DR. HOLLAND ROSE'S " ORIGINS OF THE WAR."
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Stn,—I have been reading, with great satisfaction and the respect due to so eminent a master of history, Dr. J. Holland Rose's Origins of the War. It is an indispensable vale-mecum, and I have advised all my friends to buy it. All the more must I regret even the least of what seem to me inaccuracies, or of admissions giving the weight of his high authority to current German falsehoods. I find only two such, but I could wish them two less ; and I am aware that if he insists his judgment must outweigh mine.
The first is the assertion, strangely accepted since 1871 by German friends and foes alike, that " Germany" was entitled
to Alsace and Lorraine because previously robbed of them by French force—the trifle of one hundred and seventy-four years before! With deference to a master, I do not know whether this is worse as history or as socio-political ethics. There was no " Germany " in 1697, or for near two centuries after, to take anything from, and the present Germany is no more the heir of what they were taken from than the United States by virtue of taking Cuba from Spain is heir to Spanish political grievances. Both belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, whose successors are the Catholic Austrian House of Hapsburg ; and that the Protestant Prussian House of Hohenzollern, the rival, enemy, and robber of the Hapsburg House, which but four years before had crushed and stripped it and driven it out of German hegemony, was the heir of its mummied rights in Alsace is quite the most astonishing historical proposition I have ever seen bruited. Germany may or may not have been justified in taking the provinces by right of conquest, but she had no more claim to them as stolen goods than Denmark or Serbia had. As to Lorraine, it was not "seized" at all. The diplomatic intrigue by which its last Prince exchanged it for Tuscany and its new Polish Prince willed it to France was at least more defensible than the sheer highwaymanehip by which Prussia has built up almost her entire dominion.
Bismarck, a safe authority against his own side, scouted all this bogus " history " as " mere antiquarian pedantry." He said they held Alsa.ce by the same title as Silesia, and that any one who denied the right of conquest was ignorant of his country's history. But even if it had been as true as it is false, the theory would keep the world a den of blood without cessation. You remember Macaulay's just remarks on Frederick's worse than unprovoked seizure of Silesia, summarized in the sentence : Is it not perfectly clear that if antiquated claims are to be set up against recent treaties and long possession, the world can never be at peace for a day ?" The whole paragraph is worth reprinting as a conclusive answer to such claims. Certainly Prussia of all States has least right to plead such reclamations. H a century and three-quarters of possession and incorporation, acquiesced in and recognized by no end of treaties and agreements, did not entitle France to the provinces as against a Power that never owned them or was any part of the Power that did own them, then assuredly a century and a quarter did not entitle Prussia to Silesia as against the rightful owner; and Austria would have had a perfect moral right to pour in troops and retake them whenever Prussia was in a difficulty. Even Sweden had a more decent title to Pomerania than Prussia to Silesia. Has any one ever taken an historical atlas and noted what would be the result of remaking Europe to the Etat us of a hundred and seventy-five years ago? It would leave Germany above all States a ghastly wreck.
The second item is, that a world-Parliament after the war ought to satisfy Germany's rights to expansion by giving her room in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia. I call the Spectator's own editorial columns for years past to witness that Germany has always been regarded by English opinion as the natural heir to both, and assured of having any part of either whenever she chose to take it, by virtue of her money and science being about to reclaim it from the desert to which Turkish barbarism and ignorance and corruption had reduced the garden of the world. No other Power was interfering with such reclamation; none was threatening or even debating her right to this grand potential Empire—the key to Europe in Asia; it was assumed in all discussion that here was her colonial expansion, and while she was sending out some twenty thousand emigrants a year there was room here for twenty millions. She was for ever boasting that her industries were so prosperous that she needed no outlet, since she kept all her children at home; at the same time, more suo, for ever wailing and shrieking that she must have vast territories to expand in, to keep her non- existent exiled children from being "lost" to her—though France and Spain, and above all Italy, the Scandinavian States, and the East European ones, bear it very philosophi- cally, and, as a fact, Germans will emigrate anywhere but where the officials of their beloved Vetter/and can bully and beat them: yet all the time here was one of the finest and most commanding Empires of the world in her very hands—. which she has done her best to throw away.
I for one American have no objection to Germans filling up South Brazil (as Dr. Rose wishes) or any other part of South America they like. Years ago I wrote to you that I thought the use of the Monroe Doctrine to keep these territories as a preserve for Eurindafricans in place of Teutons, for end- less Pereiras and Ribeiroas in place of new Schurzes and Von Hoists and Liebers, was asinine, and even the chance of wars was well paid for by the certainties of peace—or words to that effect. I still maintain the opinion, in spite of the attempt of Prussia, by seas of bloodshed and the letting loose of every mediaeval savagery, to dominate Europe, and ultimately America. We can fight our own battles if or when they come, and it is not worth while to sacrifice the developments and qualities of civilization to prevent them, which we should not do in any event. But why Germany is specially wronged by not being able to make every outflow of her people a ward of Berlin I cannot
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