recipients of the confidences of Ministers; they played the part of Lords Bountiful to the party organisations; they were loaded with titles, if not with honour. Their abhorrence of militarism knew no bounds, and to a large extent it seemed to German, and even to English eyes, as if they carried the Cabinet, the party-machine, and the press along with them.

'Militarism,' as used by these enthusiasts, was a comprehensive term. It covered with ridicule and disrepute even such things as preparation for the defence of the national existence. International law was solemnly recommended as a safer defence than battleships.

Better certainly, they allowed, if militarism could be rooted out in all countries; but at any rate England, the land of their birth or adoption, must be saved from the contamination of this brutalising idea. In their anxiety to discredit Continental exemplars they even went so far as to evolve an ingenious theory, that foreign nations which followed in the paths of militarism, did so at serious loss to themselves, but with wholly innocent intentions. More especially, they insisted, was this true in the case of Germany.

The Liberal party appeared to listen to these opinions with respect; Radicals hailed them with enthusiasm; while the Labour party was at one time so much impressed, as to propose through some of its more progressive spirits that, in the exceedingly unlikely event of a German landing, working-men {61} should continue steadily at their usual labours and pay no heed to the military operations of the invaders.

In Berlin, apparently, all this respect and enthusiasm for pacifism, together with the concrete proposals for putting its principles into practice, were taken at their face value. There at any rate it was confidently believed that the speculators and the 'speculatists' had succeeded in changing or erasing the spots of the English leopard.

ERRORS OF INFERENCE

But in order to arrive at such a conclusion as this the able German bureaucrats must have understood very little, one would think, of human nature in general, and of British human nature in particular. Clearly they built more hopes on our supposed conversion to pacifism than the foundations would stand. They were right, of course, in counting it a benefit to themselves that we were unprepared and unsuspicious of attack; that we had pared down our exiguous army and stinted our navy somewhat beyond the limits of prudence. They were foolish, however, not to perceive that if the British people found themselves confronted with the choice, between a war which they believed to be righteous, and a peace which they saw clearly would not only be wounding to their own honour but ruinous to their security, all their fine abstract convictions would go by the board; that party distinctions would then for the time being disappear, and the speculators and the 'speculatists' would be interned in the nethermost pit of national distrust.... In so far, therefore, as the Germans reckoned on our unpreparedness they were wise; but in counting upon British neutrality they were singularly wide of the mark.

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One imagines that among the idealists of Berlin there must surely have been a few sceptics who did not altogether credit this wholesale conversion and quakerisation of the British race. But for these doubters, if indeed they existed, there were other considerations of a more practical kind which seemed to indicate that Britain must certainly stand aside.

The first and most important of these was the imminence of civil war in Ireland. If Prince Lichnowsky and Baron von Kuhlmann reported that this had become inevitable, small blame to their perspicacity! For in this their judgment only tallied with that of most people in the United Kingdom who had any knowledge of the true facts.

In March an incident occurred among the troops stationed in Ireland which must have given comfort at Berlin, even in greater measure than it caused disquiet at home. For it showed in a vivid flash the intrinsic dangers of the Irish situation, and the tension, almost to breaking-point, which existed between the civil authorities and the fighting services.

It also showed, what in the circumstances must have been peculiarly reassuring to the German Government, that our Navy and Army were under the charge of Ministers whose judgments were apt to be led captive by their tempers. Although the Secretary of State for War did not remain in office for many days to encourage the hearts of the general staff at Berlin, his important post was never filled. It was only occupied and kept warm by the Prime Minister, whose labours and responsibilities—according to the notions of the Germans, who are a painstaking and thorough people—were already enough for one man to undertake. Moreover, the First {63} Lord of the Admiralty had not resigned; and it was perhaps natural, looking at what had just happened, to conclude that he would be wholly incapable of the sound and swift decision by which a few months later he was destined to atone for his recent blunder.

THE DUBLIN RIOT

Moreover, although the Curragh incident, as it was called, had been patched over in a sort of way, the danger of civil war in Ireland had not diminished in the least by Midsummer. Indeed it had sensibly increased. During the interval large quantities of arms and ammunition had been imported by Ulstermen in defiance of the Government, and Nationalists were eagerly engaged in emulating their example. The emergency conference of the leaders of parties which the King, acting upon the desperate advice of his Ministers, had called together at Buckingham Palace ended in complete failure.

On Monday the 27th of July readers of the morning newspapers, looking anxiously for news of the Servian reply to the Austrian ultimatum, found their eyes distracted by even blacker headlines, which announced that a Scots regiment had fired on a Dublin mob.

How the bureaucrats of Berlin must have rubbed their hands and admired their own prescience! Civil war in Ireland had actually begun, and in the very nick of time! And this occurrence, no less dramatic than opportune, was a triumph not merely for German foresight but for German contrivance—like a good many other things, indeed, which have taken place of late. When the voyage of the good ship Fanny, which in April carried arms to the coast of Antrim, comes to be written, and that of the anonymous yacht which sailed from German waters, transhipped its {64} cargo in the channel, whence it was safely conveyed by another craft to Dublin Bay to kindle this blaze in July—when these narratives are set out by some future historian, as they deserve to be, but not until then, it will be known how zealously, benevolently, and impartially our loyal and kindly Teuton cousins forwarded and fomented the quarrel between Covenanter and Nationalist. What the German bureaucrats, however, with all their foresight, apparently did not in the least foresee, was that the wound which they had intentionally done so much to keep open, they would speedily be helping unintentionally to heal.


With regard to South Africa, German miscalculation and intrigue pursued a somewhat similar course, though with little better results. It was assumed that South Africa, having been fully incorporated in the Empire as a self-governing unit only twelve years earlier, and as the result of a prolonged and sanguinary war, must necessarily be bent on severing the British connection at the earliest opportunity. The Dutch, like the frogs in the fable, were imagined to be only awaiting a favourable moment to exchange the tyranny of King Log for the benevolent rule of King Stork.

In these forecasts, however, various considerations were overlooked. In the first place, the methods of incorporation pursued by the British in South Africa were as nearly as possible the opposite of those adopted by Prussia in Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, and in Alsace-Lorraine. In many quarters there were doubtless bitter memories among the Dutch, and in some others disappointed ambition still ached; {65} but these forces were not enough to plunge into serious civil war two races which, after nearly a century of strife and division, had but a few years before entered into a solemn and voluntary covenant to make a firm union, and dwell henceforth in peace one with another. What object could there be for Dutchmen to rise in rebellion against a government, which consisted almost exclusively of Dutch statesmen, and which had been put in office and was kept there by the popular vote?

MISTAKES AS TO DUTCH

What German intrigue and bribery could do it did. But Dutchmen whose recollections went back so far as twenty years were little likely to place excessive confidence in the incitements and professions of Berlin. They remembered with what busy intrigues Germany had in former times encouraged their ambitions, with what a rich bribery of promises she had urged them on to war, with what cold indifference, when war arose, she had left them to their fate. They also remembered how, when their aged President, an exiled and broken-hearted man, sought an interview with the great sovereign whose consideration for him in his more prosperous days had never lacked for warmth, he received for an answer, that Berlin was no place for people who had been beaten to come whining, and was turned from the door.


In India, as in South Africa, Germany entertained confident hopes of a successful rising. Had not the Crown Prince, a shrewd judge, visited there a few years earlier and formed his own estimate of the situation? Was there not a widely spread network of sedition covering the whole of our Eastern Empire, an incendiary press, and orators who openly counselled {66} violence and preached rebellion? Had not riots been increasing rapidly in gravity and number? Had not assassins been actively pursuing their trade? Had not a ship-load of Indians just been refused admission to Canada, thereby causing a not unnatural outburst of indignation?

How far German statesmen had merely foreseen these things, how far they had actually contrived them, we are as yet in ignorance; but judging by what has happened in other places—in Ireland, South Africa, Belgium, and France—it would surprise no one to learn that the bombs which were thrown at the Viceroy and his wife with tragic consequences owed something to German teaching. It is unlikely that German emissaries had been less active in fomenting unrest in India than elsewhere among the subjects of nations with which they were ostensibly at peace; while the fact that the Crown Prince had but recently enjoyed the hospitality of the Viceregal Court was only a sentimental consideration unworthy of the attention of super-men.

Moreover, it had for long been abundantly clear, on a priori grounds, to thinkers like Treitschke and Bernhardi that India was already ripe for rebellion on a grand scale. There are but two things which affect the Indian mind with awe and submission—a sublime philosophy and a genius for war. The English had never been philosophers, and they had ceased to be warriors. How, then, could a race which worshipped only soldiers and sages be expected to reverence and obey a garrison of clerks and shopkeepers? A war between England and Germany would provide an opportunity for making an end for ever of the British Raj.

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MISTAKES AS TO DOMINIONS

The self-governing Dominions were believed to be affected with the same decadent spirit and fantastic illusions as their Mother Country; only with them these cankers had spread more widely, were more logically followed out in practice, and less tempered and restrained by aristocratic tradition. Their eloquent outpourings of devotion and cohesion were in reality quite valueless; merely what in their own slang is known as 'hot air.' They hated militarism in theory and practice, and they loved making money with at least an equal fervour. Consequently, it was absurd to suppose that their professions of loyalty would stand the strain of a war, by which not only their national exchequers, but the whole mass of the people must inevitably be impoverished, in which the manhood of the Dominions would be called on for military service, and their defenceless territories placed in danger of invasion.

It was incredible to the wise men at Berlin that the timid but clear minds of English Statesmen had not appreciated these obvious facts. War, therefore, would be avoided as long as possible. And when at a later date, war was forced by Germany upon the pusillanimous islanders, the Dominions would immediately discern various highly moral pleas for standing aloof. Germany, honouring these pleas for the time being with a mock respect, would defer devouring the Dominions until she had digested the more serious meal.


It will be seen from all this how good the grounds were on which the best-informed and most efficient bureaucracy in the world decided that the British Empire would remain neutral in the present war. {68} Looked at from the strictly intellectual standpoint, the reasons which satisfied German Statesmen with regard to Britain's neutrality were overwhelming, and might well have convinced others, of a similar outlook and training, who had no personal interest whatsoever in coming to one conclusion rather than another.

None the less the judgment of the Kaiser and his Ministers was not only bad, but inexcusably bad. We expect more from statesmen than that they should arrive at logical conclusions. Logic in such cases is nothing; all that matters is to be right; but unless instinct rules and reason serves, right judgment will rarely be arrived at in such matters as these. If a man cannot feel as well as reason, if he cannot gauge the forces which are at work among the nations by some kind of second-sight, he has no title to set up his bills as a statesman. It is incredible that Lincoln, Cavour, or Bismarck would ever have blundered into such a war as this, under the delusion that Britain could remain neutral even if she would. Nor would any of these three have been so far out in his reckoning as to believe, that the immediate effect of such a war, if Britain joined in it, would be the disruption of her empire. They might have calculated that in the event of the war being prolonged and disastrous to England, disintegration would in the end come about; but without stopping to reason the matter out, they would have known by instinct, that the first effect produced by such a war would be a consolidation and knitting together of the loose Imperial fabric, and a suspension, or at least a diminution, of internal differences.


[1] British public opinion in regard to that war was divided roughly according to party lines, the Conservatives favouring France on sentimental grounds, the Liberals favouring Germany as a highly-educated, peace-loving people who had been wantonly attacked.