Germany Before The War - free ebook by baron (Eugène-Napoléon) Beyens

GERMANY BEFORE THE WAR

BY BARON BEYENS LATE BELGIAN MINISTER AT THE COURT OF BERLIN Translated by Paul V. Cohn, B.A. THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, Ltd. London, Edinburgh, and New York First published March 1916....

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INTRODUCTION.

At the close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth, several efforts were made, both in Europe and America, towards the prevention of future wars, by substituting legal methods for brute force in the settlement of international disputes. It is worth while to recall the preliminary steps that some high-minded rulers took in this direction. Tsar Nicholas invited foreign governments to the first of those peace conferences which met at the Hague. Successive presidents of the Unit

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I.

N O one who has not had the opportunity in recent years of approaching the Emperor William and of conversing with him can realize the favourable impression that he at first creates. To have a conversation with him means to play the part of a listener, to allow him to unfold his ideas in lively fashion, while from time to time one ventures upon a remark on which his quick mind, flitting readily from one subject to another, seizes with avidity. While he is talking, he looks one squarely in the fac

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II.

During the decade preceding the war, too much confidence was placed abroad in the pacifism and sincerity of William II. It was forgotten that, after all, he is a descendant of Frederick the Great, and that, where politics are concerned, he must have studied the lessons taught by his unscrupulous ancestor. He claims for himself, not altogether without justice—for in his early years he might well have fallen a victim to the glamour of military laurels—the merit of having maintained the peace of Eu

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III.

I will deal later with those European events and those features of the internal situation in Germany which reacted upon the mind of William II. and helped to bring about his moral transformation. The point that must be emphasized here is that he fancied at first that he would only have to fight France, the old, implacable enemy. The coming war seemed to him nothing but a mere duel between the Empire and the Republic. For a long time he hoped to sow dissensions be tween his opponents, and to secu

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IV.

In William II.’s eyes France has always been the chief enemy. In spite of this, the idea of a reconciliation with her has repeatedly flitted across his romantic brain. Not for one moment, however, has he thought of restoring Alsace-Lorraine to her or of making it neutral territory. He regarded these questions as settled for good and all by the victories of 1870 and the Treaty of Frankfort, and would not even humour France to the extent of granting a more liberal constitution to the conquered pro

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V.

Up to the last moment the Emperor counted on the neutrality of England, whatever might be the cause of the struggle between the Triple and the Dual Alliance. He had too readily forgotten all the grievances that the United Kingdom had against him, although they had not vanished from the memories or the hearts of Britons: the famous telegram to President Kruger in 1896, in connection with the Jameson Raid, an ill-timed manifesto, which completely deceived the old patriot of Johannesburg as to the

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VI.

Astonishment has been expressed at his having gone so far astray in his judgment of public opinion and of the real intentions of the Governments of the countries of the Triple Entente. He was no better acquainted with the outlook of Italian statesmen, for the Quirinal’s decision to hold aloof from the conflict, instead of taking part as a member of the Triplice, undoubtedly caused him no little surprise and irritation. This ignorance proceeds from his bad selection of men to represent him abroad

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VII.

It often happens that a monarch or a statesman is made up of several distinct personalities, which come to the fore in turn at the various stages of his career. Few are those who remain unchanged from early youth to the grave, as if hewn from a block of granite. In rulers who are conscious of their responsibilities, the years as they roll by assuage or curb the passions of their springtime. Maturity and experience lead them to take a less confident view of enterprises to which they would like to

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I.

I T is generally admitted that the family and personal associates of a sovereign, either by their counsels and intrigues, or merely by the fact of living together with him and constantly exchanging ideas, often exercise an influence, for good or evil, on his political decisions. To this rule, however, there are notable exceptions; among recent rulers, Leopold II. is a case in point. The old Belgian monarch, with his haughty and unsocial spirit, his scorn of advice and his consciousness of superi

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II.

For some years past the Crown Prince has been talked about a great deal, a fact which has certainly not been displeasing to him. He has been credited with a decisive influence on the course of events at the moment when the threatenings of war became critical. It was alleged that this young man of thirty-two, acting behind the scenes, was the real deus ex machina of the whole drama; that he, the idol of the army, had imposed his will and that of the officers’ corps on his father, while the latter

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III.

The five remaining sons of the Emperor give little food for public discussion. Like happy nations, they have no history. Political ambitions and the chase for popularity they leave to their eldest brother. Their lives are passed in a pleasant round of military service (less arduous for princes than for ordinary officers), social amusements, and sport. Only one of them has entered the navy, where work is certainly harder than in the army. Three others, as officers of the Guards, used to do garris

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IV.

When a ruler, like some conspicuous star, rivets the attention of the civilized world, his satellites, careful not to shed any light that may dim the radiance of their lord, are content to remain in modest obscurity. This principle holds good at the Court of Berlin. The high executive posts are filled by competent men of suave manners. None of them enjoys any special prominence, although they all are or have been members of the army, and belong to the landed gentry. They have always espoused the

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V.

By the terms of the 1871 Constitution, the Empire is a congeries of federated States. The Emperor, at the head of the other reigning princes, should properly be nothing but the primus inter pares , the first among his peers, invested with very wide prerogatives and powers. At a banquet given by the German Chamber of Commerce on the occasion of Tsar Nicholas’s coronation, the present King of Bavaria (Prince Ludwig as he then was) made a vigorous attack upon a speaker who had alluded to the royalt

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VI.

The rise of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg to the position of Chancellor of the Empire has been a triumph for the bureaucracy. In looking for shoulders strong enough to bear the massive heritage of Bismarck, the Emperor, after applying in turn to the army, to the higher aristocracy, and to diplomacy, was bound to fall back upon the Prussian official caste. The fifth Chancellor has passed his whole career in the Civil Service, beginning as assessor, and advancing through the grades of district preside

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VII.

To leave Rome for Berlin; to exchange the fine Caffarelli Palace on the Capitol for the modest residence that houses the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; to pass from the cloudless skies and bright sunshine of the Roman Campagna to the chill mists of the Spree; and, worst of all, to lose an almost independent position, and become the hard-working servant of the Kaiser and the recognized mentor of the Chancellor—all this is a severe test of self-denial for a German diplomat who, while stil

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VIII.

As you walk along the Wilhelmstrasse, coming from Unter den Linden, you see, to the right, a long building of only one story, in the obsolete style of the early nineteenth century. It looks very bare and unpretentious by the side of the eighteenth century mansions that flank it right and left and the palatial Government offices, of more recent construction, that lie opposite. This venerable edifice is no other than the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Auswärtiges Amt , of the Empire. Here, fift

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I.

P RUSSIA is before all else a military State, and since 1871 Prussian militarism has laid its heavy hand upon Southern Germany, the inhabitants of which were formerly noted for their peaceful ways. The warlike spirit of the Prussians is the fruit of the statesmanship pursued by their rulers, those Electors of Brandenburg who afterwards became Kings of Prussia. The Elector of the Thirty Years’ War period, George William, had played but a humble part in that struggle. His sole desire was to keep h

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II.

In striving to maintain the whole German army at the high level attained by the Prussian, William II. has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather. He has not, however, been so happy in his choice of men; Moltkes and Roons are hard to find at any time. During his reign, as during that of William I., the Great General Staff and the War Office have worked in close unison. The former, to which officers are appointed after a careful sifting, has to make elaborate plans for strategical operations

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III.

Before the war, the Chief of the General Staff, after the retirement of Count von Schlieffen, was General von Moltke, nephew of the great Field-Marshal. Was it merely his professional merits that determined the Emperor’s choice, or had he partly to thank the famous name that he bears? Those who know him lean towards the latter view. Defects and vices, however, are more often inherited than talents, and a name is not a fetish that brings victory. Physically, General von Moltke does not resemble h

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IV.

But the advantages which, according to our opponents, were destined to ensure their triumph, were the superiority of their strategy and tactics, and the careful preparation of their army down to the last detail, far beyond anything that their rivals had achieved. “The idea is prevalent abroad,” said General von Moltke in 1910 to General Jungbluth, the commander of King Albert’s household troops, “that our General Staff is constantly preparing plans of campaign, with an eye to all the possibiliti

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V.

During the first years of William II.’s reign, the work of maintaining Germany’s military superiority bore a twofold aspect—to preserve for Germany her place in the front rank of European Powers, the place she had won at the price of two great wars; and to ward off attack, to keep all possible foes at bay. The army, apparently, was not looked upon as an instrument of conquest. It did not seem in any real sense to threaten the Empire’s neighbours, although, with its arrogant demeanour, it had an

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VI.

When one met Grand Admiral von Tirpitz in some official drawing-room in Berlin, and had a talk with him, one felt oneself in the presence of an interesting personality—what in England is known as “a strong man.” Among all the advisers of William II., there was no one who gave such an impression of strength and authority. With his fan-shaped beard, his broad forehead and thinning hair above it, his eyes, hard and piercing even behind double eye-glasses, his imposing figure, that showed a tendency

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I.

I T is difficult for a foreigner to form any proper notion of the political groups represented in the Reichstag, if he yields to the temptation of looking for parallels with the party-system of his own country, and if he confuses the political institutions of Germany with those of a nation possessing a parliamentary government. In the first place, perhaps, it will be desirable briefly to sketch the mechanism of the 1871 constitution, which, apart from slight changes needed for the Imperial frame

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II.

Prince von Bülow, in his Imperial Germany , asserts that the German race, although richly endowed with great qualities, has no talent for politics. This charge is quite unfair, the real motive for it being the dread with which a Prussian statesman views the prospect of a parliamentary system. The Germans are late-comers in the field of political life. Those of the South entered it much earlier than the Prussians; Bavaria received a written constitution from its ruler in 1818, Baden in the same y

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III.

I will not linger over the Conservative Imperialists, a group of great manufacturers, landowners, and officials, all being, by their very nature, supporters of the Government. The Conservative party proper, consisting of only forty-three members in the present Reichstag, is drawn almost entirely from the agricultural population of the provinces to the east of the Elbe; it is under the iron rule of the landed gentry. This is the genuinely national Prussian party, indissolubly attached to the prin

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IV.

The Centre has almost as much claim as the Conservative party to be ranged with the Right. It was formed in the Rhine provinces, where many prince-bishops once held their court, in Bavaria, in Baden, and in Silesia, with the object of counteracting, in the name of the Catholic minority, the intolerant spirit of the Protestant majority, and of securing for the Church the liberty that is her due. Although some official party-writers have tried hard to make us believe the contrary, the Centre is a

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V.

As in most countries, the Liberal party falls into two divisions: the moderate or “national” Liberals, and the progressive or “ultra” Liberals. Their forces are of about equal strength in the Reichstag. The former section stands for the manufacturing interests, the latter for the commercial, and both for the monarchist middle class, which is opposed to any interference by a religious authority, whatever creed it may represent. The National Liberals can point to a glorious past, for during the fi

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VI.

In 1884 the Socialist party comprised, in round numbers, 550,000 electors; in 1912 it had 4,250,000 out of a total of nearly 12,000,000 for the whole country. In 1884 the party was represented in the Reichstag by 24 deputies, in 1912 by 110 out of 397. These figures tell their own tale as to the progress made by Socialism in Germany. Every German statesman looked upon the Socialists as a great danger, and, taking his cue from the Emperor, expressed his fears somewhat too loudly in speech and wri

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VII.

Since the creation of the Empire, the Chancellors have had to govern the Reichstag with coalition majorities. This system has great advantages, but still greater drawbacks. On the one hand, the Government does not commit itself to the policy of any one party; on the other hand, to carry the bills which it regards as important, it is compelled to be eternally bargaining with parties and groups. Bismarck at first relied upon the National Liberals, who were the most numerous in the earlier assembli

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VIII.

“We must conduct affairs in such a way,” says the official German secret report, published in the 1914 Yellow Book and dated March 19, 1913, the day after the army bill of that year was passed, “that, under the weighty pressure of powerful armaments, enormous sacrifices, and a strained political situation, an outbreak of hostilities would be looked upon as a deliverance, because, like the war of 1870, it would be followed by several decades of peace and prosperity.” The new financial burdens wer

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IX.

It was not to be expected that the Conservatives would accept this defeat without any thought of seeking revenge. The aristocracy who direct the party had supported all the costly proposals for augmenting the military forces, in order to ensure Germany’s triumph in the next war. Their sins now recoiled upon their own heads. From this time forth, the landowners would suffer the common lot of taxpayers, and in the grim struggle that they wage with such amazing vigour against an ungenerous soil, wo

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I.

I ARRIVED in Berlin some time after the unravelling of the Morocco tangle. I knew already that the Convention of November 4, 1911, had aroused grievous disappointment in Germany. But what was the state of public opinion? Was it still overexcited, overheated through the incidents of the past summer? Or was it beginning to cool down again and revert to its normal temperature of ill-humour towards the western neighbour-country and of that general bitterness which had marked Franco-German relations

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II.

The bellicose minority, more active and strenuous, included, in the first place, the war party of which I have spoken in Chapter III. But by the side of the violently aggressive Germans there were more luke warm spirits; by the side of the Pan-Germans and the disciples of Von der Goltz and Bernhardi there were men of a philosophic cast, who saw war coming as an inevitable necessity, a crisis decreed by fate, essential to the well-being and development of the Empire. The shades of difference amon

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III.

How is it that this same nation responded as one man to the call of its Emperor and hurled itself with enthusiasm at its enemies? Because it thought it had been challenged, and that the frontiers, the welfare, the very existence of the Empire were in danger. Middle-class citizens, Socialist workmen or peasants, all were convinced that they were defending their country against the attack of Tsarism combined with warlike France and perfidious Albion; that the war had been desired, prepared, planne

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IV.

The war-philosophy of the university professors and the influence it has had on generations of students would deserve a volume to itself. Whence comes this implacable hatred of France among those who lived through the war of 1870 and among their pupils? We could understand it more easily if we found it in a conquered nation. And why have these intellectuals such a loathing for England? It is not enough to say that France, forty-five years ago, was not weakened enough to satisfy them, and that in

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V.

The most notable representative of this school was Heinrich von Treitschke, compiler-in-chief of the Hohenzollern saints’ calendar. Since the beginning of the war, much attention has been paid to him in England and in France; people have even begun to read him. From his books on history and politics we try to gain an insight into those glowing ideas which have played their part in bringing on the present conflict. In reading them we are struck with their literary merit; we are amazed at their we

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VI.

Side by side with Treitschke and his pupils (of whom the most conspicuous, at the moment, is Bernhardi) discerning critics are apt to place, as furnishing inspiration for the war, the German philosophers of the nineteenth century, even the poets and musicians, whose posthumous influence is still strongly felt in Germany. They attempt to prove that these representatives of the Teutonic genius are the prime agents, whether consciously or no, in the calamities from which Europe in general, and the

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VII.

The incessant growth in the Empire’s population demanded a widening of its territory. Cooped up within a narrow space, the Germans could not breathe freely; they needed new lands that could be peopled, new outlets to drain off some of this superabundant vitality. This, it is claimed by certain economists, is a biological law, and at the same time one of the causes that made the war inevitable. It was in the nature of things that Germany, sooner or later, should overflow her borders. Another lege

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VIII.

I come, finally, to the economic causes of the war. I must reluctantly confess that I do not share the opinion of some eminent writers, who regard these causes as the most prominent and the most decisive. Germany, according to them, determined to make war—on Russia and France, be it noted, for prior to the invasion of Belgium there was no thought of other opponents—in order to secure indispensable markets for her goods and to avert an imminent economic crisis. It would be superfluous here to giv

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I.

T HE German Government had not taken advantage of the Boer War, which broke out only a year after the Fashoda incident, to draw closer to France. The bitter animosity towards England which found noisy expression at that time in Germany enabled it to obtain from the Reichstag the credits required for building a powerful navy. Suddenly, however, it awoke to the necessity of discouraging these tirades by itself adopting towards the British Government a more correct attitude than the Imperial telegr

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II.

Germany was not satisfied with being informed of the Moroccan agreements by diplomatic channels. She “considered that her interests had entitled her to be consulted in a more direct manner.” 11 The signatories to the treaty of 8th April might well have sent a simple notification beforehand, to prevent the Imperial Government from throwing any obstacles in the way of their proceedings. This was the view held in Berlin, where on several occasions I heard it expanded, not without bitterness, in suc

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III.

For nearly a year after the Anglo-French agreement, the Imperial Government refused to show its hand. It gave itself time for thinking matters over, before taking a definite stand against France in Morocco. French publicists have not omitted to point out that this period of reflection ended with the Battle of Mukden. From that moment, Germany’s mind was set at rest as to the support that Russia could give, in the event of a conflict, to her Western ally. Prince von Bülow plumes himself on having

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IV.

Yet the infant brought into the world by the Conference with such painful effort seemed to have little chance of surviving. To instil a respect for law and order into the Moorish and Kabyle tribes, savage from time immemorial, to repress anarchy, to establish a security hitherto unknown, to build harbours, roads, and railways—all these tasks called for a European Power that possessed the requisite military strength, and had received a mandate to act entirely as it pleased in the zone set apart f

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V.

The second Moroccan crisis came in 1911, towards the close of spring, after the march of General Brulard’s column on Fez and its entry into that city. The German Government always denied that this expedition was necessary: it claimed that the safety of foreigners settled in the Shereefian capital was in no way threatened. The version put forward by the French authorities was totally different: they affirmed—and we must perforce believe them—that the lives of the Europeans were seriously in dange

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VI.

The guarantees obtained by Germany for her subjects and protégés consisted mainly in freedom of trade and economic liberty, and consequently in being on an equal footing with the French in the matter of concessions. She was assured, furthermore, that her manufacturers could draw on Morocco for iron ore (in which the subsoil there is very abundant), since no export duty would be imposed on this product. On her side, she promised not to fetter the action of France as regards aiding the Sultan to i

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VII.

“You are the masters in Morocco,” the Chancellor had said to the French ambassador, after the signing of the Convention. 13 Was this really true? Would the German public endorse the statement? It had expected something very different from a recognition of French suzerainty. It had anticipated a partition of Morocco between France and Germany; the latter would have obtained the fertile southern regions washed by the Atlantic. The more the discussions were drawn out, breeding an excite ment which

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I.

T HE revolution of 1908 had set up in Turkey a constitutional system or, more properly speaking, a travesty of one, by unearthing the 1876 constitution from the dust in which it lay buried. Count von Aehrenthal, who in Vienna aimed at politics on the grand scale—a personal policy, modelled on that of the statesmen of Berlin—took advantage of the internal troubles arising from the overthrow of the Hamidian despotism to convert into a formal annexation (7th October 1908) the right of occupying Bos

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II.

Two years passed. Germany spent them in recovering, bit by bit, the ground she had lost at Constantinople after the dethronement of Abdul Hamid. Her dexterous ambassador succeeded in winning the elusive confidence of the Committee of Union and Progress, just as he had won that of the despot. The enterprises of German finance and industry were spreading their tentacles further and further in Asiatic Turkey. The Turkish army acquired the obvious stamp of Prussian discipline, although the corps of

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III.

Was the formation of the Balkan League or Confederacy, covertly patronized by Russian diplomacy, known to the Cabinets of Berlin and Vienna? I am inclined to think that they were not informed of it until the moment when the Confederates were ready to give battle; otherwise, they would have tried to hold them back or to sow dissensions among them. Germany and Austria-Hungary alike were greatly concerned to keep Turkey intact, that they might draw freely, not only upon her military strength, but a

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IV.

During the winter the conference of ambassadors, meeting in London and presided over by Sir Edward Grey, had revealed among the Powers a desire (universal, if varying in degree) to join hands in warding off European complications, and to put an end, as early as possible, to the Balkan struggle, by persuading the Ottoman Government to acquiesce in the sacrifices that it must make sooner or later. Their harmony set public opinion at rest. The final peace, for which the ambassadors were working so

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V.

In order to prove to the Reichstag the necessity for the new army bill submitted to it on 18th March, the explanatory statement alleged the early victories of the Balkan League as the primary motive. Austria-Hungary, crippled by this new coalition, which probably had Russia at its back, could no longer give Germany sufficient aid; and the latter, with only her own strength to rely upon, would have to face her enemies on two opposite fronts. It was not true to say that the idea of enlarging Germa

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VI.

The law reviving the three years’ term of military service was the immediate answer of the Republican Government to the bill demanding such great sacrifices from the German taxpayer, in order that the crushing superiority of the Imperial armies might be assured. When all doubts as to the passing of the French bill were removed, Germany’s first thrill of surprise at this counter-blast was turned to genuine indignation—an indignation that would have been comical if the issues at stake had not been

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VII.

While these dangerous frictions were the chief cause of anxiety to all who, like myself, felt that the peace of Europe hung upon Franco-German relations, it seems that at this period the attention of the European public was drawn rather to the grave events enacted in the Balkan theatre soon after the Treaty of London signed on 30th May. A new conflict was brewing in that quarter. As in previous cases, the efforts to localize it were successful, but it left behind it a leaven of spite and hatred

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VIII.

In the course of the following winter, a characteristic action showed to the more clear-sighted how important Turkey and her military reorganization had once more become in the eyes of the Berlin Staff. One of the ablest German generals, Liman von Sanders, was sent with a large mission to Constantinople, in order to take over the command of the First Army Corps, revive the German system of training for the Turkish soldier, and re-establish the auxiliary services. To meet the objections raised by

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I.

T HE Archduke Francis Ferdinand will go down to posterity without having yielded up his secret. Great political designs have been ascribed to him, mainly on the strength of his friendship with William II. What do we really know about him? That he was strong-willed and obstinate, very Clerical, very Austrian, disliking the Hungarians to such an extent that he kept their statesmen at arm’s length, and having no love for Italy. He has been credited with sympathies towards the Slav elements of the E

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II.

The news that an assassin’s hand had struck down the Archduke and his wife, inseparable even in death, burst upon Berlin on the afternoon of Sunday, 28th June, like an unexpected thunderclap in the midst of a calm summer’s day. I went over at once to the Austro-Hungarian Embassy, in order to express all the horror that I felt at this savage drama. Count Szögyeny, the senior member of the diplomatic corps, was on the eve of resigning the post that he had held for twenty years, honoured by all his

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III.

During the first half of July, my colleagues and I at Berlin did not live in a fool’s paradise. As the deceptive calm caused by Vienna’s silence was prolonged, a latent, ill-defined uneasiness took hold of us more and more. Yet we were far from anticipating that in the space of a few days we should be driven into the midst of a diplomatic maelstrom, in which, after a week of intense anguish, we should look on, mute and helpless, at the shipwreck of European peace and of all our hopes. The ultima

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IV.

Until the end of the crisis, the idea of a preventive war continually recurred to my mind. Other heads of legations, however, while sharing my anxieties on this point, did not agree with me as to the premeditation of which I accused the Emperor and the military chiefs. I was not content with putting my questions to the French ambassador, whose unerring judgment always carried great weight with me. I also visited his Italian colleague, an astute diplomat, thoroughly versed in German statecraft. H

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V.

The foreign diplomatic corps was kept in more or less profound ignorance as to the pourparlers carried on since the 24th by the Imperial Foreign Office with the Triple Entente Cabinets. Nevertheless, to the diplomats who were continually going over to the Wilhelmstrasse for news, the crisis was set forth in a light very favourable to Austria and Ger many, in order to influence the views of the Governments which they represented. Herr von Stumm, the departmental head of the political branch, in a

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VI.

The game of German diplomacy during these first days of the crisis, 24th to 28th July, has already been revealed. At first inclined to bludgeon, it soon came to take things easily, even affecting a certain optimism, and by its passive resistance bringing to nought all the efforts and all the proposals of the London, Paris, and St. Petersburg Cabinets. To gain time, to lengthen out negotiations, seems to have been the task imposed upon Austria-Hungary’s accomplice, in order to promote rapid actio

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VII.

The abortive efforts to overawe St. Petersburg and the offers made to the British ambassador, as if Great Britain’s inaction could be sold to the highest bidder, brought results that were not hard to foresee. In London, Sir Edward Grey’s indignation found immediate vent in the following passage of his telegram of 30th July to Sir Edward Goschen: “It would be a disgrace for us to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France—a disgrace from which the good name of this country would neve

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VIII.

The Berlin population had followed the various phases of the crisis with tremendous interest, but with no outward show of patriotic fervour. Those fine summer days passed as tranquilly as usual. Only in the evenings did some hundreds of youths march along the highways of the central districts, soberly singing national anthems, and dispersing after a few cries of “Hoch!” outside the Austro-Hungarian and Italian Embassies and the Chancellor’s mansion. On the 2nd of August I watched the animation o

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I.

T HE violation of Belgian neutrality has brought forth a luxuriant crop of books, pamphlets, and articles in newspapers and reviews. Some indignantly denounce, others impudently defend the action of the German Government. The commentaries published on the treaties of 19th April 1839 have taught many Belgians who were ill-informed on the point what the permanent neutrality of their country really means. It was not a Heaven-sent blessing graciously poured out on the new State that had built itself

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II.

On two separate occasions during the last two years, British military attachés at Brussels have spontaneously approached Belgian officers of the higher ranks, with a view to learning whether we had considered, in the event of a European war, the possibility of an attempt by an advancing German army to force its way through Belgium, and whether our means of resistance were adequate. In 1906, Lieut.-Colonel Barnardiston had several interviews with General Ducarne, our Chief of Staff, on the subjec

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III.

From the accession of King Albert to the invasion of our territory, Germany’s attitude towards Belgium always seemed friendly. Nevertheless, in the various pronouncements that it had occasion to make concerning its respect for our neutrality, the Imperial Government set itself to lull our suspicions whenever we began to feel uneasy in spite of ourselves, without committing itself to assurances of a very formal nature. Germany had been one of the first to recognize the annexation of the Congo by

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IV.

The geographical position of Belgium, devoid as she is of natural frontiers, in itself compelled her to adopt measures of defence: to build fortresses and to maintain an efficient army. The chequered history of the past served to the Belgian people as a warning for the future. Her plains had been the favourite cockpit for the struggles between Bourbon and Hapsburg, the theatre of the first victories of the French Republic, and the grave of the Napoleonic Empire. By a miracle, our country was sav

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V.

The passage of the belligerents through Belgium was a favourite theme with all writers, French, German, English, Dutch, and Belgian, who handled, more or less competently, the problem of the coming war. Some of Germany’s preparations for invading her neighbours could not be hidden, and these naturally gave a fillip to the discussion of various moot points. As early as 1911, ten railway lines, both single and double, ran from the Eifel region to the Belgian frontier or the Duchy of Luxemburg. Fou

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VI.

From the first days of the Austro-Serbian dispute, the Belgian Government was on the watch. It did not shrink from taking the precautionary steps required in a country that Nature has left unsheltered. On 29th July, the Belgian army was put on the maximum peace footing. Two days later there was a general mobilization, and 180,000 men were called to the colours. Thanks to these prompt measures, the storm did not take us off our guard, although it came at such short notice. The Brussels Cabinet, h

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VII.

I learnt on 2nd August, from our military attaché (who had the news from an officer of the Emperor’s household), that the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg had been occupied. The route followed by the German army left me no doubt as to the coming invasion of Belgian Luxemburg, and I telegraphed this pessimistic forecast to my Government. Yet I had not gauged the full measure of the disaster that was about to overtake my country. It was on the evening of Monday, 3rd August, that I received the official te

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VIII.

The invasion of Belgium was a blunder, both political and military. Political, because England—who no doubt would inevitably have come to take her stand by France, but not at the very opening of hostilities—was moved forthwith to intervene; military, because the heroic and unexpected resistance of the Belgian army frustrated the rapid march on Paris—in other words, wrecked the initial plan of the German Staff. The Imperial Government did not anticipate that we should show fight. Our hearts would

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CONCLUSION.

A SOVEREIGN, coming at an early age to the most conspicuous throne in Europe, already too sure of his own talents, fretting with impatience to rule without restraint or guardianship, pacific both by instinct and by reason, but of a helmeted and mail-clad pacifism, which loved to vent itself in needless threats. The same prince, twenty-five years later, puffed up with pride over the marvellous expansion of his country (in which he had certainly borne his share by keeping the peace), but gradually

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APPENDIX.

With regard to the view expressed in Chapter V. concerning the subordinate part played by the economic causes of the war, it has been pointed out to me that during the Agadir crisis the employers of labour in the various German metal industries, grouped under the name of “Steel Syndicate,” addressed a petition to the Chancellor asking that war should be declared on France. Other industrial and economic leagues suggested to him, in special memorials, annexations in Belgium, France, and Russia. Be

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