Hilfen nur Soldaten." ("Against democrats The only help is soldiers.") Prussian palace proverb dating from the 1848 uprisings. LAWYERS are accustomed to speak of the ultimate or fundamental, as opposed to the proximate Ultimate versus proximate causes or immediate causes of an event. In nontechnical language, we speak of the occasion as opposed to the deeper and generally less evident cause. This cause, often hidden or only obscurely revealed in the background, is far more difficult to outline, but it is correspondingly more vital and important. It is often best described as a characteristic or tendency, an unsatisfied longing or ambition which at last becomes overmastering and rushes to a climax. I shall not make pretense of adopting a quasi-judicial attitude and of trying a case which has already been adjudicated in the supreme court of civilization to the entire satisfaction of all save the culprits in the tragedy; but I shall attempt rather to show by a recital of significant facts and events in their sequential relationship how the world tragedy which culminated in the assault of 1914 was as inevitable as the rising of the sun, and as evident to the unbiased and thoughtful observer as the result in a problem of mathematics. Several nations of the first rank have appeared upon the world's stage in this supreme drama, but the principals have been unquestionably Germany and England, with whom have been aligned respectively the forces of autocracy and democracy; for, despite its monarchical trappings, England is as genuinely democratic a nation as is the United States itself. Germany, on the other hand, has appeared in the disguise of a constitutional government, though it has been more absolute than any government, save only the Turkey of Abdul Hamid and, doubtfully, the Russia of Nicholas II. Germany and England Growth of Prussian territory I shall assume, what will later be shown and what is universally accepted to-day, that this war was "made in Germany" during something more than a generation, and I shall lay bare the mainsprings of Prussian policy as I unfold in outline the growth of the Prussianized Germany of to-day from the diminutive margrave of Brandenburg of the latter part of the fifteenth century. This insignificant province surrounding the site of Berlin possessed a barren soil and a warlike people. Under Y the Great Elector of Brandenburg, Further Pomerania and Magdeburg were acquired by conquest, and under Frederick William II., who sold the royal jewels and the family plate to secure an invincible military machine, old Hither Pomerania as well; so that by 1718 Prussian territory had been more than trebled. Frederick the Base It was Before the end of the century, another conqueror came to the throne, and this time a military genius in the person of Frederick the Great, who ruthlessly wrested Silesia from Austria and began the shameful partition of Poland. this disciple of Machiavelli who said, "I first of all take, I always find pedants to prove my rights," and again in a speech from the throne, "All written constitutions are only scraps of paper.' Frederick has been misnamed "the Great" but should be known as "Frederick the Base," for there is nothing uplifting or ennobling to be recorded of him. We in the United States have done well to remove to a well-merited place of concealment his statue, which was presented by Kaiser Wilhelm and set up at the War College in Washington. When Frederick died in 1786, his country's territory had been doubled by conquest during his lifetime. Under his successor, Frederick William III., the rape of Poland was continued, the Rhine Province was gathered in, and under Frederick William IV., Hohenzollern and the Jahde District. German dreamers In the manner described, the Prussian race of Slavic strain had between 1477 and 1864 appropriated, one after the other, various provinces, many of which were inhabited by people of Germanic race. These Germans and others, of world empire living in what is now South Germany, had already at various times in the past been loosely held together for longer or shorter periods by strong military leaders, and notably during the existence of the so-called Holy Roman Empire, aptly characterized as "neither holy, Roman, nor an empire." It has been peculiar to this German race to develop dreamers of world empire. Such were Genseric, King of the Vandals, and Theodoric the Great in the fifth century of our era, Charlemagne in the eighth century, and three Holy Roman emperors, Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II. in the twelfth century, and Charles V. in the sixteenth century. Frederick the Great of Prussia and William I. and William II. of Prussianized Germany appear therefore as merely extending to greater lengths the long procession of German wouldbe world conquerors. The modern period of Prussian conquest followed hard upon the great awakening of democratic spirit Bismarck and the German struggle for liberty which culminated in the insurrections in Europe in 1848; and had it not been for the genius and the iron will of Bismarck, I who had seized the reins of power in Germany (1), it is possible that that nation might have achieved its liberties. It was the Iron Chancellor who screwed up the courage of the Prussian King, William I., who returning from his refuge in England was timorously watching the parliamentary activities of his subjects and letting "I dare not wait upon I would." It was in this mood that his Mephistopheles came to him in the person of the "man of blood and iron" and reasoned with him. Says Bismarck in his memoirs: "I succeeded in con 'Initial figures within parentheses refer to numbered references at ends of chapters, |