Peaceless Europe | Page 5

technical point of view; and even in those industries which were not
hers by habit and tradition she developed so powerful an organization
as to appear almost uncanny. Germany held first place not only in the
production of iron, but in that of dyes and chemicals. Men went there
from all parts of the world not only to trade but to acquire knowledge.
An ominous threat weighed on the Empire, namely the constitution of
the State itself, essentially militaristic and bureaucratic. Not even in
Russia, perhaps, were the reins of power held in the hands of so few
men as in Germany and Austria-Hungary.
A few years before the World War started one of the leading European
statesmen told me that there was everything to be feared for the future
of Europe where some three hundred millions, the inhabitants of Russia,
Germany and Austria-Hungary, about two-thirds of the whole continent,
were governed in an almost irresponsible manner by a man without will
or intelligence, the Tsar of Russia; a madman without a spark of genius,

the German Kaiser, and an obstinate old man hedged in by his ambition,
the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Not more than thirty persons, he
added, act as a controlling force on these three irresponsible sovereigns,
who might assume, on their own initiative, the most terrible
responsibilities.
The magnificent spiritual gifts of the Germans gave them an Emanuel
Kant, the greatest thinker of modern times, Beethoven, their greatest
exponent of music, and Goethe, their greatest poet. But the imperial
Germany which came after the victory of 1870 had limited the spirit of
independence even in the manifestations of literature and art. There still
existed in Germany the most widely known men of science, the best
universities, the most up-to-date schools; but the clumsy mechanism
tended to crush rather than to encourage all personal initiative. Great
manifestations of art or thought are not possible without the most
ample spiritual liberty. Germany was the most highly organized
country from a scientific point of view, but at the same time the country
in which there was the least liberty for individual initiative. It went on
like a huge machine: that explains why it almost stopped after being
damaged by the war, and the whole life of the nation was paralysed
while there were very few individual impulses of reaction. Imperial
Germany has always been lacking in political ability, perhaps not only
through a temperamental failing, but chiefly owing to her militaristic
education.
Before the War Germany beat her neighbours in all the branches of
human labour: in science, industry, banking, commerce, etc. But in one
thing she did not succeed, and succeeded still less after the War,
namely, in politics. When the German people was blessed with a
political genius, such as Frederick the Great or Bismarck, it achieved
the height of greatness and glory. But when the same people, after
obtaining the maximum of power, found on its path William II with his
mediocre collaborators, it ruined, by war, a colossal work, not only to
the great detriment of the country, but also to that of the victors
themselves, of whom it cannot be said with any amount of certainty, so
far as those of the Continent are concerned, whether they are the
winners or the losers, so great is the ruin threatening them, and so vast

the material and moral losses sustained.
I have always felt the deepest aversion for William II. So few as ten
years ago he was still treated with the greatest sympathy both in Europe
and America. Even democracies regarded with ill-dissimulated
admiration the work of the Kaiser, who brought everywhere his voice,
his enthusiasm, his activity, to the service of Germany. As a matter of
fact, his speeches were poor in phraseology, a mere conglomerate of
violence, prejudice and ignorance. As no one believed in the possibility
of a war, no one troubled about it. But after the War nothing has been
more harmful to Germany than the memory of those ugly speeches,
unrelieved by any noble idea, and full of a clumsy vulgarity draped in a
would-be solemn and majestic garb. Some of his threatening utterances,
such as the address to the troops sailing for China in order to quell the
Boxer rebellion, the constant association in all his speeches of the great
idea of God, with the ravings of a megalomaniac, the frenzied oratory
in which he indulged at the beginning of the War, have harmed
Germany more than anything else. It is possible to lose nobly; but to
have lost a great war after having won so many battles would not have
harmed the German people if it had not been represented abroad by the
presumptuous vulgarity of the Kaiser and of all the members of his
entourage, who were more or