New York Times Current History: Vol 1, No. 1 | Page 5

I see the Junkers and
Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have
longed for in vain for many years of smashing one another and
establishing their own oligarchy as the dominant military power in the
world. No doubt the heroic remedy for this tragic misunderstanding is
that both armies should shoot their officers and go home to gather in
their harvests in the villages and make a revolution in the towns; and
though this is not at present a practicable solution, it must be frankly
mentioned, because it or something like it is always a possibility in a
defeated conscript army if its commanders push it beyond human
endurance when its eyes are opening to the fact that in murdering its
neighbours it is biting off its nose to vex its face, besides riveting the
intolerable yoke of Militarism and Junkerism more tightly than ever on
its own neck. But there is no chance--or, as our Junkers would put it, no
danger--of our soldiers yielding to such an ecstasy of common sense.
They have enlisted voluntarily; they are not defeated nor likely to be;
their communications are intact and their meals reasonably punctual;
they are as pugnacious as their officers; and in fighting Prussia they are
fighting a more deliberate, conscious, tyrannical, personally insolent,
and dangerous Militarism than their own. Still, even for a voluntary
professional army, that possibility exists, just as for the civilian there is
a limit beyond which taxation, bankruptcy, privation, terror, and
inconvenience cannot be pushed without revolution or a social
dissolution more ruinous than submission to conquest. I mention all
this, not to make myself wantonly disagreeable, but because military
persons, thinking naturally that there is nothing like leather, are now
talking of this war as likely to become a permanent institution like the
Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's, forgetting, I think, that the
rate of consumption maintained by modern military operations is much
greater relatively to the highest possible rate of production
maintainable under the restrictions of war time than it has ever been
before.
*The Day of Judgment.*
The European settlement at the end of the war will be effected, let us

hope, not by a regimental mess of fire-eaters sitting around an up-ended
drum in a vanquished Berlin or Vienna, but by some sort of Congress
in which all the Powers (including, very importantly, the United States
of America) will be represented. Now I foresee a certain danger of our
being taken by surprise at that Congress, and making ourselves
unnecessarily difficult and unreasonable, by presenting ourselves to it
in the character of Injured Innocence. We shall not be accepted in that
character. Such a Congress will most certainly regard us as being, next
to the Prussians (if it makes even that exception), the most quarrelsome
people in the universe. I am quite conscious of the surprise and scandal
this anticipation may cause among my more highminded (hochnaesig,
the Germans call it) readers. Let me therefore break it gently by
expatiating for a while on the subject of Junkerism and Militarism
generally, and on the history of the literary propaganda of war between
England and Potsdam which has been going on openly for the last forty
years on both sides. I beg the patience of my readers during this painful
operation. If it becomes unbearable, they can always put the paper
down and relieve themselves by calling the Kaiser Attila and Mr. Keir
Hardie a traitor twenty times or so. Then they will feel, I hope,
refreshed enough to resume. For, after all, abusing the Kaiser or Keir
Hardie or me will not hurt the Germans, whereas a clearer view of the
political situation will certainly help us. Besides, I do not believe that
the trueborn Englishman in his secret soul relishes the pose of Injured
Innocence any more than I do myself. He puts it on only because he is
told that it is respectable.
*Junkers All.*
What is a Junker? Is it a German officer of twenty-three, with offensive
manners, and a habit of cutting down innocent civilians with his sabre?
Sometimes; but not at all exclusively that or anything like that. Let us
resort to the dictionary. I turn to the Encyclopaedisches Woerterbuch of
Muret Sanders. Excuse its quaint German-English.
*Junker* = Young nobleman, younker, lording, country squire, country
gentleman, squirearch. *Junkerberrschaft* = squirearchy, landocracy.
*Junkerleben* = life of a country gentleman, (figuratively) a jolly life.

*Junkerpartei* = country party. *Junkerwirtschaft* = doings of the
country party.
Thus we see that the Junker is by no means peculiar to Prussia. We
may claim to produce the article in a perfection that may well make
Germany despair of ever surpassing us in that line. Sir Edward Grey is
a Junker from his topmost hair to the tips