II
The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul
Table of Contents "Our motto is 'from Hamburg to the Persian gulf.'"-Professor Tannemann.
"In this Pan-German Empire, Germans alone will govern; they alone will exercise political rights; they alone will serve in the army and navy; they alone will have the right to hold land; and they will thus be made to feel that they are a people of rulers, as they were in the Middle Ages. They will, however, allow inferior tasks to be carried out by the foreign subjects under their domination."-"Gross Deutschland und Mitteleuropa um das Jahr 1950," p. 48.
"Why should we make paltry excuses? Yes, we brought on this war, and we are glad of it. We provoked it, because we were sure of winning."
Maximilian Hardin,
In
Zukunft, Aug. 20, 1914.
"After this war is over, I will stand no nonsense from the United States."-The Kaiser's threat to Ambassador Gerard.
II
The Pan-German Empire Scheme, For Which Germany Lost Her Soul
German apostasy began with German military success. What the Kaiser offered to Germany in exchange for her soul was the Pan-German empire. The originator of the world empire scheme was the Kaiser; Nietzsche was its philosopher; Treitsche its historian; Bernhardi its advocate; and von Hindenburg its executive. The first conference regarding the Pan-German empire seems to have been called in 1895, and was held in the Potsdam Palace. During the next two or three years, a world organization was brought together by the "Potsdam gang," with the Kaiser at the center, an inner circle of officers, and politicians, a larger circle of bankers, manufacturers, and ship owners. Finally there was a far-flung web of diplomats, spies, commercial travellers, Pan-German League agents, organizing in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, in Buenos Ayres and Rio de Janeiro, in Buda Pesth and Vienna, in Constantinople and Cairo, German Veteran Leagues, German Commercial Associations, all looking towards the day when the Kaiser would be the world emperor, and all countries would become provinces paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. "What about international law?" asked an American diplomat of Bernhardi. "There will be no international law," was the answer. "Berlin will decide what laws are best for the rest of the world."
The Pan-German empire pamphlets, maps, books, magazine articles, published during the next ten years, were legion, but Professor Tannemann, a personal friend of the Kaiser, in 1911 restated the Kaiser's scheme. The essence of Pan-German plan was condensed into a few sentences: "From Hamburg and the North Sea to the Persian Gulf; the immediate goal, by 1915, the conquest of 250,000,000 of people; the ultimate goal, the Germanization of all the nations of the world." One of the Kaiser's speeches contains the explanation of his dream of becoming a world conqueror: "From my childhood I have been under the influence of five men,-Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Each of these men dreamed a dream of a world empire; they failed. I am dreaming a dream of a German world empire-and my mailed fist shall succeed." The Kaiser printed a map headed, "The Roman Empire; Cæsar Augustus, world emperor." That map shows the once great states, Athens, Ephesus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Carthage, reduced to county seat towns, paying tribute to the world capital, while their captive kings had walked as slaves in the triumphal processions along the Appian Way, towards the palace of the world ruler, Cæsar Augustus. One of the Pan-German empire pamphlets, and many of the German newspapers contain a revised map of Europe, showing "Germania" stamped across the continent, with St. Petersburg, Paris and London become county seat towns, paying tribute to the world capital, Berlin. Many German newspapers, during this war, have published maps showing Canada as a German province, with the name "Germania" stamped across South America, Mexico and Central America. These many pamphlets and Pan-German empire books explain Admiral Dewey's report to President McKinley. That report seems to have been written in the cabin of the flag-ship Olympia, in Manila Bay. Dewey states that the German admiral told him plainly to make a note of this prophecy that within fifteen years (1899, report of Admiral Dewey), Germany would crush France and Belgium, seize Holland and Denmark, utterly destroy England, and take Canada as a German province. Admiral Dewey added that the German admiral told him that while the Kaiser intended to seize New York and Washington and hold them for an indemnity, he did not intend to permanently hold in subjection the United States, but he did intend to retain Mexico and South America, and then "dispose of the Monroe Doctrine as he thinks best." This may explain the Kaiser's word to Mr. Gerard: "After this war I will stand no nonsense from the United States." So astounding were these claims that the statesmen and rulers of the world laughed at these threats, deeming it incredible that Germany was plotting a world war. Two or three men of remarkable prescience and vision, General Roberts in London, Chéradame in Paris, and Ex-President Roosevelt, understood and therefore never ceased warning the nation to prepare and make ready for a conflict that seemed to them inevitable.
When the Kaiser first announced his Pan-German empire scheme he bribed his people by appeals to avarice, ambition, and jealousy of England and Russia. The arguments used by the Potsdam gang were very simple: Agriculture pays six per cent., trade eight per cent., finance ten per cent., shipping twelve per cent., but war is an industry that pays fifty per cent. dividend upon the investment. Germany's war upon little Denmark, a people without army or navy, paid an enormous dividend upon the investment, in that it gave Germany one of her richest provinces, made possible the Kiel Canal, and left Denmark permanently crippled and exposed. "Denmark and Holland, also, are apples," says a German author, "that are slowly ripening, and we will pick the fruit at the proper time." Germany's war of 1864 upon Austria was the attack of a brigand upon a traveller rich with gold, and the cities and provinces that Germany wrested away from the ruler of Vienna paid a hundred per cent. upon the investment. In his Memoirs Bismarck tells the world plainly that he deliberately fomented a war with France, that he might seize the iron ore provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, in order to obtain the hematite iron that would make it possible for Germany to pass from the agricultural people into an industrial and manufacturing state as the competitor of England for the world's trade. For more than forty years the chief argument presented in the Reichstag for increased appropriations for the army and the navy was the money dividends paid by war.
In 1911 the Kaiser spread out before his people bribes most alluring. Just as the Devil led Jesus up into a mountain and showed Him the whole earth, so the Kaiser and the Potsdam gang led the Germans into a mount of temptation and showed them how easy it was to make the Kaiser a world emperor. The argument was very simple; after twenty-five years of preparation, Germany has nine million soldiers, has cannons, liquid fire, poisoned gases, battle-ships, aeroplanes, with every wagon and automobile ready to have the pleasure body removed, and a military body substituted. "We are ready to the last buckle on the horses' harness." To the east was Russia, broken by war with Japan; Russia with her gold mines, her wheat granaries, her vast coal and iron deposits and forests all undeveloped. To the southeast was Rumania, with her oil wells, with Constantinople and the silk fields, and the Tigris, the gateway to the Indian Ocean, and the treasures of the Bagdad railway country. To the west was unarmed Belgium, rich with twenty billions of treasure; France, half armed, with her newly discovered iron mines and coal measures; England, one vast jewel box, a kind of Aladdin's cave,-"Wait until Germany lifts her mailed fists upon the English treasure box, there will be enough for everybody in Berlin," is the gist of Zimmermann's speech of November, 1914. "The people of the United States call us Huns," writes the editor of the Localanzeiger, "but New York had better remember that the young Huns from the German forests took only two weeks to cross the Alps and loot the city of Rome." Other German members of the Reichstag have likened the United States unto a Crosus, the richest man in the world, living in a golden house, surrounded with bags, bursting with gems and wedges of gold and silver, but a Crosus that had no lock on his door and no weapon in his hand.
The Treasure Boxes of Europe
"Belgium is a lamb, France and England are flocks of sheep, feeding and fattening in the pasture, ready for our shears." All these statements were sent out through Germany. The other nations are so many treasure boxes, ready for our military key to unlock them. Boys, farmers' sons, discussed the coming looting expedition in the hayfields. College boys talked about the treasures of England and France, Belgium and Holland, as boys once talked about emptying the newly discovered gold mines of California. Officers drank to "The Day." Editors added fuel to the flames of avarice. The statesmen cried, "It is our duty to rule these countries, and besides, by war we get great gain."
The influence of these incitements to avarice and ambition is found in the letters taken from the dead bodies of German soldiers. In one letter, found near Vitrimont, the German...
