Слике страница
PDF
ePub

F

AN EXPLANATION OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WAR

BY DR. M. R. VESNITCH

SERBIAN MINISTER TO FRANCE AND HEAD OF THE SERBIAN WAR MISSION TO THE UNITED STATES

ROM the very day it broke out the war has been a struggle between two tendencies: one, the spirit of conquest and autocracy; the other, the spirit of liberty and justice. It could not be otherwise. Such conflicts have taken place since the downfall of Rome.

If civilization and progress are not to become vain and meaningless, this war must be brought to a definite victory. With out such a victory the world in its evolution will be turned backward for centuries to come.

As it is a struggle between principles, it is also a struggle between races that personify these principles, and these races have been in opposition for twenty centuries. In the first years of the Christian era, Strabo, in his geography which he wrote at that time, defined the two races with which he was acquainted, the Germans and the Gallic Celts. The Germans, he tells us, fight for booty, the Gallic Celts for honor. In speaking of the latter, he adds that their frank and generous character makes them feel any injury done to their neighbors as if it were done to themselves. Since that contrast was drawn between these two principal races of Europe there has been no change in them. The Teutons of to-day have the traits of their ancestors, and the descendants of the Celts have the traits that Strabo found in the Celts of his time. More than that, the Celts have imbued with their splendid qualities all the peoples with whom they have physiologically mixed, and have thus created undoubtedly the most gallant race in the history of mankind. It is well known that the Celts have mixed with Slavs, and especially with the Czechs and Jugo-Slavs. Even the name of Bohemia is a Celtic name; and so are, too, many of the geographical names in the Slavic countries, as, for example, the river names Sava, Drava, and Morava. It may perhaps be forgotten that even Belgrade, our Serbian martyred political and moral capital, was founded by the Celts. Look just for a moment at this episode from the Salonika front, reported by a French correspondent:

The French Divisional Staff had been quartered in an ancient Orthodox church whose walls had many holes-on account of the visits of many enemy shells. I was sitting inside with General F- commandant of a division on the Salonika front, and with General G- -. Our fire illumined the bright gilt ikons of St. George, St. Dimitri, and the Risen Christ. St. George was killing the dragon, and in the light of the curling flame it seemed to me that the two generals were of the saintly company, that they were also holy warriors and slayers of dragons and monsters. Through large holes in the roof the rain came down upon our heads.

"To-day," said General F

66

a Serbian soldier came to us and asked the guard to let him into the church. "These are the headquarters of X Division,' replied the guard. But the fellow was so importunate that at last the sentry let him through. Coming in to us with all the adroitness of an old soldier, he saluted and said, 'Slava,' meaning thus to tell us that it was the day of his patron saint. He wanted, he said, to thank the Creator for the capture of Monastir in this his church, the church of his own people; and then he turned round, prayed to God, kissed the ikons, and went away with cheerful soul. There is something striking about these Serbian soldiers; something warlike and yet open-hearted, something flexible and also firm. I could not describe the halo of light upon his brow as he turned from worship and left the church. A pure, ancient, unsubjugated race! I was somehow reminded of our own French peasantry. In the deepest and best sense here meet two of the aristocracies of the world, and they know it and they feel it."

Now consider the history of Europe for the last twenty centuries. It is plain to be seen that in all this time these two races have remained clearly distinct. The Teutons have spent their time and energy in struggling for the political and material subjugation of other peoples as well as their own. Their arms have always been the same-sword and fire. Militarism has been throughout their principal industry. The richest person in Germany, as you know, is the daughter of Krupp, proprietor of the

well-known gun factory. Look at their art and literature. Brute force, in the last analysis, they count as master. Remember Goethe's "Faust," and Goethe is the national German poet par excellence. Schiller, Heine, and others they regard as inspired by foreign ideas. Consider the spiritual leaders of Germany during the past hundred years. They have been cold materialists. Have not Bismarck, Bülow, and Bethmann Hollweg been guided by such men as List, Roscher, and Naumann, on the one hand, and on the other hand by Moltke, Roon, and their kind? And what do these names represent? Brutal military and economic subjugation of other peoples and nations and autocratic domination over them. The part played in the Middle Ages by the Roman Empire of the German nation, which was temporarily checked in 1648, has been resumed since 1871, when the Hohenzollerns definitely assured for themselves the control of German policies and the organizing of the German spirit. But, whether guided by Catholic Hapsburgs or by Protestant Hohenzollerns, the Germans have always been and always will remain the same-typical representatives of racial selfishness, with a tendency to domination. In twenty centuries Christianity has not succeeded in making the short way from their lips to their hearts. You remember the poetry of hate against Great Britain in this war. It falls short, however, of this Satanic appeal, written by a teacher and recited every morning for the past three years in primary schools throughout Germany:

[ocr errors]

"Kill all those who for mercy implore.

Shoot them down like dogs.

Always more enemies!

Such shall be your only prayer

In this hour of revenge!"

Schoolmasters of this kind have formed the officers and the soldiers who make the Germany of to-day. The same men would have under their control the shaping of Mittel-Europa and of the world if the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, together with their Bulgarian and Turkish allies, should succeed in remaining the victors in this tremendous struggle.

Europe and Asia Minor together are not sufficient to satisfy their ambitions. In the first half of the nineteenth century List planned the subjugation of Europe. In his early manhood he had spent some years in America, so his thoughts came to attack you too. In his "System of National Economics" he writes as follows: "Should a Power conceive the plan of stopping America in her development and of imposing upon her an industrial, commercial, and political yoke, that Power should begin with the depopulation of the Atlantic States, and the pushing of the whole increase of population, of capital, and of moral forces toward the interior. It could hope even to occupy by force in due time the principal points of defense on the Atlantic coast. and of the river mouths."

In 1898 the German Admiral Count von Goetzen, the confidant of the Kaiser, said to the American Admiral Dewey :

Approximately in fifteen years my country will begin her great war. We shall be in Paris in two months; but this will be only the first step toward our real object, the overthrow of England. Everything must be done at the precise moment, because we shall be prepared and ready for all, and our enemies will not be. Some months after having accomplished our task in Europe we shall take New York and probably Washington, and we shall keep them for a certain time. We do not intend to take your territory. We rather wish to put your country in her place as regards Germany. From New York and from others of your cities we shall take one or two billion dollars. We shall assume control of the Monroe Doctrine and of your relations to South America. In direct opposition to these tendencies, the Celtic spirit marches always without interruption on the way that leads to liberty and justice. The Gallic Church was the first to give an example in that direction. Wycliffe followed. John Huss was burned in Constance, not so much on account of his religion as

In order to grant this freedom the Celtic nations have resorted to revolution and have executed kings. In the intoxication of that ideal monuments have been destroyed, cities and families ruined. But in all these convulsions we free peoples have wished this same happiness of freedom for other nations. The French colors have spread the spirit of liberty throughout Europe, and even the Napoleonic soldiers were its apostles. With the French-Celtic soldiers only-the great Corsican cap tain was enabled to write his splendid epic poem. Without them he would have been probably only a single magnificent but sterile force, like the lightning flash in the mountain or the hurricane

because of his democratic and national tendencies. The Crusades were preached by Peter the Hermit and inaugurated by a Pope of French origin. Throughout the centuries the French have worked constantly for the liberation of Christians from the Mohammedan yoke, and they have not yet ceased to do it. You recall the part they played in the emancipation of modern Greece. You know the keen interest they have shown on all occasions in the fate of nations, especially small nations, that have had to suffer from tyrant oppression. In all this, mediæval and revolutionary, monarchical and republican, France has always been the same "fighter for the right," so exactly defined by Napoleon III in a passage of his famous address of Febru ary 7, 1859, regarding the young nations on the Danube, and running as follows: "And if I should be asked what interest France has in those distant countries watered by the Danube, I would answer that the interest of France is wherever there is a cause of justice and civilization to be defended.” 1

Instinctively, the Berlin Professor Schiemann, the confidant of the Kaiser, writing in 1913, told a historical and psychological truth: "In order to have war with France, it is sufficient for Germany to let Austria attack Serbia." He would have been quite right if he had said that in order to have war with France it is sufficient to commit any great unjust action against any nation not strong enough to protect itself.

Such are the French. Such, too, are the Anglo-Saxons, in whose veins there is so much Celtic blood. Such also, and for the same reason, are the Slavs. The history of Great Britain and the part played in it by the Scotch and the Welsh may be cited to confirm this statement. The same can be said of the history of Flanders and of Switzerland. Nothing, perhaps, can give such a clear and precise expression as the contrast between the moral and political spirit of the Teuton race and of the Celtic race as their respective conceptions of chivalry. With the Celtic race, knighthood culminates in the protection of the feeble; with the Teutons, in oppression and in the jus prima noctis. With us, moreover, moral standards are the same for great and small, for rich and poor, for nations and individuals. On the other hand, one of the greatest of German philosophers, Hegel, has taught his countrymen that the state is not. bound to follow any moral principles, these having been prescribed for private individuals only. Treitschke, on his part, does not recognize any society of nations. For him there is the state alone, and its interests come before all else; even international treaties cannot place absolute limitation on the state's power. In defending falsehood and even bribery in the diplo matic dealings of one state with another he cynically concludes: "It is absurd to bluster about morality in the face of such circumstances, or to expect a state to confront them with a catechism in its hand." 2

What wonder that this teaching has turned the German mind against liberty-loving and righteousness-loving men! The profound sentiments of such men Sir Edward Grey expressed when he declared emphatically one day in the House of Commons: “I should prefer to perish or to desert from Europe or to desert from Europe than to live under the new régime of domination that Germany intends to establish." If Germany should win this war, this régime would be that of the famous Faustrecht toward the weaker which characterizes the German sense of right; and against the danger of such a régime all free nations must fight

to the last man.

The nations of Celtic origin have quite another conception of right and of human dignity. We free peoples all believe that life would not be worth living without freedom. For the cause of freedom we have all fought against Turks and Spaniards, against Germans and Romans. To our way of thinking, our countries must be strongholds of freedom. This love, this adoration, for one's own free country was the same with Vercingetorix and Cromwell, with Rouget de Lisle and with Byron, with Obilitch, Ziska, and Kosciusko, with the Maid of Orleans and with Miss Cavell, with Lafayette, with Danton, Gambetta, and Joffre, and last, but not the least, with Washington and Lincoln.

Et si l'on me demandait, quel intérêt la France avait dans ces contrées lontaines qu'arrose le Danube, je répondrais que l'intérêt de la France est partout où il y a une cause juste et civilisatrice à faire prévaloir.

2 Treitschke's "Lectures on Politics, Vol. I. p. 107. (Quoted in "Out of Their Own Mouths," p. 44; also in "Selections from Treitschke's Lectures on Politics, p. 37.)

on the sea.

66

Germans have almost never fought for freedom. They have never brought freedom to other nations. To no other country have they brought a political ideal, because they have never had it themselves. When Goethe and Schiller tried to imbue their countrymen with an ideal of this kind they were obliged to seek their inspiration in Jeanne d'Arc of France, William Tell of Switzerland, Egmont of Flanders! For that reason the rule of the Germans has been detested everywhere. Remember the mar tyrdom of the Polish children and of the inhabitants of Alsace. You surely have not forgotten the lesson of Silvio Pellico's book "Le mie prigioni " (My Prisons). The sufferings of that Italian patriot could hardly be compared to the present martyrdom of the Jugo-Slavs as lately told in that profanation of the very idea of a parliament, the Austrian Assembly. Contrary to the German conception of a Polizeistaat, we (and when I say we" I wish you to understand I mean my kinsmen. all Slavs) have endeavored to establish a political organization of freedom and justice. I go further, and assure you that we have always had it. Louis XIV (le Roi Soleil) pretended to incarnate in his person his country and his government, but he was less autocratic than the lowest Polizeipräfekt of to-day in Germany and Austria-Hungary. Had not every Frenchman the right to go through the palace of Versailles, to see what his King and Queen ate, how they dressed, where and how they slept? Surely, none of us had to extort freedom from a national tyrant, because we were all born free. When that Angevin King of England granted the charter to his barons in 1215, he did nothing more than to agree to respect existing laws, just as the French Kings did in their Parliament, and as the Serbian Kings had done ever since the twelfth century. The Celtic ceremonies of the Druids, as described in Cæsar's Commentaries (VI, 13) were found in almost identical form in France, England, Bohe mia, Serbia, and among the Slovenes. In order to write the "Contrat Social "it was enough for J. J. Rousseau to be of Celtic or Gallic origin. If he had previously studied the Slavonic concep tions of social and political organization, when the Poles asked him for counsel as to their Constitution he would have been able to contribute to social science a more constructive plan based on age-long experience. He might have familiarized himself with that Carinthian ducal ceremony which his Celtic predecessor J. Bodin described as "not having a rival in the world." And if Blackstone had understood the Serb, he might have learned, too, that in my country we have had the jury system in as liberal a form, if not more so in certain respects, as it has been in England from the early part of the twelfth century.

All this has taken place because we freemen place our liberty and the right of common justice above all else in the world. What wonder that we owe to nations of Celtic culture almost all of what we call public law.

Let me dwell for a moment on this subject. It is necessary to do so, in my opinion, because the world cataclysm is due to the absence of a true understanding of public law on the part of our enemies. Among truly civilized nations, those with Celtic conceptions, public law is based on judicial and moral principles. In this matter Great Britain is the father of political liberty. the United States of America is the cradle of political equality. and France—to her we owe the principle of fraternity. These three countries have worked through the centuries for the crea tion and consolidation of right and freedom. As I have state before, the Slavs have marched in these same paths. We claim for ourselves the privilege of being the most tolerant of nations in religious matters, though we are separated from you by Germany, and through our separation often hindered. We have all worked in the same spirit on behalf of international law. Let

[merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

THEODORE ROOSEVELT HIMSELF AGAIN-IN FULL VIGOR AFTER HIS RECENT ILLNESS

The photograph shows Mr. Roosevelt speaking to a delegation of Liberty Loan workers who visited him at his home, Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He said in part: "Do the thing that is next. At this moment the thing that is next is to raise the money for the Liberty Loan. This is the people's war. Let us make the people themselves the owners of the debt incurred for the sake of the people. Every man, big or little, has the chance to subscribe. . . . The security is the best in the world, for it will be good as long as the Nation endures, and if the Nation breaks we shall all of us be broken, and nothing will make any difference to any of us." Mr. Roosevelt's picture was taken while he was making a characteristically forcible gesture to emphasize his words

[graphic]

1

(c) INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE

AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN FRANCE GETTING THEIR ARTILLERY TO THE FRONT
The artillerymen are shown while engaged in placing a gun on a flat car for transportation to a position at the front in one of the most important sectors

[graphic][subsumed]

REPELLING THE GERMAN INVADERS BY A GAS ATTACK

The terrors of modern warfare are realistically exhibited in this photograph, taken from an airplane, of a great gas offensive by the Allies. The volumes of noxiet gas, blown by a favoring wind, spread their deadly fumes over the German trenches and will be followed later by an onslaught by the Allied infantry

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]
« ПретходнаНастави »