[30] 1915.

In November 1915 the Italian Government publicly applied one of the provisions of the secret treaty in favour of Germany. At that moment it was deemed necessary to commandeer German ships in Italian ports for the service of the navy and the mercantile marine. Had it been a question of Austrian vessels they would have been seized and utilized without any such precautions. In virtue of Sec.4 of the Treaty the Italian authorities undertook to pay a monthly sum to the German owners for the use of their steamers. That clause lays it down that the two contracting states shall respect the enactment made by the concluding section of Article VI of the Hague Convention concerning the treatment of enemy merchant vessels.

This treaty, then, is no mere scrap of paper. It is a strong bridge spanning the chasm between Italo-German friendship in the past and Italo-German friendship after the war. To take due note of this and of like symptoms of the coming readjustment of political and economic forces is one of the primary duties of Entente statesmanship which one piously hopes are being efficiently discharged.



CHAPTER V

GERMANY AND RUSSIA

Turning to our other ally, Russia, we find that she underwent a course of treatment similar to that which well-nigh prussianized Italy. In the Tsardom the task was especially easy owing largely to the advantages offered to Teutonic immigrants from the days of yore, to the German-speaking inhabitants of the Baltic provinces, to the proselytizing German schools which flourish in Petrograd, Moscow, Odessa, Kieff, Saratoff, Simbirsk, Tiflis, Warsaw and other centres, to German colonies scattered over Russia and to religious sects. During the Manchurian campaign the Commercial Treaty drafted in Berlin, and at first denounced by Count Witte as ruinous to his country, was agreed to and signed.[31] It was Hobson's choice. After that the empire, which had already been a favourite and fruitful field for Germany's experiments, became one of the most copious sources of her national prosperity. Commercial push and political espionage were so thoroughly fused that no line of demarcation remained visible.

[31] In June 1904.

Russia's losses were proportionate and at the time were computed at 35,000,000 marks a year. In the Tsardom the imposition of this tribute was resented. By the Teutons their economic victory was followed by political influence. Their agents and spies abounded everywhere. Time passed, and as relations between the two empires grew tenser, the danger defined itself in sharper outline to the eyes of Russian statesmen, who resolved, however, to postpone remedial measures until the day should come for the discussion of the renewal of the Commercial Treaty. The knowledge that Russia would refuse either to prolong that one-sided arrangement or to make another like it, and that the consequences of this refusal would be disastrous to Germany's economic and financial position, stimulated German statesmen to bring matters to a head before Russia could back her recalcitrance with a reorganized army, and was one of the contributory causes of the European struggle.

Since then the war has flashed a brilliant light on the dark places of German intrigue, and some of the sights revealed are hardly credible. Whithersoever one turns one is confronted with the same striking phenomenon; the preponderant influence wielded in almost every walk of life, private and public, by institutions and individuals who in some open or clandestine way are under German tutelage. In the sphere of economics this is particularly noticeable. Three-fourths of Russia's foreign trade was in German hands. Dealings between Russians and foreigners were transacted chiefly through Germany. Imports and exports passed principally through German offices, established throughout the length and breadth of the Tsardom, and commercial dealings were conducted by merchants in Berlin, Hamburg, Koenigsberg, Leipzig, and other centres of the Fatherland. Merchandise was carried in and out of the country by German railway lines, or to German ports in German bottoms. Even American cotton and Australian wool and tallow were disposed of in Russia by German middlemen who had them conveyed in German steamers. On the other hand, Russian corn, sugar, spirits, were taken to Europe by German transport firms. Intending Russian emigrants were sought out by agents of German steamship companies, sent to German ports and accommodated on German steamers. In brief, whenever the Tsar's subjects had anything to sell to the foreigner or to buy from him, their first step was to go in search of a German, through whom the sale or purchase might be effected.

In domestic economics the same phenomenon was everywhere noticeable. To a Russian's success in almost any commercial or industrial venture, the co-operation of the German was an indispensable condition. Individual enterprise might sow and governmental legislation might water, but it was German goodwill that vouchsafed the fruit. Wherever Russian industry showed its head, Germans flocked thither to take the concern in hand, regulate its growth, and co-ordinate its effects with those of other industries which were under the patronage of German banks. It was in vain that Witte and his fellow workers threw up barriers that seemed impassable to German enterprise. They were turned with ease and rapidity. Thus in order to protect the textile industries of Moscow, prohibitive tariffs were levied on textile fabrics of German origin. But the irrepressible Teuton crossed the frontier, established his factories in Poland, founded the German-Jewish town of Lodz, and snapped his fingers at the Government of the Tsar. And forthwith Lodz assumed all the characteristics of a German city. German schools flourished there, German agents abounded, German became the recognized language, and permission was at one time given to German reserves there, to undergo their periodic term of military drill for the Kaiser's army!

Of the three Entente Powers challenged by Germany in 1914, Russia was therefore by far the worst equipped for the unwonted effort which the European War demanded of each. For her liberty of action, and, in some cases, even her liberty of choice, was hampered by the financial, economic, and political network which Germany had slowly and almost imperceptibly woven over the entire population. In the fine meshes of this net several organs of national life were caught, immobilized and connected with the Fatherland. And it was not until they strove to move and discharge their functions on behalf of the Russian nation that they became fully conscious of their plight. German intrigue and subterranean scheming, under the mask of sympathy—now for the autocracy, now for socialism—had effected far-reaching changes in the Empire, which few even among observant politicians appear to have realized. These innovations were embodied in the thraldom of Russian banks to German financial institutions; in the splendid organization which kept old German colonies that were scattered over the Empire in touch with each other, and co-ordinated their action; in the eloquent Russian advocates and influential dignitaries who contributed to the furtherance of German ideas and interests and swayed the policy of the State; and in the dependence of the great Russian Empire on its enemy for munitions, and almost every other technical necessary of war.

From the days of the great Peter this Teuton influence had been creeping imperceptibly over the Slav race like some cancerous soul-growth. It infused a subtle poison in the State organism, the most appalling effects of which are only now assuming visible shape. Two palace revolutions were brought about by a national reaction against the predominance of this foreign influence, which was resented by the people not merely because it was alien, but largely also because of its unscrupulous and ruthless character. Some of the most atrocious cruelties which students of Russian history associate with court and political life in the Tsardom, during the best part of two centuries, had their sources in the sheer malignity of Teuton Ministers who spoke and acted in the name of the autocrat of the moment. It is characteristic that the Minister Muennich, in the school for officers which he founded in Petersburg, had Russian history eliminated from the programme as superfluous, German history being allowed to remain; and that out of 255 students, only eighteen studied the Russian language, whereas 237 applied themselves to German. The first Sovereign to rebel against this Teuton supremacy in his Empire was the late Alexander III., who made no secret of his profound dislike for German ways. But as the Russian proverb has it, "one man in the field, is not a soldier." Hercules, to cleanse the Augean stables, had need of the water of a river, and the anti-German Tsar could not hope to make headway without the co-operation of his army of officials, who themselves were permeated with the Teutonic spirit. And as passive resistance was their attitude, his purging scheme was abortive. As a matter of cool calculation, the only hope of freeing Russia from the meshes of the German net was a war between the two peoples. And all radical legislation had therefore to be postponed.

In the meanwhile the Germans, having organized and primed their agents, have been teutonizing Russia cunningly and effectively. With the precious assistance of their own kith and kin settled in the Baltic provinces and elsewhere, they employed the never-failing expedient of taking an active and, when possible, a leading part in domestic Russian politics, and invariably on both sides. At the Court they have always been well represented, and in the ranks of the inarticulate and Parliamentary Opposition they have also been playing a noteworthy part. In factories and other industrial and commercial institutions they arranged strikes, called indignation meetings and hatched conspiracies at critical junctures when it was to Germany's interest that Russia's attention should be riveted upon home affairs. No Parliamentary Bill could be privately drafted, no railway scheme could be secretly discussed, no Ministerial measure could be canvassed; nay, seldom could a confidential report be drawn up to the Emperor himself without the knowledge of the Berlin authorities and the occasional intervention of their agents in Petrograd. It is interesting to note that in 1914 a secret memorandum of a highly confidential character, from a statesman to the Tsar, found its way to Berlin soon after it had been presented to the monarch and had a certain influence on the decisions which led to the war.

The work of economic interpenetration carried on under the aegis of such powerful patrons and resourceful coadjutors was greatly facilitated by the German colonies scattered over Russia for generations. Many of these foreigners had been invited by Catherine II., receiving large grants of land and various privileges which enabled them to flourish at the expense of the native population, on which they looked down with open contempt.

At that time the extent of free land was considerable in Bessarabia, Volhynia, and the provinces of Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, Saratoff and Samara, where down to the year 1915 entire cantons were inhabited by Germans. In the Novouzensky canton, for example, they constituted 40 per cent. of the population, in that of Berdyansk 17 per cent. and in the Akkerman canton 14 per cent. The inducements which had been held out to them to settle in these fertile districts were irresistible. Each colonist received fifty dessiatines of land,[32] extensive pastures for cattle, grants for the journey and the cost of stocking his farm, absolute immunity from all taxes, rates and military service, and complete local autonomy apart from that of the Russian community.

[32] About 107 acres.

The Germans whom these boons attracted were of two categories: sectarians (Menonites), who eschewed military service on religious grounds; and ne'er-do-wells, who objected to the restraints of law and justice in the Fatherland; besides a considerable percentage of tramps. Most of the men of the second category fared as badly in their adopted country as they had in their native land. They gave themselves up to intemperance and kindred vices, and their descendants still lead a hand-to-mouth existence in the Tsardom which their privileges alone could not better. The sectarians, on the other hand, formed a compact co-operative body, and by dint of persevering industry and shrewdness, made the most of their favoured position and prospered. With their common savings they purchased such vast tracts of land from the neighbouring gentry that in time the Russian population was constrained to emigrate to Siberia and other distant parts of the Empire. And when the present conflict was unchained they were in possession of an area of fertile land bigger than Pomerania, which is one of the largest provinces of Prussia. In the Volga country alone they owned 879,420 dessiatines, or, say, 1,884,471 acres! In the south of Russia there are 519 German settlements, and the area they occupy is estimated at more than 31,252 square versts.[33] And the land of the country gentry in the neighbouring districts was fast passing into their hands.[34] They have their own local government, their banks which help them to acquire Russian land, their insurance companies and their schools. In short, they were a compact little State within the Tsardom.

[33] One square verst is equal to 0.44 square mile.

[34] Cf. Novoye Vremya, October 5, 1914.

The sectarians still hold aloof from the native population. Indeed, almost the only relations in which they stand to Russians are those of masters and agricultural labourers. They hire Russian peasants to till their land and they compel them to work hard for small wages. Many of these colonies have the appearance of little German towns. They have added industrial pursuits to agricultural, possess flour mills, timber mills, and plough their farms with German implements. They are aggressively German in sentiment, language, character and Kultur.

That in brief is the history of one type of German colonization in the Tsardom. There is another at which it may not be amiss to cast a glance. It is of recent date and consists of German elements already resident in the Tsardom. It is a monument of Teuton audacity and Slav forbearance. One might ransack the history of European nations without finding another such instance of downright effrontery and disloyalty on the part of a privileged section of the community, and of easy-going toleration on the part of the State. The German elements of the provinces of Kurland and Livland, subjects of the Tsar though they are, resolved after the abortive revolution of 1906 to raise a living wall against the rising tide of Russian influence. And as is the wont of the Teuton throughout the world, they employed Russia's men and Russia's money to achieve their anti-Russian object. This object was to attract some twenty thousand Germans to the province, provide them with farms on easy terms, and look to time, the industry of the men, the fecundity of the women and the teachings of the schools to create a new German State in that part of the Russian Empire. It was part of the functions of these colonists, we are frankly told by their historiographer,[35] "to serve, even as armed defenders" against the Russians! In no other country on the globe is such a scheme conceivable.

[35] His name is Dr. Fritz Wertheimer. His writings are to be found in various periodicals. The essay from which these data are taken was published in the Frankfurter Zeitung, January 8, 1916.

The undertaking was organized and carried out by two brothers, Broedrich by name, in one of whom the Tsar's Government placed implicit confidence and evinced it by appointing him to be chief of the police in the canton of Goldingen. In this post of trust the German leader was able to further the anti-Russian cause materially. And he utilized his opportunities to the utmost for the purpose during the five years of his tenure of office. He himself travelled in search of suitable German colonists and had numerous agents on the look-out for such. He finally got about 13,000 to settle in Kurland and 7000 in Livland. The Kurlandische Kreditverein advanced the necessary capital as mortgagee of the land, and within five or six years many of the colonists had already paid off their debts, sold their farms to other Germans and bought untilled land in the neighbourhood for themselves. The school was responsible for the required standard of German patriotism. The success of the experiment exceeded the highest expectations, and to-day the man of confidence of the Tsar's Government, Karl Robert Broedrich, is become chief of the local administration under Wilhelm II., and deservedly enjoys the confidence of the Kaiser's Ministers.

This type of German invasion in Russia, especially in recent years, was carried out with a supreme disdain of the laws of the Empire which is equally characteristic of those who display and those who tolerate it. In virtue of a law inscribed in the Statute Book on 14/26 March 1887, foreigners are not permitted to purchase or own land outside the cities in the provinces of Kurland and Livland, whereas in Esthland there is no such prohibition. Yet in Esthland only 6396 dessiatines belong to Germans, whereas in the two provinces whence they are absolutely excluded Germans possess 36,852 dessiatines and 6396 dessiatines respectively! In the territory of the Don Cossacks no foreigner may possess land under any circumstance, yet the Germans own there 3700 dessiatines. Again, in the provinces of Podolia and Volhynia, where, for State reasons, the ownership of land is allowed only to Russians, Germans purchased and own 63,831 dessiatines in the latter province and 12,475 in the former. Altogether the amount of Russian territory which passed into the hands of the Teutons is enormous. In July 1915, when the inventory was not yet completed, the area inscribed had reached the total of 2,450,000 dessiatines or about 5,250,000 acres.[36] "This figure—" we are assured—"is still far from complete, inasmuch as a large number of data from various provinces have not been included in it, and there are no entries at all for the three provinces of the kingdom of Poland where military operations are going on and where unhappily the presence of German colonists has been utilized by the German General Staff."[37]

[36] Novoye Vremya, July 2, 1915.

[37] By a law sanctioned by the Tsar, in February 1915, the German Colonists of Southern and Western Russia were obliged to sell their land to Russian subjects, and they received ten months' grace for the purpose.

In Poland there were well over 500,000 German colonists, besides a large number of new-comers, whose unwritten "privileges" included, as we saw, occasional permission to their young men liable to serve a few weeks annually in the ranks of the German army to discharge that duty under German officers in Russian Poland! In the Ukraine and the most fertile districts of the Volga basin hundreds of thousands of Germans lived, throve, and upheld the traditions as well as the language of the Fatherland, under the eyes of tolerant local authorities.

Hard by old Novgorod, the once famous Russian republic and cradle of the Russian State, a number of German colonists settled some 150 years ago. The population of two of these settlements numbers several thousand souls, descendants of the original settlers, in the fourth and fifth generation. They had had time enough, one would think, during that century-and-a-half to assimilate Russian ways and to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Russian tongue. Well, these colonists do not speak the language of the country in which they and their forbears have been living for over 150 years! They still consider themselves German, and if you ask them who their sovereign is they answer unhesitatingly—Kaiser Wilhelm! During Russia's recent military reverses, which threatened for a time to culminate in the capture of Riga, and possibly of Petrograd as well, these parasites in the body politic of Russia displayed their joy in various unseemly ways, which aroused the indignation of their Slav neighbours. In one of their schools the Russian visiting authorities were received with demonstrations of hostility. It is usual for the portrait of the Russian Tsar to be set up in every school in the Empire. In one of these educational establishments it was discovered in the lavatory with the eyes gouged out.

Long before this war Berlin had become alive to the importance of these colonies as factors in the work of pacific interpenetration and political propaganda. Wandering teachers from the Fatherland were accordingly sent among them to link them up with their brethren at home, and fan the embers of patriotism which long residence in the Tsardom had not quenched. Little by little, the political fruits of these apostolic labours began to show themselves: the colonists, whose main preoccupation had been to occupy the most fertile soil in the district, began to take over the approaches to Russia's strategic plans, and to display an absorbing interest in Russian politics. Several Zemstvos fell into their hands, and were practically controlled by them, and they contrived to gain considerable influence in the elections to the Duma.

The chance of a useful part for these German colonies to perform having thus unexpectedly arisen on the horizon, they seized it with promptitude and utilized it with the thoroughness that characterizes their race. The numbers prosperity, and influence of the colonies grew rapidly. Land that had belonged to the Russian peasantry was taken over by the foreign parasites, and while the Tsar's Minister, were toiling and moiling to transport hundreds of thousands of Russian husbandmen and their families in search of land beyond the Ural Mountains to the virgin forests of Eastern Siberia, there in the very heart of European Russia were hundreds of thousands of intruders, who, with the help of their German Colonial banks, were acquiring additional tracts of land from which their native owners had been ousted.

I pointed out this anomaly over and over again, and long before the war I described it in review articles. The well-known German Professor, Hans Delbrueck, replied shortly afterwards, in the Contemporary Review,[38] denying point-blank the truth of my statements, which were drawn from official sources, and confirmed by the evidence of my senses. For I had visited several of the colonies in question. Besides these German settlements, there had also been a number of German industrial and commercial establishments in the Empire which, at first nowise harmful, were afterwards taken in hand by emissaries from Berlin, linked up together, affiliated to one or other of the great financial houses of Germany, and transformed into redoubtable instruments of Teuton domination. Capital was subscribed, syndicates were formed, railway-building and electro-technical industries were organized, Russia's railways policy modified, and metallurgical works were monopolized by the Germans. Here again financial institutions discharged the functions of motive power. At the beginning, about thirty million roubles were subscribed for the creation of banks, and by dint of push, importunity, secret influence and intrigue, these institutions received on deposit the savings of the Russian peasant, merchant, landowner, and official, which finally mounted up to several hundreds of millions. With this money they were enabled to control the markets and constrain Russian institutions and individuals to bow to their will.

[38] Cf. Contemporary Review, February 1911.

Contracts in Russia were appropriately drafted in the German language, being directed to the promotion of German interests. Incipient and even long-established Russian firms were either killed by unfair competition or compelled to enter the syndicates and forego their national character. Inventions and new appliances were tested, plagiarized, and employed in the service of the Fatherland. And while preparing for the war which was to set Germany above the nations—Deutschland ueber Alles—these syndicates followed the policy dictated from Berlin, sowed discord between Russian firms and various State departments, organized strikes and paid the strikers in competing establishments, and thus deprived the Russian State of industrial organs on which it would necessarily have to rely in war-time. To give but one example of this cleverly devised attack, the cotton industry of the Tsardom was in the hands of the Germans when war was declared. Another of the most important groups of Russian industries is that of naphtha. When this precious liquid is dear, many of the lesser works have to close; when it is cheap, even small industrial enterprises are able to go on working. By way of obtaining complete control of this vital element of Russia's industrial life, the Deutsche Bank went to work to form a syndicate, had a number of private wells bought up, united them in one, acquired numerous shares in Russian oil companies, and had the manager of another German bank—the well-known Disconto Gesellschaft—made a member of the Board of the Russian Nobel Company.

One of the results of this ingenious deal was a sharp rise in the prices of all the products and some of the by-products of naphtha. The increase continued at an alarming rate, filling the pockets of the German shareholders, whose syndicates received the oil at cost price for their own consumption, while Russian firms were forced to acquire it at the market value or to shut down their works. Amongst the worst sufferers from these anti-Russian tactics were the steam-navigation companies of the Volga, which had jealously warded off all attempts to germanize them.

In conditions as restrictive as these, it is well-nigh impossible for Russian industry to hold its own, much less prosper and grow. And only the most vigorous and best-organized enterprises in the Empire, like that of the Morozoffs in Moscow, managed to pursue their way unscathed. In Russian Poland, where textile industries flourished, and the total annual production was valued at 294,000,000 roubles, over one-third of these industries belonged to the Germans, whose yearly output amounted to more than one-half of the grand total, i.e., to 150,000,000 roubles.[39] In all these industrial and commercial campaigns the German prime movers had carried out their operations more or less openly. But where interests affecting the defences of the Empire were concerned, caution was the first condition of success, and, as usual, the Teutons proved supple and adaptable. By way of levying an attack against the shipbuilding industry, they pushed shaky Russian concerns into the foreground, while studiously keeping themselves out of view. Thus in one case new Russian banks were founded, and old ones in a state of decay were revived by means of German capital and encouraged to form a syndicate with the Nikolayeffsky shipbuilding works and certain foreign banks. An official inquiry, presided over by Senator Neidhardt, lately revealed the significant fact that each firm of this syndicate had bound itself to demand identical prices for the construction of Russian ships, and under no circumstances to abate an iota of the demand. And it was further agreed that these prices should be so calculated as to yield to the members of the syndicate one hundred per cent. profit.

[39] Cf. Duma debates of August 1914.

This allegation is not a mere inference, nor a rumour. It is an established fact. Neither is the proof circumstantial; it consists of the original agreement in writing signed by the authorized representatives of the institutions concerned. The data were laid before the members of the Russian Duma by A. N. Khvostoff.[40] Thus the Russian peasant is taxed for the creation of a fleet, and the Duma votes an initial credit of, say, 500,000,000 roubles for the purpose. And if the shipbuilding companies and their financial bankers were honest the aim could be achieved. But in the circumstances what it comes to is that the nation must pay 500,000,000 more, in order to get what it wants. And this tax of a hundred per cent. is levied by German parasites on the Russian people. One might scrutinize the history of corruption in every country of Europe without finding anything to beat this Teutonic device, which at the same time gratified the cupidity of the money-makers and dealt a stunning blow at the Russian State. Half of the shares of the celebrated Putiloff munitions factory are said to have belonged to the Austrian Skoda Works.

[40] Cf. Novoye Vremya, August 17, 1915.

At the outset of the present war, when Russia's needs were growing greater and more pressing, the works controlled by Germans and Germany's agents diminished their output steadily. In lieu of turning out, say, 30,000 poods of iron they would produce only 5,000, and offer instead of the remainder verbal explanations to the effect that lack of fuel or damage to the machinery had caused the diminution. Again, one of these ubiquitous banks buys a large amount of corn or sugar, but instead of having it conveyed to the districts suffering from a dearth of that commodity, deposits it in a safe place and waits. In the meantime prices go up until they reach the prohibition level. Then the bank sells its stores in small quantities. The people suffer, murmur, and blame the Government. Nor is it only the average man who thus complains. In the Duma the authorities have been severely blamed for leaving the population to the mercy of those money-grubbers whom German capital and Russian tribute are making rich. "Averse to go to the root of the matter," one Deputy complained, "the Government punishes a woman who, on the market sells a herring five copecks dearer than the current price, yet at the same time it permits the Governors to promulgate their own arbitrary laws regulating imports and exports from their own provinces. In this way Russia is split up into sixty different regions, each one of which pursues its own policy unchecked."

The importance of the role played by the banks financed by German capital in Russia can hardly be overstated. They advance money on the crops and take railway and steamship invoices as guarantees—they are centres of information respecting everybody who resides and everything that goes on in the district and the province. I write with personal knowledge of their working, for I watched it at close quarters in the Volga district and the Caucasus with the assistance of an experienced bank manager. Their political influence can be far-reaching, and the services which they are enabled to render to the Fatherland are appreciable. And they rendered them willingly. As extenders of Germany's economic power in the Empire they merited uncommonly well of their own kindred. Thus of Russia's total imports in the year 1910, which were valued at 953,000,000 roubles, Germany alone contributed goods computed at 440,000,000. These consisted mainly of raw cotton, machinery, prepared skins, chemical products, and wool.

How steadily our rivals kept ousting the British out of Russian markets by those means may be gathered from the following comparative tables. The percentage of Russia's requirements supplied by the two competing nations varied, during the fifteen years between 1898 and 1913, as follows—

Year. Germany supplied. Britain supplied.

1898-1902 34.6 per cent. 18.6 per cent. 1903-1907 37.2 " 14.8 " 1908-1910 41.6 " 13.4 " 1911 45.4 " 12.2 " 1912 47.5 " 12.6 " 1913 49.6 " 13.3 "

In the year 1901 Germany supplied 31 per cent. of the total value of Russia's imports; in 1905 her contribution was 42 per cent.; and the increase went steadily forward, reaching over 50 per cent. in the year 1913. If we add to this the net profits of German industrial and commercial undertakings in the Russian Empire, we may form a notion of the appropriateness of the comparison which likened the Tsardom to a vast German colony. The entire economic system of the country was rapidly approaching the colonial type. And to these economic results one should add the political.

It is fair to assume that at the outset the main motive of this industrial invasion was the quest of commercial profit. Subconsciously political objects may have been vaguely present to the minds of these pioneers, as indeed they have ever been to the various categories of German emigrants in every land, European and other. But in the first instance the creation of German industries in Russia was part of a deliberate plan to elude the heavy tariffs on manufactured goods. It has been aptly described by an Italian publicist[41] as legal contraband, and it supplies us with a striking example of German enterprise and tenacity. It attained its object fully. About three-fourths of the textile and metallurgical production in the Tsardom, the entire chemical industry, the breweries, 85 per cent. of the electrical works and 70 per cent. of gas production were German. And of the capital invested in private railways no less than 628,000,000 roubles belongs to Germans. Even Russian municipalities were wont to apply to Germany for their loans, and of the first issues of thirty-five Russian municipal loans no less than twenty-two were raised in the Fatherland.

[41] Virginio Gayda.

The necessity of waging war against this potent enemy within the gates intensified Russia's initial difficulties to an extent that can hardly be realized abroad, and was a constant source of unexpected and disconcerting obstacles. Some time before the opening of the war, a feeling of restiveness, an impulse to throw off the German yoke, had been gradually displaying itself in the Press, in commercial circles, and in the Duma. These aspirations and strivings were focussed in the firm resolve of the Russian Government, under M. Kokofftseff, to refuse to renew the Treaty of Commerce which was enabling Germany to flood the Empire with her manufactures and to extort a ruinous tribute from the Russian nation. Two years more and the negotiations on this burning topic would have been inaugurated, and there is little doubt in my mind—there was none in the mind of the late Count Witte—that the upshot of these conversations would have been a Russo-German war. For there was no other less drastic way of freeing the people from the domination of German technical industries and capital, and the consequent absorption of native enterprise.

When diplomatic relations were broken off, and war was finally declared, Germany was already the unavowed protectress of Russia. And when people point, as they frequently do, to the war as the greatest blunder ever committed by the Wilhelmstrasse since the Fatherland became one and indivisible, I feel unable to see with them eye to eye. Seemingly it was indeed an egregious mistake, but so obvious were the probable consequences which made it appear so that even a German of the Jingo type would have gladly avoided it had there not been another and less obvious side to the problem. We are not to forget that in Berlin it was perfectly well known that Russia was determined to withdraw from her Teutonic neighbour the series of one-sided privileges accorded to her by the then existing Treaty of Commerce, and that this determination would have been persisted in, even at the risk of war. And for war the year 1914 appeared to be far more auspicious to the German than any subsequent date.

Handicapped by these foreign parasites who were systematically deadening the force of its arm, the Russian nation stood its ground and Germany drew the sword.

Improvisation—the worst possible form of energy in a war crisis—was now the only resource left to the Tsar's Ministers. And the financial problems had first of all to be faced. In this, as in other spheres, the country was bound by and to Germany, so that the task may fairly be characterized as one of the most arduous that was ever tackled by the Finance Minister of any country—even if we include the resourceful Calonne. And M. Bark, who had recently come into office, was new not only to the work, but also to the politics of finance in general. Happily, his predecessor, who, whatever his critics may advance to the contrary, was one of the most careful stewards the Empire has ever possessed, had accumulated in the Imperial Bank a gold reserve of over 1,603,000,000 roubles, besides a deposit abroad of 140,720,000 roubles. Incidentally it may be noted that no other bank in the world has ever disposed of such a vast gold reserve.

Although one of the richest countries in Europe, Russia's wealth is still under the earth, and therefore merely potential. Her burden of debt was heavy. For at the outbreak of the war the disturbing effects of the Manchurian campaign and its domestic sequel, which had cost the country 3,016,000,000 roubles, had not yet been wholly shaken off. And, unlike her enemy, Russia had no special war fund to draw upon. As the national industries were unable to furnish the necessary supplies to the army, large orders had to be placed abroad and paid for in gold. At the same moment Russia's export trade practically ceased, and together with it the one means of appreciably easing the strain. The issue of paper money in various forms was increased, loans were raised, private capital was withdrawn from the country, various less abundant sources of public revenue vanished, and the favourable balance of trade dropped from 442,000,000 roubles to 85,500,000. Germany, on the other hand, possessed her war fund, in addition to which she had levied a property tax of a milliard marks a year before the outbreak of hostilities; she further drew in enormous sums in gold from circulation, and generally mobilized her finances systematically.

But Russia was compelled to improvise, to make bricks without straw. Her war on a front of two thousand versts long had to be waged with whatever materials happened to be available. Japan—who, I have little doubt, will be found at the close of the great struggle to have benefited largely by her pains—exerted herself to provide munitions for her new friend and ally. The United States, Great Britain and France also contributed their quota. For many of these orders placed abroad gold had to be exported, and as Russia has no other natural way of importing gold but by selling corn, which there were no means of transporting, a sensible depreciation of the rouble resulted. Great Britain and France have also had to make heavy purchases abroad for their military needs, but these two countries can still export wares extensively and keep the payments in gold within certain limits. Even Italy receives a noteworthy part of her annual revenue in the shape of emigrants' remittances from abroad. But once Russia's gates were closed and her corn had to remain in the granaries, elevators, or at railway stations, the shortage in her revenue became absolute. During the first three months of the year 1915 the value of Russian exports over the Finnish frontier and the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea was only 23,000,000 roubles, showing a falling off of about 93 per cent., as compared with the worth of the produce exported during the corresponding three months of the preceding year.

It is a curious fact that part of this reduced trade continued to be carried on with Germany for months after the war had begun. A Russian publicist has remarked that at the opening of the campaign the voice of the nation was heard saying: "Corn we have in plenty, and vegetables and salt. It is we who feed Europe. Germany will therefore starve without our corn. Our armies may retreat, but our corn will go with them; and the more the Germans advance into Russia, the further they are away from their bread." And in this the average Russian saw a pledge of victory. But before six months had lapsed, the everyday man grew indignant. For he learned that his corn was being conveyed through Finland and Sweden into Germany, and in such vast quantities as had never before been heard of. Here is a street scene illustrative of this traffic and the feelings it aroused. A long string of carts laden with flour blocks in one of the Petrograd streets leading to a bridge over the Neva; a General walking with his wife stops one of the drivers and asks: "Wherever are you taking the flour to?" "Where do you suppose? Sure we're taking it to the Germans. We have to feed the creatures. They are a bit faint." "There you see!" exclaimed the General to his wife; "didn't I tell you? And every morning without fail the same long line of carts blocks the streets while our corn is being taken to the Germans!"[42] It is to be feared that this commerce has not yet wholly ceased. For the Russians, like ourselves, are considerate of the Germans.

[42] Cf. Novoye Vremya, February 24, 1915.

That that story of trading with the enemy is no idle anecdote is evident from the circumstance, based on official Russian statistics, that during ten months from August to May, while the war was being waged relentlessly between the two empires, Russia bought from Germany no less than 36,000,000 roubles' worth of manufactures. How much the Central Empires purchased from Russia, I am unable to say. That commerce is one of the almost inevitable consequences of improvisation and one of the most sinister. Some months after the outbreak of the war the Imperial Government levied a duty of a hundred per cent. on all commodities coming from Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. That was assumed to be a prohibitive tariff. But it failed to keep out imports from the Fatherland. In the one month of April 1915, Germany sent 3,000,000 roubles' worth of manufactured goods into Russia, and in May 2,500,000 roubles' worth. And the Allied Press was then descanting on the stagnation in German trade and the starvation of the German people. The explanation of this anomaly lies in the unforeseen and enormous scarcity and rise of prices in the home markets. Some metal wares—for instance, various kinds of instruments and of wire appliances, etc.—are not to be had in Russia for love or money, consequently a hundred per cent. duty is but a heavy tax paid by the consumer, not an effective prohibition.[43] Since then, I am assured, the Government has adopted stringent measures which some people believe to have put an end to that form of trading with the enemy.

[43] Cf. Utro Rossiyi, August 28, 1915.

It is hard for foreigners to realize the plight to which Russia has been reduced by the closing of her gates. As the Nile waters were the source of Egypt's prosperity, so the abundant Russian harvests constitute the life-giving ichor which flows in the veins of the Russian nation. Without superfluous corn for exportation, the State would be unable to meet its obligations, maintain its solvency, or provide the motive power of progress. The exportation of agricultural produce was the fountain head not only of Russia's material well-being, but of her moral and cultural evolution: everything, in a word, was dependent upon plentiful harvests and extensive sales of cereals abroad. And, suddenly, the gates were closed, the corn was stored, and the nation left without its revenue. Nobody but a Russian, or one who has lived long in the country, can realize fully all that this tremendous blow connotes. Parenthetically, it may be remarked that it adds a motive, and one of the most potent, to those which inspire the heroic sacrifices of the people, quickening the flame of devotion to their Allied cause. Russia is now literally fighting for her own liberty, for escape from the iron circle that shuts her off from the sea, and isolates her from the western world in which it is her ambition and her mission to play a helpful part.

One needs no further explanation why the Russian Government put pressure upon M. Delcasse and Sir Edward Grey to open the Dardanelles route for the Russian corn. Neither is it to be wondered at that while the Allied Forces in Gallipoli were still grappling with the Turks, the Tsar's Ministers should have thrust into the foreground the question of Constantinople and the Straits, and insisted upon an immediate pragmatic settlement. True, that was not statesmanship; it was anything but political wisdom; but at any rate it was human on the part of all concerned. If this Titanic struggle, in which Russia is perhaps the greatest sufferer, is to bring her any palpable and enduring advantage, this, it was urged, can take but one form—freedom from the preposterous restraints that bar her way to the sea, and through the sea to the outside world. This and other pleas were powerful; but for this very reason and for the purpose of realizing her natural striving I personally would have temporarily negatived the Russian proposal and left nothing undone to ensure its withdrawal. For if I were asked to point to the efficient cause of the Allies' present lamentable plight in the Near East, I should single out this premature arrangement and its necessary consequences. For Roumania and Bulgaria were at the moment as bitterly opposed to Russia's overlordship in the Dardanelles and her possession of Constantinople as were France and Great Britain in the days of yore. And they embodied their opposition in acts.



CHAPTER VI

THE STATESMANSHIP OF THE ENTENTE

One of the most amazing phenomena of Entente statesmanship during the present European struggle, is the offhand readiness with which the Governments of France and Great Britain, yielding to abstract reasoning founded upon gratuitous assumptions, not only reversed the policy of centuries but committed themselves to a wholly new departure which was certain to raise up enemies to the Entente, to render its task immeasurably more arduous, and to lessen its means of achieving success. However well Russia deserved of her allies, however unquestionable her claim to the city of Constantine, no less suitable a moment could have been selected to press that claim than the spring of 1915. The only evidence we possess that the British statesmen primarily responsible for this capital blunder were conscious of the fateful character of this commitment, is the extreme care they took to have their responsibility shared by the members of the Opposition, which at that time was not represented in the Cabinet. But even with this indication before us, we cannot believe that even now this premature solution of a secular problem on lines suggested by transient episodes of a military campaign, has struck the responsible statesmen in proportion to its specific weight, the depth of its importance, and the nature of its consequences. To take but one of these, we find that towards the end of the second year of the campaign, Turkey is one of the two key-positions of the international situation. To conclude a separate peace with that Power is become a pressing, and would also be a feasible, task were it not that this earmarking of Constantinople for Russia constitutes an impassable barrier. No Turkish Cabinet would or could conclude a separate peace and strike up friendship with the nations that are making ready to deprive the Caliph of his capital. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that this premature allotment of Constantinople to Russia is the only obstacle to the conclusion of a separate peace with Turkey. There are also hindrances of a military nature which would have to be displaced before any decisive move in this direction could be expected of the young Turks.

But it cannot be gainsaid that the most formidable obstacle is that. Neither can it be questioned that that premature arrangement will, if the Allies emerge victorious from the ordeal, thrust into the foreground of practical politics a whole group of problems the most delicate and dangerous that were ever yet tackled by the inadequately equipped diplomacy of the Allied Governments. It is then that the Entente Powers will fully realize the deluge to which they made such haste to open the sluice-gates in the spring of 1915. And the only way practicable out of this blind alley would be the spontaneous abandonment by the Russian Government of the right it possesses, which however the Allies will certainly never call in question. Whether the Tsar's Government believes such a sacrifice necessary, and whether, if they did, they could summon up the courage requisite to make it, are questions which Russia's loyal allies have neither the right nor the wish to raise. We will carry out our obligations in the letter and the spirit. If the Russian people, in the person of their responsible organ, should renounce for the moment the claims which we have formally recognized and undertaken to enforce, this decision will have been come to spontaneously and without pressure or advice from their allies.

The extent to which the Teuton had his own way among the easy-going Russian people is hardly to be realized. It would be certainly inexplicable in an empire governed on national lines and conscious of its mission. For unlimited pliancy was the quality which German importunity evoked on the part of the highest authorities. One of many examples is worth recording. Among all industrial enterprises the Russian Government is most sensitive about that of high explosives. The manufacture of these they had always rigorously reserved for their own people, on obvious grounds. Well, the moment the Germans resolved to break down this barrier, they found the means to do it despite the objection raised by the Russian Press that it would be dangerous to confide the production of high explosives to foreigners and superlatively dangerous to confide it to prospective enemies. The prospective enemy carried the point, and the manufacture of high explosives was handed over to a German company, which built works for the purpose near the Russian capital, and had its headquarters and board of directors in Berlin![44]

[44] Novoye Vremya, June 24, 1915.

As in Italy, so in the Tsardom, one of the principal levers of Teuton interpenetration was the regulation of the national trade and industry. That is to say, these were allowed to subsist and thrive up to, but not beyond, the point at which they were useful as adjuncts of German enterprise. And the regulators were principally two: the Treaty of Commerce extorted from the Tsar's Government during the embarrassments caused by the Manchurian campaign, and the German banks, which in the empire paraded as Russian, just as in Italy they were decked as Italian. Many of those financial institutions were but branches of German houses, and their methods were identical with those of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant. And as Italian money and Italian institutions were employed as instruments of German interpenetration in foreign countries,[45] so Russian funds and banks were used as helps to German interpenetration in Belgium and other lands.

[45] For example, the Banca Franco-Italiana in Brazil.

A noteworthy instance of the ingenuity with which this intricate mechanism was worked came to light shortly before the outbreak of the war. In Brussels there was a branch of the Petrograd International Bank which purported to be a purely Russian concern. But once the Kaiser had sent his ultimatum to the Tsar's Government, the Russian mask was doffed by the Brussels agency, which forthwith appeared in its true colours as a potent instrument of germanization in Belgium. There was found to be almost nothing Russian about the bank but the name. The staff, the language spoken, the methods of business, the political sympathies, the aims of the operations were all German. Out of the forty-three permanent members of the staff, thirty were German subjects, six Austrians, two German-Swiss, two Belgians, one was a Dutchman, one Turk, and there was a solitary Russian. The moment Count Berchtold presented his ultimatum to Serbia this "Russian" bank refused to change any Russian banknotes on any terms and let it be understood that they were valueless. A panic on the Belgian market was the immediate consequence. Russian travellers had to deposit their jewellery in pawn and pay exorbitant rates of interest on loans. The bank itself practised a kind of usury, and advanced only sixty per cent. of the face value of notes issued by the Imperial Bank of Russia. When the Belgian Government, after the declaration of war, began to tackle German espionage, this "Russian" bank was found to be one of the strongholds of the military spies. Certain of the employees were permanent agents of the German Military Attache, and were at the same time inscribed as members of the staff of the Deutsche Bank of Berlin.

All those well-thought-out and successfully executed schemes may bear in upon the British people some notion of what is meant by German organization and co-ordination, and may also help them to gauge the chances of success, military, diplomatic and economic, on which the Allies, with their easy-going ways, their hope of somehow "blundering through," and their lack of combination and of plan—can rely when pitted against a mighty organism, disposing of the most redoubtable forces ever created by human science and skill, directed by a single mind, and served with ascetic self-abnegation and religious ardour by over a hundred million people. The courage and faith of the Allies in gazing for years upon this portentous engine of destruction without making suitable provision for the day when it would be turned against themselves, will fill future generations with amazement.

No bare enumeration of details can convey an adequate idea of the vastness, compactness and potency of the German organization which kept the Russian Colossus partially paralysed at home, while the Kaiser's armies were dealing it stunning blows on the battlefield. It is a revelation which will be followed by a new birth of the whole political world. The German colonists, the wandering German commercial travellers who acted as political spies, the various banks, joint-stock companies, religious sects, journals, reviews, schools, clubs, Lutheran pastors, and other Teuton agents, were but so many wheels and springs of the mighty machine which was set in motion and kept working by the political leaders in Berlin. For all these firms and enterprises and individuals from the Fatherland scattered over the length and breadth of the Tsardom were welded together in one vast organism by far-seeing politicians who canalized every important current of the nation's life and imparted to it the direction which German interests required. No enterprise was too vast, no detail too trivial, for the attention of these moulders of Germany's destinies.

All those activities, commercial, financial, industrial, journalistic, religious, political, the German mind combined into a single idea, the co-ordinate parts of which were studied and regulated, not by party chiefs, but by qualified experts, who, although specialists, subjected them to organic treatment. In this respect the German may be likened to a massive sombre figure who, surrounded by a crowd of sprightly shadowy nobodies, discoursing with easy frivolity on grave subjects, is engrossed with the task of destroying a great part of the frame-work of the world in order to rebuild it after his own plan. Unfortunately the extraordinary enlargement of interest which marks the latter-day political conceptions, and inspires the fateful action of Germany's acknowledged leaders, breeds in the allied peoples not so much a stern resolve to tame that revolutionary nation at all costs, as a sentimental longing for the return of the idyllic past, and an illusive hope that by dint of mild Christian charity it may yet be brought back.



CHAPTER VII

TEUTON POLITICS

It is this Teutonic power of looking far ahead, this profundity of vision, this mingled comprehensiveness and concentration, and the marked success with which these qualities have hitherto been exercised to the lasting detriment of the Entente nations which looked on and naively applauded, that fill the thoughtful student with misgivings about the future. True, it may not be too late for effective counter measures. But two conditions are manifestly essential to the successful application of any remedy: first, that its necessity should be felt and realized; and, second, that the scrupulosity which at present hesitates to apply drastic measures should yield to higher considerations than those of individual delicacy of sentiment and over-refined humanitarianism. When an individual abuses laws and restraints which bind his fellow-men, in order to inflict a deadly injury on them, it is meet that they should free themselves from those checks in their dealings with him. For example, it may be theoretically wrong, after the conclusion of the present struggle, for our people to bear such a grudge against the individual German as would exclude him from communion and intercourse with the nations of the Entente. And this principle would seem to apply with greater force to those Germans who might be willing to abandon their nationality and identify their aims, interests and strivings with those of the nation in which they would fain become incorporated. But when we reflect that almost every German, whatever his calling, how profound soever his debt of gratitude to a foreign people, considers himself first and always a member of his own country, works for its interests to the detriment of all others, and does not scruple to violate moral laws and social traditions in order to betray his new friends, we may well ask in virtue of what precept we should abstain from ostracizing him from the British Empire. His second nationality is so often a mere mask to enable him to perpetrate black treason, and it is so openly thus regarded by his own Government, which upholds and solemnly sanctions the principle, that it would be inexplicable folly on the part of the British nation to aid and abet its enemies by admitting them to the freedom of the community without taking effective precautions against treason.

And yet there is a large body of men in this country, as in France and Italy, who condemn the demand for these precautions as un-Christian and impolitic. Such laxness is the soil in which thrives the upas tree whose shade has so long darkened the organs of our empire and now threatens to blight the whole organism.

An all-important feature in the controversy which has arisen over the naturalization of German subjects is the utterly amoral view of it which underlies the attitude of the Kaiser's Government. According to these authorities, whose utterances and acts are decisive and final, a German, unlike every other subject, may swear allegiance to two states, of which one is his Fatherland, without being bound by his oath to the other. Various reasons, including material interests, may, it is argued, make it desirable that he should acquire citizenship in a foreign land; and the Kaiser's Government, for the good of the empire, recognizes this necessity and facilitates the process by a law. This law, which was enacted in July 1913, authorizes the born German subject, having first made known his intention and motive, to swear allegiance to a foreign state without forfeiting, or intending to forfeit, the rights or escaping from the duties which flow from his German citizenship. Now this is a privilege which not even the Pope has ever claimed the faculty of according.

From the point of view of international law this double naturalization is inadmissible. Every individual in the community of nations is the subject of a certain state, and only of one, and whenever the interests of that state run counter to those of any other, he is bound legally as well as morally to promote the former to the best of his ability and means. The Teuton doctrine and practice are that Germans may insinuate themselves into a country, and in the guise of loyal citizens become conversant with its secrets, and then use them to its hurt. In the light of this law, which was a custom long before it became a statute, the number of Germans naturalized in various countries grew amazingly during the past fifteen years. In France, for example, where there were only 38,000 foreigners naturalized in the year 1896 and 65,000 in 1901, the figure reached 90,000 in 1906 and 120,000 five years later. And of these, four-fifths were Germans and Austrians. Many Germans first became Swiss or British subjects in order the more easily to acquire the rights of Frenchmen. One in particular, named Wilhelm Hellpern, first became a Belgian, then as Willy Hellpern a British subject, and finally, with a view to obtaining a place on the Board of the Societe Francaise de l'Industrie Chimique, applied for and received naturalization in France. This "Willy" Hellpern was a representative of the Central Gesellschaft fuer chemische Industrie.[46]

[46] Cf. Hors du Joug allemand, par Leon Daudet.

When war was declared in 1914 hundreds of Germans applied for papers of naturalization in Switzerland, and obtained them from various little Swiss communes which were in sore want of funds. Spies eager to place their machinations under the protection of Swiss citizenship found smooth ways to the desired goal. In the single canton of Zurich demands for naturalization rose from 260 during the nine months ending in October 1913,[47] to 732 in the corresponding nine months of 1915. Several cases of fraud were discovered during this rapid process of transforming foreign into Swiss citizens: one of the most salient being that of Friedrich Wilhelm Frank, a German who had taken out his naturalization papers in England and then decided to shake off his acquired British citizenship for that of the Helvetian Republic. As Frank had not been resident in Switzerland during the two years required by the law of that country he applied and paid for a false certificate of residence, and in this way achieved his object. But the trick was finally discovered and the naturalization cancelled.

[47] The number for the entire year was 350.

We may protest as vigorously as we will against this infamous troth-mongering which is destructive of international relations, and indirectly of social intercourse, but no responsible government can afford to ignore the necessity of guarding against its consequences. For it is no ephemeral manifestation of temperament, nor the passing whim of a political party or a class. The law of double citizenship, coupled with a plenary indulgence for treason and perjury in the cause of the Fatherland, is but the solemn consecration of a principle which was long practised and is warmly approved by the entire German people. The Berlin Government publicly invoked it during the latter half of the year 1915, under circumstances which remove doubts on this score. On one and the same day in August that year all German official and non-official journals published a notice, which ran as follows: "It is alleged that in neutral countries, and particularly in the United States of America, men of German extraction" (the word citizenship is not used, but extraction), "are employed as workmen, engineers or in other capacities in the production of war munitions for our enemies. All those who thus reinforce the military strength of our foes, thereby make the prosecution of the war more difficult for Germany, and not only burden themselves with a heavy load of moral turpitude, but also expose themselves—and many of them are seemingly unaware of this—to the operation of the German laws which punish high treason."

In other words, subjects of, say the American Republic, who were born there of German parents or grandparents and never acknowledged any other government nor possessed the citizenship of any other country, become guilty of high treason if they dare to avail themselves of the plenitude of the rights which that citizenship confers. They may not work for firms which supply the Allies because their fathers, or it may be only their grandfathers, happened to be Germans. The moral duties of German subjects still lie heavy on them, and they must execute the Kaiser's will to-day on pain of being dealt with as traitors to the Fatherland.

Monstrous principles and revolting procedure of this kind are calculated to kindle a blaze of indignation in people who realize their effects and set value on the boons of civilization or Christianity. They are among the many new ideas which Kultur has contributed to the stock of weapons destructive of modern society. One might term them the asphyxiating gases of German international politics. In keeping with these teachings and practices were the theft of foreign passports by the German Government which handed them over to spies, as in the case of Lody, who was executed in London in the early part of the war. Thus the binding force of moral and of human law is dissolved whenever it clashes with German national, military, or commercial interests. This dogma lies at the roots of Kultur.

By the time war was declared, Germany had stretched forth her tentacles into various lands and was draining the life-juices of many peoples. Her footing in Italy, Russia, Belgium and France was firm. Observant students of international politics fancied they could determine the approximate date when, if the then rate of progress were maintained, Germany's overlordship over Europe would be definitely established and all armed conflicts on the Continent become thenceforth meaningless. They were all the more puzzled at what they set down as the egregious folly of jeopardizing the precious fruits of forty years' well-sustained labours by precipitating a tremendous conflict of doubtful issue. But besides the sudden temptation to utilize a conjuncture of exceptionally favourable promise, the leaders of the Teutonic nations felt moved to appeal to arms by certain slow, but steady, currents which threatened to change the situation to Germany's detriment in the space of another few years.

With the remoter causes of the Kaiser's fatal resolve, we are not now concerned. It may suffice to know that they were numerous and that the trend of their operation had been for a few months unmistakable. Time, which was working wonders for the Teuton in one direction, was raising up redoubtable enemies against him in another. For one thing Russia was becoming transfigured. The dry bones of the nation which the Germans often declared was good only as ethnic manure had had life and a soul breathed into them by the great agrarian reform of which the credit belongs to Witte and Stolypin. The latter statesman in a series of conversations had in 1906 opened his mind to me on the subject, and frankly avowed that the Government, having gone astray in its estimate of the Russian peasants who turned out to be revolutionary and anarchistic, was resolved to render them conservative by giving them land and an interest in the maintenance of law and order. That, he informed me, was the aim and origin of the agrarian law, and I expounded the theory, its working and its anticipated consequences, in a series of articles published at the time.[48]

[48] In the Daily Telegraph.

Down to the year 1861 the Russian serfs had been mostly bound to the soil. They were emancipated by Alexander II., who ordered each landowner to make over to the serfs as much of his landed property as was being actually cultivated by these. Wherever this amount seemed too extensive for the support of a family it was whittled down and the residue left with the landlord. Each of the various lots thus expropriated was given not to an individual, nor to a family, but to the village community. Each field was cut into as many strips as there were farms, and each farm had the use of one. Every year the peasants had to pay a certain sum to the landlord until the land was wholly redeemed, and liability for these payments, like the possession of the land, was common. Hence the drunkards and the lazy paid little or nothing. It was the community which decided when the sowing and when the reaping should take place. The results of this system were baneful. And little by little the more enterprising peasants who had no motive to improve the value of the land which they were allowed for a time to cultivate, migrated to the towns and joined the growing army of working men.

How long this state of things would have continued, if these immediate consequences had formed the only objection to it, is uncertain. But the Revolution of 1905-6 rendered it wholly untenable. The peasantry, on whom the Tsar and the Government counted for support, readily followed the lead of every anarchist and revolutionary who dangled the promise of free land before their eyes, and gutted or burned the manors of the landlords. With no conception of the sacredness, nor, indeed, of the nature of property, they seized what they could by force, and were gravely disappointed when it was re-taken from them by law. Stolypin's scheme, as he himself propounded it to me, was to enable the peasant to acquire the land he tilled, and not merely the scattered strips, but a compact farm capable of supporting himself and his family. And the system of collective liability for payments to the State was abolished, together with that of collective land-ownership.

This was in truth a genial reform, and the business-like way in which it was carried out did credit to the late Minister and the people. Even now it is far from completed, but already there are about six million peasant farms cut out and allotted. In European Russia approximately as many more remain to be apportioned. The effects of this innovation were rapid and encouraging. The value of the land rose enormously in consequence of the intenser culture and the increased yield. Under the old arrangement Russia's harvest of cereals was barely enough to feed the population inadequately, to supply seed and to enable a limited amount of produce to be exported. And as this limited amount was in practice often exceeded, the food supply of the peasantry was cut down in proportion. At present all this has changed for the better and changed to a greater extent than the outside world realizes. One of the consequences of this betterment, coupled with the decrease of drunkenness, is the greater purchasing power of the peasant and the growth of his requirements. So beneficial and evident were the effects of this reform, that some patriotic Russians gladly saw their Government go to the very extreme of pliancy towards Germany rather than run the risk of a war and the danger of a break in this remarkable career of national regeneration. The process was noted and gauged by the Germans, who awakened to the fact that, in a few years more, the legend of Ilya Murometz would be exemplified in latter-day Russia, and a Colossus arise among the nations, which would hinder the tide of Teutondom from inundating Europe for all time.

Other considerations of a more pressing character weighed with the statesmen of the Wilhelmstrasse, whose survey of the international situation was, at any rate, comprehensive. Renascent Russia, for example, was, as we saw, resolved to withdraw from the German Empire the one-sided advantages accorded by the Commercial Treaty. And as this question would in any case become acute within two years, that date was one of the time-limits of the European war, and I ventured to designate it as such to two of the most prominent statesmen of the Entente in the month of March 1914. They both went so far as to say that my anticipation was extremely probable.[49]

[49] Count Witte went farther and fixed the end of 1915 as the date.

However this may be, Germany, who works out her destinies by preventive wars, and therefore never leaves the initiative to her enemies or rivals, precipitated a conflict which would, she believed, break out in any case within a couple of years, and for which no more auspicious moment could be chosen than the end of July 1914, after the Kiel Canal had been made navigable for her largest battleships and the harvest ingathered.

The year and month of the historic event had been fixed by her leaders a considerable time in advance, as we now know from incontrovertible evidence. So, too, had the choice of method, which was in harmony with the usual formula, that Germany is never the apparent aggressor, and that it is her enemies who must be made to appear the partisans of preventive war.

The principle was thus laid down by Bismarck when he altered King Wilhelm's historic telegram from Ems: "Success essentially depends upon the impression which the genesis of the war makes on ourselves and others. It is important that we should be the party attacked."[50]

[50] Bismarck: His Reflections and Reminiscences.

Finally, the very day was determined—and almost on the very eve it was changed to the following day.

In connection with the date and the method I have a curious tale to unfold which has never yet been recounted in western Europe. The incident in some respects bears an unmistakable resemblance to the story of Bismarck's forgery of the Ems telegram and is well worth relating[51] and remembering. The main features are as follows.

[51] My authority for the story is the principal observer, who was also an actor in a part of this subsidiary little drama: A. I. Markoff, who at that time represented the semi-official Russian Telegraph Agency, as its head correspondent in Berlin. He himself told me the story in Stockholm and authorized me to make it known.



CHAPTER VIII

A MACHIAVELLIAN TRICK BY WHICH RUSSIA'S HAND WAS FORCED

The world is now aware, although it can hardly be said to realize, how closely journalism approaches to being a recognized organ of the Imperial German Government. One of the most influential of the Berlin journals during the past ten years has been the Lokal-Anzeiger. This paper was founded by Herr Scherl, one of those clever enterprising business men who have been so numerous, active and successful in the Fatherland during the past quarter of a century. His journal was a purely business concern, carried on congruously with the law of supply and demand and keeping pace with the shifting requirements of the public and the strongest currents in the Government. It had long enjoyed the reputation of being a semi-official organ, and it was Herr Scherl's ambition that it should be formally promoted to that rank. In February 1914 he sold the paper to a group of four persons, two of whom were Herr Schorlmeyer and Count T. Winckler, and all four were members of the political party which looked for light and leading to the Crown Prince and his military environment. Thus the Lokal-Anzeiger became the organ of the progressive military party, which was exerting itself to the utmost to force the pace of the Government towards the one consummation from which the realization of Germany's dream of world-power was confidently expected. Among the privileges accorded to the Lokal-Anzeiger from the date of its purchase for the behoof of the Crown Prince onward, was that of publishing official military news before all other papers, and not later even than the Militaer-Wochenblatt. Consequently, it thus became the most trustworthy source of military news in the Empire. This fact is worth bearing in mind, for the sake of the light which it diffuses on what follows.

War being foreseen and arranged for, much careful thought was bestowed on the staging of the last act of the diplomatic drama in such a way as to create abroad an impression favourable to Germany. The scheme finally hit upon was simple. Russia was to be confronted with a dilemma which would force her into an attitude that would stir misgivings even in her friends and drive a wedge between her and her ally or else would involve her complete withdrawal from the Balkans. The latter alternative would have contented Germany for the moment, who would then have dispensed with a breach of the peace. For it would have enabled the two Central Empires to weld together the Balkan States and Turkey in a powerful federation under their joint protectorate, and would not only have simplified Germany's remaining task, but have supplied her with adequate means of accomplishing it against Russia and France combined. Great Britain's neutrality was postulated as a matter of course.

Congruously with this plan, Russia was from the very outset declared to be the Power on which alone depended the outcome of the crisis. Upon her decision hung peace and war. On July 24, telegraphing from Vienna, I announced this on the highest authority,[52] with a degree of force and clearness which left no room for doubt as to the aims, intentions and preliminary accords of the two Central Empires. I stated that if in the course of the Austro-Serbian quarrel Russia were to mobilize, Germany would at once answer by general mobilization and war. For there will, then, I added, be no demobilization but an armed conflict. Before making that grave announcement, I had had convincing assurances and proofs that I was setting forth an absolute and irrevocable decision arrived at by the Central Empires on grounds wholly alien to the interests and issues which were then engaging the Austrian and Serbian Governments, and that a bellicose mood had gained a firm hold on the minds of the statesmen of Berlin and Vienna. Had that deliberate statement been subjected to adequate instead of the ordinary partial tests, the full significance of the crisis would have been realized by the Governments of the Entente.

[52] On 24th July I received this official information. It was published on Monday, 27th.

In the course of the negotiations which were then hastily improvised, Germany, who strove hard to gain credit for the role of disinterested peacemaker, gradually revealed herself as the chief protagonist, whereas Austria was little more than a pawn in the game. Disguising her eagerness to provoke one of the two desired solutions, Russia's abandonment of Serbia or her declaration of war, Germany succeeded in misleading the Governments of France and Britain as to her real intentions.

While M. Poincare was in the Russian capital proposing toasts and drawing roseate forecasts of the future, the German Ambassador in Paris, von Schoen, was constantly in attendance at the Quai d'Orsay, endeavouring to impress on the minds of the Acting Minister and the permanent officials there, the sincerity of the Kaiser's eagerness for peace and the growing danger of Russia's aggressiveness. "You and we," he kept saying, "are the only Continental Governments which are aware of the magnitude of the issues and the imminence of the danger. You and we perceive the utter folly, the sheer criminality, of plunging Europe in the horrors of a sanguinary war for the sake of a petty state governed by regicides and assassins. What interests have you or we to risk the welfare of our respective nations for the behoof of the Serbian military party whose dreams of greatness border on mania? No, it behoves us both to do all that lies in us to calm Russia's passion and induce her to listen to the promptings of reason and self-interest. You, with the powerful influence which your friendship and alliance impart to your counsels, and we by dint of example, ought to succeed in averting this awful peril." In this tone, Herr von Schoen delivered his daily exhortations and found some willing listeners. His specious pleading made a deep and favourable impression, and would perhaps have led to representations by the French Government calculated to wound the susceptibilities and perhaps estrange the sympathies of France's ally at the most critical hour of the alliance, had it not been for the presence at the Foreign Office of a man whose eye was sure and whose measurement of forces, political and personal, was accurate. That man was M. Berthelot. Gauging aright this insidious appeal to the centrifugal forces of the political mind, he turned a deaf ear to von Schoen's suasive efforts and kept the ship of state on its course, without swerving. In this way what seemed to the Berlin politicians the line of least resistance was adequately reinforced and a formidable, because crafty, attack repulsed.

But besides attack, the Germans had also a problem of defence to engage their attention. And, curiously enough, it appears to have been particularly knotty in Austria. At that moment Count Berchtold was Minister of Foreign Affairs in name, but Count Tisza, the Hungarian Premier, was the man who thought, planned and acted for the Habsburg Monarchy. He it was who had drawn up the ultimatum to Serbia and made all requisite arrangements for co-operation with Germany. He was backed by the Chief of the General Staff, Konrad von Hoetzendorff, whose eagerness to provide an opportunity for displaying the martial qualities of the army was proverbial. But there were others in high places there who had no wish to see the Dual Monarchy drawn into a European war, and who would gladly have come to an agreement with Russia on the basis of such a compromise as Serbia's reply to the ultimatum promised to afford. Whether, as seems very probable, this current bade fair to gain the upper hand, it is still too soon to determine with finality. There are certainly many indications that this was one of the dangers apprehended in Berlin. Russia's moderation was another. And the interplay of the two might, had Germany held aloof, have led to a compromise. For this reason Germany did not stand aloof.

The date fixed for the German mobilization was July 31. The evidence for this is to be found in the date printed on the official order which was posted up in the streets of Berlin, but was crossed out and replaced by the words "1st of August," in writing, as there was no time to reprint the text. It had been expected in Berlin that Russia would have taken a decision by July 30, either mobilizing or knuckling down. Neither course, however, had been adopted. Thereupon Germany became nervous and went to work in the following way.

On Thursday, July 30, at 2.25 p.m. a number of newspaper boys appeared in the streets of Berlin adjoining the Unter den Linden and called out lustily: "Lokal-Anzeiger Supplement. Grave News. Mobilization ordered throughout the Empire." Windows were thrown wide open and stentorian voices called for the Supplement. The boys were surrounded by eager groups, who bought up the stock of papers and then eagerly discussed the event that was about to change and probably to end the lives of many of the readers. It does not appear that the Supplement was sold anywhere outside that circumscribed district. Now in that part of the town was situated Wolff's Press Bureau, where the official representatives of Havas and the Russian Telegraphic Agency sat and worked.

The correspondent of the latter agency, having read the announcement of the Lokal-Anzeiger, which was definitive and admitted of no doubt, at once telephoned the news to his Ambassador, M. Zverbeieff. During the conversation that ensued the correspondent was requested by the officials of the telephone to speak in German, not in Russian. This was an unusual procedure. The Ambassador could hardly credit the tidings, so utterly were they at variance with the information which he possessed. He requested the correspondent to repeat the contents of the announcement, and then inquired: "Can I, in your opinion, telegraph it to the Foreign Office?" The answer being an emphatic affirmative, the Ambassador despatched a message in cypher to this effect to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs. For there could be no doubt about the accuracy of information thus deliberately given to the public by the journal which possessed a monopoly of military news and was the organ of the Crown Prince. The Russian correspondent also forwarded a telegram to the Telegraphic Agency in Petrograd communicating the fateful tidings.

Within half an hour the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs telephoned to Wolff's Bureau to the effect that the report about the mobilization order was not in harmony with fact, and it also summoned the Lokal-Anzeiger to issue a contradiction of the news on its own account. This was duly done, and so rapidly that the second Supplement was issued at about 3 p.m. The explanation given by the newspaper staff was that they were expecting an order for general mobilization and had prepared a special Supplement announcing it. This Supplement was unfortunately left where the vendors saw it, and thinking that it was meant for circulation seized on all the copies they could find, rushed into the streets and sold them. On many grounds, however, this account is unsatisfactory. Copies of a newspaper supplement containing such momentous news are not usually left where they can be found, removed and sold by mere street vendors. Moreover, the date, July 30, was printed on the supplement, so that it was evidently meant to be issued, as a matter of fact it was circulated only in a very limited number of copies and in the streets around Wolff's Bureau, where it was certain to produce the desired effect.

Half an hour later the correspondent of the Russian Agency received a request to call at the General Telegraph Office at once. On his arrival he was asked to withdraw his two telegrams which the Censor refused to transmit. To his plea that so far as he knew there was no censorship in Germany he received the reply that it had just been instituted and now declined to pass his telegrams. "In that case," he said, "my consent is of no importance, seeing that the matter is already decided." Finally, he asked to have his messages returned to him, but they would consent only to his reading, not to his retaining, them.

The Russian Ambassador also despatched an urgent message en clair to his Government embodying the contradiction communicated by the Wilhelmstrasse.

Now, the significant circumstance is that the Ambassador's first telegram stating that general mobilization had been officially ordered throughout the German Empire was forwarded with speed and accuracy and reached the Russian Foreign Minister without delay. And this news was communicated to the Tsar, who by way of counter-measure issued the order to mobilize the forces of the Russian Empire. But the Ambassador's second telegram was held back several hours and did not reach its destination until the mischief was irremediable. That curious incident is of a piece with the Bismarck's Ems telegram.