The Audacious War | Page 8

Europeans outside
of Germany have taken very kindly of late years to the Monroe
Doctrine. In Africa and the islands of the sea the German colonial
policy has not been a success. Dr. Dernburg as colonial secretary has
many a time stood up in the Reichstag and warned the Germans that the
home military system and rules were not adaptable to colonization in
foreign parts; that Germans must adapt themselves to foreign countries
and not attempt at first to make their manners the standard in the
colonies they undertook to dominate.
While German colonies have not yet passed beyond the experimental
stage, German tariffs and German commerce have been great
successes.
The population of Russia is 166,000,000 people. This is the latest
figure I gathered from those intimate with the government at St.
Petersburg. This is just 100,000,000 more than Germany. Germany
thinks she must trade to her own advantage with the people now
crowding her eastern border.
The example of America in putting up tariff bars against "Made in
Germany" has many advocates in England and in the rest of the world.
When France, only a few years ago, was angered that Italy should sign
up in "triple alliance" with Austria and Germany, she did not dare to
attack Italy with arms, but she did attack Italy by tariff measures, and
for a time Italy and France fought--by tariffs.
What might be the position of Germany if the American protective

tariff system were expanded over the earth? In the view of some people
tariffs, taxation, and armaments go hand in hand. There is a town in
Prussia that finished payment only twenty years ago on the indemnity
Napoleon exacted from it.
Can a country afford to develop an industrial system dependent upon
an outside world and then suddenly find the outside world closed by
tariff barriers?
When an American ambassador protested against Bismarck's
discriminatory treatment of American pork, the great chancellor asked,
"What have you to talk with? You have no army or navy." "No," said
the American ambassador, "but we have the ability to build them as big
as anybody. Do you wish to tempt us?" "No," said the German
chancellor, "and your goods shall not be discriminated against."
Dr. Dernburg has given the key to the German colonial military, tariff,
and financial policy. German unity in tariffs and transportation has
made German prosperity, and Dr. Dernburg, her former colonial
secretary and now in New York, says the mouth of the Rhine and the
channel ports must be free to Germany and that Belgium must come
into tariff and transportation union with Germany. Belgium is being
taxed, tariffed, pounded, and impounded into the German empire.
There is some difference in size between Belgium and Russia, but no
difference in principle with respect to their German relations.
"World power or downfall," Bernhardi put it.
CHAPTER III
THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF THE WAR
A State with no Morals--A Peace Treaty sundered--Where Germany
fails--A Thunderbolt.
Sending his little expedition to China the Kaiser said:--

"When you encounter the enemy you will defeat him; no quarter shall
be given, no prisoners shall be taken. Let all who fall into your hands
be at your mercy. Just as the Huns one thousand years ago, under the
leadership of Attila, gained a reputation in virtue of which they still live
in historical tradition, so may the name of Germany become known in
such a manner in China that no Chinaman will ever again dare to look
askance at a German."
Belgium was made an example of. According to the German idea she
should have accepted money and not stood in the way of German
progress.
German military progress is allied with German commercial progress.
It is a mistake in the conception of Germany to imagine that she wars
for the purpose of war or for the development and training of her men.
The first principle of German "Kultur" as respects the state is that the
sole business of the government is to advance the interests of the state.
No laws having been formulated in respect to the business of a state,
the government is without moral responsibility, and the laws applicable
to individual action do not apply to the state. Individuals may do wrong,
but the state cannot do wrong. Individuals may steal and be punished
therefor, but the state cannot steal. It is its business to expand and to
appropriate. Individuals may murder and be punished for the crime, but
it is the business of the state to kill for state development or progress.
The English-speaking conception of morality is that what applies to an
individual in a community applies to the aggregate of the individuals,
that the state is only the aggregate of the individuals exercising the
natural human functions of government for law