To her superior breadth of outlook, marvellous organizing powers, the hearty co-operation between rulers and people, and the ease with which, unhampered by parliamentary opposition, her Government was enabled to place a single aim at the head and front of its national policy, Germany is perhaps more deeply indebted for her successes during the first phases of the campaign than to the strategy of Hindenburg or the furious onslaughts of Mackensen. German diplomacy has been ridiculed for its glaring blunders, and German statesmanship discredited for its cynical contempt of others’ rights and its own moral obligations. And gauged by our ethical standards the blame incurred was richly deserved. But we are apt to forget that German diplomacy has two distinct aspects – the professional and the economic – and that where the one failed the other triumphed. And if success be nine-tenths of justification, as the Prussian doctrine teaches, the statesmen who preside over the destinies of the Teutonic peoples have little to fear in the way of strictures from their domestic critics. For they left nothing to chance that could be ensured by effort. Trade, commerce, finances, journalism, science, religion, the advantages to be had by royal marriages, by the elevation of German princes to the thrones of the lesser states, had all been calculated with as much care and precision as the choice of sites in foreign countries for the erection of concrete emplacements for their monster guns. No detail seemed too trivial for the bestowal of conscientious labour, if it promised a possible return. When in doubt whether it was worth while to make an effort for some object of no immediate interest to the Fatherland the German invariably decided that the thing should be done. “You never can tell,” he argued, “when or how it may prove useful.” For years one firm of motor-car makers turned out vehicles with holes, the object of which no one could guess until the needs of the war revealed them as receptacles for light machine-guns.
Nearly two years of an unparalleled struggle between certain isolated forces of the Allies and all the combined resources of the Teutons ought to banish the notion that the results achieved are the fruits only of Germany’s military and naval efficiency. In truth, the adequacy of her military and naval forces constitutes but an integral part of a much vaster system. It has hitherto been the fashion among British and French writers to dwell exclusively on the comprehensiveness of the measures adopted by the Germans to fashion their land and sea defences into destructive implements of enormous striking power and scientific precision. But the German conception of the enterprise was immeasurably more grandiose. It included every means of offence and defence actually available or yet to be devised, and testifies to a grasp of the nature of the problem which, so far as one can judge, has not even yet been attained outside the Fatherland. As the present situation and its coming developments present themselves as practical corollaries of causes which the leaders of Germany rendered operative, it may not be amiss to describe these briefly.
The objective being the subjugation of Europe to Teutonic sway, the execution of the plan was attempted by two different sets of measures, each of which supplemented the other: military and naval efficiency on the one hand and pacific interpenetration on the other. The former has been often and adequately described; the latter has not yet attracted the degree of attention it merits. For one thing, it was unostentatious and invariably tinged with the colour of legitimate trade and industry. Practically every country in Europe, and many lands beyond the seas, were covered with networks of economic relations which, without being always emanations of the governmental brain, were never devoid of a definite political purpose. While Great Britain, and in a lesser degree France, distracted by parliamentary strife or intent on domestic reforms, left trade and commerce to private initiative and the law of supply and demand, the German Government watched over all big commercial transactions, interwove them with political interests, and regarded every mark invested in a foreign country not merely as capital bringing in interest in the ordinary way, but also as political seed bearing fruit to be ingathered when Der Tag should dawn. Thus France and Britain advanced loans to various countries – to Greece, for instance – at lower rates of interest than the credit of those states warranted, but they bargained for no political gain in return. Germany, on the contrary, insisted on every such transaction being paid in political or economic advantages as well as pecuniary returns. And by these means she tied the hands of most European nations with bonds twisted of strands which they themselves were foolish enough to supply. Italy, Russia, Turkey, Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, Belgium and the Scandinavian States are all instructive instances of this plan. Bankers and their staffs, directors of works and factories, agents of shipping companies, commercial travellers, German colonies in various foreign cities, military instructors to foreign armies, schools and schoolmasters abroad, heads of commercial houses in the different capitals, were all so many agencies toiling ceaselessly for the same purpose. The effect of their manœuvres was to extract from all those countries the wealth needed for their subjugation. One of the most astounding instances of the success of these hardy manipulations is afforded by the Banca Commerciale of Italy, which was a thoroughly German concern, holding in its hands most of the financial establishments, trades and industries of Italy. This all-powerful institution possessed in 1914 a capital of £6,240,000 of which 63 per cent. was subscribed by Italian shareholders, 20 per cent. by Swiss, 14 per cent. by French, and only 2½ per cent. by Germans and Austrians combined! And the astounding exertions put forward by the Germans during the first twelvemonth of the war are largely the product of the economic energies which this line of action enabled them to store up during the years of peace and preparation.
The execution of those grandiose schemes was facilitated by the easy access which Germany had to the principal markets of the globe. One of the main objects of her diplomacy had been to break down the tariff barriers which would have reserved to the great trading empires the main fruits of their own labour and enterprise. By the Treaty of Frankfort the French had been compelled to confer on Germany the most-favoured-nation clause, thus entitling her to enjoy all the tariff reductions which the Republic might accord to those countries with which it was on the most amicable terms. British free trade opened wide the portals of the world’s greatest empire to a deluge of Teuton wares and to a kind of competition which contrasted with fair play in a degree similar to that which now obtains between German methods of warfare and our own. Russia, at first insensible to suasion and rebellious to threats, endeavoured to bar the way to the economic flood on her western frontiers, but during the stress of the Japanese war she chose the lesser of two evils and yielded. The concessions then made by my friend, the late Count Witte, to the German Chancellor, drained the Tsardom of enormous sums of money and rendered it a tributary to the Teuton. But it did much more. It supplied Germany with a satisfactory type of commercial treaty which she easily imposed upon other nations. Germany’s road through Italy was traced by the mistaken policy of the French Government which, by a systematic endeavour to depreciate Italian consols and other securities, drove Crispi to Berlin, where his suit for help was heard, the Banca Commerciale conceived, and commercial arrangements concluded which opened the door to the influx of German wares, men and political ideals.
A few years sufficed for the fruits of this generous hospitality to reveal themselves. The influx of wealth and the increased population helped to render the German army a match for the combined land forces of her rivals, a formidable navy was created, which ranked immediately after that of Great Britain, and a large part of Europe was so closely associated with, and dependent on, Germany that an extension of the Zollverein was talked of in the Fatherland, and a league of European brotherhood advocated by the day-dreamers of France and Britain. The French, however, never ceased to chafe at the commercial chain forged by the Treaty of Frankfort, but were powerless to break it, while the British lavished tributes of praise and admiration on Germany’s enterprise, and construed it as a pledge of peace. Russia, alive to the danger, at last summoned up courage to remove it, and had already decided to refuse to extend the term of the ruinous commercial treaty, even though the alternative were war. That was the danger which stimulated the final efforts of the Kaiser’s Government.
Thus the entire political history of Entente diplomacy during this war may be summarized