MR. GERARD'S DISSECTION OF THE GERMAN MIND.
WE cannot remember any diplomatic disclosures published during a war which can exactly be compared with those of Mr. Gerard, the late American Ambassador to Germany. The Daily Telegraph is to be congratulated on publishing this narrative. Several of the chapters have seemed to deal with things on the surface, and for that reason the importance of what Mr. Gerard says might sometime,: escape notice. But even when he is dealing with stray episodes and chance observations he is 1111Y11115, by a process of accumulation, building up an image of German life, sod in particular of the tortuous habits of German thought, which is of intense interest and significance. Seldom has an Ambassador been treated with so murk clumsiness. haughti- ness, and suspicion. If Lord Maeartney, the first British Ambassador to China, had kow-towed to the Reveler of China, as he was desired to do, he would not have paid greater homage to sovereign might than the German Emperor would have liked to exact from Mr. Gerard. Lord Macariney's explanation that he was the Ambassador of England was enough to keep his conduct firm and right. and the United States has good reason to be grateful that Mr. Gerard never forgot for a single moment that he occupied a position of great honour and strength in representing the United States.
The fact to which we wish to draw special attention is the astonishing revelation of Mr. Gerard as to the peace terms which Germany really had in mind at the end of 1916 and the beginning of this year. It will be remembered that in December, 1916, the German Emperor, with a great verbal parade of humanity and many pious asseverations of his responsibility before God, proposed that an end should be made of the hideous slaughter. Carefully contrived phrases suggested that the Germans were not the brutes and vandals they were represented to be by their enemies, but reasonable and merciful men who desired nothing more than to live in goodwill with the rest of the world. There is a certain type of mind which can never resist such an appeal, and assumes that whenever the word " peace " is mentioned honesty is necessarily behind it. It might be added without exaggeration that to sonic British lovers of peace an appeal for amity seems to come with special force when it comes from a German autocrat, We do not profess to understand why this should be so, but for many years the fact was fairly obvious that German arrogance and German threats were regularly explained away, while the smallest verbal indis- cretion on the part of the French—who, after all, have long stood for the Liberal tradition on the Continent of Europe in its most intellectual and spiritual form—was scarcely to be forgiven. The British man with this type of mind assured us that the British Government were making the greaten mistake in history when they refused to entertain the German Emperor's peace proposals of December, 1916. With all kinds of hints and half-suggestions, an attempt was made to convey to the British public the idea that the German peace terms were really very magnanimous. It mattered not at all that those terms had never been stated. The suggestion was persistent that the experiences of the war bad turned Germany into a model of moderation, and theft
if only we would treat with her it would be discovered that the German Emperor's terms were as reasonable as we could desire. Less than a month after Great Britain had been guilty of her "great refusal" Mr. Gerard had a conversation with Herr von Bethmann Ifollweg on the subject of peace. Mr. Gerard had for some time been trying to discover what terms were really forming themselves in tho mind of Germany behind all the attractive, if highly ambiguous, phrases of the Emperor. " What are these peace terms to which you refer continually ? " he said to the German Chancellor one day in January, 1917. " Will you allow me to ask a f••w questions ? First, are the Germans willing to withdraw from Belgium ? " The Chancellor answered that Germany was willing to withdraw, " but with guarantees." Mr. Gerard . next. asked what those guarantees were. The Chancellor replied : " We must possibly have the forts of Liege and Namur. We must have other forts and garrisons throughout Belgium. We must have possession of the railroad lines. We must have possession of the ports and other means of communication. The Belgians will not be allowed to main- tain an army, but we must be allowed to retain a large army in Belgium. We must have commercial control of Belgium." Mr. Gerard's acute comment on this barefaced proposal was : " I do not see that you have left much for the Belgians, except that King Albert will have the right to reside at Brussels with a guard of honour." The Chancellor went on defensively to explain that Belgium must not be allowed to become ." an outpost of England." " I do not suppose," retorted Mr. Gerard, " that the English wish it to become an outpost of Germany, especially as Tirpitz said the coast of Flanders should be retained in order to make war on England and America." Mr. Gerard then asked about Northern France. " We are willing to leave Northern France," said the Chan- cellor, and then added, " but there must be a rectification of the frontier." It need hardly be explained that " recti- fication " is only a synonym for annexation. " How about the Eastern frontier ? ", Mr. Gerard asked. " We must have a very substantial rectification," was the answer. " How about Rumania ? " The Chancellor replied that Bulgaria would be allowed to deal with Rumania. " How about Serbia ? " was the last question. The Chancellor replied :
A very small Serbia may be allowed to exist, but that question is for Austria. Austria must be left to do what she wishes to Italy, and we must have indemnities from all the countries and all our ships and colonies back." The peace proposals of Germany therefore amounted to this, that the Allies were to throw over the small nations, which were to disappear for all practical purposes into the capacious maw of Germany. Moreover, Germany was to be surrounded in future by a humble and obedient circle of nations paying tribute into her coffers. To intensify the hopelessly un- repentant and merciless character of this proposal, one has only to remember that Herr von Bethmann Hollweg was regarded throughout Germany as a moderate man, and was for that reason continually attacked by the Junkers as an unsafe guardian of the interests of Germany. Some one who wishes to extenuate the German terms may laugh our horror away by saying that after all the German Chancellor's answers to Mr. Gerard were only auctioneer's terms. It is usual, it will be said, for every bargainer to pitch his terms very much higher than his hopes, and the German Chancellor was only following the usual practice. No such extenuation, in our opinion, can hold good in this instance. The Chancellor was answering questions " as man to man," in the familiar phrase. He was not speaking for public effect. On the contrary, throughout Mr. Gerard's chapters it is plain that, so far as the German Government could induce themselves to believe that any danger to Germany existed on the other side of the Atlantic, they were anxious to placate the United States.
To many observers here it is a startling fact that the Americans, who were so impregnated with ideas of peace only two years ago, should now be as resolute as any one of the Allies for pressing the war to a decisive military conclusion before allowing themselves to think of discussing peace terms. We might almost say that there is less tendency in America to play with the idea that there is sonic meaning in the constant suecession of tentative German proposals than there is in any other of the Allied countries. The explanation is very simple. All that Mr. Gerard is now retailing to an astonished world was well known in Washington long ago. The Government at Washington are like a patient who has submitted himself to several mild forms of various diseases in order to guard himself against major attiwks of those diseases. They are perfectly immune. They are ne.t in the least danger of infection even when the atmosphere is surchartfed with the bacilli of German peace intrigues. No American will ever forget that Herr von Bethmann Hollweg himself admitted that during the whole period when he was, with some show of honesty, trying to arrive at an understanding with America about the
U '-boats, he was only waiting for the time when he would be strong enough to defy the United States. Again, Washington possesses a conclusive and absolutely damning document in the shape of the Kaiser's .message to President Wilson professing to explain how in July, 1911, Germany tried to keep the peace and Great Brita'n insisted upon war. That message, which has been reproduced in facsimile in the Daily Telegraph, was written in English by the Kaiser's own hand. It is headed " To the President of the United States personally." This superscription disposes of all the recent German explanations that what the Kaiser handed to Mr. Gerard was merely a few rough notes for his guidance. There is, moreover, in the circumstances no possibility of any misunderstanding through faults of translation. And in this invaluable document the Kaiser wrote that " Belgium had to be violated by Germany on strategical grounds." That admission will stand for ever, and will make the subsequent excuses of the German Government that the French were the first to violate Belgian territory, and that secret military schemes between Great Britain and Belgium were discovered in the archives at Brussels, seem only the more dishonest. Such consequential excuses are of a piece with the unsavoury Prussian tradition which began with Frederick the Great when he first invaded Saxony and afterwards discovered the documents that justified hint.
Even now, though Germany is undoubtedly sick of the war and becoming terribly alarmed by the prospect which opens up before her, she has given no visible sign of good faith. She has never said that she will leave Belgium. We notice that in an " interview " published in the New York Times Dr, Albert Sfidekum, temporary Chairman of the Reichstag Main Committee, says that the peace resolution of the Reichstag Majority holds the field, and that it is " undesirable that Germany should state detailed peace aims in advance of the Peace Conference." In other words, as we have said over and over again, what Germany would most like to achieve now is an armistice on the vaguest of vague conditions. She would exhaust the German language in phrases of high inten- tions and earnest goodwill, but when she had secured a cessa- tion of the fighting with a view to negotiation she would be in a position to cry off the negotiations at any moment that suited ben Such a moment would be likely enough to arrive soon, for it is perfectly well understood that the highly centralized control which the Kaiser exercises over his legions is a considerable military advantage. He can whip in his pack again when he chooses, whereas the Allied packs have, as it were, to sit down and talk over the situation before they can again agree upon any combined action. If ever we play into German hands in this matter we shall commit the greatest breach of trust, and deal the hardest blow to the hopes of peace, that any responsible nation could conceivably be guilty of. We must have a very plain promise of complete restoration and reparation front Germany before we can dream of a Peace Conference.
Mr. Faintheart is once again trying to make his voice heard in the land, and his argument takes the peculiarly insidious form that, though we cannot indeed lose the war, we cannot reach what is called a definite decision in the field. We are certain that Mr. Faintheart is wrong, and we are equally certain that the Allies have it within their power to prove hint wrong. If they allow Germany to discover that her wickedness was well worth while—and "peace by negotia- tion" means nothing else—they will have sinned against the light, for after Mr. Gerard's revelations them can no longer be any pretence that there is some inner good meaning within German diplomatic language.
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