Map--The Balkan Peninsula in 1914
Map—The Balkan Peninsula in 1914
THE
NEW MAP OF EUROPE
(1911-1914)
THE STORY OF THE RECENT EUROPEAN
DIPLOMATIC CRISES AND WARS AND OF
EUROPE'S PRESENT CATASTROPHE
BY
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS, PH.D.
AUTHOR OF "THE FOUNDATION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE",
"PARIS REBORN," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
THE CENTURY CO.
Published, November, 1914
Second Edition, March, 1915
Third Edition, August, 1915
Fourth Edition, December, 1915
To
MY CHILDREN
CHRISTINE ESTE of Adana,
LLOYD IRVING of Constantinople,
and
EMILY ELIZABETH of Paris.
Born in the midst of the wars and changes that this book describes,
may they lead lives of peace!
There are general causes, moral or physical, which act in each State, elevate it, maintain it, or cast it down; every accident is submitted to these causes, and if the fortune of a battle, that is to say a particular cause, has ruined a State, there was a general cause which brought it about that that State had to perish by a single battle.
MONTESQUIEU.
CONTENTS
I. Germany in Alsace and Lorraine
II. The "Weltpolitik" of Germany
III. The "Bagdadbahn"
IV. Algeciras and Agadir
V. The Passing of Persia
VI. The Partitioners and their Poles
VII. Italia Irredenta
VIII. The Danube and the Dardanelles
XIX. Austria-Hungary and her South Slavs
X. Racial Rivalries in Macedonia
XI. The Young Turk RÉgime in the Ottoman Empire
XII. Crete and European Diplomacy
XIII. The War between Italy and Turkey
XIV. The War between the Balkan States and Turkey
XV. The Rupture between the Allies
XVI. The War between the Balkan Allies
XVII. The Treaty of Bukarest
XVIII. The Albanian Fiasco
XIX. The Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Servia
XX. Germany Forces War upon Russia and France
XXI. Great Britain Enters the War
Index
MAPS
I. The Balkan Peninsula according to the Treaties of San Stefano, Berlin, Lausanne, and Bukarest
II. Partitions of Poland
III. Europe in 1911
IV. Europe in Africa in 1914
V. Belgium and the Franco-German Frontier
VI. Europe in 1914
FOREWORD
On a July day in 1908, two American students, who had chosen to spend the first days of their honeymoon in digging the musty pamphleteers of the Ligue out of the Bodleian Library, were walking along the High Street in Oxford, when their attention was arrested by the cry of a newsboy. An ha'penny invested in a London newspaper gave them the news that Niazi bey had taken to the Macedonian highlands, and that a revolution was threatening to overthrow the absolutist rÉgime of Abdul Hamid. The sixteenth century was forgotten in the absorbing and compelling interest of the twentieth.
Two weeks later the students were entering the harbour of Smyrna on a French steamer which was bringing back to constitutional Turkey the Young Turk exiles, including Prince Sabaheddine effendi of the Royal Ottoman House. From that day to this, the path of the two Americans, whose knowledge of history heretofore had been gained only in libraries, has led them through massacres in Asia Minor and Syria, and through mobilizations and wars in Constantinople, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Greece, and Albania, back westward to Austria-Hungary, Italy, and France, following the trail of blood and fire from its origin in the Eastern question to the great European conflagration.
On the forty-fourth anniversary of Sedan, when German aËroplanes were flying over Paris, and the distant thunder of cannon near Meaux could be heard, this book was begun in the BibliothÈque Nationale by one of the students, while the other yielded to the more pressing call of Red Cross work. It is hoped that there is nothing that will offend in what is written here. At this time of tension, of racial rivalry, of mutual recrimination, the writer does not expect that his judgments will pass without protest and criticism. But he claims for them the lack of bias which, under the circumstances, only an American—of this generation at least—dare impute to himself.
The changes that are bringing about a new map of Europe have come within the intimate personal experience of the writer.
If foot-notes are rare, it is because sources are so numerous and so accessible. Much is what the writer saw himself, or heard from actors in the great tragedy, when events were fresh in their memory. The books of the colours, published by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the countries interested, have been consulted for the negotiations of diplomats. From day to day through these years, material has been gathered from newspapers, especially the Paris Temps, the London Times, the Vienna Freie Press, the Constantinople Orient, and other journals of the Ottoman capital. The writer has used his own correspondence to the New York Herald, the New York Independent, and the Philadelphia Telegraph. For accuracy of dates, indebtedness is acknowledged to the admirable British Annual Register.
I am indebted to my friends, Alexander Souter, Litt.D., Professor of Humanity in Aberdeen University, and Mrs. Souter, for reading the proofs of this book and seeing it through the press in England. In the United States, the same kind office has been performed by my brother, Henry Johns Gibbons, Esq., of Philadelphia.
As this book goes to press for the third American edition, I wish to express my thanks to readers in Great Britain, America, France, Germany, and Australia for suggestions and corrections, and in particular to Baron Shaw of Dunfermline, to whom I owe the idea of the map that has been added to face the title-page.
PARIS, July, 1915.
THE
NEW MAP OF EUROPE
The New Map of Europe
CHAPTER I
GERMANY IN ALSACE AND LORRAINE
The war of 1870 added to the German Confederation Alsace and a large portion of Lorraine, both of which the Germans had always considered theirs historically and by the blood of the inhabitants. In annexing Alsace and Lorraine, the thought of Bismarck and von Moltke was not only to bring back into the German Confederation territories which had formerly been a part of it, but also to secure the newly formed Germany against the possibility of French invasion in the future. For this it was necessary to have undisputed possession of the valley of the Rhine and the crests of the Vosges.
From the academic and military point of view, the German thesis was not indefensible. But those who imposed upon a conquered people the Treaty of Frankfort forgot to take into account the sentiments of the population of the annexed territory. Germany annexed land. That was possible by the right of the strongest. She tried for over forty years to annex the population, but never succeeded. The makers of modern Germany were not alarmed at the persistent refusal of the Alsatians to become loyal German subjects. They knew that this would take time. They looked forward to the dying out of the party of protest when the next generation grew up,—a generation educated in German schools and formed in the German mould by the discipline of military service.
That there was still an Alsace-Lorraine "question" after forty years is a sad commentary either on the justice of the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany or on the ability of Germany to assimilate that territory which she felt was historically, geographically, and racially a part of the Teutonic Empire. In 1887, when "protesting deputies" were returned to the Reichstag in overwhelming numbers, despite the governmental weapons of intimidation, disenfranchisement, and North German immigration, Bismarck was face to face with the one great failure of his career. He consoled himself with the firm belief that all would be changed when the second generation, which knew nothing of France and to which the war was only a memory, peopled the unhappy provinces.
But that second generation came. Those who participated in the war of 1870, or who suffered by it, were few and far between. The hotheads and extreme francophiles left the country long ago, and their place was taken by immigrants who were supposed to be loyal sons of the Vaterland. Those of the younger indigenous brood, whose parents had brought them up as irreconcilables, ran away to serve in the French foreign legion, or went into exile, and became naturalized Frenchmen before their time of military service arrived. And yet the unrest continued. Strasbourg, Metz, Mulhouse, and Colmar were centres of political agitation, which an autocratic government and Berlin police methods were powerless to suppress.
The year 1910 marked the beginning of a new period of violent protest against Prussian rule. Not since 1888 was there such a continuous agitation and such a continuous persecution. The days when the Prussian police forbade the use of the French language on tombstones were revived, and the number of petty police persecutions recorded in the local press was equalled only by the number of public demonstrations on the part of the people, whose hatred of everything Prussian once more came to a fever-heat.
Let me cite a few incidents which I have taken haphazard from the journals of Strasbourg and Metz during the first seven months of 1910. The Turnverein of Robertsau held a gymnastic exhibition in which two French societies, those of Belfort and Giromagny, were invited to participate. The police refused to allow the French societies to march to the hall in procession, as was their custom, or to display their flags. Their two presidents were threatened with arrest. A similar incident was reported from Colmar. At Noisseville and Wissembourg the fortieth annual commemoration services held by the French veterans were considered treasonable, and they were informed that they would never again be allowed to hold services in the cemetery. At Mulhouse the French veterans were insulted by the police and not allowed to display their flags even in the room where they held their banquet. At the college of Thann a young boy of twelve, who curiously enough was the son of a notorious German immigrant, whistled the Marseillaise and was locked up in a cell for this offence. The conferring of the cross of the Legion of Honour on AbbÉ Faller, at Mars-la-Tour, created such an outburst of feeling that the German ambassador at Paris was instructed to request the French Government to refrain from decorating Alsatians. A volunteer of Mulhouse was reprimanded and refused advancement in the army because he used his mother-tongue in a private conversation. On July 1st, twenty-one border communes of Lorraine were added to those in which German had been made the official language. On July 25th, for the first time in the history of the University of Strasbourg, a professor was hissed out of his lecture room. He had said that the Prussians could speak better French than the Alsatians. The most serious demonstration which has occurred in Metz since the annexation, took place on Sunday evening, January 8, 1910, when the police broke up forcibly a concert given by a local society. The newspapers of Metz claimed that this was a private gathering, to which individual invitations had been sent, and was neither public nor political. The police invaded the hall, and requested the audience to disband. When the presiding officer refused, he and the leader of the orchestra were arrested. The audience, after a lively tussle, was expelled from the hall. Immediately a demonstration was planned to be held around the statue of General Ney. A large crowd paraded the city, singing the Sambre-et-Meuse and the Marseillaise. When the police found themselves powerless to stop the procession without bloodshed, they were compelled to call out the troops to clear the streets with fixed bayonets.
These incidents demonstrated the fact that French ideals, French culture, and the French language had been kept alive, and were still the inspiration of the unceasing—and successful—protest of nearly two million people against the Prussian domination. The effervescence was undoubtedly as strong in Alsace-Lorraine "forty years after" as it had been on the morrow of the annexation. But its francophile character was not necessarily the expression of desire for reunion with France. The inhabitants of the "lost provinces" had always been, racially and linguistically, as much German as French. Now that the unexpected has happened, and reunion with France seems probable, many Alsatians are claiming that this has been the unfailing goal of their agitation. But it is not true. It would be a lamentable distortion of fact if any such record were to get into a serious history of the period in which we live.
The political ideal of the Alsatians has been self-government. Their agitation has not been for separation from the German Confederation, but for a place in the German Confederation. A great number of the immigrants who were sent to "germanize" Alsace and Lorraine came to side with the indigenous element in their political demands. If the question of France and things French entered into the struggle, and became the heart of it, two reasons for this can be pointed out: France stood for the realization of the ideals of democracy to the descendants of the Strasbourg heroes of 1793; and the endeavour to stamp out the traces of the former nationality of the inhabitants of the provinces was carried on in a manner so typically and so foolishly Prussian that it kept alive the fire instead of extinguishing it. Persecution never fails to defeat its own ends. For human nature is keen to cherish that which is difficult or dangerous to enjoy.
To understand the Alsace-Lorraine question, from the internal German point of view, it is necessary to explain the political status of these provinces after the conquest, and their relationship to the Empire, in order to show that their continued unrest and unhappiness were not due to a ceaseless and stubborn protest against the Treaty of Frankfort.
When the German Empire was constituted, in 1872, it comprehended twenty-five distinct sovereign kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and free cities, and in a subordinate position, the territory ceded by France, which was made a Reichsland, owned in common by the twenty-five confederated sovereignties. The King of Prussia was made Emperor of the Confederation, and given extensive executive powers. Two assemblies were created to legislate for matters affecting the country as a whole. The Bundesrath is an advisory executive body as well as an upper legislative assembly. It is composed of delegates of the sovereigns of the confederated states. The lower imperial house, or Reichstag, is a popular assembly, whose members are returned by general elections throughout the Empire. In their internal affairs the confederated states are autonomous, and have their own local Parliaments. This scheme, fraught with dangers and seemingly unsurmountable difficulties, has survived; and, thanks to the predominance of Prussia and the genius of two great emperors, the seemingly heterogeneous mass has been moulded into a strong and powerful Empire.
In such an Empire, however, there never has been any place for Alsace-Lorraine. The conquered territory was not a national entity. It had no sovereign, and could not enter into the confederacy on an equal footing with the other twenty-five states. The Germans did not dare, at the time, to give the new member a sovereign, nor could they conjointly undertake its assimilation. Prussia, not willing to risk the strengthening of a south German state by the addition of a million and a half to its population, took upon herself what was the logical task of Baden or Wurtemberg or Bavaria.
So Alsace-Lorraine was an anomaly under the scheme of the organization of the German Empire. During forty years the Reichsland was without representation in the Bundesrath, and had thus had no real voice in the management of imperial affairs. By excluding the "reconquered brethren" from representation in the Bundesrath, Germany failed to win the loyalty of her new subjects. Where petty states with a tithe of her population and wealth have helped in shaping the destinies of the nation, the Reichsland had to feel the humiliation of "taxation without representation." It was useless to point out to the Alsatians that they had their vote in the Reichstag. For the Bundesrath is the power in Germany.
Nor did Alsace-Lorraine have real autonomy in internal affairs. The executive power was vested in a Statthalter, appointed by the Emperor, and supported by a foreign bureaucracy and a foreign police force. Before the Constitution of 1911, there was a local Parliament, called the Landesausschuss, which amounted to nothing, as the imperial Parliament had the privilege of initiating and enacting for the Reichsland any law it saw fit. Then, too, the delegates to the Landesausschuss were chosen by such a complicated form of suffrage that they represented the Statthalter rather than the people. And the Statthalter represented the Emperor!
In the first decade after the annexation, Prussian brutality and an unseemly haste to impose military service upon the conquered people led to an emigration of all who could afford to go, or who, even at the expense of material interest, were too high-spirited to allow their children to grow up as Germans. This emigration was welcomed and made easy, just as Austria-Hungary encouraged the emigration of Moslems from Bosnia and Herzegovina. For it enabled Bismarck to introduce a strong Prussian and Westphalian element into the Reichsland by settling immigrants on the vacant properties. But most of these immigrants, instead of prussianizing Alsace, have become Alsatians themselves. Some of the most insistent opponents of the Government, some of the most intractable among the agitators, have been those early immigrants or their children. This is quite natural, when we consider that they have cast their lot definitely with the country, and are just as much interested in its welfare as the indigenous element.
The revival of the agitation against Prussian Government in 1910 was a movement for autonomy on internal affairs, and for representation in the Bundesrath. The Alsatians wanted to be on a footing of constitutional equality with the other German States. One marvels at the Prussian mentality which could not see—either with the Poles or with the Alsatians—that fair play and justice would have solved the problems and put an end to the agitation which has been, during these past few years especially, a menace on the east and west to the existence of the Empire.
Something had to be done in the Reichsland. The anomalous position of almost two million German subjects, fighting for their political rights, and forming a compact mass upon the borders of France, was a question which compelled the interest of German statesmen, not only on account of its international aspect, but also because of the growing German public sentiment for social and political justice. The Reichstag was full of champions of the claims of the Alsatians,—champions who were not personally interested either in Alsace-Lorraine or in the influence of the agitation in the Reichsland upon France, but who looked upon the Alsace-Lorraine question as a wrong to twentieth-century civilization.
On March 14, 1910, Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg announced to the Reichstag that the Government was preparing a constitution for Alsace-Lorraine which would give the autonomy so long and so vigorously demanded. But he had in his mind, not a real solution of the question, but some sort of a compromise, which would satisfy the confederated states, and mollify the agitators of the Reichsland, but at the same time preserve the Prussian domination in Alsace-Lorraine. In June, Herr DelbrÜck, Secretary of State for the Interior, was sent to Strasbourg to confer with the local authorities and representatives of the people concerning the projected constitution. It was during this visit that the Alsatians were disillusioned. A dinner, now famous or notorious, whichever you like, was given by the Statthalter, to which representative (!) members of the Landesausschuss were invited. At this dinner the real leaders of the country, such as WetterlÉ, Preiss, Blumenthal, Weber, Bucher, and Theodor,—the very men who had made the demand for autonomy so insistent that the Government could no longer refuse to entertain it—were conspicuous by their absence. Those bidden to confer with Herr DelbrÜck in no way represented, but were on the other hand hostile to, the wishes of the people.
We cannot go into the involved story of the fight in the Reichstag over the new Constitution. The DelbrÜck project was approved by the Bundesrath on December 16, 1910, and debated in the following spring session of the Reichstag. Despite the warnings of the deputies from the Reichsland, and the brilliant opposition of the Socialists, the Constitution given to Alsace-Lorraine, on May 31st, was a pure farce. In no sense was it what the people of the Reichsland had wanted, although representation in the Bundesrath was seemingly given to them. The new Constitution preserved the united sovereignty of the confederated states, and its delegation to the Emperor, who still had the power to appoint and recall at will the Statthalter, and to initiate legislation in local matters. A Landtag took the place of the Landesausschuss. The Upper Chamber of the Landtag consists of thirty-six members, representing the religious confessions, the University and other bodies, the supreme court of Colmar, and the municipalities and chambers of commerce of Strasbourg, Mulhouse, Metz, and Colmar, to the number of eighteen; and the other eighteen chosen by the Emperor. The Lower Chamber has sixty members, elected by direct universal suffrage, with secret ballot. Electors over thirty-five possess two votes, and over forty-five three votes.
By forcing this Constitution upon Alsace-Lorraine, the interests of Prussia and of the House of Hohenzollern were considered to the detriment of the interests of the German Empire. A glorious opportunity for reconciliation and assimilation was lost. The Emperor would not listen to the admission of Alsace-Lorraine to the Bundesrath in the only logical way, by the creation of a new dynasty or a republican form of government, so that the Alsatian votes would represent a sovereign state. Prussia in her dealings with Alsace-Lorraine, has always been afraid, on the one hand, of the addition of Bundesrath votes to the seventeen of Bavaria, Saxony, Baden, and Wurtemberg, and on the other hand, of the repercussion upon her internal suffrage and other problems with the Socialists.
Since 1911, the eyes of many Alsatians have been directed once more towards France as the only—if forlorn—hope of justice and peace. What words could be found strong enough to condemn the suicidal folly of the German statesmen who allowed the disappointment over the Constitution to be followed by a series of incidents which have been like rubbing salt into a raw wound?
The first Landtag, in conformity to the Constitution of 1911, was elected in October. It brought into life a new political party, called "The National Union," led by Blumenthal, WetterlÉ, and Preiss, who united for the purpose of demanding what the Constitution had not given them—the autonomy of Alsace and Lorraine. This party was badly beaten in this first election. But its defeat was not really a defeat for the principles of autonomy, as the German press stated at the time. The membership of the new Landtag was composed, in majority, of men who had been supporters of the demand for autonomy, but who had not joined the new party for reasons of local politics. Herr DelbrÜck had given universal suffrage (a privilege the Prussian electorate had never been able to gain in spite of its reiterated demands) to the Reichsland in the hope that the Socialists would prevent the Nationalists from controlling the Alsatian Landtag. Many Socialists, however, during the elections at Colmar and elsewhere, did not hesitate to cry in French, "Vive la France! A bas la Prusse!"
The Prussian expectations were bitterly deceived. The Landtag promptly showed that it was merely the Landesausschuss under another name. The nationalist struggle was revived; the same old questions came up again. The Government's appropriation "for purposes of state" was reduced one-third, and it was provided that the Landtag receive communication of the purposes for which the money was spent. The Statthalter's expenses were cut in half, and a bill, which had always been approved in previous years, providing for the payment of the expense of the Emperor's hunting trips in the Reichsland, failed to pass.
In the spring of 1912, the Prussians showed their disapproval of the actions of the new Landtag by withdrawing the orders for locomotives for the Prussian railways from the old Alsatian factory of Grafenstaden near Strasbourg. This was done absolutely without any provocation, and aroused a violent denunciation, not only among the purely German employÉs of the factory and in the newspapers, but also in the Landtag, which adopted an order of the day condemning most severely the attitude of the Imperial Government towards Alsace-Lorraine, of which this boycott measure was a petty and mean illustration.
The indignation was at its height when Emperor Wilhelm arrived in Strasbourg on May 13th. Instead of acting in a tactful manner and promising to set right this wrong done to the industrial life of Strasbourg, the Emperor addressed the following words to the Mayor:
"Listen. Up to here you have known only the good side of me; it is possible that you will learn the other side of me. Things cannot continue as they are: if this situation lasts, we shall suppress your Constitution and annex you to Prussia."
This typically Prussian speech, which in a few lines reveals the hopelessly unsuccessful tactics of the German Government towards the peoples whom it has tried to assimilate the world over, only served to increase the indignation of the inhabitants of the Reichsland; in fact, the repercussion throughout all Germany was very serious.
The arbitrary threat of the Emperor was badly received in the other federated states, whose newspapers pointed out that he had exceeded his authority. It gave the Socialists an opportunity to attack Emperor Wilhelm on the floor of the Reichstag. Four days after this threat was made, an orator of the Socialist party declared
"We salute the imperial words as the confession, full of weight and coming from a competent source, that annexation to Prussia is the heaviest punishment that one can threaten to impose upon a people for its resistance against Germany. It is a punishment like hard labour in the penitentiary with loss of civil rights."
This speech caused the Chancellor to leave the room with all the Ministry. On May 22d, the attack upon Emperor Wilhelm for his words at Strasbourg was renewed by another deputy, who declared that if such a thing had happened in England, "the English would shut up such a King at Balmoral or find for him some peaceful castle, such as that of Stemberg or the Villa Allatini at Salonika."
The answer of the Landtag to Emperor Wilhelm's threat was the passing of two unanimous votes: one demanding that hereafter the Constitution could not be modified except by the law of the country and not by the law of the Empire, and the other demanding for Alsace-Lorraine a national flag.
One could easily fill many pages with illustrations of senseless persecutions, most of them of the pettiest character, but some more serious in nature, which Alsace and Lorraine have had to endure since the granting of the Constitution. Newspapers, illustrated journals, clubs and organizations of all kinds have been annoyed constantly by police interference. Their editors, artists, and managers have been brought frequently into court. Zislin and Hansi, celebrated caricaturists, have found themselves provoked to bolder and bolder defiances by successive condemnations, and have endured imprisonment as well as fines. Hansi was sentenced to a year's imprisonment by the High Court of Leipsic only a month before the present war broke out, and chose exile rather than a Prussian fortress.
The greatest effort during the past few years has been made in the schools to influence the minds of the growing generation against the "souvenir de France" and to impress upon the Alsatians what good fortune had come to them to be born German citizens.
Among the boys, the influence of this teaching has been such that over twenty-two thousand fled from home during the period of 1900-1913 to enlist in the Foreign Legion of the French Army. The campaign of the German newspapers in Alsace-Lorraine, and, in fact, throughout Germany, was redoubled in 1911. Parents were warned of the horrible treatment accorded to the poor boys who were misguided enough to throw away their citizenship, and go to be killed in Africa under the French flag. The result of this campaign was that the Foreign Legion received a larger number of Alsatians in 1912 than had enlisted during a single year since 1871!
Among the girls, the German educational system flattered itself that it could completely change the sentiments of a child, especially in the boarding-schools. Last year the Empress of Germany visited a girls' school near Metz, which is one of the best German schools in the Reichsland. As she was leaving, she told the children that she wanted to give them something. What did they want? The answer was not sweets or cake, but that they might be taught a little French!
Since 1910, the German war budget has carried successively larger items for the strengthening of forts and the building of barracks in Metz, Colmar, Mulhouse, Strasbourg, Neuf-Brisach, Bischwiller, Wissembourg, Mohrange, Sarrebourg, Sarreguemines, Saarbruck, Thionville, Molsheim, and Saverne. The former French provinces have been flooded with garrisons, and have been treated just as they were treated forty years ago. The insufferable spirit of militarism, and the arrogance of the Prussian officers in Alsatian towns, have served to turn against the Empire many thousands whom another policy might have won. For it must be remembered that by no means all the inhabitants of the Reichsland have been by birth and by home training French sympathizers. Instead of crushing out the "souvenir de France," the Prussian civil and military officials have caused it to be born in many a soul which was by nature German.
The most notorious instance of military arrogance occurred in the autumn of 1913 in Saverne. Lieutenant von Forstner, who was passing in review cases of discipline, had before him a soldier who had stabbed an Alsatian, and had been sentenced to two months' imprisonment. "Two months on account of an Alsatian blackguard!" he cried. "I would have given you ten marks for your trouble." The story spread, and the town, tired of the attitude of its garrison, began in turn to show its contempt for the Kaiser's soldiers. Windows in von Forstner's house were broken. Every time officers or soldiers appeared on the streets they were hooted. Saverne was put under martial law. Threats were made to fire upon the citizens. One day Lieutenant von Forstner struck a lame shoemaker across the forehead with his sword. The affair had gone so far that public sentiment in Germany demanded some action. Instead of adequately punishing von Forstner and other officers, who had so maddened the civil population against them, the German military authorities gave the guilty officers nominal sentences, and withdrew the garrison.
All these events had a tremendous repercussion in France. It is impossible to exaggerate the ill-feeling aroused on both sides of the Rhine, in Germany, in Alsace-Lorraine, and in France by the persecutions in the Reichsland. Only one who knows intimately the French can appreciate their feeling—or share it—over the Zislin and Hansi trials, the Saverne affair, the suppression of the Souvenir FranÇais, the Lorraine Sportive and other organizations, and the campaign against the Foreign Legion. It has given the French soldiers in the present war something to fight for which is as sacred to them as the defence of French soil. The power of this sentiment is indicated by the invasion of Alsace, the battle of Altkirk, and the occupation of Mulhouse at the beginning of August. The French could not be held back from this wild dash. Strategy was powerless in the face of the sentiment of a national army.
The Alsatian leaders themselves have seen the peril to the peace of Europe of the German attitude towards their country. They did not want France drawn into a war for their liberation. They were alarmed over the possibility of this, and desired it to be understood that their agitation had nothing international in it. The attitude of all the anti-Prussian parties may be summed up in the words of Herr Wolff, leader of the Government Liberal party, who declared that "all the inhabitants of the Reichsland had as their political ambition was only the elevation of Alsace-Lorraine to the rank of an independent and federated state, like the other twenty-five component parts of the German Empire." Their sincerity and their desire to preserve peace is proved by the motion presented by the leaders of four of the political groups in the Reichsland, which was voted on May 6, 1912, without discussion, by the Landtag:
"The Chamber invites the Statthalter to instruct the representatives of Alsace-Lorraine in the Bundesrath to use all the force they possess against the idea of a war between Germany and France, and to influence the Bundesrath to examine the ways which might possibly lead to a rapprochement between France and Germany, which rapprochement will furnish the means of putting an end to the race of armaments."
The mismanagement of the Reichsland has done more than prevent the harmonious union of the former French provinces with Germany. It has had an effect, the influence of which cannot be exaggerated, upon nourishing the hopes of revenge of France, and the resentment against the amputation of 1870. On neither side of the Vosges has the wound healed. The same folly which has kept alive a Polish question in eastern Prussia for one hundred and twenty-five years, has not failed to make impossible the prussianizing of Alsace and Lorraine. The Prussian has never understood how to win the confidence of others. There has been no Rome in his political vision. As for conceptions of toleration, of kindness, and of love, they are non-existent in Prussian officialdom. Nietzsche revealed the character of the Prussian in his development of the idea of the Übermensch. The ideal of perfect manhood is the imposition of one will on another will by force. Mercy and pity, according to Nietzsche, were signs of weakness, the symbols of the slave.
Under the circumstances, then, we are compelled after forty-five years to revise our estimate of Bismarck's sagacity. His genius was limited by the narrow horizon of his own age. He did not see that the future Germany needed other things that France could give far more than she needed Alsace and Lorraine. In posterity, Bismarck would have had a greater place had he, in the last minutes of the transactions at Versailles, given back Alsace and Lorraine to France, waived the war indemnity, and asked in return Algeria or other French colonies.
But would it have been different under Germany in the French colonies? A Herrero, employed in the Johannesburg mines, wrote his brother in German South-West Africa: "The country of the English is truly a good country. Even if your superior is present, he doesn't strike you, and if he strikes you and goes thus beyond legal limits, he is punished like anyone else."
CHAPTER II
THE "WELTPOLITIK" OF GERMANY
When the transrhenane provinces of the old German Empire were added to France in the eighteenth century, the assimilation of these territories was a far different proposition from their refusion into the mould of a new German Empire in 1871. In the first place, the old German Empire was a mediÆval institution which, in the evolution of modern Europe, was decaying. Alsace and Lorraine were not taken away from a political organism of which they were a vital part. The ties severed were purely dynastic. In the second place, the consciousness of national life was awakened in Alsace and Lorraine during the time that they were under French rule, and because they shared in the great movement of the birth of democracy following the French Revolution.
France, then, by the Treaty of Frankfort, believed that she had been robbed of a portion of her national territory. The people of the annexed provinces, as was clearly shown by the statement of their representatives at Bordeaux, did not desire to enter the German Confederation.
Germany failed to do the only thing that could possibly have made her new territories an integral part of the new Empire, i.e. to place Alsace-Lorraine upon a footing of equality with the other states of the Confederation, and make their entry that of an autonomous sovereign state. Consequently, neither in France nor in the Reichsland was the Treaty of Frankfort accepted as a permanent change in the map of Europe. Germany has always been compelled, in her international politics, to count upon the possibility of France making an attempt to win back the lost provinces. She has sought to form alliances to strengthen her own position in Europe, and to keep France weak. France, the continued object of German hostility, has found herself compelled to ally herself with Russia, with whom she has never had anything in common, and to compound her colonial rivalries in Africa with her hereditary enemy, Great Britain. This is the first cause of the unrest in Europe that has culminated in a general European war.
The second cause is the Weltpolitik of Germany which has brought the German Empire into conflict with Great Britain and France outside of Europe, and with Russia in Europe.
On the map of Europe, Russia, Great Britain, and France are, in 1914, practically what they were in 1815. The changes, logical and in accordance with the spirit of centralization of the nineteenth century, have transformed middle and south-eastern Europe. The changes in south-eastern Europe have been effected at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, and have been a gradual development throughout the century, from the outbreak of the Greek revolution in 1822 to the Treaty of London in 1913. In middle Europe, during the twelve years between 1859 and 1871, the three Powers whose national unity, racially as well as politically, was already achieved at the time of the Congress of Vienna, were brought face to face with three new Powers, united Germany, united Italy, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
The nineteenth century has been called the age of European colonization. Europe began to follow its commerce with other continents by the imposition of its civilization and its political system upon weaker races. Checked by the rising republic of the United States from encroaching upon the liberties of the peoples of North and South America, there have been no acquisitions of territory by European nations in the western continents since the Congress of Vienna. European expansion directed itself towards Africa, Asia, and the islands of the oceans. There was no Oriental nation strong enough to promulgate a Monroe Doctrine.
In extra-European activities, Great Britain, France, and Russia were the pioneers. That they succeeded during the nineteenth century in placing under their flag the choicest portions of Africa and the backward nations of Asia, was due neither to the superior enterprise and energy, nor to the greater foresight, of the Anglo-Saxon, French, and Russian nations. They had achieved their national unity, and they were geographically in a position to take advantage of the great opportunities which were opening to the world for colonization since the development of the steamship and the telegraph.
But the other three Powers of Europe came late upon the scene. It has only been within the last quarter of a century that Germany and Italy have been in the position to look for overseas possessions. It has only been within the last quarter of a century that Austria, finding her union with Hungary a durable one, has been able to think of looking beyond her limits to play a part, as other nations had long been doing, in the history of the outside world.
By every force of circumstances, the three new States—threatened by their neighbours, who had looked with jealous, though powerless, eyes upon their consolidation—were brought together into a defensive alliance. The Powers of the Triple Alliance drifted into a union of common general aims and ambitions, if not of particular interests, against their three more fortunate rivals, who had been annexing the best portions of the Asiatic and African continents while they were struggling with internal problems.
Oceans of ink have been wasted upon polemics against the peace-disturbing character of the Triple Alliance. Especially has Germany and her growing Weltpolitik been subject to criticism, continuous and untiring, on the part of the British and French press. But the question after all is a very simple one: the three newer Powers of Europe have not been willing to be content with an application in practical world politics of the principle that "to him that hath shall be given." Germany and Italy, transformed under modern economic conditions into industrial states, have been looking for outside markets, and they have wanted to enjoy those markets in regions of the globe either actually under their flag or subjected to their political influence. In other words, they have wanted their share in the division of Africa and Asia into spheres under the control of European nations.
Is a logical and legitimate ambition to play a part in the world's politics in proportion to one's population, one's wealth, one's industrial and maritime activity, necessarily a menace to the world's peace? It has always been, and I suppose always will be, in the nature of those who have, to look with alarm upon the efforts of those who have not, to possess something. Thus capital, irrespective of epoch or nationality or of religion, has raised the cry of alarm when it has seen the tendency for betterment, for education, for the development of ideals and a sense of justice on the part of labour. In just the same way, Russia with her great path across the northern half of Asia and her new and steadily growing empire in the Caucasus and central Asia; France with the greater part of northern and central Africa, and an important corner of Asia under her flag; and Great Britain with her vast territories in every portion of the globe, raised the cry of "Wolf, Wolf!" when the Powers of the Triple Alliance began to look with envious eye upon the rich colonies of their neighbours, and to pick up by clever diplomacy—and brutal force, if you wish—a few crumbs of what was still left for themselves.
The result of these alarming ambitions of the Triple Alliance has been the coming together of Russia, France, and England, hereditary enemies in former days but now friends and allies, in the maintenance of the colonial "trust."
The great cry of the Triple Entente is the maintenance of the European equilibrium. For this they have reason. Europe could know no lasting peace under Teutonic aggression. But is there not also to the account of the Triple Entente some blame for the unrest in Europe and for the great catastrophe which has come upon the world? For while their policy has been the maintenance of the European equilibrium, it has been coupled with the maintenance of an extra-European balance of power wholly in their favour.
The sense of justice, of historical proportion, and the logic of economic evolution make one sympathize, in abstract principle, not only with the Weltpolitik of Germany, but also with Austria-Hungary's desire for an outlet to the sea, and with Italy's longing to have in the Mediterranean the position which history and geography indicated ought to be, and might again be, hers.
But sympathy in abstract principle is quite another thing from sympathy in fact. In order to appreciate the Weltpolitik of Germany, and be able to form an intelligent opinion in regard to it—for it is the most vital and burning problem in the world to-day—we must consider it from the point of view of its full significance in practice in the history of the world.
Bismarck posed as the disinterested "honest courtier" of Europe in the Congress of Berlin. The declaration he had made, that the whole question of the Orient "was not worth the finger bone of a Pomeranian grenadier," was corroborated by his actions during the sessions of the Congress. We have striking illustrations of this in the memoirs of Karatheodory pasha, who recorded from day to day, during the memorable sessions of the Congress, his astonishment at the indifference which Bismarck displayed to the nationalities of the Balkans, and to the complications which might arise in Europe from their rivalries.
Bismarck did not see how vital was to be the Balkan question with the future of the nation he had built. Nor did he see the intimate relationship between the economic progress of united Germany and the question of colonies. One searches in vain the speeches and writings of the Iron Chancellor for any reference to the importance of the two problems, in seeking the solution of which the fabric of his building is threatened with destruction.
Perhaps it is easy for us, in looking backwards, to point out the lack of foresight which was shown by Bismarck in regard to the future of Germany. Forty-five years later, we are able to pass in review the unforeseen developments of international politics and the amazing economic evolution of contemporary Europe. Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that much attention and thought should have been given by the maker of modern Germany to the possible sphere that Germany might be called upon to play in the world outside of Europe.
For we must remember that the new Germany, after the Franco-Prussian War, was wholly in an experimental stage, and that the duty at hand was the immediate consolidation of the various states into a political and economic fabric. There was enough to demand all the attention and all the genius of Bismarck and his co-workers in solving these problems. Cordial relationship with Austria had to be reËstablished. The dynasties of the south German kingdoms and of the lesser potentates, whose names still remained legion in spite of the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803, had to be carefully handled. There were four definite internal problems which confronted Bismarck: the relationship of the empire to the Catholic Church; the reconciliation of the different peoples into a harmonious whole; the establishment of representative government without giving the strong socialistic elements the upper hand; and the development of the economic wealth of Germany.
There was little time to think of Germany's place in the world's politics. In foreign affairs, it was considered that the exigencies of the moment could be met by adopting a policy of conciliation towards both Russia and Austria, and the winning of the friendship of Italy. The Kulturkampf, the creation of the Bundesrath under Prussian hegemony, and the formation of the Triple Alliance and the events connected with them, are important in an analysis of Germany's international politics. Unfortunately we cannot bring them into the scope of this book. We can mention only the various factors that have been directly responsible for giving birth to what is called the Weltpolitik.
These factors are the belief of the German people in the superiority of their race and its world-civilizing mission; their connotation of the word "German"; the consciousness of their military strength being disproportionate to their political influence; the rapid increase of the population and the development of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the empire; and the realization of the necessity of a strong navy, with naval bases and coaling-stations in all parts of the world, for the adequate protection of commerce.
The belief of the German people in the superiority of their race and its world-civilizing mission is a sober fact. It pervades every class of society from the Kaiser down to the workingman. It is heralded from the pulpit, taught in the schools, and is a scientific statement in the work of many of Germany's leading scholars. The anthropologist Woltmann said that "the German is the superior type of the species homo sapiens, from the physical as well as the intellectual point of view." Wirth declared that "the world owes its civilization to Germany alone" and that "the time is near when the earth must inevitably be conquered by the Germans." The scientific book—a serious one—in which these statements occur was so popular that it sold five editions in three years! Paulsen remarked that "humanity is aware of, and admires, the German omnipresence." Hartmann taught that the European family is divided into two races, male and female, of which the first, of course, was exclusively German, while the second included Latins, Celts, and Slavs. "Marriage is inevitable." Goethe expressed in Faust the opinion that the work of the Germans was to make the habitable world worth living in, while Schiller boasted, "Our language shall reign over the whole world," and that "the German day lasts until the end of time." Schiller also prophesied that "two empires shall perish in east and west, I tell you, and it is only the Lutheran faith which shall remain." Fichte, one hundred years ago, exhorted the Germans to be "German patriots, and we shall not cease to be cosmopolitan." Heine believed that "not only Alsace and Lorraine, but all France shall be ours."
To show the German state of mind towards those whom they have not hesitated to provoke to arms, the remarkable teaching of Hummel's book, which is used in the German primary schools, is a convincing illustration. Frenchmen are monkeys, and the best and strongest elements in the French race asserted to be German by blood. The Russians are slaves, as their name implies. Treitschke's opinion of the British is that "among them love of money has killed all sentiment of honour and all distinction of just and unjust. Their setting sun is our aurora." One of the leading newspapers of Germany recently said: "The army of the first line of which Germany will dispose from the first day of the mobilization will be sufficient to crush France, even if we must detach a part of it against England. If England enters the war, it will be the end of the British Empire, for England is a colossus with feet of clay."
The Kaiser has been the spokesman of the nation in heralding publicly the belief in the superiority of the German people, and its world mission. It was at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Empire that the scope of the Weltpolitik was announced by Wilhelm II. He said:
"The German Empire has become a world empire (ein Weltreich). Everywhere, in the most distant lands, are established thousands and thousands of our compatriots. German science, German activity, the defenders of the German ideal pass the ocean. By thousands of millions we count the wealth that Germany transports across the seas. It is your duty, gentlemen, to aid me to establish strong bonds between our Empire of Europe and this greater German Empire (dieses grËssere Deutsche Reich) ... May our German Fatherland become one day so powerful that, as one formerly used to say, Civis romanus sum, one may in the future need only to say, Ich bin ein deutscher Burger."
At Aix-la-Chapelle, on June 20, 1902, he revealed his ambition in one sentence, "It is to the empire of the world that the German genius aspires." Just before leaving for the visit to Tangier in 1905—the visit which was really the beginning of one of the great issues of the present war—he said at Bremen: "If later one must speak in history of a universal domination by the Hohenzollern, of a universal German empire, this domination must not be established by military conquest.... God has called us to civilize the world: we are the missionaries of human progress." This idea was developed further at MÜnster, on September 1, 1907, when the Kaiser proclaimed: "The German people will be the block of granite on which our Lord will be able to elevate and achieve the civilization of the world!"
This attitude of mind is as common among the disciples of those wonderful leaders who founded the international movement for the solidarity of interests of labour, as it is among the aristocratic and intellectual elements of the nation. The German Socialist has proclaimed the brotherhood of man, and the common antagonism of the wage-earners of the world against their capitalistic oppressors. But, for all his preaching, the German Socialist is first of all a German. He has come to believe that the mission of Socialism will be best fulfilled through the triumph of Germanism. This belief is sincere. It is a far cry from Karl Marx to the militant—or rather militarist—German Socialist, bearing arms gladly upon the battlefields of Europe to-day, because he is inspired by the thought that the triumph of the army in which he fights will aid the cause of Socialism.[1]
There is a striking analogy between the German Socialist of the present generation and the Jacobins of 1793. The heralders of LibertÉ, EgalitÉ et FraternitÉ fought for the spread of the principles of the Revolution through God's chosen instruments, the armies of France, and were carried away by their enthusiasm until they became the facile agents for saddling Europe with the tyranny of Napoleon. Love for humanity was turned into blood-lust, and fighting for freedom into seeking for booty and glory. Are the profound thinkers of the German universities, and the visionaries of the workingmen's forums following to-day the same path? Does the propagation of an ideal lead inevitably to a blind fanaticism, where the dreamer becomes in his own imagination a chosen instrument of God to shed blood?
There is undoubtedly an intellectual and idealistic basis to German militarism and to German arrogance.
Their connotation of the word "German" has led the Germans to look upon territories outside of their political confines as historically and racially, hence rightfully, virtually, and eventually theirs. A geography now in its two hundred and forty-fifth edition in the public schools (Daniel's Leitfaden der Geographie) states that "Germany is the heart of Europe. Around it extend Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Holland, which were all formerly part of the same state, and are peopled entirely or in the majority by Germans."
When German children have been for the past generation deliberately taught as a matter of fact—not as an academic or debatable question—that Deutschland ought to be more than it is, we can understand how the neutrality of their smaller neighbours seems to the Germans a negligible consideration. No wonder the soldiers who ran up against an implacable enemy at LiÈge, Namur, and Charleroi thought there must be a mistake somewhere, and were more angered against the opposition of those whom they regarded as their brothers of blood than they later showed themselves against the French. No wonder that the sentiment of the whole German nation is for the retention of Belgium, their path to the sea. It was formerly German. Its inhabitants are German. Let it become German once more!
But to the Germans there are other and equally important elements belonging to their nation outside of the states upon the confines of the empire. These are the German emigrants and German colonists in all portions of the world. In recent years there has come to the front more than ever the theory that German nationality cannot be lost by foreign residence or by transference of allegiance to another State: once a German, always a German.
Convincing proof of this is found in the new citizenship law, sanctioned with practical unanimity by the Reichstag and Bundesrath, which went into effect on January 1, 1914. According to Article XIII of this law, "a former German who has not taken up his residence in Germany may on application be naturalized." This applies also to one who is descended from a former German, or who has been adopted as the child of such! According to Article XIV, any former German who holds a position in the German Empire in any part of the world, in the service of a German religious society or of a German school, is looked upon as a German citizen "by assumption." Any foreigner holding such a position may be naturalized without having a legal residence in Germany. The most interesting provision of all is in Article XXV, section 2 of which says: "Citizenship is not lost by one who before acquiring foreign citizenship has secured on application the written consent of the competent authorities of his home state to retain his citizenship."
Germany allows anyone of German blood to become a German citizen, even if he has never seen Germany and has no intention of taking up his residence there; and Germans, who have emigrated to other countries, secure the amazing opportunity to acquire foreign citizenship without losing their German citizenship.
The result of this law, since the war broke out, has been to place a natural and justifiable suspicion upon all Germans living in the countries of the enemies of Germany. It is impossible to overestimate the peril from the secret ill-will and espionage of Germans residing in the countries that are at war with Germany. There are undoubtedly many thousands of cases where Germans have been honest and sincere in their change of allegiance, but how are the nations where they have become naturalized to be sure of this? A legal means has been given to these naturalized Germans to retain, without the knowledge of the nation where their oath of allegiance has been received in good faith, citizenship in Germany.
German emigration and colonization societies, and many seemingly purely religious organizations for "the propagation of the faith in foreign lands," have been untiring in their efforts to preserve in the minds of Germans who have left the Fatherland the principle, "once a German always a German." The Catholic as well as the Lutheran Church has lent itself to this effort. Wherever there are Germans, one finds the German church, the German school, the Zeitung, the Bierhalle, and the Turnverein. The Deutschtum is sacred to the Germans. One cannot but have the deepest respect for the pride of Germans in their ancestry, in their language, in their church, and in the preservation of traditional customs. There is no better blood in the world than German blood, and one who has it in his veins may well be proud of it: for it is an inheritance which is distinctly to a man's intellectual and physical advantage. But, in recent years, the effort has been made to confuse Deutschtum with Deutschland. Here lies a great danger. We may admire and reverence all that has come to us from Germany. But the world cannot look on impassively at a propaganda which is leading to Deutschland Über alles!
When we take the megalomania of the Germans, their ambition to fulfil their world mission, their belief in their peculiar fitness to fulfil that mission, and their idea of the German character of the neighbouring states, and contrast the dream with the reality, we see how they must feel, especially as they are conscious of the fact that they dispose of a military strength disproportionate to their position in mondial politics. Great Britain, with one-third less population, "the colossus with the feet of clay," owns a good fourth of the whole world; France, the nation of "monkeys," which was easily crushed in 1870, holds sway over untold millions of acres and natives in Africa and Asia; while Russia, the nation of "slaves," has a half of Europe and Asia.
The most civilized people in the world, with a world mission to fulfil, is dispossessed by its rivals of inferior races and of inferior military strength! The thinking German is by the very nature of things a militarist.
But even if the logic of the Weltpolitik, under the force of circumstances, did not push the German of every class and category to the belief that Germany must solve her great problems of the present day by force of arms, especially since her military strength is so much greater than that of her rivals, the nature of the German would make him lean towards force as the decisive argument in the question of extending his influence. For from the beginning of history the German has been a war man. He has asserted himself by force. He has proved less amenable to the refining and softening influences of Christianity and civilization than any other European race. He has worshipped force, and relied wholly upon force to dominate those with whom he has come into contact. The leopard cannot change his spots. So it is as natural for the German of the twentieth century to use the sword as an argument as it was for the German of the tenth century, or, indeed, of the first century. We cannot too strongly insist upon this fatal tendency of the German to subordinate natural, moral, legal, and technical rights to the supremacy of brute force. There is no conception of what is called "moral suasion" in the German mind. Although some of the greatest thinkers of the world have been and are to-day Germans, yet the German nation has never come to the realization that the pen may be mightier than the sword. Give the German a pen, and he will hold the world in admiration of his intellect. Give him a piano or a violin, and he will hold the world in adoration of his soul. But give him a sword, and he will hold the world in abhorrence of his force. For there never was an Übermensch who was not a devil. Else he would be God.
But the Weltpolitik has had other and more tangible and substantial causes than the three we have been considering. It is not wholly the result of the German idea that Germany can impose her will upon the world and has the right to do so. The power of Germany comes from the fact that her people have been workers as well as dreamers. The rapid increase of the population and development of the industrial and commercial prosperity of the empire have given the Germans a wholly justifiable economic foundation for their Weltpolitik.
United Germany, after the successful war of 1870, began the greatest era of industrial growth and prosperity that has ever been known in the history of the world. Not even the United States, with all its annual immigration and opening up of new fields and territories, has been able to show an industrial growth comparable to that of Germany during the past forty years. In this old central Europe cities have grown almost over night. Railways have been laid down, one after the other, until the whole empire is a network of steel. Mines and factories have sprung into being as miraculously as if it had been by the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp. The population has increased more than half in forty years.
It was as her population and her productive power increased far more quickly and far beyond that of her neighbours, that Germany began to look out into the extra-European world for markets. She had reached the point when her productivity, in manufacturing lines, had exceeded her power of consumption. Where find markets for the goods? German merchants, and not Prussian militarists, began to spread abroad in Germany the idea that there was a world equilibrium, as important to the future of the nations of Europe as was the European equilibrium. Germany, looking out over the world, saw that the prosperity of Great Britain was due to her trade, and that the security and volume of this trade were due to her colonies.
Who does not remember the remarkable stamp issued by the Dominion of Canada to celebrate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria? On the mercatorial projection of the world, the British possessions were given in red. One could not find any corner of the globe where there were not ports to which British ships in transit could go, and friendly markets for British commerce. The Germans began to compare their industries with those of Great Britain. Their population was larger than that of the great colonial power, and was increasing more rapidly. Their industries were growing apace. For their excess population, emigration to a foreign country meant annual loss of energetic and capable compatriots. Commerce had to meet unfair competition in every part of the world. Outside of the Baltic and North Seas, there was no place that a German ship could touch over which the German flag waved.
