BOOKS.

PAN-GER. MANISM.*

EVEN after more than a year of war there are still visible some lamentable national symptoms, such as the enforcement of untimely Trade Union rules and the narrow-minded dislike displayed to the employment of women and unskilled labour in British factories, which seem to indicate that some sections of the community are not as yet fully alive to the importance of all the issues at stake in the present contest. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, it may be said that the British public have at last woke up from the deep lethargy in which they were steeped before the war, and which was duo partly to the culpable silence of responsible statesmen, who gave no adequate warning of the impending danger, and partly to the fact that many of their natural leaders steadfastly refused to accept any evidence save that which led up to their own foregone and wholly incorrect conclusions. How- ever slow the mass of the people of this country may be to grasp any new general idea with which they are unfamiliar, they experienced no difficulty in understanding what "mili- tarism" meant, or what was the significance of "frightful- ness." The former term quickened into life that intense dislike of military rule which has become a deeply rooted national tradition. The latter, when it took the form of bom- barding unfortified towns, sinking unarmed merchantmen, and slaughtering women and children, woke up all that generous • Le pangesmanisms. Par Ch, Andler, Professeur a l'Universitd de Paris. Paris: Librairte Armand Colin. [Cdr. 50.J,

and whole-hearted disgust for cruelty in all its forms which is one of the best characteristics of contemporaneous public opinion in humanitarian England. There is, however, another feature of German policy the nature of which is possibly not yet geneeally understood either in England or in America. It may be doubted whether the British or American public fully realize the time aims of Gorman ambition, or the extent to

which the realization of those aims would affect the interests both of their own countries and of every other country in the world. A few years ago a talented Frenchman, M. Oh6radame, endeavoured to explain the real meaning of the Pan-Germanic movement. His work did not attract all the attention it deserved. It was published at a time when the extent to which Germany had in. thought cut herself off from the community

of civilized nations was not as yet fully realized. Another Frenchman, Professor Andler, of the University of Paris, has now taken up the treatment of this subject. It will be well to make an attempt to familiarize the public with some of the leading facts set forth in Professor Andler's very able and interesting pamphlet. It embodies the collective opinions of a considerable number of very distinguished French savants.

It is impossible to understand the French Revolution with- out taking into account the teaching of those philosophers who heralded its advent. It has often been remarked that the origin of almost every law passed in the early stages of the Revolutionary period may be distinctly traced to the ideas propagated by Rousseau. Similarly, the utterances of the swarm of German professors and others who for many years past have been ardently preaching the gospel of Pan- Germanism afford the true key to the explanation of the recent political programme adopted by German statesmen. Officials have naturally been somewhat more reticent than their unofficial supporters. Nevertheless, the language which the former have at times employed has been sufficiently explicit. Prinoe Billow said publicly in 1904:. " The King must be at the head of Prussia; Prussia at the head of Germany; and Germany at the head of the universe." More- over, he testified to the fact that the Pan-German League, which represents the most extreme form of German Chauvinism, had deserved great credit for the manner in which it had " stimulated and evoked national sentiment."

More recently, the time having conic when there was no longer any need to wear a mask, the Kaiser announced in a General Order to his troops, of which copies were found in the possession of prisoners taken by the Russians, that "the sole object of the war was to ensure the triumph of that Great Germany, which was to dominate. all Europe." In this utter- ance the Kaiser was too modest. It cannot be doubted that the aim of the rulers of the future "Great Germany" is to dominate, not only the whole of Europe, but also the whole of the world.

List may be said to have been the real originator of the political programme which the German Government is now

endeavouring to carry out, but the extent. to which both his methods and the sentiments which he entertained towards other countries differed from those of the modern Pan- Germanists is sufficiently illustrated by the following extract from his work entitled Insular Supremacy; Writing before

the abolition of the Corn Laws, he bitterly attacked the then existing commercial policy of England, but he added : " How vain do the efforts of those appear to us who have striven to found their universal dominion on military power compared with the attempt of England, . . . Let us then congratulate ourselves on the immense progress of that [the English] nation, and wish her prosperity for all future time."

In 1892 and subsequent years, German Chauvinism, which had, of course, received a great stimulus from the astounding successes achieved against Austria in 1896 and France in 1870, took the. form of proposing to establish a gigantic Customs Union, which was to include all the States of Central Europe,

and which was to be especially directed against the commercial policy of the United States as conceived by Mr. McKinley. The programme speedily broadened out from commercial union to territorial acquisition. It was pointed out by one Pan- Germanist (Fritz BIcy) that it was absurd to leave maritime Flanders in the possession of a race so "physically and intellectually inferior" as the French, and that this rich province, which had been most iniquitously torn from the

flank of Germany by the predatory Turenne, ought to return to its original owners. The possession of Holland, which country had been "fertilized by German blood," was also necessary to Germany. Moreover, the Dutch would readily perceive that it was in their own interests to fall in with German views. Did they not need some adequate security against British aggression P As for Belgium, Mr. E. Seelnutnn observed that Charlemagne did not massacre all the Saxons. On the contrary, a number of them were deported to the, banks of the Meuse. Their descendants were obviously German. A &mita Irredenta, therefore, existed, which was pining for reunion to her German Motherland. A learned economist, Ernst von Halle, indignantly asked whether, both from an economic and geographical point of view, it was not " monstrous " that the mouths of the Rhine and the Danube, which were so singularly fitted by Nature to play an important part in the exchange of German produce with that of other countries, should be in the hands of strangers. Russia would, of course, have to be pushed back. She must be made to give up all the territories assigned to her in 1815, which had been most unjustly "lost to Prussia." There were, Paul de Lagarde pointed out, huge tracts of Russian territory which would serve admirably, not merely to satisfy the territorial ambitions of many minor German Princes, but as homes for the redundant proletariat of Germany. The Poles, as also the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, would have to be transported elsewhere, their places being taken by German colonists. According to Professor Hasse, a military " glacis " ought to be formed all round the German Empire. It should consist of a broad belt of country to be inhabited solely by soldiers retired from the German Army. Thus Germany would be preserved from the contagion of her neighbours. It might be possible to come to some amicable arrangement with France, for the French could not fail to recognize the truth of Max Harden's proposition that the limits in which Germany was confined after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 were far too narrow to satisfy her requirements. France could be afforded a guarantee that her African Empire would be secured to her. She might be able to reduce those naval and military armaments which weighed so seriously on her resources. She might even secure the services of some admirable German commercial organizers and agents. In return, Germany would obtain possession of certain colonies, and would, as a preliminary to the Mediter- ranean becoming a German lake, be allowed to construct a "German Gibraltar" in the neighbourhood of Toulon. If this arrangement was considered somewhat too leonine, Friedrich Lange was ready with an answer. It must always be understood, he explained, that if nations were to be asked to contribute towards maintaining the peace of the world, it was for others to immolate themselves, and that only as a very last resource should any sacrifices be demanded of the people of Germany.

The intense egotism of the programme put forward by the Pan-Germanists is probably best illustrated by the treatment which it was suggested should be accorded to Austria, the scorned handmaid of Germany. The services of that country could, indeed, be for a time utilized to act as a rampart against Slav aggression, but any arrangement of this nature could only be temporary. Austria, Friedrich Lange explained, was, after all, "a political abortion, the petrified residuum of a confusion of Babylonian languages." Hungary was a mere " bundle of impossibilities?' It was necessary, Paul de Lagarde said, that all the "lamentable nationalities," which constituted the Empire of Austria, should be eventually sub- merged by the flowing German tide. Austria, Hasse thought, had been far too liberally treated in 1866. She ought to have been made to cede Bohemia and Moravia. The time was inevitably approaching when Germany would have to "lay a strong hand on the ruins of the Hapsburg State."

As for Turkey, it was obvious that by the non-fulfilment of certain engagements contracted at Berlin in 1878 the Turks had sacrificed whatever international rights they might other- wise have possessed. The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire might, it is true, lead to an European conflagration, but, none the less, Germany must not hesitate. To her must • fall the lion's share of the spoil. "God will never abandon a true German." Pastor Naumann, who accompanied the Kaiser to the Holy Land, did not think it inconsistent with his duty as a minister of the Christian religion to urge that Germany should remain "politically indifferent " to such things as Armenian massacres. It was not a part of Germany's duty to encourage Christian missions. The main thing was to remember that the heritage of the Sultan would shortly be thrown on to the political market. Germany must be pre- pared to acquire the greater part of it, notably the whole of Asia Minor. Other Pan-Germanists urged that the possession of Crete was "a vital question" for Germany, and that "a sane egotism" (sin gesunder nationaler Egoisinus) could scarcely do less than demand the cession of that island and also of Armenia. The German Empire, Hasse maintained, must extend from the Baltic to the Persian Gulf. All foreign influence should be rigorously excluded from the whole of this vast territory. Anton Sprenger plaintively asked how it could be explained that Mesopotamia, the site of the Garden of Eden. as also Syria, were not in German hands. • Paul Robrbach urged, as a first step towards the creation of an African Empire, that the Belgian and Portuguese possessions in Africa should be acquired. After that had been done England would be inclined to make concessions in Egypt and elsewhere. The whole of Morocco must, of course, fall to Germany, either by the employment of force, as Max Harden suggested, or by gradual and persistent pressure on the French, who, Joachim von Billow pointed out, were "a decadent nation." In fact, everywhere colonial expansion was to be effected by the adoption of two alternative methods. These were infiltration, or, if that did not suffice, the use of violence.

Both of these methods were to be adopted in America. Professor Unold, after a tour through the Republics' of South America, informed the Reichstag that everywhere he had found distinct traces of Germanism. Charles V. had granted Venezuela as a fief to an Augsburg family named Weiser. Thus Venezuela manifestly belonged to .Clermany. Moreover, a member of the Weiser family Lad been decapitated in 1546. Was it not monstrous that his death had notyet been avenged? The Fuggere, the celebrated bankers of Augsburg, whom Michelet thought. changed the face of the world by supplying Charles V. with funds, had also been granted a charter placing them in possession of a large tract of country in the neighbour- hood of the Straits of Magellan. Why was this charter to be treated as a mere "scrap of paper "P As regards Brazil, Alfred Funke contented himself with putting forward the wholly ridiculous proposal that special representation should be accorded in the Brazilian Parliament to German residents. But this relatively moderate programme was far from satisfy- ing the more extreme Pan-Germanists. All these South American Republics must, Lange thought, be brought into the German fold, either with tlitir own consent or by the use of force. Another Pan-Germanist, Josef Reimer, pointed out that they would be all the more willing to listen to reason inasmuch as their own interests indicated the necessity of obtaining strong support against their "natural enemies," the United States.

In North America, a somewhat different note was sounded. Professor Julius Goebel, of the University of Illinois, dwelt on the fact that England was the natural enemy of the United States, and that the work of extending civilization was really entrusted to the people of Germany and America, more especially, in the case of the latter country, to the German- Americans. The fear expressed by Benjamin Franklin that America would some day be Germanized was based on very substantial grounds. Germanization, Professor Goebel held, must in the end certainly ensue.

When, however, Pau-Germanism had extended its tentacles over Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, there would still be a fifth continent which would be left un-Germanized. Was Australasia to remain outside the fold P Emil Jung, an Austrian writer, answered this question with a decisive negative. It was foolishly thought that the Australians, who have recently abed their blood like water in resisting German aggression, would be readily persuaded to assert their independence, and to inflict an incurable wound on their Motherland—Aeternumque claret wart sub pectore volnus. When this happened it was essential that Germany should be prepared to step into the lapsed heritage of England.

These are not, as might readily be surmised, the ravings of the inmates of some lunatic asylum. They are the deliberately expressed opinions of men of unquestionable learning. They are the outpourings of what Wordsworth called "sapient Germany," whose wisdom seems to have evaporated under the

intoxicating influence of the cupicla regnancli—the lust for acquiring power for its own sake.

Miss Durham, in one of her graphic accounts of life in the Near East, relates how an Albanian explained to her why his countrymen murdered men but spared women. The reason was that women could not defend themselves, whereas it was obviously necessary to shoot a man for the very simple reason that, as he was armed, he could not be robbed until he had been first murdered. This naif and acutely logical savage unconsciously gave Miss Durham a brief but by no means inaccurate epitome of Prussian State ethics and Prussian political morality as interpreted by some of the foremost exponents of that false code of civilization termed Gorman Kaatur. Nevertheless, in spite of all these very frank utter- ances, so hardy is the belief of many Germans in the credulity of the world, and especially in that of the British and American public, that we are still at times asked to believe that the Germans are a much-maligned people, and that they are led by a ruler whose true title to greatness is that lie is a