Germany and England intention to seize at least a port there. President Roosevelt sent the American fleet, under Dewey, into Venezuelan waters and gave the Germans forty-eight hours to withdraw. His somewhat peremptory method was successful. But from that time, we are told,1 German naval officers were keenly interested in New York's military defenses. Some survey like the foregoing is needful to guard us against the" tyranny of names." England and Germany in 1914 were both " constitutional monarchies "; but that does not mean that they were in any way alike, in government or society. England had a democratic government, in which the monarchic and aristocratic survivals were practically powerless mere matters of form: the German Empire was practically an absolutism. England's ideals were based upon industry and world-peace: Germany's ideals were based upon militarism and conquest. Englishmen thought of the "state" as a condition for the full development of the individual man: Germans thought of individual men as existing primarily for the sake of the absolutist state. German capitalism was perhaps in itself no more grasping and greedy than like forces in other countries. But in England, America, or France, those forces must cease to work evil whenever the majority of the people are wise enough and good enough to will it so and vote so: in Germany that capitalistic greed was backed by an irresistible military despotism against which the masses were powerless, either by ballots or bullets. FOR FURTHER Readings.—References on the spirit of German autocracy are given at the close of chapter iv. On the imperial German government, details are given in West's Modern World, pp. 654-661. 1 Davis, Roots of the War, 360. CHAPTER II MAKING "ALLIANCES" FOR PEACE By 1910, Europe had fallen into two hostile camps, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. Alliance 1. Before Bismarck fell from power, he had built the Triple The Triple Alliance. After 1871 he sought to isolate France, so as to keep her from finding any ally in a possible "war of revenge." To this end he cultivated friendship with all other European powers, but especially with Russia and Austria. Austria he had beaten in war only a few years earlier (1866); but he had treated her with marked gentleness in the peace treaty, and the ruling German element in Austria was quite ready now to find backing in the powerful and successful German Empire. Soon, however, Bismarck found that he must choose between Bismarck Austria and Russia. These two were bitter rivals for control prefers Austria to in the Balkans. The Slav peoples there, recently freed from Russia the Turks, looked naturally to Russia, who had won their freedom for them, as the "Big Brother" of all Slavs and all Greek religionists. But Austria, shut out now from control in Central Europe, was bent upon aggrandizement to the South. In particular her statesmen meant to win a strip of territory through to Salonika, on the Aegean, so that, with a railroad thither, they might control the rich Aegean trade. If Serbia were able to fulfill her dream of a South Slav state reaching to the Adriatic, she would interpose an inseparable Slav barrier to this plan, right across the path of Austria's ambition. Accordingly Austria sought always to keep Serbia weak and small; while Russia, hating Austria even more than she loved the Balkan Slavs, backed Serbia. This rivalry between Austria and Russia became so acute by 1879 that there was always danger of war; and in that year Bismarck chose to side with Austria as the surer ally. Accordingly he formed a definite written alliance with Austria to the effect that Germany would help Austria in case of war with Russia, and Austria would help Germany in case she were attacked by France and any other Power. Three years later, Bismarck drew Italy into the league, making it the Triple Alliance. Italy was so bitterly enraged at the French seizure of Tunis in that year, in flat disregard of Italian imperialistic ambitions there, that she laid aside her ancient differences with Austria for a time and agreed to aid the central empires in any war in which they should be attacked by two or more powers in return for backing in her colonial ambitions. 2. Then Russia and France, each isolated in Europe, drew together for mutual protection into a "Dual Alliance" (1884). But Bismarck hoped to draw England into his "triple" league; and his hope was not unreasonable. In the eighties and nineties, England and France were bitter rivals in Africa, and England and Russia, in Asia. England, however, clung to a proud policy of "splendid isolation." Then, after Bismarck's fall, she began to see in the German Emperor's colonial ambitions a more threatening rival than France; and Russia's defeat by Japan made Russia less dangerous. German militarism was deeply hateful to English democracy, and Germany's new commercial activity threatened England's trade, while the new navy that the Kaiser was building could be meant only to work England's destruction. Moreover, England and France were daily coming to a better understanding, and in 1903 a sweeping arbitration treaty put any war between them almost out of the question. Soon afterward, England and Russia succeeded in agreeing upon a line in Persia which should separate the "influence" of one power in that country from the " influence" of the other, so removing all immediate prospect of trouble between the two (1910). From this time the Dual Alliance became the Triple Entente The Triple England, France, and Russia. England was not bound by Entente definite treaty to give either country aid in war; but it was plain that France and Russia were her friends, and that she could not look on quietly and see her friends crushed by Germany - which was showing marked hostility to her. 66 liances and peace Mild efforts for world peace Each of the two huge armed leagues always protested that The alits aim was peace. No doubt many men in both - and nearly all in one did shrink from precipitating a conflict between such enormous forces under the new conditions of army organization, quick transportation, and deadly explosives. For half a century (1871-1914), except for the minor struggles in the half-savage Balkans, Europe rested in an "armed peace." But this peace was based upon fear, and it was costly. Year by year, each alliance strove to make its armies and navies mightier than the other's. Huge and huger cannon were invented, only to be cast into the scrap heap for still huger ones. A dreadnaught costing millions was scrapped in a few months by some costlier design. The burden upon the workers and the evil moral influences of such armaments were only less than the burden and evil of war. In every land voices began to cry out that it was all needless: that the world was too Christian and too wise ever again to let itself be desolated by a great war. And then came some interesting efforts to find new machinery by which to guard against war in standing arbitration treaties, permanent international tribunals like the Hague Court, and occasional World Congresses. defeats proposals ment Too soon, however, it was made plain, that, noble as these Germany efforts were, they were insufficient, in the absence of a more organized world opinion and organized world force and of radical measures of disarmament. And at the Hague Congresses in 1899 and in 1907, the earnest proposals for disarmament made by England and the United States failed of result because of the implacable opposition of Germany and Austria. It is significant, too, that Germany repeatedly refused to enter into standing arbitration treaties with the United States, though Army in creases in Europe in 1913 such treaties had been concluded between us and every other important country. The year 1913, after some local wars in the Balkans, saw a new outburst of militarism. Germany adopted a new army bill planning an increase of the army in peace from 650,000 to 870,000, with an immense money appropriation.1 Three weeks later (July 20), France, in terror, raised her term of active service from two years to three, adding fifty per cent to her forces under arms. Austria and Russia adopted plans for similar reorganization of their armies. Even little Belgium, alarmed at the building of German railways to her border-at vast expense and with no apparent purpose except for invasion - adopted universal military service. Each country of course found excuse and incitement to further efforts in the like efforts by its rivals. In particular, German and Austrian papers published frenzied articles on the danger with which their countries were threatened by the proposed enormous increase of Russia's army and by new Russian railways that apparently looked to an invasion of Germany, just as German roads looked to an invasion of Belgium and France. The "balance" of power was a matter of unstable equilibrium. A touch would tip it into universal war. Within a year that war was precipitated by a trivial event in the Balkans. 1 The Socialists in the Reichstag voted against the army bill, but immediately afterward most of them voted for the appropriation. This inconsistency has a partial explanation not wholly to their discredit. The new taxes, for the first time in the history of the Empire, bore heavily upon large incomes and upon the landlords. The Socialists had long advocated this sort of taxation in vain. |