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A General Sketch of the European War: The First Phase, a non-fiction book by Hilaire Belloc |
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Part 1. The General Causes Of The War - (3) Prussia |
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_ PART I. THE GENERAL CAUSES OF THE WAR: (3) PRUSSIA The Germans have always been, during their long history, a race inclined to perpetual division and sub-division, accompanied by war and lesser forms of disagreement between the various sections. Their friends have called this a love of freedom, their enemies political incompetence; but, without giving it a good or a bad name, the plain fact has been, century after century, that the various German tribes would not coalesce. Any one of them was always willing to take service with the Roman Empire, in the early Roman days, against any one of the others, and though there have been for short periods more or less successful attempts to form one nation of them all in imitation of the more civilized States to the west and south, these attempts have never succeeded for very long. But it so happens that about two hundred years ago, or a little more, there appeared one body of German-speaking men rather different from the rest, and capable ultimately of leading the rest, or at least a majority of the rest. I use the words "German-speaking" and "rather different" because this particular group of men, though speaking German, were of less pure German blood than almost any other of the peoples that spoke that tongue. They were the product of a conquest undertaken late in the Middle Ages by German knights over a mixed Pagan population, Lithuanian and Slavonic, which inhabited the heaths and forests along the Baltic Sea. These German knights succeeded in their task, and compelled the subject population to accept Christianity, just as the Germans themselves had been compelled to accept it by their more powerful and civilized neighbours the French hundreds of years before. The two populations of this East Baltic district, the large majority which was Slavonic and Lithuanian, and the minority which was really German, mixed and produced a third thing, which we now know as the _Prussian_. The cradle of this Prussian race was, then, all that flat country of which Koenigsberg and Danzig are the capitals, but especially Koenigsberg--"King's Town"--where the monarchs of this remote people were crowned. By an historical accident, which we need not consider, the same dynasty was, after it had lost all claim to separate kingship, merged in the rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg, a somewhat more German but still mixed district lying also in the Baltic plain, but more towards the west, and the official title of the Prussian ruler somewhat more than two hundred years ago was the Elector of Brandenburg. These rulers of the Mark of Brandenburg were a family bearing the title of Hohenzollern, a castle in South Germany, by which name they are still distinguished. The palace of these Hohenzollerns was henceforward at Berlin. Now, much at the same time that the civil wars were being fought in England--that is, not quite three hundred years ago--the Reformation had produced in Germany also very violent quarrels. Vienna, which was the seat of the Imperial House, stood for the Catholic or traditional cause, and most Germans adhered to that cause. But certain of the Northern German principalities and counties took up the side of the Reformation. A terrible war, known as the Thirty Years' War, was fought between the two factions. It enormously reduced the total population of Germany. In the absence of exact figures we only have wild guesses, such as a loss of half or three-quarters. At any rate, both from losses from the adherence of many princes to the Protestant cause and from the support lent to that cause for political reasons by Catholic France, this great civil war in Germany left the Protestant part more nearly equal in numbers to the Catholic part, and, among other things, it began to make the Elector of Brandenburg with his Prussians particularly prominent as the champion of the Protestant cause. For, of all the warring towns, counties, principalities, and the rest, Prussia had in particular shown military aptitude. From that day to this the advance of Prussia as, first, the champion, then the leader, and at last the master of Northern Germany as a whole (including many Catholic parts in the centre and the south), has been consistent and almost uninterrupted. The "Great Elector" (as he was called) formed an admirable army some two hundred years ago. His grandson Frederick formed a still better one, and by his great capacities as a general, as well as by the excellence of his troops, gave Prussia a military reputation in the middle of the eighteenth century which has occasionally been eclipsed, but has never been extinguished. Frederick the Great did more than this. He codified and gave expression, as it were, to the Prussian spirit, and the manifestation of that spirit in international affairs is generally called the "Frederician Tradition." This "Frederician Tradition" must be closely noted by the reader, because it is the principal moral cause of the present war. It may be briefly and honestly put in the following terms:-- "The King of Prussia shall do all that may seem to advantage the kingdom of Prussia among the nations, notwithstanding any European conventions or any traditions of Christendom, or even any of those wider and more general conventions which govern the international conduct of other Christian peoples." For instance, if a convention of international morals has arisen--as it did arise very strongly, and was kept until recent times--that hostilities should not begin without a formal declaration of war, the "Frederician Tradition" would go counter to this, and would say: "If ultimately it would be to the advantage of Prussia to attack without declaration of war, then this convention may be neglected." Or, again, treaties solemnly ratified between two Governments are generally regarded as binding. And certainly a nation that never kept such a treaty for more than a week would find itself in a position where it was impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon a vague calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of the circumstance, the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be to the advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such a treaty should be broken. It will be apparent that what is called the "Frederician Tradition," which is the soul of Prussia in her international relations, is not an unprincipled thing. It has a principle, and that principle is a patriotic desire to strengthen Prussia, which particular appetite overweighs all general human morals and far outweighs all special Christian or European morals. This doctrine of the "Frederician Tradition" does not mean that the Prussian statesmen wantonly do wrong, whether in acts of cruelty or in acts of treason and bad faith. What it means is that, wherever they are met by the dilemma, "Shall I do _this_, which is to the advantage of my country but opposed to European and common morals, or _that_, which is consonant with those morals but to the disadvantage of my country?" they choose the former and not the latter course. Prussia, endowed with this doctrine and possessed of a most excellent military organization and tradition, stood out as the first military power in Europe until the French Revolution. The wars of the French Revolution and of Napoleon upset this prestige, and in the battle of Jena (1806) seemed to have destroyed it. But it was too strong to be destroyed. The Prussian Government was the first of Napoleon's allies to betray Napoleon _after_ the Russians had broken his power (1812). They took part with the other Allies in finishing off Napoleon after the Russian campaign (1813-14); they were present with decisive effect upon the final field of Waterloo (1815), and remained for fifty years afterwards the great military power they had always been. They had further added to their dominions such great areas in Northern Germany, beyond the original areas inhabited by the true Prussian stock, that they were something like half of the whole Northern German people when, in 1864, they entered into the last phase of their dominion. They began by asking Austria to help them in taking from Denmark, a small and weak country, not only those provinces of hers which spoke German, but certain districts which were Danish as well. France and England were inclined to interfere, but they did not yet understand the menace Prussia might be in the future, and they neglected to act. Two years later Prussia suddenly turned upon Austria, her ally, defeated her in a very short campaign, and insisted upon Austria's relinquishing for the future all claims over any part of the German-speaking peoples, save some ten millions in the valley of the Middle Danube and of the Upper Elbe. Four years later again, in 1870, Prussia having arranged, after various political experiments which need not be here detailed, for the support of all the German States except Austria, fought a war with France, in which she was immediately and entirely successful, and in the course of which the rulers of the other German States consented (1) to give the Hohenzollern-Prussian dynasty supreme military power for the future over them, under the hereditary title of German Emperors; (2) to form a united nation under the more or less despotic power of these emperors. This latter point, the national unity, though really highly centralized at Berlin, especially on the military side, was softened in its rigour by a number of very wise provisions. A great measure of autonomy was left to the more important of the lesser States, particularly Catholic Bavaria; local customs were respected; and, above all, local dynasties were flattered, and maintained in all the trappings of sovereign rank. From that date--that is, for the last forty-four years--there has been a complete _Northern_ Germany, one strong, centralized, and thoroughly co-ordinated nation, in which the original Prussian domination is not only numerically far the greatest element, but morally overshadows all the rest. The spiritual influence ruling this state issues from Berlin and from the Prussian soul, although a large minority consist of contented but respectful Catholics, who, in all national matters, wholly sympathize with and take their cue from the Protestant North. So far one may clearly see what kind of power it is that has initiated the German theory of supremacy which we have described above, is prepared to lead it to battle, and is quite certain of leading it to victory. But we note--the fatal mark in all German history--that the unity is not complete. The ten millions of Austrian Germans were, when Prussia achieved this her highest ambition, deliberately left outside the new German Empire. And this was done because, in Prussian eyes, a so-called "German unity" was but a means to an end, and that end the aggrandizement of the Hohenzollern dynasty. To include so many southern and Catholic Germans would have endangered the mastery of Berlin. The fact that Austria ruled a number of non-German subjects far larger than her Austrian population would further have endangered the Hohenzollern position had Austria been admitted to the new German Empire, and had the consolidation of all Germans into one true state been really and loyally attempted. Lastly, it would have been impossible to destroy the historic claims to leadership of the Imperial Hapsburgs, and that, more than anything else, was the rivalry the Hohenzollerns dreaded. Once more had the Germans proved themselves incapable of, and unwilling to submit to, the discipline of unity. What part, then, was Austria, thus left out, to play in the international activity of Prussia in the future? What part especially was she to play when Prussia, at the head of Northern Germany, should go out to impose the will of that Germany and of herself upon the rest of the world? That is the next question we must answer before we can hope to understand the causes of the present war in their entirety. _ |
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