The young German, brought up in an overpopulated country, unable to enter a civil service which will keep him under his own flag—and remember how intensely patriotic he is, this young German, just as patriotic as the young Frenchman or the young Britisher—must leave home. He is not of the class from which come the voluntary emigrants. His ties are all in Germany: his love—and his move—all for Germany. So he becomes a German resident abroad, in close connection with the Fatherland, and always working for the interests of the Fatherland. He goes to England or to France, where he studies carefully and methodically, as if he were to write a thesis on it (and he often does), the business methods of and the business opportunities among the people where he is dwelling. He is giving his life to put Deutschland über alles in business right in the heart of the rival nation, and he is succeeding. During October, 1914, when they tried to arrest in the larger cities of England the German and Austrian subjects they had to stop—there was not room in the jails for all of them! And in many places business was paralyzed.
In carrying the products of steadily increasing volume to steadily growing markets, Germany has been sensible enough to make those markets pay for the cost of transport. Up to the very selling price, all the money goes to Germany. The process is simple: from German factories, by German ships, through German salesmen, to German firms, in every part of the world—beginning with London and Paris.
Germany's merchant marine has kept pace with the development of her industry. Essen may be the expression of one side of modern Germany, which is said to have caused the European war. But one is more logical in believing that Hamburg and Bremen and the Kiel Canal have done more to bring on this war than the products of Krupp. During the last twenty-five years the tonnage of Germany's merchant marine has increased two hundred and fifty per cent., a quarter of which has been in the last five years, from 1908–1913. There are six times as many steamships flying the German flag as when Wilhelm II mounted the throne. In merchant ships, Germany stands today second only to Great Britain. The larger portion of her merchant marine is directed by great corporations. The struggle against Great Britain and France for the freight carrying of outside nations has been most bitter—and most successful. Before the present war, there was no part of the world in which the German flag was not carried by ships less than ten years old.
With the exception of Kiau-Chau, the colonies of Germany have never been of much practical value, except as possible coaling and wireless stations for the German fleet. But here also the opposition of her rivals has minimized their value. Walfisch Bay and Zanzibar have, as we have already said, lessened the strategical value of the two large colonies on either side of the African continent. In the division of the Portuguese colonies agreed to by Great Britain, it was "the mistress of the seas" who was to have the strategic places—not part of them, but all of them, the Cape Verde Islands, Madeira, and the Azores.
As Germany's commerce and shipping have so rapidly developed, the seeking for opportunities to extend her political sovereignty outside of Europe has not been so much an outlook for industrial enterprise as the imperative necessity of finding naval bases and coaling stations in different parts of the world for the adequate protection of commerce. The development of the German navy has been the logical complement of the development of the German merchant marine. Germany's astonishing naval program has kept pace with the astonishing growth of the great Hamburg and Bremen lines. Germany has had exactly the same argument for the increase of her navy as has had Great Britain. Justification for the money expended on the British navy is that Great Britain needs the navy to protect her commerce, upon which the life of the nation is dependent, and to guarantee her food-supplies. The industrial evolution of Germany has brought about for her practically the same economic conditions as in Great Britain. In addition to the dependence of her prosperity upon the power of her navy to protect her commerce, Germany has felt that she must keep the sea open for the sake of guaranteeing uninterrupted food-supplies for her industrial population. It must not be forgotten that Germany is flanked on east and west by hereditary enemies, and has come to look to the sea as the direction from which her food supplies would come in case of war.
This last factor of the Weltpolitik, the creation of a strong navy, must not be looked upon either as a provocation to Great Britain or as a menace to the equilibrium of the world. If it has brought Germany inevitably into conflict with Great Britain, it is because the navy is the safeguard of commerce. The Weltpolitik is essentially a Handelspolitik. The present tremendous conflict between Great Britain and Germany is the result of commercial rivalry. It is more a question of the pocket-book than of the sacredness of treaties, if we are looking for the cause rather than the occasion of the war. It has come in spite of honest efforts to bring Great Britain and Germany together.
Lord Haldane, in February, 1912, made a trip to Berlin to bring about a general understanding between the two nations. But while there was much discussion of the question of the Bagdad Railway, Persian and Chinese affairs, Walfisch Bay, and the division of Africa, nothing came of it. On March 18th, Mr. Churchill said to the House of Commons: "If Germany adds two ships in the next six years, we shall have to add four; if Germany adds three, we shall have to add six. Whatever reduction is made in the German naval program will probably be followed here by a corresponding naval reduction. The Germans will not get ahead of us, no matter what increase they make; they will not lose, no matter what decrease they make." This was as far as Great Britain could go.
In the spring of 1912, the British fleet was concentrated in the North Sea, and an accord was made with France for common defensive action in the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, during M. Poincaré's trip to Petrograd, an accord was signed between France and Russia for common naval action in time of war.
The Pan-Germanic movement in recent years has not been a tool of the Government, but rather a party, including other parties, banded together more than once to oppose the German Government in an honourable attempt to preserve peace with the neighbours in the west.
It is a tremendous mistake—and a mistake which has been continuously made in the French, British, and American press since the beginning of the war—to consider the Weltpolitik as an expression of the sentiments of the German Emperor and his officials. Since it was forced upon Bismarck against his will, Pan-Germanism has been a power against which the Emperor William II has had to strive frequently throughout his reign. For it has never hesitated to force him into paths and into positions which were perilous to the theory of monarchical authority. The Kaiser has resented the pressure of public opinion in directing the affairs of the Empire. Pan-Germanism has been a striking example of democracy, endeavouring to have a say in governmental policies. The Naval and Army Leagues, the German Colonial Society, and the Pan-Germanic Society are private groups, irresponsible from the standpoint of the Government. They have declared the governmental programs for an increase in armaments insufficient, and have bitterly denounced and attacked them from the point of view exactly opposite to that of the Socialists. The Pan-Germanic Society refused to recognize the treaty concluded between Germany and France after the Agadir incident. Said Herr Klaas at the Hanover Conference on April 15, 1912: "We persist in considering Morocco as the country which will become in the future, let us hope the near future, the colony for German emigration." The same intractable spirit was shown in Dr. Pohl's address at the Erfurt Congress in September, 1912.
We hear much about the Kaiser and the military party precipitating war. A review of the German newspapers during the past few years will convince any fair-minded reader that German public opinion, standing constantly behind the Pan-Germanists, has frequently made the German Foreign Office act with a much higher hand in international questions than it would have acted if left to itself, and that German public opinion, from highest classes to lowest, is for this war to the bitter finish. It is the war of the people, intelligently and deliberately willed by them. The statement that a revolution