The Blot on the Kaisers Scutcheon | Page 7

emperor and all the other nations and races subject
peoples.
Beginning in 1860 with thirty-five millions of people and only fifteen
billions of dollars, Germany had climbed to greatness upon iron steps,
heated hot by war. Never did wars yield so large a return.
The war with Denmark had given Germany the Kiel Harbour, the Kiel
Canal and a sea-coast for her ships.
The war with Austria had given Germany the rich coal provinces of
Central Europe. The war with France had given Germany the iron
mines of Alsace and Lorraine.
And here for the next war were Denmark and Holland, Belgium and
northern France--so many jewel boxes that could be looted. To the
eastward were Poland with her coal mines, Rumania with her oil fields
and Russia with her wheat granaries. And once Central Europe became
a Middle-Europe German Empire there was no reason why later on
Germany should not extend her conquests to Russia on the east and
England on the west, and then to North and South America.
It was a great scheme. Never was prize so rich. Never could obstacles
be so easily swept away. To make Berlin a world-capital and Kaiser
Wilhelm a world-emperor only two things were needed.
Plainly the first thing to be done was to organize the Pan-German
Empire League and educate the leading men of Germany--the ship
owners, bankers, merchants and manufacturers, editors, ministers,
priests and university professors.
Local branch societies were organized in all the large German towns
and cities. Weekly meetings were held, papers read and reports made.
Slowly people of the middle class were included in the league.

Documents marked "Secret and Confidential" were distributed, setting
forth the details of the scheme.
Full reports were made as to what Germany could make by seizing the
fields of Denmark, the cities on the mouth of the Rhine in Belgium, the
coal and iron mines of France, Poland and Russia, and also the
undeveloped resources of the Valley of the Euphrates.
Careful statements were prepared as to the difficulties that must be
surmounted, but always this lure was held out--that the poorest German
who then had nothing, would when Germany was victorious become a
landowner, live in a mansion and drive his own automobile. Then he
would have Russians and Frenchmen to wait upon him, since the
German was a superman, intended for a patrician, while all other races
were pigs, intended by nature to be bondsmen and plebeians.
"The rest of the world is amassing wealth, and when the fruit is ripe
then we Germans will pluck it"--this was their motto.
Little by little the germ of world-ambition became a fever, burning in
the soul of every German at home or abroad. It took twenty years to
thoroughly inculcate every individual of the German race with this
feverish ambition, but when 1914 came every German had gone over to
the Pan-German scheme and was ready to die for it.
2. The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot
After all the Germans at home and abroad understood the Pan-German
scheme of seditious intrigue in foreign countries and the vast web was
spun and thrown out over all the cities and continents where the
Kaiser's representatives were living, the second thing to be done was to
make the plan clear by spreading it out like a great map. The method
used, therefore, was pictorial.
The Department of Publicity in Berlin became experts on geography.
They began to issue illustrated maps so that the rudest German peasants
and the German colonists living in Milwaukee or El Paso, in Rio
Janeiro or Buenos Aires, in Brussels or St. Petersburg, in Melbourne or

Calcutta, could easily understand the method and the goal.
Out of twenty maps issued in Berlin and reproduced by Andre
Cheredame, no one is more important than the one marked "The Old
Roman Empire." The simplest German miner understood the map at a
glance and realized its meaning for the members of the Pan-German
League. Here is old Rome marked world capital. Here is Cæsar
Augustus called the first world emperor. Here is Carthage with its
capital looted and Roman peasants remaining after the victory to move
into rich men's houses and estates of North Africa. And here also were
the maps of conquered Palestine, Ephesus, Athens and Corinth. To be
sure the old Romans had to become soldiers, but, later, did not each
Roman soldier live in the rich gardens around Thebes, Ephesus and
Corinth?
Instantly the imaginations of the German peasants and workmen
kindled. The Kaiser was right. What had been in Rome must be in
Berlin. The Elbe must succeed the Tiber. Berlin shall be the second
world-capital. Our Wilhelm shall be the second world-emperor.
Germania shall be written straight across Europe from Hamburg on the
North Sea to Bagdad on