: WH XN LAMAR MA SRAM SASAS SN \ SS SS CAC SS WY TENN WS “ Ss . “ NS 4; LE i ite 4 Vee ie es SS 8 . Sh SN WES ‘Ss SS SS AA SS \ SS WN WK AY SEN \ Nae Na oY . AX Se SY NV WAR\ << ne 7 a -—.. SS XS AR = \ SN \\ A \ ~ -— \\ S \ AN SS SSSR A_AAVKQ RSs IW ~ A . SRN — ARS \ ‘ S Seas TINNY KE ~ SG iS s SS _ _ _ _ | ee SRN S . SS tS we SV TSN SN ‘ SENN SS SSSsas7 SS S . . SIN WSS Se MASS SNE ’ * WS CCC CC y i, SN SS =e LOI S . AVVy ~ SIN BY =o : SHH NS ANA AA EO NN MOON Se i?. \“\ - DCPCO>™CUOCCOEE NX \\ S SX \ S _ ~ _ \ \ _ -LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA GIFT OF Wallace Howland20° EUROPE 1925 Seale of Miles 100-200-300 400 i | 4 } / Gib, (e tap ofe, Palermo <{ SICILY. MALTA ® (&r. orth “Cape Hammeriest « é CHO ¢ ~~ = R 8 S THON Ft. a ie Cr. ~~ Wg ra Long. East 10° from: GreenwichTWENTIETH CENTURY EKUROPE BY PRESTON WILLIAM SLOSSON, Pu.D. Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan Author of The Decline of the Charust Movement WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER ON MODERN SCIENCE BY EDWIN E. SLOSSON, Pu.D. Director of Science Service. Author of Creative Chemistry, The American Spirit an Education, etc. UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF JAMES T. SHOTWELL, LL.D. Professor of History in Columbia University HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, BOSTON - NEW YORK - CHICAGO - DALLAS - SAN FRANCISCO The Riverside Press CambridgeCOPYRIGHT, 1927 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.DEDICATED TO MY FIRST HISTORY TEACHERS EDWIN E. SLOSSON MAY PRESTON SLOSSONPREFACE wentieth Century Europe appears in a field where there are already numerous good surveys. Most of them, however, choose 1815 or 1870 as their starting-point, and there may be place for a general history which is free to give a more detailed consideration to the problems of our own genera- tion. The period treated is substantially that of the firs quarter of the twentieth century. All historical ‘“‘periods”’ are quite arbitrary, but the “‘ point as any from which to take a backward glance at the quarter-mile post’’ is as good a road along which we have travelled. But the book makes no attempt to confine itself meticulously to the present century. On the contrary, every effort has been made to link the present to the past by references to pertinent events or conditions of the nineteenth century or even earlier. For similar reasons, the narrative has been permitted to stray outside the continent of Europe whenever European interests became involved with those of Asia, Africa or America. Instead of any formal bibliography there is a brief list of references easily available to most readers who have access to a good university or city library. Obviously a full bibliography of twentieth ‘century Europe, even if it were limited to books of historical interest and value, would be many times larger than this entire volume. For the con- venience of the reader preference has been given, with but a few exceptions, to books written in English or available in translation, and reference is usually made to recent rather than to original editions. No book attempting to cover so wide a field can make much claim to originality or first-hand information. My indebtedness to the historians of the modern period will be obvious to every reader. The nearest approach to novelty is, perhaps, the chapter on the Paris Peace Conference; asvi PREFACE my year of service as Assistant Librarian of the American Peace Commission gave me some direct contact with the organization and activity of the Conference. But while it would be impossible to list all my obligations, three debts are so heavy that I would be very ungrateful if I did not here acknowledge them. Professor James T. Shotwell of Columbia University, my former teacher, has had the patience and kindness to read the entire manuscript in various stages of unpreparedness and to offer comments and suggestions which have been of the utmost value. Professor Bernadotte Schmitt of the University of Chi- cago has read the chapters dealing with pre-war diplomacy and the crisis of 1914 and offered many valuable sugges- tions. My father, Dr. Edwin E. Slosson, has volunteered a brief supplement to the book on twentieth century science and invention and the philosophical implications of modern science. In this field he is a specialist, as I am not, and itis the one field of all others in which error is most possible to the layman. To these “friends in need’’ I return my sincerest thanks. PRESTON SLOSSON Ann Arsor, MICHIGANCONTENTS I. THE HERITAGE OF THE NEW CENTURY . : : ; : The evolution of European civilization — Countries, races, lan- guages, religions, governments and nationalities of Europe. Il. THe BritIsH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS Structure of the Empire — Government of the United Kingdom — Parliamentary institutions — the Boer War — Trades-unionism and the Labor Party — Liberal reforms — The Irish question — The self-governing Dominions. III. THe DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE ; ‘ ‘ Liberal and democratic tendencies of the new age — Socialism — French politics and problems — Modern Italy — The Papacy — Spain and Portugal — Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and ” Scandinavia considered as favorable examples of “small State culture — The Norwegian revolution. IV. THE GERMAN EMPIRE : : : : : ; ; The Imperial constitution — State governments — The growth of industrialism — Economic conditions — National minorities — Political history to 1914. V. Tue RivAL EMPIRES OF EASTERN EUROPE: AUSTRIA- HUNGARY AND RUSSIA Contrast of eastern with western Europe — Nationalities and problems of Austria and Hungary — Austro-Hungarian foreign policy — Russian geographic and economic conditions — Na- tional minorities — Revolutionary movement of 1905-06 — The constitutional monarchy — Conflict of Russian and Aus- trian interests in the Near East. EUROPE IN THE TROPICS . a ° = . Genesis of modern imperialism — Tropical produ industrial Europe — Racial contacts and conflicts — The parti- tion of Africa -— British India — Malaysia and Polynesia. cts needed by VII. EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST ‘ : : ; ‘ Oriental civilization — The “‘old régime”’ in China — European commercial encroachments—The Boxer Rebellion — The Russo-Japanese War — Japanese ascendency in Korea and Manchuria — The republican revolution in China — Chinese- Japanese rivalry. cy rs)CONTENTS VIII. EuroPE IN THE NEAR EAST : : : E : . 202 — XII. THE NEw Wortp Joins THE OLD Decline of the Ottoman Empire — Emergence of the Balkan States — The Macedonian question and the Young Turk Revo- {ution of 1908 — Policy of the Powers — Annexation of Bosnia- Herzegovina — ‘Berlin to Bagdad” — The partition of Persia — The Tripolitan War — The Balkan Wars and their conse- quences. F DHE seASTIODANDIOR SFEACE, |... ice: remy arene a 242 European alliances— Triple Alliance and Triple Entente — Diplomatic crises in Morocco and elsewhere — Armaments by land and sea — Forecasts of war — Militarism and pacifism — The Hague Conferences and Court. TabHETSTORM BREAKS .° . -«, ) “a: 5 | i Oe The diplomatic crisis of 1914 — Declarations of war — Relative strength of the two hostile coalitions. . THE GREATEST WAR oi ot a bake, ee nr OOS Conditions and characteristics of modern warfare — The Ger- man offensive in the west — The Marne campaign — The dead- lock of the trenches — Campaigns in Poland, Austrian Alps, the Balkans, Rumania, Turkey, and the colonies to 1917. acsane ates 30 The United States as an interested neutral — Naval war — Blockades, neutral rights, and the submarine — American over- tures for peace — American preparations for war and extent of participation in the conflict — Attitude of Latin America. Pale KCQLEAPSE QR RUSSIA... air. 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A) se SOLOMON - ery ma Me ELLICE 1's. a\ KEELING 3S. ; a ST,HEL ‘ % NEW HEBRIDES m5 r : - : i- BR de = Uy Ne 5 = eee (Brfr.) oS : la ‘ Bl Ge i SA RODRIGUEZ T "-). «white dustries. Both parties uphold the policy of ex- Australia” cluding all Asiatic labor by rigid immigration poy laws, and maintaining an organized system of national de- fense, based on compulsory military training, to defend the Protection48 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Commonwealth against possible Asiatic enemies. Although Australia has less than two inhabitants to the square mile, her statesmen have not hesitated to assume responsibility Colonial for the administration of Papua (British New policy Guinea) and, since the war, for German New Guinea as well. Thus the colony becomes in turn a coloniz- ing power. Australia has been a pioneer in political demo- cracy. The colony of Victoria was one of the first of mod- ern communities to use vote by ballot (hence the term “Australian ballot’’). Adult suffrage exists for both federal and state elections and the popular referendum is employed. The authority of the Govern- State ment has been freely used for the protection of coe n labor by industrial legislation, the amelioration of poverty by old age and invalidity pensions and ma- Democracy ternity grants (the “baby bonus’’), for the opening of arid lands to settlement and the compulsory division of large estates into smaller holdings. The chief present problem is rural development. Half the population lives in the great industrial towns, although the tropical lowlands of the northern shore, the vast interior desert plateau, and even wide spaces of the cultivatable grasslands of the southeast remain almost uninhabited. The interesting little island group of New Zealand in its area and its temperate climate bears much resemblance to New the British Isles at the farthest extremity of the aad globe. The chief industry is sheep-raising, but like Australia New Zealand has striven to establish a na- tional economy with a just balance of industry and agri- culture. Unlike Australia New Zealand has a unitary government, a single Parliament and ministry serving for the whole country. In political and economic experiment Dene New Zealand has shown the way even to Aus- apdigc tralia. Perhaps the most interesting experi- ments have been the compulsory arbitration laws for the prevention of industrial disputes, and the compulsory partition of large landholdings. Government banking and insurance are highly developed. The politicalTHE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 49 system is thoroughly democratic, resting since 1893 on adult suffrage. One interesting phase of national life is the native question. The Australian natives were The native mere savages who have contributed nothing to question the world but the boomerang and some quaint customs which have interested scientists. But the Maori of New Zealand was a warrior of skill, courage, and intelligence who offered a real obstacle to white settlement. His mastery of the arts of both peace and war won him considerable respect even from his British enemies, and now he has settled down as a peaceful farmer with a grant of land and a small share in the national legislature. Although the New Zealand settlers now get along fairly well with their darker compatriots, they are as much resolved as the Aus- tralians to permit no immigration of non-European races to endanger their high standards of life and labor. New Zealand also has a small colonial empire of her own, con- sisting of island groups in her part of the Pacific. The chief event in the history of South Africa since the Boer War has been the union of the two mainly British colonies of Cape Colony and Natal with the two coun aging conquered Dutch colonies of the Transvaal and _ since the Orange Free State into a common federation. Boe In spite of the bitter memories of a recent war, the union was constituted with but little opposition in 1909. The British and Dutch in the population elements are of some- what equal strength and both languages are in 44. Union official use. The first Prime Minister of the of South Union was Louis Botha, former Boer general. ee The Union Government consists of the Governor General, his council or ministry, a Senate selected in part by the colonial legislatures and in part by appointment, and a House of Assembly elected by the people. The provinces, even more than in Canada, are strictly subordinated to the federal authority. The South African Party, representing the interests of the Dutch who are friendly to the Union and are willing to accept a place within the British Empire, has been the principal political force and it has enjoyed the50 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE general support of the Progressive or British Party. The Political Nationalists under General Hertzog, represent- tendencies ing the Boers who are still unreconciled to the result of the Boer War, and the Labor group, representing chiefly the radical miners, have proved formidable op- ponents to the dominant party. More serious than the party strife of Boer and Briton, or even the industrial warfare of miner and mine-owner, is Whiteand the native problem. The native negro races black within the territory of the Union far outnumber the white settlers. In Cape Colony some of them enjoy the franchise, but as a group they stand outside the po- litical life of the Union, serving the whites as personal or industrial wage laborers or living in village communities of their own with little reference to the new civilization grow- ing up around them. Can these millions of half-civilized Africans become in time equal citizens of the Union? Will they willingly accept an inferior status? Or is the solution to be found in segregation, setting aside certain districts as ‘“‘reservations” for their exclusive use? These problems the statesmen of South Africa would like to solve, but the direction in which the solution must be sought is still un- known. Another racial problem is the Asiatic immigrant. Brown and The importation of Chinese labor was ended yellow by the Liberal victory in England, but Hindus (who, as British subjects, are not so easy to exclude from British territory) have settled in considerable numbers in some parts of the Union. Asiatic labor is in some respects more advantageous to the mine-owners than either the high-priced white man, with his radical trades-unionism, or the easy-going native black man. But many South African leaders feel that to permit Asiatic immigration would add new difficulties to a racial situation already too complex. Thus far we have considered in detail those parts of the British Empire which may be justly termed a Common- Two aspects wealth of Nations, the British Isles, and the of Empire = Dominions, lands lying in whole or in part in the temperate zone and settled to a considerable degree by menTHE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS 51 of European stock. Here democratic self-government has had almost unrestricted play. But another, and larger, part of the Empire is in a position of dependence, ad- ministered by officials appointed to govern them and sub- ject to the authority of the cabinet ministers for Indian or colonial affairs. The policies which the British Govern- ment has pursued in governing the sons of the tropics must be the subject of a later chapter.* tSee Chapter VI.CLA PALE sail THE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE Seventy years ago, as those who are now old can well remember, the approach- ing rise of the masses to power was regarded by the educated classes of Europe as a menace to order and prosperity. Then the word Democracy awakened dislike or fear. Now it is a word of praise.... It is not the nature of de- mocracy, nor even the variety of the shapes it wears, that are to-day in debate, but rather the purposes to which it may be turned, the social and economic changes it may be used to effect. JAMEs BRYCE EUROPE as a continent is but a huge peninsula extending westward from the land mass of Asia. As Europe narrows aie ete towards the Atlantic from the broad Asian base, WS ING iona States of it is split by mountain ranges and the encroach- Atlantic Europe ing sea into small but very definite geographical units, the ‘‘countries’’ of western Europe. Italy, France, and Spain are more easily defined on a physical map than is the continent of Europe itself. This fact has tended to make western Europe the home of na- tional States in contrast to the huge polyglot Empires of eastern Europe and Asia. Differing greatly as they do in race, language, religious allegiance, and economic develop- ment, the countries of Atlantic Europe stand out in the first quarter of the twentieth century as a group charac- terized by: (1) a common historical] background of the Roman Catholic and feudal culture of medieval ‘ Chris- tendom’’; (2) the achievement of national unity and in- dependence; (3) the realization of a relativ ely high degree of popular self-government as parliamentary democracies. This chapter will treat only of the nations of continental Europe to the north, west, or south of Germany. Great Britain is a typical member of the group, but has been con- sidered already as the central] part of the far-flung British Empire. Germany shares in full the historic traditions and intellectual life of the West, but her autocratic po- litical forms, down to the revolution of 1918, render it= 10 North Cape Hammerfest $e ee EUROPE 1900 Seale of Miles 100 200 300 400 Kiev a a - 7 TAG ir ay ““\T\Q r 21a anct model - government in western Europe worked least enable smoothly under such adverse conditions as ex- isted in the Portuguese Republic; it was most successful, perhaps, in the Republic of Switzerland.* Nature, to be t ‘Democracy is there more truly democratic than in any other country.” (Bryce, Modern Democracies, vol. U, p. 4 19.)74 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE sure, had set the Swiss many hard problems. On an area about twice as great, Switzerland supports approximately as large a population as the state of Massachusetts. But Massachusetts is a lowland commonwealth with excellent natural harbors on the greatest trade routes of the world. Switzerland is a landlocked country covered with rugged highland. Over a third of the Republic is more than four thousand feet above sea-level. But the Swiss have turned their very disadvantages to profit. Lacking coal, they have utilized the “white coal”’ eee) jo the mountain torrents to turn their factory progressof wheels. They have placed under cultivation all eens the valley and plateau land that could be farmed, extended stock-raising to the very edge of the glaciers and made the Alps themselves productive by extending hos- pitality to tourists. In 1912 the gross receipts of the Swiss hotels amounted to over $50,000,000, and thousands of shopkeepers are as dependent as the guides and hotel- keepers upon the tourist industry. Not all visitors to the ‘“‘playground of Europe’’ are transient mountaineers. There are large permanent foreign colonies of Germans, Frenchmen, Italians, Austrians, and Englishmen who have been attracted to the country by the charm of its scenery, the healthful climate, or the organized amusements. The census of 1910 showed over 500,000 foreigners resident in the Republic or about fifteen per cent of the population. In addition to the natural poverty of the country the Swiss have been faced by the further problem of maintain- ae ing a common national spirit among the differ- problem of ent peoples of the Republic. Though a most ae patriotic commonwealth, Switzerland is any- thing but homogeneous. A majority of the Swiss speak German as their native tongue, but in the western part of the Republic the language of the people is French, in the extreme south it is Italian, and in one canton the old “Romansch” dialect still exists. Fortunately the educated Swiss can usually speak both French and German, and sometimes many other languages, so the difference ofTHE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 75 speech is not a barrier to community of thought. There is also a religious division between Catholic and Protestant, which does not at all correspond to the division by lan- guage, as some parts of French Switzerland are Protestant, and some parts of German Switzerland Catholic. The Swiss Government is parliamentary, but differs in detail from other parliamentary systems. Instead of a single executive head and a partisan ministry Swiss there is a Federal Council of seven members, ¢&™°ct@cy one of whom enjoys the honorary title of President, though he has little individual power. The members of the Fed- eral Council are chosen for three years by the Nationa! Assembly, but not necessarily on party lines. The Federal Assembly, like the American Congress, has one house to represent the nation as a whole and another to represent the several states or cantons. Not all legislative power is vested in the two houses, for Switzerland has provided a means for direct popular legislation through the initiative and referendum. In contrast to the French Republic, Swiss institutions lay great stress on local home rule. The cantons are not mere administrative units, but sovereign states a enjoying all rights not specifically delegated to dumand _ the Federal Government. In most of them the popular assembly there is a single-chamber legislature, chosen by direct popular vote, and a frequent appeal to the voter by the initiative and referendum. In a few of the smaller cantons (Uri, Glarus, Unterwalden, and Appenzell) direct democracy is carried to its logical conclusion and there is no legislative body except the mass assembly of the voters, resembling in form the old-fashioned ‘‘town meeting” of New England, but having the power to enact state legisla- tion of the widest scope as well as to deal with local pro- blems as they arise. BELGIUM, THE NETHERLANDS, LUXEMBURG Strategically located between the great Powers of France and Germany are three little parliamentary monarchies,76 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Belgium, and the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg; a situa- The buffer : ; ea ? a8 3 : states of tion full of peril from a military point of view pen G oe in the event of a Franco-German war, but eco- nomically most advantageous. Belgium and Luxemburg were until 1914 protected by treaties of neu- tralization, the Netherlands enjoying only such security as might be afforded by the principle of the “balance of power,” as none of the three nations had the population and military strength to fight unaided against any of the Powers. Because of their geographical location and nat- ural resources the three buffer states have enjoyed a po- litical and economic importance far out of proportion to their size. Luxemburg, smaller than Rhode Island, lay on the linguistic borderland between French and German speech and in a direct line from Paris to western Germany, and its importance was further enhanced by the possession of some of the richest iron mines in Europe. Belgium occupies the very heart of industrial Europe. Although not ranking as a Great Power in the political or Bee at military sense, Belgium ranked among continen- workshop of tal countries immediately after Germany and Beers hai France in industrial output, had a foreign trade exceeding that of Italy, had a greater railway mileage in proportion to area than any other country in the world, and was the most densely inhabited of European nations. With an area less than that of Maryland, Bel- gium had a population almost as great as Pennsylvania. The reasons for Belgium’s industrial strength were many. Adequate resources of coal, broad level plains affording easy transit in the north, the splendid port of Antwerp, proximity to the great markets of France, Germany, and Britain, and, above all, a tradition of industrious and skill- ful workmanship, combined to make Belgium a leader in manufacture. Even in the Middle Ages the Flemish towns were known throughout the civilized world for the excel- lence of their wares. Whether the Great War will have permanently injured Belgian industry or simply have givenTHE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 77 it a brief setback — such as that which has been caused by previous wars in this historic battle-ground of the nations —only the future can tell, but those who best know the 3eloian workingman seem most optimistic. Like Switzerland, Belgium is a nation without a national language. Northern Belgium speaks Flemish, a language closely akin to the Dutch. Southern Belgium Contrast speaks French. Thus Belgium, like Luxem- is Wer 2 : Z emisn ane burg, Lorraine, and Suateeelailel lies on the Walloon linguistic frontier between French and the Teu- Belgium tonic tongues. The line of division cuts Belgium almost exactly in half and runs close to the capital of Brussels. Unfortunately for the unity of the country the difference of language is reénforced by other differences between the north and south. Northern or Flemish Belgium is ocean- bordered lowland, as flat asa carpet. Southern or Walloon Belgium is hilly and contains important coal mines. Both parts of the country are Roman Catholic, but Flemish 3elcium is more inclined to clericalism in politics, while Walloon Belgium, like France itself, shows tendencies to- wards political radicalism and religious anti-clericalism. Nevertheless it would be a mistake to speak of two “na- tionalities’’ in Belgium, since Walloons and Flemings are alike loyal to the existing Government and have shown little tendency to part company with each other. The Belgian Constitution follows the usual lines of parliamentary monarchy. In the early part of the century the King was the aged Leopold II, an able but The Belgian somewhat unscrupulous financier whose chief as interest lay not in Belgian politics, but in the development of his commercial interests in Africa. In 1909 he was suc- ceeded by King Albert, who was to be during the Great War the most romantic and attractive figure among the Kings of Europe. There is a legislative chamber of two houses and a responsible ministry. “The two most interest- ine features of the Constitution were the plural vote and the system of proportional representation. The plural vote was adopted as a safeguard when manhood suffrage Se Se Sait pannat toatonotell = —TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE | 78 was conceded in 1893. Persons qualifying with respect to ownership of property or educational attainments were granted one or two extra votes in addition to the suffrage possessed by every one. The system of proportional re- presentation adopted in 1899 was designed chiefly to dis- tribute parliamentary representation among the parties in proportion to their popular vote. There are three important political parties. The Catholic Party corresponds to the clerical parties in other ee countries, such as France, Germany, and Italy. politics in It is chiefly concerned to maintain religious meen teaching in the schools. The Liberal Party has favored the secularizing of the schools and has joined with the Socialists in opposing the plural vote. The So- cialist Party is very strong among the workingmen. Many of the labor unions are associated with the socialist move- ment, though others are affiliated with the Catholics and the Liberals. The sharp separation between political par- tisanship and industrial disputes which characterizes the labor movement in the United States does not exist in con- tinental Europe, which is becoming more and more ac- customed to strikes for political objects and to political parties organized on a basis of class. In addition to its political activities and its trades-unionism, the socialist movement has yet a third phase in the encouragement of coéperation. Many wholesale and branch stores have been established by the workingmen for the benefit of their class and even a few codperative productive industries. Bel- gian socialism has found particularly able leaders, such as Camille Huysmans of the International Socialist Bureau, and Emile Vandervelde, who entered the coalition ministry during the Great War and later represented Belgium at the peace conference. Although such a small nation, Beleium is one of the Galenial greatest of empires. The Belgian Congo in cen- Papen of tral Africa has about twice the population and 7 some ninety times the area of the mother coun- try. Until 1908 it was known as the Congo Free State andTHE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 79 administered by the King of the Belgians, but gross abuses in the treatment of the natives roused the attention of Europe and led to the transfer of sovereignty to the Belgian nation.. The raw products and natural resources of this area will no doubt, when more adequately developed, prove of the greatest advantage as a basis for Belgian manu- factures. The Kingdom of The Netherlands, more commonly known as ‘‘Holland”’ after its most important province, is the successor of the famous Dutch Republic he Nether- which played the part of one of the Great lang aH Powers of Europe in the seventeenth century. and While it no longer ranks as a naval power, Hol- P%" land has still one of the largest merchant fleets of con- Dros- I tinental Europe and a share in the world’s trade far out of proportion to its population. The colonial empire of the Dutch is more populous and prosperous than in the days when the ships of the Netherlands monopolized the spice trade and roused the envy of every European nation. An age of peaceful economic progress has succeeded the war- like glories of past centuries, but as the everyday Dutch- man has been the gainer for the change we cannot lament the loss to the historian. The Dutch are above all a trading people. In mining and manufacturing they are behind their Belgian neighbors, not for lack of diligence, but because nature has) ©, merce not given them equal resources of coal. Butas and | carriers of the world’s wares the Dutch have Coe admirable facilities in their central position, their valuable seaports, the level character of the country, and the net- work of canals to facilitate local water transportation. The colonial empire furnishes an excellent foundation for Dutch commerce. The Netherlands, a country somewhat larger than Belgium or Maryland, and with a population little greater than that of Illinois, has colonial possessions t For an account of the failure of the Congo Free State under the administra- tion of Leopold II, see pp. 143-45: ae ane ee ancient ‘season aliases Seen80 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE extending over 783,000 square miles with an estimated population of more than 50,000,000. Nor are the Dutch colonies mere paper claims to deserts or undeveloped trop- ical hinterlands. On the contrary, they rank among the best-developed and best-administered colonies in the world and furnish the mother country with rich supplies of sugar, spices, coffee, plantation rubber, copra, tobacco, mineral oil, and tin.* The Dutch have also to their credit great achievements in agriculture in their own country. Finding themselves Free pressed for room they have reclaimed land from Dutch build the shallow seas which press in upon the low- pgend lying regions of the country. Holding back the : sea with dikes and draining it from swampy land, they have succeeded in establishing pasturage, farms, and even cities on land actually below sea-level. In case of necessity, such as a foreign invasion, this lowland could be flooded and the advance of an enemy absolutely halted by waters just too deep to pass with infantry and just too shallow to permit of naval operations. As the Dutch pro- verb has it, a proverb true in Holland if nowhere else, ‘‘God made the sea, but man made the land.”’ The latest project has been to fill in a large part of the Zuider Zee, the broad inlet of the North Sea which encroaches so much on the narrow frontiers of the country. Politically The Netherlands has always been a liberal country, at least in comparison with most of the mon- The Dutch archies of continental Europe. The parliament Government or States General has controlled the ministry since 1848, and the powers enjoyed by the present ruler, Queen Wilhelmina (1898—), are not much greater than those of an English King. The individual provinces enjoy a wide measure of home rule; perhaps not so great as a “sovereign” canton of Switzerland, but much greater than a French department, as each has its cwn local legislature. But while constitutional traditions and habits were well established, democracy has been of slower growth, and, as 1 See pp. 162-64.THE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 81 in liberal England, the suffrage was limited by a slight property qualification even in the twentieth century. Aside from the management of a vast colonial empire, the problems of the Dutch have been concerned mainly with national defense and social welfare legislation. p 4.04) ;.. The Socialist Party is strong, although, as in sues in The Belgium, it is evolutionary rather than revolu- SS tionary in character. The division of the population be- tween a Protestant majority and a Catholic minority and the feeling among the Liberal and Socialist parties that education should be altogether secular have created an is- sue as to religious teaching in the schools. Fortunately there is no serious language problem. The Dutch have their own national speech, closely akin to the dialect of northern Germany (‘‘low German”’), and as a trading folk they are also familiar with the languages of their best customers. THE SCANDINAVIAN STATES In the far north of Europe the three Scandinavian na- tions form a distinct sub-type of western European civiliza- tion. The Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians are oW gina all of the blond north European race (Nordic), vian civiliza- they speak closely related languages, they are a with but few exceptions Lutheran Protestant in religion. Although the Scandinavians have retained the traditional forms of monarchy, they have in recent years attained a very high degree of democracy; a democracy the more se- cure since it rests not alone upon political institutions, but also upon universal education and widely distributed pos- session of property. In one respect the Scandinavian coun- tries have carried democracy even further than the repub- lics of France and Switzerland. They have pouiiism granted full suffrage to women and complete and | equality of civil rights. Socialism is strong in a Scandinavia, but, as in Holland and Belgium, it is usually constructive and moderate in character. None of the Scandinavian nations is now able to play a en ee eeTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE central part in world politics. The combined population of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is not much greater than that of the state of New York. The natural poverty of this semi-Arctic region sent during the nineteenth century mil- lions of Scandinavian emigrants to western Canada and the Emigration northwestern part of the United States, but in to America +ecent years new industries have been developed, the standard of living has greatly improved, and emigration has decreased in consequence. The problem of poverty is now less serious in Scandinavia than in most parts of Europe. Though inferior in political and military power, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are important factors in world commerce, thanks in part to the economic efficiency Trade of the people and in part to the seaborne traffic routes of the which reaches the Scandinavian ports by way of Bou Noreh the North Sea and the Baltic. In the great possibilities for trade with Russia, Germany, and Britain the Scandinavians have found some compensation for the cold climate and grudging soil of a far northern latitude. Warm currents from the Atlantic keep the Scandinavian harbors free for traffic at seasons when North American ports in the same latitude are walled with ice. Though Denmark indirectly profited through the victory of the Allies, recovering northern Schleswig from Germany, Neutratity: Boe of the Scandinavian nations participated of the in the Great War. The common need for neu- pone trality bound the nations together diplomatically more closely than they had been united in time of general peace, for in spite of their common Scandinavian civilization the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes have pre- ferred national independence to the advantages of political union. In fact, the tendency has been away from unity, as is shown by the separation of Norway from Sweden and the home rule movement in Denmark’s overseas possession of Iceland. Denmark with about half the area of the state of Maine supports a population of more than three millions. Many industrial communities in Europe are more densely set-THE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 83 tled, but Denmark is largely dependent on azriculture. A majority of the people live in the country r and about a third are directly engaged in farm- ae anak Mores cel larmer ing. Of course the farms are very small. than half of them are mere market gardens of less than twelve acres, and about two thirds of all the agricultural land are in holdings of less than one hundred and forty-seven acres. Tenancy is much rarer than in other agricultural countries, as nine Danish farmers in every ten own the land they till. the breaking-up of the few lar Legislation encourages ge estates that are still in existence and which were much more extensive a few dec- ades ago. While no country has carried the division of the land among peasant proprietors much farther than Denmark, yet in no country has there been more thorough- Agricultural going codperation in marketing agricultural °™#™2@tion produce. There are more than a thousand codperative dairies, with an annual turnover in excess of $100,000,000, and nearly half as many poultry societies for marketing eggs. In addition to these sales associations there are pur- chasing societies, breeding associations, and coéperative credit organizations. In all, there are over four thousand codperative agencies of various sorts uniting the interests of 250,000 farmers.! Until after the middle of the nineteenth century the Kings of Denmark were absolute monarchs. Even after a parlia- ment of two houses had been constituted, the Rupee ruler refused to yield the control of the execu- ment of parliamen- tary govern- the popularly elected branch of parliament ment in (the Folkething), fearing that the Radical Farm- enna ers’ Party would diminish the army below the limit of safety and invite attack from Germany or some other neighboring power. tive power and exclusive control over finance to ~ In 1901, however, King Christian IX «See F. C. Howe, Denmark: a Coéperative Commonwealth (1921), for a very enthusiastic account of the results obtained by the Danish farmers’ organiza- tions for mutual help84 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE agreed to appoint a ministry chosen from and responsible to the Danish Radicals. His successors, Frederick VIII (1906-12) and Christian X (1912—), have not returned to the old system of personal rule, but have been content to reign without presuming to govern. In 1915 the suffrage was broadened by permitting women to vote for members of the parliament. During the nineteenth century Denmark lost both Nor- way and Schleswig-Holstein, but still retained an overseas @verceas colonial empire. The Danish islands in the Denmark West Indies were sold to the United States in 1916 and have been rechristened the Virgin Islands. Denmark has in Greenland the territorial rights to a vast plateau of ice, valuable only for the fishing stations of its shore line. Iceland, with only 90,000 inhabitants, is of little political importance, but it is one of the most interest- ing communities in Europe. The Icelanders enjoy home rule and a completely democratic constitution. They have a language and literature of their own and are said to publish more books in proportion to their population than any other European nation. To a remarkable de- gree they have combined the primitive traditions of their Viking ancestors with the highest culture of modern Europe. At the opening of the twentieth century the countries of Sweden and Norway formed a single kingdom. But the The union DLOnds of union were very slight and, as the issue of Sweden proved, easily severed. Oscar II (died 1907) and Norway sc ; : : was King in both countries and he was assisted by common ministries of war and of foreign affairs. But each nation had its own constitution, its own ministry, and its own parliament. The arrangement might have worked smoothly enough had there been on both sides the will to codperate. But the two nations had little in common, save the characteristics common to all Scandinavian peoples. The Norwegian speech is much more akin to the Danish than to the Swedish. The high ridge of the Kidlen Moun- tains, the “backbone” of the Scandinavian peninsula,THE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 85 divided Norway from Sweden geographically. The union of the two countries was comparatively recent, dating only from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and had no force of historic tradition to recommend it to the people; moreover, it had been imposed on the Norwegian people against their strongly expressed desire for independence. The political institutions of the two countries were profoundly different. In Sweden democracy had gone far, but the nobility was still a powerful factor in the life of the nation. Norway, a land of fishermen and peasant freeholders, had no aristo- cratic class and was increasingly tending towards complete democracy. Throughout the nineteenth century the ferment of na- tionalism was at work in Norway. Incessant conflicts over small points of constitutional interpretation kept up a feeling of irritation between the two aon list countries. To the Swedes the Norwegians were in NSEWAG a disloyal and rebellious people, making much of petty grievances and forgetting that they already en- joyed substantial self-government. To the Norwegians the Swedes seemed overbearing partners bent on dominating the union by virtue of their privileged position and superior numbers. A remarkable literary revival strengthened the pride of the Norwegians in their native land. Whether their great writers, like BjGrnson, were themselves directly involved in the movement to make Norway independent and democratic or, like Ibsen, distrusted the tendencies of the time, they alike contributed to the making of an in- dependent national consciousness. Some radical patriots went so far as to attack the literary language of the nation as too ‘‘Danish”’ and proposed to purify it of foreign words and influences, reviving in a literary form the dialect of the peasants. The final break came over the consular service. That Norway should establish a separate system of yay consulships appeared to the Swedish Govern- declares in- ; dependence ment a fatal blow to the union. On the other hand, the Norwegians felt that their commercial interests86 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE were being sacrificed to the very different commercial inter- ests of the Swedish merchants. On June 7, 1905, the Nor- wegian parliament (the Storthing) declared that Oscar II of Sweden was no longer King of Norway. For a few months war with Sweden seemed possible. Throughout history governments have nearly always sought to main- tain themselves by force of arms against a rebellion or a movement for secession, and it showed great self-restraint on the part of Sweden not to resort to the time-honored weapons of coercion. But finally it was agreed that the question should be settled by a direct plebiscite of the Norwegian people. The vote was almost unanimous for independence, and the Swedish Government accepted the situation. Another question remained in the background. Should Norway be a republic or a monarchy? Many of the na- Noma. tionalist leaders of Norway were republican in accepts their sympathies, but the foreign Powers who monarchy . : : ; : might interfere in preventing the secession of Norway were all monarchies with the exception of France. Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and Sweden would all prefer an hereditary Chief of State. So partly out of deference to foreign sentiment and partly, no doubt, be- cause the people were more accustomed to kings than to presidents, the Norwegians voted by large majority to call a Danish prince to the throne as King Haakon VII. But in spite of their rejection of republicanism, the Nor- wegians remained devoted to democratic government; praia te: indeed Norway has often been termed the most democratic democratic monarchy in the world. Under the ener chy ‘" union the nobility had been deprived of all class privileges and manhood suffrage established. After the union had been broken, direct election to the parliament was substituted for indirect; in 1907 the vote was extended to women who were taxpayers, and in 1913 women were admitted to the vote on equal terms with men. In a most enlightened spirit the governments of SwedenTHE DEMOCRACIES OF ATLANTIC EUROPE 87 and Norway agreed to refer future disputes to the Hague Court and to leave unfortified the frontier be- tween the two countries. Friendly relations Lose have continued since the period of separation. To give Norway an international security the sition of Norway new Government engaged with England, Russia, and Ger- many not to cede territory to any foreign Power, and they in turn agreed to respect Norwegian territory. The politi- cal position of Scandinavian Europe was further stabilized by the Baltic and North Sea conventions of 1908, by which the principal interested nations declared themselves in fa- vor of maintaining the status quo in the lands touching these two oceans. Sweden is the largest, most populous, and most power- ful of the Scandinavian nations. It is larger than Califor- nia and has a population of nearly six million. _ There is a greater proportion of level land than ee ate ae in Norway and both agriculture and forestry are ie demand important sources of national wealth. Though Norway has many farmers, the land is so rugged that it cannot support the whole population, and thousands of Norwegians have been forced to find by sea the living de- nied them by the land. The merchant marine of Norway is greater than that of Sweden or The Netherlands or any other State outside the rank of the Great Powers. On the other hand, Sweden has an industrial advantage in the pos- session of valuable deposits of iron ore. Both countries are rich in water power and have applied it freely to manufac- tures. Sweden has a democratic Constitution of the parlia- There is a legislative body of two houses Manhood suf- The Swedish Government mentary type. possessed of the usual powers. frace for the popular branch of the parliament was established in 1909, and since the war women also have been admitted to the franchise. King Gustavus V, who succeeded Oscar II in 1907, has not been content to with- draw from political affairs altogether. Shortly before the outbreak of the Great War he demanded a reorganization Hor een *. e88 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE of the defenses of the nation and threw his influence to the party which supported increased military appropriations. The occasion for the preparedness agitation in Sweden was the aggressive conduct of the Russian Government, Swe- ee nar den’s neighbor to the east and a very bad neigh- fear of bor to have. Russia was actively endeavoring Russia to reduce the Grand Duchy of Finland into a mere dependent province. Sweden could not be indifferent to this, since Finland was once a Swedish possession and still contained a large minority who spoke the Swedish language; moreover, Finland lay directly on the frontier. The Swedes feared that the subjugation of Finland would be but the first step in the advance of the Russian Empire westward to the Atlantic. The danger may have been real or imaginary, but the panic was very real. It accounts not only for the strengthening of the Swedish army, but also for the alleged ‘“‘pro-German” sympathies of many Swedes during the Great War. Had Russia not been on the side of the Allies, Swedish sentiment might have been very differ- ent.CHAPTER IV THE GERMAN EMPIRE What people do know is this: Forty years ago the Germans suddenly rose from an existence which was insignificant both economically and politically to one of great strength. They have fought for and won the rank of a world power, they have created a mighty army, and have tremendously increased their commerce and their industries; they have built ships, and have now begun to demand con- sideration for their interests in the world at large . . . Germany, in the judgment of most people, is a mighty power but one opposed to freedom. It matters little whether this judgment of the world is wrong or right — in its generaliza- tion and exaggeration it is surely wrong but we must realize that this view is universally held and that we ourselves supply in our dealings with the other nations some of the arguments on which it is based. PAUL ROHRBACH (1912) GERMANY, the Great Power of central Europe, has been the center of the world drama of the first quarter of the twen- tieth century. The reason for this lies partly in 5... «6 e 7 gins ¢ Germany’s geographical position, intimately in modern = ellis Germany touch with the affairs of both eastern and west- ern Europe, and partly in the fact that Germany combined the industrial development and progressive culture of the West with an antiquated class system and an autocratic polity. The historic culture of the Rhine valley is one of the oldest north of the Alps, the town life of medieval Ger- many was one of the most brilliant pages of European his- tory, and Germans shared to the full in the great intellec- tual movements of the modern time: the Reformation, the Renaissance, the eighteenth century sc enlightenment,’’ the scientific discoveries of the nineteenth century. Unfortu- nately the political development of Germany lagged behind that of other countries. The German princedoms, instead of being welded together into a strong national State, were united only by the nominal tie of the Holy Roman Em- pire, a bond so weak that it could not even prevent the Ger- man princes from making war on each other. The Confed- eration which replaced the Empire after the Napoleonic Wars proved equally inefficient. German patriots sought to obtain national unity by90 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE means of revolution, but the attempt of 1848 to create a liberal and democratic German nation failed be- Tea cause of the hostility of the ruling classes to any eee scheme of federation that might weaken their political power. It was not until a reactionary Prussian nobleman named Otto von Bismarck pointed out that German patriotism could be reconciled with the auto- cratic traditions of Prussia that the movement for unifica- tion passed out of the hands of the liberals. Bismarck de- clared that the revolutionists of 1848 had made a mistake in trying to solve the problem of German unification “by speeches and resolutions of majorities’? instead of relying on a policy of “blood and iron.” Gaining the confidence and support of King Wilhelm I of Prussia, he had an op- portunity to put his views to the test in spite of strong liberal opposition in the Prussian Landtag. The Prussian army was a finely tempered instrument ready to his hand. With it in three successive wars he defeated Denmark, Austria, and France and cleared the way for a new and stronger federation of all the German states except Austria. Henceforth in the mind of every German democratic and liberal ideals were associated with the failure of 1848, while the Prussian monarchy was dignified with the prestige of victory. Bismarck had “‘outbid’’ the radicals by proving that conservatism could mean more than mere resistance to change; that it could be creative and achieve great national aims. It is proper to emphasize the attainment of German unity as the legacy of Bismarck to twentieth century Germany because it seems to be the one part of his work as a creative statesman which was destined to outlast his age. When the great Chancellor left office in 1890 the Empire which he Germany had brought into being had but twenty-eight gac nation years more to live, and the Constitution which Germany he had established, the foreign alliances which the Empire he had negotiated, the colonial empire which he had acquired, the army which he had cherished were to go down to a common doom with the dynasty which he had soTHE GERMAN EMPIRE oI HT } faithfully served. But German unity has been strength- ae ened rather than weakened by the Great War and the re- a publican revolution which followed it * and Bismarck’s con- . tention that ‘‘The German’s love of the Fatherland has \| need of a prince on whom it can concentrate its attach- : ment’’ has already been refuted by experience. . Still, short-lived as was the Constitution of the old tH German Empire, it merits attention because of the radical | I | contrast it presented to the parliamentary gp... 0+ ine i 4 Governments of western Europe. Germany was German _ ; not, indeed, an autocracy in the Russian sense. eae at | The personal power of the German Emperor (Kaiser) was nin i} limited in many ways, not only by rights granted to the at German people, but even more effectively by the special ty privileges allowed to the lesser German states as induce- ila) TR ments to enter into federation with Prussia. Essentially, i the German Empire was an attempt to combine three po- cic litical principles: (1) the predominant power of the King- EN dom of Prussia, (2) the local self-government of each Ger- if man state, (3) legislative representation of the nation as a } whole. The first aim, the predominance of Prussia, was secured hi i by making the Kaisership hereditary in the House of Hohen- | | zollern, the ruling family of the King of Prussia. German writers have laid great stress on the fact that the King of Prussia in his capacity as ruler of the Empire was “German Emperor” rather than ‘“‘Emperor of Germany.’ In . | theory he was but president of a federation; “‘first among ny his peers,’”’ the sovereign princes of Germany. But if his legal position as the hereditary chief of a federal state was i inferior to the undivided dignity of a King of ,, ,,. . a Z : A The Kaiser England or of Italy, his actual power was much at greater. He summoned and dissolved the Federal Council | (Bundesrat) and, with the consent of that body, the popular i legislative body of the Empire (Reichstag). He promul- gated the laws and supervised their execution. He ap- pointed the Imperial officials. He was sole head of the 1 For a discussion of the new constitution of Germany see Chapter XIX.92 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Imperial navy and, subject to the special rights of a few German-states* head of the Imperial army. Within Prus- sia itself his power as Emperor was doubled by his direct authority as King. In a sense he was above the law, for his Chancellor must bear the responsibility for his words and acts. To offer him insult was a heavily punishable crime. Most of the functions of the German Emperor were exercised through the Chancellor of the Empire (Reichs- The kansler), who was also usually the Prime Min- mace istenof Prussia. Jhic office was created to fit the gigantic personality of Bismarck, and no subsequent Chancellor was able to cope with its full responsibilities. A man with the genius and energy of a Bismarck, a Riche- lieu, or a Cavour could in this office have been Emperor in all but name; but such men are rare. After his dismissal of Bismarck in 1890, Kaiser Wilhelm II was careful to ap- point only those men as Chancellors who would be un- questioning servants of the royal will. This was easily possible since the term of office of the Chancellor depended upon the will of the Emperor alone. He could not be com- pelled to accept a Chancellor with whom he was out of sympathy nor to dismiss a Chancellor who had his confi- dence. It is at this point that the German Constitution con- trasted most sharply with constitutional monarchy as it existed in western Europe. A Prime Minister in Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, or the Scandinavian countries was a party politician chosen be- cause he could command the support of a legislative ma- eee jority in the parliamentary body of the nation. constitu: The German Chancellor need not be a political tional but leade lea pe ie é , f Aotiabiar: Cader at all; in fact he usually boasted o sera being ‘‘above party.” Frequently he held office In open defiance of a hostile majority in the Reichstag and even faced a formal vote of censure without ™In time of peace Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Saxony controlled their local contingents,THE GERMAN EMPIRE 93 prejudice to his authority.' This certainly gave great stabil- ity to the German Government. ‘rom the founding of the German Empire to 1917 Germany had but five Impe- rial Chancellors, whereas France changed Prime Ministers every few months. But this stability was attained at the cost of democracy. Since the elected representatives of the German people had no power to dismiss frum office the chief responsible executive officer of the Empire, it followed that, whatever control the German people exercised over legislation, they had little or none over the equally impor- tant field of Imperial administration. In another respect the German Chancellor differed from the Premier of a parliamentary monarchy. A Prime Minister is usually the chief of a ministry or cabinet, and the views of his colleagues have much weight with him, since it is essential that a ministry act as a unit on all vital political issues. But the German Chancellor 74, had no colleagues; there was, strictly speaking, See nce F no German “cabinet.” The chief executive ‘Prime officials of the Empire were mere administrative Minister’”’ experts subordinate to the Chancellor and directly de- ac pendent on him for their position. The diligence and com- petence of the German bureaucrats in their special fields have received world-wide recognition, but asa rule the initia- tion of new policies rested with the Chancellor, the Em- peror personally, or the German princes as represented in the Federal Council. The Secretaries of State for foreign affairs and for the treasury enjoyed no such independent position as a French Foreign Minister or a British Chan- cellor of the Exchequer;who may chance to overtop his nominal chief in real importance. The German Chancellor had also much initiative in the matter of legislation, but to explain this we must first examine the most characteristic and powerful of the po- litical institutions of the Empire, the Federal The Council or Bundesrat. Theoretically this body Bundesrat was the heir to the Diet of the old Germanic Confed- * For a striking instance of this see p. 109.94 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE eration which came to an end when Bismarck estab- lished German unity; it represented the sovereignty of the German princes and the rights of the individual states. In many ways it was comparable to the Senate of the United States, but its range of executive, legislative, and judicial power was far wider than that of the American upper house. Indeed, it seems to be the general opinion of German jurists that in the Federal Council was embodied the legal sovereignty of the German federation or ‘‘ Bund,” and that Germany was, in consequence, not a monarchy, but an “aristocratic polyarchy.’’* So greatly, however, did the authority of Prussia predominate even in the Bundesrat that this must be considered a distinction without a differ- ence! The Federal Council represented twenty-two German monarchies, the Senates of the three city-republics, and the The heart of S0Vernor of the Imperial territory of Alsace- the Imperial Lorraine. Each delegation voted as a unit and Constitution Gs : ee ; under the instructions of its home government. In contrast to the American Senate, the states were un- equally represented, in a rough approximation to their re- lative importance. The Kingdom of Prussia cast seventeen of the sixty-one votes of the Council. This was far from the majority to which Prussia was entitled on grounds of popu- lation and political importance, but Prussian influence and prestige among the lesser states of northern Germany usually sufficed to rally a majority to any policy strongly desired by the Prussian Government. Moreover, by special constitutional provision, Prussia had an absolute veto on laws affecting the army and navy or reducing cer- tain taxes; and since any constitutional amendment could be defeated by fourteen hostile votes in the Federal Council, it is evident that the solid block of seventeen votes cast in obedience to the instructions of the King of Prussia im- posed an impassable barrier to radical reforms. The re- 7 2 1° .! he . ‘c aS 7 1 "For full discussions of the significance of the Bundesrat see F. Kriiger, Government and Politics of the German Empire, chaps. 1v, v1, and 1x; also jeelts Robinson, The German Bundesrat (1891).THE GERMAN EMPIRE 95 presentation of other German states varied, from the six votes of the Kingdom of Bavaria to the single vote of the smaller duchies, principalities, and free towns. The duties of the Federal Council were so numerous and extended that it remained in practically permanent session. Its great task was the preparation of the budget and of the legislative program favored by the Emperor and his Chancellor. Though laws might originate in the popular chamber, the Reichstag, in practice important questions of legislation were first hammered into shape in the Federal Council and then introduced into the Reichstag by the Imperial Chan- cellor, himself always the chairman of the Council. In any case no law could be enacted without the final assent of the Council. In addition to its legislative duties, the Federal Council declared war, approved treaties, undertook the coercion of German states which defied Imperial au- thority, enjoyed general oversight in the administration of Imperial laws, determined constitutional questions arising in the sphere of administrative law between the Empire and the states, supervised Imperial finance, confirmed im- portant appointments, and, with the assent of the Em- peror, dissolved the Reichstag. The Reichstag was Bismarck’s concession to the spirit of the age. It was a legislative body of 397 members chosen by direct, secret, and almost universal manhood suffrage. Admirers of the German Constitution boasted The that it was the most democratic parliament in Beichstas Europe. This was hardly the case, since there had been no redistribution of seats to correspond with the shifting population of the Empire and by the end of the nineteenth century a vote in a country district of stationary population had come to have several times the weight of a vote cast in an industrial suburb of Berlin. But it may be readily ad- mitted that the Reichstag was by far the most democratic piece of political machinery in the German Empire. Had it enjoyed the powers of a British House of Commons or a t Though the Chancellor might name a temporary substitute if unable him- self to act as chairman. saeuuabedoaiediammeeamiateniree—96 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE French Chamber of Deputies, Germany would have been counted, as regards its central government, a parliamentary monarchy of the modern type. But we have already seen that the Reichstag had no control over the executive gov- ernment of the Empire and that important measures of legislation were usually submitted first to the Federal Council. Even the control of the Reichstag over the public purse was limited and uncertain. Army budgets were usually voted over a considerable period of years, and all Germany remembered that Bismarck had been able to col- lect taxes for years in the face of a hostile Prussian parlia- ment (1863-67). It is unfair to dismiss the Reichstag as a mere “debating society,” since it could at least halt the new laws and new taxes which the Emperor and_ his Chancellor might wish to introduce, but at best its powers were negative. The Reichstag was important as a popular check on autocracy, but it was the weakest parliamentary body in Europe west of the Russian Duma. In every federal Government in the werld there is a con- flict between the nationalist tendency to reduce the states Particular. tO administrative units of a centralized govern- ism in ment and the particularist tendency to empha- Germany : Re ie es , : size states rights’’ and treat the nation as a mere alliance of sovereign states. In some respects the German Empire was more centralized than the United States of America. For example, there was a general code of civil and criminal law common to the Empire. But while the legislative competence of the central government was wider in the German than in the American federation, much of the administration of Imperial affairs was left to the local authorities. Taxes and customs duties levied by the Em- pire were collected by officials employed by the several states. Bismarck, moreover, had granted certain special privileges to the more powerful South German states to induce them to enter a federation dominated by their old enemy Prussia. Bavaria, next to Prussia the most power- ful and therefore most highly privileged state, was granted the permanent chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Com- ’THE GERMAN EMPIRE 97 mittee in the Federal Council, permitted to maintain her own railway and postal system and her own organiza- tion of poor relief. Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden had the exclusive right to levy taxes on local wines and beer. Some states enjoyed a very limited measure of control over their military establishments in time of peace, though most states agreed to consolidate their armies altogether with that of Prussia. The supreme law court of the Empire (Rezchs- gericht) met at Leipzig in Saxony instead of in Berlin. The city-states of Hamburg and Bremen maintained “free zones’’ in their ports outside the tariff line. The King of Prussia enjoyed within his own dominions an authority limited only by the Constitution of the King- dom. Ministers were not in fact held responsi- a ble to the legislative body, the Landtag, but Prussian The Landtag con- >!2te sisted of two chambers, a House of Lords (Herr- only to their royal master. Case ee enhaus) and a House of Representatives (A bgeordneten- haus). The former, as its name implies, represented mainly the territorial nobility, though the King might appoint new members at will from any rank of society. The House of Representatives was chosen in a very complex manner. In theory the franchise was almost universal for adult male Prussian citizens. But voters were divided in each district into three classes according to the amount of direct taxes paid. Each class chose one third of the electors to which the district was entitled. These electors in turn chose the representatives. In this way the vote of an employer might outweigh that of thousands of his workingmen and a landlord could outvote the whole of his tenantry. It has been estimated that in the election of 1908 the class of wealthiest taxpayers represented only four per cent of the population, the middle class fourteen per cent, and the lowest class eighty-two per cent.t To make matters worse, the failure to redistribute seats in conformity with the tF. A. Ogg, The Governments of Europe (1920), p. 662. Even so conservative a statesman as Bismarck called the Prussian franchise ‘‘ the worst of all electoral systems.”’98 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE movements of population had caused a great over-repre- sentation of rural Prussia at the expense of the growing cities, and there was no secret ballot to protect the humble voter from the intimidation of landlord, employer or public official. In general the constitutions of the lesser German states were far more democratic than that of Prussia. But in Se nearly every instance some degree of special State © representation was granted to property-owners, eee taxpayers, the nobility, or the professional classes. To this end many ingenious “fancy franchises” were adopted which contrasted markedly with the simple and popular manner in which the federal Reichs- tag waschosen. The hereditary chiefs of the four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, and seven principalities in the Empire enjoyed without exception a wide range of per- sonal power, and even the three city-republics of Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck had Senators chosen for life as part of their municipal machinery. The most backward states in the Empire, politically speaking, were the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz which had no written constitutions and no form of representation except for a medieval system of ‘‘Estates”’ or advisory as- semblies of the landowning classes. German political life was at its best in local administra- tion. It is true that the elective element in provincial and municipal government was always mingled with, and usually subordinated to, a professional bureaucracy largely inde- Local pendent of popular control. But the expert government officials entrusted with civic administration were men whose training had fitted them for their task. It must be confessed that a taxpayer of Dresden or Berlin would feel more confidence that the public money was being wisely spent than the average taxpayer of New York, Chicago, or Philadelphia. German municipalities ventured very boldly in the public ownership of public utilities, and yet there were relatively few instances of graft”’ or even of incompetent management. It was rather the rule than the exceptionTHE GERMAN EMPIRE 99 for a German city to own its street railways, water- works, gas-works, electric plants, markets, docks, stock- yards, and slaughter-houses. In addition generous pro- vision was made for civic beauty and public recreation in the establishment of parks, museums, civic theaters and opera houses, bathing-houses and_ recreation grounds. Municipal savings banks, insurance societies, and pawn- shops were quite common. Cities were not permitted to srow at random; they were carefully built according to plan and rigid official regulations prevented any property- owner from erecting buildings out of harmony with the neighborhood. Many cities enjoyed a substantial income from the successful conduct of competitive industrial undertakings.’ “City air gives freedom,” says a German proverb. If freedom is taken in its usual meaning of exemption from external regulation, this was hardly the case in Germany, but if it be taken to mean self-expression, the proverb has much significance. To the foreigner perhaps the most pleasing feature of German life was the individuality of the German towns. In most European countries culture centers in one city and radiates thence to the provincial towns; this was emphatically not the case with Germany — as Berliners were often reminded! Not only such historic capitals as Dresden and Munich but even minor provincial cities had community traditions that were all their own. Jena, Nuremberg, and other towns of ancient date blended with charming quaintness the domestic architecture of the Middle Ages with the commercial energies of the twentieth century. Municipal socialism was but one phase of the “State Socialism’? of Germany. The individualistic theory, popular in English-speaking countries, that Paternalistic public welfare is best fostered by private Initia: Lye mCR tive, has never been widely accepted in continental Europe and least of all, perhaps, in the German Empire. It was tSee W. H. Dawson, Municipal Life and Government in Germany, for many illustrations of municipal socialism. ——100 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE considered right and proper that the Empire and its several states should concern themselves with the whole range of human activities. Education was mainly State-directed. There was close connection between Church and State in both Protestant and Catholic Germany. Every young man was expected to serve in the army. The income from Government-owned mines, railways, forests, posts, tele- graphs, and public lands made up a large part of the public revenues. /Agriculture and industry were protected against foreign competition by high tariff barriers. Bismarck when Chancellor of the Empire introduced a system of national insurance against accident and illness and old age pensions which has since been widely copied by other European nations. A vast army of officials was required to Carry out the manifold activities of the federal, state, and local governments: indeed it has been estimated that at least one German out of every twenty was in civil service.? The salary of the German official was often inadequate by English or American standards, but this was in part coun- terbalanced by the security of a permanent position and the social respect which was paid by persons in private life to those who had the honor to give direct service to the State. The Germany which had defeated France in 1870 was still a mainly agricultural nation, but so rapid was industrial a development under the united Empire that by “industrial the twentieth century Germany ranked with the eee United States and Great Britain as one of the three leading industrial Powers of the world. In 1871 less than a quarter of the population of the Empire lived in towns of more than five thousand inhabitants; by 1900 more than two fifths of the population was urban. But this does not measure the full extent of the change, as the increase was most rapid in the largest cities. Berlin, with its suburbs, became second to London among the great cities of Europe. Industrial towns on the Rhine grew as rapidly as American cities in the Middle West. In 1882 of every hundred Germans forty-two were engaged in ™F. C. Howe, Socialized Germany (1915), p. 21.THE GERMAN EMPIRE agriculture; in 1907, only twenty-eight. velopment of manufacturing national wealth. For centuries Germany had France, or “door”? country as compared-with England, The Neth« tional wealth of equal to that of Great Britain and Ireland.’ rlands. But in the twentieth century IOI With the de- came a great expansion of been a the na- Germany was reckoned as approximately INDU STBI AL GERMANY Navaro, te teoaae iz x I t mL E ENC E mas a Mines Jiron Industry | = we Industry 0 tton Industry ~ sai zburg ner try C— Sugar Ind y | - 6) j Warsow’ development was the Germany’s industrial markable since the Empire lacked alike the boundless natural resources of America and the vast colonial domain of Britain. The Ger- man Empire was about as large as the French smaller than the Republic and considerably ea ry. That by B: 1913, placed the national wealth of Germany $67 ,500,000,000). as measured by statistics, see oe s Economic Wealth by Dr. Karl Helfferich. with what gigantic resources Germany was able to undertake the war of 1914. THOLe? 1e— Reasons for Germany’s economic progress state of llod, cited in pe report of the Dresdner Bank, at 270,000,000,000 marks (about For a full presentation of the material progress of Germany, Progress and Ne aya This covers the period 1883-1913 and shows102 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Texas. Its seaports were not so good nor so favorably placed with regard to transatlantic trade as those of Great Britain or France. Neither climate nor soil Was excep- tionally favorable to agriculture. The German colonies were inferior to the overseas possessions of England, France, and The Netherlands. The principal reasons for the in- dustrial success of the Empire, under so many handicaps, appear to have been: (1) the presence of valuable mineral deposits, (2) the application of science to industry, (3) the careful organization of manufactures and trade to capture the markets of the world. Although Germany was handicapped by nature in many ways, rich amends were made in the wealth of the German Manet mines. In 1910 Germany produced nearly one wealth of fifth of the world’s coal and more than one fifth Germany ce of the world’s iron and steel. There were also within the Empire valuable deposits of zinc, lead,and cop- per, and the most important potash deposits in the world. Water-power existed also in sufficient quantity to make possible extensive electrical development. The natural resources of Germany were used as a basis for manufacture within the country. In I9grt over sixty- hes five per cent of the export trade of the Empire application Was In manufactured goods, only twenty-five Bea ‘© per cent in raw materials for industrial purposes, and less than ten per cent in agricultural pro- ducts. On the other hand, more than half of the imports into Germany were of raw materials for the German fac- tories. Scientific research led to a remarkable develop- ment of the coal-tar industry and its products, such as drugs and dyes. In many other directions, such as the Krupp iron works at Essen, the optical glass of Jena, the porcelain of Dresden, the Bavarian breweries, the toy and clock manufactures of the Black Forest region, German skill and science turned the phrase “Made in Germany”’ into a guarantee of excellence. German trade abroad was increasingly carried by German ships. Important transatlantic lines, such asTHE GERMAN EMPIRE 103 the North-German Lloyd and the Hamburg-Amerika, were developed under the patronage of the Gov- ernment. German consuls in foreign countries ween ae fostered in every possible manner the efforts of German traders to open up new territory. As in the United States many corporations in the large-scale industries, such as coal mining, united to form combines controlling prices and output. But whereas the American Government has reserved the ri under the Sherman Act, the German Government has tended rather to encourage and regulate the which dominate German industry. ght to dissolve ‘“‘trusts”’ “syndicates ”’ and ‘‘Kartells”’ While the development of manufacturing and foreign trade was the most striking feature of the economic life of Germany during the Empire, agricultural German progress was by no means neglected. SEMA half the area of the country was under crops, and most of the rest was devoted to pasture and forest. Waste land Germany led the Nearly °® was at an almost irreducible minimum. world in the production of potatoes and of sugar beets, and was very nearly self-supporting with respect to all the principal grains and vegetables of the temperate zone.* Like German industry, German agriculture was very highly organized. By the outbreak of the Great War there were some 25,000 agric ultural codperative societies of various types within the Empire. The German Government has been careful to conserve agriculture as the basis of Germany’s economic life. This was in part due to the anticipation of possible war when Germany, abeleaguered fortress, w ould need to have her own granaries. Great Britain, with the strongest navy in the world, could afford to workshop and to fetch food from afar: Germany, it was felt, could not take such a risk. But an even more important factor in the decision of the German Government to pro- 11 costs was the political influence of Agrarianism become a vast tect agriculture at a « But in many parts of Germany the hardier grains, such as rye, are grown in preference to wheat.104 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE’ the great landowners of eastern Prussia. Western Ger- many, like most of western Europe, was farmed by peasant freeholders, but east of the Elbe much of the land was divided into great estates worked by gangs of laborers. The “agrarian” or country party movement in Germany was therefore associated with extreme conservatism and was the natural support and ally of an aristocratic govern- ment. Serfdom in Prussia lingered till 1810 and a hundred years later its impress was still felt on Prussian institutions; for example, in the laws punishing with imprisonment farm laborers and domestic servants who went on strike or failed to carry out their contracts.t The poverty of rural life in eastern Germany and the grinding tyranny of the landlords were no doubt contributory causes to the rapid growth of the big cities, Many landlords were forced to give seasonal employment to Slavic laborers from Russia and Galicia to offset the “land flight” ‘of their Geanan tenants and laborers. Except in the more stagnant rural districts the popula- tion of Germany showed a continuous increase during the The life of the Empire. In 1870 Germany and population France had approximately equal population; eee by the opening of the Great War, Germany had a population of some 67,000,000, increasing at the rate of nearly a million a year, whereas France had a stationary population of about 40,000,000. It is needless to say that this change in relative population profoundly altered the relative strength of the two countries. The Kingdom of Prussia alone attained a population almost equal to that of all France. Yet while the increasing population of Ger- many caused many serious problems, such as the housing question in the big towns, it cannot be contended that Germany was becoming Overpopulated or in need of wider territories for settlement. On the contrary, the tide of emigration that had set so strongly towards America in the * For the best discussion jn English of the legal position and economic hard- ships of the farm laborers of the eastern provinces see Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, chaps. XII, XIII and x1y.THE GERMAN EMPIRE 105 nineteenth century had almost ceased by the twentieth. Owing to the industrial development of Germany the means of subsistence were increasing more rapidly than the population and the standard of living was rising even for the poorest classes. One great advantage enjoyed by Germany over Austria- Hungary and Russia lay in the fact that by far the greater part of its population was of a single nationality. The large Jewish element in Germany did not setionality form, as in Russian Poland, a ‘‘state within the segs state,’ but was blended with the Christian 5 population. The old Slavic, Lithuanian, and other non- German elements in eastern Prussia had been completely Germanized except in the Polish provinces.t* | Only three alien elements of political significance existed in Germany: the Francophile population of Alsace-Lorraine, the Danes of northern Schleswig, and the Poles of eastern Prussia. Unfortunately the German Government decided to treat these alien nationalities in the Empire as conquered ene- mies, denying them alike an equal status with other Ger- mans and special rights as national minorities. A common and expressive phrase dismissed the French, Danish, and Polish elements of the Empire as ‘‘second-class Germans.” The Poles were most numerous in the provinces of West Prussia and Posen, which had been taken from Poland by the partitions at the end of the eighteenth cen- The Polish tury. There were also Polish settlements in problem Silesia and East Prussia, but in these German influences had been longer at work. Attracted by hopes of gain many Polish peasants moved westward to the industrial towns in the Rhine valley, but here, as mere individuals in a mass of German workingmen, they constituted a less serious pro- blem. Unquestionably the Prussian Poles of the eastern marches were a serious menace to German unity, so long t Prussia, east of the Elbe, has been Germanized in historic times; the very word ‘‘Prussia’’ isnon-German. There still exists‘a Slavic district in Lusatia, a little south of Berlin, a relic of ancient settlements of Wendish tribes. But the German of the east is none the less a German nationalist in spite of his infusion of alien blood.@ Se a- adge aR ae pasoanae eareeat eects 106 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE as they were unreconciled to German citizenship. They were educated up to the German standard and were on the whole more prosperous and better organized than their fellow Poles in Austria and Russia. Religion reénforced national differences, for they were Roman Catholics and their Prussian neighbors were mainly Lutheran Protestants. Like other Slavic peoples their birth-rate was relatively high. The Prussian Government feared that the eastern frontier of the Kingdom might be Polonized and lost for- ever to German nationality. It might have won the Poles by conciliation; instead it relied on the more familiar method of coercion. In the twentieth century the Prussian Government at- tempted to achieve two aims: to suppress all public use of the Polish language and to introduce German settlers in Polish territory. The use of non-German languages at public meetings was restricted by law. All sorts of social, athletic, fraternal, and business organizations were broken up by the authorities as organized too much along national lines. The German language was used to the exclusion of Polish in the schools. In 1906 there was a great strike of school children against being forced to receive religious instruction in German; a strike abetted by their parents and many of the Polish clergy. After several months the strike was suppressed by inflicting ruinous fines and long sentences of imprisonment on obdurate parents, and by substituting German for Polish officials and schoolmasters wherever possible. Even more important than the language conflict was the battle for the land. The Prussian Government appropriated Colonizing Money to buy up Polish lands on which to settle ee German peasants. Finding that the Poles were reluctant to sell, and were even extending their holdings, an expropriation law was enacted authorizing the Government to compel the sale of land desired for German settlers. Even this drastic measure failed to extend Ger- man settlement in any marked degree, as the Poles organ- ized to repurchase land from the Germans, boycotted PolesTHE GERMAN EMPIRE 107 who sold voluntarily, and opposed to each new act of bureaucratic tyranny the solidarity of a patriotic peasantry; the same force which destroyed English landlordism in lreland. The Danish question was the Polish question over again, though on a much smaller scale. When Bismarck in- corporated Schleswig-Holstein into the King- dom of Prussia he included in the new provinces the Danish population of northern Schleswig. Prussia’s Schleswig promise to consult the will of these new subjects by plebi- scite was never fulfilled and was later formally abrogated. Danish was banished from the schools and public meet- ings, and officialism even went to such absurd lengths as to refuse permission to Captain Amundsen to lecture on Arctic exploration because as a Norwegian he spoke a tongue akin to the Danish! The question of Alsace-Lorraine was quite unlike the } Polish and Danish national problems, since the main issue was not that of language. In German Lorraine, Alsace- it is true, a French-speaking population had been added to the Empire, but Alsace was predominantly Ger- Lorraine man in blood, speech, and customs even when it had be- longed to France. But even the Germans who favored the annexation of Alsace admitted that its population was largely French in sentiment. To quote the German his- torian Treitschke: In the view of our obligation to secure the peace of the world, who will venture to object that the people of Alsace and Lorraine do not want to belong to us? The doctrine of the right of all the branches of the German race to decide on their own destinies, the plausible solution of demagogues without a fatherland, shivers to pieces in presence of the sacred necessity of these great days. These territories are ours by the right of the sword, and we shall dispose of them in virtue of a higher right — the right of the German nation which will not permit its lost children to remain strangers to the German Empire." Bismarck and the military chiefs defended the annexation 1From Was Fordern wir von Frankreich?108 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE on grounds of strategy, ignoring the national question en- tirely. As a military outpost of the Empire, Alsace-Lorraine was denied not only the democratic government desired by the people, but even the local home rule enjoyed by the states of the Empire. It was a territory (Reichsland) ruled by a governor (Statthalter) appointed by the German Emperor and responsible to him alone. The people were allowed to vote for the Imperial Reichstag, but their local legislature (Landesausschuss) was almost powerless, since it was subordinate to the will of the executive and to the superior legislative competence of the Imperial Govern- ment. The territory was heavily garrisoned by troops from distant parts of Germany, Prussian officials were im- ported to administer public affairs, schoolmasters from over the Rhine zealously endeavored to stamp out all traces of French culture. Politicians, such as the Abbé Wetterlé, who criticized the German rule in Alsace-Lorraine; satirists, such as the cartoonist ‘‘Hansi”’ (Waltz), who ridiculed it: even peasants who sang the J larseillaise, wore the French tricolor, or smiled derisively at a German soldier were prose- cuted for sedition or high treason. In 1911 a new Constitution slightly improved the legal position of the Reichsland. The legislature was re- Thenew = Organized as a two-chambered body and given Renetitition in Greased powers. The Statthalter, however, remained independent of all popular control, and the three votes in the Federal Council of the Empire cast in the name of Alsace-Lorraine really strengthened only the power of the King of Prussia. In 1913 two German officers, Colonel Reutter and Lieutenant Forstner, established a reign of terror in the The Zabern Alsatian town of Zabern which became a na- eo tional issue as momentous for Germany as was the Dreyfus case for France. Insults hurled at the popu- * But the votes of Alsace-Lorraine could not be counted for Prussia on con- stitutional amendments or to give Prussia a majority in the Federal Council which otherwise it would not have had.THE GERMAN EMPIRE 109 lace, arbitrary arrests, the imprisonment of civil judges for protesting against military violence, the sabering of a lame cobbler were but incidents in a long campaign of outrages intended to break the spirit of the Alsatian people. Pro- tests were heard in the liberal press and echoed in the Reichstag. In December a formal vote of censure was car- ried against the Government. In any country of western Europe this would have meant the resignation of the Prime Minister and of his entire cabinet. But the impotence of the Reichstag 4 constitu- Chancel- tional crisis The German was now to be strikingly illustrated. lor Bethmann-Hollweg refused to resign. Crown Prince openly congratulated Colonel Reutter. The head of the Berlin police declared Alsace “‘the enemy’s country.’’ A court-martial which had investigated the case vindicated the accused officers on the ground that military authorities could act at their own discretion “‘ when, in their souls and consciences, they have the intimate con- viction that. the civil authorities are too slow in demanding Thus on the very eve of the Great ’ their intervention.’ War the principle was confirmed that constitutional gov- ernment did not exist in Germany when civil authorities came into conflict with the will of military commanders. The political history of Germany from 1900 to I9I4 was mainly determined by the increasingly aggressive foreign policy of the Kaiser and his associates, the rapid Relation of increase in the army and the navy, and growing [ore!sn en E policy to [To obtain a_ internal interest in colonial development. politics free hand for its imperialistic policy, however, the Government had to face a twofold task at home: to combat the rising power of the Social Democratic Party and to organize a stable majority in the Reichstag out of the chaos of bourgeois (i.e., non-Socialist) parties. A Chancellor could, as we have seen, govern even in defiance of a hostile Reichstag but to initiate new policies, and es- pecially to obtain increases in the military establishment, it was important to have in power a Chancellor skillful at the game of party politics. cere eae110 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE In 1900 the Kaiser chose as Chancellor, Prince Bern- hard von Biilow, former Foreign Secretary, an adroit and Ministry of _quick-witted politician of imperialistic tend- von Biilow encies. He endeavored to govern by means of a “bloc” or coalition of the Conservative, Catholic, and National Liberal parties. The election of 1903 did not shake his power, but it embarrassed his work by returning to office 79 Socialists who voted against the Government on all issues. The Catholic or Center Party proved an unreliable ally and finally turned against the Govern- ment on the question of the African colonies.t Chancellor von Biilow appealed to the nation in 1907 and succeeded in decreasing the Socialist representation from 79 to 43 in the new Reichstag. But the popular vote of the Socialists was greater than ever before; the loss in representation being due to a coalition of anti-Socialist parties, stirred by the patriotic appeal of the Kaiser and the Chancellor. Chancellor von Biilow finally met defeat at the hands of his closest allies, the Conservatives, who refused to sanction Ministry of his proposals for inheritance taxes bearing a heavily on the wealthy classes. In 1909 he was Wes succeeded by Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, a Prussian burecucrat of conservative temper. Unlike his brilliant predecessor he made no attempt to pursue a policy of his own devising, but was content to remain a mere mouthpiece of his Imperial master. Though personally honest and peace-loving, he was unable to oppose the drift of events towards the Great War and under his ministry was enacted the army bill of 1913 which placed the German army in the strongest position it had ever occupied. In 1912 a new Reichstag was chosen. The Socialists, German casting over four million votes, became the parties in ee : : ieeleeiicn largest single party, with IIo representatives. of 1912 This party stood for the political views and economic interests of the organized laborers of the towns *The Government was accused of having blundered into a war with the natives of South-West Africa by pursuing a harsh and oppressive colonial policy.THE GERMAN EMPIRE and included many moderate liberals (the so-called “re- visionist’’ Socialists) who were far from up- The holding the extreme doctrines of Karl Marx. Socialists Next in number to the Social Democrats were the Catholics, organized as the so-called ‘‘Center” Party, with 90 votes in the Reichstag. The main purpose The Catho- of this party was to protect the interests of the lic Center Catholic Church in Germany from hostile legislation. To a friendly Government it was usually willing to lend sup- port, but it represented the democratic tendencies of southern and western Germany and was sometimes allied with the Socialists in support of social reforms and in op- position to colonial imperialism. The National Liberals, with 44 members, and the Pro- gressives (Fortschrittspartet) with 41, represented the com- mercial and industrial middle classes. i he Na- The liberal tional Liberals, originally a party of protest 8" against autocratic government, became steadily more con- servative in domestic policy and more imperialistic in foreign affairs as the great industrial magnates came to see the advantages of a strong navy and an overseas empire. The Progressives, on the other hand, continued to work earnestly though quite ineffectually for responsible par- liamentary government. The Conservative Party with 45 members, and its close allies the Free Conservatives (18) and agrarian and anti- Semite groups (11), stood for the existing con- 74.6 con- stitution, opposed liberal reforms, upheld mili-_ servative tary authority and an aggressive foreign policy, cue and favored the economic interests of the landlord and the peasant against the townsman. Owing to the unfair dis- tribution of seats they were represented in the Reichstag out of proportion to their popular vote; they had few fol- lowers in the growing towns, but drew their support from the backward rural districts of the northeast. They were ae heart of every Government coalition and yet sometimes, ‘more royalist than the King,’ they voted < against meas- ures desired by the Kaiser and the Chancellor, but which112 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE were opposed to the class interests of the Prussian land- owners. Outside these four main groups were parties represent- ing national protest: Poles, Alsace-Lorrainers, Danes, and Nationalist Guelphs (protesters against the annexation of groups Hanover by Prussia); also a few independent delegates. The nationalist groups were generally hostile to the Government except when their favor was bought by special concessions. The Poles and Alsatians, being Roman Catholics, often allied themselves on general issues with the Center. Though Germany never had party government under the Empire, the political parties in the Reichstag had real end importance, since they represented permanent of German _ tendencies in German life, and substantially the Leet same parties have reappeared under new names in the Republic. Modern socialism owes its organization and program to the Germans Marx, Engels, and Lassalle; the Catholicism of southwestern Germany represents traditions centuries old; German liberalism rests on the tradition of 1848 and is the mainstay of the new Constitution; and, finally, German conservatism has shown itself in recent years, and may show itself in the future, the most formidable foe which democracy has ever known.CLEA wrk V THE RIVAL EMPIRES OF EASTERN EUROPE: AUSTRIA- HUNGARY AND RUSSIA The three great military monarchies which have lately fallen to pieces — Rus- sian, Austro-Hungarian and German — were all based upon an aristocracy of large land proprietors, whereas the other European countries had become parliamentary and democratic states. Europe was thus divided between two political orders, founded on two social orders in fact, into two different worlds between which the Elbe was approximately the boundary. CHARLES SEIGNOBOS AMERICANS are too apt to think of Europe as a unit and to apply the term “ more widely from each other thana New England The two Europes European” to institutions which differ town differs from a Cuban sugar plantation. Not to speak of differences in language, race, religious con- fession, geographical barriers, and historic national feuds, there was at the opening of the twentieth century a funda- mental cleavage between Atlantic Europe, modernized by political revolution and industrial development, and the great plains of eastern Europe where the landed aristocracy still dominated political, social, and economic life. To pass from Paris to Moscow was to step from the twentieth to the seventeenth century. Germany, as we have seen, was the connecting link between the two social orders, taking her industry and culture from the West, but submitting in political matters to the leadership of the ‘‘East Elbe Junkers.’’ In another respect Austria-Hungary and Russia were in a class by themselves. Western Europe was, with certain minor exceptions, divided into national States in which patriotic sentiment corresponded closely to politi- cal allegiance. Austria-Hungary and Russia contained an even greater variety of nationalities than all western Europe, but they were artificially held together by the bureaucratic machinery of the two great military Empires. Once these Governments were weakened, as by the Great War of 1914-18, the Empires of eastern Europe fell apart into their national units.114 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE The power of the landed aristocracy in eastern Europe rested on three facts: (1) agriculture was the chief industry, The ruling land the chief wealth, and the ownership of the eee land was concentrated mainly in the hands of the ‘‘well born”; (2) Austria-Hungary and Russia were military monarchies, and the traditions of the aristocracy in all European countries have been military, war having been the regular profession of the feudal nobility of the Middle Ages; (3) the work of government was mainly en- trusted to appointed officials rather than to elected popular leaders, and the highest ranks of the civil service were more accessible to the nobility and gentry than to the people at large. Sometimes a man of humble birth would acquire wealth or office, but in that case he was usually given a title or some other sign of royal favor which admitted him and his descendants to the inner circles of aristocratic society.’ ‘ AUSTRIA-HUNGARY Austria-Hungary belonged more completely than Ger- many to the civilization of eastern Europe. In former ages actrine the lands ruled by the House of Habsburg were Ine SUY) united politically with the states of modern Germany; in the twentieth century they formed an inde- pendent Empire, though closely allied by treaty and com- mon interests to the Germans of the north. But Austria- Hungary, though not much behind the German Empire in constitutional development, suffered from two most serious handicaps: lack of national unity and backwardness of in- custrial and social conditions. Second in size only to Rus- sia among the nations of Europe, with a population of more = For an admirable discussion of the effect of the land system of eastern Europe on political development see The New Europe, July 24, 1919, pp. 25-30. Professor Seignobos recognizes eight different landed aristocracies in eastern Europe: (1) the Russian; (2) the Germans of the Russian Baltic Provinces; (3) the Rumanian; (4) the Magyar ‘‘magnates’’ of Hungary; (5) the Austrian in German Austria and Bohemia: (6) the “Junkers’’ of Prussia; (7) the Polish gentry in Russian Poland; (8) the Poles of Lithuania, White Russia, Galicia, and the Ukraine. In later chapters there will be frequent reference to the break-up of the social, economic, and political system of eastern Europe as a result of the revolutions which accompanied or followed the Great War.AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND RUSSIA 115 than 50,000,000, rich in natural resources and genial in climate, Austria-Hungary might reasonably have aspired to rival the greatness of Germany instead of being content to remain a “‘brilliant second”’ to Germany’s Imperial policy. But in an age of nationalism and industrialism the power of nations is measured neither by acres nor popula- tion if the acres are undeveloped and the people divided by racial feuds. It would be much overstating the truth to assert that Austria-Hungary as a whole was unaffected by the progress of modern times. There were wealthy and Beeler prosperous provinces, such as Bohemia, which and social ranked with any part of Europe in manufactur- Ee ing skill; great cities, such as Vienna and Buda-Pest, which were world famous for music, art, and literature. But even in German Austria there was more illiteracy than in any part of Germany, and in less favored parts of the Empire the peasantry lived as they had for hundreds of years, un- instructed in all things beyond the narrow life of the village. Within one empire were not only many races, but many levels of civilization. Agriculture was the leading industry of the country, but from some of the richest lands of the Hungarian plains, with every advantage of climate, the crop yield to the acre was less than in Germany. The economic backwardness of Austria-Hungary might soon have been overcome, however, had it not been for the na- tional barriers which divided the Empire into ‘culture- tight’’ compartments. Alone among the Great Powers of the world Austria- Hungary had no single dominant nationality; like Switzer- land, though ona greater scale, it wasa mosaicof _ . racial groups. It is true that the royal House of Renee the Dual Habsburg was German and the court at Vienna : Monarchy the center of political and social life, was German in type and atmosphere. But long ago the Government had abandoned the attempt to Germanize the polyglot popula- tion of the Empire. It was the policy of the Viennese court to preserve a sort of balance of power among the peoples116 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE of the Empire by favoring some and sternly repressing others. One people, the Magyars of Hungary, had even been granted complete home rule and a position of practi- cal equality with the Germans of Austria. The Austrian Emperor was King in Hungary and his powers were limited by the constitutional rights of the Hungarians, much as were the powers of the King of Sweden and Norway (be- fore the division of that realm) by the constitutional rights of the Norwegians. But here the parallel fails. In the case of Sweden and Norway two kindred peoples were united by allegiance to a common ruler; in the case of Austria- Hungary two peoples, with almost nothing in common, had the double task of adjusting their relations to each other and of ruling over millions of rebellious alien subjects of many nationalities. Austria and Hungary enjoyed separate constitutions and parliaments. Their relations with each other were regulated ~ “t x } S S| ~ S SY > Pere ASS 2 ys ~> 2 ’ BEKO 3 rr, % : as Kishi} in \ ~ =} ia? mians RASS A ; ~ Kron staat \ 2; f Z ee oer ened ro ead ‘ 44 ) f ie DA© = : \ \ el fl Uy op : Pe - x pacialp Tarr aon lag Se ne = Ae iAUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND RUSSIA 121 blow at her own national security and resolved at any cost, even the cost of war, to crush Serbia before that kingdom waxed stronz enough to divorce the Yugoslav (Serb, Croat, and Slovene) provinces from the Empire. RUSSIA AND HER DEPENDENCIES Russia, the third of the Empires of eastern Europe, in- cluded not only the larzest country in Europe but all of northern Asia: altogether more than one seventh ee oe of the land surface of the globe. Nor were the gifts to Russian lands scattered like the colonial do- Shoe mains of other European nations; they stretched in a broad unbroken belt from the Baltic and the Black Sea to the Pacific. Had they been as densely settled as most parts of Europe, they would have included more than the entire present population of the world, but many parts of Asiatic Russia remained still undeveloped and ‘even European Russia was thinly populated because of the rigor of the climate and the primitive agricultural methods of the peasantry. The tundras or frozen marshes of the Arctic plain were practically valueless for settlement, and the grassy prairies (steppes) of southeastern Russia and central Asia could not sustain a large population; but in between the frozen north and the arid south lay forest lands and farming country which were capable of almost unlimited development. In wheat production Russia stood second to the United States of America, and the other grains and vegetables of the temperate zone were grown in abundance. Russia produced the greater part of the world’s flax and (with Finland) ranked first in the timber trade. The richest petroleum deposits in the Old World were found near the Caspian Sea. Many metals were found in the Empire, and Russia enjoyed almost a monopoly in the production of platinum, a metal more valuable to-day than gold. The older nations of Europe viewed with some fear the boundless possibilities which seemed to lie before Russia. In western and central Europe the limit of population was122 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE almost in sight, already the birth-rate was beginning to Rapid decrease; every year would increase the relative growth of | man-power of Russia. In spite of an excep- Sa the tionally high death-rate, due to the barbarous balance of ignorance of the Russian poor, the population of ie the Empire which amounted to 128,000,000 by the census of 1897 was estimated to be over 170,000,000 at the outbreak of the Great War. With the industrial develop- ment and better conservation of infant life which might be expected from contact with western civilization, the rate of increase might be even greater. The Russian army was the largest in the world and, until the Japanese War, the Rus- sian navy was considered one of the strongest in Europe. Few of the friends or enemies of the Russian Empire realized to how great an extent the natural advantages of the coun- try were offset by the economic backwardness of the people and the manifold inefficiencies of the central government. Spain, in the days of its decadence, was called an ex- tension of Africa into Europe; with about the same degree of permissible exaggeration it may be said that “‘Asian”’ ie sheers standards of Russia in Europe was Asia in Europe. Long ee centuries of invasion by nomad tribesmen from the central Asian plains may not have greatly modified the racial stock of the Russian people, but they altered permanently the course of Russian history. The vigorous attempt of Peter the Great to ‘‘westernize’”’ Rus- sia succeeded only in part. He and the rulers who suc- ceeded him established in Russia a centralized national monarchy of the type which prevailed generally throughout continental Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; they created a fashionable court, an all-pervasive bureaucracy, and a drilled and uniformed army. The Rus- sia of Saint Petersburg and Moscow was superficially as European as Vienna or Berlin. There were universities, museums, academies of art, music and dancing. With characteristic pessimism many Russian literary men of the nineteenth century complained that Russia had as yet be- queathed little or nothing to the common stock of civiliza-AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND RUSSIA 123 4 tion, but these very men were then engaged in creating one of the most remarkable literatures in the world. Nevertheless the cosmopolitan culture of the small class of educated Russians but threw into darker relief the isola- tion of the Russian masses from European civilization. °er™ op f 4 i = Cx : Zeila (rag C.Guardafui agdala Jibutix9 Ras Hafun Q s vw (Br) 8 = —_@ RODRIGUEZ t8r) & mauritius. Br.) * REUNION {. (Fr.) ee ee ee Reneef Ce naan at aa : |EUROPE IN THE TROPICS 149 railway. In general they have dealt tactfully with na- tive peoples and have admitted a greater equality of the black and white races than have the English, Germans, or Dutch. They have not hesitated to raise colored regiments from tropical Africa and employ them on European battle- fields, and while this policy may be a questionable one from the standpoint of European interests and world peace, at least it testifies to the success of the French in making loyal soldiers of their most recently conquered subjects. At one time the hope of a great tropical empire led France to the very verge of war with Great Britain. South of Egypt is a vast region where desert merges The Sudan into grassland and grassland into jungle as one crisis passes southward from the dry “horse latitudes’’ towards the equator. Here also the ‘“‘white’’ races of northern Africa (white by racial origin but black-skinned from the intense sunlight) merge with the true negro, and the Mohammedan culture of the Arab impinges on heathen barbarism. An insurrection in the Sudan led by a Mohammedan fanatic swept aside every vestige of Egyptian overlordship and brought the death of General Gordon, the British veteran who had undertaken to protect British interests in the im- periled region. For several years, from the death of Gordon in 1885 to the reconquest of the Sudan by Lord Kitchener in 1898, the country was a welter of anarchy, a no-man’s-land of robbery and murder. As Egypt and the British pro- tectors of Egypt had seemingly relinquished effective con- trol France saw an opportunity for adding the Sudan to her own dominions. The dream of British imperialism in Africa has been ex- pressed in the formula ‘‘the Cape to Cairo,” signifying that all of eastern Africa from the Mediterranean Cape to ports of Egypt down the Nile to the Sudan and iajr° vers then overland through tropical Africa to the Nile Cape of Good Hope should form a continuous commercial route under exclusive British control. This involved a con- tinuation for an indefinite period of the Egyptian protec- torate, the reconquest of the Sudan, the development150 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE of Uganda in the hinterland of British East Africa, the extension of British control over German East Africa, the development of Rhodesia, the conquest of the Boer re- publics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. But France had another dream which ran counter to the British. The western frontier of French Africa, which then lost itself in the sands of the Libyan Desert, should be extended to the Nile and thus tap the Egyptain trade route back again to the Mediterranean. In 1898 the intrepid explorer Major Marchand reached Fashoda on the Nile and there erected the French flag. But Sir Herbert Kitchener was then at war with the wild dervishes of the Sudan and in September he annihilated their chief army at the battle of Omdurman. On behalf of Egypt, the nominal suzerain of the Sudan, Kitchener reclaimed the country and informed the French leader when he arrived that his claim based on exploration and conquest was invalidated by existing legal rights. The Foreign Offices of Britain and France plunged into heated The Anglo- Controversy. But the British apparently had eae of mot only the clearer title but the better military the Sudan backing to make it effective, and so France re- HL reoe luctantly abandoned the Nile, receiving in com- pensation enough of the western Sudan to ensure contact between the French Sahara and the Congo. The British established a joint rule (condominium) of Egypt and Great Britain over the Egyptian or eastern The future Udan. But since Egypt, in turn, was in reality OAGeRe to dependent on Britain, the condominium was little more than a polite disguise of British rule. On the whole the establishment of British authority was of undeniable benefit to the Sudan. The anarchy of dervish rule gave way to orderly policing, natural resources, such as the growing of cotton, were actively encouraged, and schools established in a country hitherto almost solidly il- literate. A touch of sentiment was given to the work of * So far as possible this East African empire was to be strung on a rail-route. But it would be a serious mistake to imagine that ‘through traffic’’ from Egypt to South Africa was the chief object of the plan. Much more important was the development of local resources and commerce all the way along the route.EUROPE IN- THE TROPICS I51 education by naming Gordon College after the soldier-hero of Khartum. The bulk of the Sudanese had less national consciousness than the Egyptians and therefore resented less the imposition of an alien rule. In British East Africa and Uganda British rule has also been notably successful, and the conquest of German East Africa (1918) has filled in the last missing link of the chain of British colonies which span the length of Africa. Cecil Rhodes, the Imperial dreamer whose policy did so much to provoke the Boer War,? achieved a less dubious success in extend- Uganda and 7 ing British authority over the sparsely settled sabe tes elevated grasslands to the north of the Boer States. Much of this region now bears his own name — Rhodesia — and justly so, for without his initiative it might readily have fallen into the hands of Portugal or Germany. In eastern Africa the British power is now decidedly dominant. In western Africa British interests are second to the French, and yet the British hold many 4,. pritisn valuable strips of the Guinea coast and in Ni- in West geria possess a ‘“‘model colony,’’ excellently ae governed and developed. British Nigeria, like Rhodesia and other parts of British Africa, was first developed by a chartered company, but later directly by political authority. This authority, however, has been mainly exercised through native rulers whose ways and customs have been carefully respected. This was especially important in northern Nigeria, where fierce Mohammedan tribesmen would have resented too much innovation. Sir Frederick Lugard, the first High Commissioner for northern Nigeria, with only a few score white men to aid him, pacified and organized the whole of a region larger than Germany and with a popula- tion of some ten millions, during the first twelve years of the new century. Nigeria as a whole hasa population of more than 17,000,000. In the south near the coast palm oil is a main export, while the northern interior is being developed as a cotton country. 3ritish Africa in 1914 had an area, exclusive of Egypt, of t See pp. 23-27. - - nen152 TWENTIETH CENTURY, EUROPE more than three million square miles. In extent this was British less than French Africa, but in value probably Africa asa superior, as so much of the French domain was yale desert waste. The Great War added German East Africa (now Tanganyika Territory), German South- west Africa and parts of Kamerun and Togoland, besides freeing Egypt from nominal dependence on Turkey. The relative success of the British in Africa may be attributed in part to the existing strength of the Empire in commerce and sea power, in part to the long experience which the British have had in colonial administration, and in part to the high quality of the men who have represented Britain in the tropics. To undertake the administration of an African empire larger and more diversified than the United States and more populous than the British Isles is a task which will tax, perhaps overtax, the resources of British statesmanship and which would surely have passed, the power of any nation of inferior resources or less ably served. Portuguese Africa is considerable in extent and valuable in its reserve of tropical wealth, but Portugal has been too ie poor and too distracted by internal political Powersin troubles to develop properly her colonial em- Spat pire. Labor abuses in the cacao plantations have been almost as notorious as the rubber slavery of the Congo Free State. The Spanish outposts along the western coast are of even less importance, and the zone of Spanish influence in northern Morocco has brought with it little but a legacy of war. Italy has recently entered the race, with superior re- sources and energy, but with little better success. The Italian conquest of Tripoli from Turkey in 1911- 12 * may lead to a development of that country on lines similar to the French administration in Tunis and Algeria, although Tripoli is handicapped by the excess of desert land almost to the coast. Italy’s tropical colonies of Eritrea and Somaliland in eastern Africa have thus far not been of great commercial importance, and her attempt to Portugal Spain Italy *See Chapter VIII, for the Tripolitan War.EUROPE {N THE TROPICS 153 conquer the highland plateau of Abyssinia ended in com- plete failure. Two parts only of the entire African continent retain fully independent governments, although native rulers still exercise nominal authority under European pro- 4, gependent tection in many places. Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Africa: | is an isolated, half-civilized monarchy in north- apy eastern Africa, shut off from the sea by British, French, and Italian Somaliland. The people are mainly of the ‘“White’”’ race and profess a curious local type of the Chris- tian religion. Only the rugged character of the country and the warlike skill of its inhabitants have saved it from being added to Italian Africa; much as similar causes have saved Afghanistan from absorption in British India. Liberia is a republic on the west coast founded by liberated nezro slaves from the United States. The British and French have encroached on the Liberian fron- tiers, but they have refrained from annexing the country out of respect for American sentiment. Great Britain also has a freedmen’s colony, Sierra Leone, but it is subject to the authority of the Empire, whereas the United States has hitherto refrained from exercising any police power over Liberia. Some negro enthusiasts in the United States have dreamed of establishing a great African Empire or Republic under native rule, but neither Abyssinia nor Liberia possesses the power to form even the nucleus of such a State, and it will be long before the present colonizing na- tions abandon any part of their African possessions, except possibly to each other! What is much more jy. puiture probable is the gradual growth of efficiency and of the self-respect among the Africans under European ASS tutelage till they are able to demand a chief share in the government of their native countries. The vitality of the negro race and its adaptation to the African climate seem to guarantee that it will never die out, as have some of the tribes of Polynesians and American Indians, and the ad-~ vance of education will prevent a permanent acceptance of Liberia either political or economic servitude. But many genera- nee seem— S eEeeeaeee ee ae = " aera eee a 154 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE tions may elapse before the temperate zone ceases to send out rulers to the tropics. The Asiatic tropics, in contrast with the African, do not so much present the contact of native barbarism with in- The and trusive civilization as contact between civiliza- shadows of tions of different types. India has an older lad culture than England, though a culture which has specialized along a different line. India is the home of many important religions; Europe has borrowed her relig- ious ideas from Asia. India ranks the sage and priest above the warrior and the ruler. Even in the more practical branches of science India has made essential contributions, such as our common “‘ Arabic’’ numerals, which the Arabs transmitted from India to Europe. A few centuries ago the luxuries of life, the gold, silks, and jewels which ornament the lives @f the very rich, might be found in greater abund- ance in the palaces of India than in the courts of European monarchs; and even to-day a native prince can make a more impressive show for some formal state occasion than most Occidental rulers, and act his personal part in the pageantry with far greater grace and dignity. But the civilization of India, remarkable as it is, has not been able to hold its own. The English conquest was but the latest of a series of con- quests by “hardy northern barbarians,” and even if the British flag should be withdrawn from India no one would care to predict that another conqueror would not soon ap- pear. The curse of the tropics lies even upon this brilliant and attractive people. The great masses of the population are so poor that a single crop failure may mean death by starvation for several million farmers. Their horizon is bounded by petty village affairs, the world of books and newspapers is far away, harmful superstitions are cherished as part of ancestral piety, knowledge of the laws of hygiene simply does not exist, and political co6peration is made al- most impossible by the mutual hostility of races, religions, and social classes. The political activity of India is intense, but it is mainly confined to a very small class of educated men — journalists, lawyers, students, or public officials —Strof Gibralt Tangier (Neutral Zone)f: 02 MADEIRA iS. SOS Ss “MOR Port opado ps = B SUNIS QMALTA ae CYPRUS | N SEA / CANARYS. 5 TENERIFFE.9 (Sp, FEES" = CAPE VERDE is. © (ort) — = f= OF CANCER SIERRA T Freetown QlEONE A, We = On fG Monrovia “ TERRITORY E NEW MAP OF AFRICA 1925 (SJ British {GS} Spanish [J French [CY Portuguese [5G italian =) Belgian [== ]J independent States ~—+—- Cape to Cairo Railroad wwec/e Former German Territory Scale of Miles @ 200 400 600 800 A N ST,HELENA : ‘(8r,) . op sia & \ ulawayo® ia \ & BECHUANALAND 2 9"A\S Ot AF SSS _ Shr & P irce om PRR TRANSVAAL. e afekinpe/ “Ora s ey Delagoa Bay - \ Long. West 30° from Greenwich 20° a X Lake Tanganyika \S Reg Britis Me ndateRp ALDABRA ta en f) T Ry OG SEYCHELI Os ess 1S. par es Salaam Qo Br.) r 4 (8r) mage C.DELGADO § COMORO Is. o @Fr. afr) 9 % RODRIGUEZ I. & MAURITIUS I. Br) S REUNION I. r) (Fr) ee a J M LO Johan sburg © S& Lourenco Marques ’ ve ; Long. East 50°from Greenwich 60° CHM ee Se ee a ee ee eeEUROPE IN THE TROPICS 155 who have had opportunity to come in touch with European or American institutions. British India, like so much of the British Empire, was a splendid accident. The East India Company began asa purely commercial undertaking, a middleman to exchange the manufactures of Europe for the luxuries of the Orient. Forced to fight by the hostility of French traders and unfriendly native rulers, the Company found itself through the military genius of Clive the re- sponsible governor of several large provinces. The British in India Ambitious agents of the Company sought trade by intervention in native politics and discovered, rather to their dismay, that each extension of influence brought with it new responsi- bilities of administration. In 1858 the British Government assumed directly the responsibilities hitherto exercised through the agency of the East India Company. The work of expansion continued until by the end of the nineteenth century the whole peninsula was either directly under British rule as ‘‘ British India’’ or indirectly under British control in the so-called ‘‘native States.’’ A special member of the British cabinet, the Secretary of State for India, and a Viceroy in India, are the main links between the sovereign British Parliament and the local administration. Parlia- ment, on the initiative of the ministry of the day, sometimes decrees a general plan of reform for British India, but the details of everyday government are left almost wholly to the discretion of the officials on the spot. The Indian Civil Service has a high reputation for efficiency. Educated men willingly enter it as a lifetime career, and the higher ranks are selected more carefully and paid more liberally than is common in colonial services. The lower ranks of the local administration are to an increasing degree filled by native clerks. In similar fashion the army of India is a mixture of British and of native Indian troops, with British officers in the majority even of native regiments. The task of administering India is not like that of ruling a foreign nation; rather of administering the affairs of a whole continent. British India has a population of nearly ener ne reenterTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE 156 250,000,000, the native States, for whose welfare the British are almost equally responsible, more than 70,000,000. If the native States are included India represents about three fourths of the entire British Empire. The Complexity differences of race and language in different ° their task parts of the peninsula would of themselves suffice to prevent national unity, but they are of less importance than the religious division. Over 200,000,000 adhere to the Hindu faith, a native interpretation of the universe which in the course of centuries has developed every shade of religious thought from the loftiest spiritual creed of the learned Brahmins to the crudest popular idolatry. The Mo- hammedans, over 60,000,000 in number, are violently hostile to the Hindus and their militant creed has won the alleziance of most of the warlike nations of India. In Burma and some other districts there are over 10,000,000 Buddhists; but the main conquests of the faith of Guatama Buddha, the gentle prophet of India, have been outside his native country, and especially in China and Indo-China. Christian. missionaries have won a few million converts, divided into many sects. The warlike Sikhs, the Parsee traders, the wild folk of the inland jungles, with their myriad forms of nature worship, add to the barriers of faith which divide India. The Hindus, the largest single element, are again divided by hereditary lines of ‘‘caste,’’ social classes sanctioned by religious custom. The Brahmin or priest stands apart from the world and may be contaminated by the mere close presence of an inferior. The warrior or ruler is next on the social scale, then the ‘‘middle class” merchant or peasant, then the humble laborers in various grades, while certain lowly outcasts might perform only the most degraded tasks. Faced by difficulties of such magnitude, the British made Aspects of | no attempt to impose European institutions on British rule India as a whole. Save for putting down such customs as the suicide of widows, infanticide and ritual *In the British Empire as a whole Christianity is but the third religion in number of adherents, Christians being exceeded by the Hindus and Moham- medans.EUROPE IN “LHE* TROPICS 157 murder (thugee), the Government has left religion severely alone, refusing to appear even as the direct patron of mis- sionary effort. Instead of attempting the almost impossibly exigent task of educating the whole nation, they gave higher education to a select few in the hope that in turn the edu- cated Hindu would do something to enlighten his poorer fellow countryman. The main task of British rule was simply to preserve order and maintain justice in the courts. The ending of tribal warfare and the capricious tyranny of native despots has undoubtedly been a great blessing to India, though there is always some loss in accepting the routine security of an alien rule in exchange for the possi- bilities of initiative, variety, and experiment. Many of the princely caste undoubtedly mourn the “ when empire might reward the efficient ruler and fighter, good old times” whose sword must now remain forever in its sheath. The British have striven also to upbuild the economic structure of the country by establishing railroads, highways, canals, and factories. They have undertaken huge re- Debit and lief works in time of famine. Yet famines are ‘tt as common and almost as deadly as ever,’ because the rapid increase in population keeps even pace with the growth in wealth. Taxes are heavy, and the natives complain that, although all the revenue raised in India is spent on India, much of it goes to pay and supply a foreign army of occupa- tion. The British reply that they must have a strong army to hold the northern frontier against raiders from Afghanis- tan and, some day, perhaps, from Germany or Russia. Another grievance, not without a measure of justification, is that skilled native industries have been crushed out of existence by the competition of the cheap manufactured goods of Lancashire. Undoubtedly the development of India as a market for manufactures has recompensed ,the British nation many times over for the expenditures under- taken on behalf of India by the British Government. tSome Hindu nationalists declare that famines are more severe than in the days of native independence. But since the modern period is the only period of reliable statistics, such assertions must be discounted as incapable of proof.158 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Many of the Indian peoples, proud of their ancient civil- ization, resented the British overlordship of their country The nation. @2d strove by various methods to amend or to alist move- endit. The resulting nationalist movement be- aus came more active as the spread of western educa- tion awoke a larger class to the ideal of political democracy, but like all radical movements it tended to split into diver- gent groups. Many moderate Hindu leaders were content to demand “home rule within the Empire,” a status of Do- minion self-government comparable to that of Australia or Canada. This they hoped to achieve by peaceful political agitation and moral pressure upon British public opinion. A more extreme party desired complete independence, even though violence might be necessary to attain it. These political factions merged and blended in curious ways with religious ideals, sometimes representing a progressive Re- formation, such as the Arya Somaj group, who wished a purified Hinduism, sometimes representing mere reaction- ary prejudice against any innovation on ancient custom.: Perhaps the most interesting phase of the recent na- tionalist movement was the propaganda carried on by Al Bien Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi was a critic of the non-| British India whose point of view was much that Aaieat ve of Tolstoy towards the Russia of his time. Gandhi held that British imperialism was but the symptom of a disease, the real evil being the western cult of materialism and brute force. He condemned all that was the product of western science and invention, even modern hospitals and railroads, and urged that India return to the simpler life of ancient times, reject all imported products, revive native handicrafts, and live austerely as befitted a spiritual nation. His political program forbade the use of violence and proposed to attain national inde- pendence by passive resistanee and a systematic boycott (“non-coéperation’’) of all governmental activities. None of his followers should hold public office, attend public cere- monies, bring cases into British courts, or pay obedience to Ik > pee ie ae : inte ; oe For example, the agitation against laws restricting child marriage.EUROPE IN THE TROPICS 159 British legislation. The personal sincerity and saintly simplicity of Gandhi won him thousands of followers, and many Hindu and Mohammedan nationalists, including even those who doubted his policy of non-resistance, attached themselves to his party. The British Government, faced by the growing demand for self-government, has cautiously introduced reforms in the political institutions of British India. Lord 7. Mecley: Curzon, the Conservative Viceroy who ad- Minto re- ministered India from 1898 to 1905, was the last ‘eS to maintain the old system of exclusive British rule, though it is due to him to admit that British rule in his day was competent and conscientious. Some acts of his adminis- tration, however, such as the partition of Bengal in 1905, roused nationalist resentment, and Earl Minto, his Liberal successor, began a policy of concessions to native sentiment. Lord Morley, the Secretary for India, supported his reforms. The number of elected members in the Legislative Councils of the provinces was increased (1909), and native Indians admitted to the Governor General’s Council and to the ad- visory Council of the Secretary for India. Three years later, in 1912, the capital was transferred from Calcutta to the ancient city of Delhi. Hindus were admitted more readily to executive positions. But these cautious conces- sions only whetted the appetite for more. In fact, po- litically minded Hindus found it more than ever exasperat- ing that their delegates could discuss public policies in the legislative bodies, but could not control the real work of ad- ministration. The more violent nationalists appealed to force. At- tempts were made against the life of Earl Minto and his successor Lord Hardinge. The British Govern- 5...) mani- ment turned to coercion and enacted severe laws festations of Though the Mohammedans ee in the main kept aloof from the agitation of the Hindu students, with a lofty aristocratic scorn for the phrases of democracy, and had turned a deaf ear to the German- Turkish cry of ‘‘a holy war against the English” in 1914, against sedition.TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE they felt concern at the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and agitated for a more friendly British foreign policy to- wards Moslem interests. Another grievance was the dis- crimination against Hindu immigrants by the British Dominions of Canada, Australia, and South Africa. ‘We are British subjects,” thought the Hindus; ‘““why, then, may we not settle where we please within the Empire?”’ The climax of discontent was reached in 1919 when General Dyer broke up an illegal mass assembly in the city of Amritsar by instantly firing a volley into the crowd and continuing to shoot until all were dispersed. Though Par- liament condemned the ‘Amritsar massacre,’ it left re- sentment against British rule which still continues. Faced with such serious unrest the British Government resolved on a much more radical reform than had ever been The Mon. emtured. The proposals of Mr. Montagu, then tagu- Secretary for India, and Lord Chelmsford, who pelted had experience as Viceroy, received the approval of Parliament. For British India as a whole there was to be a legislature consisting of a Legislative As- sembly, with a large majority of elected members, and a Council of State, in part appointed and in part elected. The viceroy still retains power in case of emergency to over- rule the legislature on vital issues, such as finance. Still more significant was the reform of the provincial Legislative Councils. The franchise was widened to include some five million voters, mainly of the wealthier classes, in place of the small oligarchy of thirty thousand who had previously en- joyed the vote. With the exception of certain ‘‘reserved”’ subjects, such as military and police affairs, the Legislative Councils and the ministers responsible to them will have complete control, subject only to certain emergency powers of the Provincia] Governors, over local government. Be- cause of this distinction between the matters “reserved” to the British officials, and the matters “‘transferred”’ to the control of the elected Councils, the new form of provin- cial government is called a ‘“dyarchy”’ or dual control. After a period of ten years the whole plan is to be examinedEUROPE IN THE TROPICS 161 and abandoned, modified or extended at the will of Parlia- ment according to the experience of its practical working. There can be but little doubt that the new liberties of India will tend to broaden rather than contract, for a grant of national self-government, once made, is difficult to recall. Britain-in-Asia includes several colonies outside the Dyarchy Indian Empire. The island of Ceylon, immediately south of India, is governed as a separate crown colony. It is a main center of the tea export. Near the equator the port of Singapore, the southern gateway to the Far East, dominates the Malay States under ae British protection. In part the Malay Penin- Settlements sula is ruled like British India directly by British ang evaey officials; in part, like the native States of India, indirectly through British advisers to native monarchs. In northern Borneo there are some peculiarly interesting ex- Ceylon periments in colonial administration. One part of the is- land is governed by a chartered company, the British North Borneo Company; another part is ruled as an hereditary monarchy with a British dynasty. ‘‘Raja’’ Brooke of Sarawak took the throne at the bidding of the native Malay and Dyak tribesmen, and he and his successors Borneo and have since enjoyed a remarkably peaceful rule.1 New Guinea British New Guinea, including the old colony of Papua and the recently acquired ‘‘mandate”’ of German New Guinea, are administered by Australia. France is an important colonial Power in the Far East as well as in Africa. In Indo-China the French conquered an empire in the nineteenth century which has in French some degree compensated for the loss of the Paes greater prize of India in the eighteenth. The colony of Cochin-China, and the protectorates of Cambodia, Annam, t Alleyne Ireland, a well-known writer on comparative colonial politics, declares that ‘‘With such knowledge of administrative systems in the tropics as may be gained by actual observation in almost every part of the British Empire ... I can say that in no country which I have ever visited are there to be observed so many signs of a wise and generous rule, such abundant indica- tions of good government, as are to be seen on every hand in Sarawak.” (The Far Eastern Tropics (1905), pp. 61-62.) emer sina aiateaanaia meee.162 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Tonkin, and Laos have a combined area a little greater than that of France and a population of about 20,000,000. The conquest of these colonies cost France many expensive wars, and until the present century they were looked on as mere costly encumbrances, paying dividends in political in- fluence, perhaps, but certainly not in revenues. The recent progress of Indo-China is all the more remarkable. A com- mon government was established for the whole country, hitherto administered in too piecemeal a fashion, a better grade of civil servant introduced into the administration, valuable public works completed, and the budget placed on a sounder basis. French Indo-China is still a relatively little known part of the world, but it has immense possi- bilities of future economic development. Its rice crop is one of the chief present sources of wealth. Squeezed between British India and French Indo-China, and sadly encroached on by both, is the one fully inde- Siam. the Pendent kingdom of tropical Asia. The recent “Land of | mative monarchs have been wise enough to learn the ae from their colonial neighbors and they have called into service able European scientists and administrators. The tolerably efficient Government of Siam, and the fact that the kingdom forms a useful “‘ buffer State” between the French and British colonial frontiers, have thus far preserved Siam from the usual European con- quest. While Britain and France administer important parts of the Farther Indies, the great prize of the Far Eastern The Dutch tropics has fallen to The Netherlands. The pee SeIuEGH Bast. Indiessarets product of the older colonial movement of the early seventeenth century, when the Dutch East India Company, thanks to the temporary naval supremacy of The Netherlands, obtained a mono- poly of the spice trade. For a long time the larger islands, Borneo, Sumatra, and Dutch New Guinea, were neglected, while all the attention of the colonjal administration was focused on the island of Java and the smaller spice islands. The resources of Java were so thoroughly exploited that theEUROPE IN THE TROPICS 163 island became, for its size, perhaps the most valuable piece of tropical property in the world. The Dutch officials, al- though overgiven to routine and “‘red tape’’ and often ab- surdly underpaid, showed the conscientious attention to the minutest details of their labors so characteristic of their nation. tion was the purely commercial attitude of the Company, and later of the Dutch Government, to the native Malayan population. the coffee, sugar and spice plantations, yielding immense The greatest weakness of Javanese administra- Taxes were collected in the form of labor on profits to the Government, and the native rulers or Regents, acting as agents of the Dutch administration, too often were guilty of gross oppression.’ In recent years attention has shifted from the merely financial aspect of colonial rule to general problems of public welfare. labor has been abolished, native rights to the land are carefully safeguarded, and all officials are required to pass stringent examinations on the geography, institu- Though the Dutch Government no longer expects to extort direct profits from the administration, the rewards of trade have Coffee and sugar are important staples for export, and in recent years the commercial im- The ‘‘culture system”’ of forced Modern Java tions, and languages of Netherlands-India. continued to increase. portance of copra and plantation rubber has much increased. Spices, quinine, and many other forest products of minor importance come to the market. On an area of 50,000 square miles, about the size of New York State, Java sup- ports a population of 35,000,000, five times that of The Netherlands in Europe, and yet Java is almost entirely de- pendent on agriculture and exports a large proportion of the annual produce. If the whole of the Dutch East Indies were as populous as Java they would have an ag- gregate population equal to that of all Europe! But at pre- sent the population of Sumatra, the Dutch parts of Borneo t The evils of forced labor were exposed in Dekker’s novel Max Havelaar, which from its popularity and influence has often been termed the ‘‘ Dutch Uncle Tom's Cabin.”’ aaeiaceeeiee ee inne etiiailiaiaanamarmen,TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE 164 and New Guinea, and the other islands of Netherlands- India is less than half that of Java alone. The smaller islands have been continuous spice producers Outlying : ee : e + parts of since their first discovery by Europeans, and in EAT i. recent years rubber and copra plantations and mineral resources, such as tin mines and oil wells, have been developed in various parts of the East Indies. The myriad groups of islands scattered throughout the tropical Pacific, though not individually so large or wealthy as the East Indies, have a variety and extent which The parti: ‘anks them as one of the most important fields tion of the of colonial expansion. Sometimes these islands Pacific : : are collectively termed Oceania, as though they formed an insular continent of their own. Like Africa, Oceania was divided among the colonizing Powers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Great Britain, with the island continent of Australia as a base for operations, obtained her usual lion’s share in the partition of the Pacific. In 1874 the Fiji Islands, whose plea for admission to the Empire had once been rejected, were placed under British protection. A High Commissioner of the Western Pacific is also Governor of Fiji, and the annexation of the Fiji group led inevitably, though almost reluetantly, to the absorption of other hitherto independent groups, such as British the Gilbert, Ellice, Tonga, and British Solomon poeania archipelagoes, and New Zealand’s acquisition of the Cook Islands and many less important islets. Pitcairn Island was added to the Empire by the accident of being the landing-place of shipwrecked mutineers. France ob- tained the Society Islands, with Tahiti, the Marquesas, and French and the Tuamotu groups; also New Caledonia, German which at one time was used as a penal colony. possessions . . e Germany acted in time to secure, through Bis- marck’s vigorous diplomacy, the Caroline, Marshall, and Ladrone Islands north of the equator, and the Bismarck Archipelago and western Solomons near the coast of New Guinea. The United States acquired Tutuila in Samoa,EUROPE IN THE TROPICS 165 Wake, Midway, Guam, and, most important of all, the . native Polynesian Kingdom of Hawaii. The American ; | American islands form, as it were, a series of Uccania Hi stepping-stones across the Pacific to the Philippines. Since a the war the German islands have been divided among : | Japan, Great Britain, and the British Dominions of Aus- f | tralia and New Zealand.* | Particularly interesting in the politics of the Pacific are | \} } the attempts which have been made to administer islands jointly by two or more nations. The idea of Condomin- partnership in tropical administration has much eae | and the ° ° - | ee to commend it in theory, but to the present it New Heb- rial i ; : : ides has rarely succeeded in practice. Samoa was *“‘ : . . . . Hit /} an independent native kingdom, practically dominated by Be ! the white plantation owners and the consular representa- ) i tives of Germany, Britain, and the United States.2. The natives, stalwart in body but gentle and unambitious in ip spirit, permitted the independence of their island home to become a mere shadow while their native ‘‘kings’’ (tribal | a chieftains would be a more accurate term) were crowned or deposed at the will of rival traders. At one time consular | intrigues almost brought on war between the Germans on ht the one part and the British and Americans on the other. | To prevent further conflict, Samoa was placed by diplo- matic agreement under the joint administration of the three interested Powers. In 1899 this period of ‘‘condominium”’ was ended by treaty, as experience with it had caused . general dissatisfaction to the natives and to all of the gov- | erning Powers. Great Britain relinquished all her rights, in return for compensation elsewhere, and Germany and the United States divided the group between them. The Ger- man islands have since fallen to New Zealand as prize of | war. In the New Hebrides group Britain and France have | long exercised a joint governorship, but many proposals have been brought forward to terminate this arrangement, which seems to please no one. : ™See Chapter XV. 2 A very vivid and detailed, if not quite impartial, account of the Samoan troubles may be read in the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, long a resident iat of Samoa and the well-beloved champion of Samoan rights.— eee 166 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Until the political authority of the colonizing Powers was established throughout the Pacific, the natives were often Problems of Kidnaped into virtual slavery (“‘blackbirding”’ the Pacific by white traders. This evil has been restrained, eee but the economic problem of the tropical Pacific remains a difficult one. Neither the dark, negroid Melane- sian natives of Fiji and western Oceania generally, nor the brown, smooth-featured Polynesians of Hawaii, Samoa, and the farther island chains, are particularly well adapted to plantation labor. They accepted Christianity with amaz- ing readiness and have adapted themselves to the usages of civilization within a single lifetime. Men are still alive who can remember when cannibalism was rife in these now de- corous, well-ordered communities. But contact with the white man has greatly decreased the numbers of the natives of Oceania, chiefly through the spread of contagious dis- eases. Just as the English and Spaniards imported negro slaves to work the plantations in the West Indies, which work the American Indians either would or could not per- form, so the British have had to use Hindu contract labor- ers in Fiji and the Americans to use Japanese labor in Hawaii. The natives now are usually treated like ‘‘reserva- tion” Indians and are protected as wards of the State even against their own improvidence.CHAPTER VII EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST The truth is, that at present foreigners are powerful and the Chinese feeble. And whence arises the power of the former? It certainly is not innate in them, but depends upon the fact that ‘‘The requisites of Government are sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler’’ (Confucian Analects). Li HUNG-CHANG (1867) SEPARATED from the civilizations of Europe, India, and America by the broadest deserts, the highest mountains, and the widest ocean’ in the world, the three “nee ord nations of the Far East, China, Japan, and Régime” in Korea, have for many centuries formed a world the Far of their own. tury these countries were isolated as much by their own policy as by distance and natural barriers; they at once despised the foreigner as a barbarian and feared him as a possible conqueror and exploiter. They were content with their own civilization, dignified by ancient tradition and the sanctions of religion and adjusted to their racial desires by ages of social experience. Perhaps too much has been said of the natural conservatism of the Asiatic. In ancient days both China and Japan have experienced profound changes in political institutions and habits of life. But at least it is true that at the time when the Far East was thrown open to the trade of the rest of the world and forced to adopt European methods of war and diplomacy, the public life of eastern Asia was stagnant and unprogressive. Japan, once forced to abandon the old policy of isolation and exclusion, rapidly adapted herself to the new condi- tions. No other Asiatic people has so com- Japan takes pletely understood and mastered the principles 2" inde- of Western civilization as the Japanese. The ie ithe recognition of Japan as one of the ‘‘civilized na- “°"4 tions’’ is part of nineteenth century history; the twentieth century shows the rise of Japan to the position of a ‘‘ Great Until late in the nineteenth cen-Se 168 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Power,” the first non-European nation to rank as such since the Turks were defeated before Vienna in the seventeenth century. No foreign Power in the twentieth century has ventured to regard Japanese territory as open to conquest and colonization. China and Korea have been less fortunate. Korea, though nominally independent, was little more than a buffer The parti. tate between the rival empires of Russia and cowl. Japan, and the only question as to its future that the annexa- puzzled European observers was to which empire moe gen. the prize would fall. China, also, was con- erally ex- sidered a possible field for colonial expansion. veces But this prize was so great that there were many claimants. No one nation would have been permitted to rule all China, as England ruled India. But so inefficient was the native Government in upholding the integrity of China that few expected an early national revival similar to-that which had taken place in Japan. The alternative to such a national revival would be partition among the Powers. Mutual’ jealousies might delay the actual an- nexation of Chinese territory, might even lead to wars among the would-be colonizers, but could not save China from the consequences of weakness and misgovernment. The future of China is still as dubious as ever, but it is no longer a foregone conclusion that this ancient empire will Why China follow the destiny of India, Africa, and Turkey. eee, China has won a reprieve, if not a pardon. Japan secured independence by developing a stable central government and a formidable army and navy; China has not yet attained either political stability or military strength. But four political developments of the twentieth century have worked to the advantage of China: (1) there has been a patriotic revival, which has still to perfect its constructive work, but which has at all events swept away many antiquated customs and institutions of the old régime; (2) the Russo-Japanese War, the Great War, and the Russian Revolution have eliminated the two most predatory European Powers, Russia and Germany; (3) theEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 169 United States has consistently championed the independ- ence and integrity of China from the time when Secretary Hay declared for the ‘‘open door”’ to the Washington Con- ference of 1921; (4) China’s membership in the League of Nations affords additional guarantees against foreign ag- gression. Whatever may be the destiny of China, it cannot fail to have the profoundest effect on the rest of the world. The Chinese Empire with its dependencies covers an TAB gate area greater than that of the continental United of China in States. It is the world’s greatest reservoir of wong poli- man power. No accurate census has ever been taken, but most estimates grant a population of more than 400,000,000, or approximately one fourth of the human race. This population may easily be doubled in another century, since the birth-rate is exceptionally high, the death-rate (which at present is said to balance the high birth-rate) will probably decrease with the growing knowledge of sanitation and modern medicine, and vast tracts of terri- tory in the outlying portions of the Empire still await set- tlement. As a people the Chinese are industrious, thrifty, and enduring. They thrive in all climates from the rigor- ous winters of northern Manchuria to the perpetual sum- mer of Java and the Philippines. The chief reason that has been put forward for excluding them from Australia, Canada, the United States, and other thinly settled coun- tries is that they can endure conditions of poverty which would be intolerable to races accustomed to a higher stand- ard of living. They have little of the Japanese skill in war, and few people to-day cherish the old nightmare of the “yellow peril’’ embodied in armies of tens of millions bent on the conquest of the white man’s world. But in the peaceful wars of commerce the Chinese have every ad- vantage except the technical engineering knowledge of the West, and that knowledge they are rapidly acquir- ing. The resources of China are adequate for almost limitless industrial development. Both coal and oil are found inTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE considerable quantities and there are immense deposits of Economic «FON ~ ore and other valuable commercial min- conditions erals. As the best European and American ee nine mines are exhausted, the comparatively un- touched resources of China will become of ever increasing importance. At present the wealth of China is still mainly agricultural. The vast majority of the people are small farmers, tilling their tiny patches of land along the great rivers of the eastern plains. The margin between success- ful farming and famine is very narrow. No American farmer and no European peasant west of Russia can easily imagine the intensity of the struggle for existence in China. When the rivers rise, tens of thousands are killed by the floods; during a dry season millions die of hunger. In the almost universal absence of hygiene, pestilence spreads un- checked. Many of the most terrible epidemics which have swept over Europe are believed to have originated in eastern Asia. Under such conditions human life ceases to be greatly valued, and it is not surprising that a fatalistic indifference to death is one of the characteristic Chinese traits. The old Chinese civilization, with all its defects, was in many ways as remarkable as the civilization of Europe. Chinese | The Chinese were acquainted with such luxuries civilization as silks and porcelain (‘‘China”’ ware) at a time when our North-European ancestors were skin-clad_ bar- barians. They knew of the printing-press, gunpowder, and the compass. They had a written language of their own in which each word was represented by a distinctive character. In the decorative arts the Chinese, and the Japanese as well, achieved miracles of painstaking skill which surpass in their own kind the best European work. Daily life was enriched with an elaborate ritual of politeness which would have done credit to the court of Louis XIV. Even those Chinese who admit the superiority of the West in science and invention do not concede to us any superiority in the ‘‘art of living.” * During the Tai-ping Rebellion in the nineteenth century some twenty million Chinese were killed or died of famine: more than twice as many as were killed in all the theaters of the Great War. There have been many similar episodes in Chinese history.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST I7I Nor was the Chinese civilization wholly a matter of ex- ternals. The whole life of the people has been shaped by the teaching of a group of philosophers who lived fhe several centuries before the Christian era and SO preached the virtues of courtesy, benevolence, of Chinese fair-dealing, reverence, and filial piety. Con- Hu fucius was the most influential of these philosophers and his works are still studied as the classics of the language. Whether or not we can speak of a Confucian ‘‘religion”’ is a difficult question. Confucius was indifferent to the super- natural; he did not deny the gods, but he showed little interest inthem. Asa nation the Chinese are practical and prosaic and little given to theological speculation. Under the old Imperial Government there was a government cult of ceremonial in honor of ‘‘Heaven’’; many Chinese pro- fessed Buddhism or Taoism, and some were converts to ‘ Mohammedanism or Christianity. But no very hard and sharp logical lines were drawn between the various cults, and the Confucian principle of reverence for ancestors, parents, wise men, and rightful authority pervaded all Chinese religions alike. It is characteristic of the ethical basis of Chinese life that many Imperial decrees were not in the form of commands with penalties attached, as would have been the case in a European country, but were moral exhortations to the people. The weakness of Chinese religious life was in the confusion between ethical conduct and merely prudential or conventional conduct, and the absence of any appeal to the imagination. It is as if we had no Bible except the Book of Proverbs. The political principle taught by the Chinese philoso- phers was “‘enlizhtened despotism.”’ The rule of kings and princes was taken for granted, but it was under- Despation stood that they should be fathers of the people tempered by and ever solicitous to promote their moral and See material welfare. A ruler who misgoverned his subjects beyond the point of endurance might be rightfully deposed. ‘He who puts an unrighteous judge to death,” said Mencius, ‘‘is no regicide but a minister of justice.’”’ The7 . a tet ir a ileal adie tee 172 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE republican revolution of the twentieth century was there- fore no novelty in Chinese history, except in the failure to establish a new hereditary dynasty in place of the old. The ruling dynasty of the nineteenth century was not of Chinese origin. In the seventeenth century the Man- The chus, a branch of the yellow race rather remotely Manchu akin to the Chinese, overran the more civilized Emperors Ny . 44s . Chinese provinces and established their own dynasty, also forcing on the Chinese people some novel customs, such as the wearing of the pigtail. But in the long run the Chinese absorbed their conquerors, as the English absorbed the Norman knights and barons who conquered them in 1066. It has often been the fate of the unwarlike Chinese to pass for a time under foreign rule, but they have clung tenaciously to their old institutions. In theory the Emperor was absolute monarch over the whole Chinese Empire. The ceremonial of the court was of the most elaborate Oriental sort and even European ambassadors were compelled to perform acts of submission before being admitted to the august presence of the “‘Son of Heaven.”’ But despotism in China, like despotism in Russia and in all extensive empires with inferior means of communication, amounted in practice to bureaucracy, the rule of a trained official class. The Chinese officials were selected in part by the favor | of the court, but very largely on the basis of civil service Hl ae examinations. This modern-seeming system is serviceex- Many centuries old. Those who survived a "Chi, threefold series of rigorous competitive examin- j ations were sure of a position in the public ! services. The subject-matter of the examinations was en- tirely literary; it tested only familiarity with the classic authors and ability to write graceful essays on suggested topics. Not until the present century was the system modified to include more modern and immediately practical subjects. As, after all, for centuries the higher schools in Europe and America taught little but the Greek and Latin classics, it should not be hard for us of the West to under-EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 173 stand the conservatism of the Chinese system of public examinations. The worst feature of the old Chinese Government was the corruption that pervaded every department. Officials were not expected to live on their salaries, and Tacinecen as seldom did so. Bribery, graft, and extra-legal of Chinese fees were a matter of course. Even aman like °"“S Li Hung-chang, the greatest of modern Chinese statesmen, took good care to feather his own nest. Judges were often dishonest and the legal system was so inefficient and cruel that foreigners would consent to trade in China only on condition that they be exempted from the jurisdiction of Chinese courts. Torture was practiced freely to extort evidence and to punish atrocious crimes. The public finances were badly administered and the whole system of taxes and customs dues needed to be straightened out by honest and capable officials. The merits and defects of the Chinese, their devotion to peace, and their lack of public spirit, alike handicapped the Empire in dealing with such warlike and pa- ae triotic nations as Japan and the European French, and German an- nexations of tury was filled with successful aggressions against Chinese China. Great Britain forced Chinese ports open one to foreign trade and annexed the important port of Hong- Powers. The latter part of the nineteenth cen- kong (1842). France conquered Annam, which China claimed as a dependency of the Empire, and drove a Chinese garrison from Tonking (1885). Germany took advantage of the murder of two missionaries to demand from China a leasehold for ninety-nine years of the port of Kiao-chau and special privileges for developing the mines and building the railway lines in the province of Shan-tung (1898). It was this high-handed seizure of Kiao-chau by Germany which led England and France to preserve the “balance of power,’’ at the further expense of China, by obtaining the leases of Wei-Hai-Wei and Kwang-chow Wan. Russia and Japan were even greater dangers to Chinese174 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE independence. China, in complacent ignorance of her own The Chino. Xtreme military inefficiency, had blundered Japanese into war with Japan and suffered a complete and War humiliating defeat. By the terms of peace (1895) China gave up all claim to suzerainty over Korea, ceded to Japan the important island of Formosa, paid a heavy war indemnity, and, most important of all, per- mitted Japan to occupy the Liao-tung Peninsula in southern Manchuria. Japan’s success was complete. At one stride she had taken a place among the military Powers of the modern world and alone among Asiatic nations dealt on equal terms with the nations of Europe. But such success carried with it the penalty of rousing the jealousy of other claimants to the spoils of China. Russia, Germany, and France made a joint diplomatic protest against the Japan- ese annexation of the Liao-tung Peninsula and Japan was forced to give way. Russia, in protesting against the Japanese occupation of southern Manchuria, was putting in one word for China Rue and two for herself. The German seizure of replaces Kiao-chau was followed by a Russian lease for paper ie twenty-five years of Port Arthur and Talien- wan (Dalny) in the southern tip of Liao-tung. The advantages of the new acquisition were very great. Port Arthur was the first entirely ice-free port which Russia had ever had in all her vast Asian empire. It would be an excellent naval base for the Russian fleet in the Far East. But Russian ambition did not stop there. The annexation of Port Arthur was to be but the beginning of a great empire of the Pacific. Railroads were to be built throughout Man- churia and linked with the trans-Siberian line, exclusive commercial concessions negotiated with the Chinese Gov- ernment (with the aid of considerable military pressure) would bring all Manchuria within the Russian sphere of influence, and when the time was ripe Manchuria would be added to the domain of Russia-in-Asia. In 1902 Russia promised the gradual evacuation of Manchuria, but in- vented pretexts for delay. In spite of protests from China,EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 175 Japan, and other nations Russia strengthened her hold on Manchuria until it was plain that a Russian evacuation would never take place unless Russian armies were driven out by war. China was profoundly stirred by the danger of partition among the colonizing Powers. It is true that in Korea and dndo-China the Empire had lost claims rather ss : : Commercial than effective rights, and that even the loss of “spheres of the outlying dependencies still attached to the es s Empire — Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and Turkestan — would leave the great mass of Chinese popu- lation under the dragon flag and loyal to the Imperial throne. But more menacing than the loss of outlying de- pendencies or the sacrifice of a few ports along the coast was the growing tendency of the Powers to mark out eco- nomic spheres of interest within which the fortunate pos- sessor would have a monopoly of mining rights, railway routes, banking facilities, and commercial concessions. In a weak or backward country, such as China, Turkey, or the native States of Africa, commercial zones often harden into zones of political dominance and foreshadow the lines of eventual partition. Germany held a sphere of interest in the province of Shan-tung, the most densely settled pro- vince of the Empire, the home of the immortal Confucius. France claimed special rights in the southern provinces bordering on the French colonies of Indo-China. Great Britain had a somewhat vaguer claim to commercial privileges in the populous valley of the Yangtze. Japan aspired to a sphere of influence in the province of Fukien. “In all there were eighteen provinces of the Chinese Em- pire, and of these eighteen thirteen were preémpted by the Powers, the thirteen most populous, most wealthy, and most desirable, including within them all the important waterways, harbors, mines, and economic centers that were possible of access to foreign commerce.’’? tP. H. Clements, The Boxer Rebellion (1915), p. 36. For asketch map of the present spheres of interest in China see R. F. Millard, Our Eastern Question, (1916), p. 381.176 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE One alone of the Powers with interests in the Pacific stood apart from the scramble for exclusive concessions and The Open commercial privileges, acquired no leased port, cor and hoped for no share in any partition of Chinese territory. That Power was the United States of America. John Hay, Secretary of State, had declared that the two principles guiding American diplomacy in the Far’ East were the golden rule and the Open" Door: > Bie policy of the Open Door was a protest against abusing “spheres of economic interest’’ to create monopolistic privileges which would injure the commerce of unprivileged nations. The main purpose of the American declaration for the Open Door was to prevent American commerce from being driven out of the Chinese market, but since com- mercial privilege frequently leads to political dominance, one incidental result of Secretary Hay’s policy was to pre- serve China for the Chinese... On September 6, 1899, Secretary Hay requested assurances from the interested foreign Governments on the following points: The recognition that no Power will in any way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest within any leased terri- tory or within any so-called ‘“‘ sphere of interest” it Ee ey may have in China. That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to all merchandise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said ‘‘ sphere of interest” (unless they be “ free ports’’), no matter to what nationality it may belong, and that duties so leviable shall be collected by the Chinese Govern- ment. That it will levy no higher harbor dues on vessels of another nationality frequenting any port in such “ sphere’’ than shall be levied on vessels of its own nationality, and no higher railroad charges over lines built, controlled, or operated within its “ sphere” on merchandise belonging to citizens or subjects of other nation- alities transported through such “ sphere ”’ than shall be levied on similar merchandise belonging to its own nationals transported Over equal distances.? t For a full discussion of the question see Shutaro Tomimas, The Open Door Policy and the Territorial Integrity of China (1919). ? Foreign Relations of the United States (1899), p. 129.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 177 The incessant encroachment of foreign Powers on Chinese territory, arousing a deep and sullen resentment against all foreign governments, their civilization and their religion, was one of the principal causes of that strange _. A ee : a ‘ Failure of outbreak of Chinese fanaticism known to history the Chinese as the Boxer Rebellion. Another cause was the Reser at failure of the reform movement of 1898 initiated by the well-meaning Manchu Emperor, Kuang Hsu. His career is one of the most pathetic in history and proves once more how little can be accomplished by an “enlightened despot” whose enlightenment is not shared by his subjects. Like Joseph II of Austria, he thought that a whole nation could be modernized by Imperial decree. He struck at the root of the old bureaucracy by substituting practical civil service examinations for the old-fashioned literary essays. He abolished sinecures and useless offices, reorganized (on paper) the national finances, introduced Western methods in the army and navy, turned many temples into schools, and granted the right of free petition and a free press to his subjects. At every step he made fresh enemies and a large reactionary party gathered around the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi. To crush reactionary intrigue, the Emperor selected one of the ablest of his officials, Yuan Shih-kai, who was later to be President of the Chinese Republic, to behead Jung ‘Lu, the chief of the military leaders of Tzu Hsi’s party, and then to arrest and imprison the Empress Dowager herself. Yuan Shih-kai was quite awake to the need of reform in China, but he mistrusted the impulsive young Emperor and he desired to save the life of Jung Lu. He therefore exposed the plot, and instead of the Emperor putting Tzu Hsi in prison, she forced him to resign his authority into her hands and to retire from active political life forever. The Dow- ager Empress — the ‘‘Old Buddha”’ as foreign journalists familiarly called her — abolished most of the reforms in- stituted or projected by the Emperor, drove into exile Kang Yu-wei, the leader of the reform party, and executed several of his associates. Prince Tuan, father of the adopted heir- \178 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE apparent, openly patronized the anti-foreign fanatics. The old régime was to make a last stand against twentieth century civilization. The ‘‘shock troops”’ of the reactionary movement were the members of societies organized for anti-foreign propa- Pe Wh ganda, the most famous of which Eke the name movement Of ‘Fists of Righteous Harmony,”’ later west- Bepias a8 2 ernized as “‘the Boxers.’’ At first the Manchu Government stood ostentatiously aloof from the movement, condemning the anti-foreign riots and the murder of Christian missionaries in pompous proclamations. Yuan Shih-kai was instructed to crush the disorders in Shantung, where the Boxer Rebellion first became formid- able, and that he did his best to maintain law and order is the testimony of nearly all foreign observers. Many other Provincial Governors were equally loyal. But as time went on and the riotous outbreaks gained in extent and violence, the authorities at Peking began to The waver. Secret instructions sent to local officials Government contradicted the public proclamations flaunted takes it up ; sie ; in the face of Europe. Large bodies of the regular army joined the mobs against the foreigners. In June, 1900, Baron von Ketteler, the German Minister, was murdered by Chinese troops and the other foreign ministers were besieged in their own legations at the capital. Yet while the aid given by the Imperial Government to the Boxer movement is beyond question, there seems always to have been some fear in Peking that the foreigners might crush the Boxers after all. The pretense was kept up throughout the whole course of the Boxer movement that the Dowager Empress and her ministers lacked only the power and not the will to put down the ‘‘rebellion.’”” To this day it is uncertain whether — from a strictly legal point cf view — the foreign Powers made war on China or simply aided the native authorities to restore order. ’ * A curious evidence of the perplexed and inconsistent policy of the Chinese Government was the gift of food supplies sent to the defenders of the legations by the Chinese authorities at the very time when Chinese regular troops were besieging them!The imminent peril to thousands of foreign traders, mis- sionaries, and officials in China forced the Powers to act together in spite of their mutual rivalries and The eee os jealousies. The whole civilized world was the foreign afraid that the next news from Peking might ees tell of the massacre of all the foreign refugees in the lega- tions. An international relief expedition of Japanese, Russian, British, American, and French troops, com- manded by a German general, Count Waldersee. advanced on Peking and entered the city. The heroic garrison of the legations was still holding out against odds of hundreds to one. With the occupation of Peking, the Boxer movement, so far as it enjoyed official support, was at an end. The Imperial Government at once abandoned its defiant atti- tude and sought only to avert the wrath of the victorious foreigners. That wrath was very terrible. For months the people of Europe and America and Japan had been horrified by the cruelties of the Chinese mob to their fellow na- Theva tionals and diszusted by the hypocrisy and _ ance of the treachery of the Chinese Government. Ger- “le many, justly incensed at the murder of her Minister, was particularly urgent for severe punishments and heavy in- demnities. The German Kaiser has never lived down the speech in which he incited the German army to make them- selves as feared as the Huns of Attila. There is only too much evidence that Russian, German> French, and Italian troops repaid the Boxer atrocities in kind. The German Government was not ashamed to share in the plunder won by its armies, but it is pleasant to note that as one result of the Great War Germany was compelled to return to China the astronomical instruments stolen from Peking. Perhaps the most shameful incident in the suppression of the Boxer *For example (one of many) see the testimony of Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer in China, concerning the massacres at Tien-tsin cited in The Independent, November 22,1900. Mr. Hoover commented on the misbehavior of the Russian and French troops and declared that the Americans were ‘‘the only decent ones.’”’ But even American, British, and Japanese troops, though under the best discipline of the allied forces, were sometimes guilty of plunder. EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 179180 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE movement was the massacre of some five thousand Chinese civilians by Russian troops in the Siberian town of Blago- vestchensk. It must be admitted that the Russians, like the Chinese, have the Oriental tendency to hold life cheap. The terms of peace imposed on the Chinese Government for permitting the massacre af foreigners were sufficiently Li Hung. severe to teach a lasting lesson, although the chang veteran Chinese statesman Li Hung-chang per- ag formed a last service to his countrymen in undertaking the negotiations with foreign Powers. All his life he had preached peace with the for- eigners, not from any desire for innovation, since at heart he was a conservative disciple of Confucius attached to ancient ways and patriotically indignant at the aggressions of the European Powers, but because he alone fully real- ized China’s military weakness. He bluntly rebuked the Empress Dowager for encouraging the Boxers, and de- clared with matchless civic courage that “Under any en- lightened sovereizn these Boxers, with their ridiculous claims of supernatural powers, would most assuredly have been condemned to death long since. . . . You should take steps immediately to appoint a high official who shall purge the land of this villainous rabble, and who shall see to it that the foreign Ministers are safely escorted to the head- quarters of the allied armies.”” No doubt the confidence foreign diplomats felt in the grand old man of China saved the Empire from still harsher terms that might have been imposed. After long discussion the allied Powers agreed upon a joint ultimatum to China demanding: (1) Public apology Terms of for the murder of the German Minister; (2) Peace punishment of officials guilty of directly aiding the Boxer riots; (3) reparation to Japan for the murder of a Japanese official; (4) indemnities to foreign Governments and individuals who suffered from the Boxer movement; (5) military precautions, such as the dismantling of the Taku forts and the establishment of permanent guards for the foreign legations at Peking; (6) abolition of anti-foreignEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 181 societies, such as the Boxers. The indemnity was fixed at 450,000,000 taels (nearly $334,000,000). The United States was entitled to about $25,000,000 indemnity, but later voluntarily remitted to China about half of this sum. In gratitude for this act of unexpected generosity, almost without precedent in diplomatic history, the Chinese Gov- ernment decided to use the money returned by the United States in sending Chinese students to American universi- ties. From among the American-trained Chinese students have come many of the statesmen of the present Republic, whose friendship for the United States is our greatest diplo- matic asset in the affairs of the Far East. In a well-meant effort to check the aggressions of Japan in Manchuria, Li Hung-chang had relied perhaps too much on the support of Russia. Now it appeared that this great dependency of the Chinese Empire would become Russian. It was a prize well worth fighting for, if conquest is ever worth the cost of war. Manchuria is a thinly settled region with a population of only 17,500,000, but it can support a popu- lation, on the Asiatic standard of living, of at least 100,000,000. There are enormous undeveloped resources ussia and ipan clash over Manchuria R J of timber, minerals, and farming lands. Japan, already badly overpopulated, looked with covetous eyes towards Manchuria, not so much as a field for colonization as for commercial exploitation. Port Arthur, in particular, the Japanese regarded as rightfully their own, and deeply re- sented its military occupation by Russia. But the Russian Government continually evaded the fulfillment of its promise to evacuate Manchuria and even challenged the claim of Japan to a sphere of influence in Korea. The Russian Tsar, a sincere lover of peace, but hopelessly ig- norant of the realities of politics, probably believed that Japan would yield without a fight and permit the realiza- tion of the Russian plan for a new empire in the Far East. His agents in Manchuria, such as Admiral Alexieff, ap- * For Manchuria’s capacity to support such a population see S. K. Hornbeck, Contemporary Politics in the Far East (1916), p. 272. nctrhenenete pain mn oan tenons a se tosOE EEE ae 182 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE pointed in 1903 as “‘ Viceroy of the Far East,” held no such delusion. They knew that Manchuria and Korea must be won by battle, but they underestimated the military strength of Japan and expected a short, one-sided war with an inevitable victory. When had an Asiatic people ever been able to resist one of the Great Powers of Europe? The world at large, still ignorant of the latent capacity Factors of | Of the Japanese people, agreed with the Russian YE A statesmen that the odds were on the side of the Japanese Russians. Russia excelled Japan in area, in Wes population, in military resources, in wealth, and in experience of the European style of warfare. The one obvious advantage of Japan was in the theater of war. Russian troops could reach Manchuria only over the trans- Siberian Railway and a large part of the Russian navy was stationed in the Baltic, half a world away from Japan. The other advantages of the Japanese, their more efficient military organization, their more wisely directed Govern- ment, and the keener military spirit among their people, were not appreciated until the war revealed them un- mistakably to the world. The rise of Japan to a place among the military Powers is due to a double cause: the old military tradition and the Nees adoption of Western methods of training and traditions of equipment. The Japanese have borrowed much japan of their culture from China, but never were two F neighboring people fundamentally less alike. China at the time when it was first opened to foreign influences was a huge, amorphous Empire with little patriotic spirit and a rooted contempt for the soldier’s trade. Socially it was a democracy and politically a bureaucratic despotism. Japan at the same period was a unified national State, feudal in organization and aristocratic in temper. Political power was held chiefly by the daimios (feudal iords) and the samurai (military retainers or ‘‘knights”). The Emperor or Mikado was reverenced as an absolute ruler and an al- most divine personage. But his actual power was slight, for the turbulence of the great lords and the usurped au-i Tere Ee Ee neg ARC ek OCEAN. S 7 A CHINA AND JAPAN Scale of Miles 0 100 200 $00 400 600 600 —— bt hd heEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 183 thority of the line of hereditary Prime Ministers (the " Shoguns’’), practically limited him to religious and ceremonial functions. Religiously Japan shared with China the rites of Buddhism and the tradition of reverence for ancestors. But the ethical basis of Japanese life was in many respects the opposite of that of China. Instead of the practical, prosaic, ‘‘business man’s” ethics taught by Confucius, the Japanese were stirred to deeds of nobility and patriotic heroism by the chivalric code of bushido, the personal honor and loyalty of the warrior. Japan from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century resembled in a thou- sand ways western Europe from the tenth to the sixteenth century. But, unlike Europe, Japan was compelled to pass in a single generation from the Middle Ages to modern times. The independent power of the feudal nobles was The modern overthrown, the Mikado recovered authority as J@Pan monarch of a centralized national State, constitutional gov- ernment was introduced, the army was reorganized on a basis of universal military services, the laws were rewritten to conform to modern ideas of legal right, factories were established, railway and steamship lines instituted, uni- versities were founded and education made more general, the cities were policed and lighted and made sanitary, and reforms of every sort which had been incubating in Europe for four hundred years were transplanted without delay to Japanese soil. Two great compliments were paid to Japan by the Western nations in recognition of Japan’s adoption of Western civilization. One was the abolition of Pi epeaoman yc : The Anglo- consular jurisdiction” and ‘‘rights of extra- Japanese territoriality”; the special privileges by which on ch civilized nations protect their citizens from the native law of half-civilized countries. One by one the na- tions of Europe and America agreed that in all parts of Japan the authority of the Japanese courts should be un- limited by exceptions in favor of foreign residents. An- other tribute to the growing importance of Japan was the.I OE ne 184 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE alliance with England in 1902. This was all the greater compliment, since the British Government had for the greater part of the previous century refused all alliances and maintained a policy of ‘‘splendid isolation.’”’ The avowed purpose of the alliance was “to maintain the status quo and general peace in the extreme East,”’ and in defense of this policy to protect each country if attacked by two or more foreign Powers. Thus Great Britain was not obliged to join Japan in the war against Russia, but had some other Power, for example, France or Germany, leagued with Russia against Japan, the British would have been drawn into the conflict. With mighty Britain as a “‘second”’ to warn intruders off the field of conflict, the Japanese were more confident of a favorable result in their duel with Russia. In February, 1904, the Japanese ended their long and futile negotiations to force Russian withdrawal from Man- Japan churia and Korea by diplomatic methods. In pare ne deciding for war Japan decided also that from the aeainst very first the Japanese forces must take and hold Xussia | the offensive. In the immediate theater of war, | the Far East, the Japanese outnumbered the Russians by both land and sea, but the ultimate man power of Russia was so much greater than that of Japan that a few months’ delay in conducting the Manchurian campaign would mean a certain Russian victory. The first blows were struck at 4 sea. On February 8, 1904, a Japanese fleet under Vice- Admiral Togo struck the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and inflicted a severe defeat. This act of hostilities marked the p | opening of the war. Simultaneously with the naval demon- ! stration at Port Arthur, General Kuroki landed an army in Korea and began his advance to the Yalu River, the Man- churian frontier. The Russo-Japanese War was exceptional among the great wars of history in that the whole campaign took place on neutral soil. Korea and China (the overlord of Man- churia) furnished the battle-fields for Russia and Japan, but did not themselves intervene on either side. TheEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 185 Japanese speedily made themselves masters of Korea and by April faced a Russian army along the Yalu Ti ° 7m Z S ne River. Henceforth the war by land was lim- Japanese Oct upy ited to Manchuria. While one Japanese army 56.0 ang crossed the Yalu, another closely besieged Port aS dew Arthur and Dalny in the Liao-tung Peninsula, eee and a third advanced northward into the heart of Man- churia. A series of naval victories destroyed what was left of the Russian navy in the Far East. General Kuro- patkin, the Russian commander, withdrew before the Japanese and held to the defensive, knowing that time fought on his side and that every mile of the Japanese ad- vance took them farther from their base of supplies. Port Arthur, besieged by land and sea and isolated from all Russian support, held out for several months in the face of furious assault. It was one of the strongest The siege fortresses in the East, and the Russian Govern- o Port Arthur ment hoped that it would sustain the severest attacks until a relief expedition could be sent to its aid. When General Stéssel surrendered in January, 1905, the disappointment in Russia was great, and General Stéssel was later prosecuted for surrendering too easily, but for all that the heroic endurance of the Port Arthur garrison through seven months of bombardment and assault is the one episode of the war which the patriotic Russian can re- member with any pride. In the meantime several Japanese armies under the general leadership of Marshal Oyama were converging upon the Russians in central Manchuria. General Kuropatkin with 180,000 men made his stand emnipaish in at the fortified railway town of Liao Yang. The Ce at Japanese with only 140,000 soldiers attacked the strong Russian positions and forced the Russian army back upon the city of Mukden. A little south of Mukden both armies entrenched and awaited reénforcements. The fall of Port Arthur set free another Japanese army, and when the battle was renewed the Japanese confronted the Russians with approximately equal forces, 300,000 on eachPe a eae na 186 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE side. The Japanese were once more victorious. General Kuropatkin lost about a third of his entire army and was compelled to retreat to the north. But the decisive action of the war was still to come. Russia had a great fleet in being, safe in European waters. Whe Could that navy be sent to the Pacific, the Russian Japanese armies in Manchuria might be isolated Heetas 24 from the homeland and thus deprived of all in Japanese hope of reénforcements and supplies. The i venture was doubtful, but the need was des- perate. So in March, 1905, Admiral Rozhestvensky left the Baltic for Asiatic waters. In May it encountered Ad- miral Togo’s fleet in the greatest naval battle which the world had ever known (the battle of Tsushima Straits). Nearly the whole of the Russian fleet was destroyed by the superior tactics and gunnery of the Japanese. Important as was the naval battle which decided the fate of the war, one trivial incident of the voyage of the Russian } she fleet came near to causing a war between Great “battle” of Britain and Russia which would have dwarfed Dcevet into insignificance the whole Manchurian con- flict. The Russian fleet in passing through the North Sea came upon a number of British fishing vessels. In a moment of inexplicable panic some of the Russians decided that Japanese torpedo boats were hidden among the fishing boats and fired, killing several men. As a matter of fact there were no Japanese within many thou- sands of miles of the North Sea, but the Russian com- manders were in a state of ‘‘nerves”’ and willing to believe in any danger. The indignation of the British public was .| great, but at last it was agreed to refer the whole matter to a special naval commission. Russia made peace by the payment of an indemnity to the fishermen and their families. The Dogger Bank incident is memorable as one of the most significant victories ever won in the cause of peace and international conciliation. r ‘Tt was in fact an arbitraton sui generis, of a kind new and unprecedented in the history of international relations; for it was not only applied, at a time ofEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 187 After the battle of Mukden and the destruction of the Russian fleet, the war had reached a deadlock. It is true that Japan had enjoyed an almost uninterrupted The ee series of victories and was entitled to all the drags on to honors and glory of the war, but — and this isa 79°40“ fact too often overlooked by the civilian public — wars are not won by “‘points,’’ but by ultimate staying power and the final knockout blow. This blow Japan could not de- liver. An invasion of Siberia, still more of Russia, was a physical impossibility; the distances were too vast and the means of communication too poor. Had the Russian Government enjoyed the same unhesitating popular sup- port which the Mikado and his generals were accorded by the people of Japan, the war might have been prolonged for several years and ended finally in a Russian victory. But the Russian Government was shaken to its very founda- tions by rebellion. Troops were mutinying and refusing to go to the front, not from fear of the bullets of the enemy, but from sheer disgust at the incompetence of their leaders and the corruption and tyranny of their rulers. Until the internal crisis had passed, Russia could not effectively re- sume the war in Manchuria. Both nations wished peace; each feared that to ask it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. President Roosevelt of the United States saw that now was President the time when a friendly neutral Power could Rooseyet offer its mediation without offense to either war by side. American public opinion had been some- ™@!##0" what in favor of Japan throughout the war, partly because Russia was regarded as the aggressor and partly because of the admiration felt for the courage, patriotism, and military great excitement, to a question affecting the national honor and vital interests of both parties to the dispute, but it introduced into our administration of international justice a new method of procedure in cases of alleged violations of the law of nations. It has set a precedent for the establishment of tribunals combining the functions of an International Court of Arbitration with those of a Court of Inquiry for the investigation and trial before the bar of the public Opinion of the world, of those charged with international crimes and misde- meanors.”” (A. S. Hershey, International Law and Diplomacy of the Russa- Japanese War (1906), pp. 240-41-)188 ' TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE efficiency of the Japanese. President Roosevelt had given his personal assurance of the friendly good offices of the United States in case Japan’s rights were so injured as to endanger the general peace of he East. On the other hand, there was an old tradition of friendship between Russia and the United States dating back to the friendly attitude of the Tsar’s Government during the American Civil War. In August, 1905, peace negotiations opened at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Japan was represented by Baron Ko- mura and Mr. Takahira, Russia by Count Sergius Witte, leader of the reform party at the Tsar’s court, and Baron Rosen. The Russians had the more difficult task. In the eyes of the world Russia was a beaten nation trying to win back by diplomacy some part of what had already been lost by war. i The two chief points of controversy were the payment of a war indemnity, demanded by Japan, and the cession of The the island of Saghalien off the coast of Siberia. Beacool, For a time there was real danger that the peace conference might break up on these issues, but President Roosevelt continued to urge the need for com- promise, and at last Japan agreed to drop the demand for an indemnity and to accept part of the island of Saghalien in place of the whole. On September 5, 1905, the final terms of peace were signed. Russia recognized the ‘‘pre- dominant political, military, and economic interests” of Japan in Korea and agreed not to interfere with ‘‘any measure of direction, protection, and supervision”? which Japan might adopt in that country. Both nations agreed to evacuate Manchuria and restore it to Chinese adminis- tration, but the leased territory of Port Arthur and its en- virons in the Liao-tung Peninsula was transferred from Russia to Japan together with certain railway concessions and mining rights. Japan’s victory yielded very substantial results, though Fruits of the Japanese public intoxicated by triumph was hae inclined to blame its negotiators for not obtain- ing more. The little Kingdom of Korea now lay entirelyEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 189 at the mercy of Japan. In Manchuria Japan had obtained 700 miles of railway, over 7000 miles of railway zone, some valuable mines, 1300 square miles of land in the leased ter- ritory, the important fortress of Port Arthur, and every strategic advantage for the exploitation of the Manchurian market. That part of the island of Saghalien south of 50 degrees north latitude, renamed Karafuto, became a part of the Japanese Empire. More important than territorial gains and commercial advantages was the improved posi- tion of Japan in world politics. Russia now respected and feared the rival whom she had despised and entered will- ingly into agreements respecting the commercial interests of the two Powers in Manchuria. Great Britain renewed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and extended its scope to the protection of British interests in India as well as in the Far Fast. The ‘‘Hermit Kingdom” of Korea had now, of course, no more chance of independence than a mouse caught between the paws of acat. During the Russo-Japanese ,,..., War the Korean Government had been forced absorbs to accept a Japanese protectorate and to consult ~~ Japan before taking any action with respect to foreign policy. In 1905 a Japanese Resident General took charge of the foreign affairs of Korea. The dormant patriotism of the Koreans was awake at last, too late. An insurrection against the Japanese, fomented by the Korean Govern- ment, and a protest to the Hague Peace Conference of 1907 were in vain. The Emperor of Korea was forced to resign and Japan extended the powers of the Resident General to all departments of the internal administration of the coun- try. In 1909 Prince Ito, former Resident General of Isorea, was assassinated. Angered by repeated attempts at in- surrection, the Japanese Government gave up the pre- tense of Korean independence and in 1910 annexed the country outright to the Japanese Empire, renaming it Chosen. In Manchuria also the Japanese have improved the po- sition won by the Treaty of Portsmouth, with the differ-190 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE | ence that there has been—as yet — no actual annexa- ne tion save for the leasehold of Port Arthur. Dinas Border: By special agreements with China and Russia, ane ek Japan has secured virtual control of the coal mines, timber concessions, and railway projects in southern Manchuria. Mongolia is another outlying Chinese dependency which has been all but lost to the foreigner. It is a wild, hungry land of desert, prairie, and plateau from which for thousands of years nomadic tribes have gone forth to conquest. Russia of the T’sars supported a movement for independence among the tribesmen of Outer (western) Mongolia. Though the revo- lution of 1917 weakened Russian influence for a time, the ties are very slight which bind Mongolia to China. Tibet, the high plateau which lies between China and India, was long unknown to Europe, and until recently it was death for a European to attempt to visit the sacred capital of Lhasa. In 1904 Colonel Younghusband, on behalf of the Government of British India, menaced by Tibetan raids on northern India and Russian intrigues be- yond the frontier, entered Lhasa and compelled the Tibet- ans to open trade and to refrain from making agreements with foreign Powers unsanctioned by the British Govern- ment. In 1907, when Russia and Britain were more friendly, both agreed not to seelz special concessions from Tibet and to respect there the sovereign rights of China. But the real weakness of the Chinese Empire was not at the extremities, but at the heart. The Manchu dynasty might have recovered prestige after the loss of territory in Manchuria, Mongolia, or Tibet, but it could not sur- Mongolia Tibet t Scientific attention has recently been attracted to Mongolia by the dis- covery there of dinosaur eggs and other unique fossils. Many believe that the Mongolian highland was an early home of the human race. F. Ossendowski’s Beasts, Men and Gods (1922) contains unforgettably vivid pen-pictures of the barbaric life of modern Mongolia, possibly colored a little too brightly by the author’s imagination. 2 Tibet is chiefly interesting for the dominant power of the Buddhist priests, who have almost transformed the country into a vast monastery. ‘Tibetan Buddhism is so corrupted by many superstitions and formal usages that Gau- tama Buddha would hardly recognize his own religion if he should visit earth again.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST I9I vive the revelation of its own inefficiency during the Boxer outbreak. Every intelligent Chinese was now TI : ee 1e revo- ‘foreign devils’’ must be _lutionary spirit gathers ‘ convinced that the fought with their own fire; that China was doomed unless she followed the example of [ead in : : China Japan and adopted such Western methods as were essential to national survival under twentieth century conditions. Even the Empress Dowager was convinced by the failure of the Boxer movement that China could not resist Europe by clinging to outworn institutions. Re- forms that had once been rejected when proposed by the Emperor Kuang Hsii, such as the introduction of modern subjects into the civil service examinations, were now adopted and accepted as inevitable even by the reaction- aries. A constitution and a parliament were promised. But it was impossible for the Manchu dynasty to regain the lost obedience of the Chinese people. The old bottles could not hold the strong new wine. Other causes contributed to the republican revolution. Although the Manchus had mingled with the Chinese people, adopted many Chinese customs, and National admitted into the ranks of the bureaucracy na- movement tive Chinese who could pass the necessary ex- Maricht aminations, they were still disliked as foreigners, rule and the revival of national spirit in China could not but injure the prestige of a foreign dynasty. The Manchus were not a numerous element in China; they held only about one fifth of the posts in the civil service, and their privileges were few and slight. On the other hand, their pretensions were offensive to the democratic spirit of Young China. In -ach provincial city there was a garrison of Manchu “ ban- nermen,’’ military pensioners who loafed at the cost of the State and formed one of the least efficient military organiza- tions in the world. A few distinguished families had titles and the members of the Imperial clan, the descendants of the founder of the Manchu dynasty, wore girdles of the Im- perial yellow. A most pretentious court at Peking scarcely veiled the corruption and incompetence of the dynasty and its courtiers. ee ae nnnf Tenge — 192 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Had the Chinese remained indifferent to the political teachings of the West, there might still have been a revolu- tion, for revolution is part of Chinese tradition. Liberal ae ge : ideas of Except for the valor and military skill of penne ~ Chinese Gordon” and other European officers, the Manchu dynasty might have crumbled half a century earlier during the Tai-ping Rebellion. But an old-style Chinese revolution would merely have replaced one dynasty with another, perhaps more vigorous and efficient at first, but certain to relapse sooner or later into complacent self-indulgence and indifference to the public welfare. Twenty-six dynasties had thus risen and fallen without effecting any permanent change in Chinese institu- tions. But contact with the more progressive and change- ful public life of western Europe and America had taught the Chinese students who supported the revolution that something more might be effected than a change of dynasty. Their war-cry was ‘‘Down with the Manchus,”’ a slogan to which even the illiterate peasant would respond, but their own ideal was better expressed by “ Long live the Republic!” China was to have not another revolution, but a new type of | revolution; an attempt to win reforms, not merely to punish | abuses. The most prominent leader of the republican revolution of 1911 was Sun Yat-sen, a stormy petrel of Chinese politics The first who had been actively engaged in plots against | Sea % if piceident the Manchu dynasty for over fifteen years. Republic of Much of his life was spent abroad for the very ape good reason that to land in China meant a death sentence. Even in London he had been kidnaped and im- | prisoned in the Chinese Legation, and but for the remon- strance of the British Government he would have been shipped to China for execution. When the republic was proclaimed in various cities of southern China, Sun Yat-sen | returned to his native country and was chosen by a revolu- tionary convention the first President of the Chinese na- tion. With him were associated many students from American universities and a former Minister to the UnitedEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 193 States, the wise and witty Wu Ting-fang, sometimes termed “the Franklin of the Chinese Revolution.” Politicians of narrower vision and generals discontented with the Manchu service leagued themselves with the idealistic students of Young China and within a few months the new régime was solidly established throughout southern China. In the North where the monarchists still held sway there was panic. The Emperor was a child and none of his family, his courtiers, or the high officials then in Yuan Shih- service could cope with the rebellion. At last it mals aes 10pe of the was decided to recall to office the ablest of the Manchu conservatives, Yuan Shih-kai, the man who had °%"*S protected foreigners during the Boxer outbreak in Shan- tune and who had aided the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi to overthrow the reformer-Emperor Kuang Hsii. Yuan Shih-kai had later been dismissed from office by the friends of the ex-Emperor, the dismissal being camouflaged in the courteous Chinese fashion by pretending that he had re- signed of his own will for reasons of health — to nurse an imaginary ‘‘lame leg’””! Now asa last resort the Manchus turned to the man whom they had cast aside. He refused to reénter the public service, remarking with grim humor that his leg was not yet well, until an offer of supreme com- mand over the Imperial armies at last restored his health. Yuan Shih-kai, though a friend to reform, was no believer in republics. Had it been possible he would have crushed the revolution and saved the dynasty. But he y,,,,, spin- saw that it was now too late tosave Manchu rule kai becomes in China and he entered into negotiations with present the revolutionists of the South. President Sun Yat-sen sacrificed his own ambition for the unity of the Republic and resigned his office in favor of Yuan Shih-kai. The Im- perial family resigned their powers, offices, and dignities and were pensioned off and allowed to retire gracefully, making a virtue of necessity and assuming to confer on the people the republican liberties which they could no longer deny them. Thus far everything had gone as smoothly as revolution- since enecagea nh aN alk tanec a 194 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE ists in any country could expect. There had been com- paratively little fighting, the Manchu Govern- rss of ment had offered little resistance to the will of Republic the people, and the radical South was united with the conservative North under a common President. It became fashionable for Chinese men to aban- don the pigtail, now regarded as a symbol of subjection, and for Chinese women to throw aside the bindings which had confined their feet for centuries and made cripples of all the wealthy class. The picturesque old flag of the dragon was replaced by a new emblem of five horizontal stripes, symbol- izing the five nations of the Republic — Chinese, Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, and the Mohammedans of Turkestan. China, which in all other respects had lagged so far behind Japan in the adoption of Western institutions, had at almost a single step passed from a bureaucratic despotism like that of Russia to a democratic republic like the United States, while Japan still remained in the same stage of political evolution as Germany, a monarchy, constitutional, but not yet democratic. f China, however, was to pass through a long period of | probation before the Republic of 1912 became established The on a permanent basis. The fundamental diffi- Chinese culty with the republican movement in China not yet was that which has hampered the republics of “political ”’ . . : iis ; Latin America and_ spoiled many promising fj democratic movements in Europe from Portugal to Russia: the unbridged chasm between the intellectual minority who made the constitutions and the illiterate masses who had to use them. The Chinese people, though democratic by na- | ture, had no experience of self-government on a large scale and had, of course, no share in the ‘“‘Western learning”’ which had so greatly influenced the student class. The peasants were glad to see the Manchus go, but they had . few ideas as to what further changes the revolution might bring. Politics remained a question for the students, the officials, the professional politicians and — most unfortu- nately — the generals of the army.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 195 Hardly had the new Parliament met before conflicts broke out between the President and the radical parties. The President was distrusted, not without some pie reason, as a monarchist at heart, an adherent of against Par- the Manchus, a conservative of the North. Zament Every attempt was made to reduce his power and confirm the supremacy of Parliament. But Yuan Shih-kai was not the man to play the part of a French President, an orna- mental headpiece to the Government. He insisted on choosing his own cabinet ministers and negotiating foreign loans without sanction of Parliament. The radical re- publicans of the southern provinces rose in revolt against what they considered the usurpation of power by Yuan Shih-kai. The revolt was unfortunate in every way. It gave the President an opportunity to oust his political opponents from Parliament on charges of treason and to establish a military dictatorship under republican forms. President Yuan Shih-kai was not content with the power of an Emperor; he wished also to enjoy the name. Very cautiously he sounded public opinion as to the aioe to possibility of reviving the Empire under a new revive the dynasty. As the deposed Manchus had few monareny partisans, he had little to fear from them. The convinced republicans who could be counted on to resist any ruler who bore the title of Emperor seemed to be in the minority; at all events, they lacked the military force to oppose the armies of Yuan Shih-kai. With great personal ambition Yuan Shih-kai united a fine native sense of caution and a desire to do what was best for China. It was only after months of delay and with apparent hesitation that Yuan Shih-kai an- nounced the restoration of the monarchy. 3ut President Yuan Shih-kai discovered that he had underestimated the strength of the republicans. Political methods which met no opposition in Peking gc ip roused fierce hostility in Canton. In 1915 a against rebellion broke out in the southernmost province Nor of China, Yunnan, and spread within a few months over all ee ae ecnatncmeeeaae a196 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the provinces of the South. More than once during the confused period of revolution which has followed the over- throw of the Manchu dynasty there has been a virtual separation between the two halves of the Republic. Then a compromise would be patched up, enabling China for the next few months to present a united front to foreign Powers. The difference in political outlook between the northern and southern provinces may be compared to the very similar differences between Prussia and southwestern Germany which delayed the unification of the German Empire. Northern China, like Prussia, is conservative, militarist, agrarian, traditionally loyal to a central gOov- ernment, and but slightly affected by foreign influences. Southern China, like Rhenish Germany, is commercial, democratic, inclined to revolution, and more devoted to local self-government than to the unity of the nation. Yuan Shih-kai embodied the spirit of the North, the traditions of the mandarins of old China, just as Sun Yat-sen embodied the enthusiastic hopes of the young rebels of Canton. The deadlock between these antagonistic forces was solved for the time being by the death of President Yuan Givilewac Shih-kai in 1916. Vice-President Li Yuan- renewed hung, who succeeded him, upheld the republi- can cause. But civil war soon broke out again. General Tuan Chi-jui, the Prime Minister, led an army against President Li Yuan-hung, who had dismissed him from office. Another of the political generals who had usurped the rightful authority of the civil government, Chang Hsun, attempted to restore the Manchu dynasty, but was easily defeated by Tuan Chi-jui. The southern provinces in the meantime once more threw off their allegiance to Peking and set up a provisional government on their own account. General Tuan Chi-jui, once more Premier, remained the dominant power in northern China under three successive Presidents.‘ He had rendered a great service to China in defeating the attempt to restore the Manchus, but he proved unable to reconcile the rebel South or to keep all the . *Li Yuan-hung, Feng Kuo-chang, Hsu Shih-chang.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 197 Provincial Governors and generals even in the North loyal to the central government. But it would give a wrong impression of the Chinese revolution merely to state that China has not yet established a true republican government with unques- eat eey) tioned, peaceful jurisdiction over the whole na- _ ectual tion. There have been many incidental bene- Mea of fits of the revolutionary movement which probably outweizh all the disorders which it has caused. A great mass of obsolete traditions and customs was swept away with the Manchu dynasty. The new China is eagerly learning from the West, not only to master such material affairs as military equipment and factory management, but to discover the spiritual forces which have given to Europe and America the mastery of the world. Christian missions are regarded in a very different spirit from that which pre- vailed in the days of the Boxers. Thousands of eager Chinese students have undertaken the task of mastering the science and philosophy of the West for the benefit of their fellow countrymen. The teachings of such philosophers as John Dewey and Bertrand Russell have been accorded as attentive a welcome as if Confucius and Mencius had come to life again in their persons. A wholesome symptom of growing public spirit in modern China has been the war on the opium traffic. In the nine- teenth century the Chinese Government, awake 7. yar to the terrible misery and degradation caused against by the national vice of opium-smoking, tried to °?"" prohibit imports of opium from British India. To the dis- credit of Christian civilization Great Britain and other European nations not only tolerated the exportation of the poisonous drug to China, but resisted the measures taken by. China to prevent the traffic. In the present century a more enlightened spirit has resulted in an agreement be- tween the European Powers and the Chinese Government to codperate in the suppression of opium imports. Great Britain agreed to cut down exports from India in the same degree that the Chinese Government succeeded in reducing i198 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the production of opium within China itself, and by a series of agreements at The Hague, confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (article 295), the ban on opium was made practically world-wide. Within China the activity of the Government has been supported by an enlightened public sentiment with the result that the opium vice has become a very minor evil in Chinese life. Enforcement of the law is not yet perfect, but an opium addict is a rarer sight in modern China than a drunkard in any European country. The young Chinese Republic has had as much difficulty with its foreign relations as with rebellion and civil war. The “‘six The overthrow of the Manchu dynasty was re- power loan” garded with much sympathy in Europe and America as an evidence of national progress. To be sure, Russia took advantage of the disorders of the revolution to strengthen her influence in Mongolia, and Japan to extend her power in Manchuria, but neither nation showed any ill-will towards the Republic as such. The financiers of six foreign nations — Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States — joined in an offer to China of a great loan for national reorganization. But so many restrictions were imposed on the Chinese Republic as to the use of money that President Wilson withdrew the support of the American Government from the project, fearing lest participation in the loan “might conceivably go the length in some unhappy contingency of forcible interference in the financial and even the political affairs of that great Oriental State.’” American bankers then withdrew from the “six power loan,” but European bankers made loans which temporarily freed China from financial difficulties, but in- volved her more than ever in the entanglements of foreign influence.” The Great War brought many difficulties to neutral *This article was inserted in the Treaty very largely at the insistence of Mr. Lansing, then Secretary of State and member of the American Peace Com- mission. It is another boon American diplomacy has conferred on China. 2 Readers interested in questions of international finance should consult the list of foreign loans made to China from 1898 to 1915 in Modern China, by _ Sihgung Cheng (1919), pp. 21 I-27.EUROPE IN THE FAR EAST "109 China. Japan, as the loyal ally of Great Britain, demanded that Germany evacuate Kiao-chau in the Shan- r Japan the On Germany’s refusal Japan heir of Germany in Shan-tung tung Peninsula. seized the leased port and thus became master of “nine points of the law.’”’ This was the origin of the Shan-tung question which was later to haunt the peacemakers at Paris and contribute to the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles in the United States Senate.t' For the present purpose it is enough to note that just as Japan had succeeded to the claims of Russia in Manchuria as a result of the Russo-Japanese War, so she succeeded to the claims of Germany in Shan-tung as a result of the Great War of 1914. Thenceforth China regarded Japan as the most dangerous of foreign Powers: the most influential, the most aggressive, and the nearest! Japan took advantage of her improved strategic position, and the fact that all rival Powers, except the United States, were involved in the European conflict, to press «7. on China a far-reaching series of demands de- twenty-one signed to establish definitely the Japanese lgmande sphere of influence in Manchuria, Shan-tung, eastern Inner Mongolia, and the province of Fukien. An additional list of demands, which were later abandoned, would have given Japan preference over other nations in the whole of China. China was asked to appoint Japanese ‘‘advisers in po- litical, financial, and military affairs’’; to grant the right of land-ownership to Japanese hospitals, churches, and schools; to admit Japanese police into the Chinese police service in - to buy munitions of war from Japan; ’ “important places’ to grant to Japan railway contracts in the Yangtze valley, hitherto reserved for British enterprises, and to permit Japanese missionary propaganda throughout China. It is evident that some at least of these demands conflicted with the American principle of the Open Door and would have provoked controversy with other Powers had Japan in- sisted on them. The Chinese people were roused to an unwonted patriotic 1 For discussion of the Shan-tung question see Chapters XV and XX.TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE ' fervor by the Japanese proposals. Students rioted in the Growthof | Streets and held huge anti-Japanese demonstra- ase Pa tions. Merchants boycotted Japanese trade. apanes aa : z feeling in lhe Peking Government protested, and was China widely blamed for not supporting its protests with vigorous action. But President Yuan Shih-kai knew that China could do nothing to resist the superior might of Japan and that no foreign Power in 1915 could come to China’s aid. As Japan agreed to abandon her more general demands, the Chinese Government thought it best to com- ply with the rest. These related to: (a) recognition by China of rights acquired by Japan as successor to Germany in Shan-tung; (b) extension of the Japanese lease of Port Arthur and Dalny to 1997, extension of the Japanese lease of the Manchurian railways, preference to Japan in the financing of Manchurian railway projects and mining enter- prises, and in general the recognition of Japanese interests in the commercial development of southern Manchuria and eastern Inner Mongolia; (c) recognition by China of the rights of the Hanyehping Company, financed by Japanese capital, in developing the iron and coal resources of the Yangtze valley; (d) an agreement not to grant concessions to foreign nations within the province of Fukien where the Japanese claimed a sphere of influence. The humiliations which Japan inflicted on China in IQI5 have left a certain antagonism between the two great na- Chin tions of the Far East which it must be the first eee task of Japanese statesmanship to remove. It apan is the aim of Japan to establish what has been called a ‘‘Monroe Doctrine for eastern Asia’’: thatiis; to warn European and American Powers not to extend their present colonial holdings to those parts of eastern Asia still independent of foreign control. But China does not accept Japan in the réle of protector. To the Chinese of to-day Japan is classed not as a comrade in the cause of ‘‘ Asia for the Asiatics,” but as just such another predatory Power as Germany or Russia. Of all the Great Powers the United States alone has earned and held the confidence of theEUROPE IN THE FAR EAST 201 Chinese. A remarkable proof of this was the entrance of China into the Great War following the example of the United States. Japan had entered the war from the very first as an ally of Great Britain and had earned the gratitude of all the nations fighting Germany by protecting the q.., Pacific waterways from German raiders. China enters the had no obligation to enter the war and remained Pee neutral until Germany declared for unrestricted submarine warfare. Thereupon China followed the lead of the United States in breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany (March, 1917) and five months later declaring war. No Chinese army was transported to Europe, but in the pro- duction of munitions, the supply of laborers for work behind the trenches, and the suppression of German intrigues in the Far East the Chinese contributed all that was possible to the final victory. When China and the little Kingdom of Siam had joined the Allies, together with Japan and the British, French, and Russian Asiatic empires, almost the entire continent of Asia was solidly united in a common cause with America and western Europe. Participation in the Great War meant for Japan the highest peak of international prestige as a Great Power which she ever at- tained; it meant for China that the most ancient of civilized nations had been reborn to the twentieth century and was for the first time hailed as equal and comrade by the younger and stronger nations of the West.CHAPTER. VIII EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST He found himself in a dreadful underworld —in a new moral dimension — where foulest vices were the only way to honors: where acts of the most noble virtue were punished worse than our gravest crimes: where the machinery of civiliza- tion — the railway, the telegraph, the police — were instruments for the de- struction of all that makes for civilization: where the only hopes of progress lay in the success of dynamitards and banditti. He came back from his excursion a sadder and a wiser man, and set to work to revise his views on the Eastern Question and the Lower Regions. GEORGE YOUNG THE “Eastern question” is the legacy to European di- plomacy of the conquest by Mohammedan nomads of The western Asia, northern Africa, and the south- anaes eastern quarter of Europe. The faith of Islam, uestion the Arabian culture and tradition, the Turkish capacity to conquer and incapacity to govern, have left their impress on the nearer East and widely sundered its civilization from that of Western Christendom. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries northern Africa, Asia south of the Anatolian highlands, and southeastern Europe with the exception of the immediate vicinity of Constan- tinople have been liberated from the overlordship of the Ottoman Turks, but they still retain the impress of their centuries of subjection. Mohammedanism, though a creation of the Arabs, re- ceived its greatest extension at the hands of warlike tribes Fe from the grasslands of central Asia. One of Ottoman these tribes, the Osmanli or Ottoman Turks, paper at overran Asia Minor in the Middle Ages and ventured at last to wage equal war with the By- zantine Empire, the sole surviving relic of the Mediter- ranean Empire of ancient Rome. Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Empire, fell to the Turks in 1453 A.D. Dur- ing the sixteenth century the Turks ruled, or at least claimed tribute, over a greater variety of peoples than any Chris- tian State. All of Asia west of Persia, including Arabia,EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 203 Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Armenia, Syria, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus region, was Turkish. In Europe, Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Mace- donia, Thrace, Croatia-Slavonia, Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, Hungary, the Crimea, and the Tatars of southern Russia acknowledged the overlordship of the Sultan at Constantinople. a dependency, and Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria paid tribute. In Africa, Egypt was held as As Khalif (““successor’’ to Mohammed) the Sultan enjoyed also a primacy, half religious and half political, among all Islamic rulers not unlike that of the Holy Roman Emperor among the princes of medieval Christendom. The Ottoman Empire, however, never became a Turkish national State. The Turks were numerous enough to dominate, but too few to settle, the lands which they had conquered. guage prevailed only in Asia Minor and the Characte Even the Turkish lan- SEanen te Ottoman : State neighborhood of Constantinople, and the lan- guage was spoken by many who had no claim to descent from the original invaders. The subject “nations” of the Empire were grouped not by language but by religious sects, and the Turk ruled them not as a conquering race but as the foremost champion of the privileged religion. The form of government was the absolute despotism of the reigning Sultan, exercised through a bureaucracy of his personal dependents. The chief practical limit on the Sultan’s power was the law of Islam, codified in the holy writings of the Koran and interpreted by the religious officials of the Empire. No strong feudal aristocracy arose to check the Sultan’s power; his officials were for the most part palace slaves who held office at the Imperial pleasure. The conquest of Constantinople led to the adoption of some of the worst traditions of the Byzantine court, such as an elaborate ceremonial contrasting sharply with the primitive simplicity which is generally characteristic of Turkish life. ‘ * Many historians say that the ‘‘ Turk” of to-day has little more true Turkish blood than the average modern Englishman or Anglo-American has Norman blood from William the Conqueror and his warriors.epics, Tal ice a ee go G 204 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Many of the Sultans after the sixteenth century were weak in character and intellect, and the tasks of government fell to officials, courtiers, and favorites. Palace intrigues and mutinies of the Janzzaries disturbed the central government and the distant provinces became more self-assertive.* The civilization of the Ottoman State, save in so far as it borrowed from the conquered Greeks, was borrowed from The the Arabs. Islam, like Christianity, is more Islamic than a theology. It is also a civilization, a body fagition of common ideas, traditions, and institutions. The creed of Mohammed was simple: ‘‘There is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet.”’ Islam aimed at simplicity in church as well as in creed. A separate priesthood, in the European sense, hardly existed, although there were teachers of the law of the Koran (Mohammed’s “‘Bible’’), custodians of the churches or mosques, and self-devoted hermits, prophets, and missionaries. Four observances, however, were enjoined by Mohammed on his followers: (1) daily prayers, (2) an annual fast, (3) almsgiving, (4) a pilgrimage, at least once a lifetime, to Mecca, the birth- place of Mohammed. Many usages common to Moham- medan countries have a religious origin; such as the ban on “graven images’’ and the use of human or animal forms in decoration, the prohibition of alcoholic drinks, and the dating of the calendar from the flight of Mohammed to Medina (622 A.D.) which began the active period of his ministry. Many secular elements of Arabian culture have also been carried along with Mohammedan influence, al- though only indirectly connected with religion; for example: (1) slavery, (2) polygamy, (3) the seclusion and subordina- tion of women, (4) the Arabic alphabet and a literary culture derived from Arabia and Persia, (5) characteristic archi- tecture, of which the best examples appeared in Moorish 1 The janizaries were an infantry bodyguard, recruited largely from Christian children of the subject nations. The lack of a universally accepted law of succession to the throne had a most deplorable effect on the Sultanate. The janizaries, like the Pretorian Guard of ancient Rome and the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Empire, would sometimes rise against the reigning Sultan and place on the throne a candidate of their own. In the early nineteenth century the janizaries were abolished as a greater menace than protection to the State.EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST Spain; (6) Arabian science, especially in mathematics, ae ; t | geography, medicine, and chemistry.’ ty The emblem of the Mohammedan religion is the crescent moon, and it is a most appropriate symbol. The Turkish Nit Empire, having no national character and no determinate boundaries, continued to grow until the it touched the limit of its military strength and Eacre. from that time onward it waned, slowly relin- 1] . quishing province after province to the advancing forces of i | Christendom. In 1571 the destruction of a Turkish fleet at | Lepanto marked the passing of naval supremacy in the . Mediterranean. In 1683 a Polish army rescued Vienna from Had ee Turkish besiezers. In 1699 Hungary definitely passed to the Austrian Habsburgs. During the eighteenth century ii Russia conquered the northern shores of the Black Sea. | During the nineteenth century the break-up of the Otto- peal i man dominion proceeded more rapidly, as the Christian | J people of the Balkan Peninsula awoke to a sense of na- iit | ] | i Decline of tionality. The Ottoman Turks, with contemptuous toler- ance, had permitted the Christian peasants (rayahs) to worship as they pleased, to keep their national traditions, | and to administer public affairs on a village scale. The | i general Government did not conceive its duty to include | the regulation of the daily routine of life; it was rather a ma- chine for taxing the submissive and terrorizing the insur- gent than for administering public business. i] After 1820 the Greek insurrection, long smouldering in b secret, burst into open flame. Insurrections broke forth in | | various places, Albania, the Peloponnesus, Thes- waiving | saly, and Rumania. Enthusiastic liberals from Greece i} the West, such as Lord Byron, volunteered in as coe the Greek cause. Defeats were as frequent as victories, however, until the Great Powers intervened directly; France and Britain moved by political sympathy and Rus- / sia by desire to advance the interests of the Greek Ortho- { 1 Some idea of the Arabic contributions to our own civilization may be ob- ee tained by listing words in English beginning with the Arabic prefix “fal” (= “‘the’’), such as alchemy, alcohol, alcove, algebra, alkali, almanac.pene ooh oe 206 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE dox Church. Southern Greece obtained independence, and in 1832 a Bavarian prince was placed on the throne of a new constitutional kingdom under the protection of the chief European Powers. Even earlier than Greece, though less noticed by Europe.at large, the Serbs along the Danube rose against Turkey in 1817 and obtained practical auton- Serbiaand Omy, which was formally confirmed by the Montenegro Treaty of Adrianople in 1829. Yet Serbia, though enjoying the substance of independence, continued to pay tribute to the Sultan till 1878. The little Serb principality of Montenegro, perched high among the moun- tains of the Adriatic shore, had never really been conquered by Turkey and continued to retain independence and along with it the old barbaric simplicity of life. Russia remained a steadfast foe of the Ottoman Empire, which held the gateway between the Black Sea and the Petco at Mediterranean. But the other Christian Powers the Great | pursued a less consistent policy. Great Britain, Fowersin France, and Austria were influenced particu- the ’ p ae larly by fear of Russian expansion, preferring that Constantinople and the narrow Straits which joined the Black Sea with the Mediterranean should be held by a weak nation like Turkey rather than by one of the Great Powers. From 1854 to 1856 a league of Western nations (Britain, France, and the Italian Kingdom of Sar- dinia) fought with Russia in the Crimean War to preserve the Ottoman Empire from dismemberment, and succeeded, at least, in winning for it the respite of a generation. In 1877 Turkish misrule in the Bulgarian provinces afforded a pretext for renewed Russian intervention and once more placed the Ottoman Empire in peril of immediate partition. But the diplomatic exertions of Britain and Austria, who feared that at last Russia might win control of the Straits, succeeded in placing the Bulgarian question before a Con- gress of all the chief States of Europe. The Congress of Berlin has the same significance for the modern history of the Near East that the Congress of Vienna two generations earlier had for the history of western andEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 207 central Europe in the nineteenth century. The whole Balkan area was to be remapped by interna- 4, tional agreement; the status of each province Congress of was to be determined definitely and finally; the ele interests of each Power were to be recognized so far as com- patible with the equal interests of other Powers. Little at- tention was paid to the wishes of the Balkan peoples; it was assumed, rather erroneously, that they had no such strong national aspirations as had wrecked the work of the Con- gress of Vienna in the West. The main features of the settlement reached at Berlin were: (1) Confirmation of the complete independence of Serbia, Rumania, and Monte- negro, already virtually free from Turkish control; (2) slight territorial gains for Serbia and Montenegro; (3) the promise of a “‘rectification’’ of the northern frontier of Greece; (4) the partition of the “big Bulgaria”’ planned by Russia into three provinces; (5) the establishment of the northernmost of these provinces as a self-governing prin- cipality, paying an annual tribute to the Sultan; (6) the establishment of a central Bulgarian province — eastern Rumelia — as an autonomous State under a Christian Goy- ernor, but subject to military occupation by the Turkish army; (7) the return of the southernmost Bulgarian pro- vince, under the name of Macedonia, to direct Turkish rule; (8) the transfer of southern Bessarabia from Rumania to Russia; (9) compensation for this loss, by awarding to Rumania a district between the Danube and the Black Sea (Dobrudja); (10) a slight enlargement of Russian Armenia at the expense of Asiatic Turkey; (11) a British leasehold of the island of Cyprus; (12) the awarding to Austria of an international ‘‘mandate’’ to administer the affairs of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to police a narrow strip of territory separating Serbia and Montenegro (the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar). The greater part of the Berlin settlement remained in- tact down to 1908. There had, of course, been some changes during the intervening thirty years. Bulgaria and east- ern Rumelia had merged into a single sovereignty in 1885, wy ay veal he 1) | | reer eoage eaePET aN aor omn a ns a a - Ba inn nc Sane ssagueeentond — 208 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE in spite of the protests of Turkey, the jealousy of the other The Balkan nations, and the hostility of Russia, dis- Paans in appointed at the failure of Bulgaria to play her Lc twentieth expected réle as grateful agent of Russian pol- Sa icy. The Greek-speaking island of Crete after a long series of insurrections had attained a considerable measure of self-government, though the Powers still denied permission to unite with the Kingdom of Greece. In 1897 Greece had made an attempt to extend her frontiers to the north, but had met with sharp defeat at the hands of a superior Turkish army. But the most important changes since 1878 did not appear on the surface and ran counter to the spirit, rather than to the letter, of the Treaty of Berlin. A new spirit of national assertion and self-respect had developed alike among the Ottoman Turks and among their ne young Christian neighbors. The more progressive Turk element of the Turks, influenced by English sve constitutionalism and by German ideals of efficiency, desired to bring to an end the personal rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the wily despot who had long since i “Shelved”’ the promised national constitution. They viewed with grief and indignation the manner in which provinces still nominally Turkish were in reality being lost tothe Empire. Bulgaria had become in everything but the name an independent kinedom; Austria in Bosnia-Herze- govina and Great Britain in Cyprus and Egypt had trans- formed military occupation into virtual annexation; even Macedonia, the heart of European Turkey, was gradually passing into the control of administrators chosen by the Christian Powers. Ottoman finances were to some extent under the supervision of creditor Powers, and extensive special privileges (““capitulations’’) had been granted by treaties old and new with the nations who shared the trade . of the Near East. In short, Turkey, like contemporary China, enjoyed nominal suzerainty over a vast empire which was in part divided into foreign ‘“‘spheres of in- fluence”’ and in all parts subject to foreign interference; anEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 209 empire permitted to exist because no agreement had yet been reached as to its partition. To make Turkey a nation amonz the nations by adopting so much of Western military, administrative, and economic methods as would suffice to free the country from European guardianship was the aim of the Young Turks. Japan had attained such an aim; re- formers in China were striving to accomplish it; why should the nation of the Prophet lag behind, the last relic of mediz- valism in an age of progress? The most immediate problem in the regeneration of Turkey was the condition of Macedonia. Turkey in Europe, as it existed at the opening of the ,,. twentieth century, may be divided into three Macedonian main regions — not political divisions — with 7°” respect to the provinces still administered from Constanti- nople. North of the A¢gean and to the south and east of Bulgaria lay Thrace, important because of its proximity to the capital and the Straits. Here Bulgarian, Greek, and Turkish elements in the population were in jealous rivalry, but held together under rather effective Turkish mili- tary control. provinces (vilayets) of Kossovo, Monastir, and Saloniki, was Macedonia. Most of this region had been included in the greater Bulgaria sketched by Russia in 1877, and the fact of its return to Turkish rule did nothing to end Bul- Turkish au- Farther west, including approximately the garian aspirations to add it to their nation. thority was not strong enough in Macedonia to hold in check the rival aspirations of Bulgars, Serbs, and Greeks to stamp their respective ‘‘national ideas’’ on the bewildered poly- glot Christian peasantry of that unhappy region. Still farther to the west, on the shores of the Adriatic, Albania maintained a proud, barbaric isolation from all modern in- fluences. Turkish officials visited Albania to levy taxes, but for the rest the wild highlanders lived the narrow tribal life of their ancestors of a thousand years before. As many of them were Mohammedans, they were not so direct a menace to Turkish ascendancy as the mingled Christian peoples of Macedonia, but the geographical position of theTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE two regions implied that the loss of Macedonia would in- volve the further loss of Albania. Who were the Macedonians? No one can say exactly and the Macedonians themselves were by no means agreed. Re By majority they were Christian in religion, al- distracted | though a Mohammedan minority dominated the eee land, and the chief seaport, Saloniki, contained yet was a large Jewish colony. By language, the Mace- io donians of the A®gean coast were Greeks, but those of the interior were mainly Slav. The Bulgarians claimed them all as fellow countrymen, but really they represented a variety of transition dialects between the Bulgarian and the Serb. Perhaps the Bulgarian element was the more considerable, but it is impossible to speak dogmatically on this point. Mingled with the Greek, Bulgarian, Serb, and nondescript Slavic settlements were little patches of Albanian, Turkish, Rumanian (‘‘Vlach’’), and Jewish population. The Bulgarians spread their na- tional idea by means of their separate church organization, the national Bulgar division of the Greek Orthodox faith (the ‘‘exarchate,” organized in 1870); by the establishment of schools in which Bulgarian was the language of instruc- tion; and, when moral persuasion failed, by terrorizing the Macedonians with bands of armed propagandists. Greeks, Serbs, and Albanians imitated the Bulgarian example. The inefficient Turkish officials could not pacify the regions, though they kept it from open rebellion by impartial per- secution of all the Christian inhabitants. The name of Macedonia became sinister in all Europe as the most dis- orderly of countries, where the unwary traveler was likely to be seized by bandits — half highwaymen and half pa- tmots——and carried to the mountaing for ransom, and where the distracted peasantry were constant victims of raids, village burning, and unspeakable atrocities. 1 “The well-known recipe for making a Macedonian Slav village Bulgar is to add -ov or -ev onto the names of all the male inhabitants, and to make it Serb it is only necessary to add further the syllable -ich; -ov and -ovich being respec- tively the equivalent in Bulg . . ~ . . . ’ tively arian and in Serbian of our termination -son.’ Wevill Forbes, The Balkans, p. 68.)EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 211 i Such conditions could not continue indefinitely without European intervention. The Powers had permitted mas- i | sacres in Armenia in 1894 and for several years bites H Hi thereafter to pass with merely formal protests, of the but, while Armenia is tucked away in the most - : | inaccessible corner of Asia Minor, Macedonia occupies a f | strategic position on the Vardar valley, the main artery of | trade from the Danube valley to the A©Sgean. The most i! ) drastic solution, and perhaps the only final one, would have ! been the creation of an independent Macedonia or the parti- tion of the region among the Christian nations of the Bal- | kans. But to permit this was to risk a general Balkan i war, perhaps a general European war, and so the Powers a pledged themselves to the policy of the “integrity of the #1 Ottoman Empire’? — what was left of it. Reforms from i within would, it was hoped, bring Macedonia to a condition of tolerable order. In 1903 Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two chief rivals for influence in the Balkan Peninsula, agreed to the establishment of an international police force, —— —~ 1 led by foreign officers, to restore order in Macedonia (the : “Miirzsteg program”). Hampered by Turkish mis- Hi government and the divergent policy of the rival European i Powers, the little force of gendarmes in Macedonia failed ) | to cope with the growing anarchy of the countryside, and the principal result of the experiment was to increase the . fear of patriotic Turks that Macedonia was about to follow I the path already taken by Serbia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, | . first a Turkish province, then a protected district under ia European tutelage, then an autonomous dependency, and yal at last an independent nation. Stirred by rumors that British and Russian statesmen were planning for the Macedonians autonomy under a Christian Governor, the Young Turks at Salo- The Youre niki raised the standard of revolution. The Turk success of a revolution usually depends on the Ree attitude of the army, and on this occasion the more capable Turkish officers, many of them trained in foreign military Hy schools, sympathized completely with the aims of the Com-aT hn Ce ee nS 212 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE mittee of Union and Progress which directed the insurrec- tion. Abdul Hamid bent to the storm and in July, 1908, promised to restore the constitution which he had promised early in his reign and call without delay a parliament of the whole Ottoman Empire. In the following year he at- tempted to restore absolute rule, but his reactionary coup d'état failed and he was forced to abdicate. Mohammed We brother of the deposed Sultan, was placed on the throne, but never enjoyed the independent power misused by his pre- decessors. The real authority passed to the inexperienced young Ottoman patriots of the Committee of Union and Progress. The news that the Ottoman Turks, the most backward of the world’s ruling races, had declared for constitutional A false government roused great enthusiasm throughout dawn liberal circles in Europe and America. The initiative for reform had come not from the oppressed Christians of Macedonia, who might be understood to wel- come almost any change as an improvement, but actually from the dominant Mohammedan minority. Some saw in this fact a coming awakening of all the Mohammedan i peoples, in Persia, Africa, and India as well as in Turkey. Others hoped for a regenerated Ottoman Empire in which a common spirit of national loyalty would transcend the differences of creed. The new Parliament met in an at- | mosphere of immense good will. Few saw that the work of Fi | national regeneration could not be considered a hopeful enterprise while three great problems still remained un- solved: (1) the conservatism of the Mohammedan peas- antry; (2) the national hopes cherished by the Christian | races of the Balkans; (3) the imperialistic aims of the European Powers. The first obstacle to success was the abyss of misunder- standing between the “Young Turks” and the old. De- New wine VOted to the cause of the Ottoman Empire they ingle, both were, but their conceptions of patriotism had little in common. To the traditional Turk with his Asiatic mental background Turkey was important,EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST §' 213 not as a nation among the nations, but as the embodiment of the faith of Islam. He could never bring himself to re- gard a Christian of the Ottoman Empire as a fellow citizen. The creed which a man professed seemed to him — perhaps logically — as of more importance than the language in which he professed it. The nationalism and constitutional- ism of the Young Turks seemed alien, half-infidel concepts. Many of the new leaders were reported to be lax in the faith, favorable to such irreligious innovations as the unveiling of women and the drinking of wine. Even the new army discipline, based on the German principle of compulsory service for all subjects alike, suited oddly with native military traditions and institutions. On the other hand, the Young Turks, with all the tactlessness of the enthusiastic reformer, pushed forward their program alike indifferent to the protests of Moslem and of Christian. While the mass of the Mohammedan population of the Empire viewed the activity of the Young Turks with in- difference or vague distrust, the opposition of the Christian nationalities was unmistakable. They had welcomed the overthrow of Abdul Hamid and the unenlightened tyranny which he had represented, but they had no mind to abandon their old national customs to become ‘‘good Ottomans.” Their secret wish was for complete independence from all things Turkish; failing that, they preferred to remain quiescent within the Empire while enjoying as wide a measure as possible of local home rule. They had little feeling of loyalty to the Government in Constantinople and no desire to adopt the language or fight the battles of a Turkish nation. In this attitude of resistance they were supported by the independent Balkan States. The Otto- manization of Macedonia and Thrace would mean to them the toss of every hope for national expansion. Instead of attempting the difficult task of transforming Macedonian rebeis into patriotic subjects by a policy of conciliation, the t A European of the sixteenth century would have understood this. The exaltation of national differences above differences of creed is a very modern tendency. eeTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Young Turks resolved to coerce them into obedience. Mas- sacre and banditry again prevailed as in the days before the revolution. Balkan statesmen renewed their projects for and the final partition of European éé a “war of liberation’ Turkey. The same patriotic urge which had inspired the Young Turks to attempt the regeneration of the Ottoman Empire Bileara was at work in the other Balkan nations. Bul- declares in- garia, though still in name a dependent prin- dependence . . , cipality of the Sultan’s realm, was for all prac- tical purposes as independent as Serbia, Montenegro, or Greece, and had in fact made greater strides towards po- litical stability than any of them. Europe was hardly sur- prised, therefore, when Prince Ferdinand took advantage of the revolution in Turkey to proclaim the complete in- dependence of Bulgaria, and thus put an end to any pos- sibility of a reassertion of Turkish authority in his princi- pality. On October 5, 1908, less than three months after the Young Turk Revolution, Prince Ferdinand assumed the title of ‘‘Tsar,” and the Powers, forgetful of the Treaty of Berlin, soon recognized the position of Bulgaria as an in- dependent Kingdom on the easy condition of Bulgaria’s payment of a small indemnity to the Sultan. Armed with the new dignities of kingship and independence, Ferdinand proceeded to strengthen the Bulgarian army, to press more vigorously than ever Bulgarian interests in Macedonia, and to enter into negotiations with neighboring States for an alliance against the Turk. Serbia, though an independent Kingdom of older creation, was in an inferior political and economic position. Bul- eee garia, with twice the area of Serbia anda fifty per compared Cent greater population, had a frontage on the Bees Black Sea which gave access to the trade routes of the world. Serbia was landlocked and her foreign trade lay at the mercy of unfriendly neighbors. Both countries had democratic constitutions and all the machinery of parliamentary government; but in neither country did the reality of politics correspond to the form.EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 215 | There was no native aristocracy to direct the public life Lt of the young kingdoms and the peasant voters were too inexperienced to establish stable democracies. Foreign affairs, therefore, were left to the initiative of the ruler, i while domestic politics became the forum of the professional politician. The long reign of Prince Ferdinand (Prince HH thy 1887-1908; King 1908-18) and the dictatorial power of his ae |) greatest minister, Stambuloy (1886-94), had imparted a | | certain stability to Bulgarian policy which was entirely lacking in Serbia. In the latter country King Alexander : Obrenovitch (1889-1903) provoked his subjects to revolu- ah i tion by his tactless and overbearing conduct. | F i ee — ~~ ~ “nannies eenitantiiitiaaa naman ener Nenana a - ~ eaeTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE in the mountains, reorganized the national finances, and encouraged education. Greece is a nation partly com- mercial and partly agricultural, and Venizelos took equal care in fostering the growth of the merchant marine and in helping the peasants. Had his foreign policy accomplished nothing, he would still deserve a place in modern Greek history as the chief builder of national prosperity. The fundamental principle of the diplomacy of Venizelos was that of Bismarck and of Cavour: Be sure that the foreign situation is what you want it to be at the moment you choose to act. His chief difficulty was to restrain the ardent enthusiasm of Grecian patriots until he had ce- mented an alliance with Bulgaria and Serbia and chosen a moment and a cause of quarrel which would insure the neutrality of the greater European Powers. He did not wish for Greece alone to face the full power of the Ottoman Empire and he knew that the other Balkan States would never venture war unless their own national interests were involved as well as those of Greece. Fortunately for his plans, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria were as concerned as Greece in the partition of Macedonia. Venizelos, acting for Greece, King Ferdinand and Premier Gueshoff for Bulgaria, King Peter of Serbia and King Nicholas of Monte- negro were active in furthering the Balkan Alliance. The necessary casus belli was furnished by the repressive tactics of the Young Turks in Macedonia, and the favorable mo- ment for action came (somewhat earlier than the allies had anticipated) after Italy’s war in Tripoli and an insurrec- tion in Albania had weakened the position of Turkey. The Balkan Alliance included a series of separate secret agreements. An open alliance was impossible, as it would The Balkan have provoked an immediate Turkish attack. So Se well were the intentions of the new allies hidden that down to 1912 many European ‘“‘experts” declared a general coalition of the Christian States against Turkey impossible on the ground that the mutual hatred and dis- trust of the Balkan peoples would always prevent con- certed action. By March, 1912, a defensive alliance wasEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 221 concluded between Bulgaria and Serbia. It contained an annex providing for the respective spheres of interest in the event that a partition of Macedonia became necessary and proposed the Tsar of Russia as arbitrator of all disputed points. It was followed by an agreement between Bul- garia and Montenegro, and in May by the alliance between Bulgaria and Greece. In form this was a purely defensive agreement for mutual protection against a Turkish attack and for reforms in Macedonia. The Bulgarians even ap- pended a special declaration to the treaty that they would not go to war with Turkey over the Cretan question which was of interest only to Greece. But Venizelos knew well that the Turkish policy in Macedonia would soon enough transform a defensive alliance into a military coalition. These treaties were succeeded by military conventions which defined the part to be played by each army and navy in the event of war. It is interesting to note that one of these agreements provided for Bulgarian aid to Serbia in case Austria-Hungary should intervene against the latter nation. Of all the States of southeastern Europe Rumania alone, which had no frontier common with Turkey and therefore nothing to gain from a Turkish defeat, remained outside the coalition. salkan”’ nation. It lies in the lower Danube valley north of the Balkan highland, and its inhabitants, proud of The their Roman origin (or, if this claim be con- attitude of Rumania In geographical strictness Rumania is not a tested, at all events their Romance language), refuse to be classed with the Bulgarian or Serbian Slavs. Without aspiring to be a great Power, Rumania had a greater population and a larger army than any of the Balkan States (excluding, of course, the Asiatic provinces of Turkey), and was further strengthened by an alliance with Austria-Hungary and a ruling prince of the House of Hohenzollern, a remote relative of the German Emperor. Yet for political purposes the Kingdom on the lower Danube must be classed with the Balkan Kingdoms. Like them it has an historical background of Turkish servitude and veryk “922 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE recent national revival. Like them it has a mainly peasant population, stalwart and patriotic, but illiterate and im- poverished. In fact, the prevalence of large landed estates placed the Rumanian peasant on a somewhat lower level than the Serbian swineherd, who at least owned his own farm. Politically Rumania was a fairly stable parlia- mentary monarchy in which the landed aristocracy played a dominant part. The numerous Jewish element in the population was practically deprived of civil and political rights in spite of stipulations in the Treaty of Berlin that they should be admitted to Rumanian citizenship. The “unredeemed lands’’ beyond the Rumanian frontier lay not in Turkey but in Russia (Bessarabia) and in Hungary (Transylvania). Until Russia and Austria became foes in 1914, Rumania had little hope of attaining complete na- tional unity. The Balkan policy of Rumania was that of the “balance of power”’; to prevent any Balkan State from becoming powerful enough to menace Rumanian safety. Behind the rivalries of the petty Balkan Kingdoms lay the more formidable jealousies of the Great Powers, trans- The storm tOrming all Balkan questions into major dip- center of lomatic crises. It is hardly too much to say ee eathat the immediate cause of the Great War of 1914-18 lay in the fact that the Balkan area was sufficiently backward and disorderly to invite foreign interference and that no Balkan State was strong enough to resent such inter- ference. By the twentieth century all other European na- tions had attained at least an apparent political stability, either as parts of some powerful empire or as highly civilized little commonwealths which gave no cause of offense to their neighbors. Southeastern Europe was the weak spot of the European State-system. The diplomats of older, stronger nations had little respect either for the decadent Ottoman Empire or for the upstart kingdoms and prin- cipalities which had fallen heir to former Turkish provinces. The Balkan area was not, of course, the only chessboard of diplomacy. Africa was another, China a third, and but for the Monroe Doctrine Latin America would have been aEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 223 fourth. But the peculiar mischief of the Balkan situation lay in the fact that in this instance the backward and ex- ploitable area lay in Europe, in immediate contact with the frontiers of the interested Powers. ‘That is why the ques- tions of Bosnia, Macedonia, and Constantinople more deeply imperiled the general peace than the disputes over Manchuria or Morocco. Of the eight World Powers, Japan had no interest in the Near East and the interests of the United States were com- mercial and philanthropic only. France, Italy, ite ae and Britain had a negative interest in the pre-_ the Great servation of peace and the “balance of power.” ate es They intervened frequently in Turkish and _ twentieth wie . century Balkan affairs, but mainly to prevent the ag- grandizement of other Powers. To this generalization the African dependencies of the Ottoman Empire form an ex- ception. Here the three west-European Powers have found tempting fields for colonial expansion. Russia and Austria- Hungary, nearest to the Balkan area, have been consistently and directly interested in all that happened withia it. Their rivalry for influence over the Balkan States has at every turn dominated the policy of these States themselves. Germany deserves a special word. In the days of Bismarck the least interested of all the European Powers in Near Eastern affairs, Germany became in the twentieth century the protector of the Ottoman Empire and cherished hopes of a German sphere of influence extending from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. When Bismarck presided over the Congress of Berlin in 1878, he assured the Powers with apparent sincerity that his part was only that of an “honest broker’’ Fe carrying out the commissions of others. From jnterest in the German standpoint ‘‘the whole Eastern Se Question was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.’’ Not until the reign of William IT did the Near East become a region of major interest to German diplomacy. In part this change of view was due to the growing commercial interests of Germany in the eastern224 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Mediterranean, but also in part to ambitious hopes of Im- perial expansion. With the colonizable areas of Africa, the Pacific, India, and the East Indies already preémpted; with Latin America protected by the Monroe Doctrine, and China protected by British and American support to the policies of the ‘Open Door” and the “‘balance of power in the Far East,’’ not much of the world was available as a German sphere of influence. There remained the Near East: the Balkan States, European Turkey, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. This region could be reached by over- land rail routes; it was not, like most areas of colonization, at the mercy of the superior British fleet. There was also the further advantage that German policy in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire would strengthen and be strength- ened by Austria’s interests in the same field. The phrase “Berlin to Bagdad” has unfortunately been applied in two different senses. Sometimes it is used with er reference to a purely commercial enterprise, the meant by completion of railroad connections between ae *° Mesopotamia and the Straits, which would connect with other routes, completed or pro- jected, from Constantinople to central Europe. Sometimes it is used to imply all the imperialistic ambitions which the completion of such a route might render possible. British and French investors, as well as German, sought railroad concessions in Asiatic Turkey, an excellent field for foreign capital, since the Turkish Government lacked the wealth and the technical skill to develop its own rail routes. In 1899 a private company, controlled by German capital and backed by German diplomacy, obtained permission to extend the railroad system already existing in Asia Minor into Mesopotamia. In 1903 financial terms acceptable to the Ottoman Government were negotiated and construc- tion begun. The road was not yet completed at the out- break of the Great War. Russia, France, and Great Britain at first strongly op- posed the German railroad concession. No one questioned that railroad extension was badly needed in all parts ofEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 225 Asiatic Turkey, nor that German capital was entitled to its share of the development of this backward 4, ; i we 3 ‘ Why the region. No doubt British and French capital- British oe : oa ° objected ists felt some chagrin that so rich a prize as the economic mastery of Mesopotamia had fallen into German hands.‘ But the real objections to the plan were strategic. Behind German private enterprise stood the German Government. The German Kaiser had twice visited the Ottoman Empire, and on the second occasion (1898) he had proclaimed that ‘‘the three hundred million Mohammedans that are scattered throughout the world may rest assured that the German Emperor will eternally The German Government had refused to be their friend take any part in the European protests against the mas- sacres in Armenia and Macedonia. German officers and military experts played a great part in the reorganization of the Ottoman army under Abdul Hamid and later in cooperation with the Young Turks. The Bagdad Railroad concession was one of the results of the diplomatic entente between Germany and the Sultan. The proposal to carry the Bagdad Railroad as far as the Persian Gulf seemed a direct threat to British India. As the British Foreign Secretary phrased it in it 1903, Great Britain ‘‘would regard the estab- question of lishment of a naval base or fortified port in the the Fersian Persian Gulf as a very grave menace to British interests, and would certainly resist it by all means at her disposal.’’ A rail route from central Europe to the Persian Gulf, broken only by the narrow, well-fortified Straits at Constantinople, would be a far quicker and securer route for moving large bodies of troops than the British sea routes by way of the Cape of Good Hope or the Suez Canal. More- over, railway connections in Syria and Arabia would enable the Germans to shift their menace at will from India to Egypt. There was another side to the question. Many t‘‘The Bagdad line was probably the most valuable single prize still un- appropriated in our day in the colonial world.’’ (F. Schevill, History of the Balkan Peninsula (1922), p. 448.) eee eee ‘ Pemertge nee “eR pt — —_ cena nerve‘, F i 226 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Germans sincerely regarded the British hostility to the Bagdad Railroad as based on colonial jealousy, ‘‘the dog- in-manger policy” of a nation which had many colonies and yet begrudged to Germany the opportunity to exploit Mesopotamia. Particularly were they angered when the British secured a virtual protectorate over the little Mo- hammedan district of Koweit at the head of the Persian Gulf, thus blocking the terminus of the proposed route. By the Potsdam Agreement of 1910 and treaties con- cluded the following year, Russia agreed to oppose no ee further obstacle to the Bagdad route, and Ger- of the many agreed in turn to respect the sphere of in- ees, fluence claimed by Russia in northern Persia. Temporarily Germany consented not to extend the Bagdad line to the Persian Gulf. In 1914 the British conceded to Germany full control of the route beyond Bag- dad and as far as Basra, reserving only the narrow strip of land between Basra and the Persian Gulf as a zone of Brit- ish interest. Next to the Ottoman Empire, the largest independent Mohammedan country was Persia. Persia is an arid, Rs rugged highland, about three times as large as Britain in France, but with a population of probably not eee more than ten million. Those who read their Old Testaments do not need to be reminded that Persia has had her day of glory as the greatest of Oriental Empires. But in modern times Persia has been the anvil and not the hammer. Weakly administered by a line of despotic Shahs, shut off from the vivifying contacts of world commerce, plundered by robber bands, with a peasantry sunk in ignorance, superstition, and sloth, Persia at the opening of the twentieth century presented a typical study of national degeneracy. The country was kept alive, like the neighboring realm of Afghanistan, as a convenient » buffer” between Asiatic Russia and British India. But the new century was to witness a Persian revival compar- able to the work of the Young Turks in the Ottoman Em- pire; though at first it seemed that both experiments wouldEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 229 lead to national partition before reform could place national independence on a secure foundation. In 1906 the agitation of Persian reformers, humiliated at the low position to which their fatherland had fallen, forced the Shah to grant a constitution and a represent- The Persian ative assembly (the Mejliss). Three years Revolution later the Shah was dethroned and his eleven-year-old son crowned in his stead. Foreign advice was sought to place the tangled national finances on a sounder basis, and a young American financier, Morgan Shuster, accepted the task. He found his position an impossible one, not only because of the intrigue and corruption in Persian Govern- ment, but even more because of foreign interference. The Russians supported the reactionary elements in Persia against the Mejliss and the party of reform, apparently with the deliberate intention of keeping Persia weak and dependent. The British Government, with its hands tied by the Russian entente, offered Mr. Shuster no support. After a few months’ struggle with the diplomatic network in which Persia was enmeshed, Mr. Shuster resigned and Persia fell again under Russian influence. In 1907 Russia and Great Britain, ancient rivals in Asia, were brought to friendship by the common menace of the growing power of Germany. Both nations were aioe interested in the oil resources which are the chief Rie if natural wealth of Persia, and now that the two pa nations were agreed there was no longer any necessity to preserve a wholly independent Persia as a buffer State between them. Russia was granted a sphere of influence over northern Persia, including Teheran the capital and the wealthiest and most populous parts of the country. Britain obtained a smaller sphere of influence, bordering on Baluchistan and Afghanistan, as a safeguard to the Indian frontier. In between the Russian and the British zone lay a ‘‘neutral’’ zone facing the Persian Gulf, where neither Power claimed a monopoly of commercial concessions or predominant political influence. Nominally, Persia remained an independent nation, but was too weak: \ 228 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE to keep control of her mines, railways, national finances, and policing. Under pretext of restoring order, Russian armies occupied northern Persia. The Great War inter- rupted the process of assimilation, and after the Russian Revolution the Soviet Government of Russia repudiated all claims based on old treaties and thus gave Persia a new opportunity to realize independence. British capital is still interested in Persia as one of the chief sources for fuel oil used by battleships. Another stage in the partition of the heritage of Islam was the Italian seizure of Tripoli. Tripoli was the last of Eeioean the Mohammedan States of northern Africa expansion Where the Sultan exercised any real authority. acres Morocco, an independent nation, gradually fell under French influence, each stage of absorption marked by a serious international crisis, until in IQI1I the ascendancy of France was definitely established." Algeria and Tunis, sometime dependencies of the Ottoman Empire, had long since been annexed to the French overseas em- pire; Algeria, conquered in a series of wars beginning in 1830, was incorporated into the central administration of France, while Tunis, annexed in 1881, was considered as a “protectorate” with a native ruler still permitted to retain the empty honors of sovereignty. Egypt was long the most valuable Turkish dependency, but the Khedives, nominally vassals of the Sultan, acted as practically independent rulers throughout the nineteenth century until the country fell under European domination. The extravagance of Ismail, one of the Egyptian Khedives, had led to two momentous events: the purchase by the British Govern- ment of a controlling interest in the Suez Canal Company and the establishment of a joint Franco-British control of Egyptian finances. A native insurrection against foreign interference led in 1882 to the intervention of the British army and the establishment of what was in fact, though not in name, a British protectorate. Not until the Turkish Government entered the Great War, however, did Egypt cease to grant formal recognition of Turkish suzerainty. * For the annexation of Morocco see Chapter IX.EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 229 Because of her geographical location, Italy is of all the Powers the most directly interested in northern Africa. The French seizure of Tunis was a great disappointment to the Italians. who had marked out that country as Italian pol- a future Italian protectorate. Because of the ley ia Txipols Mediterranean activity of France and Britain only Tripolt remained unappropriated. Italy, which had entered into alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary very largely on account of the French annexation of Tunis, forced her allies. as a condition of renewing the Triple Alliance, to grant her a free hand in Tripoli. Although Germany and Austria-Hungary had long been wooing the favor of Tur- key, they could not well protest against an action of their ally to which they had already given sanction. France, Britain, and Russia had their own reasons for desiring the friendship of Italy, as an additional safeguard of the Triple Entente. Thus Italy was secured against interference from any quarter when, in 1911, she decided that the time was ripe for action. The war was certainly one of aggression, of conquest, but Italy had as many reasons to justify her ac- tion as France in Morocco or England in Egypt. All the Powers had recognized Tripoli as an Italian sphere of in- terest; Italy had invested heavily in the peaceful develop- ment of the country; Turkish interference with Tripolitan affairs was likely to retard the peace and prosperity of Tripoli. If the Turkish fleet had been as strong as the Turkish army, Italy would have faced a serious war. But Italian naval superiority kept Turkey from sending any +, considerable aid to the native garrisons in Tripoli Tripolitan and so the war was localized. The fierce desert a Arabs gave the Italians much trouble in penetrating the interior of the country and the war dragged on for months to a weary, costly, but inevitable conclusion. Against the home territories of the Ottoman Empire the Italians (anxious to avoid a general Balkan war) sent no forces until Tripoli had been fairly well subjugated. Then to compel the Turkish Government to make peace the Italian fleet230 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE seized Rhodes and a group of small islands in the Agean (the Dodecanese). By the Treaty of Lausanne, signed in October, 1912, Turkey agreed to withdraw all her forces from Tripoli, and thenceforth Tripoli (including Cyrenaica) became the Italian colony of Libya. Most of the interior of the new colony is sandy desert, incapable of much develop- ment, but the Mediterranean coast has some commercial possibilities. Italy also retained the A®gean islands taken during the war. What finally brought the Ottoman Government to sur- render Tripoli was the Albanian Insurrection and the be- et ginning of the First Balkan War. The Albanian Aitenian rising was unexpected, as the Albanians, though Seewee? of stubbornly conservative and tenacious of their local liberties, were in large part Mohammedan and less disaffected than the Christians of Macedonia, Thrace, Armenia, and other parts of the Empire. The cause seems to have been the undue hurry of the Young Turks to impose their reformed national institutions on an unready people. Even the Mohammedans in Albania were not Ottoman Turks; they were willing to accept their re- ligion from Constantinople, but not an alien constitution or the Turkish language. Rebellion simmered in the Albanian highlands during the entire period of Young Turk rule, and at last the Government decided to offer local autonomy toa ~ big Albania,” including the vilayets of Scutari, Janina, Monastir, and Kossovo. This pleased the Albanians, but it infuriated the Balkan Kingdoms, who claimed that much of the territory in question was inhabited by Macedonian Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks. The Balkan States were now ready to bring their alliance into action. Probably both the Greek and Bulgarian Govy- i ernments would have preferred to wait a little Turkish Macedonia longer for their military machines to reach a in its last =) bs a nian state of perfect preparedness, but the people be- hind the Governments would not wait. Rumors, much exaggerated, but with a terrible basis of truth, of Turkish massacres in Macedonia had inflamed publicEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 231 opinion to the point where it could not be longer controlled. The military setbacks of Turkey in the Italian War and the Albanian Rebellion seemed to make the moment favorable. News of the Balkan Alliance commenced to leak into the The Austrian Government, fearing the possible press. effects of a Balkan War, proposed home rule (“‘ progressive decentralization’’) for Macedonia. The Turks concen- trated troops for the ‘‘autumn maneuvers.’ A more con- servative ministry supplanted that of the Young Turks, but the exasperation which the Young Turk policy in Mace- donia had caused was in nowise lessened. The Balkan allies demanded guarantees that the Macedonian reforms, promised by the European Powers, would actually be car- ried into effect. The Powers, still bent on averting war, warned the Balkan States that: If, despite this note, war does break out between the Balkan States and the Ottoman Empire, we shall not admit, at the end of the conflict, any modification of the territorial statws quo in Euro- pean Turkey. This warning the Balkan allies wisely ignored. They knew by long experience that the Concert of the Powers always adjusts its program to an accomplished fact. On October 8, 1912, Montenegro, the smallest and most primitive of the Balkan Kingdoms, declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Montenegro did not have to The first ‘mobilize’; in that country every man was a ee ane soldier, and the field of battle was within walking Weeroiee! distance of his home. A week later Bulgaria, ‘Perton Serbia, and Greece joined in an ultimatum to Turkey. The reforms in Macedonia Turkey might have conceded; the right of the Balkan States to oversee the administration of these reforms could not have been granted without virtually yielding her sovereignty in those provinces. So the Turk- ish Government, having hastily patched up peace with Italy, now bent all its energies to the Balkan War. Most students of European diplomacy and of military science predicted a Turkish victory; the Turks themselves were Aan eyengesnenat armenia ——' : . 232 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE certainly of that opinion. The Ottoman army had a glorious military tradition centuries old, resting on the valor and endurance of the average private soldier from Asia Minor, and to this “will to victory”’ had now been added the science of the West: the instruction of German officers and equipment with German cannon. The Balkan statesmen were not so rash as they appeared to be. Many factors were on their side. In discipline, Wiiy the leadership, equipment, and patriotic enthusiasm eee they were at least the equal of the Turks, and their strategic situation was much superior. European Turkey had so long and winding a frontier that no army which the Empire could put into the field would suffice to protect every part of it. The Greek navy domin- ated the A®gean, not only permitting the Greeks to annex at their leisure the Aegean islands, but preventing Turkish reénforcements from reaching Macedonia. Only by way of the narrow Straits could the Ottoman Empire draw help from its Asiatic provinces. The difficulty of bringing Asiatic troops to the European battle-fields in time for de- Cisive action practically nullified the advantage in numbers claimed for Turkey, Moreover, many of the levies from Asia Minor did not understand the new ways of fighting. They objected to the presence of Christians in the ranks, as, indeed, many of the Christian Ottomans objected to serving against their fellow Christians of the Balkan States. The “new model’’ army which the Young Turks had organized proved less efficient than the old Turkish army simply be- cause the soldiers had not yet had time to become ac- customed to European methods of organization, discipline, and equipment. In the Great War of 1914-18, after the army reforms had become familiar, Turkey recovered most of the military prestige lost in the Balkan War. Forces from Serbia and Montenegro at once occupied the Sandjak of Novi-Bazar, thus uniting the two Serb King- The war in doms, to the utter disgust of Austria-Hungary Eucawest whose diplomacy had long been directed to keeping them apart, Montenegro and Serbia attemptedTHE 2 BALKAN NATIONS Ss 1914 : SCALE OF MILES 0 60 100 160 Acquisitions of New Territory thro | War of 1912- 13 shown in lighter tints. 2£UU Longitude East fr Kepl es 2 ware Qo N kola CERIGC Qcenia "TO gh the m Greenwit Capea a > , Ka ey ES mmyrn® uD Bh Italy - Z 4 of RHODES ees Ke Fnods ; ¢ we! ‘ : A ) ae “ni. 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P} li t #7 rikhala ALariysa EGEAWN Edremid EY . aves .¢? f COR a ao Q oar K ony 7 \ FT HESSALYO VY °e oF MITYLENE ff T U 5 1 arg A 1 9 . 7 ~ | O eee J " e Na “ae S . SEA CN r 1 N ) 2s = ea __f Magnesia oh =o QoEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 233 Mie also to seize seaports in Albania, opening up westward i ‘“\Yindows on the Adriatic.’”’ Macedonia, caught between Serbian armies advancing to the south and Greek armies | marching northward, was overrun in a few weeks. The . Serbians won a great victory at Kumanovo, captured the | important city of Monastir, and marched into Albania to 4 seize the port of Durazzc. The Greeks advanced to Saloniki, the chief Macedonian seaport, laid siege to Janina | th in the Greek-Albanian borderland of Epirus, and added . | = ; Crete and other A-gean islands to their Kingdom by naval Me action. The northern Albanian fortress of Scutari, be- iq sieged by Montenegro, and Janina in the south held out a Wa] i few months longer. From the military standpoint the interest of the first Balkan War centers chiefly in eastern Thrace, where the Paige! main Ottoman armies were gathered, resting on 7,, : | Constantinople and Adrianople as their base. campaign in hia | an Here the Bulgarian armies, supplemented later ae by a contingent from Serbia, hammered the Turkish front. At Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas the Bulgarians triumphed and drove back the Turkish army behind the fortifications | of Constantinople (the Tchataldja lines). But the Bul- | garians, who had already sacrificed more lives than any } of the other Balkan allies, were still held at bay before Adrianople, and their attempt to pass the Tchataldja en- I trenchments proved a costly failure. The Thracian cam- the military honors rested with Bulgaria. In December Turkey and Bulgaria agreed to an armistice, which was accepted by the other belligerents with the exception of Greece. Delegates of the belligerent nations met in London to discuss terms of peace where they could keep in touch with each other and with the Great Powers, who were eae } bound to have their own opinion on a question London Peace it Conference paign had reached a temporary deadlock, although all . . i ; so important as the remapping of the Balkans. The Powers abandoned their original position that there should be no change in the territorial status of234 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE European Turkey. On the contrary, it was now taken for granted that Macedonia was to be partitioned by the Balkan allies, and Turkish offers of ‘‘autonomy’”’ were laughed aside. Albania and Thrace presented greater difficulties. Austria-Hungary was insistent that Albania must not be partitioned by Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece. Albania must be made into an independent State, on grounds of nationality (the Albanians speak a language of their own quite distinct from Greek or Slavic) and to prevent Serbia from becoming a rival of Austria on the Adriatic. The Turks saw that they would have to yield Albania, Mace- donia, and western Thrace, but they were determined to retain Adrianople. The mere rumor that Adrianople would be surrendered brought back into office the Young Turks (Committee of Union and Progress), who were resolved to see the war through to the end. Negotiations came to an end and hostilities were resumed. Throughout February and March the Turks attempted to regain their lost ground in Thrace, but on March 26th The second ‘drianople was forced to surrender. The London Greeks were already in Janina, and in April Conference : : Montenegro achieved the conquest of Scutari. The Powers, however, had already reached an agreement on Albanian independence and forced Montenegro to sur- render her prize. As Turkey had now lost everything in Europe except Constantinople and the Straits, even the Young Turks were convinced of the necessity of suing for peace. A second conference met in London, warned by the Powers to hasten the conclusion of peace. On May 30, 1913, the Treaty of London was concluded, ending the first Balkan War. European Turkey was limited to the zone of the Straits, lying east of a line drawn from Enos on the fgean to Midia on the Black Sea. The island of Crete went to Greece, but the status of the other A©gean islands was left to the decision of the Powers. Albania was to be independent with frontiers to be drawn at the will of the Powers. Unfortunately no decision had been reached by theEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 235 Balkan allies as to the partition among themselves of the spoils of victory. Bulgaria claimed Thrace as +. p41, : eh ee ; z The Balkan far as the Enos-Midia line by right of conquest Alliance 3 : Ee pie SAAD . breaks up and geographical proximity, and the claim was allowed by her allies. Bulgaria also claimed the greater part of Macedonia on the ground of nationality and the existing treaty between Bulgaria and Serbia, but this claim was contested. Both Greeks and Serbs challenged the Bulgarian contention that the majority of Macedonians were Bulgars. As for the pre-war treaty, the Serbian Government now asked that it be set aside on the ground that when it was made Serbia expected to obtain an Al- banian seaport, such as Durazzo, which was now denied to her by the intervention of the Powers. Disappointed in Albania, Serbia demanded compensation in Macedonia. Bulgaria obstinately adhered to the letter of her treaty rights, refusing to admit that Serbia’s disappointment, which was in no way the fault of Bulgaria, should result in a diminution of Bulgarian Macedonia. To make confusion worse, Rumania, which had taken no part whatever in the war, put forward a claim for ‘‘compensation”’ to restore the ‘balance of power’ in the Balkans. Bulgaria, in all the elation of her greatest victory, was expected to yield west- ern Macedonia to Serbia, southern Macedonia (the Salonik1 region) to Greece, and a strip of land between the Danube and the Black Sea to Rumania, while Turkey eagerly awaited a pretext for reconquering Adrianople. Thus be- set on four sides Bulgaria should in wisdom have yielded something, but national pride counseled resistance. Two ominous events hastened a second Balkan war. A Greek fanatic assassinated King George, and his successor Constantine was expected to follow a more ag- . : : . : The gressive national policy. In Bulgaria the mod- Macedonian erate and conciliatory Gueshoff was compelled {077 2 of 9 by public sentiment to resign office to the more chauvinistic Daneff. Militarist sentiment rode high, in both countries. Greece and Serbia formed a secret al- liance to protect their holdings in Macedonia from a Bul-236 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE garian attack. In a last effort to avert war, the Tsar of Russia demanded the submission of the whole Macedonian question to him as arbiter, threatening Serbia and Bulgaria with Russia’s displeasure if either should break the peace. The Austro-Hungarian Government, not sorry, perhaps, to see the Balkan league broken into rival groups, refused to support the Russian move for peace. Greek and Serbian armies already occupied the greater part of Macedonia, as was natural, since the main military effort of Bulgaria had been in Thrace, and thus held ‘‘nine points of the law”’ as against Bulgaria. The temptation for a sudden attack was too great for the Bulgarians to resist. They looked upon Macedonia as theirs by right and felt strong enough to seize the disputed territory by force of arms. Thus the perennial Macedonian question, which had already brought about the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and the Balkan War of Liberation in 1912, was destined to bring about a Balkan War of Partition in 1913. Up to this point Bulgaria could rightly count on much foreign sympathy. She had borne the greatest burden of The second the war, her national claims in Macedonia were eran at least as good as those of Serbia or Greece, and War of her diplomatic attitude, while stubborn and un- Partition generous to her allies, conformed at least to the letter of her rights. But now Bulgaria put herself entirely in the wrong. Without any declaration of war, and ap- parently even without sufficient authorization from his own Government, General Savoff ordered an immediate attack on the combined Greek and Serbian armies. Hostilities began on June 29, 1913. Montenegro, naturally in sym- pathy with Serbia, joined the Serbian forces. Rumania had already been promised the town of Silistria, on the Bulgarian frontier, but now saw a chance to win by force of arms the entire southern Dobrudja. The Turks recaptured Ad- rianople. Within less than a month the whole military structure of Bulgarian policy had collapsed and Bulgaria agreed to accept a peace based on the terms demanded by her opponents.EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 237 The second Balkan War, arising as it did from the bitter rancor of nations but recently in alliance, was characterized by exceptional ferocity. In their retreat from) Go auct of Macedonia the Bulgarians burned the Greek the war; villages and put to death many of their ine “°° habitants, sometimes with frightful cruelty. The Greeks published to the world the evidence of the “‘ Bulgarian atroc- ities’”’ to discredit their foe in the court of world opinion. Investigations made after the war confirmed many of the Greek charges, but showed also that the Greeks had been themselves guilty of similar offenses. In fact all of the Balkan peoples, Turks, Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs, Albanians, Rumanians, have in recent years suffered under the re- proach of inhuman deeds, and the massacres in Macedonia sé by partisan bands (komitadjis) in time of so-called ‘“‘ peace”’ were quite as cruel, if not quite so extensive, as the mas- sacres of the second Balkan War. But Europe, not fore- seeing what events would take place next year in the more civilized parts of the continent, was genuinely shocked at this revelation of what warfare in the Balkans meant. As one diplomat phrased it, the war of liberation had de- generated into a war of partition, and that in turn into a war of extermination. Peace was made at Bucharest (August Io, 1913) between Greece, Serbia, Rumania, and Montenegro on the one part and Bulgaria on the other. Rumania obtained 7h. the entire southern Dobrudja from Silistria to pesericnot the Black Sea, the richest farming section of and of Con- Bulgaria. Serbia annexed western Macedoniaas “‘7tinople far as the new Greek frontier and including the important city of Monastir and the upper Vardar valley. Greece obtained a great extension of territory in southern Mace- donia, including the whole A¢gean coast from Saloniki to beyond Kavalla. Turkey, regarding the Treaty of London annulied by the second Balkan War and by the fact that it had not been formally ratified, imposed a new treaty on Bulgaria at Constantinople, September 29, 1913. The frontier was still to run from Enos to Midia, but was to be238 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE bent inland between those points in such a way as to give Adrianople and eastern Thrace generally back to the Otto- man Empire. The most important and permanent result of the Balkan wars was the end of Turkey as a European State. AIl- Abalance though the Turks still kept their hold on Con- sheet of the stantinople, Adrianople, and the zone of the a Straits, this was but an outpost of Asiatic Turkey. Less than a third of the population and less than a sixth of the area of European Turkey in 1912 remained in 1913. Henceforth the ‘‘center of gravity” of the Ottoman Empire was in Asia Minor. Of all the Balkan allies Greece gained the most. The area of the Kingdom was practically doubled and its population increased by two thirds (from about 2,750,000 to 4,750,000). Greece now included all of Thessaly and southern Epirus, southern Macedonia, Crete, and all of the A®gean islands except those held by Italy since the Tripolitan War and a few retained by Turkey to protect the entrance to the Dardanelles. There were still a few Greek settlements outside the Kingdom in southern Albania, Bulgarian Thrace, Turkish Thrace, and western Asia Minor, but substantially the Greeks had achieved their ideal of a reunited nation. Almost equally welcome to the Greeks was the strategic mastery of the AXgean Sea and the prestige won in two victorious wars. Serbia had almost doubled in area likewise, adding to her former territories western Macedonia (including the district Serbiaand known as ‘‘Old Serbia’’) and that part of Novi- Montenegro Bazar not given to Montenegro. The popula- tion of both Serbia and Montenegro increased by about one half, giving Serbia a population of nearly 4,500,000 and Montenegro nearly half a million. Serbia was still disap- pointed of a seaport, but there was now only one frontier between Serbia and the gean — the Greek — and Greece was now a friend and ally. Bulgaria could hardly place the Balkan Wars in the profit column. Her net increase in area was less than one fifth; Turkey GreeceEUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST as against her acquisitions in eastern Macedonia and west- ern Thrace must be set the southern Dobrudja, p11: transferred to Rumania. Her net gain in popu- and Jation was probably not more than one twen- eens tieth, though the total population, even so, remained as great as that of Greece. The possession of a coastline on the A®&gean was not of as much value to Bulgaria as one might think, as Greece held all the best northern A¢*gean ports and the railroad line to the Bulgarian port of Dedeagatch ran through territory reclaimed by Turkey in the second Balkan War. Asan offset to these gains we must reckon the heavy losses of Bulzaria in both Balkan Wars, the loss in the second war of the military prestize and European favor gained in the first, and the legacy of a permanent feud with Serbia, Rumania, and Greece. The new country called into existence by the will of the Powers had an area about equal to that of European Turkey — or the state of Maryland. Its pop- ulation was reckoned at 800,000. Of all the Balkan Kingdoms Albania was the wildest and most back- ward; in fact the country remains to-day rather a con- federacy of highland villages than a true national State. The Powers, however, treated Albania like other Balkan States and followed their usual expedient of placing on the throne a German prince, borrowed for the purpose. Prince William of Wied in 1914 took the title of Mpret of Albania and endeavored to Europeanize his troublesome little principality. But he had been on the throne only a few months when the Great War swept his sovereignty aside, and Albania, nominally neutral, became a battle-ground of Austrians, Italians, and Serbs. Under various native dic- tators and provisional governments Albania has managed to maintain her national existence and even to repel Serbian claims to the northern part of the territory and Greek claims to the south. Albania persists as a proof that a state of anarchy seems quite as natural and tolerable to a half-civilized people as any elaboration of government. The events of the first and second Balkan Wars had a AlbaniaAOR TAT IOT I To OTT 240 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE most disturbing effect on the delicate adjustments of the Pe yoetie European balance of power. The basis of Ger- waren man and Austrian policy in the Near East had Dae been the military and political strength of the ; Ottoman Empire. Now the Turkish power had almost been swept from Europe, and at a time, too, when the Turkish Government had placed reliance on German artillery and German leadership. Before the Bal- kan Wars the plan of a Near Eastern sphere of influence, based on the Bagdad Railway project, had seemed easy to accomplish, since the Austrian frontier was in touch with European Turkey; now between them lay two Balkan Kingdoms, Serbia and Bulgaria, both hostile to Turkey and to each other, impossible to unite in any general plan of alliance. Asill luck would have it, the victor in both phases of the Balkan struggle was Serbia, now more than ever hostile to Austria-Hungary because barred from the Adriatic by Austrian diplomacy. In August, 1913, the Austro- Hungarian Government proposed to Germany and Italy the ‘‘intention to act against Serbia,’ but receiving no en- couragement from either ally postponed aggressive action for another year. Russia, resolved to protect her Balkan interests against Austrian rivalry, now appeared almost openly as the champion of Serbia. Italy, held in suspense between dread of a southern Slav movement and jealousy of Austrian mastery of the Adriatic, hesitated as to where to place her sympathies. France rejoiced at the apparent check to German ascendancy in Turkey. All congratu- lated themselves that the Balkan Wars were concluded without directly involving a conflict of the Great Powers, even while they recognized that the Treaty of Bucharest contained as many dangers for the future peace of Europe as had the Treaty of Berlin. In spite of the needless bloodshed and frustrated hopes Teruo ne which have marked the history of southeastern puuzationiot Europe in the century which has elapsed since Europe at large began to take an interest in the emancipation of the Balkan nationalities, it is allow-EUROPE IN THE NEAR EAST 241 able to end on a note of hope. Greece, Serbia, Bulga- ria, Rumania, Montenegro, and Albania have been raised from enslaved provinces to free and self-respecting peasant democracies. Even Turkey has been awakened for all time from the Byzantine sloth which marked the stages of her long degeneration. The force of nationalism has brought no peace to the Balkans, but it has brought some measure of freedom, and with it the fruits of freedom, in- dustrial activity, and social experiment. The faults of the Balkan States to-day, Turkey included, are frontiersmen’s faults, the crudities of young communities, and with them goes a hopeful energy which is the virtue of youth., fs CHARTER TIX THE LAST STAND OF PEACE The Conference is of opinion that the restriction of military charges, which are at present a heavy burden on the world, is extremely desirable... . The Signatory Powers undertake to organize a permanent Court of Arbitra- tion, accessible at all times and acting, in default of agreement to the contrary between the parties, in accordance with the rules of procedure inserted in the present Convention. Resolutions of the First Hague Conference Tue Great War of 1914-18 was not a more remarkable chapter in the history of mankind than the generation of mere peace which preceded it. It is safe to say that 1e rea . Peace of never before had the nations of central and eo WS western Europe enjoyed so prolonged a truce among themselves. Wars there were, but always “marginal” wars, fought either in the half-barbarous Balkan highlands or outside Europe altogether in South Africa, Manchuria, or Cuba. No great industrial nation had to protect its own towns from bombardment, its own frontier from invasion. Considering how many diplomatic crises arose to give the cabinets apprehension and cause flurries on the stock exchanges, considering how sharp were ) > ‘ national rivalries and how deeply ingrained were old hatreds and humiliations, the long peace was a blessing hardly to be expected, and perhaps hardly deserved. For the task of diplomacy, as most statesmen then conceived it, was not to make all nations friends or compel them to submit to a common public law, but to preserve the peace by leaguing the nations together in alliances so powerful that no foe would venture to attack. Up to a certain point this plan of securing peace by a “‘ balance of power” worked success- fully. But one drawback of a peace based on a system of opposing alliances was that if war did come it could no longer be limited to a single battle-ground and a simple issue, but would tend to involve most of the States of Europe.THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 243 “= The starting-point of the whole scheme of alliances was Bismarck’s conviction that France would never forgive Germany for the Franco-Prussian War and the Bismarcl’s loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Prince Bismarck was mp uEingres a statesman who loved to convert his foes into German friends and allies— once he had thoroughly ‘°lition beaten them. He had incorporated South German States, former enemies of Prussia, into his new Prussianized Ger- man Empire. He had vanquished Austria and then wel- comed her into alliance. In spite of many quarrels, he strove always for the friendship of England and Russia. When his military advisers convinced him that it was his duty to annex French territory, he did so witha heavy heart, for it meant that henceforth he would always have to reckon with one great European nation as an unchangeable enemy. The rest of his life was devoted to a single purpose, to sur- round Germany with powerful friends and to keep France isolated and impotent for harm. France without allies he did not fear. Germany had met and defeated her in single combat and could do so again, especially since every year added to the wealth and power of the new Empire. But Bismarck was haunted by a ‘‘nightmare of coalitions.’’ He dreaded that a revengeful Austria or an ambitious Russia or a jealous England united with France might overbear the strength of Germany. Bismarck’s most cherished dream was a triple alliance of the three autocratic Empires — Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany. But the divergent aims of Russia The Triple and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans made it Alliance impossible to keep both countries into one alliance. So Bismarck was forced to content himself with a defensive alliance with Austria-Hungary (1879) and with Italy (1882). If Germany were attacked by Russia, or another nation supported by Russia, Austria-Hungary would come to her aid, and similarly Germany would aid the Austrians in a defensive war against Russia. Italy, momentarily jealous of French colonial expansion, joined the alliance as an additional guarantee against France. To supplement this244 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE triple alliance of the three Powers of central Europe, Bis- marck made a special agreement with Russia (the so-called ‘‘reinsurance treaty’’) by which Russia pledged herself not to join France in an offensive war against Germany and Germany promised in turn not to support Austria-Hungary in an offensive war against Russia. Rumania, not a great Power certainly, but a small State strategically located on the frontiers of Russia and Hungary, was attached to the Triple Alliance by special treaties. It can hardly be said that a true ‘“‘balance of power” existed in the days of Bismarck’s Chancellorship. Ger- The Dual many dominated European diplomacy and eilliance bound to herself by treaty, diplomatic under- standing, or the coercive power of fear all the continental Powers with the exception of France. Great Britain and the United States, secure behind the ocean and their navies, were outside Germany’s sphere of influence, but not at all inclined to champion France against her. But with the passing of Bismarck from the political stage, Germany had no longer a statesman who could contrive to remain on friendly terms with both Russia and Austria-Hungary. Russia, now free from any diplomatic obligations and no longer assured of German neutrality, entered into al- liance with France. The balance of power was redressed. The military power of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy was offset by the military power of France and Russia. A military convention of 1893 bound France to support Russia if attacked by Germany, or by Austria- Hungary supported by Germany, and bound Russia to sup- port France if attacked by Germany, or by Italy backed by Germany. Never were two countries more unlike than France, the most radical of republics, and Russia, the most autocratic of monarchies. Their alliance was no ‘love match,’’ but rested on the purely diplomatic consideration that both nations were afraid of Germany and resentful of her dominance. It seemed natural to the diplomatic mind that the three Powers of central Europe should be opposed by the two great Powers situated at the extremities ofTHE LAST STAND OF PEACE 245 Europe and thus be compelled to guard both their eastern and their western frontiers.* Such was the diplomatic situation at the end of the nineteenth century. The opening of the new century brought one of the most remarkable diplomatic The revolutions in history. Great Britain, which revolution had held proudly aloof from the diplomatic of 18098 quarrels and alliances of continental Europe, 197 interested only in the upbuilding of her own far-flung colonial empire, now became an active partner in the coali- tion of nations opposed to Germany. Italy and Rumania, still nominally allied to Germany, became completely alien- ated in sympathy, chiefly because of their rivalry with Austria-Hungary. Now it was Germany that complained, as France had complained a generation earlier, of ‘ ‘diplo- matic isolation.”” In all the world Germany could count securely on but one ally, Austria-Hungary; all other nations were at best uncertain friends and in many cases dangerous rivals and potential foes. Certainly politics makes strange national politics most of all. bedfellows, and inter- If it was surprising to find France and Russia in firm alliance. it was doubly at surprising to find Great Britain joined with them. friends and not indeed by formal alliance, but by adiplomatic ‘°° friendship (entente) which proved in practice no less firm a bond. Diplomatic isolation, which France and Germ: ny had found so irksome, was congenial to the British, securely reliant on naval power. France was England’s rival in Egypt, in the Pacific, in the Mediterranean. As recently as 1898 France and Britain stood almost on the verge of war over the control of the Egyptain Sudan.2. Russia was still less trusted than France. Great Britain had fought Russia in the Crimean conflict of 1854-56, and had forced her by sharp diplomatic pressure to abandon her policy of crush- ing Turkey in 1878. British sy mpathy was lavishly given to “Tt is an example of what may be termed checkerboard diplomacy: all the red squares have a natural tendency to join in alliance against the black squares.’ (Charles Seymour, The Diplomatic Background of the War, p. 41.) 2 See pp. 149-50.246 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the Finns, the Poles, the Jews, the political exiles in Siberia, and every other victim of Russian tyranny. Above all, England feared for India. One has only to read the early stories of Rudyard Kipling, written from the standpoint of an /\nglo-Indian, to see how generally officers in that out- post of empire took for granted a coming conflict with Russia, while back in Europe publicists were writing nu- merous articles op such subjects as ‘‘ Will the future world be Slav or Saxon?’’ On the other hand, the English tradi- tion was one of friendship for Germany in general and for Prussia in particular. Queen Victoria was of Ger- man descent; her husband was a German prince. Such able Conservative statesmen as Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Salisbury were friends of the new German Empire, and the leading light of British liberalism, Gladstone, de- clared in the House of Commons: “If Germany becomes a colonizing Power, all I can say is, ‘God speed her.’ She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of a great purpose of Providence for the benefit of mankind.” The Anglo-German friendship, though often interrupted by passing disputes such as the Prussian seizure of Schleswig- Gk Holstein from Denmark in 1864 and the later seizes the dispute over the Samoan Islands, did not ter- a minate until Germany attempted to rival British power at sea. It has often been said that Germany and England could no more have quarreled than an elephant and a whale. The small professional standing army which policed rather than defended the British Empire could not be compared to Germany’s armed hosts recruited on the Prussian principle of universal military service. On the other hand, so long as the British held the seas and guarded the landward approaches to India, they had little to fear from any army that Germany could muster. But Germany, with extensive colonies in Africa and the Pacific, with a great and growing merchant marine, with a foreign trade vital to the prosperity of the Empire, and, more than all, with a pride which would not admit that the Fatherland should take second place in any line of human endeavor,THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 247 determined to create a navy which would be commensurate with the greatness of the nation. The Kaiser was im- mensely pleased with the idea. ‘‘Our future lies on the water,’ he declared, and the ‘‘trident must be in our hands.” The building of the German navy was entrusted to Ad- miral Tirpitz, appointed in 1897 as secretary of State for the Navy. In 1898 a Navy League (Fiotten- ie vereim) was organized to carry on propaganda for German a big fleet and an aggressive naval policy. In ™Y” 1898 the Reichstag approved a shipbuilding program which practically doubled the naval strength of the Empire. In 1900 this program was amended to provide for a still greater expansion of the German fleet. The purposes of the German Government were announced at the time the new appropriations were voted: To protect Germany’s sea trade and colonies, in the existing circ umstances, there is only one means: Germany must have a battle fleet so strong that even for t os .dversary with the greatest sea power a War against it would peril his own position in the worl: involve such dangers as to im- i: Of course the ‘‘adversary with the greatest sea power’”’ was Great Britain. The British understood this public threat and felt that for-the first time since Waterloo they were really in danger. But while the British would certainly never have per- mitted Germany, or any other Power, to outbuild their navy, they would not have been so alarmed (ante in other respects Germany had shown a friendly quarrel with spirit. The United States at that very time Eee was also building a great navy and so was Japan, yet the British press showed very little alarm at these developments. Unfortunately a very distinct current of hostility towards I'ngland was observed in the German press, in The Kruger the debates of the Reichstag, and in the decJara- telegram tions of the German Government. One of the first open ex- *A. Hurd and H. Castle, German Sea Power (1913), gives the text of the German navy laws.| 248 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE pressions of this hostility was the Kaiser’s famous telegram of congratulation to President Kruger of the Transvaal on the defeat of the Jameson Raid: I express to you my sincere congratulations that without ap- pealing to the help of friendly Powers, you and your people have succeeded in repelling with your own forces the armed bands which have broken into your country and in maintaining the independence of your country against foreign aggression. That the Jameson raid was a foolish and discreditable ad- venture has been admitted even by Englishmen; the real sting in the Kruger telegram was the assumption that Germany as a ‘‘friendly Power’? might claim the right to intervene in behalf of the Boer republics. During the en- suing war in South Africa the German Government re- mained formally neutral, but German public opinion was furiously and almost unanimously hostile, and from that time forward sincerely cordial relations between the two peoples were never restored... An even more significant cause of Anglo-German hostility was the German project for dominating Turkey, strategically as well as commercially, in such a way as to threaten the British position alike in Egypt and in India.” Great Britain had been uncomfortably friendless during the Boer War, when not only the Germans but continental The Entente Europe generally had been distinctly pro-Boer. CMa With the rapid expansion of the German navy isolation was no longer safe. Reconciliation with Germany seemed for the time being an impossibility.3 Reconciliation with Russia seemed no less out of the question until the Russo-Japanese War had put an end to Russian dreams of imperial expansion in the Far East. But it was possible to bring about a friendly understanding (the so-called entente cordiale) with France in spite of ancient enmities and recent *B. E. Schmitt, England and Germany, p. 145: “ That struggle, which put an end to German aspirations for the incorporation of South Africa in a Greater Germany, was the great landmark in Anglo-German relations.’ ? For the Berlin—Bagdad project see pp. 223-26. 3 Tentative overtures for an Anglo-German alliance had come to nothing.THE LAST SPAND OF PEACE 249 quarrels. The French were becoming reconciled to the British occupation of Egypt and even of the Sudan and they desired in return the good will of the British for their own policy in Morocco. Théophile Delcassé, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1898 to 1905, was desirous of a close diplomatic agreement between the two countries. The new ruler of the British Empire, Edward VII, was very friendly to France. No doubt his share in the diplomatic events of his reign has been much exaggerated, alike by German opponents and English eulogists. He was in no sense the author of the entente, which was really the com- bined work of the French and British cabinets. But his position and prestige and his personal tact and charm were very useful aids to the diplomats. The Anglo-French entente never included a definite de- fensive alliance, such as united Russia with France, or Italy and Austria-Hungary with Germany. arp ae bat The British have always claimed that in 1914 was not an they were free from any treaty obligation to give ance military aid to France. circumstances called for aid. The entente really involved three factors: (1) a general arbitration treaty, concluded October 14, 1903, by which both countries were to submit all disputes to peaceful arbitration unless they concerned “honor,” “ vital interests,’’ or the rights of other nations; They were free to decide when (2) a series of important agreements respecting conflicting colonial rights, concluded April 8, 1904; (3) an unwritten understanding that England and France would henceforth strive in all matters to bring their foreign policy into har- mony and would stand by each other if either were wantonly assailed. England’s position in Egypt was formally recog- nized and France was supported in her policy of ‘ benevo- lent assimilation’’ in Morocco. The German Government declared that it saw no peril in the settlement of outstanding colonial disputes between Great Britain and France, but it resolved none the less that France should never have Morocco, unless Germany received adequate compensation elsewhere, and further resolved that either Russia or Britain should be forced to desert France.250 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE The weak point in the French case was that the actual annexation of Morocco could not yet be openly avowed, ae but could only be hinted at in secret agreements. challenges Spain, expecting that a small strip of Moroccan rence over territory would ultimately fall to her, and Italy, content to recognize France’s position in Mo- rocco in return for recognition of her own ambitions in Tripoli, might consent to look the other way while France strengthened her position in northern Africa. Not so Germany. The Kaiser, acting on the advice of von Bilow, paid a flying visit to Morocco and informed the native Sultan that he was resolved to maintain the complete in- dependence of Morocco and to defend the interests of Germany in that country. The moment was well chosen. France was unprepared and unwilling to fight Germany at that time and on that issue and consented to lay French claims before an international conference. France also dismissed from office the Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Delcassé, doubly offensive to Germany as the principal author of the entente with England and as the most ener- getic advocate of French imperialism in Morocco. An international conference met at Algeciras in 1906 to establish the future status of Morocco. It is interesting to The note that the United States was represented, as Algeciras well as the chief European nations, and that Congress President Roosevelt took a keen personal inter- est in the course of negotiations. The independence of Morocco was reaffirmed and the principle of the ‘‘open door,’’ equal commercial rights to all foreign nations, was established. On the other hand, it was recognized that so backward and disorderly a country needed foreign help and it was provided that France and Spain should under- take the task of preserving order. But the Act of Al- geciras did not prove to bea final settlement of the question. France did not abandon her old ambition of adding Mo- rocco to her colonial empire, and the continuous disorder and bad government gave her many a pretext for extending her authority. It must be admitted that the gradual increaseTHE LAST STAND OF PEACE 251 of French ascendancy has benefited the average Moroccan, even though it may have violated the spirit of the Act of Algeciras and thereby given to Germany just grounds of complaint. In order to restore to the full the supremacy which the German Empire had enjoyed in Bismarck’s time, the Kaiser resolved to renew Bismarck’s policy of vote a direct understanding between Germany and Russian Russia. The Russo-Japanese War afforded an ae opportunity. Though Britain was not directly involved in the war, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the Dogger Bank incident * had left a legacy of distrust between the British and the Russians. The Kaiser hoped to pre- pare an alliance of continental Europe against what he termed the “‘Anglo-Japanese group.” He insisted that the treaty must be kept secret from France until The it was concluded, lest France betray it to Eng- Bjérké land. Ina private interview at the Baltictown ['*Y of Bjérk6 on July 24, 1905, the Kaiser presented the fol- lowing proposals to the Tsar: I. If any European State attacks one of the two Empires [i.e., Russia and Germany], the allied party engages to aid the other contracting party with all his military and naval forces. II. The high contracting parties engage not to conclude with any common enemy a separate peace. III. The present treaty will become effective from the moment of the conclusion of the peace between Russia and Japan and may be denounced with a year’s previous notification. IV. When this treaty has become effective, Russia will under- take the necessary steps to inform France of it and to propose to the latter to adhere to it as an ally. The treaty, although approved by both Tsar and Kaiser, never went into effect, because the Tsar’s advisers, Count Lamsdorf and Count Witte, persuaded him that the whole plan was inconsistent with the existing French alliance. The very existence of these secret negotiations was not generally known until after the Russian revolution of 1917. 1 See pp. 186-87. test eee sscemmnnset ny ma kT Pa ee ae bm a 252 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE The most sinister feature of the whole plan was an under- standing that ‘‘In case of war and impending attack on the Baltic from the foreign Power... Russia and Germany will immediately take steps to safeguard their interests by laying hand on Denmark and occupying it during the war.” The close of the Russo-Japanese War and the rejection of the alliance with Germany left Russia free to come to an The Anco. @oneement with England. The same diplomatic Racciane method was followed as in the case of the Anglo- aed of French entente, the clearing-up of outstanding colonial disputes and the removal of causes of friction. In the case of France, Great Britain had settled the questions of Egypt and Morocco, had determined the extent of French fishing rights on the Newfoundland coast, | had delimited African boundaries and respective spheres of influence in Siam, and had established a joint government over the islands of the New Hebrides. In the case of Rus- sia, Great Britain reached an agreement safeguarding the independence of Afghanistan, recognizing Chinese suze- rainty over Tibet, and establishing Russian and British spheres of influence in Persia. | The Triple Entente was now complete. France and : Russia were bound together by a defensive alliance and The Triple Great Britain was bound to both by diplomatic Entente and policy. The combined armies and navies of the its friends : ' Triple Entente greatly outnumbered those of the Triple Alliance. Moreover, Italy could no longer be relied on as a member of the Triple Alliance. Cherishing the hope of annexing Tripoli, an ambition realized in 1911, | the Italians were inclined to forgive France their old dis- P| appointment of 1881 when France had established a pro- f tectorate over Tunis. Italy was now a cordial friend of | France; she had never been otherwise with England. Italy also viewed with undisguised alarm the aggressive policy of Austria-Hungary in the Balkans which seemed to threaten Italian interests in the Adriatic. Serbia was openly hostile to Austria-Hungary, particularly after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. Rumania showed increasingTHE LAST STAND OF PEACE 253 discontent at the oppression of Rumanian subjects in Hungary. Belgium was so apprehensive that Germany’s next invasion would pass through her territory that as early as 1906 Belgian military representatives carried on secret conversations with the French and British for the protection of their neutrality in case of attack by Germany." Portu- gal was bound to Great Britain by an old alliance, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, originally directed against Russia, now brought Japan into the diplomatic group op- posed to Germany.? This alliance was renewed in 1905 and extended to the protection of India as well as of Japanese and British interests in the Far East. In IQII it was again renewed for a period of ten years with a spe- cial clause inserted to prevent Great Britain from being dragged into a war with the United States on behalf of Japan.’ The German Government was resolved to test the strength of the ‘‘Iron Ring’’ and discover whether its diplomatic isolation was as complete as it feared. : : = 4 —— Germany’s Austria-Hungary s successful annexation of Bos- jnfluence nia-Herzegovina in the face of the combined aaa ee 11C Jai Ke S opposition of Serbia, Turkey, and Russia seemed reassuring. Germany was successful also in winning the friendship of the Young Turk Party, which had come into power by the Turkish Revolution, in spite of the support formerly given by Germany to the deposed tyrant Abdul Hamid. The Balkan Wars discomfited Germany by weaken- ing Turkey and strengthening Serbia and Rumania, but t These documents were discovered by the German authorities after they had occupied Belgium and published as a belated justification of their invasion, con- tending that they amounted to a defensive alliance with France and England. But a nation which has the duty to protect its neutrality would be foolish to neglect any precautions or ignore any known menace. See J. B. Scott, Diplo- matic Documents Rz lating to the Outbreak of the European War, 2 vols. | I9I6). * At one time it was proposed to admit Germany as a third partner into the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but Germany showed little interest in the matter, probably from fear of being dragged into a war with Russia. 3 “Should either high contracting party conclude a treaty of general arbitra- tion with a third power, it is agreed that nothing in this agreement shall entail upon such contracting party an obligation to go to war with the power with whom such treaty of arbitration is in force.” A general arbitration treaty was at that time being considered between Great Britain and the United States. oe ee tere ese254 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE German and Austrian diplomacy won a partial victory in erecting Albania as a barrier to keep Serbia and Monte- negro from gaining seaports on the Adriatic. What finally convinced Germany that her old predomi- nance in Europe had departed was the outcome of the Mo- Te rocco question. Onat least three occasions that again a ill-omened country brought Europe to the verge Beates of a general war. The first crisis was ended, as we have seen, by the Algeciras Congress. In 1908 the French authorities captured some army deserters who had sought refuge with the German consul at Casa- blanca and an acute international crisis arose, which was ended in 1909 by Germany’s recognizing “the special po- litical interests of France” in Morocco in return for im- portant commercial concessions. But Germany did not intend to let France establish an actual protectorate in spite of the convention of 1900. Taking advantage of some disorders which in 1911 had provoked a French military in- tervention, Germany sent a warship — the Panther — to Agadir “to protect the important German interests in the territory in question.’ As Germany’s commercial interests at Agadir were very slight, this declaration evidently meant to raise once more the whole Moroccan issue. France unsupported by England would have been unable, perhaps, to resist Germany’s new move and would have ae been forced either to abandon the plan to con- British lion vert Morocco into a French protectorate or else pees (ue to allow Germany a generous share of Morocco for herself. But the British were as reluctant as the French to see a German colony in Morocco, near Gibral- tar and the entrance to the Mediterranean. Besides, they believed that Germany’s action at Agadir meant more than a blow at France’s colonial policy, that it was an attempt to separate France and Britain and to prove that the entente cordiale could not survive a German threat. In order that there might be no misunderstanding of the British position in the matter, Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, warned Germany in a public address that:THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 255 If a situation were to be forced upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of heroism and achieve- ment — by allowing Britain to be treated, where her interests are vitally affected, as if she were of no account in the cabinet of na- tions — then I say emphatically that peace at that price would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to endure. These words were all the more impressive from the fact that Lloyd George was the most prominent anti-militarist in the cabinet, a lover of peace and an advocate of a good under- standing with Germany. The German Government had found out what it wanted most to learn, whether or not the entente would really bring Great Britain to the side of France in time of eh danger. French and German diplomats now followed the tried to reach a direct agreement, while England, eed having spoken, stood aside. On November 4, IQII, negotiations were concluded. France at last ob- tained what she had desired for many years, a pro- tectorate over Morocco, save for a strip of coastland re- served to Spain. Germany was compensated by a large part of the French Congo. Officially the German Govern- ment declared itself satisfied with the settlement, but at heart it felt that Germany had suffered a defeat and had lost prestige in the councils of Europe. Public opinion in Germany was very bitter and threats of war were openly spoken. It is not impossible that war might have come during the Morocco negotiations had not the fear of war caused a financial panic in Germany and also roused the labor and socialist elements alike in France and Germany to protest against a European conflict on a colonial issue. The British Government realized that the end of the Morocco crisis had left Germany in a very dangerous temper. It wished to avert war, and to that The end was willing to concede the German demand_ Haldane for a “place in the sun”’ (a share of colonial em- ™**"°" pire) where it could be granted without peril to the strategic points of the British Empire; also to give assurances thatf 256 ~ TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the Triple Entente did not intend to take the offensive against the German Empire. The British Government. commissioned Lord Haldane, who was a statesman of ripe experience and a lover of German life and culture, to re- assure the German Government as to the course of British policy. The German Chancellor requested him to pledge the unconditional neutrality of Great Britain in the event that Germany was ‘‘forced to go to war.” The British cabinet refused to accept this formula, but proposed in- stead a pledge that ‘‘Aggression upon Germany forms no part of any treaty, understanding, or combination to which England is now a party, nor will she become a party to any- thing which has such an object.’’ In other words, England would desert France and Russia if they attacked Germany, but would not pledge herself to remain neutral if Germany attacked them. Germany would not accept the British pledge, though it is difficult to see what more could reason- ably have been demanded. The natural result of the failure of the Haldane negotiations was to make the British Gov- ernment fear that Germany was contemplating an offensive War. Colonial negotiations were carried on with greater success, thanks very largely to the tact and friendliness of Prince The Lichnowsky, German Ambassador to Great coonia at britain. As far back as 1898 there had been a in Africa secret agreement between Germany and Great and Asia Vice coer . Britain for the division of the Portuguese colo- nies between the two Powers in case they ever came upon the market. This was thought a very possible case, since Portugal was a weak, poor, and backward nation totally unable to develop the resources of her vast African empire. This treaty was now revised to give Germany a much larger share: a great part of Angola, northern Mozambique, and the islands of San Thomé and Principe. The Bagdad Railway question,? which had caused more bad feeling be- tween Germany and England than anything else except naval rivalry, was also finally settled to the satisfaction of 1 See pp. 223-26.THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 257 both parties. Germany was allowed to extend the Bagdad Railway as far as Basra and granted important commercial concessions which almost transformed Mesopotamia into a German sphere of interest. The British retained their in- fluence on the shores of the Persian Gulf, thus preventing the Germans from threatening India from their new point of vantage. Both the African and the Turkish agreements were, of course, soon invalidated by the Great War. There is abundant evidence that in the early months of 1914 relations between England and Germany were better than they had been for the past ten years. _ : - Lhe danger England was still alarmed over the growth of cent the German fleet and distrustful of German ™0ves from he Nortl intentions towards France and Belgium. Ger- Sea to the many was still irritated over the Moroccan settle- et ne ment. But at least the two Powers had reached 4 oe agreement on the chief issues on which they aie t In February, 1914, Secretary for Foreign Affairs told the Reichstag that Anglo- were directly divided. he German German relations were ‘‘vecht gut’’ (very good). The Brit- ish cabinet was also optimistic. The storm center was no longer in Africa or Mesopotamia, but in the Balkans, where the Powers chiefly interested were not Germany and Great Britain, but Russia and Austria-Hungary. But all this afforded no security for peace, since Germany had made Austria-Hungary’s cause her own, and Great Britain and France were convinced that behind Germany’s support of the Austrian policy lay ambitions that extended far beyond the Balkans and menaced the peace of all Europe if not of the whole world. The succession of diplomatic crises which had created the opposing alliances of the Powers continued to influence European politics and caused the existing al- “Tighten- liances to be made more specific and to assume _ ing” the a more aggressive character. France and Rus- ae sia worked out in some detail military and naval conven- tions. Italy, the disaffected member of the Triple Alliance, was promised more active support for her colonial policy.258 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Thus diplomatic agreements, in origin wholly defensive and perhaps to the very verge of war defensive in intention, came to bristle with armament and threat of war. Coincident with the rivalry of alliances and coalitions which engaged the attention of the Foreign Offices of -the The European Powers was an equally eager compe- armament tition among the War Offices and the Admi- ag ralties. Nearly every European nation had adopted in some form the Prussian principle of universal military training in time of peace. Great Britain alone of the greater Powers continued to rely on volunteer enlist- ment, and in spite of the fact that the British Isles were protected by the greatest navy in the world there was active agitation in British military circles for compulsory training. During 1912 and 1913 important increases were made in the military establishments of Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Germany. The German Army Bill of 1913 added 60,000 additional recruits to the men summoned each year for training; France, almost simultaneously, re- stored the three-year term of compulsory military service, which had been reduced since 1905 to only two years.’ The armed peace had become almost as costly as war. Naval rivalry was keenest between Great Britain and Germany. The Russian navy had been badly shattered Naval in the war with Japan and had never recovered BN aITY, its former relative position. The United States and Japan had powerful fleets, but they were not expected to act in European waters. The French gave up the at- tempt to rival Germany in the North Sea and concentrated their fleet in the Mediterranean, where they had no effec- * Count Max Montgelas, in The Case for the Central Powers, pp. 105-06, con- cedes that “There is no certain proof that this [three-year term] had been de- cided upon before the terms of the German Army Bill were known in Paris,” but he points out that both measures had been for some time at least under con- templation. He estimates the peace establishment of the continental Powers in I9I4 as: Russia, 1,445,000; France, 794,000; Germany, 761,000; Austria-Hungary, 478,000; Italy, 273,000. But the Russian army, though the largest in the world, was rendered partly ineffective by inadequate railroad equipment which hampered mobilization.THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 259 tive rival except Italy. Until the German navy became a menace, it had been the British custom to scatter their ships all over the world in order to defend every distant colony and maintain British prestige wherever British traders went. ended under the vigorous administration of Admiral Fisher, This easy-going policing of the seas was one of the most picturesque old sea-dogs who ever directed a navy. modern equipment, withdrew warships from distant out- He ruthlessly scrapped obsolete ships, introduced posts and concentrated the great bulk of the British navy in the North Sea ready for an instant blow at Germany. It was no use pretending any longer, with Germany and Great Britain filling their home waters with ever larger fleets within striking distance of each other, that these fleets were built for the world at large and without special refer- ence to an expected Anglo-German war. As one British imperialist ironically said: ‘‘Our power is concentrated, watching our dearest friends, those Germans who have no intention whatever of coming near England!”’ In 1906 the British launched the Dreadnought, the first large warship fitted with turbine engines and ten twelve- Never was a vessel more ironically The Dread- nought era inch guns. named, for the launching of this warship pre- cipitated the greatest naval panic in history. It so greatly outclassed all previous types of battleship as to render al- most obsolete the existing British capital ships. The Ger- mans saw their chance and accelerated their building pro- gram. They had the great advantage over the British in building their navy ‘‘right’’ on modern lines from the very start; they were not encumbered like their rivals by having a vast amount of capital sunk in old-fashioned boats. If they could lay down ships of the new type faster than Great Britain, they would have command of the seas in spite of the British superiority in total tonnage. In 1908 Germany was alleged to be building new warships more rapidly than Great Britain. The British public took alarm and a wide- spread agitation was started for eight new Dreadnoughts (“We want eight, and we won’t wait!’’ was the campaign260 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE slogan). From 1909 on the British Government built ships more rapidly than Germany, resolved to meet any cost rather than the cost of unpreparedness at sea. The naval race was, however, most distasteful to the British taxpayer and the British Government repeatedly The besought Germany to agree to a ‘‘naval holiday,”’ 3ritish either in the form of a total cessation of new propose a : : “naval construction for a period of years or an agree- holiday ment based on a fixed ratio of capital ships be- tween the two Powers. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the British Prime Minister, invited Germany to discuss the limitation of naval armament, but Chancellor von Biilow returned a refusal. In 1908 King Edward VII asked the German Kaiser to end the naval rivalry which was costing both nations so dearly; the Kaiser would not even consider the matter. New British proposals were answered con- temptuously by Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg in 1911 with the remark that ‘‘any one who seriously considers the question of universal disarmament must inevitably come to the conclusion that it is insoluble so long as men are men and States are States.’’ Lord Haldane in his negotiations raised the question of limitation of navies, but without result. Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Minister, and Winston Churchill, at the head of the Admiralty, made still further efforts to reach a basis of understanding with Ger- many, but the most that they could effect was a working agreement that for the present Germany would not exceed a ratio of ten capital ships to sixteen of the British. An even more sinister omen of threatened war than either diplomatic alliances or the race of armaments was the at- Bresarett titude of public opinion in the chief European ness countries. The literature on the Great War propaganda ° : ; . before 1t happened includes many hundreds of books and thousands of articles. The German invasion of * The curious reader will find very accurate predictions of such developments as trench warfare and military aviation in The Last Shot, by Frederick Palmer, and Anticipations and The War in the Air, by H. G. Wells. Early in 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in an article “ Danger!”’ thinly disguised as fiction, pre- dicted submarine attacks on merchantmen as deciding a war against England.THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 261 Belgium, for example, was not only a matter of discussion for the military experts of France and Britain, but was openly canvassed in the public press. In 1906, eight years before the war, an article in the Fortnightly Review * declared that: The British Government cannot ignore the probability, verging on absolute certainty, that apart from any inducement on general grounds for it to combine with France, the next Franco-German struggle will commence with an act of violation at the expense of Belgian neutrality that will render it compulsory for us to inter- vene for the defense of Belgium. More ominous than the literature of preparedness was the actual glorification of war by a certain type of political Very seldom did the militarists Modern philosopher. militarism contend that war was good in itself, but very frequently that every nation must be either “hammer or anvil’? and that a people who had ceased to conquer were already decadent. The popular enthusiasm for nationality was blended with the legal doctrine that independent States are sovereign and have no superior, with Machiavelli’s principle that the moral law applies only to private and not to public life, and with biological teachings of the ‘‘survival of the fittest”’ in the ‘‘struggle for existence.”” These doc- trines received their most systematic exposi- yo con- tion in Germany and may therefore best be fined to . . : f Germany studied with reference to that country. But the ; same doctrines, more sketchily expressed, can be found in A series of imaginary invasions of England by Germany began in 1871 with The Battle of Dorking, and a rather inferior drama on this theme, An English- man’s Home, played a really important part in the naval panic of 1909. The French and German predictions of war were even more frequent than the English. Sometimes they took the form of essays on foreign policy, such as General Bernhardi’s notorious book Germany and the Next War (1911); some- times they were in the form of fiction, such as Frankreich's Ende, Le Partage de l’Allemagne, and many others. The number of technical books on military affairs and the science of strategy bought by the French and German civilian public in the years immediately preceding the Great War was really extra- ordinary. Men who had served their term in the army in time of peace, and feared to be soon called to the colors in time of war, felt a personal interest in the dry details of military science. t Fortnightly Review, August I, 1906. More detailed studies were printed in the same periodical in February, 1910, and February, 1914.262 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the literature of every country. Von Moltke’s famous Saying that peace was not even a beautiful dream finds exact parallel in the remark of the Englishman Cramb that “In the light of History, universal peace appears less as a dream than as a nightmare.’’* England’s sole superiority in the matter was that few Englishmen took such teachings seriously. In France chauvinistic journalists, especially those attached to the fading cause of monarchy, advocated a war to regain Alsace-Lorraine. In Russia imperialism took the form of Pan-Slavism, interpreted by some to mean merely that Russia should be the friendly “big brother” to all Slavic peoples, but others insisted that the Slavic parts of Austria-Hungary and the Balkans, with Con- stantinople and the Straits for good measure, must all come under Russian dominion. Of the greater Powers of Europe, Germany was the least content with her position in the world. The great and German growing population and trade of Germany, her peecusist new fleet and merchant marine, her potential military strength contrasted too markedly with the narrow confines of Germany-in-Europe and Germany overseas. The annexation of Kiao-chau from China, the attempt to keep France out of Morocco, the establishment of German influence in Turkey, the negotiations with Great Britain over the Portuguese colonies, and the effort to win from the British the dominion of the seas were so many attempts to make up for lost time in the colonial field. Grandiose am- bitions were much encouraged by the propaganda of the Pan-German League (Alldeutscher Verband), the Defense Association (Wehrverein), and numerous other patriotic societies, and were echoed in army circles and to a certain extent in the universities. That Germany must expand was agreed on all hands. Where? Opinion on this point was hopelessly divided. Perhaps we may recognize five types of German imperialism in the twentieth century.” z J. A. Cramb, The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain (written 1900, re- published 1915), p. 154. * A good discussion of the various schools of imperialism may be found in Edwyn Bevan’s The Method in the Madness (1917), one of the better-balanced “‘war books,”THE LAST STAND OF PEACE 263 One school of expansionists desired above all overseas colonies, particularly in Africa. “A German India in Dr. Solf, Colo- 1. Colonial- Africa’’ expresses their ideal. ists nial Minister, and Professor Delbriick of Berlin, were leaders of the colonialists. Another, and frequently more belligerent, group objected to the colonial plan on the ground that while England held the seas no German colonial empire would be secure. Their program was de- struction of the British fleet and annexation of II. High the Channel ports of Holland, France, and Bel- %. nan connection. Like no other war in history, the behind the Great War was a conflict of machines, of in- °”" genious mechanisms on land, on sea, below the waves and above the clouds. Such mechanisms were indispensable to victory against a foe similarly equipped, and yet, by themselves, they did not suffice. Nothing is stranger than the way the old survived in the midst of the new. Aircraft could dominate a country from above, submarines could threaten it with starvation, artillery could blast a way to victory, but the infantryman lost nothing of his former im- portance. He alone could occupy and police the land which the new war machines had opened to him. Behind the shell barrage and the cloud of poison gas came the man with the bayonet to destroy in hand-to-hand conflict the last resistance of the enemy. Old-fashioned devices, such as the steel helmet and the hand grenade, long obsolete in war, again came into practical use. Earthwork entrench- ments protected with barbed-wire entanglements proved more valuable means of defense than the elaborate Brial- mont fortresses of concrete and steel which lined the French frontier. Man power remained one of the cardinal factors of war. The demands of the new warfare on the man behind the gun were greater than at any time in the past. Owing in part to the vast size of the armies engaged and Continuous the speed with which railroad and automobile battle could spread them over a whole countryside, and in part to the deadlock of trench warfare which soon replaced open battles in the field, the armies of the Entente Allies and of the Central Powers were in constant touch from the first to the last day of the war. In all former wars battles were isolated incidents in a long campaign. Two armies would296 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE go out to seek each other. They would spend weeks, per- haps months, in slow stratezic movements and at last meet on some limited plot of open country, the “battle-field.” Within a few hours the battle would be over and a defeated army fly in wild rout from the pursuing victors. But the Great War was one unbroken battle. For the sake of convenience it may be divided into campaigns and opera- tions, but even on the quietest sectors of the line (where the daily dispatches chronicled " nothing to report”’) there was always more or less fighting and a slowly growing casualty list. In an active sector the strain of battle might be main- tained for weeks without intermission. “Waterloo?” said one British soldier. ‘We are fighting five Waterloos a week.” Since human nature cannot endure incessant labor and nervous tension, it soon became the custom to shift troops frequently from the front trenches to reserve en- campments behind the line or to quieter sectors of the front, replacing them with fresh and rested men. But even with this relief the soldier’s physical endurance and moral cour- age were tested as never before. In one respect, at least, science wrought an important alleviation of the soldier’s lot. In the wars of the nine- Medical teenth century, even down to the American cam- BROSFESS paign in Cuba, disease usually claimed many victims for every death on the battle-field. The Japanese in their war with Russia were the first to show, on a con- siderable scale, that even under the hard conditions of an active campaign an army could be kept in normal health. In the Great War all the principal belligerents took such careful hygienic precautions as to keep the sick-list down to a quite manageable basis, Except for a typhus outbreak in Serbia and the great influenza scourge of 1918, which affected civilians equally with soldiers, the Great War did not result in any widespread epidemic. Such familiar campaign scourges as typhoid, cholera, tetanus, and gan- grene almost disappeared. There was marked improvement in the treatment of wounds, both in the emergency ‘first aid”’ at the front and the subsequent treatment in the baseTHE GREATEST WAR 297 hospital. Of those who lived to reach the hospital at all, the great majority recovered health sufficiently to enter active service again or to be usefully employed behind the lines. German physicians, for instance, claimed that about nine tenths of their hospital cases were discharged cured and less than two per cent died. Not all the possibilities of twentieth-century warfare were at once apparent. The Germans had cut short nego- tiations expecting to overwhelm France before .. . ; “ee ; i he first Russia could complete her mobilization. The phase: the war of improved methods of transportation which had “* movement so greatly increased the rapidity of military movements seemed for that reason to point to a very brief war. In Bismarck’s time Prussia had defeated Denmark, Austria, and France in a few decisive battles; and subse- quent conflicts, such as the American victory over Spain, the Japanese triumph over Russia, and the two Balkan Wars, seemed to confirm the current military theory that under modern conditions there would be no wearisome al- ternations between victory and defeat, but that one bellic- erent would from the very first win and hold a decisive superiority. The Entente Allies inclined to the same opin- ion. At first they sent to the trenches men who had later to be recalled for expert service in munitions factories. When Lord Kitchener, the British War Minister, warned England to expect a three years’ war he was commonly considered a pessimist. The first phase of the war, the rush of the German army from the Belgian frontier to the outskirts of Paris, was indeed as rapid and eventful a cam- paign as Europe had ever known. It held a false promise of open battles and an early decision. Who could have foretold the four years of trench warfare that were to intervene between the German offensive in the autumn of 1914 and the victorious advance of the Entente Allies? The German army advanced along the whole line from Switzerland to the Dutch frontier. In eastern France it made slow progress because of the hilly country and finally298 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE came to a halt before the line of great French fortresses guarding the valley of the Meuse — Verdun, The battle- [7 aa Fee Toul, Epinal, and Belfort. In southern Alsace Bee the Germans repulsed a French offensive which aimed to recapture the “‘lost provinces,’’ Alsace and Lorraine. Throughout the war the French held a little corner of Alsace, but they could make no further progress at this point. Forces sufficient for extensive attacks in the Vosges Mountains could not be spared from the ampler battle-fields of northern France and Belgium. The great bulk of the German army marched on France by way of the level plains of northern Belgium. At Liége, The the border fortress on the German frontier, the Belgian Belgians held back the German advance for "awe athree days (August 4th to 7th). Here the new German siege guns had their first test. A few heavy shells dropped almost vertically on the fortress turrets crushed them like eggs under a hammer. The little Belgian army was swept back towards the French frontier. The French abandoned a series of incomplete counter-offensives along the Franco-German frontier to send aid to hard-pressed Belgium. By August 20th the British succeeded in taking the initiative with their recently landed expeditionary force under Field Marshal Sir John French. On the same day the Germans entered the Belgian capital of Brussels. Two days later they captured the fortress city of Namur. The combined British-French-Belgian army, outnumbered by the German army of invasion, held the field from August 20th to 24th and then began a retreat along the entire front which extended from Mons to Verdun. Now the zone of battle shifted from Belgium to northern France. The Belgians still held a part of Flanders from ae Antwerp to the coast, but the main French and German British armies had fallen back to French soil. General Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, decided not to risk a battle until the entire available forces of the Allied armies in the west could be effectively coérdinated and placed on an advantageous advance on Parishi ¥ i THE GREATEST WAR 299 HY it} i } battle-ground. To risk a premature counter-offensive, an jj while the French and British divisions were still scattered ea ! and disorganized by the rapid German advance, might lead . to irretrievable disaster. The little British contingent on i ] the extreme left of the French line was in particular danger : of being overwhelmed by the German advance or out- | flanked by a westward extension of the German line. General von Kluck, commanding the German right, hurled i | his wearied troops against the British in daily battle during | the long retreat from Mons, giving and receiving terrific ae losses. The French fortresses on the Belgian frontier ii proved as impotent to delay the German advance as had Wee the Belzian defenses themselves. Paris was in imminent i; danger. The French Government transferred some of its Tha) essential administrative offices to the distant city of Bor- Ih deaux as a precaution against the possible loss of the capital. 1 But General Joffre was retreating not to avoid the in- evitable battle, but hoping to find a better time and place ! for it. He was resolved to make his stand be- 7. 4.54 fore Paris because France could not afford the before aris loss of the capital. The capture of Paris would mean to Germany a trophy of victory which could not fail | : to have the profoundest effect on public opinion in every | belligerent and neutral country; it would also mean the . control of the most important center of French industry and railway transportation. By September the German iit right already threatened Paris, while farther east the French Ha line had been driven south to the valley of the Marne, bend- ing in a sharp concave between Paris and Verdun. Herea . stand must be made, or many other departments must be \ abandoned to the invader. On September 6th began the battle of the Marne. Von Kluck had abandoned the direct march on Paris to swing . his army east and south and to break the French 74. pattle line. The German commanders believed that of the their first task was to crush the main French patie bor army by a battle in the open field; then Paris would lie at . their mercy. But this change in the direction of the Ger-300 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE man attack gave the French and British an opportunity for a counter-attack on the weakened right of the German line. The Germans had underestimated the capacity for offensive action of the exhausted British regiments and the hastily reorganized French forces. But when the Allies threatened to turn the German line on the west by vigorous attacks in the neighborhood of Paris (the battle was so near the city that the military governor of Paris commandeered a thou- sand taxicabs to carry troops from Paris to the front!), von Kluck realized his blunder and withdrew his troops to the north. The Germans saved themselves from being out- flanked, but at the cost of weakening the center of their line. General Foch detected a gap in the German line where only a thin covering of troops held the marshes of Saint Gond. By a sudden thrust at this point he compelled the enemy to mend their error by a rapid retreat. The Germans had made their supreme effort, and the Allied line held firm from Paris to Verdun, as well as from Verdun to Switzer- land. The battle of the Marne did not satisfy the hopes of either side for a conclusive victory of the Waterloo type, but it saved Paris, it saved the forts of eastern France, it permitted the Allies to recapture the offensive, and it shat- tered to pieces the whole war plan of the German Gen- eral Staff. The main German army fell back on prepared entrench- ments along the river Aisne after failing to break the French The race position on the Marne. But to the north and Pee am amwest. there was-a great extension and consolida- tion of the German line. The campaign in northern France had left the situation in Belgium a little uncertain; the fate of Antwerp and the Flemish coast towns still hung in the balance. The British, French, and Belgians tried to extend their lines through central Belgium, thus saving the sea- coast and the resources of western Flanders. The Germans tried to occupy the whole of Belgium and the coastline of northeastern France. Neither side was wholly successful in its strategic aim. Antwerp was isolated and besieged and the Germans reached the sea at Zeebrugge and Ostend.THE GREATEST WAR " 301 But the Allies were in time to save a corner of Flemish ter- ritory around Ypres and to insert a permanent barrier of entrenchments between the German army and the French ports of Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. This meant that the British could continue to send reénforcements across the English Channel by the shortest route from England to the battle-line. Had the Germans captured the Channel ports it would have been very difficult for the British to take an important part in the war by land. The city of Antwerp, an important commercial center on the river Scheldt and one of the most strongly fortified cities in Europe, remained a thorn in the side of The siege of the German army of occupation in Belgium. “"twerP The Germans attacked it during the last week of Septem- ber, battered down its fortresses with siege artillery, and by October 9th compelled the final evacuation of the garrison. The British and French could spare only a small force for the relief of the doomed city, and this relief expedition was compelled to join the Belzian retreat. A few British marines were driven beyond the Dutch frontier and there interned for the rest of the war. The German army was now the de facto Government of 3elgium, save for the western tip of Flanders where the British and Belgian armies lay entrenched. In |_| northern France the German lines enclosed a Geran rough triangle of land bounded by the Belgian Bopp the frontier and by trenches running west along the Aisne from Verdun to the valley of the Somme, and thence north to Belgium. Less than a twentieth part of France was occupied by the enemy, but within this area were the principal iron and coal mines of the country and four fifths of the iron and steel manufacture. Many industrial towns lay in the invaded district, including Lille, the fifth largest city in France. The loss of her chief industrial region greatly crippled France and forced her to rely in part on munitions supplied by Great Britain or bought in the neutral market of the United States. During the next four years Germany’s possession of Belgium, Luxemburg, and ne eetf 302 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE northeastern France proved of immense value to her con- duct of the war on every front. The coal and iron mines supplemented the resources of Germany, and the factories were transformed into German munitions works or were stripped of their machinery for use in German factories along the Rhine. Even the crops and cattle were requisi- tioned for German use while their owners starved or lived on foreign charity. The policy of the German army of occupation in France and Belgium was to make the task of policing.easy by crush- The reise ing the spirit of resistance from the first. It had of terror in long been an accepted military principle that a em private citizen fighting as a franc tireur (that is, unattached to any regular army) was liable to military execution. But the Germans extended this principle from individuals to communities. They madea practice of hold- ing as hostages the chief men in each town, such as the mayor or the village priest, and executing them in case German soldiers were attacked by any townsman. This practice of hostage-taking had been widely employed in ancient warfare and by barbarous nations, but was termed “obsolete” by writers on international law in the nineteenth century. Sometimes a town ora whole section of a city was laid in ruins as a warning to others. The most famous instance of this was the burning of a section of Louvain from which the fire spread to the library and university, on August 26, 1914. Another harsh practice was the levying of extortionate fines on conquered cities under threat of im- mediate destruction. The many sporadic and individual cases of cruelty reported at the time of the invasion of Belgium signify less in the long run than these deliberate policies adopted by the highest military officials and sanc- tioned by the German civil Government. Belgium bore up with remarkable courage against the Incidents Tule of the conqueror. Cardinal Mercier, one of German of the chief Roman Catholic dignitaries of the Kingdom, protested boldly against each new in- fraction of national liberty. Under the very eye of theKarlsruhe if qDinant oMalines Cy, pre eee harle~ « ’ ° se a so - ZC ubeuge e eziere hent Termonde Mons ow a *A"* oBruges B ws ’Courtrai JAtmentieres x Chateau-Thierry e es, ao . ennes Fismes tteréets 4, \ | 9 AR ville WV alencier Montmirail EN Pouai \ “A Villers- ten7 brny “TA 2] Ii { gney ° tk < ) Os leup Dix pate YRCSq Lys ou 1e ° Senlis Dunkirk | St er ie ZA bbevill Sp, Nie aes o e m Ta Montdi Cor FRONT 1918 | Calais 9 Boulo, et 0 Scale of Miles 30 Dover ((f 20 10 0 WESTERN womens § Farthest German Advance Sept. 8,1914 — a — Line of July1,1916 atts German Offensive March to July 1918 -e-e-e-e Line of Nov. 11, a = z ec % ° § E = Leong. East 4°304 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE German censorship a group of Belgian patriots printed and distributed a revolutionary newspaper, La libre Belgique. The Belgian civil officials withstood so far as possible the illegalities of the German civil or military officials whom the fortune of war placed over them. Some of Belgium’s new despots advocated the permanent annexation of Belgium to the German Empire and compelled thousands of Belgians to emigrate to Germany and labor in German factories under penalty of imprisonment for willful idleness. This revival of slavery in modern times provoked world-wide protest, and the United States formally warned the German Government that such a policy would be “‘in all probability fatal to Belgian relief work.’’ Similar deportations took place in northern France. During the Bissing régime the German civil governor, Baron von der Lancken, ordered the execution of an English nurse, Edith Cavell, for assist- ing British prisoners of war to escape. The execution was permitted by military law, but it deeply wounded the humane sentiment of neutral countries. One of the German policies in Belgium might have had important results if the general reign of terror had not so ae completely alienated the sympathy of all classes attempt to Of the population. This was to weaken Belgium Beam by separating the Flemings from the French- speaking Walloons and thus split the country into its two constituent races. The Flemings were close kin by race and language to the Dutch and North Germans and had old political feuds with the Walloons, but since the German yoke pressed heav ily upon Flanders as well as upon southern Belgium, very few Flemings took any active interest in the German pians for a ‘“‘free and independent”’ Flanders. After the Germans had fallen back to the Aisne and had ieee pushed through Flanders to the sea, the war of lock of the Movement ended in the west to be succeeded by western fs beset a new type oi combat, the war of the trenches. Along a front of some six hundred miles stretched two opposing lines of earthwork entrenchments, protectedTHE GREATEST WAR 305 at most points by barriers of barbed wire. At first the trenches were mere emergency shelters designed to con- serve man power while awaiting the expected renewal of open battle. But when the campaign of 1914 ended with- out giving either side a decisive victory, it became neces- sary to transform these temporary refuges into ample winter quarters for the fighting men of the front line. So the trenches were deepened and widened and provided with bomb-proof shelters, underground passages, and high para- pets with loopholes for rifle fire. In a well-constructed trench the soldier was as safe as in a good fortress. By heavy artillery fire, aérial bombardment, or the explosion of an underground mine, a section of earthwork entrench- ment might be destroyed and its garrison with it, but ordinary rifle and machine-gun fire had little effect, es- pecially after the soldiers were equipped with steel helmets and with periscopes for directing fire from shelter. Behind the front trenches were other lines of defense, so that, even if the enemy succeeded in capturing the entrenchments im- mediately opposed to them, they would be confronted by fresh barriers. Under such conditions, practically amount- ing to siege warfare, an advance of a few score yards or the capture of a strip of elevated ground fifty feet above the surrounding plain was heralded as a great victory and worth the cost of several thousand lives. . The entrenched front protecting Paris and central France ran through a hilly country of limestone rock. The freshly upturned earth was white with chalk, making ,,. edolity the outline of the trenches as distinct to the of trench enemy as if traced upon a blackboard by some “” giant hand. Farther to the north, protecting the Channel ports and sea-lines of communication between England and France, the trenches ran through the flat claylands of Flan- ders. Here the soldiers encountered the worst hardships of the war.t' Heavy rains in the chalklands were speedily ™‘*The author has visited the fighting fronts from the sand-dunes of the Belgian coast to the entrenched camp of Saloniki and observed during the con- flict the conditions under which men fought from the polders below sea-level to the glacier-clad heights of the Alps. He has no hesitation in saying that, of nantes Sane306 “TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE absorbed by the soil; in the Flemish claylands rain and melt- ing snow filled the trenches and turned the “‘no man’s land” between the opposing lines into a sea of mud. Often the trenches had to be built up from the ground by sand-bag arapets, because to dig below the surface was to create a I S ditch of standing water which could not easily be drained. In the spring of 1915 both the British and the Germans attempted to break the deadlock on the rain-soaked plains © The 1915 of Flanders. Both attempts failed. The British ea eWeLe inadequately supplied with high-explosive use of shells and relied too greatly on the shrapnel fire o1son gas . . _ pease of light artillery to protect their advance. The Germans in their attempt to capture the Belgian city of Ypres (Second Battle of Ypres, April 22d) introduced a novel weapon. They flooded the British trenches with clouds of chlorine gas which strangled and poisoned the unprepared defenders. The effect of this new means of warfare was great beyond expectation, and had the Ger- mans been prepared to drive home a vizorous assault im- mediately after the gas attack they might have broken the British line and altered the fate of the war. But the use of poison gas was still in the experimental stage (it had, in- deed, been specifically forbidden by a convention of inter- national law adopted at the first Hague Conference) and its possibilities were still unrealized. Later in the war va- rious types of poison gas were frequently used by both sides and protective masks were served out to all soldiers in the front trenches.* all the combatants, those who fought on the plain of Flanders endured the most terrible physical conditions.” (Major Douglas W. Johnson, Battlefields of the World War, p. 25.) In 1918 the United States manufactured the greatest supply of toxic gases ever prepared, and it is generally conceded by military opinion that had the war been carried into the following year Germany’s own weapon would have been turned against her with decisive effect. To quote from Colonel Walker, of the American Chemical Warfare Service: E Our idea was to have containers that would hold a ton of mustard gas carried over fortresses like Metz and Coblenz by plane, and released with a time fuse arranged for explosion several hundred feet above the forts. The mustard gas, being heavier than air, would then slowly settle while it also dispersed. A one-ton container could thus be made to account for perhaps an acre or more of territory, and not one living thing, not ev~n a rat, would live through it. The pl ines were made and successfully demonstrated, the containers were made, and we were turning out the mustard gas in requisite quantities in September [1918].All attempts by French, British, and Germans to reach a decision in the west failed during 1915 and 1916. Falken- hayn, the German Chief of Staff, staked and lost The his position and his military reputation on the Verdun siege of Verdun. Verdun was one of the great French frontier fortresses, a pivotal point on the entrenched front where the battle-line running north from the Swiss frontier swerved sharply to the west. At this point the German Crown Prince commanded in person. If Verdun were lost, the whole French line would have to be recon- structed on some less advantageous front than the heights guarding the Meuse River. The natural situation of Ver- dun is very strong and its capture from the lowlands of the Woevre plain very difficult, but this very fact made a Ger- man assault the more imperative, since Verdun in French hands would be a formidable ‘‘sally-port”’ for an offensive against Lorraine. The Germans relied on their siege guns to reduce the permanent forts as they had already crushed the forts of Antwerp and Liége. In February, 1916, the German army advanced from the north, reaching the out- lying fort of Douaumont before the initial advance was checked. Thereafter the assault smouldered down into stubborn, intensive siege warfare. To France the Verdun campaign was perhaps the most heroic campaign of the whole war, for it required more than a single valiant effort to attain victory; it was a continual test of endurance, last- ing for half a year without relaxation against heart-breaking odds. Many hilltops and villages changed hands a dozen times in attack and counter-attack until the whole crescent- shaped battle-ground north and east of Verdun was blasted to desert and naked rock. In all ages the French soldier has been famous for his reckless gallantry in attacking the foe, but here was a new type of French soldier who could endure as well as dare, fight as bravely on the defensive as in the enthusiasm of a charge, a soldier who expressed his inmost soul, not in any Napoleonic phrase about “ but in the quiet resolution, ‘‘They shall not pass!”’ In July the German offensive, which had already cost glory,” o wad < THE GREATEST WAR 307308 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE some 300,000 men, was practically abandoned. The small The strip of territory around Verdun which had fallen Somme to the Germans was of little value, but the cam- Ce meet paizn had at least served the purpose of post- poning any general offensive by the Entente Allies. In July the Enzlish and French started a joint advance along the course of the Somme River in northern France. The purpose of the attack was partly to relieve the German pres- sure on the exhausted defenders of Verdun, and partly to cooperate with the offensive campaigns undertaken at the same time by Russia and Italy.. The French selected as their objective the town of Péronne, the British forces im- mediately to the north the town of Bapaume. As with the German attack on Verdun, the relatively large gains of the first surprise attack were not maintained in the later phases of the battle. The Germans were well entrenched and pro- tected by elaborate mazes of barbed wire, and while the Allied troops succeeded in forcing back the German line to a depth of six or seven miles along a wide front they had not attained either Péronne or Bapaume. The campaign was noted for its frightful cost in human life to attackers and defenders alike. It is estimated that Germany lost from 600,000 to 700,000 men in the Somme campaign of 1916; Great Britain 450,000, and France well over 200,000. In September the British for the first time employed a land-battleship: or °‘‘tankee)) (Dhebtanikes wae simply an Significance @Mored automobile which gripped the ground gthed with “‘caterpillar’ endless belts instead of wheels and thus ran little risk of being upset or getting stuck in crossing rough ground. The caterpillar tractor had already played a part on American grain-fields and the British adapted the principle to the uses of war. To conceal the experiment until actual test on the field of battle had proved it a success, the word went out from the factories that the War Office was making ‘‘tanks’’; hence the inappropriate name, The great merit of the tank lay in the fact that it provided the only solution for the deadlock of trench warfare. Hitherto an offensive operation againstTHE GREATEST WAR 309 well-prepared entrenchments had been impossible without sufficient artillery preparation to demolish b tanglements and front-line trenches infantry to advance. arbed-wire en- and thus permit the A heavy artillery fire gave warning to the enemy that an attack was in prospect and destroyed the all-important element of surprise. But the sheer weight and power of the tank enabled it to crush down w ire fences, earthwork parapets, even stone walls, without any previ- ous artillery preparation. Like the German utilization of poison gas, the tank was a by i, of trench warfare and might never have been employed if the open field. In striking contrast to the immobility of the western front was the rapid series of victories won by the German armies in eastern Europe. By the end of 1916 Germany had repulsed the Russian invasion of wae ae a Austria-Hungary, overrun Russian Poland and i area a large part of Lithuania and the Ukraine, con- quered Montenegro and Serbia, occupied Albania and northern Greece, cemented an alliance with Bulgaria and Turkey, defeated Rumania, and halted the Italian advance on Trieste. The effect of these triumphs on public opinion in both neutral and belligerent countries was very great. Advocates of the German cause took as their maxim, “Look at the war map!”’ Military opinion was less impressed. So long as the Allied line held firm in France and the British fleet mastered the se as, no victories on any part of the east- ern front could end the war. But they could prolong the war, and unquestionably the failure of the Entente Allies to sustain_as vigorous a campaicn in eastern as in western Europe postponed the defeat of Germany for at least three years. he armies had kept to The first phase of the war in the east was to Russia’s ad- vantage. In order to overwhelm France as speedily as possible, ( selgium and 7 rermany stripped Russian her eastern provinces of soldiers, leaving only oretewart a weak defensive force to codperate with the ~ Austro-Hungarian army against the Russian advance.Re, 310 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE — Russia mobilized more quickly than had been thought possible, and during August, 1914, Russian armies under General Rennenkampf had invaded East Prussia and an- other force under General Brussilov had entered Galicia. The open Polish plain presented few obstacles to a rapid advance, although the transportation facilities of road and railroad were inferior to those enjoyed by the German in- vaders of the Belgian lowland. During the last week of August a large portion of the Russian army in East Prussia was entrapped and out- The battle flanked in the difficult, marshy region of the of Tannen- Mazurian Lakes, losing some 80,000 prisoners. pore This campaign, fought on the site of Poland’s greatest victory over the Germans five centuries earlier (1410), had the important effect of halting the only im- portant invasion of German territory * during the entire course of the war. General von Hindenburg, whose inti- mate knowledge of the topography of the region had made possible the German victory, was hailed with some justice as the man who saved the Empire. But the attempt to follow up the advantage gained at Tannenberg by a counter- invasion of Russian Lithuania was halted by the Russians, who took advantage of the marshes and forests of the Nie- men River as von Hindenburg had formerly taken advan- tage of the natural difficulties of southern East Prussia. Much more successful was the Russian invasion of Gal- icia. The Austro-Hungarian armies which confronted the The Russians were weaker in leadership, in discipline, pelican and in national morale than the German soldiers mpaign of von Hindenburg. Many Poles and Bohemian Czechs were in secret sympathy with the Russian cause and surrendered to the advancing foe at the earliest opportunity. Russia had the advantage in numbers and in position. Gal- icia lies northeast of the mountain wall of the Carpathians and was therefore the hardest part of all the variegated do- « The French held a small corner of Alsace and British and other Allied forces had seized the German colonies. But the German colonies were mere ‘ pos- meee nee . . : sessions ’’; they had no considerable German population.15° Long. East 20° from Greenwich 25° 30° | : zeae i, EASTERN FRONT | 0B Sesh oie me meme Furthest Russian advance 1915 A275) Mam Battle line Jan. 1918 | \ Scale of Miles 50 100 150 200 —S Grodno a Tamnenbe TEX ae NPresden 7 Te Breslau\, | 5 \ pre OSE eM ln | & | Odessa, Sal Na NM AS <~. A } \._ @Buchares, Ne ~ dv a Sy, zi a ~0 LYS Sa Sv" ‘\ \ | ( @ Sofia ee eR < ; Co (~~ A KT Ye? SOE R A: S ‘TI STEN, ie TSN ig { ) ) Bou i GA rk! A } LL SING oN Wa] \ ( a‘ iy | A \ ‘ SQ ASE! \ | \324a5\ l , >» (COE IE ioe ie SZaee w v WES312 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE mains of Austria-Hungary to defend. On the Russian side it lay open to invasion, defended only by a few forts and the tributaries of the Vistula and Dniester Rivers. In Sep- tember the Russians seized Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, and occupied also the province of Bukowina. They shut up a large Austrian garrison in the fortress of Przemysl and continued their advance on Cracow. General von Hindenburg in the meantime attempted to relieve the hard-pressed Austrians by a German offensive against War- saw the capital of Russian Poland. On March 22, 1915, Przemysl surrendered to the Russians with its garrison of 120,000 men. Much encouraged by this victory, the Rus- sians pushed their advantage farther and even seized some of the passes through the Carpathian Mountains from Galicia to the plains of Hungary. In April, 1915, the military prestige of Russia was at its highest point. Every- where sympathizers with the Allies looked forward with eager expectation to the fall of Cracow and the invasion of Hungary. The Russian position was not so strong as it seemed. Russia was backward in all the crafts and industries which ty hee supply the tools of modern war and her allies of Russia's | were too distant to make up for Russia’s de- Pe eee ficiencies, trom ler sown factories. Hostile Turkey held the entrance to the Black Sea, the German fleet dominated the Baltic, and the thin trickle of military supplies entering the country by way of Archangel and Vladivostok was wholly inadequate to meet the urgent needs of the hour... The Russian battle-front of nearly nine hundred miles was hard to hold and easy to break, especially since it rested on inadequate lines of communi- cation and supply. There was no lack of man power in Russia, but the heavy losses of the early months of the war had killed off many trained officers who could not easily be replaced. Tactless attempts to ‘‘Russify” Galicia had alienated the civil population of the battle-zone, who had at. t General Gourko testified that ‘batteries in action daily did not receive more than four shells per gun per day.”THE GREATEST WAR 313 first welcomed the Russians as liberators and champions of the Slavic cause. The friction of incompetence in all branches of the Russian bureaucracy was already slowing up the military machine. Though Russian soldiers had reached the passes of the Carpathians, the army was not yet ready to cross that formidable mountain barrier while an unbroken German army was still in the field. A combined Austro-German force, supplied with heavy artillery and ample munitions of war and directed by the genius of General von Mackensen, prepared for a crushing offensive in Galicia, hoping not only to drive back the Russian army, but to break it altogether. On May I, 1915, von Mackensen began the attack along the Dunajec River, just east of Cracow. The unexpectedly heavy blow broke the Russian line and com- 4. pattie pelled a rapid retreat to save the Russian army of the in Galicia from being surrounded and annihi- pale lated. In June, Przemysl and Lemberg were abandoned. By July the Teutonic armies held possession of all Galicia with the exception of a small strip of land in the extreme east. But worse was to follow. Having-lost Galicia, Rus- sia was compelled to abandon, Russian Poland, since this great territorial salient was in danger of being crushed be- tween a northern army based on East Prussia and a south- ern army from Galicia. By making skillful use of the Vis- tula and Narew Rivers, the Russians were able to delay the German advance in Poland until they could extricate their army from th¢é region of Warsaw. Von Hindenburg failed in the main purpose of his Polish campaign, the envelop- ment of the Russian army, but he succeeded in striking Russia a blow from which she never fully recovered and in conquering an eastern borderland (Russian Poland, Cour- land, Lithuania) half as large and one third as populous as the German Empire itself. For a time the war on the eastern front lapsed into the deadlock of the trenches. The battle-front from Courland to Bukowina was shorter and straighter than the original sinuous line following the broad salient of Russian Poland, —se nee ene: 314 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE hence Germany had the unusual advantage of being able to ae hold an advanced position with fewer men than Rican would have been required to protect the old eis of frontier. Yet Russia had still a surplus of man power to spend on breaking or driving back the German line. General Brussilov delayed his offensive until June, 1916, in order to accumulate an adequate re- serve of munitions to replace the heavy losses of the Polish retreat. The Russian armies won several brilliant initial successes and reconquered Bukowina and a large part of eastern Galicia. Italy, hard pressed by Austria-Hungary, felt the relief, and the Franco-British attack in the Somme valley in July compelled Germany to sustain a difficult de- fensive on two fronts. But the Russian effort was soon ex- hausted. It was a noteworthy achievement to drive back the Austro-German line from twenty to sixty miles along a front of two hundred and fifty miles, to capture over 350,000 prisoners, and to nullify all the German hopes of ending the war victoriously in 1916. Yet the main Russian objectives of Brest-Litovsk, Lemberg, and Halicz remained in hostile hands, and by the end of summer the Russian “‘steam-roller’’ halted and open warfare was once more abandoned for the continuous siege operations of the trenches. With the possible exception of the Armenians and other subjects of the Turk, no people in the Great War are more Poland, the © be pitied than the Poles. Their country poe of furnished a battle-ground for the,Germans and the Russians. When the Russians devastated Galicia, the burden of war fell, not on the German Austri- ans, but on the Poles; when German soldiers in turn occu- pied Russian Poland, the Polish provinces fell a vicarious sacrifice for Russia. That the Poles were drafted into the contending armies against their will was but the common fate of the subject races of eastern Europe; the peculiar hardship lay in the fact that Polish subjects of Prussia and of Austria were compelled to fight their own kinsmen of Russian Poland. The sympathies of the nation were asTHE GREATEST WAR 315 divided as its allegiance. In the first year of the war the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas promised to reunite the three “under the scepter of the Russian Tsar” as a nation “‘free in her religion and her language, fragments of Poland and autonomous.” This appeal rallied to the Entente Allies most of the Polish subjects of Russia and not a few in the other camp who had known and disliked German rule. But with Germany’s conquest of Poland came second thoughts. ‘ Autonomy “under the Tsar’’ was at best a poor substitute for independence even if the word of Russia’s rulers might be trusted. The Teutonic Powers in 1916 outbid Russia by promising an independent Poland in ‘‘intimate relations with Austria-Hungary and Germany.” It is true that this promise related only to Russian Poland; Galicia was to remain Austrian and Posen and West Prussia German. Hopes of national unity would be fatally injured by a Ger- man victory. But from the local standpoint of eastern Europe a German victory seemed much more probable than a triumph for the Allies; would it not be better to negotiate with a belligerent who could ‘‘deliver the goods’’? Moved by such considerations a group of Polish patriots, who were at heart not unfriendly to the Allied cause, or- ganized a Committee of National Defense and The placed in the field a national army under Sea General’ Pilsudski to coéperate with Germany create a and Austria against the common foe, Russia. Rota, But military exigencies prevented Germany State” from giving any real autonomy to the conquered provinces. ‘Intimate relations’’ with Germany seemed to threaten a German dynasty and dominant German influence in the new Polish State. Cut off from relief by the Allied blockade and reduced to famine by German requisitions of the na- tional food supply, the Poles seemed doomed to starvation whichever side might be ultimately victorious. The Rus- sian revolution of 1917 and the simultaneous entrance of the United States into the Great War ! worked a revolution in Polish sentiment and put an end to the German hope of 1 See Chapters XII and XIII.316 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE using Polish nationalism as a weapon for the conquest of eastern Europe. If Austria-Hungary played a less significant part in the Great War than Germany, this must be ascribed not only iat to the inferior population, industrial wealth, function of | Military organization, and national morale of the hea: in Dual Monarchy, but quite as much to the fact that, fighting a defensive battle on every part of the frontier, the Austrians had to rely on Germany to furnish the additional force needed for an offensive cam- paign. From the first week of the war an Austro-Hungarian force was kept busy by the Serbian campaign in the Dan- ube valley while the main army was fighting Russia beyond the Carpathians. In May, 1915, Italy joined the list of Austria’s foes, and from that time forward a very large part of the army was held immobilized on the short Italian frontier. Even before the intervention of Rumania in the following year, it was necessary also to keep a careful watch on this dangerous and uncertain neutral.’ The Italian armies operated along the mountain-walled Austrian frontier. Here the natural conditions of the war- The Alpine ZON€ were as different as possible from those campaign which characterized the level plains of Flanders of Italy ‘ and Poland. In the north (Trentino and the Tirolese Alps) a bewildering maze of foothills, divided by mountain valleys and passes, led step by step to the highest crest of the eastern Alps. Instead of trench warfare, the rocks formed natural defenses and the struggle became a series of machine-gun duels above the clouds for the pos- session of strategic hilltops. This infantry and artillery combat in three dimensions amid the eternal snows was un- questionably the most romantic and picturesque phase of the war, the joy of the military photographer, but it made impossible any rapid advance by either belligerent. Large armies could not be deployed to fullest advantage among the precipices. Austria, content to hold her own, had every * For the causes which led Italy and Rumania to enter the war see above, pp. 284-86.THE GREATEST WAR 317 natural advantage against Italy, which was bent on con- quering the ‘‘unredeemed provinces” beyond the frontier. To the east lay a somewhat more promising field of ac- tion. Along the Adriatic coast the mountains were lower, and the Italians directed their main effort to- The Isonzo ward Gorizia and Trieste, while keeping an ‘?™Paisn army in the Trentino not so much to conquer Tirol as to prevent an Austrian counter-offensive from the north. After heavy losses, the Italian armies crossed the Isonzo River, occupied Gorizia, and began the slow conquest of the hills which lay on the road to Trieste. But the natural de- fenses of the Isonzo front, though not so striking at first glance, were almost as strong as the Alpine ramparts of the north. The Isonzo River was commanded by batteries from the rocky plateaus to the east. Nearest the Adriatic lay the Carso plateau, a tableland of barren limestone honeycombed with tunnels, entrenchments, and machine- gun nests. Through this difficult country the Italian army never succeeded in penetrating until the final collapse of Austria at the close of the war. Italy had command of the Adriatic Sea and might have landed armies farther to the south, but the whole eastern shore of the Adriatic, though it holds several excellent harbors, has behind it an inhospita- ble highland guarding the Danubian plain as effectively {roma western invasion as the Carpathians guard it to the east and north. In May, 1916, an Austrian army of 400,000 gathered in Tirol for a blow at Italy which would not only drive the Italian army from the Trentino, but might out- The flank the army on the Isonzo. By June Austria spe te had reconquered nearly the whole of the high- northern land and threatened an advance on Vicenza and italy) tane the Venetian plains. At this crisis the hard-pressed Aus- trian armies in Galicia called for reénforcements against General Brussilov’s successful drive. The Austrians trans- ferred a sufficient number of soldiers to the Russian front to save Galicia, but at the heavy cost of abandoning their Italian campaign. General Cadorna saw that the im-318 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE mediate danger had passed and he resumed the offensive, reconquering some strategic heights in the Trentino and pushinz still farther his eastern battle-front on the Carso. Austria’s last independent effort in the west had failed. Until October, 1917, the Austro-Hungarian forces were content to remain on the defensive, and when in that month they made their supreme effort against Italy such success as was attained must be ascribed mainly to German aid. Germany was also summoned to aid in the conquest of Serbia. From August, 1914, till September, 1915, an in- Biieias decisive conflict was waged along the Danube intervention and its branches, the Save and the Drina. On egonis the whole the Serbians were able to repel the in- vaders and even to spare forces for raids into Bosnia and Slavonia. Austria, preoccupied with the much more significant conflicts with Russia and with Italy, post- poned the decisive reckoning with Serbia. In the autumn of 1915 a combined force of Germans and Austro-Hunga- rians under the gifted German officer, Field Marshal von Mackensen, prepared for the definitive occupation of Serbia. Just at this time Bulgaria determined to throw in her lot with the Central Powers. The diplomats of the Entente had been ‘‘caught napping’”’ by the politic King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. In vain they now tried to persuade Serbia and Greece to yield back part of their Macedonian conquests of the second Balkan War. Serbia would not promise enough, and Greece under the influence of King Constantine would offer nothing. On the other hand, the Central Powers held out the tempting offer of all Mace- donia and persuaded Turkey to surrender a small strip of territory giving Bulgaria control of a railroad route to the Aegean Sea. Greece proved as disappointing to the Entente Allies as Bulgaria. The defensive alliance between Greece and Greece a Serbia which grew out of the Balkan Wars still i a stood, and Prime Minister Venizelos was known to be ardently a friend of the Entente. But King Con- stantine, a brother-in-law of the German Kaiser, was soTHE GREATEST WAR 319 hostile to the idea of intervening in the war at that juncture that he removed Venizelos from office, appointed a neutral- ‘st cabinet and dissolved the Parliament. In defense of his policy Constantine claimed that the alliance with Serbia envisaged only a Balkan conflict and that Greece was in no case obliged to help Serbia against Austria-Hungary or Germany even if Bulgaria joined the war. With reluct- ance he consented to permit the Entente Allies to use the Greek port of Saloniki as a base of operations, but there was continuous friction between the Greek authorities and the small expeditionary force of the Allies under General Ser- rail. In 1916 Venizelos, believing that he had been il- legally dismissed from office and that the Entente cause had the support of the majority of the Greek people, raised the banner of revolution against Constantine artd advocated ‘mmediate war on Bulgaria, which had forcibly occupied a part of Greek Macedonia. ‘The English and French aided the revolution with a naval blockade and in June, 1917, took the drastic step of forcing Constantine to abdicate in favor of Prince Alexander. The failure of Greece to send the expected aid to Serbia and the delay of the western Allies in sending an adequate expeditionary force to Macedonia enabled the The Balkan Central Powers to make short work of Serbian campaign resistance. The Serbs were good fighters, trained in the bloody Balkan Wars of 1912-13, but they had suffered heavy losses in the early months of the war and were now outnumbered by the Austro-German army to the north and by the Bulgarian army to the east. The little Serbian army was, of course, overwhelmed and its shattered remnant compelled to retreat through the Albanian mcuntains. Montenegro yielded so easily that King Nicholas was sus- pected of a secret understanding with the Austrians. The relief expedition sent by the western Allies retreated into Greek territory and remained strongly entrenched but practically ineffective at Saloniki. Serbia, Montenegro, and part of neutral Albania came under the military ad- ministration of German, Austrian, and Bulgarian officers a (eae armen ee320 “TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE and so remained for the greater part of the war. The Italian foothold on the Albanian coast, the Anglo-French army at Saloniki, and the uncertain neutrality of Greece and Ru- mania alone prevented Germany’s conquest of the Balkan region from being complete. Of all the campaigns of the Great War the Rumanian campaign of 1916 was most decisively to the advantage of The the Central Powers. The Entente had built high Rumanian hopes on Rumanian intervention. The Central waver. — Powers were correspondingly alarmed. Ru- mania’s action led to the dismissal of Falkenhayn as Ger- man Chief of Staff and the appointment in his place of Marshal von Hindenburg, the leader who had so brilliantly conducted the campaign in Poland. The wooded heights of the Transylvanian Alps saved Hungary from being im- mediately overrun, but the Rumanians pressed through the mountain passes and occupied a large part of Transylvania before Germany could come to the aid of Austria-Hungary. But von Mackensen in the meantime had invaded the Dobrudja, a district of Rumania lying south and east of the Danube and hence protected by no natural barrier from a Bulgarian invasion. The Allied army at Saloniki was pinned down by enother Bulgarian army and thus pre- vented from advancing north to relieve the hostile pressure on Rumania. Falkenhayn, the former Chief of Staff, still in charge of the local campaign, now directed a counter-offensive in Ane Gai! Transylvania. During September and October, aue-Cole 1916, he freed Hungarian soil from the invader ~ and prepared for a descent on the Wallachian plains. Now that Rumania was forced to the defensive, the full disadvantage of her geographical position became ap- parent. The very long, crescent-shaped frontier towards Hungary had few defenses except the mountains them- selves, for the reason that during the long alliance between Austria-Hungary and Rumania the military force of the nation was mainly directed to strengthening the eastern frontier against Russia. With one hostile army advancingTHE GREATEST WAR 321 north from the Bulgarian frontier and another pouring southward through the mountain passes of Transylvania, the whole Rumanian army was caught as between the jaws of a trap. And now a crowning misfortune befell the Ru- manians. The military supplies, especially the artillery, which Russia had promised did not appear. No doubt Russia was hard put to it to supply the needs of her own army after the Galician offensive of 1916. Yet evidence has since transpired that many Russian officials were so hostile and jealous towards Rumania that they did all in their power to prevent aid from being sent to the little na- tion which had entered the war on ample assurance of Rus- sian support. At all events, the failure of Russia to come to the relief of Rumania, combined with inability of the Saloniki army to effect a diversion in Macedonia, disor- ganized the whole Rumanian plan of campaign. In order to save the army from being completely surrounded and cut off, the Rumanians abandoned the whole of Wallachia, after the mountain barrier was pierced by the Germans, with little attempt at resistance. In December, Bucharest, the cap!- tal. surrendered. By the end of the year all that was left of the Rumanian army was cooped up in the northern pro- vince of Moldavia, where behind the Sereth River and the Moldavian hills the Rumanians halted the German ad- vance and saved a small fraction of their country from foreign occupation. The main advantages of the Rumanian campaign for the Central Powers were economic. Rumania is a farming country, rich in grain, and wealthy also in pe- pe troleum. Food for hungry civilians in Berlin of the. and Vienna; fuel for motor lorries on the roads Rumen behind the trenches and submarines at sea — : these were the real fruits of the campaign. For the rest, Bulgaria and European Turkey were relieved of any peril threatening them from the north: the eastern battle-front was shortened; Rumania was practically eliminated as an active factor in the war, and the military prestige of the Entente was weakened throughout the Near East. As322 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE against such a sweeping victory the Entente could point only to the Serbian advance in Macedonia as far as Mon- astir. The decadent Ottoman Empire conserved still the old Turkish virtue of military valor and under German direc- petals. tion the Ottoman infantry was quite as good war advantages material as the average European conscript. Dap urkey: Yet the real value of Turkish allegiance to the and | Central Powers lay not in any mere increase of political ; : ; available man power, but in the doubly strategic location of the Ottoman State. From the point of view of material strategy the Power which controlled Turkey could so blockade the Dardanelles by land batteries and mines as to seal up the Black Sea and isolate Russia from the sea- routes of the Mediterranean. Without the Russian grain the western Allies would suffer, while without English man- ufactures and munitions of war Russia would be crip- pled. The Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire also provided a vantage-ground from which to attack, or at least to threaten, British power in both India and Egypt. Even more important was the ‘‘moral strategy”’ of the Sultan’s position in the Mohammedan world. Turkey was the only independent and relatively powerful Mohammedan nation, other Moslem realms being directly under foreign rule or indirectly subject to foreign influence, and the Turkish Sultan claimed the honor of the ‘Caliphate’? or primacy among all Mohammedans. At Germany’s bidding the Turkish Government proclaimed a holy war (jihad) against the Entente nations, with the hope of stirring up religious rebellions in Egypt, French North Africa, and the Mo- hammedan provinces of India. The most dreaded power at the disposal of Turkey, the power to summon all Mohammedans to a holy war, proved Turkey's to be of less importance than Germany had sholy Dark hoped or the Allies had feared. France had little comparatively little difficulty with her Moham- Siete medan subjects in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunis, and was even able to employ some Mohammedan regimentsTHE GREATEST WAR 323 on the western front. Italy was confronted by no general rebellion in Tripoli, Russia by none in Turkestan. Eng- land proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt and refused any longer to recognize Turkish suzerainty in Egypt or Cyprus. In northern India there were some faint stirrings of dis- content, but most of the native princes and peoples remained unshaken in their loyalty. Even in Turkey itself not all of the Mohammedan population responded enthusiastically to the call for a religious war. The Arabs, who occupied the southern parts of the Ottoman Empire, had many grievances against their Turkish rulers and tended to favor England as against the Sultan. Perhaps the religious sum- mons would have had more effect if the war had really been between Christendom and Islam rather than between rival groups of Christian Powers." While the political influence of Turkey crumbled before the test of battle, the material advantages of the nation’s geographical position remained and became 7, daily more important. The obvious course for Gallipoli the Allies was to seize Constantinople and the AP ese Straits, thus opening up a sea-route to the Black Sea ports of Russia. A victory here, at the most strategic point in the Near Eastern war-zone, would have brought Russia into the general plan of operations with her allies, and would have settled for the remainder of the war the mastery of the Balkans and of the whole Ottoman Empire. But the cam- paign against Constantinople, excellently conceived, was faultily executed. Russia, hard pressed in Poland, was in no position to lend direct aid. France hardly felt that she could spare troops from her threatened homeland. The main task fell to the British army and navy. The British had no way of estimating the strength of the Turkish shore defenses protecting the Dardanelles passageway, the nar- «The unresponsiveness of the ! {ohammedans in India and Africa to the jihad was one of Germany's greatest disappointments in the war. Mr. Morgenthau, the American Ambassador, reports the German Ambassador to Turkey as declaring: “‘ Turkey herself is not the really important matter. Her army is a small one and we do not expect it to do very much. .. . But the big thing is the Moslem world. If we can stir the Mohammedans up against the English and Russians, we can force them to make peace.”’324 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE row, winding strait through which all ships must pass from the A¢zean Sea to the little inner Sea of Marmora, and they hesitated between naval operations in the Dardanelles and military operations on the peninsula of Gallipoli on the European shore of the Straits. In February, 1915, a combined Franco-British naval expedition appeared at the entrance of the Dardanelles. It Turkshold included the new British “‘super-dreadnought”’ ae Queen Elizabeth and a large fleet of old- against the fashioned battleships supported by auxiliary Milled fleet craft. The forts at the mouth of the Dardanelles were easily silenced, but at the narrowest point of the straits the new fortifications inflicted terrible damage on the Allied warships. At one point of the narrows the channel which separates Europe from Asia was less than a mile wide and could be so thickly sown with mines as to halt the pro- gress of any fleet. In March the British military authori- ties concluded that the Dardanelles could not be forced until the land batteries on the Gallipoli peninsula had been captured. There are two opinions as to the wisdom of this decision. Ambassador Morgenthau has pointed out that the Turkish forts had practically exhausted their ammuni- tion when the Allies abandoned their advance through the Dardanelles. A rash and spirited dash into the Sea of Mar- mora, in accord with the heroic Nelson tradition, might have cost many ships and many lives, but would very possibly have won Constantinople and with Constantinople the war. On the other hand, some have urged that the Allies were justified in “‘ playing safe,” since they could not have known that the Turkish forts were short of armor-piercing shells and since in any case the floating mines might have wrecked the entire attacking fleet. During the last week of April a large force of British, tee Bure French colonial, and Australasian soldiers under cence the the command of Sir Ian Hamilton seized the campaign SOUthern tip and the western shoreline of the Gallipoli Peninsula. But the long delay in pre- paring the attack by land had given the Turks opportunityTHE GREATEST WAR 325 to protect their permanent fortifications by hillside entrench- ments. The Allies were compelled to resort to trench war- fare, a kind of trench warfare in which the Turks, holding the defensive and occupying all the higher ground, had every advantage. The Australasian or ‘‘Anzac’’ troops * particularly distinguished themselves by their courage in the face of superior numbers and every natural disadvan- tage, but their every assault was beaten back. After suffering over a hundred thousand casualties, the Allies de- cided to withdraw their forces from the Straits, the more so since the entrance of Bulgaria into the Great War enabled Germany to send direct aid to the Turks. In December, 1915, the British abandoned their positions on the penin- sula and early in the following month evacuated the last entrenchments. A similar disappointment awaited the British in Meso- potamia. The Persian Gulf and the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates held out a delusive promise 7. Meso- i so of an easy advance into the Ottoman Empire, potamia with British India as a military base. General sc wack Townshend advanced towards the Mesopotamian metrop- olis of Bagdad in 1915 with a combined force of British regulars and colonial troops from India. Under the direc- tion of the German General von der Goltz the small British force was halted and surrounded at Kut-el-Amara, where it endured a siege lasting from December, 1915, to the end of the following April. All the attempts of the British to send succor failed and the Turks took prisoner nearly three thousand British troops in addition to six thousand Indians. The material loss was small, but the injury to British pres- tige in the Near East was very great. The campaign against Turkey also had resulted in seem- ing failure. Russia was unable to spare a large force for the conquest of Armenia and Anatolia. In 1916, under the vigorous leadership of the Grand Duke Nicholas, the ation for the Australia and New Zealand “Anzac,” originally an abbrevi alasian forces and all that Army Corps, became a convenient term for the Austr pertained to them. For example, their landing-place on the Gallipoli penin- sula took the popular name of Anzac Cove.326 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Russian armies had taken the fortified city of Erzerum Ra's and occupied a large part of Armenia. But failure in the Turkish armies, directed by German officers Armenia é : E 1 and supplied with German guns and ammuni- tion, maintained a strong defensive until Russia had become so weakened by war and by internal discontent as to be no longer formidable either in Asia or Europe. Then the Turkish armies advanced, reconquering Armenia and even threatening Russian provinces south of the Caucasus. The Russian effort was further hampered by the collapse of the British campaigns in Mesopotamia and at the Dardanelles. Like the Belgians and the Poles, the Armenians suffered from their geographical position. Although the Armenians are widely distributed throughout the Ottoman Armenia: ; z : ‘ the Empire, there being a large Armenian colony in een a Constantinople itself, the national homeland lies in the eastern part of Asia Minor near the Russian frontier. The Turks felt, not perhaps without reason, that a people so long oppressed as the Armenians would aid the Russian invader rather than the Turkish Government. The pro-German chiefs of the Turkish ad- ministration, Talaat Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, and Enver Pasha, Minister of War, came to the terrible decision that the way to settle the Armenian ques- tion was to wipe out of existence the entire Armenian population. This decision was disguised as “deportation.” The Armenians were driven into the desert, some few were permitted to settle in distant parts of the Empire (for no massacre is ever quite complete), but the majority were suffered to die of famine or were butchered on the road. No census has ever been taken of the number of Armenians done to death in this way, but a German authority who afterwards investigated the massacre estimates that a mil- lion Armenians, half of them women and children, were killed by the Turks. If this estimate approximates the * Dr. Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien. See also: the Bryce Report on the Armenian atrocities; H. A. Gibbons, The Blackest Page of Modern History (1916); M. C. Gabrielian, Armenia, a Martyr Nation (1918). Dr. Lepsius has published documents signed by Talaat Pasha giving direct instructions for theTHE GREATEST WAR truth, the Armenian massacre of 1915 must be set down as the most extensive slaughter of non-combatants since the days of Timur and his Tatars. The Turkish massacres during the Great War were by no means limited to the Armenian population, as Greeks, Syrians, Jews, and even rebel Mohammedan Arabs suffered outrages which we now know to be not the mere fanaticism of individuals, but the deliberate purpose of Talaat Pasha and the chiefs of the Young Turk Party to make the Ottoman Empire a na- tional State by the annihilation of alien elements. The British command of the sea meant that Germany’s overseas colonies would inevitably be lost during the course of the war, even though they might be won back ©, man again around the conference table in the event losses in the of victory on European battle-fields. The Ba Ree cific colonies were first and most easily conquered. The for- tress of Kiao-chau surrendered to Japan after a few weeks’ siege in November, 1914, and the Japanese aided also in the occupation of many small German islands north of the equator. Australian forces occupied German New Guinea (Kaiser Wilhelmsland), and an expedition from New Zea- land seized German Samoa. The Japanese continued to govern their island conquests for the remainder of the war, and on similar principles the British entrusted to Australia the administration of Kaiser Wilhelmsland and the neigh- boring islands, and to New Zealand the administration of Samoa. The British colonies had become in their turn colonizing conquerors. In German Africa the contest was much more stubborn. In western Africa British and French colonial forces seized the German colonies of Togo and Kamerun. East Africa, however, did not finally surrender See until a general armistice closed the war. The CF Sees odds were heavily on the side of the Entente Allies, since British armies from the South African Union were supplemented by native troops from the Belgian massacre of refugees: “‘An end must be put to their existence ...and no re- gard must be paid to either age or to sex.”328 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Congo, the Portuguese colonies, and from British East Africa, Rhodesia, and even India. General von Lettow- Vorbeck, with 4000 white troops and at least 25,000 native Africans, had, however, a sufficient force to defend the vast territory of tropical jungle, arid grassland, rugged highland, and roadless wilderness which was entrusted to his charge, and even the military genius of General Smuts was able to accomplish only a very gradual occupation of Germany’s greatest colony. German Southwest Africa also presented a real military problem. The only considerable body of troops available The Boer for the conquest was the mixed British-Dutch rebellion army of the Union of South Africa. Some of the Dutch Boers were still unreconciled to British overlordship and saw in the war with Germany a prospect of regaining the national independence lost in the Boer War. General Botha, Prime Minister of the South African Union, and General Smuts, who later succeeded him in that post, held the Boer population as a whole loyal to the British Empire in that difficult hour, but they had forced upon them the double task of suppressing rebellion at home while carrying on a war of conquest against the neighboring Germany colony. With the surrender of De Wet and his fellow rebels the task of reducing German Southwest Africa was made easier and was complete by the summer of 1915. By the winter of 1916 both the Entente Allies and the Central Powers were completely disillusioned as to their mee early hopes of a short, decisive war. The ex- sheet of war haustion of a protracted struggle was already ae eee telling on the morale of both groups of combat- ants. The war in the west had apparently reached an unbreakable deadlock; the German assault on Verdun being an admitted failure and the Franco-British offensive on the Somme but a very partial success. Italy had neither conquered Austria nor been conquered by her. In Poland, in the Balkans, and in Turkey the Central Powers had won striking victories, but the British fleet still held the sea and the German colonies had become prize ofTHE GREATEST WAR war. The intervention of the United States, the collapse of the Russian Tsardom, the revival of unlimited submarine warfare against Allied and neutral merchantmen, were to inaugurate in 1917 a new phase of the war with many strategic and diplomatic developments which could not have been anticipated in 1916.PROT ET GHAPTER Xi THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. Wooprow WILSON THE entrance of Italy into the Great War in 1915 left neutral one only of the Great Powers: the United States of be America. Other neutral nations might be im- Ow Europe portant because of their geographical situation, eres as Switzerland or The Netherlands, or because of their possibilities as convenient sources of com- mercial products needed by the warring nations. Diplo- mats, consular agents, propagandists, and —~to be frank — spies, did not neglect even such distant countries as Siam or Liberia. But while the moral and material aid of any neu- tral might be valuable, the United States alone could fling into the balance the decisive weight of unparalleled in- dustrial power and great potential military strength. As the shrewder statesmen of Europe did not expect any early direct participation of the United States in the war, they aimed chiefly to gain such indirect aid as a sympathetic neutral might give, particularly to secure a continuous supply of the raw materials or manufactured goods required for the successful prosecution of the war; not only ‘‘muni- tions” in the limited sense of the term, but foodstuffs, cot- ton, copper, oils, and chemicals. The Entente Allies, hav- ing command of the seas, here enjoyed every advantage. They could trade freely with the United States, and indeed with the whole neutral world, while the Central Powers could carry on only such overseas trade as their adversaries might permit,THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 331 But the favor of the United States was desired for other than commercial reasons. Even if the nation did not inter- vene in the war, her influence might be felt in the making of peace and the balance of power when the war was over. Many idealistic Europeans also valued the good will of the United States for its own sake, not that Americans are wiser than other men in probing the merits of an interna- tional conflict, but because a neutral nation, powerful enough to stand clear of alliances and to be free from in- timidation, could approach the issues of the war with more impartiality and therefore more justly than any belligerent. The verdict of American opinion might well anticipate the ultimate sentence of history. For all these reasons, spokes- men for every warring nation deluged the country with arguments for their cause. In particular the lesser nations and subject peoples still striving to obtain their independ- ence activity urged their claims through every channel of publicity. The first reaction of America to the Great War was sheer horror that so great a tragedy could take place in an age that boasted of its enlightenment and humanity. i American newspapers before 1914 gave very America little space to foreign affairs and few realized aes how electric the atmosphere of diplomacy had become in the decade preceding the war. Still fewer realized that the spreading conflict might involve the New World with the Old. One of the strongest American traditions had been not to intervene in any European con- flict, no matter how greatly the public might sympathize with one side or the other. American foreign policy had for its cornerstone the injunction of Washington, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.’’ The maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine and commercial rivalry in the Orient had. it is true, led to occasional intervention by the United States in Latin America and in China and the Pacific islands. American representatives attended several ~ ae ret een ean332 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE international conferences, such as the Hague Peace Con- ferences and the Algeciras Congress concerning Morocco. But all such participations in foreign politics appeared ex- ceptional and incidental and they stopped short of per- manent alliances or military action on European battle- fields. President Wilson’s declaration of neutrality in 1914 appeared, then, to the majority of the nation, not only proper but inevitable. As time went on, however, it became daily clearer that the United States could not altogether hope to escape the consequences of so vast a conf.ict. The sudden interrup- tion of trade with Germany caused an acute shortage of certain drugs and dyestuffs ordinarily imported from that country, and the cotton market in the southern states suffered severely from loss of foreign orders. Cn the other hand, England and France afforded a steadily growing market for war munitions. American charity was called upon to aid in saving Belgium and Poland from famine. Every American felt vicarious pride in the effective organ- ization of relief work by Mr. Herbert Hoover in Belgium. The shifting fortunes of the war map taught the nation its first thorough lesson in European geography, and a flood of books and mazazine articles, some scientific, some propa- gandist, but in most cases journalistic in type, aroused public interest in the causes of the war. The particular question in which the United States as a neutral power was most immediately interested was the The rizht to travel and trade across the Atlantic even freedom of in time of war. One of the diplomatic traditions the seas Ste ( of the United States was the ‘‘freedom of the seas.’’ This freedom had been invaded on both sides in the epic struggle of Napoleon against Great Britain; and this was the main cause of the War of 1812 against the British as the more aggressive violators of neutral rights. Once again the United States and the lesser neutrals had their mails stopped, their ships searched, and their goods con- fiscated as ‘‘contraband of war”’ by British cruisers. But on this occasion a new and greater peril appeared on the‘THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 333 other side. Germany had struck back at the Allied block- ade by the submarine, a weapon whose very nature con- tained a threat against the lives as well as the property of neutral traders. Neither the Entente Allies nor the Central Powers were in a position to enforce a ~ blockade”’ in the strictest legal meaning of the word. The Germans could not ; ae Blockade only trade with landward neutrals such as The and Netherlands, but were able also to carry on a Practite considerable seaborne commerce with Sweden across the Baltic. For this reason the British Orders in Council interfering with neutral trade with Germany avoided as much as possible the use of the term ~ blockade,”’ relying in part on general sea law concerning the taking of prizes and contraband and in part on the principle of re- prisal against actions taken by Germany. As for Germany, she could establish no blockade at all. From the standpoint of international law a blockade must be close, continuous, impartial, and complete; it is not constituted by the taking of a few prizes or the sinking of individual ships, but must amount to a complete naval investment of the blockaded port. The neutrals complained that both groups of bel- ligerents had usurped the legal powers of blockaders to the detriment of neutral trade. Quite aside from the technical privileges of the blockader, international law recognizes a limited right to intercept certain classes of goods directly used for military purposes as “contraband of wate | But the definition of ‘‘contraband’’ has varied with every bel- ligerent in every war. Substances as innocuous as cotton may contribute directly to the making of munitions of war, and it is practically impossible to maintain in practice a dis- tinction between foodstuffs destined for the army and food- stuffs for the civilian population. Another difficult ques- tion arose from the practice of shipment of goods through a neutral port. On the one hand it seemed an outrageous abuse of power to interfere with trade, let us say, between New York and Rotterdam, both the United States and The Netherlands being neutrals. On the other hand it was very334 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE clear that if the British did ot regulate the traffic between neutrals, Germany could import all that she needed simply by sending it through Dutch territory instead of directly to German ports. Eventually Great Britain and her allies went so far as to “ration” neutrals adjacent to Germany; not permitting them to import goods intended for ultimate consumption in Germany. All these and many other knotty points of sea law formed the subject of diplomatic correspondence during the Great War. In 1909 the Powers had attempted a codification of existing international law concerning war at sea. But this Declaration of London was not ratified by the British Parlia- ment and so did not become legally binding on the belliger- ents of either side in the Great War. On August 20, 1914, the British Government agreed to abide by the Declara- tion of London, but with the reservation that it would make such additions of exceptions to the rules of the Declaration as might become necessary! In November the British warned shipping from the North Sea as a mined area dangerous tocommerce. In February, 1915, Germany pro- claimed a much wider ‘‘war-zone”’ including all the waters around the British Isles and threatened enemy merchant ships found in the war-zone with destruction without warn- ing, while “ even neutral ships would be exposed to danger.” In the meantime the German Government had undertaken the task of regulating the food supply of the beleaguered nation, which afforded the British an excuse for declaring all foodstuffs contraband as possibly devoted to military pur- poses. Owing to the superior tonnage of the British fleet the #2 The United States, which has usually upheld neutral trading rights in war- time, stretched belligerent powers to the utmost during the Civil War with respect to rights of blockade, definition of contraband, search and seizure, and the “doctrine of continuous voyage”’ (i.e., the determination of contraband with reference to its ultimate rather than its immediate destination). Prece- dents drawn from the Civil War were freely quoted against the American Government during the Great War. But the parallel is not quite exact, as from the point of view of the Government at Washington the Civil War was a rebellion, not an international conflict, and the navy was not blockading enemy ports, but closing its own ports to neutral trade along the southern coast.THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 335 Germans dared not risk a decisive battle for control of the sea. There were a few attempts to break The sub- through the blockade. Cruisers dashed across marine the North Sea, bombarded English coast towns, Ee leateer and then dashed back to safety. The Goeben sae and the Breslau took refuge in Turkish ports. A fleet of five German cruisers under Admiral von Spee defeated a smaller British force under Admiral Cradock off the coast of Chile in November, 1914, but five weeks later the British squadron of Admiral Sturdee avenged this defeat by destroy- ing the German cruisers near the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. The individual feats of some of the Ger- man commerce raiders deserve to be remembered in history, notably the Emden of Captain von Miller and the Moewe of Count Zu Dohna, which kept the sea for weeks and took numerous prizes. One trading vessel actually reached the United States from Germany with a cargo of dyestuffs, the Deutschland, the world’s first submarine merchantman. But broadly speaking it remained true throughout the war that all the seas of the world, except perhaps the Baltic, were closed to German trade, and that the German battle- ships and cruisers could do nothing to break the British blockade or impose a counter-blockade on any of the Allies. One weapon only remained available: the submarine. The submarine is largely an American invention. The Germans had not specialized in building submarines before the war, but used them as auxiliaries to the main battle fleet as did the British, French, and Americans. In fact the range of usefulness of this type of craft is very limited. Like all torpedo boats, the submarine is frail and light enough to be vulnerable to a single well-directed shell from a battle- ship or cruiser. It moves more slowly than many cruisers and merchant ships, and except where it can surprise the enemy it is easily evaded. In this one element of surprise lies all its special value. By submerging it can pass through a close blockade and reappear when least expected. But even as a commerce destroyer the submarine suffered serious handicaps, as it could not without detection take its prizes336 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE into port, while to sink the captured merchant ship after permitting all its passengers and crew to seek safety in the lifeboats might allow time for a hostile cruiser to appear on the scene. In fact, to rise to the surface and challenge the merchant ship at all involved great risk if the ship carried any defensive armament. Germany was therefore faced with the hard choice of practically laying aside her strong- est weapon against her mightiest foe, or else adopting a policy of relentless submarine warfare, striking secretly and without warning at merchant vessels of the enemy or neu- tral traders in enemy waters. One of the few points of sea law on which all authorities were in agreement was that no merchant ship, even if carry- ee ing contraband of war, may be sunk without submarine Specific warning and due opportunity granted a ee sfonithe safety of all on board. Of course if a merchant ship offers armed resistance this im- munity disappears. By the declaration of a zone of un- restricted submarine warfare in February, 1915, Germany challenged principles of international law which had been generally recognized and respected for hundreds of years. The German plea, that the novelty of the submarine as a weapon, with its peculiar characteristics and disabilities, made obsolete all precedents, carried no conviction in neu- tral countries because it was evident that the employment of a new weapon, however legitimate in itself, could bring with it no new right to slay non-combatants and neutrals. As if to make her position still less tenable, Germany, in executing Captain Fryatt for using merchant ships in com- bat with submarines, denied to traders the rights of bel- ligerents as well as the privileges of non-combatants. As the moral leader of the neutral nations the United States had the heavy responsibility of registering a protest chee against each new invasion of the ‘freedom of the champions Seas.’ The American Government protested vie against the extension of the contraband list, the interruption of mails, the boycotting of ‘‘ black- listed’’ neutral firms, the misuse of neutral flags, and otherTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 337 acts of the British and other Governments which infringed or seemed to infringe property rights. but the German war-zone declaration, containing a serious threat against neutral lives, involved far graver problems. On February 10, 1915, the American Government warned Germany that it would “hold the Imperial German Government to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps it might. be necessary to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas.’ The German Government offered to re- strict the employment of submarines and submarine mines on condition that the principles of the Declaration of Lon- don with regard to contraband be accepted by the Entente Allies, thus enabling Germany to import foodstuffs and raw materials for manufacture. This proposal was inacceptable to Great Britain, and therefore the German Government continued its policy of war against merchant shipping. At- tacks on the American vessels Cushing and Gulflight and the drowning of an American citizen on the British passenger liner Falaba directly challenged the position taken by the Washington authorities. But they were almost forgotten when another disaster, similar in kind but vastly greater in degree, first brought the public opinion of the world face to face with the tragic possibilities of unrestricted submarine warfare. On May 7, 1915, the British passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed off the Irish coast. As one of the largest trans- Atlantic liners, the Lusitania had been deliber- +. ately singled out for special destruction to strike Lusitania terror into the heart of England. 3efore the ms ship sailed, passengers had been warned by German agents not to board her, and after its destruction, hailed by the German press as a naval victory of the first order, medals were struck to commemorate the event and holidays de- clared in some of the schools. Of the 1906 passengers and crew on board, over 1100 were drowned, among them I14 American citizens. On that date for the first time a con-338 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE siderable body of American opinion contemplated the pos- sibility of war with Germany. But the Government at Washington, though sorely pressed, remained true to its declared policy of neutrality and contented itself with a reiterated warning that ‘‘The Imperial German Govern- ment will not expect the Government of the United States to omit any word or act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of maintaining the rights of the United States and its citizens.”’ A long diplomatic correspondence ensued. The German contention was that such events as the sinking of the Lusi- Continueq tania, though perhaps contrary to international U-boat law as previously interpreted, were justified by oe the novelty of the submarine as a weapon, as “‘reprisal’’ against the British blockade policy, and because British merchant ships sometimes went armed and carried munitions of war. Renewed loss of American lives on the Arabic and the Ancona (the latter destroyed by an Austrian submarine commander) darkened the prospect of peace. Finally, the destruction of the Sussex in March, 1916, brought matters to a crisis. President Wilson’s patience was at an end and he declared that any further such inci- dents would force the United States ‘‘to sever diplomatic relations with the Government of the German Empire.” This explicit warning could have had no sequel but a diplo- matic break with Germany, if not indeed a declaration of war, and it had the desired effect of compelling the German Government to agree not to torpedo merchant ships with- out affording every opportunity for the safety of the pas- sengers and crew. This promise was made conditional upon a modification of the British blockade and did not prevent a renewal of ruthless submarine warfare the following year, but for a few months it postponed the crisis between Ger- many and the United States. The determination of the German Government to rely on the submarine rather than risk in battle the capital ships of the navy was strengthened by the one major naval com- * But the Lusitania was not armed, though it carried munitions.THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 339 bat of the war — the battle of Jutland. On May 31, 1916, a number of British ships patrolling the North Sea The battle under command of Vice-Admiral Beatty came of Jutland into touch with the German High Seas Fleet which had ventured out of port along the Danish coast. Von Scheer, the German commander, had with him superior forces and succeeded in inflicting severe injury on the British warships until Admiral Jellicoe came to their aid with the main fleet. Now the odds shifted. Admiral Jellicoe maneuvered to intercept the German fleet from its base and thus compel ‘t to decisive conflict or surrender. But night was already descending and the mists of the northern seas added to the obscurity. The remnant of the German fleet withdrew under cover of night and succeeded in regaining its base. Next only to the battle of the Marne in 1914, Jutland has been the most discussed conflict of the Great War. Several controversial books have been written about it and no doubt naval students will find in its details opportunity for study for many generations tocome. In the case of the Marne no one seriously contests that it was a great and fruitful victory for the French: the only outstanding problems relate to the manner in which the victory was won. But in the case of Jutland there is still the further question: Who won the battle? The Germans claimed it at the time and afterwards as a victory, since with a smaller fleet they inflicted heavier injuries than they received. The British lost three large battle-cruisers and several minor vessels. The Germans lost one battleship, one battle-cruiser, and a number of light cruisers and destroyers. Perhaps the honors of the day may be granted to Germany, and certainly the British public was bitterly disappointed at the inability of the fleet to carry out its purpose of intercepting the German warships and ending the threat of the German navy once and for all. But if the test of victory is the ultimate effect of a battle upon the course of the whole war, then certainly Jutland was a victory for Britain. The German navy continued to remain in port and came forth only for final surrender in 1918. The British continued to close the sea to German340 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE commerce; Jutland left the trident still in the hands of Britannia. Over the protest of the neutral nations the Entente Allies had shut off the Central Powers from all access to the Tightening world’s markets. From the first day of the war the the risk of being captured and taken to a prize blockade court had kept even the most venturesome traders away from going directly to German ports, but until the Allies undertook the regulation of neutral trade Germany had been able to import by way of The Nether- lands and Scandinavia. Already in the industrial cities of Austria and Germany thousands of people were insuffi- ciently fed. The German Government undertook the gigan- tic task of rationing civilian food. In June, 1916, repre- sentatives of the Entente Allies met in Paris to work out a program of continued economic coéperation extending, if need be, even beyond the war. Germany was now con- fronted not only by an immediate ‘‘starvation blockade,” but by the still more terrible prospect of an economic boy- cott which would prevent the revival of German commerce if peace were restored. Even a peace of victory crowned with extensive conquests would be a disaster to Germany if the Entente Allies could maintain a policy of granting commercial preference to each other as against goods “made in Germany.”’ The neutrals, too, were disquieted by the possibility of a permanent economic entente in which they could not become members. There was one especially sinister side to belligerent in- fluence in the neutral United States, the practice of es- pionage and the promotion of strikes and ‘‘ac- ’ in munitions plants; in short, an at- tempt to direct war operations in neutral ter- ritory. Some members of the German and Austro-Hungarian Embassies became involved in these in- trigues, and in 1915 Constantin Dumba, the Austro-Hun- garian Ambassador, and Captains Boy-Ed and von Papen, of the German Embassy, were dismissed because of their illesal activities on American soil. Other German agents Additional a grievances cidents’ against GermanyTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD fomented anti-American propaganda in Mexico and among the Caribbean republics. The most amazing instance of the lengths to which German diplomacy would go was not learned until after Germany’s resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917. Alfred Zimmermann, German Minister for Foreign Affairs, notified the Ger- jy. «=. The “Zim- man Minister to Mexico that it was the inten- mermann tion of his Government to force an immediate "°* peace by ‘“‘ruthless submarine warfare’’ and to keep the United States neutral. If this attempt should fail — We propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and together make peace. We shall give general financial support, and it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.... You are instructed to inform the President of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on his own initiative, should communicate with Japan, suggesting adherence at once to the plan, and at the same time to offer to mediate be- tween Germany and Japan. An indirect result of Germany’s Caribbean plots was to hasten the annexation by the United States of the Danish West Indies, a small group of islands mainly The Virgin devoted to raising sugar cane whose population slands consisted largely of descendants of negro slaves imported from Africa to work the plantations. The group was valued chiefly for the excellent harbor of the island of Saint Thomas, a strategic position so valuable that the United States in 1916 paid twenty-five million dollars for the Dan- ‘sh islands. Both the United States and Germany had long contemplated the purchase. We now know that the ambiguous attitude of Germany, after the sinking of the Sussex and before the r« newal of un- restricted submarine warfare the following year, Another was the natural result of a profound division of soe sentiment in the most influential German cir- towards cles. The chiefs of the army and navy generally, amet including such national heroes as Ludendorff and von342 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Tirpitz, insisted on the folly of laying aside the one weapon which could bring a speedy victory in deference to neutral opinion. Their program was to proclaim a close blockade of the British Isies, sink all ships that approached their shores, and end the war by starving out the industrial towns of Britain within a period variously estimated at from six weeks to six months. The United States would probably not intervene, and in any case the war would be over long before a large American army could reach French soil through the dangerous seaways of the Atlantic, guarded by watchful submarines. On the other hand, Ambassador von Bernstorff wished to pursue a directly opposite course, and he frequently and urgently requested the home Govern- ment to refrain from alienating American opinion, at least until he could win the moral support of the American Gov- ernment to back a German offer for a negotiated peace. He warned Germany not to rely on continued American neu- trality or to take for granted the ineffectiveness of any American intervention. Many German civilians seconded his views. The final decision of the German Government was in the nature of acompromise. Submarine warfare was to be held in check for a few months, but in the meantime the building of submarines should be pushed vigorously so that when the storm did burst it would burst in full fury. During this “‘armistice’’ with the neutrals President Wilson was to have his chance to propose peace. If the Entente Allies would then agree to negotiate on terms acceptable to the Central Powers, well and good. If not, let the military men have a free hand to carry out their policy. Un- fortunately for the effect of this plan of conciliating America in the hope of ending the war by diplomacy, German agents were permitted to engage in such anti-national propaganda within the United States and anti-American intrigues with other nations as most tended to irritate President Wilson and his cabinet. Although the public mind was much occupied with the rights and wrongs of the war, the rival pleas for pacifism and preparedness, the injuries to American rights on theTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 343 high seas by both belligerent groups, the election of 1916 drew no clear line between those who favored neutrality and those who favored intervention. The Democrats took for granted President Wilson’s policy of neutrality, although Mr. Bryan, Secretary of State, re- signed office rather than stand sponsor for diplomatic cor- respondence with Germany that might lead to war, and, A year of hesitation on the other hand, Secretary of War Garrison resigned be- cause disappointed at the failure of Congress to vote a sufficient increase in the army.t The Republicans attacked the foreign policy of President Wilson as feeble and vacil- lating, but most of them hesitated to abandon neutrality altogether in view of the fact that a large group of voters, headed by Senator La Follette of Wisconsin, wished to avert trouble with Germany by forbidding the export of munitions of war and discouraging travel abroad on armed merchant ships. Ex-President Roosevelt, now openly pro- Entente, made an exception to the general tendency of the politicians in both parties to avoid the war issue and con- centrate discussion on domestic question. The Republican Party, however, thought it safer to nominate for President Associate Justice Charles Hughes of the Supreme Court, a jurist of high reputation who had not become involved in the controversies over the war or in the factional fight of 1912 between the supporters of Roosevelt and Taft. The Administration seemed as hesitant as the country at large. The American Ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Hines Page, urged on President Wilson continuous friendly codperation with the Entente Powers and in Behind particular with Britain. In February, 1916, che} scenes Colonel E. M. House, President Wilson’s most trusted ad- viser, told the British Government in confidence “that President Wilson was ready, on hearing from France and England that the moment was opportune, to propose that a «In 1916 a new National Defense Act increased the regular army to a maxi- mum strength of 223,000 and the National Guard to 450,000, and made many technical improvements in organization and mobilization, but did not estab- lish the national reserve ‘‘Continental Army”’ advocated by the War Depart- ment. Rae meena earnactaemn ane344 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Conference should be summoned to put an end to the war. Should the Allies accept this proposal, and should Germany refuse it, the United States would probably enter the war against Germany.’ Nothing, however, came of the sug- gestion at the time and the President resumed his policy of watchfully waiting for a more opportune time to offer mediation. Frontier troubles with Mexico and the Presi- dential campaign took up much of his attention. The campaign was not a very intense one, as both parties feared to lose votes by too much outspokenness on war The issues. President Wilson stressed the legislative election of - record of his party: the lower tariff, the new mae: Federal Reserve banking system, the extension of loans to farmers, the Clayton Anti-Trust law, the eight- hour day for railwaymen. Mr. Hughes attacked President Wilson’s foreign policy mainly with respect to the failure to deal effectively with the disorders in Mexico. He promised a more resolute and efficient government and a restoration of the Republican system of tariff protection for industry. The result was a victory for President Wilson, thanks to the Farther West. For the first time a President wes elected against the opposition of both the industrial Northeast and the Middle West by the votes of States beyond the Missouri River. President Wilson’s reélection encouraged him to offer the mediation of the United States to the belligerent na- tions. At the same time, but quite indepen- Wilson’s offeriof dently, the German Government was ready mediation . e nr esuepus ° e with its offer to initiate peace negotiations.. On December 12, 1916, the German and Austro-Hungarian Governments announced that they were ready ‘‘to enter forthwith into peace negotiations.’”’ On December 18th President Wilson asked both warring groups for ‘‘such an avowal of their respective views as to the terms upon which the war might be concluded and the arrangements which would be deemed satisfactory as a guaranty against its re- newal or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future a would make it possible frankly to compare them.”’ He an-THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 345 nounced the willingness of the United States to assist ne- gotiations in any way that might be most acceptable, and pointed out that agreement should not be impossible, since the war aims of the different nations involved “‘are virtually the same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to the world.’’! A further and more exact definition of the essential conditions of peace by responsible statesmen of the belligerent Powers might, he thought, bring peace nearer. Germany and Austria-Hungary refused to disclose their war aims. They proposed instead an assembly of delegates of all belligerent Powers on neutral territory to initiate confidential negotiations looking to- Fnteita wards peace. The Entente Allies were franker eee in the avowal of their program. Apparently ther _ they judged that President Wilson’s suggestion Dea ray afforded an opportune moment for the first LOBES public formulation of their demands. Hitherto their war aims had been phrased only in such broad terms as Premier Asquith’s famous Pardee “restitution, repara- tions, and guarantees.’’ Now they specified: In the first instance, the restoration ae Belgium, of Serbia, and of Montenegro, and the indemnities which are due them, the evacuation of the invaded territories of France, of Russia, and of Rumania, with just reparation; the reorganization of E urope, guaranteed by a stable settlement, based alike upon the principle of nationalities, on the right which all peoples, w hry small or great, have to the enjoyment of full security and free economic development, and also upon te -rritorial agreements and _ inter- national arrangements so framed as to guarantee land and sea frontiers against unjustified attacks, the restitution of provinces or territories wrested in the past from the Allies by force or against the will of their populations; the liberation of Italians, of Slavs, of Rumanians, and of Czecho-Slovaks from foreign domination; the enfranchisement of populations subject to the bloody tyranny of the Turks; the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, decidedly alien to Western civilization. The intentions of His 1 This statement was widely misunderstood, especially in the Entente press, as seeming to imply that there was no difference in the purpose of the Entente Allies and the Central Powers. The context shows clearly that the President was commenting rather on the incompleteness with which the war aims of the belligerents had been made known to the world at large.346 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, regarding Poland have been clearly indicated in the proclamation which he has just addressed to his armies. A later statement from Mr. Balfour, the British Foreign Minister, laid special stress on the absolute necessity of expelling the Turkish Government from Europe and liber- ating all the nations suffering from its rule. The German Government protested that its peace offer had been made in all sincerity, but did not renew it or further disclose its views as to the proper basis of a peace settlement. As the note of the Entente Allies on January 10, IQI7, foreshadowed in the main the actual peace settlement of Seceene 1910r it deserves particular examination. Not of the all of its significance appears on the surface. ee Lo riis The restoration of invaded territories and in- demnities for the injury of the invasion might, indeed, be taken for granted, but the proposed territorial rearrangement of Europe according to the principle of na- tionality must be interpreted in the light of secret under- standings made in the interest of France, Italy, and Russia, and the new conviction that Austria-Hungary was not a mere second to Germany, but was the center of the whole problem of the peace settlement. By the Treaty of Lon- don, April 26, 1915, Italy received promise of the Tirol to the Brenner Pass, Trieste and Istria, a part of Dalmatia, several islands in the Adriatic, and a share in the parti- tion of Asiatic Turkey.2. In 1916 Rumania was promised the Rumanian-speaking districts of Hungary. France, of course, expected Alsace-Lorraine (‘the restitution of pro- vinces or territories wrested in the past from the Allies by force’’) and considered plans for annexing also the Saar valley and erecting into an independent “buffer State” the German provinces west of the Rhine.’ No exact delimita- * Strangely enough, this ‘‘essential’’ condition of the peace was the one part of the Allied program not carried into full effect. ? For Italy’s entrance into the war, see pp. 284-85. 3 Great Britain never endorsed the plan for dividing Germany at the Rhine, and the French Government seems to have put forward the proposal as a tentative suggestion rather than a final commitment.THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 347 ticn of Germany’s frontiers was arranged either to the east or to the west, but the Russian Government insisted that “in leaving France and England full freedom in the de- termination of the western boundaries of Germany, we as- sume that in their turn the Allies will grant us equal free- dom to fix our boundary limitations with Germany and Austria-Hungary.’’ Russia had publicly promised to re- constitute a united Polish nation, presumably including Galicia from Austria and Polish Prussia from Germany as well as the Russian Kingdom of Poland, but this promise did not extend to complete independence; Poland was still to be united with Russia in the person of the Tsar. Russia was further to have Constantinople and the Straits, and presumably a wide extension of her frontier in Turkish Armenia. The delimitation of boundaries between the proposed French sphere of influerice in Syria and the British claims in Mesopotamia reached a provisional settlement in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Japan claimed the German island colonies north of the equator and also the German leasehold of Kiao-chau on the Shantung Peninsula, leaving to Great Britain and the Dominions of Australia and New Zealand the Pacific colonies south of the equator. One phrase in the note of the Entente Allies is particu- larly interesting: ‘‘the liberation of Italians, of Slavs, of Rumanians, and of Czecho-Slovaks from foreign +. new domination.’”’ As the Czechs and Slovaks are weapon of : . . nationalism Slavs, the phrase was an illogical one, parallel to ‘British and Welsh”’ or ‘‘Germans and Bavarians.” But there was purpose in thus singling out for special mention one branch of the Slavic peoples. It was an announcement to the world that the Allies would not be satisfied merely with annexing frontier provinces of Austria-Hungary to their own territories: Italian-speaking Austria to Italy, Ru- manian Hungary to Rumania, Galicia to Russia or Poland, and perhaps Bosnia-Herzegovina to Serbia. They would strike straight at the heart of the Dual Monarchy; liberate a nation which, although pro-Entente in sentiment, could not be claimed as subject to any one of the Allies; demand348 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE either the total dismemberment of the Habsburg dominions or their reconstitution on a federal basis in which neither German Austrian or pro-German Magyar could play a dominant part. Passing beyond the old diplomacy of “balance of power,’ ‘‘compensation,” ‘‘rectification of frontier,’ the Allies appealed to the national spirit of all the subject races of the Central Powers, so that the pretentious structure of ‘‘Mitteleuropa”’ might crumble from explosion within as well as from military pressure without. This change of policy was due in part to the influence of a bril- liant group of English and French students of eastern European affairs, such as André Chéradame, H. Wickham Steed, and R. W. Seton-Watson, the able propaganda of Professor Thomas G. Masaryk, leader of the Czech na- tional cause, and the Pan-Slavic sympathies of the Russian Government. Periodicals such as The New Europe warned the English and French nations that they were near-sighted, and that a victory which liberated Belgium and Alsace- Lorraine would be only a defeat if Germany could still im- pose her will on central and eastern Europe. A fascinating but quite unanswerable question is what peace program the German Government would have put eee forward had it chosen to copy the frankness of German its foes. Most of the German Socialists and a suence con- few liberals and pacifists of other parties would have been satisfied with a peace restoring the frontiers of 1914 ‘“‘ without annexations or indemnities,”’ but they had as yet no influence on the Imperial policy. At the other extreme General von Bissing demanded the annexa- tion of Belgium by ‘‘right of conquest,” the establishment therein of a ‘‘state of dictatorship,” the expulsion of all who refused to accept the new order and the confiscation of their property... In 1915 six powerful industrial and agrarian ae * “He who remains in the country must declare his allegiance to Germany, and after a certain time must declare his allegiance to Germanism, In con- nection with this it cannot be tolerated that wealthy Belgians shall leave the country and nevertheless draw profit from their possessions in Belgium. Ex- propriation is absolutely necessary, in order to prevent such a state of things as exists in Alsace-Lorraine to the present day.’”’ (Memorandum of Governor General Moritz von Bissing.)THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 349 associations (the League of Agriculturists, the German Peasant League, the Christian German Peasant Union, the Central Association of German Industrialists, the League of the Industrialists, and the Conservative Association of the Middle Class) demanded control over Belgium ‘in mo- netary, financial, and postal matters,’’ the annexation from France of the French iron mines, ‘including the fortresses of Longwy and of Verdun, which are necessary to defend the region,” and from Russia “the annexation of at least 3altic provinces and of territories to the ‘ some parts of the | south of them.’ Presumably, but not certainly, the Gov- ernment of the day occupied a middle ground between the advocates of peace by conquest and the advocates of peace without annexations. On January 22, 1917, President Wilson announced to the Senate the result of his tender of good offices to the belliger- ents and outlined his own views of a just and Bits 2 stable peace. He urged a ‘‘ peace without vic- Rie oate! tory’’ based on the consent of all the nations, Teh great and small. Such territorial arrangements as were necessary should follow lines of nationality. Asan example of this he instanced Poland: ‘“‘there should be a united, independent, and autonomous Poland.” Every nation should have ‘‘a direct outlet to the great highways of the sea’”’ — if not by an actual sea-frontage, then by neu- tralized rights of way across intervening territory; and in war as in peace there must be freedom of the seas “alike in law and in fact.’”’ Armaments should be reduced and an association of nations replace the insecure principle of the balance of power. Thus far had overtures for peace progressed when Ger- many suddenly announced a policy which made peace im- possible. Convinced that the demands of the Submarine Entente Allies amounted to a rejection of their Wan senewcd peace offer, the German statesmen concluded that von 3ernstorfi’s policy of securing American aid in negotiating peace had ended in failure and that it was time to try the plan of Ludendorft and von Tirpitz, naval warfare against ~ manne sito caren PME350 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE British trade devoid of all restrictions and reckless of all consequences. Since unrestricted submarine warfare made inevitable American intervention (unless President Wilson cared or dared to cancel his pledge after the Sussex incident), Germany’s action was a gambler’s throw which shows how desperate had become the real situation of the Central Powers under the long pressure of the blockade, no matter how great their apparent gains on the ‘war map.” Early in January the German Government made its fateful de- cision, but it was not officially announced until the end of the month. All the waters around the French and British coasts were to constitute a war-zone barred to all ships, neutral as well as belligerent, armed or unarmed, whether containing contraband of war or not. The only exception permitted was the right to dispatch one passenger ship a week along a narrow sea-lane, a ship carrying no contra- band and decorated with broad ‘‘zebra stripes”’ of alternate white and red. Other sea-lanes permitted ships to approach the neutral shores of Holland, Greece, and the Scandinavian countries. The new war-zone decree went into effect on February 1, 1917. Perhaps we may now say that on that date Germany and her allies lost the war. Not since the first impetus of German invasion had been halted at the Marne had the cause of the Entente Allies The crucia} Stood in such peril. Though the submarine Hee of campaign brought ruin on its authors, it came perilously near success. No possible victory on land, not even a simultaneous occupation of Paris, Petro- grad, and Rome, could have so hastened the end of the war in Germany’s interest as a blow at the manufacturing towns of Great Britain which were ceaselessly supplying the armies of the western front with all the tools of modern war. An island country which is also a manufacturing country is peculiarly vulnerable. It cannot feed itself and it can im- port food from abroad only so long as it can command the seas. “A few months’ interruption of overseas trade and Great Britain would be far nearer starvation than France or Germany ever could become. Rigid censorship con-THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 351 cealed the extent to which German submarines were cutting down on the merchant fleets of the Allies and the neutrals who dared to enter the war-zone, but in the best-informed circles apprehensions were greatest. By April, 1917, the submarines were sinking ships several times as rapidly as they could be put out by all the shipyards of the world. - +7 — oe - - — _ — r : 4 ) > : 2 20 15 ; on / j NK 7 / & F45 j [ea | : / , ¢ = | ZONE OF / | UNRESTRICTED / 5 AS | SUBMARINE WARFARE J <= ’ ; LS i917 ™ Le ea | : i 4 <5 f Y ’ NOLO “HG j | Ww Ko eh Z . A ; LN ey, J di ey, Mie | SA VA ly { Pepad Yip ° hea 4 “ é {Oo = j L£. f O ‘ | / C Re, ) a | Den, I j ‘27 rae c / “NM ARIr j Y by ? Ay / r { | +4 /& y f > ry i \ 5 } 4, - “Po d V4 “I 7; yy ( if ( N I~ m - - ~ ¢ } f ae MA [yo ) J So es fan R r~ * SWire * / Zz \ x SS “ Vy ye > = : ee ee A » ; x 4 ? SCALE OF MILES i g ZL WS‘? : <— sioyomn ® S T T - | — 6 100 200 300 400 5600 Ae ere | a | GERMANY’S SUBMARINE PROC LAMATIONsj F i 352 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE When Admiral Sims visited London to coérdinate the naval efforts of the United States with those of Great Britain, he was told bluntly that unless the submarines could be halted the war was lost. The German declaration of unrestricted submarine war- fare ended at once diplomatic relations between Germany “ Armed and the United States. Ambassador von Bern- neutrality” storff and Ambassador Gerard received their papers and left their posts. President Wilson did not want to declare war, however, unless Germany followed up her threat of unrestricted warfare against neutral shipping by some overt act, as there was still the remote possibility that Germany would not use to the full the Boy ers she claimed. As an emergency measure he advocated ‘‘armed neutral- ity,” the defensive armament of American merchant ships. The majority of both Houses of Congress, regardless of party, supported this plan. But the end of the session was very near and a “‘little group of willful men,” as the Presi- dent called them, took advantage of the unlimited freedom of debate then permitted in the Senate to prevent considera- tion of the measure. This did not prevent the President from arming ships on his authority as Executive. Its main result was to bring about a change in the rules of the Senate, making possible the closure of debate in certain cases, al- though still permitting greater latitude of discussion than is possible in the House of Representatives. On March 4th the President, who had been elected so recently to the cry “ He kept us out of war!” was inaugurated under the shadow of impending conflict, for nothing but an eleventh-hour re- pentance could prevent such an attack by German sub- marines on American ships as would automatically convert armed neutrality into open belligerency. Several neutral- ist organizations merged into an Emergency Peace Federa- tion to oppose the policy of the Government, and several notable public men, among them President Wilson’s own former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, con- tinued their efforts to av ert war, but with an ever-growing sense of hopelessness. When the new Congress met inTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 353 April, it was not to discuss the arming of merchant ships, but to vote on a declaration of war. On April 2d President Wilson brought to the bar of Con- gress the case of the German Government versus the Ameri- can People. In asking for a declaration of war en SOY he surveyed the many wrongs which the nation hauly had suffered in the lives and property of its citizens and the intrigues, plots, and conspiracies fomented within its borders. He distinguished between the Imperial German Government and the German people more clearly than any spokesman for the Allies had done and placed the whole burden of responsibility for the war on a narrow and privileged class." He welcomed the newly established Russian Republic as ‘‘a fit partner for a League of Honor”’ in the crusade against autocracy. He disclaimed on behalf of the nation all conquests, annexations, indemnities, or ma- terial compensation of every Sort. He urged the enlistment of a new army of at least five hundred thousand men, re- cruited on the principle of compulsory military service, and the support of the war as largely as possible by taxation to avoid the inflation which would come from financing the war entirely by borrowed money. The declaration of war was expected and inevitable; what was new in President Wilson’s speech was the new definition of the aims of the war: ‘‘to fight for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included ; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obe- dience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.’’ The struggle of nations had become a struggle of political principles. Congress was not unanimous, and the debate on the war, thouch brief, was bitter. Party lines, however, disappeared. In the House of Representatives fifty votes were Congress cast in opposition, most of them from German- "sponds American constituencies, although the leader of the anti- war group was the Southern Democratic floor leader Claude354 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Kitchin. In the Senate three Republicans and three Democrats alone represented the minority, Senator La Follette of Wisconsin heading the opposition. In accord- ance with the vote of Congress the President proclaimed war on April 6, 1917. The war to which the nation was now pledged was to be no mere naval combat or playing around with armed ships and foreign loans, not even an expedition of volunteers as in 1898 in Cuba, but the mobilization of every needed man and every needed dollar and the com- plete identification of American war efforts with those of the Entente Allies. The standing army and the National Guard received many volunteer recruits as the war-cloud darkened over Building an the United States, but President Wilson and his ae military advisers, taught by the experience of Great Britain, decided not to depend on volunteering to build up the new National Army which was to supplement the older branches of the service. The trouble with volun- teering is not that it fails to raise the recruiting to the proper figure; both Great Britain and the United States have usually found it possible to enlist all the men in their wars whom they could equip and support at the front. The real military superiority of the “draft” is that it is more sys- tematic; the army can take the particular men it needs, at the time they are needed, and keep at home the elderly, the fathers of large families, the physically incompetent, and the men whose special talents or situation make them more useful in the fields and factories than in the trenches. In order that the mobilization of the army might be uniform and function as a single machine, the President disregarded the gallant proposal of ex-President Roosevelt, who offered to accompany a special division of volunteers to enter at once into the conflict. The French desired an immediate expeditionary force, even a small one, for the moral effect on the war-weary civilian population of their country; a visual assurance that America would fight the war directly and not merely by loans and munitions shipments. But the very men most eager to volunteer as an advance guardTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 355 of the American army were the men most needed as com- missioned and non-commissioned officers of the masses of untrained civilians now for the first time entering a military camp. To prepare for this task th authorities rushed the construction of sixteen huge cantonments— not mere Camp- ing-grounds, but mushroom cities of wooden buildings with all possible facilities for training, sanitation, and recreation. In the meantime 4557 local draft boards sifted the cases of the 9,586,503 men between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age who were registered for service. Among the men who could put forward no special claim to exemption the order of muster into service was determined by lot. Each registered man was given a number in his local district and a single drawing of lots in Washington thus determined the order of mobilization of every man in every district. This impartial method of obtaining recruits contrasted markedly with forms of conscription used in other wars, notably in the Northern states during the Civil War, when the wealthy could purchase exemptions from the general duty of service. The financial burden on the American Government was a double one. Loans must be made to the other nations, great and small, which were leagued against 7, Germany, for no other nation now commanded ‘“‘sinews of Gnancial resources to be compared with those of ‘er the United States. Money must also be raised to create an army and carry it overseas, an army which was to be the best-paid and most expensively equipped army in the world. Labor in the shipyards and on cantonment buildings also commanded unusual wages, the inevitable result of almost unlimited demand for labor. Private contracters worked for the Government on a “cost plus percentage” basis, a system. which deliberately sacrificed economy for speed. From the first the United States raised a large part of the necessary expenses by increased direct taxation, especially on profits and large incomes. But borrowing seemed neces- sary also, and this was a difficult problem, since the people of the United States had little experience in handling public356 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE loans, or indeed in taking bonds of any sort. Bankers, capitalists, and business men could be relied on to buy bonds to the limit of their resources, but that was not all that the Government desired. How call the matter to the attention of the farmer, the laborer, the clerk, the pro- fessional man, the homekeeper with her “nest ege”’ of family savings — accustomed to invest surplus funds in a new house or automobile or a speculative purchase of real estate or industrial stock rather than bond-buying? The answer was found in the American art of advertising. Four ' Liberty Loans” and a final ‘‘ Victory Loan” were placed on the market and vigorously forced on the public attention by special ‘‘drives”’ or advertising campaigns. The first loan, fixed at $2,000,000,000, was oversubscribed. Larger loans then followed as the war effort became more intense, until in all over $21,000,000,000 was raised and the Ameri- can people became for the first time a nation of bondholders. President Wilson did not follow the precedent of most heads of belligerent Governments and reorganize his cabinet The ae on a non-partisan basis. The declaration of administra- war brought with it no immediate changes in a the personnel of the Democratic Administration. But many new offices were created outside of the cabinet which played a great part in handling the new prob- lems created by the state of war. The men for these posts were for the most part successful business men, appointed without regard to party, who gave their services to the Government for a nominal salary (the ‘‘dollar-a-year”’ men) or entirely without charge. The most pressing task being the creation of a merchant fleet adequate to transport armies and supplies to Europe and to counterbalance the loss of shipping from submarine attack, the Government created an Emergency Fleet Corporation for the construc- tion of the new ships and a Shipping Board to direct their operation. Major-General Goethals, completer of the Panama Canal, undertook the building of the merchant fleet, though he later resigned his post because of a dispute over the proportion which wooden ships should bear to theTHE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 357 whole fleet. Herbert Hoover, whose efficient administra- tion of food relief in Belgium mé ade him the inevitable choice, became first adviser and later administrator of the food resources of the United States. The task of the Food Ad- ministration was not quite the same as that of similar agencies in Europe. The United States was faced with no rationing by official decree was unnecessary ; production on the farms ilable for export to the food shortage; the problem was r ather to increase so that a large surplus might be aval European Allies. Once a; vain all the arts of publicity were called into play and every Ame rican housewife was adv a food and substituting bulk e table for the precious as to the best means of sav ing vezetables and cheaper cereals on th wheat needed abroad. As fuel must be conserved as well as food, the President appointed President Garfield of Williams College Fuel Administrator. Owners of auto- mobiles were asked to codperate in saving gasoline and lustrial plants limited themselves to sometimes private int Secretary of the Treasury part-time operation to save Co tL McAdoo, acting as Director-General of Railroads, merged the operation of all important r tilroad lines into a single system. Passenger sé .rvice and the freightage of articles of luxury had to grant precedence to the transport of mu- nitions of war. This meant a heavy loss of revenue to the railroad companies, but it spee ded up the agencies of war. The Shipping Board, the I Food Administration, the War Trade Board, the Railroad Administration, the War Industries Board, and the Fuel Administration, though nominally not included in the cabinet, formed in practice temporary ‘‘war cabinet’ ’ departments. The first year of war between the United States and Ger- many was a period of mo bilization and prepa- ,,. ration. At the opening of the war there were American barely 200,000 soldiers ready for action in the soon im regular army and the mobilize »d National Guard.’ Before the war ended, the United States hac {| placed in ser- t For the statistics of the American army in the Great War see The War with Germany, by Colonel Leonard P. Ayres, of the General Staff (1919).358 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE vice, including volunteers and drafted men, twenty times this number. An average of six months was required to complete the training of a private soldier and a longer period to make an efficient commissioned officer. Of 200,000 army officers fewer than 9000 had been in federal service at the opening of the war. Many others had experience in the ranks as privates or had attended officers’ training camps as civilians, but thousands had no military training whatever, and even those who had some military experience required a “post-graduate course”’ to fit them to cope with the un- precedented problems and duties created by the Great War. Moreover, even if the United States had had a standing army as large as the French or German, it is questionable if many soldiers would have been sent to France until the curbing of the submarine peril set free shipping enough to transport armies as well as the equally essential food and munitions. Even by February, 1918, the rate at which American soldiers reached France was less than 50,000 a month. Five months later American soldiers arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day. In all more than 2,000,000, approxi- mately half of the army, reached France before the end of the war. But the battles in which the American army proved a powerful and independent factor formed one brief campaign of the summer and autumn of 1918. The American army, handicapped by lack of professional training and actual experience in the earlier phases of the Quality Oh had the advantage of consisting wholly of the fresh troops, unwearied by years of the heart- ainerican breaking deadlock of trench warfare. Their : physical and mental standard of fitness was probably above the European average because they were the first men selected as fit from a large population. No need had yet arisen to accept as combat troops boys, old men, cripples returned from the hospitals, the stunted or stupid rejected by the early drafts. The most impartial testimony to the worth of this new element on the western front is the report of a German army officer at the time of the American attack at Belleau Wood in 1918:THE NEW WORLD JOINS THE OLD 359 The Second American Division must be considered a very good one and may even perhaps be reckoned as a storm troop. The different attacks on Belleau Wood were carried out with bravery The moral effect of our gunfire cannot seriously im- and dash. The Americans’ pede the advance of the American infantry. nerves are not yet worn out. The quali ties of the men individually may be descri bed as re- markable. They are physically well set up, their attitude is good, and they range in age from eighteen to twenty -eight years. They lack at present only training and ex ‘perience to make formidable adversaries. The men are in fine spirits and are filled with naive assurance, the Boras of a prisoner are character ristic — ‘‘We kill or get killed.” Such was the verdict of Europe on her pioneer sons from the west. The chief task of the fleet was, of course, to safeguard shipping from submarine attac k, as the Germans had prac- tically abandoned other forms of naval w anlare:) i: : Work of Naval operations were carried out in closest the codperation with the British fleet and with the eee combined merchant marine of the two countries. i Forty-nine per cent of the American army in France traveled in British ships; forty-five per cent in American ships, including as such the German liners held in American ports at the opening of the war. To protect cargo and troop ships the convoy system pI roved the most successful, each group of merchant ships going to sea with a guard of cruisers. For further protection the ships were pz ainted with we cid camouflage, not to conceal their presence, but to delude the submarine commander as to their speed and direction. Routes were frequently shifted. Direct war against the submarine was wage .d with the depth bomb, the mine barrage, the scouting airplane, the swift destroyer, and the armed decoy-ship made up to appear as a harmless mer- chant vessel. More than two hundre «1 German submarines are known to have been destroyed in one f fashion or another during the war, but as new submarines were constantly being « Cited in De Chambrun and De Marenches, The American Army in the turopean Conflict (1919), P- 153-Be 360 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE built the rapid decrease in shipping losses after April, IQI7, must be attributed largely to skillful evasion of submarine attack. The American army crossed the Atlantic, as the British army had crossed the Channel, almost without loss. Merchant ships were not so fortunate, but in 1918 the out- put of new tonnage exceeded the diminishing loss from undersea attack. No other American republic took in the military opera- tions of the war a comparable share with the United States, ie but the adhesion of Latin American countries to America the cause of the Allied Powers was of value for eng the commercial and diplomatic reasons. It dimin- ished German influence in a wide quarter of the neutral world and it furnished a test of the success of President Wilson’s attempt to win the good will of Latin American States by forbearance with troublesome Mexico. Cuba and Panama, much under the influence of the United States, declared war on Germany almost simultaneously with their powerful neighbor. Of more significance was the addition of Brazil, a country too distant and populous to be regarded as a mere second to Washington diplomacy, a country, moreover, with a considerable element of Ger- manimmigrants. Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua followed the same policy, and a number of other Latin American republics broke off diplomatic nego- tiations with Germany, but stopped short of a declaration of war (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Santo Domingo, Uruguay). Other neutral nations in distant parts of the world, China, Siam, and the African Republic of Liberia, waited the ex- ample of the United States before formally joining the Allies. :CHAPTER XIII THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA The behavior of the Russian proletariat toward the Constituent Assembly, that open door to freedom and justice, is like that of a man who for years has been shut up in a dungeon. Having obtained possession of explosives, he patiently drills holes in one of the blocks of stone that stand between him and liberty and packs them with dynamite in the hope of bl owing a hole in the wall. Suddenly the earth quakes and lo, the door of his dungeon stands ajar! Gazing at it with dull uncomprehending eyes, he completes his tamping, sets off the dynamite charge and, wounded and half dead from the blast, he drags himself through the breach in the wall to freedom. But he might have stepped forth unscathed through the open door! EpWARD A. Ross Tue Russian Revolution is an unfinished story, and the historian of the year 2000 A.D. may be able to count it finally, as we to-day count the French Revolu- 7 1e tion, as being on the whole a gain to civiliza- Russian tragedy of tion. But though such political earthquakes tate 7. may in the long run be reckoned as progress, they are always failures in the sense of being disappoint- ments. No man or party among the hopeful enthusiasts who met in the National Assembly of 1789 to work for the peaceful regeneration of France dreamed that the outcome of their work would be the Red Terror of 1793, the civil war in Brittany, the foreign war with half Europe, the Napoleonic Empire, the restoration of the Bourbons, the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the Second Empire, the Commune, and the petty political bickerings and royalist conspiracies which marked the early years of the Third Republic. The Russian Revolution, working on a vaster scale against greater difficulties, has equally disappointed the hopes of every one. To conservatives and cautious reformers it was a plunge into the bottomless pit of an- archy. To liberals and democrats it has meant the erec- tion of a new despotism in the place of the old. Even the extreme radicals who eventually attained power have had to face famine and civil war and postpone to an indefinite362 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE future the full realization of their program of social and economic reforms. Affairs in Russia were ripe for revolution before the war. On the very eve of the conflict the Russian Government Merete. Was disturbed by a serious outbreak of strikes ment of and riots which showed that popular discon- the war . : a tent, driven underground by police vigilance since the revolution of 1905, was ready to break forth again at the first opportunity. For a few months the patriotic fervor of the war and the iron rigor of military discipline kept Russia in hand. Even veteran revolu- tionists, like Prince Kropotkin, hoped that good would come out of a war waged in alliance with liberal France and England against feudal Austria and Prussia. A competent Tsar and an honest and patriotic court would have seized the opportunity offered by the war to foster popular loyalty. But the old story of the Crimean War and of the Japanese War was repeated. It was charged by opponents of the administration that funds raised for carrying on the war were misappropriated by dishonest officials or wasted by incompetence. Soldiers marched against German artillery without even an adequate supply of rifles and ammunition. The Russian soldier is much-enduring, but he began to fear that his life was being spent to no purpose. Ugly whispers of treason in high places circulated among the ranks. Inefficient government pays a high tax in war-time. Russia suffered heavier losses from 1914 to the revolution Russian than did any other one nation during the entire Losses course of the war — a loss in killed, captured, or permanently disabled of some 4,000,000 men. The losses in cannon and munitions of war during the retreat through Poland seriously crippled the- later operations of the Russian army. Not until the early summer of 1916 were the Russians able to resume the offensive. General Brus- silov’s campaign of that year in eastern Galicia and Little Russia was a brilliant achievement, but was brought to a premature close by the failure of essential supplies, and then the army once more entrenched and awaited attack.THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 363 The campaign against Turkey in Asia Minor had been but little more successful, and Rumania had been left to her fate without effective Russian support. The net result of nearly three years of war was that the Russian army re- mained on the defensive along a front extending from Riga to Rumania while Germany exploited the newly conquered resources of Poland and Lithuania. No doubt the exer- tions of Russia had been of indispensable value to the west- ern Allies by forcing the Central Powers to divide their armies between east and west, but the Russian peasant in the ranks could not reckon in terms of such distant and in- direct advantages. To him the war had been an almost un- broken series of disasters and he could see no better out- look for the future. The Russian machinery of government was beginning to show signs of a breakdown, not at this point or at that, but in every detail. To begin at the top, the chief The Tsar in - of State, Tsar Nicholas, Autocrat of All the wartime Russias, was one of the weakest and least capable of the Tsars. He threw himself with patriotic energy into the war, assumed nominal command of the army, approved the prohibition of the sale of liquor, promised freedom and national unity to the Poles, and spoke words of encourage- ment and high-hearted resolution to the army and the na- tion. It is due to the unhappy ruler to say that he took no personal part in the German intrigues which influenced many of his officials. But for all his excellent intentions he was like clay in the hands of the potter among his ill ad- visers. Chief of these was the Empress, a princess of Ger- man blood, who was patriotic, but certainly out of sym- pathy with the aspirations of the Russian people. She was forever goading the Tsar to punish liberals and defy the Duma, and exerted her powerful influence, like another Marie Antoinette, to protect reactionary officials who hap- pened to be personal friends. Particularly notorious was the case of Rasputin. Both the Tsar and his wife were religious mystics and very indiscriminate in seeking spiritual advisers. They re- a + eee a meaner eicheaamrsealt Maat 9 sanmrenanidiai CNS364 TWENTIETH CENTURY. EUROPE tained at the court as their most trusted counselor an Rasputin at eccentric monk of coarse manners and evil reputa- the court tion, Gregory Rasputin. Rasputin’s voice was powerful in the appointment and dismissal of officials and his following at the court included many of the most re- actionary politicians, all of them enemies of the people and some of them friends of Germany. He claimed the powers of a prophet and healer and was particularly valued by the royal family as affording supernatural care to the little crown prince (tsarevitch), whose health had given much concern. When Rasputin was murdered by a group of exasperated supporters of the dynasty, public opinion re- joiced as over a victory on the battle-field. But Rasputin was only a symptom of deep-seated disease, and after his death the Tsar found new advisers equally perilous to the prestige of his throne. The official advisers of the Tsar were selected from the higher ranks of the bureaucracy. Many of them were The Tsar's German in blood and sympathy. During the ministers most critical months of the campaign of 1916 the Tsar’s chief minister, Boris Stiirmer, so greatly ham- pered the operations of the army that he was openly accused of treason. Miliukov, leader of the Constitutional Demo- crats in the Duma, declared: The abyss between our authorities and us has widened and be- come impassable. We could appeal before, assuredly not to the sense and capacity of the rulers, but at least to their patriotism and good will. Could we do so now? This fearless denunciation forced Stiirmer out of office. His successors, however, did nothing to improve matters. The chief power in administration was the fanatical re- actionary Protopopov, Minister of the Interior, who de- voted all his zeal to harrying and persecuting liberals. He even discouraged the efforts of the provincial zemstvos (local administrative councils) to send supplies to the army, on the ground that any form of voluntary codperation by the Russian people tended toward revolution. It mightTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 365 almost be said that Russia was obliged to wage war against the opposition of her own leaders. The Russian Duma represented mainly the landed gentry. The Tsar had so manipulated the franchise that the peas- ants and town laborers chose only a small part of its membership. But unrepresentative as it was the Duma was a rallying point for all the honest patri- otism of Russia. Most of the representatives, even of the more conservative parties, were in earnest about winning the war and rooting out inefficiency and disloyalty in high places. The Duma afforded a citadel of free speech to critics of the administration who would have been promptly The Duma suppressed had they voiced their opinions anywhere else. The bureaucracy hated the Duma for this reason and re- solved to crush it. The winter of 1916-17 was a terrible one to the Russian townsman. The strain of war coupled with inefficient management had broken down the transporta- /fhe crisis of tion system of the country, primitive enough aad at best, and the residents of the great cities lived on short rations. In Petrograd starving workingmen rose in open revolt against the Government. This caused no disquiet at first, since Protopopov deliberately intended to force the revolution into the open that it might be the more com- pletely crushed. Bread riots were a part of his plan. Taking the Petrograd riots as an excuse, Prince Golitzin, the Prime Minister, ordered the Duma to adjourn on March 1ith. The President of the Duma warned the Tsar that the sit- uation was most critical and might involve the very exist- ence of the dynasty. The Tsar preferred to listen to his reactionary ministers who were elated at this opportunity to quell at a single blow the constitutional liberties of the Duma and the revolutionary spirit of the mob. One vital point Protopopov and his fellow conspirators had overlooked. They could not, as in 1905, The March rely on the loyalty of the army. The soldiers Revolusion refused to fire on the crowd. They remembered their own grievances against a government which had conscripted i | Bi () iat pi] i iy re } \ I Pits ie Hit i i \ ; . i i a Hint le th t A | | 7 ' i |366 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE them to fight in a quarrel whose issues they did not com- prehend, and had then frittered away the chances of victory by scandalous mismanagement. In some cases the soldiers shot their own officers or fought the police.t A desultory battle raged in the streets of the capital, but owing to the reluctance of the soldiers to fire on the crowd the loss of life was not very great. A part of the army declared for the Duma. The order to adjourn was disobeyed and all the liberal delegates joined in proclaiming to Russia that the Duma had “found itself compelled to take into its own hands the reéstablishment of the authority of the State and public order.” The unwitting Tsar, always the last to be correctly in- formed of conditions in his.own realm, was caught unaware. Tsar On March 14th the Tsar was informed while re- Nicholas turning by train to his palace that insurrection abdicates i api: had broken out in Petrograd, and that the people demanded his abdication. On the following day a dele- gation from the Duma met him at Pskov and proposed that Tsar Nicholas resign the throne to the young Crown Prince Alexis, with Grand Duke Michael as Regent. The Tsar’s spirit seemed broken by the news that the army was a unit against him. He made no protest against his fate and re- quested only two favors: that the crown should go to his brother Michael directly instead of to the Crown Prince Alexis, because he could not bear to be parted from his little son, and that he might be permitted to retire to his estates at Livadia, rich in flower gardens. His first request was granted. The Grand Duke Michael was offered the throne on condition that he would ‘‘govern in full union with the national representatives.’’ Butthe Grand Duke cautiously announced that he would accept the throne ‘‘only if this should be the desire of our great people’’ as expressed by a Constituent Assembly ‘‘elected on a basis of universal, equal, rT listened to what was being said and heard that the police tried to use their whips and swords on the people and this angered the Cossacks so much that they attacked the police, killed the captain, and drove them all away.’’ (Frank A. Golder, The Russian Revolution, p. 64.)THE | COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA secret, and direct suffrage.’”’ In the meantime Russia re- mained a republic. The Tsar’s other request for permission quietly to retire to the life of a country gentleman was never accorded. He was kept closely imprisoned in his palace at The fate of Tsarskoe Selo and later transferred to Siberia. ‘he SF While the constitutional régime lasted the Tsar and his family were given the treatment of prisoners of war, watched and guarded and confined to simple fare, but not punished as criminals. Under the Bolshevik reign of terror in 1918 the Tsar’s lot became rapidly worse. He and his immediate family were subjected to every form of insult and abuse, which ended only with their secret execution by decree of a local soviet at Ekaterinburg in July, 1918. Thus the Tsar was denied even the dignity of public trial and execution granted to Charles I and Louis XVI. No incident in the Great War is more pathetic than the fate of this gentle, kindly, though most unroyal ruler; but private virtue has never yet saved a king who from blindness, ignorance, and the advice of evil counselors inflicts endless misfortunes on his people. The authority of the revolution was now vested in the hands of a provisional Government consisting of the chief party leaders of the old Duma. It contained , representatives of various moderate parties, but Ae ; the only Socialist or pronounced radical among repeats its members was the new Minister of Justice, Alexander Kerensky. At the head of the new Government stood Prince Lvov, former President of the Union of Zemstvos, who held the important position of Minister of the Interior. The new Minister of War was Guchkov, a leader of the conservative Octobrist Party; the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miliukov, chief of the Con- stitutional Democrats. No abler body of men have ever held power in Russia, but they were fatally handicapped from the start by the gulf of misunderstanding which sep- arated them from the peasants and workingmen. The provisional Government desired to establish a régime that368 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE was both liberal and stable, in which personal liberty would be secure, but property rights would be safeguarded with equal care. The radical parties demanded an immediate general peace, the division of the great estates among the poor peasants without compensation to the former owners, and the nationalization of all important industries. For the moment, however, the provisional Government received enthusiastic support from the masses of the Rus- Theeraof sian people. A revolution requires time to good feeling realize its own strength. So long as there ap- peared to be any question of the complete victory over T’sardom all factions stood together to defend the achieve- ments of the March Revolution. The Government pro- claimed a general pardon for all political crimes, and eighty thousand exiles returned from Siberia. Complete freedom of speech and of the press was granted. Capital punish- ment was abolished, arbitrary arrest made illegal, and a speedy trial for all accused persons guaranteed. All the legal discriminations against the Jews disappeared. They were henceforth free to live where they chose, own property of any kind, engage in any occupation, enter any school or college, and hold any civil or military position to which they might be appointed. The special privileges of the estab- lished Orthodox Church disappeared and all sects enjoyed complete religious freedom. Poland, now wholly under German domination, was promised complete national in- dependence in place of the vague “autonomy’”’ offered by the Tsar. The legal rights of Finland were restored. The attempt to impose the Russian language by force on the non-Russian peoples of the Empire ceased. Local govern- ment was reorganized and reactionary officials who could not or would not adjust themselves to new conditions were ousted from their positions. All these astounding innovations imposed at once upon the most backward and illiterate of European nations be- wildered as well as pleased the people. Without the *It is hard for an American to realize the mental darkness in which nine tenths of the Russian people lived. One Socialist orator having declared thatTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 369 slightest training in self-government on any scale larger than the village, they had small conception of the + d a x ; The first meaning of democracy and the stern demands it draught of . ohm sc . freedom makes on the individual citizen. Good-natured crowds stood all day in the city streets listening to orators expounding the meaning of the revolution or paraded be- hind red banners, enjoying the first free holiday in their hard-driven lives. In the country anarchy reigned un- checked. Unwilling to wait for the slow process of law, many peasants seized the estates of their landlords or wealthy neighbors and divided them among themselves. In place of the old administrative officials, who, however incompetent and corrupt, at least had learned by long practice the routine of their duties, came idealistic young amateurs, who knew a great deal about revolutionary philosophy, but had never before handled the machinery of government. The infection of disorder passed to the army. Soldiers turned the trenches into picnic grounds, chatted across ‘‘no man’s land” with their German foes, and sometimes varied proceedings by shooting their officers. The navy practically disappeared as an instrument of wal as the sailors were more interested in fighting for the revo- lution than in fighting against the Germans. Because the Russian poor and their radical leaders did not fully trust the ‘‘bourgeois”’ provisional Government, they supplemented the regular, legal authorities The rise of by a system of revolutionary councils chosen in) Pe soMete the towns by the factory workers, in the country by the peasant communes, in the army by military units. These councils bore the name of ‘‘soviets.”’* At first they did not challenge the authority of the Government, but they acted as watchdogs of the revolution to encourage new reforms henceforth Russia would have no ‘‘monarch”’ but the revolutionary pro- letariat, a crowd of soldiers drew the conclusion that it was planned to choose as the next Tsar a ‘‘monakh”’ (monk)! ! (See Golder, op. cit., p. 77-) «The Russian word “‘soviet’’ had no special revolutionary flavor. Any council may bear this name; even the old [mpe rial Council of the Tsardom was a soviet. But the events of the revolution of 1917 have given a special mean- ing to ‘‘soviet government”’ as practically equivalent to rule by workingmen’s delegates to the exclusion of all the propertied classes.370 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE and denounce reactionary tendencies. But as time went on the soviets extended their power from propaganda to administration. Soon the agents of the provisional Gov- ernment found that they could get no order obeyed unless it were approved by the local soviet. It was not long before a distinct cleavage separated the bourgeois liberals who dominated the provisional Govern- The conflict tment and the laboring poor who found in the of parties soviets the most congenial form of political self- expression. The reactionary parties practically disappeared during the early weeks of the revolution, or hunted cover. In fact the old Tsardom had few adherents outside the ranks of its own paid officials; when it had once fallen it found no friends willing to stand by it in adversity. This eliminated any immediate danger of a counter-revolution, but left the stage clear for a conflict between those who ac- cepted the results of the March Revolution as they stood and those who considered the revolution still incomplete. In the former class were the Octobrists and the Constitu- tional Democrats; in the latter the various factions of so- cialism. The Social Revolutionaries, the traditional radical party of Russia, had the largest following, especially among the peasants. The Social Democrats drew their strength from the workingmen of the towns. For more than a decade the Social Democratic Party had been divided into two bitterly hostile factions, the majority group, called Bolsheviki from the Russian term for ‘“majority,’ and the minority or Mensheviki. All of these parties except the Bolsheviki gave general support to the provisional Govern- ment as a necessary means for conserving the gains of the revolution and carrying on the war against Germany, but they differed widely as to the policies which the Govern- ment should pursue. As the only large party which openly opposed the first republican Government of Russia, the Bolsheviki rallied to The themselves every element of radical discontent. Having no representatives in the ruling ministry they were free from all the responsibilities of administra- BolshevikiTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 371 tion and the necessary compromises of a political coalition. They were in a position to outbid the other parties, there- fore, in promises to the people, and they won new support with every blunder of the Government and every defeat on the battlefield. Their program comprised the following de- mands: (1) the ‘‘dictatorship of the proletariat’’ — that is, the principle that the propertied classes should have no political rights and no share in the Government; (2) ‘all power to the soviets’’ — that is, the abolition of all the existing agencies of government and the substitution there- for of the revolutionary councils of workingmen, soldiers, and peasants; (3) immediate confiscation of the land with- out compensation; (4) nationalization of productive pro- perty; (5) revision of war aims and the immediate con- clusion of a general peace. In their economic program they differed from the other socialist parties only in being un- willing to wait for future legislation, but politically their principle of class dictatorship was at the farthest extreme from the ideals of liberty and equality professed by most socialists. Vladimir Ulianov, better known by his alias of Nikolai Lenin, was the leader of the Bolsheviki. He was a Russian of noble descent whose brother had been hanged pati many years before for a conspiracy against Tsar Alexander III, and who had himself suffered exile for his convictions. During the first days of the revolution he was in Switzerland, but he returned as soon as possible in a com- pany of Russian immigrants whom the German Govern- ment permitted to pass through German territory, in cars hermetically sealed to prevent an outflow of propaganda on the wrong side of the frontier. From the day of his arrival in Russia he was the sharpest thorn in the side of the provi- sional Government, working untiringly for its overthrow. In many ways his character suggests that of Robespierre. Like that famous revolutionist, Lenin could sway a mob without the qualities of the demagogue. He was dry, pedantic, and dogmatic in manner, iterating and reiterating his Marxian formulas with little attempt at appealing to the372 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE emotions of his audience. He was imperious and dicta- torial and ready to use any method to realize aims which seemed to him right, hesitating at no extreme of tyranny or perfidy, but for all that fundamentally sincere and self- devoted to an abstract cause. Unlike most theorist radi- cals of his type, he was a very ‘“‘practical politician” in the sense that he could bide his time and shift his course when necessary. This capacity for opportunism, for main- taining power by postponing cherished reforms, was later to stand him in good stead when he had to run a govern- ment himself. The aid given by the German Government to Lenin and other important Bolshevist leaders raises an interesting Bolshevism Guestion which still awaits a final answer — to and German what extent the Bolsheviki consciously codper- apne ated with Germany against the interests of the Entente Allies. One point at least is clear. The Bolshe- viki were not, in any positive sense, what is called “ pro- German.” ‘To them all ‘‘capitalistic’’ (non-socialist) gov- ernments were equally foredoomed to follow militaristic and imperialistic policies. They condemned Germany and Austria as much, but no more, than they condemned Eng- land, France, the United States, or the ‘‘ bourgeois republic” of Russia. They accepted German aid, but at the very moment of accepting it they announced that they were working for a world revolution which would overthrow all existing governments in Europe. Any treaties or agree- ments, secret or open, which Germany might force them to make would be kept just so long as suited their purpose. On their part the Germans gave aid to the Bolsheviki for ex- actly the same reason that they had favored Stiirmer’s ministry under the Tsar or supported nationalist move- ments in Poland, Finland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, car- ing little for the merits of the case, but glad to help any type of propaganda which might weaken Russia or cause her to withdraw from the Entente Alliance. Paul Miliukov, Foreign Minister of the provisional Gov- ernment, was a liberal imperialist. He wished Russia toTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA have an enlightened and democratic government but he did dream of not wish to relinquish altogether the ‘ : Sees ; The con- empire which Russia had cherished under the flict over Tsar. In particular, he desired that Russia ket should gain Constantinople and the straits con- necting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. But many of the more radical revolutionists believed that the newly emancipated Russia should repudiate all the secret engage- ments inherited from the Tsardom and propose terms of peace which would permit a speedy ending of the war. They demanded that Miliukov either abandon the secret treaties negotiated during the war or resign his post. In May the agitation against Miliukov reached a head. Street demonstrations for and against the provisional Goy- ernment disturbed the capital. The soviets 7. cong threatened to withdraw their support from a_ provisional war waged on the basis of secret treaties. So ease threatening was the position that the Government con- sulted with the soviet leaders and agreed to drop Miliukov from the office of Foreign Minister and to enlarge the so- cialist representation in the ministry as a whole. Teres- tchenko replaced Miliukov. Kerensky, former Minister of Justice, became Minister of War in place of the conserva- tive Guchkov. The new Government was a coalition, about equally divided between socialist and ‘‘bourgeois”’ parties, which probably reflected fairly enough the division of opinion among the public at large. But it had lost the confidence of many conservative men who had supported the first provisional Government and it had not yet won the confidence of the Bolsheviki, who demanded a socialist ministry from which all bourgeois liberals would be ex- cluded. The new provisional Government repudiated the Miliu- kov policy of continuing the war until the Central Empires were crushed and the full demands of the En- 47,. new tente Allies could be imposed upon them. It foreign issued a statement advocating a general peace Poy “~ithout annexations or indemnities and based on the ih Bia iit Bt Hil PW374 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE right of nations to decide their own affairs” ; and promising to bring about a new agreement with Russia’s allies on this basis. The Russian formula was hailed with enthusiasm by liberals and pacifists everywhere, but it was coldly re- ceived by the ruling cabinets of other belligerent countries, not quite so war-weary as Russia.’ In spite of the unwillingness of England, France, and Italy to revise their war aims to meet the Russian demands, Rte the second provisional Government remained restore the Wholly loyal to Russia’s promise not to make a wees separate peace. Kerensky as Minister of War did all that was humanly possible to revive military enthusiasm at the front. But it was already too late. The emotional oratory of the great revolutionary leader seldom failed to stir an immediate response, but the effect of his appeals was temporary while the forces of dis- integration were permanent. Not until July did the Rus- sian army feel strong enough to resume the offensive, and this attempt served only to reveal how utterly unreliable the Russian soldier had become. The Russian Revolution made the same mistake which had been made — at first — in the French Revolution, the Politics in. attempt to introduce pure democracy into an the trenches army on active service. This was,a natural and very creditable reaction from the cruel military discipline of the old régime with its inhuman gulf between the officer and the private soldier. By the new rules soldiers elected their own welfare committees and sent delegates to the soviets. They were not obliged to salute their officers or give them honorary titles. They were allowed to take an active part in politics and join political societies. Some of these privileges were originally intended only for the Petro- erad garrison, but the soldiers in the trenches insisted on sharing them, and even extending them. Before long the soldier soviets were usurping the powers and duties of the ‘To the Russian peasant with his narrow village outlook Manchuria, Con- stantinople, and other distant places are mere words. The story is told that one Russian peasant declared: ‘‘What do we want of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles anyway? They are always frozen in winter!”THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA a7D officers and issuing military orders. In this state of in- discipline it was easy for the Germans and the Bolsheviki alike to spread disloyal propaganda. The officers were powerless and the Government could rely only on counter- propaganda and the arts of persuasion. A few Cossack regiments set a good example, and a ‘‘women’s battalion of death’’ was organized to shame the men into renewed efforts, but all in vain. On the first of July the Russian army in Galicia made a vigorous attack along the Dniester River, reaching the city of Halicz. As an advance beyond the high- Russia’s last water mark of the 1916 offensive, this was a !ensive favorable omen, but the initial success was not repeated. 3efore a fortnight had passed the Russian attack had utterly broken down. Several cases have been reported in which the Russian soldiers, having advanced to a certain position, deliberately halted and engaged in leisurely de- bate as to whether they should continue their advance or remain on the defensive. The military result of a combat between a disciplined German army and a soldiers’ debat- ing society may be imagined! After suffering frightful losses, the Russian army retreated from Galicia and Bukovina, thus entirely freeing Austrian soil from the in- vader. Isolated Rumania was left to her fate. Behind the Russian lines the whole Ukraine, where German-Austrian propaganda had been particularly effective, seethed with newly awakened national feeling against the Russian Gov- ernment. Coincident with these disasters at the front, fresh riots broke out in Petrograd. Armed men in motor cars passed through the streets, terrorizing the populace 7. i.4 and the local authorities. Although the rioters provisional took as their battle-cry the Bolshevist maxim, aver te ‘All power to the soviets,’’ Lenin and other party leaders regarded the movement as premature and reserved their supreme effort until the coalition Government should have still further lost the confidence of the masses. The insur- rection of July was therefore put down after a few days of ne nS TREN ARO tes376 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE mob rule. But the rising tide of radical sentiment forced out of power Prince Lvov, head of the first and second re- publican ministries, and with him resigned the Constitu- tional Democrats. Henceforth Kerensky was himself the head of the provisional Government. Only a few non- socialists accepted office in the reconstructed ministry, which was practically a coalition of the various socialist groups (except the Bolsheviki) together with a small number of liberal bourgeoisie. Another change was made in the military command. In August Kornilov succeeded General Brussilov as head of the Russian army. Alexander Kerensky was the last hope of those who wished at once to preserve the fruits of the revolution and ietenskey to keep Russia in the war. His personal pres- and the tige was greater than that of any other living revolution : Russian, for he had been one of the most popu- lar and fearless radical leaders in the old Duma and he had taken a leading part in each succeeding revolutionary ministry. As Minister of Justice he had kept the popular vengeance against the hated ministers of the old régime within legal bounds and repeatedly saved Russia from the disgrace of lynch law. As Minister of War he had done more than any other man to infuse patriotism into the dis- affected army. Observers of all parties describe his oratory as marvelous. But when he became Prime Minister his personal power and his popularity with the laboring poor were alike in decline. Always physically weak, his heroic exertions in the early months of the revolution now told heavily on his judgment, his temper, and his power to work, and the rout of the army had clouded his early confidence in the outcome of the revolution. A note of despair crept into his later speeches. ‘‘My strength is failing,’ he once said, “because I no longer have my old confidence that we have before us, not revolting slaves, but conscious citizens creating a new state with an enthusiasm worthy of the Russian nation. Alas that I did not die two months ago, for then I should have died in the splendid dream that once and for all a new life had dawned for Russia!”’THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 377 An inevitable effect of the political conflicts of the revolu- tion was a falling-off in the productive power of the nation. Factory workers took the power from their em- a 1e ployers just as soldiers’ committees had taken industrial power from their officers. The working day was opr apse > ; “ SSla reduced from twelve to eight or even six hours, wages were doubled and trebled, bosses lost the power to discharge incompetent workmen. Strikes and street demonstrations interrupted the routine of work even in munitions factories. By the end of summer the manu- facturing output of Russia had fallen to about half its normal figure. The always inadequate transportation system of the country fell into chaos. To take a train was an adventure; it depended on the whim of the train crew where or when one would eventually arrive. When we consider that Russia at best was not in the first rank as a manufacturing nation, that the important industrial cities of Russian Poland had fallen into German hands, that the importation of German and Austrian goods on which Russia normally depends had been cut off for three years by the war, that munitions from France and England could not pass through the Black Sea closed by Turkey, or through the Baltic dominated by the German fleet, it is evident that even if the Russian army had not lost its will to fight it would soon have had to face the enemy with empty hands, unless in some way the mines, factories, and railways of Russia could be restored to relative efficiency. The collapse of the Russian campaign in Galicia en- couraged the German army to break the Russian lines farther north. So a vigorous offensive was The fall of started in the Baltic provinces, where part of the 8 population was German in speech and sympathy and might be expected to welcome the invasion. Already Courland had been occupied and a sustained advance to the north and east would bring German armies within striking distance of Petrograd itself. In September, 1917, the Germans cap- tured Riga, the chief city of Livonia, and next to Petrograd the most important Russian port on the Baltic. WithTWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE 378 little difficulty they seized some island outposts and pre- pared for a descent on Esthonia. Each advance shook popular confidence in the Kerensky Government and in- creased the demand for immediate peace. In order to gain moral authority for the Government a general conference had been summoned in August, made The up of representatives from city councils, rural Moscow zemstvos, coOperative societies, trades unions, Conference . arn te . commercial organizations, soviets, and other public agencies of Russian life. It was not a legislature, like the old Duma or the promised Constituent Assembly, but Kerensky and his colleagues hoped that as an advisory body it would help toward a solution of Russia’s growing perplexities. On the whole the Moscow Conference was conservative in tenor. Premier Kerensky had to listen to many reproofs for not taking sufficiently drastic measures to crush mutiny at the front and disloyalty among civilians. Distinguished officers, such as Generals Kornilov and Kaledin, demanded the immediate execution of soldiers who retreated against orders. Korniloy, the adventurous Cossack who had risen to command of the army, was the hero of the Conference and from that time began to cherish the delusion that Russia would accept him as a military dictator if the provisional Government failed in its task of restoring order. General Kornilov, convinced by the fall of Riga that drastic measures were necessary, proposed a reconstruction eee Pe of the provisional Government giving to himself bids for as commander-in-chief supreme civil and mili- Pe tary control. This proposal alarmed Kerensky, who, as socialist and revolutionist, was naturally suspicious of a military dictatorship and feared that it might undo many of the gains of the revolution. On September 9th he announced that Kornilov had been removed from his post of commander-in-chief. Instead of submitting to orders, the general replied with a proclamation of defiance and marched on Petrograd with an army consisting largely of Native troops from the Caucasus, the so-called “SavageTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 379 Division.”” But the army as a whole remained loyal to Kerensky and even the Bolsheviki rallied to his support against the greater danger of a Cossack dictatorship. Kor- nilov’s army dispersed and he was forced to surrender. The effect of the Kornilov incident was wholly unfortunate. It deprived the army of the services of an able general, it dis- credited the men who had advocated stricter military dis- cipline by associating them with Kornilov’s conspiracy, and by a natural reaction it strengthened the authority of the soviets against which Kornilov had protested. More than ever the radical parties viewed the propertied classes, even the liberals among them, as counter-revolutionists at heart who were planning to restore the old régime. Kerensky now turned to the radicals for support. The provisional Government formally proclaimed Russia a re- public to set at rest any lingering fears that the ,,, Constituent Assembly might adopt a monarchi- Democratic cal constitution. Reactionary officers, associ- a a ated with the Kornilov movement, were dismissed. An- other national conference met, but this time it bore the name of the Democratic Conference and was composed of more radical elements than the Moscow Conference. After much random debate, the Conference agreed to the calling of a preliminary Parliament which would embody the legal authority of the revolution until the meeting of the Con- stituent Assembly. The Bolsheviki denounced the pro- posal as a mere expedient for keeping the provisional Gov- ernmentin power. For political reasons they demanded the immediate convening of the Constituent Assembly, but their real plan was to inaugurate the rule of the soviets. During the early months of the revolution the All- Russian Congress of Soviets, and the Central Executive Committee which represented it between meet- _ The Bolshe- ings, was socialist but not bolshevist. This vikiand central organization of the soviet system, by ‘S°YS_ ‘ = ~ politics this time extensively organized throughout Russia, was always radical enough to give the provisional Government a good deal of trouble, but it had not yet as-380 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE pired to exclusive authority. But the Bolsheviki had cap- tured many local soviets during the summer and autumn of 1917, sometimes by fair voting and sometimes by a show of violence. In Petrograd a prominent Bolshevist Leon Trotsky (Bronstein) replaced the Menshevist Tcheidze as head of the local soviet. This facilitated the plans of the Bolsheviki for a conspiracy in the capital. A new meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets was imminent and the Bolsheviki were confident of con- All power to trolling a working majority init. Of the Con- the Soviet! stituent Assembly they were hopeful, but less certain. This naturally strengthened their desire to build the new constitution of socialist Russia around the soviets rather than upon the work of an untried Assembly or the existing agencies of the provisional Government. The soviets had been at work for months, they were an engine of the revolution and associated with its triumphs, and they held the confidence of the workingmen of the towns. Now that the Bolsheviki had at last captured the soviets they could use them as both a means to overthrow the Government and a substitute for it. In harmony with the bolshevized soviets a large part of the army and navy under the instructions of a military-revolutionary commit- tee secretly prepared_a new revolution. By the end of Oc- tober all plans were complete. The Kerensky Government seemed singularly unaware of the Bolshevist plot and un- able to take the vigorous action necessary to suppress it. But without the support of the army the Government could not in any case have retained power for long or kept Russia in a war in which the Russian soldier had lost all interest. Kerensky frankly warned the other Allied Governments that Russia could no longer take an active and determining part in the war, but neither he nor the statesmen of the Western Allies realized how eager the average Russian had become for peace at any price. On November 6th the Red Guards (revolutionary regi- ments acting under Bolshevist orders) seized the public buildings in Petrograd. On the following day they placedTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA under arrest the ministers of the provisional Government, though Kerensky himself managed to escape. 7, The All-Russian Congress of Soviets approved November the coup d'état and recognized the new pro- Segaues visional Government organized by the Bolsheviki. Un- like the earlier revolutionary ministries, the Council of People’s Commissaries, which was the executive branch of the new Government, was drawn entirely from one po- litical party. It was the first all-socialist Government in human history and it did not even represent the whole of Russian socialism. The Bolsheviki were determined to make an end to compromise and coalition and rule with an authority as absolute as a Tsar’s. Lenin, the chief of the Bolshevist Party, was also the head of the Council of People’s Commissaries. Trotsky, leader of the Petrograd Soviet, was Commissary for Foreign Affairs. All the other important posts in the administration went to prominent Bolshevist politicians. As little consideration was shown to the other socialist factions — the Social Revolutionaries and the Menshevik Social Democrats — as to the bour- geoisie themselves. Foreign observers looked on the revolution in Petrograd as merely an interesting episode in the chaotic political struggles of Russia. Petrograd was a dis- . . affected city with radical traditions; its local ale Constituent Assembly garrison was not the whole of the Russian army. But Moscow, too, deserted Kerensky. The army at the front failed to answer his appeal. Soon it became clear that the Bolshevist régime, based on the military force of the Red Guards and the moral support of the soviets, was the real Government of Russia. Its legal title might be weak, but that mattered little in the crisis of a revolution when the only test of any government is “Will the army obey?”’ But one hope remained for a speedy overthrow of the new régime. Perhaps the Constituent Assembly would refuse to support it. Elected on a basis of universal adult suffrage the Assembly represented the democracy more fairly than any other body of men in Russian history. It382 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE was not limited to the upper classes, as the old Duma had been; it did not exclude these classes, like the soviets. In it was embodied the moral authority of all Russia. The Bolsheviki themselves had urged the Kerensky Govern- ment to call together the Assembly and cease to govern without a mandate from the people. But when the Bol- sheviki had once obtained power the Constituent Assembly was no longer to them a popular court of appeal against a “bourgeois” Government, but only an annoying obstacle to the establishment of a perfect proletarian constitution. Elections took place on November 25th. Russia had gone far indeed on the road to radicalism. The Constitu- as tional Democrats and other non-socialist groups verdict of | almost disappeared, and even the Menshevik ae Social Democrats made little showing. The real contest was between the Bolsheviki and the peasants’ party, the Social Revolutionaries. In Petrograd and Moscow, in the chief industrial centers, and among many divisions of the army the Bolshevist candidates were elected. But in Russia as a whole the Social Revolution- aries won a striking victory. If the majority of the Russian people had been permitted to have their way this party would have organized the new Government. But the Bol- sheviki had no intention of surrendering power merely be- cause they had been defeated in an election. They post- poned the meeting of the Assembly from December to January and prepared to set it aside altogether unless the Social Revolutionary majority would agree to accept the legislation demanded by the Bolshevist minority. On January 18, 1918, the Constituent Assembly convened in Petrograd under the armed menace of Red Guards and The Bolshe- Sailors from the Baltic fleet. The more con- vig destroy servative members stayed away altogether, in Constituent the well-justified belief that their personal safety ney would be endangered if they appeared in the capital. By a vote of 244 to 153 the Social Revolutionaries chose their leader Tchernoy president of the Assembly in- stead of the Bolshevist nominee, Maria Spiridonova. TheTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 383 Assembly also refused to accept the proposed declaration ceiving all constitutional power to the soviets. The Bol- sheviki and a few of the more radical Social Revolutionaries (the faction of the ‘‘left’’) thereupon left the Assembly, and on the next day forcibly dispersed it in the same fashion that Nicholas II had been wont to dissolve a disobedient Duma. The dream of a democratic Russia was at an end. The disasters of the war had brought the Bolsheviki into power; it followed that only an immediate peace could keep Immediately after coming into Russia bids for peace them there. power the new Government proposed a general armistice. The western Allies, still confident that Russia would repudiate the November Revolution, refused to recognize the Bolshevist régime and therefore paid no at- tention to its proposals. The Germans, on the contrary, encouraged the Russian negotiations, not hoping from them a general European peace such as the Bolsheviki desired, but seeing an opportunity to make a separate peace with Russia. From the end of November diplomatic agents of Germany and Russia were in touch with each other and military operations practically at a standstill. On Decem- ber 15, 1917, a definite armistice signed at Brest-Litovsk by representatives of Russia and of the Central Powers put a term to Russia’s participation in the war. In capturing the public buildings of Petrograd the Bol- sheviki obtained possession of the secret documents of the old Russian Government. As the Soviet Gov- The ernment had ‘already resolved in any case to polreya break off the alliance with England, Italy, and Reaiant! France, Trotsky, the Commissary for Foreign le Affairs, did not hesitate to make public the secret treaties concluded between Russia and her Allies. At the same time, Trotsky warned the Central Powers that they had skeletons in their own closet: When the German proletariat, by revolutionary means, gets access to the secrets of its Government chancelleries, it will produce documents from them of just the same nature as those which we are now publishing.384 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE A prophecy which has been more than amply fulfilled. The Soviet Government followed its repudiation of Russia’s diplomatic obligations by a decree repudiating Russia’s foreign debt, which was largely held by France. To the French holder of Russian bonds this action of the Soviet Government was nothing less than robbery, and from that time forward France was the most consistent and bitter enemy of the Bolshevist régime. On December 22, 1917, formal negotiations for peace opened at Brest-Litovsk between the representatives of The Be Soviet Russia and the delegates of the Central Litovsk Powers. The German Government sent the Sateen Foreign Secretary, Richard von Kiihlmann; Austria-Hungary sent Count Czernin, who held a corre- sponding position in the Dual Monarchy. But these civil- ian emissaries were dominated by the military authorities of the German General Staff who realized the utter prostra- tion of Russia and were not afraid of abusing their victory. General Hoffmann, one of the German military delegates, frequently interrupted proceedings with threats which seemed to embarrass his civilian colleagues as greatly as they embarrassed the Russian diplomats. Impatiently he declared: I must first protest against the tone of these proposals. The Russian Delegation talks to us as if it stood victorious in our countries and could dictate conditions to us. I would like to point out that the facts are just the reverse and that the: vic- torious German army stands in your territory. The nominal head of the German delegation on one oc- casion apologized for this truculent attitude. ‘‘If General Hoffmann expresses these terms more strongly,” he said, “it is because a soldier always uses stronger language than diplomats.’”’ But in spite of some misgivings on the part of the more moderate German and Austrian diplomats, notably Count Czernin, the military party had its way. The peace imposed on Russia was to be a one-sided peace, a peace of force. The Russian delegates at Brest-Litovsk, led by M. Joffe,THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 385 but acting under the orders of Trotsky, the Commissary for Foreign Affairs, had a most difficult task. ; = . ; ‘ Russian They realized that ail the material power was policy at 3rest- on the side of the victorious Central Powers y;. 7, 4 IV> and that if the Bolsheviki resisted the peace of force which would probably be imposed on Russia, they could be caught between two fires: an advance of the Ger- man armies into the heart of Russia and a rebellion of their own followers who had been promised an immediate peace. On the other hand, to yield too much and too easily would seem to justify every patriotic Russian who accused them of betraying national interests toGermany. They followed, therefore, an intermediate course, not openly rejecting the demands of the Central Powers, but playing for time and secretly endeavoring to foment revolutionary movements among the German soldiers. This had little influence at the time, while the Germans were still confident of an early peace with victory, but, when at a later period of the war fortune turned against the Germans, the teachings of Trotsky’s agents began to bear belated fruit. General Ludendorff himself reckons the Russian communist propa- ganda among the chief causes which led to the military col- lapse of Germany in 1918. The main point at issue in the prolonged debates of Brest- Litovsk was the fate of the Russian nationalities torn from the Russian Empire by war or revolution; eS- qy. iccue of pecially Poland, Lithuania, Courland, Livonia, ‘‘self-deter- — : mination” The Russian Esthonia, and the Ukraine. delegates demanded that this former Russian territory be evacuated and that the inhabitants be left wholly free to determine for themselves their form of government. The Central Powers conceded willingly enough the general principle of “‘self-determination,” but refused to discontinue their military occupation. They insisted further that a popular vote was not essential to determine the wishes of the inhabitants; ‘ to speak the real will of the people. This was no academic question. Germany and Austria-Hungary wished to erect ‘representative bodies” could be trusted386 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE an eastern barrier of dependent States, permanently allied to the Central Powers, which would at once offer new fields for commercial exploitation and fend off possible Russian aggression. The Germans knew that the mass of the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian peasantry was not friendly, but they hoped by military and political pressure to coerce their provisional Governments into accepting Teutonic princes and constitutions ‘‘made in Germany.” Of all the Russian nationalities which renounced the rule of Petrograd the sorest loss to Russia was the Ukraine, or Little Russia.” Such lands as Finland and The if Republic Poland had never been thoroughly Russified, plate and their separation, while it might diminish Ukraine Bete - the resources of the Russian Empire, would strike no blow at Russian unity. But in the vast plains of southwestern Russia lived a people closely akin to other Russians by language and national tradition. These Ukrainians (‘‘borderlanders””) numbered over 30,000,000 in Russia and counted as their fellow nationals more than 4,000,000 Ruthenians in Austria-Hungary. The Ukraine comprised the richest grain-growing provinces of Russia, lying between Great Russia and the Black Sea. But the old Russian despotism had made serious blunders in its rule of the Ukrainian provinces and by oppression had goaded into life a nationalist sentiment of which Austrian propagandists made skillful use. With the Russian Rev- olution of 1917 the Ukrainians put forward a demand for complete “autonomy” and took advantage of the Bolshe- vist upheaval to enlarge autonomy into complete inde- pendence. The Ukrainian Republic sent representatives of its own to Brest-Litovsk, where they negotiated a sep- arate peace with the Central Powers. The Bolsheviki ac- quiesced in the independence of the Ukraine, but they did not cease to flood the country with Bolshevist agents who strove to bring about a reunion of Great and Little Russia on the new basis; not of a common nationality, but of com- mon revolutionary institutions. No final solution was reached by the Central Powers forTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA the problems presented by Poland, Lithuania, and the 24Itic Provinces of Esthonia, Livonia, and Cour- ; : The land. Poland, in particular, presented grave Austro- difficulties. Germany would not consent to Bou ; question abandon an inch of Prussian Poland, but was reluctant to annex new Polish territories which could not, as experience had shown, be assimilated into German na- tionality. One much-discussed solution was to join Rus- sian with Austrian Poland in a new Habsburg kingdom, creating a triple realm of Austria-Hungary-Poland. But Count Tisza, speaking as the leader of the Hungarian Gov- ernment, imposed an absolute veto on this plan. Hungary might consent, he said, to an Austrian annexation of Po- land as a dependent province of Austria, but would never agree to giving Poland equal rank with Hungary as an au- tonomous State. The Poles themselves were becoming increasingly discontented by the postponement of their promised national independence and by a “rectification”’ of the Ukrainian frontier which altered the historic fron- tier of Russian Poland. In conciliating the Ukraine, the Central Powers had further alienated Poland. Finland was unquestionably the most anti-Russian part of the Empire. A people in part Asiatic and in part Swed- ish in race, language, and culture, having nothing +, in common with the Slavs; a people with a rad- Republic of ically democratic constitution and ancient tra- Pin eae ditions of self-government, who had seen their legal rights one by one invaded by the bureaucrats of Petrograd; such a people could not fail to see in the Russian Revolution an opportunity to reassert their national rights. The revolu- tionary Government in Russia retained the nominal al- legiance of Finland by a general grant of ‘‘autonomy,”’ but the oe of local self-covernment were hard to define. Under the old régime, Finnish autonomy meant that the Grand aneene - ‘Finland was united with the Empire of Russia in personal union by a common allegiance to the House of Romanoff. But there was now no ruling family to command the allegiance of any Finn, and to become388 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE incorporated into so alien a commonwealth as Russia ran counter to the national instinct. With the Bolshevist Revolution Finland flung off even the name of Russian alle- giance and in December, 1917, became an independent State. Unfortunately the Finnish Republic came into existence at a time of acute class rivalry. A new Diet had just been meri fie elected and the Socialists had lost their former en majority. Although the election was by uni- Sinian versal adult suffrage, a radical wing of the Fin- nish Socialists, like the Bolsheviki in Russia, favored the overthrow of the democracy and the establishment of a dic- tatorship of the proletariat. In this endeavor they could rely on the sympathy and aid of the existing Russian Gov- ernment, which was willing to acknowledge Finnish inde- pendence, but desired Finland to adopt communist in- stitutions. The rivalry of the Finnish-speaking inhabitants and their Swedish compatriots, the rancor of the tenant against his landlord and the workman against his em- ployer, the fear that the conservative parties were willing to ally with Germany to assure Finland’s independence, and the desperation born of a terrible famine which was killing the poor by thousands, all played a part in confusing the issues and increasing the bitterness of the class war. The Finnish Bolsheviki and their Russian allies ravaged south- ern Finland, butchering without mercy all of the ‘‘bour- geoisie’’ who opposed the new order. A volunteer militia opposed to Bolshevism, the ‘‘ White Guards,” organized the farmers and the middle classes White in the towns of western and northern Finland against Red and halted the advance of the ‘Red Guards.” They appealed to Sweden for aid, but Sweden remained neutral, though sympathizing with the Whites, fearing to be drawn into the Great War by an intervention which Russia was sure to oppose. Germany, however, sent aid to the Whites and aided them to reconquer the country as far as the Russian frontier. In their gratitude for German aid the Finns came greatly under German influence. In March, 1918, a peace treaty between Germany and Fin-‘THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 389 land provided for friendly neutr: Wity on the part of Finland and close diplomatic and commer jal relationships with Germany. ‘The reaction against Bolshevism had gone so far that many conservative Finns prop sed the establish- ment of a constitutional monarchy in place of the republic, and in such a case it was understood that Germany would present a candidate for the throne from among her own princes. Whether these projects would ever have been realized or not cannot now be told, as they naturally came to an end with the defeat of Germany. They were sig- nificant at the time in alienating the sympathy of the western Allies, who now regarded Finland as a German dependency. The disintegration of Russia under the Bolshevist ré- gime did not stop with the “s 1f-determination”’ of Finland, and the Ukraine. In the Caucasus , Mountains ee Georgians, Armenians, and Ta- fr riiental tars announced their intention to erect republics jp, ee of their own. The greater part of Siberia was held by anti-Bolshevist Russians who were seeking to organize a counter-revolution. The far north of European Russia became the Archangel Provisional Government, under the protection of the Allies. The Cossack settle ments in southeastern Russia organized armies against Lenin and Trotsky. Only in the cities of central Russia (the old ‘“‘Muscovy” or Great Russia) and in the country districts which could be dominated from those cities were the Bolsheviki rulers in fact. While the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk were still progressing, the Russian Empire seemed to be dissolving into a score of petty, warring re- publics; anew Balkans, with class warfare added to historic national feuds. In February, 1918, the peace negotiations with Russia broke down. The Ukrainian Rada (parliame Tits) saci made a separate peace; much to the disappoint- ™2kes ment of the western Allies, who had hoped that Sithoatin since the Ukraine was still non-Bolshevist it A vould continue in the war even if Soviet Russia withdrew.390 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE The peace with the Ukraine on February 9th was followed on February toth by the withdrawal of Soviet Russia from the war. On Trotsky’s advice the Russian delegation re- fused to sign any peace treaty, but declared the war at an end. No doubt Trotsky hoped that this unusual step would appeal to the German Socialists and workingmen and bring about a general strike if the German militarists should fur- ther try to prosecute the war. Vain delusion! The German armies advanced into Russia encountering no real resistance, while the German Socialists contented themselves with par- liamentary protests. Some of the more fiery spirits among the Bolsheviki counseled armed resistance to the new Ger- man invasion, since it was now directed, not against a Tsarist or “bourgeois” Russia, but against the proletarian revolution. But Lenin, the dominant figure of the whole Bolshevist Party, advised submission, pointing out the im- possibility of effective resistance and the certainty that the Germans would wreck the new revolutionary régime if Russia remained obstinately at war. On March 3, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed. Those who signed it must have felt that they were The Treaty signing a death warrant for Russia, at least the of Brest- Russia which has existed since Peter the Great. oe All the borderlands of Russian Poland, Lithua- nia, and the Baltic Provinces passed out from Russian rule and their fate was left to German determination. Turkey reoccupied Erivan, Kars, and Batum in Russian Armenia. Russia was forced to recognize the peace between the Cen- tral Powers and the Ukraine and to cease all Bolshevist propaganda in Ukrainian territory, and similarly to cease agitation against the Republic of Finland. The Aland Islands, a Finnish dependency in the Baltic Sea, were to be deprived of their fortifications. By a supplementary agree- ment Russia had to pay a war indemnity of 6,000,000,000 marks ($1,500,000,000) for war losses to German subjects and for the cost of caring for Russian prisoners of war. Since the western Allies refused to recognize the Bolshevist Government, it followed that they also refused to recognizeTHE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 391 the existence of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and all of its provisions were formally nullified by the Treaty of Ver- sailles in 1919. Rumania, left without support from Russia or the Ukraine, was forced to make peace to avert complete national annihilation. In the Brest-Litovsk negotiations Turkey and Bulgaria sent their representatives, but more as spectators than as participants. But at Bucharest Bulgarian interests were directly involved. The southern Dobrudja, won from Bulgaria by Rumania in the second Balkan War, was returned with some additions. The northern Dobrudja, extending as far as the Danube River, passed under the joint control of the Central Powers, as the Turks expressed some objections to granting Bul- The Treaty of Bucha- rest garia unconditional rights to the whole district. Ai:ong the Austro-Hungarian frontier a ribbon of territory was torn away in order to give the mountain passes and the foothills of the Carpathians to the Dual Monarchy. As some offset to these territorial losses Rumania was allowed to extend her control over the Russian province of Bessarabia, and to retain a commercial route across the Dobrudija to the Black Sea. The most important clauses of the peace from the German point of view were the economic provisions, giving to the Central Powers leasehold control over the valuable petroleum fields of Rumania, modifying the Rumanian tariff, regulating the administration of the Danube River, and providing for the upkeep, at Rumania’s expense, of an army of occupation. A further provision granted equal rights to Jews and Mohammedans with the Christian popu- lation cf Rumania. To the fundamental principles of this peace Rumania assented in March, 1918, and the details were finally agreed to in May. The immediate and apparent Austria-Hungary by the treaties of Litovsk and Bucharest were most important. The eastern battle-front disappeared. For the first time in modern history Germany and Aus- tria-Hungary had little to fear from the great armies of gains to Germany and ) Brest- What the peace won for the Central Powers } 1 T . | 1 N a t % :392 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Russia. It mow became possible to concentrate the military resources of the Central Powers against the western Allies. To the east lay no longer hostile trenches, but promising fields for political and economic expansion. Poland, Lithu- ania, Courland, Livonia, Esthonia, Finland, the Ukraine, even Rumania, had become dependencies, client States, of the Central Powers. Naumann’s dream of a confeder- ated Mitteleuropa, in which the German Empire would play a part similar to that of Prussia among the lesser German States, seemed in fair way to realization. Soviet Russia also might eventually be forced under German influence, or at least remain a benevolent neutral bound by ties of com- mercial necessity to industrial Germany. The Turkish ad- vance toward the Caucasus and the defeat of Rumania brought to the Central Powers petroleum reserves adequate to the needs of even the longest war. In the Ukraine lay rich grain harvests which held out hope of relieving the food shortage in the German and Austrian towns.t With all eastern Europe open to the trade of Germany and Austria- Hungary, the importance of the command of the seas was greatly decreased. Finally, the moral effect of the Russian surrender enabled the Germans and their allies to endure yet another year of war and to look with fresh hope to the last great campaign on the western front which would de- termine the fate of the war. To Russia the settlement of Brest-Litovsk brought neither peace nor freedom. The Bolshevist Government had de- hana mobilized the army, only to reorganize it as a peace,and revolutionary force of ‘‘Red Guards.” Many reedom in parts’ of Russia considered themselves at war with Germany, and therefore at war with the Bolsheviki who had made the peace of Brest-Litovsk. Even extreme revolutionists shared this feeling. At the All- Russian Congress of Soviets, held at Moscow in July, 1918, * The treaty with the Ukraine was nicknamed ‘the bread peace,” because of the food supplies imported by Germany and Austria-Hungary after Brest- Litovsk. Count Czernin comments: “The millions whose lives were saved by those 42,000 wagon-laads of food may repeat the words ‘bread peace’ without a sneer.”THE COLLAPSE OF RUSSIA 393 the Social Revolutionary representatives denounced the Germans. Two days later Count Mirbach, German Am- bassador to Moscow, was assassinated. Similar terror- ist actions took place in the Ukraine. The Bolsheviki, loyal (though reluctantly loyal) to their pact with Ger- many, punished severely every manifestation of hostility toward Germany’s representatives. Acting under Ger- man instructions they attempted to disarm Austrian pris- oners, mainly of Czecho-Slovak nationality, who had sided with the Entente Allies after surrendering to Russia. This step, seeming to bring the Bolsheviki into close alli- ance with Germany, led to renewed intervention by the Allies. The Czechs and Slovaks, whom the Bolsheviki had tried to disarm, seized rolling stock on the Trans-Siberian Rail- way and fought their way through Siberia to the on far eastern port of Vladivostok. ‘They were at- eee tacked by German and Austrian armies in the Ee ee cho- Ukraine, by Bolshevist Red Guards whom Trott iy 4, sky had sent to enforce disarmament, and by German prisoners of war who had taken matters into their own handsin Siberia. In spite of the odds opposed to them, the Czecho-Slovaks protected their retreat across the whole breadth of Siberia, defeated the Red Guards sent ae them, and overturned local. ce ate of Bolshevist rule many parts of western Siberia and 1 southeastern Russia. In order to aid the Czecho-Slovak forces and keep the Trans- Siberian Railway from falling into hostile I hands, the Allies at last consented to the landing of Japanese troops at Vladivostok. American and British soldiers occupied also the Arctic seaboard of European Russia, at Archangel and along the Murman coast. The valorous resistance of the Czecho-Slovaks had checkmated German plans for dom- inating Siberia and added a omantic chapter to the history of the war, but it sharpened the antagonism between Soviet Russia and the Entente. In order to demonstrate to the Russian people that the impolicy of the Soviet Government had not alienated hammeron mnie394 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE foreign sympathy from the suffering Russian masses, the Ree he President of the United States sent a message of hope for of good will to the Soviet Congress of March, Russia ae I9Io: Although the Government of the United States is, unhappily, not now in a position to render the direct and effective aid it would wish to render, I beg to assure the people of Russia through the Congress that it will avail itself of every opportunity to secure for Russia once more complete sovereignty and independence in her own affairs, and full restoration to her great réle in the life of Europe and the modern world. Although the Bolshevist Government sent a somewhat churlish reply, extending thanks to ‘‘the laboring and ex- ploited classes of the United States’ rather than to the American Government, the gesture of sympathy did much to cement friendship between the two countries. The American message well expressed the secret hope of every earnest Russian, from the Cossack counter-revolutionists to the Bolsheviki, that Russia would emerge stronger than ever before from the purgatorial flames of foreign and civil Wal.sf > iN CHAPTER XIV\ THE HOUR OF VICTORY A war does not solve absolutely any problem but the one — which side is the stronger; it may clear the sround of encumbrances and so facilitate the builders’ task, but the immedia ordering’’ which the Greek historian noted torious battles. In casting up the accounts of any armed struggle, the debit :vier, because the losses are ascertained, while the . result is a desperate confusion — that deadly “‘dis- as the consequence even of vic- side must appear the | elements of profit are too often in speculation and the far future. JoHN BucHAN THE spring of 1917 was made notable by four important é / Y developments in the Great War: the climax of the sub- marine campaign, the Russian Revolution, the - 1¢e entrance of the United States into the war, and western the first general retirement of the German army aa 2 in the west. From October, 1914, to March, 1917, the western battle-front had remained practically stationary; the greatest changes being the German advance on the outer forts of Verdun and the Anglo-French ‘‘drive’ along the Somme Valley. Tactical gains had been made at a fearful sacrifice of human life, but no general strategic ’ movement appeared possible for either side. The German command in the west had lost the offensive and could not resume it until the progressive demoralization of Russia rendered possible the transfer of troops from the eastern front. Since a defensive campaign alone seemed possible, the Germans decided to abandon the death-grapple on the narrow battle-ground of the Somme, to prepare a new series of entrenchments on stronger ground to the rear (the ‘Hindenburg line’’), and to obtain a straighter and shorter battle-front at the sacrifice of about a thousand square miles of French territory. Before the retirement was effected, the Germans systematically laid waste the entire abandoned area. Towns and villages were*burned, fruit trees cut down, wells destroyed, and one of the most fertile regions in France turned into wilderness. The immediate purpose of this devastation was to hamper the advance of396 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE the English and French armies, and this object was thor- oughly attained, as the Hindenburg line was in a state of complete preparedness by the time the soldiers of the En- tente had occupied the man-made desert. Needless to say the civilian public of all the Allied and Associated Powers rejoiced at this, their first important ae advance in the west since 1914. Expert military the Entente Opinion saw less reason for optimism. The skill one of with which the German retreat had been con- ducted and new defenses prepared fully offset the territorial loss involved. But there still remained the hope of broadening this initial gain into a new general offensive. A British army near Arras and a French army under General Nivelle near Laon struck at the pivots — north and south — of the new Hindenburg entrenchments. In both cases the initial success was encouraging. The British captured Vimy Ridge and took some 20,000 prisoners; the French occupied the famous Chemin des Dames, a road cresting the heights north of the Aisne. Later in the year the French recaptured nearly all that they had lost before Verdun and the British literally blasted their way forward through the mud of Flanders by heavy artil- lery fire and mines dug under the German trenches. Such gains would have been very welcome in 1915 or 1916, but they failed to meet the high hopes which the German re- treat had raised. The heavy losses of the French offensive, the ever more evident helplessness of Russia, the growing weariness engendered by years of indecisive warfare had combined to create a feeling of discouragement which de- manded an early and decisive victory or an early nego- tiated peace. Very ominous was the fact (carefully concealed at the time by censorship) that in one of Nivelle’s offensives several an ._,, French regiments had flinched from the attack Defeatism : in France, asa useless bloody sacrifice. The superb morale of the French soldier had been the very corner- stone of the military strategy of the Entente Allies from the beginning. The civil Government also England, and ItalyTHE HOUR OF VICTORY showed weakness. Until Clemenceau took the helm in November, France was governed by indecisive ministries, patriotic enough and skilled in parliamentary ways, but lacking the confidence and resolution needed in time of war. Malvy, the Minister of the Interior, dared not take steps to repress the anti-war agitation conducted by radical pacifist papers such as the Bonnet Rouge. Joseph Caillaux, perhaps the ablest of French politicians and financiers in the years immediately preceding the war, more and more openly hinted at the desirability of negotiations with Germany. Although later arrested and tried for treason at the insti- gation of Clemenceau, it 1s probable that Caillaux was patriotic in intention, but his pacifist propaganda brought him into association with men who for motives of their own were serving German aims. England was far less ex- hausted than France, but she was at the same time, secure behind her ocean wall, able to view the war with more de- tachment. A pacifist minority, represented by the Union of Democratic Control and several leaders of the Inde- pendent Labour Party, had protested against the war from the beginning. Now even conservatives began to pause and consider whether or not the game was worth the candle. Lord Lansdowne, one of the most eminent leaders of the Conservative Party in the House of Lords, declared in November, 1917, ‘‘if the war is to be brought to a close in time to avert a world-wide catastrophe, it will be brought to a close because on both sides the peoples of the countries ‘nvolved realize that it has already lasted too long.’’ Con- scription had been carried with much difficulty in Great Britain, where hundreds of ‘‘conscientious objectors”’ re- fused military service, and in Ireland the attempt to in- troduce it broke down before a nation-wide opposition. Rising prices and overwork in the mines and munitions shops brought strikes and labor disputes for the Govern- ment to settle. British labor was divided against itself on the Russian proposals for international negotiation by the Socialist parties of all belligerents. In Italy by 1917 national morale presented a far graver398 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE peril. Italian opinion had from the first been much divided as to the advantages of entering the war. Austria, rather than Germany, was Italy’s traditional foe, and apart from the hope of gaining a narrow fringe of ‘‘unredeemed Italy”’ from Austria the Italians had little at stake in the conflict. Moreover, the military situation was most discouraging. The Italian offensive toward Trieste had ended in a pro- longed deadlock; an endless, wearisome struggle in which the capture of a barren ridge of limestone was a “‘great victory’’ for which thousands of lives must be spent. Bread riots in the factory towns, indiscipline in camp and trench, whispers of the new Russian doctrine ‘‘Bolshevism”’ be- ginning to circulate among the more radical socialists, alarm- ing rumors of famine among civilians industriously cir- culated by German agents among the war-weary soldiers, dulled the fighting edge of some divisions on the upper Isonzo. Here, therefore, the Germans directed their next attack. Save on the defensive, holding in check the Italians, the Austrian army had almost ceased to count as a factor in the The war. There was even danger that Charles, the Caporetto new Emperor who had succeeded the aged ae Francis Joseph, might seek a separate peace with the Entente or, more probably, open negotiations in which Germany would have to participate rather than fight on alone. ‘‘Defeatism,’’ indeed, was a greater menace to Austria-Hungary than to Italy, or any other combatant save only Russia. Three times the Germans had been forced to lend a “‘stiffening” of German leadership to an Austrian offensive: against the Russians in Galicia, against the Serbs in the Balkan war zone, and against the Ruma- nians. Now six German divisions, deflected from the Rus- sian and French fronts, formed the spearhead of the Aus- trian attack against Italy. During the last week in Octo- ber, 1917, a violent assault, aided by all the terrors of modern artillery and poison gas, overwhelmed the Italian forces on the upper Isonzo, just across the Austrian frontier. At Caporetto the Italian line broke and permitted the Ger- ‘THE HOURVOF: VICTORY man-Austrian army of invasion to penetrate past the fron- tier hills to the rich Venetian plains below. 1st, Italy had lost 180,000 prisoners to the foe. By November This in- volved retirement for the whole Italian army, as there was otherwise the possibility that unbroken regiments, still holding to their original positions, might be surrounded and forced to surrender. The Italians, after the first rout, managed the retreat with skill and made full use of the moat- rivers of the Venetian plain to delay the enemy until they could finally entrench themselves on a short line of defense before the Piave River. The imminence of national peril put a sudden end to all talk of peace by negotiation or by proletarian revolution. Venice was saved and the patriotic energy of Italy restored. But Austria had been relieved of her greatest peril and saved to the alliance of the Central Powers for another year. As some slight offset to the crushing defeat of Russia and Rumania and the collapse of the Italian advance against Austria, the Entente recovered its lost prestige , «1. in the Ottoman Empire. In March, 1917, a liningin the British army entered Bagdad, thus avenging aS the former Turkish victories in Mesopotamia. General Maude’s victory at the ancient Arab capital of Bagdad was followed in the autumn by the conquest of Palestine under General Allenby, who occupied Jerusalem in December. In both campaigns the British were greatly aided by the changing attitude of the Arabs, subjects of the Ottoman Government and inclined at first to respond to the Turkish appeal to the Mohammedan world, for the Arabs are the eldest and most orthodox sons of Islam. But Colonel Lawrence and other English agents who had made a study of Arabian civilization and habits of thought were able to convince the Arabs that the interests of the creed of Islam were not bound up with the political fortunes of the Turkish Sultan. proclaimed independence of Turkey, and the Mohammedan population of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine, hostile at first, shifted to a watchful neutrality and finally a sympa- One Arabian state, the Kingdom of the Hedyjaz, gar catennenanenene PARRA400 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE thetic codperation as the British armies moved slowly into the Turkish provinces. Until Germany began her last great offensive in March, 1917, there was a period of partial inactivity along the The winter Western front. The Austrian attempt to ex- before ploit further their gains in northern Italy ended the last ; ‘ campaign in complete failure; the line of the Piave still In the held, not unjustly winning the tribute from Sx t ° ’ . puta the Italian poet d’Annunzio: ‘Are there other living riversin Italy? I will not think of them. ... Soldiers of the countryside, soldiers of the city, men of every kind, Italians from every province, forget all else for the moment, and remember only that this water is for us the water of life . . . the deep artery of the blood of our land.” Toward Cambrai in northern France the British directed a sudden In the attack in November, without the usual artillery Boneh preparation, but employing in unprecedented numbers the huge armored tractor cars (“‘tanks”’) which were the chief British contribution toward the mechanism of contemporary warfare. Though the Germans repelled the British by a counter-attack, the significance of the battle was not lost to either side. Earthwork entrench- ments, guarded by barbed-wire fences, were not, then, as had been supposed, impregnable to all attack until days of gunfire had blasted them asunder. A key had been found for the three years’ deadlock in the west and open warfare was possible once more to the combatant who had tanks enough to lead his attack. One reason why no final decision in the west was sought in the later months of 1917 was that both sides looked for reénforcements. Not until Germany could Prepara- ; oWepie tionsforthe shift her divisions from the eastern front could 1918 ‘ +8 SEE i J s Hane she place in the field an army equal to the com bined forces of British, French, Belgians, and Americans in the west. While the Russian situation was still doubtful, Germany played a waiting game, economiz- ing man power by remaining on the defensive and also by ingeniously varying the conditions of trench warfare sor : ~~" Vienna aad TRA -WUNGARY ‘oZ)\ SE 1 he A 4 \ “\B Igra gape: ‘s , \ ‘fs ay THE WARRING NATIONS MARCH, 1918 CALE OF MILES 100 600THE HOUR OF VICTORY that smaller forces could hold the wide front. The new en- trenchments covered a wider zone and hinged on small concrete-domed machine-gun nests (the “‘ pillboxes’’) which could give the enemy endless trouble to eliminate by artil- lery fire before any safe advance was possible. The Ger- man offensive tactics also aimed at any economy of men. In 1914, when attacking the French and Belgian fortresses, and later at Verdun, the Germans had flung their armies forward in living waves, careless of loss if only the military objective were attained without delay. Their new method of attack relied on the skill and valor of a few chosen veterans (‘‘storm troops’’) who seized strategic points in the hostile line and thus permitted the ‘‘infiltration”’ of the army through the breaches so created. Gas shells, clusters ‘ of machine guns, and bomb-carrying airplanes aided the storm troops to win their sudden assaults. By March all was ready for the last campaign. The German High Com- mand knew that it must be the last campaign, and the de- cisive one, for never again in the war could conditions be so favorable. Russia had reached its lowest point of dis- solution, in the anarchic interval between the civic disct- pline of the republic and the partisan discipline of the com- munist dictatorship. Italy was still reeling from the blow at Caporetto. The other Entente Allies, excepting only England and France, were too weak or too distant to play a decisive part in the struggle. The British and French must then be defeated, and at once, because the failure of the submarine campaign left an open road across the At- lantic for the new American armies. A few months’ delay and Germany would be faced by greater odds than ever be- fore. Too frequently the Entente Allies had consoled them- selves with the half truth that ‘‘time fights on our side.” Delay had indeed made possible the full mobilization of the British army, but it had also permitted Russia to break under the strain of repeated disappointment. But now there seemed some truth in the saying, for America had taken nearly a year to organize her military resources and stood ready to fling them into the balance against Germany.402 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Of course the necessity for a German offensive was as apparent to the French and British as it was to the Germans March themselves. But the Germans masked their Zions preparations with sufficient care that it remained uncertain just where the blow would be delivered. Along the western front Germany had 192 divisions (over 1,500,- 000 soldiers) against 169 divisions (nearly 1,400,000) for the Entente Allies. From their superior forces the Germans selected divisions of the best storm troops and attacked along a fifty-mile front from a point east of Arras south to my La Fére. The concentration of artillery and infantry for the attack was almost unprecedented for so wide a front, amounting to one gun and fifty-five rifles to every eleven yards. The British Third Army under Sir Julian Byng held ground fairly well before Arras, but was forced to re- treat across the old battle-field of the Somme to keep con- tact with Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army, driven back al- most to Amiens by the irresistible shock of the main Ger- man offensive. Within a few days the Germans captured 90,000 British prisoners and hundreds of cannon, sweeping back the British lines over an area of 1500 square miles. But the main German object — to ‘‘break through”’ as had once been done against the Russians in Galicia and again against the Italians at Caporetto— had not been at- tained. The British had lost the ground which had taken them and their French allies over three years to reconquer within the space of a few days. They had suffered, fighting on the defensive, losses approximately as great as the Ger- mans had spent to win the battle. But they saved the in- tegrity of the battle-front and with it the war. Hindenburg and Ludendorff, chief directors of the Ger- man effort in the west, felt justly that their care and fore- Thor’s sight in the March offensive had borne full fruit. hammer ‘The first drive had been asuccess. Where should strikes again : ; the next attack be delivered? They decided to attack the British south of Ypres, with the hope of captur- ing ports on the Channel which might be transformed from British transport landings to German submarine bases.THE HOUR OF VICTORY Farther south German cannon bombarded Paris from a distance of seventy-five miles. A third German offensive, between Rheims and Soissons, reached by the end of May, 1918, the old tI914 battle-line of the Marne River at Chateau-Thierry. Soissons itself was captured and Ger- man trenches stood only forty-four miles from Paris. By July the German effort had reached an end. Every attack had won important territorial gains, but neither the British nor the French had been routed; neither Paris nor the Chan- nel ports were in German hands, and the hungry, war- weary civilians in German and Austrian cities expected nothing less. One of the first effects of the March disaster was to teach the Entente a lesson which they had not hitherto learned from Germany’s achievements, the need of con- The rally of centrated command. The Central Powers, dom- ‘he atente inated by the German General Staff, had fought as a unit; the Entente Allies as individual nations. Now in the ultimate emergency a supreme commander-in-chief was placed over the entire western war zone. General Fer- dinand Foch, who had commanded the French center on the Marne and served with distinction in many subsequent campaigns, was the inevitable choice. Foch organized a strategic reserve of French, British, and American divisions (General Pershing had placed the American forces without reservation at his disposal) to meet each new German at- tack. The British brought every available man across the Channel, bringing back to normal strength the decimated divisions which had taken the shock of the German attack. American soldiers were packed in transports with only their personal equipment: precedence for once granted to man power over the equally indispensable transport of muni- tions and food. By midsummer the Germans had lost their superiority of man power. No way of restoring it was possible. Even as things were, the last recruits from Ger- many showed far inferior fighting qualities to those of the veterans of earlier campaigns and could not be used as storm troops or even relied on as reserves. Desertions be-404. TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE came frequent, regiments transferred from the Russian front seemed to have learned ‘‘defeatism’’ from their long contact with Bolshevist propaganda. On the other hand, the morale of the Allied and Associated Powers rose mag- nificently to meet the crisis. The feeling that all depended on a single effort, beyond which lay peace and victory, put an end to the intrigues, dissatisfaction, and clamor for a negotiated peace which had filled the previous year. The farthest extension of the German advance, and for that reason its weakest point, was the sharp salient whose The counter. Dase extended from Soissons almost to Rheims etrokeion and whose apex rested on the Marne at Chateau- E Thierry. No effort was spared to improve the German front by widening the base of the salient, especially toward Rheims, but the French held stubbornly the en- trenchments which flanked the German wedge. In June the American Second Division halted the German offensive by vigorous counter-attacks in Belleau Wood, the first im- portant American victory ever won on a European battle- field. But in July Ludendorff had prepared a heavier at- tack, the last phase of the German offensive in the west. From July 15th to July 18th the Germans strove desperately to widen their front on the Marne. Rheims still held out, but on the west, near Soissons, the Germans advanced their trenches six miles at the farthest point. Here the German effort halted, exhausted. Marshal Foch had al- ready prepared his counter-offensive. On July 18, 1918, French and American troops under General Mangin at- tacked the western flank of the German salient, from Sois- sons to Chateau-Thierry. The Germans, unable to resist the pressure, withdrew once more from the Marne to the Aisne. Finding that the first experimental blow had succeeded, Marshal Foch determined to initiate a general offensive. August 8, The British under Marshal Haig were ready to bone take the leading share in this movement. On the old Somme battle-field they launched an attack on August 8th. For the first time the German soldiers refusedTHE HOUR OF VICTORY 405 to rally to meet the attack.t The Canadians under General Byng were particularly successful in driving back the Ger- man lines in Picardy, capturing entrenchments long sup- posed To the south the French gave effective support to the British drive. The balance in man power, munitions, and aircraft had passed to the Entente. The German soldier had uncomplainingly endured four full ‘ ‘impregnable.”’ years of conflict while hope still remained, but in her last hour Germany had no statesman to tell her, as Clemenceau had told France in the agony of June: ‘‘I fight before Paris, I shall fight in Paris, I shall fight behind Paris!”’ General Pershing now concluded that the time was ripe for placing in the field a consolidated American army which would be more than a collection of scattered __ regiments. Some French and British military eee experts demurred, fearing that anew army, with (0° mipu no intermixture of seasoned veterans, might pay too heavy a price in avoidable losses for the privilege of in- dependent action. The battle of Belleau Wood and other combats in which the Americans had engaged had proved (what few ever doubted) the courage of the individual sol- dier, but they did not prove, what many Europeans doubted, the competence of American generalship. For this reason special importance attaches to the last phase of the war, the autumn of 1918, when the American army had attained a size sufficient to carry on its own strategic actions as part of the general advance. In September the American army took for its special task the crushing of another German salient, a part of the battle-front where the Germans had for four years held an isolated outpost at Saint-Mihiel in the Meuse valley south of Verdun. The operation was a complete success and forced a German retirement from Saint-Mihiel to the frontier. Without respite the battle merged into the general October campaign of the Meuse t Ludendorff’s own comment is interesting: ‘August 8th was the black day of the German army in the history of the war. . . . I was told of deeds of glorious valor, but also of behavior which I should not have tl ht possible in the houg German army; whole bodies of our men had surrendered to single troopers or isolated squadrons.” th Cis naa a HK406 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE valley and the rugged forest country of the Argonne, in which twenty-nine American combat divisions took part, a force twelve times as great as the armies which Grant led through the Wilderness in the bloodiest days of the Civil War. Another service rendered by the Americans was to take over an increasingly large section of the western front and thus set free British and French divisions for concen- trated offensives. In January the Americans held but one per cent of the front-line trenches, and even in May only four to seven per cent, but when the Meuse—Argonne cam- paign was under way American forces occupied more than a fifth of the entire battle-line. While the American army, pushing on toward Metz and Sedan, was threatening the German lines of communication with the armies in Flanders, these armies were British a : victories giving ground under the direct assaults of the ee British. As early as April a daring raid on Zee- brugge by sea and air had wrecked one of Ger- many’s most valuable submarine bases on the Flemish coast. Another raid on Ostend in May practically put an end to submarine activity in the neighborhood of the Eng- lish Channel. The Belgians reoccupied the ports in Oc- tober, while the British seized railroad centers in French Flanders and in Picardy. Bulgaria was the weakest link in the chain of German military power which stretched from the North Sea to the ree Arabian deserts. The Bulgarians, naturally a meantime Warlike race, had made their full contribution Bulgaria. to the war in their campaigns against Serbia and Rumania. But their army was the smallest of the armies of the Central Powers and there lay behind it no store of national wealth or industrial productivity. The resources of Bulgaria, such as they were, had been severely strained by the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and by the early campaigns of the Great War in southeastern Europe. The conquest of Serbia and Rumania held out hopes to Bulgaria of obtaining Macedonia and the Dobrudja, and so kept her loyal to the Central Powers. But Bulgaria had no remain-THE HOUR OF VICTORY ing strength of her own and all her hopes might be scattered by a blow from any quarter which Germany could not parry. The Entente had made no move for a long time in the Bal- kans. Buta large army of Greeks, Serbs, French, British, and Italians lay encamped from Saloniki to the Adriatic, an army which amounted to nearly three quarters of a million men. In September General d’Esperey received orders from Marshal Foch to advance against the Bulgarians, in the confidence that Germany, hard-pressed on the western front, could send no effective aid. The campaign was brief. The Allies broke the Bulgarian line in Macedonia, and on the last day of September Bulgaria surrendered uncon- ditionally. Four days later King Ferdinand, whose policy had involved Bulgaria in the war, abdicated in favor of Prince Boris. The capitulation of Bulgaria involved the isolation of the Ottoman Empire. No fresh assistance could now be ex- pected from Germany, even if Germany could 7. otto. spare men or guns from her own campaign. The man Empire 3ritish followed up their successes of 1917 at Se ae Bagdad and Jerusalem with the conquest of Syria, the oc- cupation of Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities, the seizure of railway centers along the Berlin—Bagdad route, and an advance on the oil wells of Mosul in northern Mes- opotamia. Enver, Talaat, and the other leaders of Turkish imperialism, who had staked the national destinies on a German victory, resigned office to men more acceptable to the victorious Entente. The new Sultan, Mohammed VI, begged for an armistice. On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Government agreed to open the Straits to the warships of the Entente Allies, to place Turkish territory at the dis- posal of the victors, to return the prisoners taken during the war (they had already surrendered the survivors of General Townshend's ill-fated Mesopotamian expedition of 1916), and to demobilize the Turkish army. The dream of a Teutonized Near East which had inspired German di- plomacy for a generation had vanished and British prestige was restored throughout the Mohammedan world.408 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE Of all the Great Powers on either side, Austria-Hungary had staked the most on victory. Defeat for Germany, ioe France, Italy, Russia, or Great Britain meant Austria- Hungary national humiliation, loss of territory, heavy Soe indemnities, perhaps a setback of a generation or more in national development. But in each case there would remain a core of nationality, an irreducible homeland, within whose contracted frontiers political unity would still exist. Austria-Hungary alone among the Powers had to contend with the separatism, not of national minorities, but of majorities. The dominant German ele- ment in Austria, the dominant Magyar element in Hungary, lacked confidence in each other and were sundered by mem- ories of rebellion and repression. Yet they stood together in the coldest and most formal of unions, necessitated there- to by their common dread of the subject nationalities, Latin and Slavic, which threatened to overwhelm them. Early in the Great War many predicted the emergence of a true Austro-Hungarian nation from the common experiences of war-time. For afew months, in truth, there was a flash of patriotic enthusiasm among many, at least, of the Danubian nationalities; embodied most clearly perhaps in a certain cult of devotion to the aged and unhappy Emperor. But the weary campaigns against Russia, Rumania, Italy, and Serbia soon wore away the first enthusiasm with which Francis Joseph’s subjects had responded to his call to arms. In the next stage, the loyalty to particular national ideas replaced the common loyalty to the State. The Tyrolese peasant and Viennese burgher fought no longer for the artificial structure of Austria-Hungary, but they still had a cause: the cause of Teutonism, the common historic bond of all the German peoples, whether Prussian or Austrian, Saxon or Bavarian. The Magyar was increasingly willing to see a severance of Hungary from Austria, but he fought on in the fear that defeat might involve a partition of the “thousand-year realm” of Hungary. Even the Croat, who would not fight against Serbia, could be used on the Italian front, and not a few Galician Poles subordinated their na-THE HOUR OF VICTORY 409 tional quarrel with the Austrian Government to their greater quarrel with the harsher Russian rule. Only the Czecho-Slovaks had all to gain and nothing to lose from a victory of the Entente. In Russia, France, and America, Czecho-Slovak legions gathered under their own historic banners to fight the Austrians; in Austria-Hungary itself they opposed to the Government a sullen resistance which seriously hampered the activities of the Dual Monarchy. Various turns of fortune in the course of the war tended still further to alienate the subject nationalities of Austria and Hungary. The intervention of Rumania 7,. pg. made a potential rebel of every Rumanian in claration of Transylvania. The Russian Revolution free aoe the Poles from their fear of Tsarism. The reply of the Entente Allies to President Wilson’s request for a statement of peace terms encouraged the Czechs and other Slavs to hope more definitely for independence. The accession of the Emperor Charles in 1916 brought to the throne an in- experienced ruler who, with many excellent intentions, could not command the sentimental loyalty which had been ac- corded to Francis Joseph. Perhaps the most important single event in the mobilization of national sentiment against the Austro-Hungarian State was the agreement reached at Corfu on July 20, 1917, between representatives of the Kingdom of Serbia and of the Serb, Croat, and Slovene nationalities in Austria-Hungary. Early in the war Serbia would have been satisfied with the realization of a ‘Greater Serbia,’’ including Bosnia-Herzegovina and possibly other provinces, but leaving many of the Roman Catholic Croats and Slovenes still united to Austria- Hungary. By 1917 Serbian particularism was merged ina wider loyalty to a fatherland which would include all of the southern Slavs (Yugo-Slavs) excepting only the Bulgarians. The Declaration of Corfu provided for (1) the creation of ‘fa constitutional, democratic, and parliamentary mon- archy’’ under the title of the “‘Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes’’ with the reigning Karageorgevitch dynasty of Serbia at its head; (2) equal rights for the three410 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE branches of the Yugo-Slav language and for the two alphabets (the Latin and the Cyrillic or “Russian”) in which it is written; (3) equal rights for the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Mussulman religions ‘‘which are the most professed”’; (4) the use of the reformed calendar as in western Europe; (5) a constitution to be established by a Constituent Assembly chosen ‘‘by universal, direct, and secret suffrage.” One of the obstacles to the plan of the Serbian leaders for a united Yugo-Slav kingdom was the conflict of Slavic and Roreien Italian interests along the eastern Adriatic. By Smt eee the secret treaty of London the Italian frontier tionalist would be extended over many Slavic communi- revolution ties and to these a victory for the Entente would mean only a change of masters, the Italian instead of the German Austrian. After the Caporetto disaster, how- ever, a friendlier feeling joined the interests of Italians and Yugo-Slavs by revealing to both peoples the folly of quar- reling in the face of a still formidable enemy. Ata congress of nationalities held in Rome early in 1918 the Italian repre- sentatives agreed ‘‘that the unity and independence of the Yugo-Slav nation is a vital interest of Italy, just as the completion of Italian national unity is a vital interest of the Yugo-Slav nation,” and promised ‘‘to solve amicably the various territorial controversies on the basis of the principles of nationality.” Unfortunately, details were not decided, and thus the question of the Italian—Yugo-Slav frontier remained to plague the Peace Conference, but much was gained in securing codperation between Slavs and Italians for the immediate purposes of the war. In May the British Foreign Office announced its approval of the activities of the Rome Congress. Both Poland and the lands of the Czechs and Slovaks were still, of course, completely occu- pied by German and Austrian armies, but as early as 1917 Polish and Czecho-Slovak legions had been organized on foreign soil — in Russia, France, and the United States — to fight in the common cause of the Entente Allies. In 1918 the Allied Governments and the United States recognizedTHE HOUR OF VICTORY 4II Polish and Czecho-Slovak ‘‘ National Councils,’’ with head- quarters in Paris, as the authorized spokesmen of the newly recognized republics. Austria would now have been glad to make peace on promise of autonomy for the Slavic nationalities of the Empire, but the moment had passed when such +y.. 4; th of terms would have been acceptable either to the Czecho- : ree ; Slovakia Slavs themselves or to their foreign protectors. : Austrian Poland was now one with Russian Poland in the de- mand for complete independence; the Yugo-Slavs had made that their program ever since the Declaration of Corfu. On October 18, 1918, the final blow fell on Austria-Hungary when “the Provisional Government’”’ of Czecho-Slovakia in Paris issued its declaration of independence. This de- claration is noteworthy for its radically democratic and progressive character. The Czecho-Slovak State shall be arepublic. In constant en- deavor for progress it will guarantee complete freedom of con- science, religion and science, literature and art, speech, the press, and the right of assembly and petition. The Church shall be separated from the State. Our democracy shall rest on universal suffrage; women shall be placed on an equal footing with men, politically, socially and culturally. The rights of the minority shall be safeguarded by proportional representation; national minorities shall enjoy equal rights. The government shall be parliamentary in form and shall recognize the principles of initiative and referendum...the large estates will be re- deemed for home colonization; patents of nobility will be abol- ished. Our nation will assume its part of the Austro-Hungarian pre-war public debt; the debts for this war we leave to those who incurred them. When the Austro-Hungarian Government approached President Wilson for an armistice in October, 1918, the President replied that the national claims of the Czecho- Slovaks and Yugo-Slavs must be accepted as part of the peace. As these claims now went beyond ‘‘autonomy”’ to full independence, this meant the complete dissolution of the ancient Empire of the Danube. On November 3, 1918, Austria-Hungary accepted an412 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE armistice which involved the surrender of the navy, the Cheeets demobilization of the army, and the occupation central of territory by Entente forces in sufficient Europe : number to prevent conflict between the eager young nationalities which had fallen heir to the territory of the Empire. This was almost the last. act of Austria- Hungary as a State. The Latin and Slavic provinces had YUGO-SLAVIA ¥ Cpa nee -.~—— Former Boundaries —_—_—_ Present Boundaries _--- Treaty of London Line ase Plebiscite Areas hd 20 0 50 «©6100 «©1150 =200mi. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY already broken away and even Hungary had declared for an independent republic. At least seven independent Governments — Italy, Yugo-Slavia, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, and Poland —ruled in the place of asingle Empire. Each strove to make its frontiers as wide as the most ardent patriot could claim. All frontiers were provisional; until the Peace Conference met to determine the issues involved, hardly a man could be sure of what State he was a lawful subject. Trade almost ceased in the Danube valley, as each new GovernmentTHE HOUR OF VICTORY 413 seized the available rolling stock on the railroads and ship- ping on the Danube within its immediate boundaries as its share of the assets of the bankrupt Commonwealth. The Emperor Charles, rejected by seven nations of his former subjects, went into voluntary exile. Hasty democratic and republican constitutions were rigged up. Strange local movements for a still more complete fragmentation of the Empire appeared: for a Ukrainian East Galicia; a German Kingdom of Northern Bohemia; a Republic of Cis-Carpa- thian Ruthenia; an independent City of Fiume; an in- dependent Transylvania. Self-determination seemed work- ing toward absurdity as every little islet of population pro- claimed its own sovereignty with flag and postage stamp. Where hunger ruled most harshly the embittered poor went beyond nationalist democracy and demanded immediate socialism. Vienna, pitiably impoverished, demanded im- mediate food supplies from the enemy, as no friend could supply the need. Factories lay idle and farmers refused to exchange their good beef and butter for the worthless paper currency which represented all that was left of the buying power of the towns. The Entente soon discovered that there was still an enemy to fight on the Danube front, but no longer an Austrian army: the more formidable enemy, Anarchy, the product of months of underfeeding and the humiliation of utter defeat. Germany, even without the aid of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary, remained formidable and might long have maintained the war if there had been any ,.__ possible prospect of advantage. But the grow- victory in ing American army could not be offset by any heise aid from Germany’s former allies and Germany’s own last reserves had been thrown into the struggle. All through the month of October increasingly heavy attacks along the whole line from Flanders to Verdun pressed back the Ger- man lines. French soil was almost cleared of the invaders, the Belgian coast reconquered, and Alsace-Lorraine ex- pectant of a counter-invasion, when Germany approached the Entente through the United States with proposals for414 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE an armistice. In the German navy discipline had failed al- together. The larger warships had hardly ventured far from port since the battle of Jutland, and the submarines had been so hunted down with decoy ships, depth-bombs, and other devices that enlistment in this one active branch of the navy had almost become a sentence of death. In November the sailors of the High Seas Fleet broke into mutiny. General Ludendorff, the mainspring of resistance, resigned his post in the army on October 26th, and the civil- ian chiefs were now free from his interference in carrying out their plan for an immediate peace by negotiation. Many people, among the victorious nations as well as in Germany, were astounded at the sudden and complete col- lapse of the German army, so powerful six months earlier, but the true military moral of the campaign of 1918 was written in General Haig’s final summary: The rapid collapse of Germany’s military powers in the latter half of 1918 was the logical outcome of the fighting of the two previous years. It would not have taken place but for that period of ceaseless attrition which used up the reserves of the German armies, while the constant and growing pressure of the blockade sapped with more deadly insistence from year to year at the strength and resolution of the German people. It is in the great battles of 1916 and 1917 that we have to seek for the secret of our victory in 1918. Before considering the armistice of November II, 1918, which marked the formal end of active warfare, it may be Bosca well to review the diplomatic approaches to Bian peace of which it was the culmination. Ger- many’s first offer of peace in 1916, President Wilson’s request for a statement of terms of peace from all belligerents, and the answer returned by the Entente Allies failed to bring peace nearer because the German Govern- ment preferred a resort to unrestricted submarine warfare to acceptance of the demands of herenemies. The military collapse of Russia led eventually to the separate peace of Brest-Litovsk, but had very little effect on the negotiations between Germany and the western Powers. But 1917 wasTHE HOUR OF VICTORY a year of great war-weariness for all belligerents. States- men could no longer keep silence as to the conditions of peace, closing all discussion with the familiar formula “Our present business is to win the war,’’ nor openly claim the extreme demands of victory. On July 19, 1917, the Ger- man Reichstag passed a resolution in favor of 7, ‘““a peace of understanding,”’ with the significant Reichstag remark that ‘‘ With such a peace forced acquisi- ce tions of territory and political, economic, and financial op- pressions are inconsistent.’ This formula was vague enough, but it seemed to imply that Germany would not demand territorial annexations as a condition of peace, provided that the Entente Allies in their turn would aban- don all plans for annexation and also the system of inter- Allied commercial preference worked out by the Paris Con- ference of June, 1916. The peace resolution was carried by a coalition of the Socialists and the Center (Catholic) Party. The Conservative and National Liberal parties, which more nearly represented the views of the Govern- ment, voted against it. Chancellor Michaelis, the au- thorized spokesman of the Kaiser, was evasive, declaring only that he accepted the Reichstag resolution “as I under- stand it.”’ In August Pope Benedict XV ventured the task of neu- tral mediation in which President Wilson had failed. He urged the belligerent nations to subordinate 7, Band territorial questions to the important issues of offers an disarmament and arbitration and to renounce olive branch indemnities and claims for reparation. None of the bel- ligerents to whom the Pope directed his appeal seemed to find in it an immediate opening to peace, but it was at least significant that covenants for permanent international peace were now as eagerly debated by statesmen on both sides as the older questions of annexations and indemnities. Ludendorff, representing the viewpoint of the general staff of the army, and Chancellor Michaelis, the successor of Bethmann-Hollweg, agreed in private on the need for strategic annexations to protect the iron mines of Lorraine one IT ~ ee ee416 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE and certain exposed points on the Polish frontier. In public, however, Michaelis did not venture to wander far from the Reichstag resolution for peace without conquest, and he applauded the plea of the Pope for disarmament and arbitration. President Wilson discerned the conflict of opinion in Germany between the growing pacifism of the Reichstag and the stubborn militarism of the civil and military bureaucracy. In his reply to the Pope, therefore, he argued that ‘‘We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to en- dure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evi- dence of the will and purpose of the German people them- selves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting.”’ Chancellor Michaelis, a well-intentioned but colorless Prussian official without much parliamentary experience, soon followed Bethmann-Hollweg into retire- ment. In October Count Hertling of Bavaria, an elderly Catholic politician, became Chancellor and brought into negotiations a touch of South-German suavity. Kiihl- mann, as Foreign Minister under Michaelis and Hertling, also tended to seek a possible peace. But time and again the whole civil government was overruled by the military chieftains, intent on an impossibly complete victory. We have noted already that Austria-Hungary desperately sought a peace at any price short of complete dismember- Aiteesaie ment at a time when many Germans were still efforts for confident of decisive victory. The memoirs of a the numerous German and Austrian statesmen and generals who have dealt with the Great War are full of the friction between the two allies. From the German point of view Austria-Hungary was almost a dead weight, useful to furnish raw man power and certain commodities, but incapable of initiating any successful campaign except under German leadership. From the Austrian angle, Germany was a bullying ‘‘ big brother,”’ ever prolonging the war to gain some remote object in which Austrian interests were not at all involved. In 1917 Emperor Charles tried to get into touch with England, France, and Italy by meansTHE/HOUR OF : VICTORY of various channels in neutral Switzerland. In a note- worthy letter to Prince Sixtus of Bourbon he declared that Austria would favor ‘‘ France’s just claims regarding Alsace- Lorraine,’’ and the restoration of Belgium and Serbia to complete independence. German Government the relinquishment of Alsace-Lorraine Count Czernin proposed to the to France in return for Austrian Galicia, which would be added to Russian Poland and in some form united with Germany. All the overtures of Austria failed; partly, it is supposed, because Austria was unwilling to meet the full demands of Italy, and partly because Germany would at no time listen to any proposals for abandoning Alsace- Lorraine. The German Socialists were practically a unit in oppos- ing the annexationist plans of the military leaders of the Empire, but their union ended with this. A ,.4,,). majority group, headed by Ebert, Scheidemann, efforts for and other influential politicians, voted regularly oe for war credits and favored a peace which would leave frontiers much as they were in 1914. A minority of Inde- pendent Socialists attacked the war as imperialistic and demanded the application of self-determination to the national minorities in central Europe, as well as in enemy States. Alone of all the German parties they conceded that peace might have to be bought by some positive conces- sions to the Entente Allies. The Russian Revolution created new alignments. A small fraction of the Socialists in each belligerent country assumed the name Communist, adhered to the Bolshevist plan for soviet government and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and tried to engineer plans for a world revolution by furtive conferences in Switzerland. The British Labor Party voiced the clearest and most specific peace platform; declaring in favor of (1) reparations to injured Belgium; (2) self-determination for Alsace-Lorraine, Poland, the Balkan States, and unre- deemed Italy; (3) a federation and customs union for the Balkan area; (4) liberation of the national minorities in Turkey; (5) international administration of tropical Africa; " nine,418 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE (6) no “‘economic war after peace has been secured’’; and (7) the establishment of a League of Nations. An attempt to hold a labor conference in neutral Stockholm in 1917 failed, as several sections of the labor movement in the Entente countries boycotted the meeting as likely to lead to no useful result. Premier Lloyd George redefined the British position on January 5, 1918. The period was one of the dark days of A British the war, with the defection of Russia and the statement of partial defeat of Italy still fresh in memory, and peace “7S the heaviest German attack on the western front in preparation. Under the circumstances the Prime Minister’s statement was very moderate and even repre- sented in some respects a retreat from demands which had formerly been made. The Austrian Government was as- sured that ‘‘a break-up of Austria-Hungary is no part of our war aims” provided that ‘‘genuine self-government” were granted to the minor nationalities in the Empire. Arabia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine were to be freed from Turkish rule and the Straits internationalized, but “‘we do not challenge the maintenance of the Turkish Empire in the homelands of the Turkish race with its capital at Constantinople.” With these concessions, the terms stated followed the lines marked out by the reply of the Entente Allies to President Wilson a year earlier. All occupied territory must be evacuated and restored to com- plete independence. Reparation must be made for the injuries inflicted by invasion. France must regain Alsace- Lorraine and Italy her unredeemed provinces in Austria. On January 8, 1918, President Wilson laid before Con- gress a statement of his own views of the peace settlement. The As they crystallized into definite form much that “Fourteen had been left vague by other spokesmen of the Points ; Allied and Associated Powers, and as they formed in part the basis of the treaties of peace, these ~ fourteen points’ attained a unique significance among the diplomatic documents of war-time. In summary these terms were:THE HOUR OF VICTORY I. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at... diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view. II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas .. . except as the seas may be closed .. . by international action. III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims. VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory. VII. Belgium... must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. VIII. All French territory should be freed, and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine . . . should be righted. IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality. X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary. . . should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development. XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated, occupied territories restored, Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea. XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be per- manently opened. XIII. An independent Polish State should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea. XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity. In numerous subsequent statements President Wilson in- creasingly stressed the League of Nations as ‘‘the most essential part of the peace settlement itself’’ and the general420 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE principles of equity which must govern the decisions of the Peace Conference (“‘no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just’’). The “fourteen points’’ remained down to the armistice negotiations the clearest declaration of his policy on specific questions arising immediately from the war. When the possibility of German defeat grew to certainty the German Government, and even the officers of the abianae General Staff, agreed that there must be no de- negotiations lay in seeking peace on the most favorable terms ae still obtainable. New men were called to office to carry out the new policy. Chancellor Hert- ling gave way to another South-German, Prince Maximilian of Baden, a politician of decidedly liberal views in spite of his private opposition to the Reichstag peace resolution of the previous year. In October Prince Maximilian became the responsible head of the Government and associated with him as Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Solf, an able colonial administrator. On October 6, 1918, the Chancellor pro- posed “‘the immediate conclusion of a general armistice’’ in a note to President Wilson. The reply was an inquiry as to whether Germany meant to accept the ‘‘terms laid down by the President in his address to the Congress of the United States on the eighth of January” (the ‘‘fourteen points’’), and “whether the Imperial Chancellor is speaking merely for the constituted authorities of the Empire who have so far conducted the war.” The President also pointed out that peace negotiations would involve an agreement with the European Allies and an evacuation of their territory. In answer, the German note accepted the ‘‘fourteen points”’ as a basis of peace, agreed to evacuate occupied territory, and assured President Wilson that ‘the great majority of the Reichstag”’ supported the negotiations of the Foreign Office. President Wilson pressed still further for explicit assurances that submarine attacks on merchant ships would cease, that no further destruction of property would be perpetrated by the retreating German armies, and that theTHE HOUR OF VICTORY transfer of executive power from the Kaiser to ministers responsible to the Reichstag should be real and permanent. ee Not until he had been reassured on all these points did the } President agree to take up peace negotiations with the European Allies, with whom thus far Germany had no direct dealings. On the whole Britain, France, and Italy found in the ie ‘fourteen points’? a convenient outline of the terms of i | peace. They insisted, however, on two altera- >. smend- \ tions or restatements. First, that with respect ments tothe | it to the ‘‘freedom of the seas. . . they must reserve re HH to themselves complete freedom on this subject when they We! enter the Peace Conference.”’ Second, that the President’s Het reference to restoration of the invaded territories must be i construed to cover reparations ‘‘for all damage done to the be ae civilian population of the Allies and their property by the ; aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air.” at) Perhaps President Wilson’s earlier notification to the Austro- Hungarian Government that ‘‘autonomy” for the subject races of that Empire must now be considered as equivalent 1; to independence may be considered as a third amendment Wn: to the peace terms. It was, then, not on the basis of the | ) original declaration of President Wilson, but upon that declaration as amended in these particulars that Germany surrendered. it The German delegates empowered to receive terms of Hi armistice appeared before Marshal Foch. A note of | dramatic sternness was struck at the first meet- Thus ends . ing. The Marshal, though convinced that an the wae . armistice was better than pressing the war to final victory . in the field, which might indeed crush the German army, but would cost many thousand French lives, determined that there should be no doubt as to ‘‘who won the war.” When the delegates maladroitly asked Marshal Foch what proposals of armistice the Entente Allies would make, the pied Marshal answered that the Allies proposed no armistice, but that the Germans were free to request an armistice if they chose. Only when a formal request for peace was presented422 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE did Marshal Foch condescend to outline the terms agreed on by the Entente Allies. These terms were not open to dis- cussion; they were accepted unconditionally. Germany must cease military operations; evacuate Belgium, France, Luxemburg, and even Alsace-Lorraine; surrender prisoners of war, hostages, and refugees; surrender a specified amount of artillery and war material; retire behind the Rhine and permit occupation of the Rhineland by Allied troops; sur- render designated warships; cease fighting in East Africa, where a small German colonial army still held out against overwhelming odds; abandon all rights claimed under the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. The armistice terms were designed not to forecast terms of final peace, but to render Germany helpless to renew the war. They marked the end of the war in a military sense, just as the Peace Treaty of Versailles marked its end in the diplomatic sense. On November I1, 1918, the armistice came into effect, and for the first time since August, 1914, the guns were silent. The German Government which signed the armistice was wholly different from the Government which requested it. The During those first days of November a revolu- German tion had swept away monarchies, aristocracies, eee UC forme sot rule hundreds of years old. Of all important revolutions the German Revolution of 1918 was accomplished with perhaps the greatest ease and the least enthusiasm; in fact, it was not a seizure of power, but the abdication of a Government incapable of concluding a vic- torious war and unwilling to face its subjects with a humiliating peace. The sudden fall of the German Government was in part at least due to its failure to make political concessions which would make easy the transition from autocratic German ; politics to popular government. At the opening of the during tl = 6 ane wen wat the Waiser,declaredathatshe mo longer knew parties but only Germans, a statement which was accepted by the Socialists as a friendly overture by a ruler who hitherto had spoken of the more radical partiesTHE HOUR OF VICTORY as traitors and rebels. But the friendly words of the Kaiser did not prelude any actual concessions. The two respects in which the German Constitution differed most from that of the democracies of western Europe were the irresponsibility of the Chancellor, whose policies repre- sented the will of the Kaiser and not of the Reichstag, and the state Government of Prussia, the dominant state of the Empire, with its plutocratic franchise. The Prussian franchise was so flagrantly undemocratic that the Kaiser (as King of Prussia) and his ministers pledged themselves to reform, but they encountered the opposition of con- servative Prussian Junkers, now as so often ‘‘more royalist than the king,’ and the long awaited reform was delayed in the Prussian Diet till democratic opinion had lost all faith in the ability of the Kaiser to make good his pledge. As for the larger matter of parliamentary control of the executive, the accession to power of each new war Chancel- lor, Michaelis, Hertling, and Prince Maximilian of Baden, was hailed as a victory for public opinion and an approach to parliamentary control. But not until the final armistice negotiations did the Government admit the principle of parliamentary government or consider any steps to alter the forms of the Imperial Constitution. Probably the most significant political advance made by Germany during the war was not any constitutional reform, but the discovery of a common purpose by the Center (Catholic), Democratic, and Socialist Parties, hitherto widely sundered. These three powerful groups advocated internal reform and an early peace on the lines of the Reichstag resolution of 1917. Impotent to control either foreign or internal policy during the war, they still acted as a slight check on the influence of the imperialistic parties and the military advisers of the Crown. When peace came they provided a ready-made working majority for the republican régime. The actual revolution began with the naval mutiny. Not content with refusing active service, the sailors at Kiel established revolutionary councils on the Russian model and seized the governmental power in several northern424 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE towns. The Socialists had prepared the trades unions to The expect an outbreak if peace were not at once con- transition to cluded, so as soon as the sailors of Kiel had given EO’ the signal of revolt their example was followed by uprisings in every part of the Empire. On November 7th, Bavaria passed into the hands of councils of workmen and soldiers under the leadership of Kurt Eisner, a Jewish pacifist of high ideals and a lifelong enemy of Prussianism. Two days later the workers of Berlin declared a general November Strike and demanded the abdication of the Kai- Ontgie ser. Acting on the advice of military men, more solicitous for his safety than for his honor, the Kaiser with his eldest son fled to the refuge of neutral Holland. The Netherlands Government could do no other than give shelter to its unwelcome guest, as an old historic tradition made Holland a safe refuge for political exiles of every type. Chancellor Maximilian surrendered the executive power to Friedrich Ebert, the recognized leader of the conservative or majority wing of the Socialist Party. The several Ger- man States copied the example of the Empire and drove from power all ruling princes, setting up in place provisional Governments, usually of a socialistic color. The first task of the revolutionary Government was to curb its own “‘lunatic fringe.’’ On the issue of supporting The the war the Socialist Party had divided into a Spartacist majority group and a radically pacifist minority, movement ac : the Independent Socialists. The revolution brought schism among the latter in turn. Experienced leaders of the Independents, such as Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, while criticizing the participation of the majority group in the war policy of the Kaiser’s Govern- ment, found it quite possible to codperate with their former comrades once the war had ended and the democratic re- public had been established. But others felt that the majority Socialists had committed an unforgivable sin in betraying the German proletariat to the cause of the war- makers and that the Independents who now sought a re- union of parties were hardly less guilty. Nothing but aTHE HOUR OF VICTORY revolution of the Russian type, sweeping aside all that re- mained of capitalist and bourgeois society, could purge the land of four years of needless bloodshed. This group bore the name of Spartacus, leader of a slave rebellion in ancient Rome, though it later became merged with other admirers of the Russian program in the Communist Party. Their point of view is well indicated in their manifesto to the pro- letarians of the world in December, 1918: There still sit in the Government all those Socialists who in August, 1914, abandoned our most precious possession, the International, who for four years betrayed the German working class and at the same time the International. But, proletarians of all countries, now the German proletarian himself is speaking ; tO YOU. = - We ask you to elect Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils every- where that will seize political power and, together with us, will restore peace. Not Lloyd George and Poincaré, not Sonnino, Wilson, and Erzberger or Scheidemann, must be allowed to make peace. Peace is to be concluded under the waving banner of the socialist world revolution. In December, 1918, the Spartacist group attempted to seize power by rebellion against the Socialist provisional Government of Ebert. They did not wish to ows. await the elections of a constituent assembly, in versus | which they would be surely outvoted, so they RUS demanded immediate establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the régime of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Councils. The seizure of public buildings, wire- less stations, and newspaper presses in Berlin was intended as a first step toward assuming this dictatorship. But Noske, acting as Socialist Minister of War, did not hesitate to turn machine guns against the Spartacist rebels. The rebellion was crushed in blood and its leaders, Karl Lieb- knecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were assassinated by an angry mob after their arrest. The Independent Socialists, offended at the drastic measures taken to quell the revolu- 1“ Every schoolboy” will remember the address of Spartacus to his gladiators, which he used to recite on Friday afternoons along with Catiline’s defense and Rienzi’s appeal to the Romans.426 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE tion, broke their truce with the majority Socialists and went for a time into opposition. In March new riots in Berlin ended once more in victory for Noske’s loyal troops. The Spartacists were more successful in Bavaria. The assassina- tion of Kurt Eisner by a reactionary aristocrat led to an up- rising in Munich which brought into power revolutionists quite as radical as Eisner and of far harsher temperament. For a few weeks Bavaria was subject to a dictatorship, modeled on the soviet régime and centered in the city of Munich. The country districts of Bavaria seem to have had little or no sympathy for the movement. During their brief period of power the communist dictators of Bavaria killed many hostages and left a legacy of hatred that swung public sentiment in Bavaria back toward monarchy. Kaiser Wilhelm II did not at once resign his legal au- thority on quitting the country. Perhaps he thought The that the republican victory might even yet prove abdication a mere flash in the pan. But on November 28, of monarchy A : : 1918, after more than a fortnight of exile, he solemnly declared: I hereby renounce forever the rights to the Crown of Prussia and the rights to the German Imperial Crown therewith bound up. At the same time I release all officials of the German Empire and of Prussia, as also all officers, non-commissioned officers, and rank and file of the navy, the Prussian army, and the troops of the Federal contingents, of their oath of loyalty, which they took to me as their Emperor, King, and Commander-in-Chief. I expect of them that until the German Empire is ordered anew they will help those men who hold the actual power in Germany to protect the German people against the threatening dangers of anarchy, famine, and foreign domination. After this declaration German monarchists felt free in conscience to codperate with the provisional German Gov- ernment, without relinquishing their principles and hopes. This was of immediate advantage to the nation, which needed the assistance of army officers, civil servants, and technical experts of the old régime to maintain order and restore prosperity, but it implied the danger that the re-THE HOUR OF VICTORY public might pass from the hands of sincere, if sometimes fanatical, revolutionists to the men who ruled in 1914. Would German liberalism be strong enough to hold an even course between the Spartacists with their creed of class war and the monarchists with their tradition of class rule? A temporary answer to this question was given by the elections of January, 1919. All political groups took part, with the exception of the radical Spartacists, 7, and the franchise was completely democratic, Weimar admitting on an equal basis men and women saa twenty years of age and distributing representation accord- ing to the proportional system. The election therefore represented as closely as possible the real sentiments of the German people. The three liberal parties supporting the provisional Government (the Socialist, Catholic ‘ Chris- tian People’s,’ and Democratic Parties) obtained about four fifths of the total membership in the Assembly. The National People’s Party, successor to the old Conserva- tives, had 42 members; the People’s Party, representing the interests of ‘‘big business,’’ 22 members; the Independent Socialists, 22 also. These were the only important opposi- tion groups. The Socialists retained the provisional presidency, held by Ebert, and the premiership, taken by Scheidemann, but they were forced to admit many Catho- lics and ‘‘bourgeois”’ liberals to the ministry. The revolu- tion was no longer directed by Socialists alone. The meet- ing of the Assembly at Weimar was itself a symbol of liberal triumph; the monarchists would have preferred Berlin as the old center of Prussian domination of the Empire; the Independent Socialists preferred Berlin also, for an opposite reason, that the influence of radical city mobs might give a redder color to the policies of the Government. Weimar was chosen as the old cultural home of central Germany, the city of Goethe and Schiller, and (associated with her sister city of Jena) as the focus of the first movements for na- tional liberty and unity in the early nineteenth century.' « “Even so might a demoralised and democratised England placate a victori- ous and Victorian America by transferring parliament to the Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon.’’ (George Young.) se pe RENEE428 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE The national flag was to be neither the red banner of so- cialism nor the red, white, and black of the old Empire, but the black, red, and gold of the revolution of 1848. The background of economic misery must explain the fevered symptoms of revolutionary unrest, directed against the liberal republic as well as against the mon- What the meatier] archy. In Germany as in Russia bolshevism mous 2 was a creed of the towns, and it was the towns ermany which felt most severely the direct and indirect effects of the blockade. The countryside, unless actually devastated (as in parts of Poland and northern France), can at least feed itself in hand-to-mouth fashion whatever wars may come. But the city lives by trade and trade lives by peace. Germany had escaped any serious invasion and had so husbanded her food resources that literal famine, such as swept Armenia, was forefended. But years of under- feeding took their toll, reflected in the increased death-rate of the civilian population. A memorial of the German Public Health Board at the end of 1918 contained the following grimly significant statement: The year 1914 showed no perceptible increase of mortality. ... During the years 1915 and 1916, the increase of civilian mortality was not yet very heavy, amounting to 9.5 per cent in the former year and. somewhat over I4 per cent in the latter in excess of the 1913 rate. The last two years of the war, however, reveal very profound effects of the blockade. In 1917 the death-rate in- creased to 32 per cent, and in 1918 even to 37 per cent above that of 1913. The great increase began in December, 1916, in the months known in Germany as the ‘“‘turnip winter.’ Of course the civilian death-rate does not measure the ex- tent of the harm caused by prolonged “‘hard times.’”’ Even in statistical Germany we have no measure of the number of those enfeebled in health, with decreased earning power, unfit to be the fathers and mothers of healthy children. Neither the heroic deaths on the battle-field nor the havoc of plague and famine are so great an indictment of war as the slow numbing of the physical and mental qualities of the race by the exhaustion of its vitality. Germany, cer-THE HOUR OF VICTORY tainly, was not the only sufferer, but her hidden wounds drained her life blood as surely as the more obvious injuries of invaded France or Serbia. Even the armistice could not at once restore normal trade, and “blockade deaths”’ oc- curred during the long months of peace negotiation. With what injuries to civilization shall we debit the war? For centuries it must be too early to reckon them, Germany is still paying in impaired political traditions and. ay. aelande racial qualities for the Thirty Years’ War in the sheet of the seventeenth century; England has not yet wholly ee escaped the direct financial burden of the wars with Na- poleon; and every war in modern times has left a legacy of ‘nternational hatred which has led to fresh wars and en- during rivalries. ‘Wars are not paid for in war-times,”’ said Benjamin Franklin, ‘‘the bill comes later.’’ Of course the real costs of war must be distinguished from mere ‘“book losses.” For example, a war loan is often incorrectly regarded as a way of deferring the payment for a war to future generations, but really a war loan is an adjustment of credits: the actual wealth in terms of productive power is taken and spent at the moment, once and for all, whether raised by tax or loan, though for reasons of public policy the taxpaying portion of the public may later be compelled to reimburse the bond-buyers. Let it be admitted also that much of the economic wastage of war-time is counter- balanced by the temporary stimulus to production caused by ‘‘war orders”’ and the introduction, under the spur of necessity, of more efficient methods of production and dis- tribution. Other assets of an economic character are the erection for military purposes of roads, wharves, and other public works still available in time of peace; the stimulus of invention in certain fields, notably aviation and medicine; the physical and technical training which some men are able to gain from a brief experience of army life. Much more important gains, in fact perhaps the only argument for modern wars apart from the dread necessity of self- defense, arise from the keen testing of human institutions under the stress of the struggle for existence. State struc-430 TWENTIETH CENTURY EUROPE tures unsoundly built, such as the Russian and Austro- Hungarian Empires, fall to pieces; others, such as the Ger- man Empire, are forced to drastic reconstruction; even those which best endure the test are forced to adopt re- forms which might have waited long for realization amid the gentler competitions of peace. Churches, schools, indus- trial concerns, and every form of human activity must also rise to the occasion or give way to better things. To countless individuals also the war provided a crisis of the soul and the gateway to a nobler life. Such are the assets of war, and they are but such as might be gleaned also from earthquake, fire and flood, or any great natural disaster which tests the courage and intelligence of the race. The other side of the balance sheet is longer and more evident. If we consider first the armies of the belligerents The direct Wwe find by the latest statistical estimates that cost in life the war took from civilian life 65,000,000 physi- cally fit men, killed over 8,000,000 of them; crippled or permanently injured more than 9,000,000, and inflicted wounds more or less serious on some 21,000,000. The num- ber of men mobilized during the war fell but little short of the entire population of the German Empire and the num- ber killed more than equaled the entire population of Bel- gium. France alone spent nearly as many lives to redeem Alsace-Lorraine as the population of those provinces. The accompanying table, compiled in 1925 from official sources — still open to much correction — shows the distribution of battle casualties among the active belligerents.". Of course the estimates for several nations, such as Russia and some of the Balkan States, are only approximate, and distant bel- ligerents, such as China, Japan, and the Latin American countries, are not reckoned at all, as they were not mobi- lized on European battle-fields. Earlier official war death estimates were slightly lower than these, but they had also an item of ‘‘missing,” covering several hundred thousands of those whose fate was then unknown. *A New Estimate of World War Casualties, by Rex F. Harlow in the New York Times Current History, June, 1925.THE HOUR OF VICTORY OTAL KILLED AND DIED REPORTED MOBILIZED FORCES IN WAR WOUNDED Resse ihe cd ie 12,000,000 1,700,000 4,950,000 Germany . } «.i+7 «45-44 1d) 000,000 1,773,000 4,216,058 British Empire....... 8,904,467 908,371 2,090,212 France. Ls a OA LOTOOO 1,357,800 4,216,058 Austria- Hungary as abe 7,800,000 1,200,000 3,620,000 Vtaly tice Gocco etek. ee@k5;000 650,000 947,000 United States........ 4,800,000 50,280 205,690 URE WE c3. gn e <= << oe eT OOOO 325,000 400,000 Bulvartas.: v2 rs