CAUSES OF THE WAR FROM THE FRENCHMEN’S POINT OF VIEW

New Zealand Tablet, 25 April 1918, Page 7

CAUSES OF THE WAR FROM THE FRENCHMEN’S POINT OF VIEW

By Spectator.

The object of this paper is to state the causes of the war from France’s standpoint. I. Economical Causes of Germany’s Industrial War,

This extraordinary thing has happened in Germany—she has in a short time so changed as to have become unrecognisable. In the first third of the last century, 80 per cent, of the Germans lived by agriculture, and poor agriculture it was, for the soil all over the country is poor. The history of Germany, we may remark by the way, is partly explained by this simple fact, that it is a poor country inhabited by a people with a great appetite —this people has invariably sought a supply of food from elsewhere. To-day Germany is one of the world’s greatest industrial Powers. She exploits to the utmost her underground wealth in fuel and minerals, in order to supply the insufficiency of the soil. Since the year 1870. her economical progress has accelerated; from the year 1895 it has become simply prodigious. For instance, she used to extract in 1895, seventy-nine million tons of coal; in 1912 one hundred and seventy millions. She manufactured in 1895, 5,400,000 tons of pig iron, and in 1914, 17,617,000. The capital of her companies, which in 1895 was only two milliard twelve million (francs), reached, in -1906, fourteen milliards. Her trade exhibited similar progress: from 1896 to 1906 the tonnage of her merchant fleet rose 29 per cent., and the amount of her general trade rose from seven milliards 670 millions to seventeen milliards 44 millions in 1903.

In no period of history and in no other country was ever such a formidable rise in labor and wealth. At the same time there was a similar increase of population. While the population in 18/6 was 41 millions, it as nearly 70 millions at the eve of this war. No instance of a like phenomena has been ever seen in any other country. Well nigh all these new forces were engaged in manufactures' which employed an enormous number of hands taken from the land: the rural population at the beginning of last century was 80 per cent.; it as only 43 per cent, in 1882, and 29 per cent, in 1907. The towns grew abnoxmxally. Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Hamburg, Breslau, had collectively, in 1871, one million eight hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants; in 1910 the number was 5,175,000. In 1871 only eight towns had a population equal or superior to 100,000 souls; in 1910 there were 48 such towns. '

Read these figures again and again, reflect on these formidable increases and you will understand that Germany has changed so as to be unrecognisable. Momentous consequences, political and social, are discernible in the future interior government of that country. But enough on this topic. What interests us are the effects of this change in the whole world, and it may be said without exaggeration in the life of all humanity. ( Germany, by her energetic and methodical labor, produces far more than she consumes ; she must therefore have an outlet for her excessive production. Because she is over-productive she must assuredly have expansion, and verily she has expanded in all directions.

First of all her groups of emigrants, passing and permanent, in all the countries of the Old and New World, were looking out for something to do and found it. United and strongly grouped, encouraged and urged on by the metropolis which sent to them her directions and the money of her banks, they labored everywhere, and everywhere with success. At the outbreak of the war England, France, and Italy perceived how Germany was bearing on their economical life. Every country in the world made the same discovery.

The Germans also spread by their colonies: they were able even when the bulk of the land' suitable for. colonists . seemed taken up by ‘ their predecessors, to create a colonial empire for which they dreamed a boundless, future. rTo all that they had a perfect right. If, in the competition with the nations, they had proved more energetic and able, so much the more to their credit. But Germany was dissatisfied with such mighty resultssome of her statistics she bore with pain and reluctance. Since she became, over-productive her underground wealth was insufficient for her manufactures. She had to pay in 1913 238 million francs in the purchase of iron ore, 192 millions for coal, 346 millions for copper, and in that same year the importation" of cotton cost her 614 millions. Nor was this all. To feed her ever-growing population she spent enormous sums: for cereals alone a milliard. All that she deemed intolerable. The Germans therefore determined to have for themselves, in the capacity of owners, all the raw materials they required for themselves and their productions in any place they were found in the four quarters of the globe. It was simple covetousness and greed, and this greed was on© of the causes of the war, and not the least. War for Germany is a serious business; by war she hoped to fput her ever-increasing greed.

ll.—Moral Causes of the War —German Pride.

No pride, not even that of the Ancient Romans, ever equalled German pride. The Germans claimed for themselves every virtue of mind and heart. Volumes could be written to contain their expressions of self praise and self love. Nor did such selfadulation arise merely among mad and vulgar jingoists: the loudest and most extraordinary were uttered and written by illustrious philosophers and thinkers, by celebrated professors, by generals, by statesmen; nay, by the Emperor himself. . ' Over a century ago, one of the philosophers, Fichte, said to his fellow-countrymen: “With you among modern nations have been especially deposited the seeds of human perfection, and to you the first task of its development has been entrusted. If you fall humanity falls with you, hopeless of future renovation.” And, in our day, only ten years ago, Emperor William declared the following: “Let all of you, burgesses, peasants, and workmen, be united in the same sentiments of love and fidelity to the fatherland, and then the German people shall be the granite rock on which our Lord God shall build and achieve the civilisation of the world; they shall realise the poet’s words: “One day the world shall owe its salvation to the German Empire.” The Kaiser also said: “The dear God would not have taken such pains with our German fatherland, had He not in store for us a grand destiny, we are the salt of the earth God has called us to civilise the world.” And here we see the strangest proof of German megalomania : the belief that God has chosen the Germans, among all nations, as of old He chose the Hebrews, to reveal to them His law and give them the mission to teach it to and impose it on all mankind. Now this extraordinary notion is an article of faith which thousands of priests and parsons teach their millions of adherents. It were easy to quote most strange and incredible words uttered in pulpits, Catholic and Protestant. A few words may be cited from one of the most eminent Protestant pastors, who is. Emperor William-- himself, for the Kaiser is the head of the Protestant Church in Prussia, and he preaches, and is eager to preach, and this is what he one day said: “The German people is God s chosen people. His spirit is incarnate in me, in my quality of Emperor. lam God’s sword and representative on earth.” ; It is bound, therefore, by God’s behest, to command the earth, and all the earth. That is not only its duty but its right: it is not merely authorised, but obliged. Were it to shirk this obligation, it would bo unfaithful ? to God, Who took so much pains to create

the German fatherland. It would deserve such punishment as befel the Jewish people for ignoring its divine vocation, - and for rejecting the'Son of God when He came on earth. How many in Germany entertain such notions ? Their number is probably very great. But of course there -is a legion of unbelievers, and they doubtless sneer at the pretended “divine vocation” of Germany and the Emperor’s mysticism. True, but they reach the same views by another way. They teach that the German is the superman, and he is so, they say, by his physical structure, by the height and the breadth of his forehead, by the color of his eyes—arguments .quite as grotesque as those of the theologian and the preacher. This set of infidels also believes Germany made for the domination of the world, and the pride of both classes is certainly one cause of the war. 111-—Political Causes of the War: Prussianised Germany. ' There is one more cause and that most important: Germany lived on for a long while in the state of anarchy. She was composed of hundreds of states, each with its independent life. The Emperor’s authority was alike pompous and worthless. Put among those states one rose above the others—Prussia. At the dawn of the eighteenth century it was a poor tiny kingdom having hardly two million inhabitants, and made up of scattered fragments between the Rhine and the Vistula, the two extremities of Germany. But in the lifetime of Frederick-William, and of Frederick 11., it became a military state. Everything was subordinate to the needs of the army. The finances were administered with extreme economyluxury nowhere ; everybody at work. In other countries the nobility had some pretence of independence: .it defended itself against the crown ; it was at times rebellious. In Prussia it was subservient. The Prussian Junker (squireen) gloried in his service: it was his honor and pride. From father to son he served in the army. A military caste was born in the country, scorning the burgesses, harsh on the peasant, always docile to the master, ever standing with joint heels and hand to forehead. In this state none reasoned; nicht raisonniren . “No reasoning,” said the master. Therefore Prussia was organised for war. It needed war—that little Prussia split into minute parts. The forces required combination. Territories had to be conquered again, and again, and again. There was once a small history of Prussia made for primary schools. In it', alongside of * each princeling, was a delineated square, in which was inscribed the number of kilometres conquered by him. • It was by necessity that war became in Mirabeau’s words, The notional industry of Prussia.” To sum up : A people has become a huge industrial power, over-productive, ambitions, greedy. This people is mad with pride: it deems itself charged by God to rule and save the world ; it believes that to be its duty, or else it believes that its natural superiority over all peoples mark it out for the government of the world. This people is governed by a soldier-Emperor, by heritage a soldier, by tradition a conqueror, and master of the greatest military might ever seen in the world. }*.- Combine all that, or rather contemplate it already combined: trade, philosophy, religion, militarism tend to the same end, German supremacy, religion, militarism tend to the same end, German supremacy, German hegemony. - And the leader, Kaiser William, while he provokes our smiles by proclaiming himself God’s representative, may rightly affirm that he exactly represents his own people; for he honors trade, he philosophises, he preaches, and he is the War-lord. % . •<

■ ; Never at any period, or ,in any country, there a people so bent on war as the German's. t ‘ ■' - - What this people wants, what it expects from war, it has declared again and again in every possible tone. It wanted the French departments of north and of Calais, a part of the department of the Somme, another of the department of Ardennes, the department of Meuth-et-Moselle, the arrondissement of Briey. It wanted Verdun and Belport. ’ , That is written textually in the famous memorial tendered to the Government by the six great industrial and agricultural annexations, which comprise millions of Germans, and in a manifesto published by high German notabilities. That is repeated daily by the Pan-Germans who control public opinion. They wanted, and still want, to obtain a war indemnity: some have claimed 20 milliards, others 30; in March, 1917, the Coloyne Gazette, the Government organ, claimed 100 milliards. For them one of the main objects of the war was the annihilation of France. “.IV e must never more,” wrotes the author. General Bernhardi, “aya in find France in our way." The wresting from her the richest of her departments, representing one-third of her fortune, the crushing of her by overwhelming contributions—that means the annihilation of France. „ And for Germany, what- an increase of wealth; what an abundance of raw materials! coal and ores from France. Already they thought themselves possessed of rare treasures. They spoke of expropriating all manufactures, all the owners in those annexed French provinces, and the substitution of German owners ; they spoke of transferring into German hands all the means and instruments of production. But who would indemnify the expropriated? “France,” audaciously they responded. Of course they also estimated that the colonies would be much better in their hands than in 1 the French. Moreover, they wanted a rich agricultural and industrial land ; they wanted Holland, the Belgian and Hutch coasts, the French coast from the Somme ; these were a necessity for them because they are opposite England, because they possess the mouths of the Escault, Meuse, and Rhine. By what right, forsooth, did the Dutch, that little roasted' people, as they say, possess the mouth of the Rhine, the German river ? So much for the enlargement on the West. On the East they wanted to push the Russians far back in order to grasp the provinces bordering on the Baltic, to cut their communications with the Black Sea, and separate them from Europe. In then* extension on this side, they wanted the wheat lands, so as to people them with German colonists. Thus they would provide themselves with wheat, and settle their surplus population. They would thus also restore the balance between their agricultural and industrial population. Finding themselves cramped they simply want to be, at ease. By these means they would at the same time extend the German land and increase their inward power. They wanted to use this force both promptly and colossally. : One of their greatest schemes was to open a way to Asia from Hamburg. The main stations , would be Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia, Constantinople, and Bagdad. Germany and Austria would subject the intervening countries, Servia, Bulgaria, and Turkey. To this region would be ■attached the North of France, Belgium, and then Holland, and afterwards, in due course, Scandinavia. Thus the starting point would be the North Sea and the goal the Persian Gulf; and'-so the-whole world would -form an Empire vaster than the ancient Roman Empire. ' The Germans- saw themselves. already at work in remote Asia, and thousands and thousands of colonies would cultivate, the region made famous by "Nineveh and Babylon. ■ ' j • - . . :

' Yet this plan was only one gigantic scheme. They wanted to convert the Mediterranean into ' a German lake. In the north, Trieste would be- the great outlet of the Empire. In the west, Tangiers would guard the entrance to the sea, for they naturally determined to seize Morocco’ In the East,' all the coast would be German, since it would continue in possession of Turkey, Germany’s servant. To this Turkey would be added Egypt, after the expulsion of the English. Besides the Germans knew and said that the Turkish Empire would not live forever but who would inherit Turkey at that Empire’s downfall? Germany, of course. Thus the whole of Western Asia would be Germanised.

And already German enterprise had begun in Eastern Asia. In China’s very flank Germany possessed the fortress-colony of Kaia Chan. She had entered deeply into the economical life of that immense reservoir of forces— Chinese Republic. But the domination of Europe and Asia did not satiate the German appetite. In Africa, prior to the war, Germany possessed, in the West, on the Atlantic coast, the Cameroons, and, in the East, on the shore of the Indian Ocean, the colony of Eastern Africa. A wide space separated these colonies, but that space was French Congo and Belgian Congo ; Germany therefore coveted both those Congos. And what business had Portugal, that small insignificant country, to own colonies on the west, along the Atlantic coast, and, in the east,, along the shores of the Indian Ocean ? It was absurd, as Germany intended soon to show by grasping those colonies also.

An immense German colonial- empire would thus be founded between the two oceans in Central Africa. Nor did German ambition stop there. Germany held for certain, when she viewed the future, that one day, after the destruction of France, she would destroy England and take her place in her colonies. All Africa, would then become German.

In America Germany coveted no territory, but she expected great results from her pacific penetration. Numerous are the German emigrants in the two Americas. They remember they are German and German above all things. Accordingly they are grouped in German associations and companies whose heads are the diplomatic representatives of the Empire, ambassadors and consuls. Close are their relations with the mother-country,' with the banks, the great commercial companies, and the Government. The pacific penetration carefully distinguished between North and South America. In South America, the land, as the Germans call it, of tattered Republics, above which emerged Brazil and Argentina, they had no need to be particular. They exacted' that the Germans should be represented in the legislative assemblies, as Germans : that they should have their electoral lists apart, a certain number of deputies in the chambers, a certain number of members in the Senate—a minority indeed, but resting on the might of iho Empire. In the United States such pretensions were impossible, but in this nation of a hundred millions, Germans amount to twelve millions, and nowhere was their organisation stronger than in the great Republic. Their unions and re rain swarmed : so did their commercial firms, agencies, banks. Very prosperous newspapers were lavishly spread about, edited in German by Germans; and in certain American journals the German propaganda was conspicuous. German pamphlets teemed through the land. German agents and German spies were settled in all the fittest spots. Thus Germany represented in the United States by a “German nation,” so perfectly organised, could rely, at the outbreak of the war, on American sympathy, or if, by impossibility, the United States declared against her, she could paralyse their action. •Such, then, in broad outlines, was the programme of German ambition. No doubt, you deem it exorbitant; you perhaps imagine that for the needs of their cause, the enemies of Germany exaggerated her- folly..

.But there is no part of this programme for which we have not ,precise German declarations; and, for better proof than any words, look at the history of this war. Undoubtedly, in regard to the United States, Germany made a huge error of judgment, which marks her incapacity to judge other people, and exhibited the monstrous infatuation which impelled her to despise beforehand whatever is not herself. But the history of these nearly four years’ war has proved the power of German organisation on America. Remember the press campaign there, and the fierce fury of propaganda, and the many crimes, and the unheard of con-, duct of her military attaches , who suborned plots ; and finally, that Ambassador, who, on the very eve of his removal,' undertook to propose to Mexico the dismemberment of the United States. What they wanted to do against the United States, they did not, but they were bent on doing it. No doubt also, instead of extending their African Empire, they have lost it. It has shipwrecked totally ; but be certain that they still desire and hope to resume their forsaken dream, and so they say, even by the voice of the Socialists. Again, the English have taken, Bagdad, the terminus of the farnotis railway. But remember the long and broad zone projected between the North Sea and the Persian Gulf ; the Germans occupy a great part of it; the French departments in the North. Belgium. Luxemburg, and, at the other extremity, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey; since the last two Powers are vassals and subordinate. Now, it may be safely affirmed, of all their schemes this was the dearest : for they knew that its realisation meant the mastery of the world. V. — Conclusion. After showing their words and their acts, and marking that their acts confirm their words, we conclude, in all safety of conscience, that “Germany wanted to became the mistress of the world.” For what, then, are the French fighting? They are fighting to defend their country, inherited from their forefathers, and to get back from the enemy Alsace-Lorraine violently torn from them in 1871, despite the unanimous protestation of the inhabitants, enthusiastically French. They are fighting to avenge their dead, to avenge their ruins, to punish those incendiary bandits, murderers, restorers of ancient slavery, bandits of a sort hitherto unknown ; for they are armed with all the forces of science, and their barbarity is inspired, commanded, organised, and regulated. They are fighting, they and their Allies, to defend the liberty of their labor against an enemy aiming at the subjugation of the whole world to the likings of his trade and industry. They are fighting to defend the liberty of their mind ; for that Power wanted to usurp the intellectual and moral direction of mankind, on the plea of mankind’s salvation. A German has said that Germany, like Rome of old, ought to dictate to men “the forces id the ; r thoughts." Now surely nothing could be more unbearable than the domination over minds of a power maddened with selfinfatuation, scorning whatever is not herself, insolent, brutal, whose supreme thought is that might is right. Finally, while they are fighting against the most formidable military force the world has ever known, thev are warring against war itself. They are determined to organise peace in such a way that any disturbing nation shall be controlled and subdued by the solidly armed will of the other nations. They, are fighting for a decisive victory which may spare their children the return of such horrors as set all humanity weeping. • •