At the close of the nineteenth century and the opening of the twentieth, several efforts were made, both in Europe and America, towards the prevention of future wars, by substituting legal methods for brute force in the settlement of international disputes. It is worth while to recall the preliminary steps that some high-minded rulers took in this direction. Tsar Nicholas invited foreign governments to the first of those peace conferences which met at the Hague. Successive presidents of the United States, for their part, strove to obtain an immediate practical result by means of treaties concluded with various nations. The object of these treaties was to submit to a court of arbitration any disputes that might arise among the signatories. The two Hague Conferences failed, indeed, to realize the ideal aims which their promoters had in view. They were unable to establish compulsory arbitration. On the other hand, they organized procedure, and set up machinery, such as the permanent court of arbitration, to facilitate the peaceful settlement of disputes. They succeeded, to some extent, in regulating the employment and checking the abuse of certain weapons and methods of warfare, and in drawing up a sort of legal code for belligerents. The international Hague Conventions have justly been called a charter of rights for the nations in war time. Unfortunately, the observance of these rules cannot be enforced by any court of justice, and depends entirely upon the honesty or good will of the Powers that have accepted them.

Apart from all this State action, several valiant efforts were made by private individuals, inspired with the noblest ideals. Politicians who had grown gray in the public service, such as M. Beernaert, a Belgian Minister of State, devoted all their remaining vigour of body and mind to the task of spreading the influence of peace conferences and leagues, by making them more numerous. In meetings at which many eloquent speeches were delivered they tried to discover means of superseding the ultima ratio of a resort to arms by the permanent use of arbitral tribunals. Baron D’Estournelles de Constant and Lord Weardale—to mention only the most energetic apostles of their creed—preached with unflagging zeal the gospel of pacifism, which, by smoothing over international differences, was to lead mankind towards the Golden Age of universal peace.

In all countries except Germany, the Socialists, Collectivists, Labour Party, or whatever they might style themselves, could not stand aloof from a movement which aimed at the abolition of war. The pacifist movement, though indeed striving towards a different goal, was quite in harmony with the teachings of Socialists, and would have helped them to secure one of the main planks in their platform—that is, to remove national barriers and frontiers by creating an international solidarity among the workers, in place of the old particularist notions of country and fatherland behind which the capitalists and the middle classes remain entrenched. Inspired by pacifist ideas, some of the leaders of French Socialism, notably JaurÈs, even made overtures to the Social Democrats of Germany, with a view to bringing about an understanding between the two countries. Two congresses, held at Berne in 1912 and 1913 respectively, were attended by a large number of French parliamentary deputies; but the group of delegates from the Reichstag, Socialists for the most part, was insignificant. Their good intentions were frustrated by the problem of Alsace-Lorraine, which barred all further progress. Neither side could find a means of removing this obstacle without wounding the sensitive patriotism of the two nations.

The thunder of the guns in the Balkan War, while revealing to pacifists the grim realities of the battlefield, did not awake them from their dreams. On the contrary, the pacifists persisted all the more in their illusions. After all, they urged, this war was not a European conflict, but an episode in the eternal Eastern question. Throughout the crisis, the Great Powers, by the conferences of their ambassadors and the utterances of their statesmen, had shown their earnest desire for peace. The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente, those two good-natured giants, both showed the same conciliatory disposition. The balance of power between these two groups compelled them, even had they wished otherwise, to maintain a pacific attitude, while the Balkan conflagration, being thus localized, was dying out at their feet. After so searching a test, the prospect for the future seemed bright indeed.

Life in the clouds of pacifism was not conducive to the realization of the ever-growing danger. It was enough to live in Berlin, amid such circles as were in touch with the Imperial Government and the foreign embassies. The heart of the German capital was indeed the meeting-place for the principal wires of world-politics. During the last few years, the air that one breathed there was strangely oppressive; the ground quaked beneath one’s feet, as in the neighbourhood of a volcanic eruption. One never ceased gazing anxiously at the horizon, now towards the Vosges, now towards the Balkans, wherever the storm-clouds, charged with electricity, were gathering at the moment. A gust of fresh wind would scatter these clouds, but they would gather again after the briefest interval. As one felt only too clearly, the peace was so fragile that the slightest incident might serve to break it. Should Greece and Turkey wrangle over the possession of a few barren rocks in the Ægean, should a Zeppelin once more come to earth in some town of Lorraine, or should a party of Teuton tourists be again molested by some discourteous French students, the artificial security that reigned in Central Europe would be at an end.

These recurring attacks of fever were bound to result in a fatal crisis. War has at last broken out, sooner than the most gloomy pessimists anticipated, and in a more terrible form than they dared to imagine—a war that has set three-fourths of Europe ablaze, and has spread like wildfire to other continents and other seas. What was the immediate cause of this general outbreak? “A political murder of unexampled brutality, and the need for severely punishing a little nation of conspirators,” say the two Germanic empires with one voice. “Mere pretexts,” is the convincing reply of the Entente Powers. The origins of the war, of course, go much further back, and the causes lie deeper and are less obvious to the eye. The German intellectuals, now that they have cast aside their official servility and are discoursing freely on the lot that awaits their nation, have the honesty to admit as much themselves.

In the present work I have endeavoured, as others have done before me, to trace these causes and to assign the responsibility for the disastrous events that we are witnessing. My conclusions are based mainly on the personal observations that I made during a stay of two years in Berlin immediately before the war. At the same time, I have attempted to sketch the psychology of the principal German actors in the tragedy of 1914. I can sincerely say that I have taken every care to remain strictly impartial, to render to CÆsar the things that are CÆsar’s, and to make due allowance for the policy imposed upon Germany during the last fifteen years, and for external events that have had their influence since the beginning of the century.

Moreover, these pages, which have been written during the melancholy leisure forced upon me by the calamities of Belgium, have a further object in view. I have desired to do a service to my beloved country, the first victim—and an innocent victim—of a ruthless design. I have desired to contribute something towards requiting her for those monstrous charges with which her torturers have sought to belittle her stainless loyalty and to tarnish her unparalleled heroism.

May my labours bring some small light to those who search for truth! May they furnish a document of some service to future writers, to those who, with an authority that the passage of time alone can give, will describe a period of the world’s history which Christian civilization will some day shudder to recall!

GERMANY BEFORE THE WAR.