GERMAN PROBLEMS AND PERSONALITIES INTRODUCTION BY THE LITERARY EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK "TIMES"

Three years ago there was one man in Europe who had a political sight so clear that his words then written seem to-day uncanny in their wisdom.[1]

This man saw the present war; he saw that Belgium would be invaded by Germany; he saw that the Germans hated England with a profound and bitter hate; that German diplomatic blunders had placed that nation in almost complete isolation in the world; that the Triple Alliance was really only a Dual Alliance, popular feeling in Italy becoming increasingly hostile to Austria and to Prussia; that Germans felt their culture to be superior to the civilization of the rest of the world, and themselves to be a superior race, with the right to rule other peoples; that Prussianism and Junkerism and militarism were in complete control of the German soul; that Germany had ambitions for world empire, a recurrence of “the old Napoleonic dream”; that the danger to European peace lay with Germany and not with England; that Germans believed war to be essentially moral and the mainspring of national progress; that the whole German people had become Bismarckian; that the Germans hoped to obtain by a victory over England that shadowless place in the sun toward which they began to leap when they beat France in 1870.

The seer who thus saw is Dr. Charles Sarolea, who recently came to the United States in the interests of his country, one of the most distinguished of Belgian scholars, a friend of King Albert, holder of Belgian decorations and honours from British learned societies, for the last fourteen years Belgian Consul in Edinburgh, and for the last twenty-one years head of the French and Romance Department at the University of Edinburgh. His vision was set out in “The Anglo-German Problem,” written in 1912, now published in an authorized American edition, perhaps the most accurate forecast which has been penned of to-day’s conflict, and certainly one of the most exact analyses of the German nation made before the world learned, since last August, to know it as it is—as Sarolea, master delineator of a nation’s character, drew it. Clear, sane, calm, logical, strong—such is Dr. Sarolea’s book, with its “rare perspicacity” and “remarkable sense of political realities,” in the words of King Albert’s appreciation of the work.

Dr. Sarolea, looking at Germany from the British Isles, where he was writing, perceived that “war is actually unavoidable” unless a spiritual miracle was wrought; that Europe was “drifting slowly but steadily toward an awful catastrophe.” Why? Because Germany was strong, envious, ambitious, conceited, arrogant, unscrupulous, and dissatisfied. It was in Germany that “the pagan gods of the Nibelungen are forging their deadly weapons,” for Germans believe national superiority is due to military superiority. Dr. Sarolea named as a war year this very year[2] in which we now are when he said:

“Believing, as they do, that to-day they are rich and prosperous mainly because in 1870 they beat the French people, why should they not believe and trust that in 1915 they would become even stronger and richer if they succeeded in beating the English?”

And the conflict, when it comes, will be “a political and religious crusade,” rather than a mere economic war, for the conflict between England and Germany “is the old conflict between liberalism and despotism, between industrialism and militarism, between progress and reaction, between the masses and the classes.”

So many other important points are made in Dr. Sarolea’s closely written book, in which practically every sentence contains a fact, an idea, or a prophecy, that it is not possible in this review to do more than present a few of them in the summary which follows. Though the present tense is used by Dr. Sarolea and the reviewer, it should be constantly remembered that Dr. Sarolea was thinking in 1912, not since August, 1914.

Germany is in “tragic moral isolation.” The moral and intellectual influence of German culture is steadily diminishing. Other nations feel a universal distrust and dislike toward Germany. So great is this antipathy that the Germans imagine there is a malignant conspiracy against them. An upstart nation, suddenly wealthy and powerful, Germany has developed an inordinate self-conceit and self-assertion. The German glories in being a realist. He thinks only of political power and colonial expansion. Might is the supreme test of right. He constantly emphasizes the indelible character of the German race. Germans are suffering from “acute megalomania.” They think the English decadent, the French doomed to premature extinction, the Russians “rotten.” Germany is the “reactionary force in international politics.”

England believes the building of the German Navy is mainly directed against her, though Germany says she is building to protect her colonies and commerce. Yet it is not reasonably possible so to account for the German fleet.

The greatest danger to England is not invasion of the British Isles, but invasion of Belgium and France. These countries are the “Achilles heel of the British Empire.” The German strategic railways on the Belgian frontiers show that Germany is far more likely to invade Belgium than England, Belgium again becoming the cockpit of Europe.

Germany feels that she has grievances against England; thus her hatred. She thinks England has checked her commercial expansion. But this is not true, for English Free Trade has been one of the most important contributory causes of German prosperity.

Germany thinks England has arrested her colonial expansion; Germany says every other great nation but herself has been permitted to build up a colonial empire; thus she is prevented from attaining her natural growth. But this is not true. England could not have checked her colonial aspirations, because Germany had no colonial aspirations until recently. When Germany did start to seek colonies, she met everywhere conflicting claims of England, but this was because England was already in possession, having begun her colonial policy years before Germany entered the race. Bismarck was largely responsible for Germany’s now having so small a colonial territory.

Germany thinks she has another grievance—that England has hemmed her in with a ring of enemies. But Germany is friendless because of her mistakes. Bismarck alienated the Russians for ever in 1878 at the Treaty of Berlin, making a Franco-Russian understanding unavoidable. The Kruger telegram of 1896, the outburst of anti-British feeling during the Boer War, the German naval programme, opened England’s eyes to her danger; thus was England forced to seek France and Russia.

The Kaiser is intensely religious, claiming to be “the anointed of the Lord.” Yet he is a materialist, an opportunist, and mainly trusts to brute force. The navy is his creation. He brandishes the sword, saying he loves peace. Napoleon III. used to express his love for peace, yet brought on the most disastrous war of French history; Nicholas II. started as the peacemaker of Europe, yet brought about the bloodiest war in Russian history. “Are the Kaiser’s pacific protests as futile, are his sympathies as shallow, as those of a Napoleon or a Nicholas?”

Dr. Sarolea closes his book thus:

“We can only hope that England, which to-day more than any other country—more, even, than republican France—represents the ideals of a pacific and industrial democracy, may never be called upon to assert her supremacy in armed conflict, and to safeguard those ideals against a wanton attack on the part of the most formidable and most systematic military power the world has ever seen.”

CHAPTER I