HERR SCHEIDEMANN'S HEROICS.
WE have often had occasion during the war to wonder . at the average German's inability to take any point of view except his own. The enemy could and did break all the rules of war to snatch an advantage, but he resented furiously the slightest technical breach of a rule that could be imputed to the Allies. We are inclined to think that this grotesque narrow-mindedness was not mere hypocrisy, but arose out of an honest conviction that the Germans are the chosen people, and that other nations are in a different category and may not claim equal rights. This singular German trait has forced itself on our notice once again in the astonishing speech delivered by Herr Scheidemann, the German Socialist Premier, in the National Assembly on Monday. lie assumed that Germany was an innocent victim of the world- war, and lie proceeded to denounce the Allies in general, and President Wilson in particular, for propounding a Peace Treaty which would make Germany a" prison camp." As an apostle of "Soil-Determination "—that unhappy term which means anything or nothing—he lamented the absence of the Alsace-Lorrainers from Berlin. He grieved over the prospect that the Deputies from West Prussia, Posen, and Silesia were meeting for the last time with the others as "Germans amongst Germans," though he knew, and his audience knew, perfectly well that those provinces are mainly inhabited by Poles whom Prussia has dra- gooned for a century and a half without converting them into Germans. He was bitterly indignant at the demand that Germany should yield up her shipping by way of com- pensation for the infamous ' U'-boat campaign, that she should compensate the Allies for the damage done in the occupied territories and elsewhere, that she should renounce her colonies, and undertake not to differentiate in her tariff against Allied commerce. The Peace terms were, he said, not only unacceptable but" murderous." Germany could not fight, he added, but she wanted a Peace "which leaves us life as our sole capital for labour and making amends, instead of one which would perpetuate hatred for ever." Herr Scheidemann's heroics may have pleased his hearers. But the unsympathetic reader will wonder how Herr Scheideinann, and apparently the German people as a whole, can have forgotten so completely what happened last year at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, and what kind of Peace was proposed for the Allies in the, event of the German victory which every German then anticipated.
We should have been very sorry to see the Allies following the evil example of the German Peace Treaties. But inasmuch as those Treaties were received with hearty approval by all parties in Germany except the Independent Socialists, it is worth while to contrast their drastic terms with the very moderate demands now made by the Allies. At Brest-Litovsk on March 3rd, 1918, Germany compelled Russia to renounce territories with an area of five hundred and seventy thousand square miles and a population of seventy millions, and to accept the permanent economic domination of Germany over Russia by means of tariffs and concessions. The Germans intended under this Treaty to rule Russia as a helpless dependency, from which all foreign competition would be excluded. Nor did the Treaty bring peace, for the Germans continued to occupy fresh tracts of Russian territory, looting as they went, and finally in August last they compelled the Bolshe- viks to agree to pay £300,000,000 in four months by way of compensation to the invaders for their trouble. The German public was delighted with this shameless Treaty. It is true tliat the Majority Socialists did not vote for it in the Reichstag, but they were most careful not to oppose it, and very few among them ventured to criticize its terms. We may perhaps find in the traditional German fear of Russia some excuse for such a Treaty, though it was in fiat contradiction to the Reichstag's resolution in favour of a Peace" without annexations and without indemnities," which deceived some of our simple-minded Socialists and Pacificists. But for the Peace of Bucharest with Rumania there was no excuse. Bismarck might have used the opportunity to display a wise leniency towards Rumania in her extremity, as he did towards Austria in 1866. But his degenerate successors, with the cordial approval of the German people, imposed on Rumania in March, 1918, a Peace which extinguished her political and commercial independence. Rumania had to cede the whole of the Dobrudja, which is mainly a Rumanian land and includes the chief Rumanian port of Constanza. She had to surren- der to Austria all the passes on her Carpathian frontier, BO that she was in future to be defenceless. Further, she had to give Germany and Austria complete control of her oilfields, her grain, her railways, and her shipping. The full effect of the Bucharest Economic Treaty was to reduce the Rumanians to hopeless serfdom such as they had endured under the Turk.
This was the German idea of a "just Peace" or "a Peace by understanding" little more than a year ago. We cannot remember that Herr Scheidemann raised his voice in protest against it, but we remember very well that Herr Erzberger, who is now a prominent associate of his, defended the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as being quite in accord with the Reichstag Peace Resolution which Ile himself had framed. Nor were these monstrous Treaties surprising to any one who had studied German utterances on the subject of war aims. The Mittel-Europa or Central Europe project of Herr Naumann, himself a very moderate politician as measured by German standards, presupposed the forcible subjection of Belgium and Holland, Rumania and the Balkan States, to a Hohen- zollern-Hapsburg despotism centred in Berlin. The Pan- Germans, including among them such Socialists as Dr. Lensch, went much further. Herr Scheidemann, who Poses as an injured innocent, told the Reichstag on April 6th, 1916, that one must be a political infant to persuade him- self that a whole continent can be set on fire, that millions of men can be killed or wounded, without the removal of a single frontier-stone placed by some musty old diplomatist." The Socialist Press argued that a policy of ` no annex- ations" was un-Marxian. The Socialist Deputy Peuss- Dessau pleaded for the annexation of Belgium in the interests of the Belgians themselves. Another Socialist, Herr Landsbeig, who is a member of the Peace Delegation, urged the annexation of Western Poland up to the river Narev, regardless of the fact that it was inhabited by five million Poles. At the Socialist Party Congress in 1917 Herr Scheidemann, supported by the majority, refused to admit the right of the ,Alsace-Lorrainers to " &If-Determination " by a plebiscite. He now makes it a grievance that the Allies will not take a plebiscite in Alsace- 'Lorraine, but eighteen months ago he rejected the sugges- tion that Germany should do so because, he said, Alsace- Lorraine was not a nation. Nor would he admit that the Poles had any right to" Self-Determination." The integrity of the German Empire must be preserved ; the fine prin- ciples to which he paid lip-service, for the benefit of Mr. Henderson and H. Longuet, were for export only and not for home consumption.
When we recall the aggressive Imperialism favoured by nearly all Germans, and accepted with mild reservations by the Majority Socialists as well as by all other parties except the small faction headed by Herr Haase and the late Dr. Liebknecht, we cannot take Herr Scheidemann's lamentations very seriously. As a matter of fact, the Allied Peace terms differ fundamentally in temper from the terms which the Germans imposed on Russia and Rumania, and which they would have imposed on us if they could. The territorial cessions which Germany is required to make do not infringe the principle of nationality. Geimany is only asked to restore a French province to France, a Danish district to Denmark, three Polish provinces to Poland, and a Lithuanian district to Lithuania. These are not annexations but restitutions. In the special case of the Saar Valley, which is now German though it was long under French rule before 1815, there is no annexation, but merely a transfer of the coal-mines to France as com- pensation for the coal-mines of Northern France which the Germans wilfully destroyed in order to paralyse French industry. There can be no sort of comparison between these cessions of non-German lands to their rightful owners and the wholesale seizures by Germany and her confederates of non-German territory at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. The Allies, again, only ask Germany to compensate them for their losses in a war caused by German ambition and malice. They do not seek to establish an economic domination over Germany for all time, as Herr Scheidemann pretends. They have been actuated rather by a desire to make the burden of reparation as light as is possible in the circumstances. The demand that Germany shall pay £.5,000,000,000 in thirty years towards the cost of undoing the evil that she has wrought is not severe, as the debt might well have borne compound interest. As it is, one-fifth of the sum, payable by 1921, will be free of interest ; two-fifths will bear only 2i per cent. from 1921 till 1926, and afterwards 5 per cent. ; and the remainder will bear interest at 5 per cent. The Kaiser in July, 1917, said that when Germany had won the war she would exact an indemnity of 00,000,000,000. The sooner Germany can pay the compensation, the better pleased we shall all be. No serious person in Allied countries wishes to reduce the Germans to slavery," though the Germans when they had the power actually reduced the Russians and Rumanians to slavery of a most objectionable kind. All that we ask of Germany, when she has made such atonement as is possible for the harm that she has done, is that she should become a good European and for- swear the horrible ambitions which have brought, her to her present state. The Allies, therefore, need not take Herr Scheidemann's factitious indignation too seriously. Germany was intolerable when she thought she was winning the war, and she seems unable to comport herself in defeat with the dignity that great peoples have shown in the past. The behaviour of France in 1871 was a model that we may commend to Herr Scheidemann and his countrymen. They used to boast that they would " organize sympathy" after the war, but now they are likely to stir up fresh illwill.
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