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On the eve of the Great War I sat one evening in the reading room of the Hotel Erbprinz in classic Weimar. I had spent ten happy days in Thuringia, and had visited with deep interest a little village near Erfurt, where one of my forbears was born. I had seen Jena, from whose historic university this paternal ancestor had gone as a missionary to North America in the middle of the eighteenth century. This simple-minded German pietist had cherished the apparent delusion that even the uncivilized Indians of the American wilderness might be taught—the Bernhardis and Treitschkes to the contrary notwithstanding—that to increase the political power of a nation by the deliberate and highly systematized destruction of its neighbors was not the truest political ideal, even of an Indian tribe.

This missionary had gone most fittingly to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where its enlightened founder had already given a demonstration of the truth that a treaty of peace, even though not formally expressed in a “scrap of paper,” might be kept by white men and so-called savages with scrupulous fidelity for at least three quarters of a century, for even the cynical Voltaire said in sincerest admiration that the compact between William Penn and the Indians was the only treaty which was never reduced to parchment, nor ratified by an oath and yet was never broken. When Penn, the great apostle of peace, died in England, a disappointed, ruined, and heart-broken man, and the news reached the Indians in their wigwams along the banks of the Delaware, they had for him, whom they called the “white Truth Teller” so deep a sense of gratitude that they sent to his widow a sympathetic gift of valuable skins, in memory of the “man of unbroken friendship and inviolate treaties.”

These reflections in a time of broken friendships and violated treaties are not calculated to fill the man of the twentieth century with any justifiable pride.

My mind, however, as I spent the quiet evening in the historic inn of Thackeray’s Pumpernickel, did not revert to these far distant associations but was full of other thoughts suggested by the most interesting section of Germany, through which it had been my privilege to pass.

I had visited Eisenach and reverentially stood within the room where the great master of music, John Sebastian Bach, had first seen the light of day, and as I saw the walls that he loved and which are forever hallowed because they once sheltered this divine genius, the question occurred to me whether he may not have done more for Germany with his immortal harmonies, which are the foundation of all modern music, than all the Treitschkes, and Bernhardis, with their gospel of racial hatred, pseudo-patriotism, and imperial aggrandizement.

I had climbed the slopes of the Wartburg and from Luther’s room had gazed with delight upon the lovely Thuringian forests. Quite apart from any ecclesiastical considerations that room seemed to suggest historic Germany in its best estate. It recalled that scene of undying interest at the Diet of Worms, when the peaceful adherence to an ideal was shown to be mightier than the power of the greatest empire since the fall of Rome. The monk of Wittenburg, standing alone in the presence of the great Emperor, Charles the Fifth, and the representatives of the most powerful religious organization that the world has ever known, with his simple, “Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders,” represented the truest soul and highest ideal of the nobler Germany.

These and other glorious memories, suggested by Eisenach, Frankfort, Erfurt, Weimar, Jena, and Leipzig, made this pilgrimage of intense interest, and almost the only discord was the sight of the Leipzig Voelkerschlacht Denkmal, probably the largest, and certainly the ugliest monument in all the world. It has but one justification, in that it commemorates war, and no monument ever more fully symbolized by its own colossal crudity the moral ugliness of that most ghastly phenomenon of human life. Let us pray that in the event of final victory Prussia will not commission the architects of the Leipzig monument, or the imperial designer of the Sièges-Allée to rebuild that Gothic masterpiece, the Rheims Cathedral. That day in Leipzig an Alsatian cartoonist, Hansi, had been sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for a harmless cartoon in a book for children, in which the most supersensitive should have found occasion for nothing, except a passing smile.

On the library table of the Erbprinz, I found a large book, which proved to be a Bismarck memorial volume. It contained hundreds of pictures glorifying and almost deifying the Iron Chancellor. One particularly arrested my attention. It was the familiar picture of the negotiations for peace between Bismarck and Jules Favre in the terrible winter of 1871. The French statesman has sunk into a chair in abject despair, struck speechless by the demands of the conqueror. Bismarck stands triumphant and his proud bearing and arrogant manner fail to suggest any such magnanimous courtesy as that with which Grant accepted the sword of Lee at Appomattox. The picture breathed the very spirit of “væ victis.” Had a French artist painted this picture, I could understand it, for it would serve effectively to stimulate undying hatred in the French heart. It seemed strange that a German artist should treat a subject, calling for a spirit of most delicate courtesy, in a manner which represented Prussian militarism in its most arrogant form.

This unworthy picture reminded me of a later scene in the Reichstag, in which the Iron Chancellor, after reviewing with complacency the profitable results of Germany’s deliberately provoked wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, added the pious ejaculation:

Wir Deutsche fürchten Gott sonst nichts in der Welt. (We Germans fear God but nothing else in the world.)

It is not necessary to impeach the sincerity of this pious glorification of the successful results of land grabbing. The mind in moments of exaltation plays strange tricks with the soul. Bismarck may have dissembled on occasion but he was never a hypocrite. It is the spirit which inspired this boastful and arrogant speech, which has so powerfully stimulated Prussian Junkerism, to which I wish to refer.

Had an American uttered these words we would have treated the boast as a vulgar exhibition of provincial “spread-eagleism,” such as characterized certain classes in this country before the Civil War, and which Charles Dickens somewhat over-caricatured in Martin Chuzzlewit, but in the mouth of Bismarck, with his cynical indifference to moral considerations in questions of statecraft, this piece of rhetorical spread double-eagleism, manifests the spirit of the Prussian military caste since its too easy triumph over France in 1870-1871, a triumph, which may yet prove the greatest calamity that ever befell Germany, not only in the seeds of hatred which it sowed, of which there is now a harvest of blood past precedent, but also in the development of an arrogant pride which has profoundly affected to its prejudice the noble Germany of Luther, Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Humboldt, and Lessing.

To say that Germany “fears” nothing save God is contradicted by its whole diplomatic history of the last half century. In this it is not peculiar. The curse of modern statecraft is the largely unreasoning fear which all nations have of their neighbors. England has feared Germany only less than Germany has feared England and this nervous apprehension has bred jealousy, hatred, suspicion, until to-day all civilized nations are reaping a harvest horrible beyond expression.

The whole history of Germany since 1870 has shown a constant, and at times an unreasoning fear, first of France, then of the Slav, and latterly and in its most acute form, of England. I do not mean that Germany has been or is now animated by any spirit of craven cowardice. There has not been in recorded history a braver nation, and the dauntless courage with which, even at this hour, thousands of Germans are going with patriotic songs on their lips to “their graves as to their beds,” is worthy of all admiration.

The whole statecraft of Germany for over forty years has been inspired by an exaggerated apprehension of the intentions of its great neighbors. This fear followed swiftly upon the triumph of 1871, for Germany early showed its apprehension that France might recover its military strength. When that fallen but indomitable foe again struggled to its feet in 1875, the Prussian military caste planned to give the stricken gladiator the coup de grâce and was only prevented by the intervention of England and Russia. Later this acute and neurotic apprehension took the form of a hatred and fear of Russia, and this notwithstanding the fact that the Kaiser had in the Russo-Japanese War exalted the Czar as the “champion of Christianity” and the “representative of the white race” in the Far East.

When the psychology of the present conflict is considered by future historians, this neuropathic feature of Germany’s foreign policy will be regarded as a contributing element of first importance.

Latterly the Furor Teutonicus was especially directed against England, and although it was obvious to the dispassionate observer in neutral countries that no nation was making less preparations or was in point of fact so illy prepared for a conflict as England, nevertheless Germany, with a completeness of preparation such as the world has never witnessed, was constantly indulging in a very hysteria of fear at the imaginary designs of England upon Germany’s standing as a world power.

Luther’s famous saying, already quoted, and Bismarck’s blustering speech to the Reichstag measure the difference between the Germany of the Reformation and the Prussia of to-day.

I refuse to believe that this Bismarckian attitude is that of the German people. If a censored press permitted them to know the real truth with respect to the present crisis, that people, still sound in heart and steadfast in soul, would repudiate a policy of duplicity, cunning, and arrogance, which has precipitated their great nation into an abyss of disaster. The normal German is an admirable citizen, quiet, peaceable, thrifty, industrious, faithful, efficient, and affectionate to the verge of sentimentality. He, and not the Junker, has made Germany the most efficient political State in the world. If to his genius for organization could be added the individualism of the American, the resultant product would be incomparable. A combination of the German fortiter in re with the American suaviter in modo would make the most efficient republic in the world.

The Germany of Luther, that still survives and will survive when “Junkerism” is a dismal memory of the past, believes that “the supreme wisdom, the paramount vitality, is an abiding honesty, the doing of right, because right is right, in scorn of consequence.”

That the German people have rallied with enthusiastic unanimity to the flag in this great crisis, I do not question. This is, in part, due to the fact that the truth has never yet been disclosed to them, and is not likely to be until the war is over. They have been taught that in a time of profound peace England, France, and Russia deliberately initiated a war of aggression to destroy the commercial power of Germany. The documents hereinafter analyzed will show how utterly baseless this fiction is. Even if the truth were known, no one can blame the German, who now rallies to his flag with such superhuman devotion, for whether the cause of his country is just or unjust, its prestige, and perhaps its very existence, is at stake, and there should be for the rank and file of the German people only a feeling of profound pity and deep admiration. Edmund Burke once said, “We must pardon something to the spirit of liberty.” We can paraphrase it and say in this crisis, “We must pardon something to the spirit of patriotism.” The whole-hearted devotion of this great nation to its flag is worthy of the best traditions of the Teutonic race. Thor did not wield his thunder hammer with greater effect than these descendants of the race of Wotan. If the ethical question depended upon relative bravery, who could decide between the German, “faithful unto death”; the English soldier, standing like a stone wall against fearful odds, the French or Russian not less brave or resolute, and the Belgian, now as in Cæsar’s time the “bravest of all the tribes of Gaul.”

No consideration, either of sympathy, admiration, or pity, can in any manner affect the determination of the great ethical question as to the moral responsibility for the present crime against civilization. That must be determined by the facts as they have been developed, and the nations and individuals who are responsible for this world-wide catastrophe must be held to a strict accountability. The truth of history inexorably demands this.

To determine where this moral responsibility lies is the purpose of these pages.

In determining this question Posterity will distinguish between the military caste, headed by the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, which precipitated this great calamity, and the German people.

The very secrecy of the plot against the peace of the world and the failure to disclose to the German nation the diplomatic communications hereinafter quoted, strongly suggest that this detestable war is not merely a crime against civilization, but also against the deceived and misled German people. They have a vision and are essentially progressive and peace-loving in their national characteristics, while the ideals of their military caste are those of the dark ages.

One day the German people will know the full truth and then there will be a dreadful reckoning for those who have plunged a noble nation into this unfathomable gulf of suffering.

Though the mills of God grind slowly,

Yet they grind exceeding small,

Though with patience He stands waiting,

With exactness grinds He all.

Or to put this ancient Greek proverb in its German form:

“Gottes Mühle geht langsam aber die mahlt fein.”

James M. Beck.

New York, November 30, 1914.