New York Times Current History: Vol 1, No. 1 | Page 8

grinning fangs, and are
now rolling over with their teeth in one another's throats, are to be
tamed into trusty watch-dogs of the peace of the world. I am sorry to

spoil the saintly image with a halo which the British Jingo journalist
sees just now when he looks in the glass; but it must be done if we are
to behave reasonably in the imminent day of reckoning.
And now back to Friedrich von Bernhardi.
*General Von Bernhardi.*
Like many soldier-authors, Friedrich is very readable; and he maintains
the good and formidable part of the Bismarck tradition: that is, he is not
a humbug. He looks facts in the face; he deceives neither himself nor
his readers; and if he were to tell lies--as he would no doubt do as
stoutly as any British, French, or Russian officer if his country's safety
were at stake--he would know that he was telling them. Which last we
think very bad taste on his part, if not downright wickedness.
It is true that he cites Frederick the Great as an exemplary master of
war and of Weltpolitik. But his chief praise in this department is
reserved for England. It is from our foreign policy, he says, that he has
learnt what our journalists denounce as "the doctrine of the bully, of the
materialist, of the man with gross ideals: a doctrine of diabolical evil."
He frankly accepts that doctrine from us (as if our poor, honest
muddle-heads had ever formulated anything so intellectual as a
doctrine), and blames us for nothing but for allowing the United States
to achieve their solidarity and become formidable to us when we might
have divided them by backing up the South in the Civil War. He shows
in the clearest way that if Germany does not smash England, England
will smash Germany by springing at her the moment she can catch her
at a disadvantage. In a word he prophesies that we, his great masters in
Realpolitik, will do precisely what our Junkers have just made us do, It
is we who have carried out the Bernhardi programme: it is Germany
who has neglected it. He warned Germany to make an alliance with
Italy, Austria, Turkey, and America, before undertaking the subjugation,
first of France, then of England. But a prophet is not without honour
save in his own country; and Germany has allowed herself to be caught
with no ally but Austria between France and Russia, and thereby given
the English Junkers their opportunity. They have seized it with a
punctuality that must flatter Von Bernhardi, even though the

compliment be at the expense of his own country. The Kaiser did not
give them credit for being keener Junkers than his own. It was an
unpleasant, indeed an infuriating surprise. All that a Kaiser could do
without unbearable ignominy to induce them to keep their bulldogs off
and give him fair play with his two redoubtable foes, he did. But they
laughed Frederick the Great's laugh and hurled all our forces at him, as
he might have done to us, on Bernhardian principles, if he had caught
us at the same disadvantage. Officially, the war is Junker-cut-Junker,
militarist-cut-Militarist; and we must fight it out, not
Heuchler-cut-Hypocrite, but hammer and tongs.
*Militarist Myopia.*
Unofficially, it is quite another matter. Democracy, even
Social-Democracy, though as hostile to British Junkers as to German
ones, and under no illusion as to the obsolescence and colossal
stupidity of modern war, need not lack enthusiasm for the combat,
which may serve their own ends better than those of their political
opponents. For Bernhardi the Brilliant and our own very dull Militarists
are alike mad: the war will not do any of the things for which they
rushed into it. It is much more likely to do the things they most dread
and deprecate: in fact, it has already swept them into the very kind of
organization they founded an Anti-Socialist League to suppress. To
shew how mad they are, let us suppose the war carries out their western
program to the last item. Suppose France rises from the war victorious,
happy and glorious, with Alsace and Lorraine regained, Rheims
cathedral repaired in the best modern trade style, and a prodigious
indemnity in her pocket! Suppose we tow the German fleet into
Portsmouth, and leave Hohenzollern metaphorically under the heel of
Romanoff and actually in a comfortable villa in Chislehurst, the hero of
all its tea parties and the judge of all its gymkhanas! Well, cry the
Militarists, suppose it by all means: could we desire anything better?
Now I happen to have a somewhat active imagination; and it flatly
refuses to stop at this convenient point. I must go on supposing.
Suppose France, with its military prestige raised once more to the
Napoleonic