Peaceless Europe | Page 6

less guilty of the same attitude.
Before the War Germany had everywhere attained first place in all
forms of activity, excepting, perhaps, in certain spiritual and artistic
manifestations. She admired herself too much and too openly, but
succeeded in affirming her magnificent expansion in a greatness and
prosperity without rival.
By common accord Germany held first place. Probably this
consciousness of power, together with the somewhat brutal forms of
the struggle for industrial supremacy, as in the case of the iron industry,
threw a mysterious and threatening shadow over the granitic edifice of
the Empire.
When I was Minister of Commerce in 1913 I received a deputation of
German business men who wished to confer with me on the Italian
customs regime. They spoke openly of the necessity of possessing

themselves of the iron mines of French Lorraine; they looked upon war
as an industrial fact. Germany had enough coal but not enough iron,
and the Press of the iron industry trumpeted forth loud notes of war.
After the conclusion of peace, when France, through a series of wholly
unexpected events, saw Germany prostrate at her feet and without an
army, the same phenomenon took place. The iron industry tends to
affirm itself in France; she has the iron and now she wants coal. Should
she succeed in getting it, German production would be doomed. To
deprive Germany of Upper Silesia would mean killing production after
having disorganized it at the very roots of its development.
Seven years ago, or thereabouts, Germany was flourishing in an
unprecedented manner and presented the most favourable conditions
for developing. Her powerful demographic structure was almost unique.
Placed in the centre of Europe after having withstood the push of so
many peoples, she had attained an unrivalled economic position.
Close to Germany the Austro-Hungarian Empire united together eleven
different peoples, not without difficulty, and this union tended to the
common elevation of all. The vast monarchy, the result of a slow
aggregation of violence and of administrative wisdom, represented,
perhaps, the most interesting historic attempt on the part of different
peoples to achieve a common rule and discipline on the same territory.
Having successfully weathered the most terrible financial crises, and
having healed in half a century the wounds of two great wars which she
had lost, Austria-Hungary lived in the effort of holding together
Germans, Magyars, Slavs and Italians without their flying at each
others' throats. Time will show how the effort of Austria-Hungary has
not been lost for civilization.
Russia represented the largest empire which has ever been in existence,
and in spite of its defective political regime was daily progressing.
Perhaps for the first time in history an immense empire of twenty-one
millions and a half of square kilometres, eighty-four times the size of
Italy, almost three times as large as the United States of America, was
ruled by a single man. From the Baltic to the Yellow Sea, from Finland
to the Caucasus, one law and one rule governed the most different

peoples scattered over an immense territory. The methods by which,
after Peter the Great, the old Duchy of Muscovy had been transformed
into an empire, still lived in the administration; they survive to-day in
the Bolshevist organization, which represents less a revolution than a
hieratic and brutal form of violence placed at the service of a political
organization.
The war between Russia and Japan had revealed all the perils of a
political organization exclusively based on central authority represented
by a few irresponsible men under the apparent rule of a sovereign not
gifted with the slightest trace of will power.
Those who exalt nationalist sentiments and pin their faith on
imperialistic systems fail to realize that while the greatest push towards
the War came from countries living under a less liberal regime, those
very countries gave proof of the least power of resistance. Modern war
means the full exploitation of all the human and economic resources of
each belligerent country. The greater a nation's wealth the greater is the
possibility to hold out, and the perfection of arms and weapons is in
direct ratio with the degree of technical progress attained. Moreover,
the combatants and the possibility of using them are in relation with the
number of persons who possess sufficient skill and instruction to direct
the war. Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States of
America, were able without any appreciable effort to improvise an
enormous number of officers for the War, transforming professional
men, engineers and technicians into officers. Russia, who did not have
a real industrial bourgeoisie nor a sufficient development of the middle
classes, was only able to furnish an enormous number of combatants,
but an insufficient organization from a technical and military point of
view, and a very limited number of officers. While on