Volume 1 — The Reply From France

By M. Yves Guyot and Prof. Bellet.

The following is the text of an open lettert addressed by M. Yves Guyot, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal des Economistes, and M. Bellet, Professor at the Schools of Political Science and Commercial Studies, to Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich, the communication being a reply to the recent German Appeal to Civilized Nations on the subject of the war:

PARIS, Oct. 15, 1914.

To Prof. Brentano of the University of Munich:

Very Learned Professor and Colleague: On reading the Appeal to Civilized Nations, (among which France is evidently not included,) which has just been sent forth by ninety-three persons declaring themselves to be representatives of German science and art, we were not surprised to find Prof. Schmoller's signature. He had already shown his hatred for France by refusing to assist at the gatherings organized, a little more than two years ago, to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the Paris Society of Political Economy, (gatherings at which we were happy to enjoy your presence and that of your colleague, Mr. Lotz.) In his Rector's speech at the Berlin University, in 1897, he declared that German science had no other object than to celebrate the imperial messages of 1880 and 1890; and he pointed out that every disciple of Adam Smith who was not willing to make it a servant of that policy "should resign his seat." But we felt painful surprise when, at the foot of the said factum, we found your name side by side with his.

You and the other representatives of German science and art accuse France, Great Britain, Belgium, and Russia of falsehood. Would you have submitted, on the part of one of your pupils, to so grave an imputation, so lightly bandied? Admitting you to be in absolute ignorance of the documents published since the war declaration, you have certainly been acquainted with the ultimatum pronounced by Austria to Servia. It must have struck you with surprise; for it stands as a unique diplomatic document in all history. Did you not ask yourselves whether the demands of Austria did not go beyond all bounds, seeing that they insisted on the abdication of an independent State? You learned that, in spite of Servia's humble reply, because it contained a reservation, immediately, without discussion, the Ambassador of Austria-Hungary left Belgrade, and that the following day Austria declared war. You do not ignore the steps taken by Great Britain and France, the demand for delay made by Russia, and the reply of the German Chancellor "that none should intervene between Austria and Servia." He elegantly qualified the attitude thus adopted as "localizing the conflict."

Is there a single member among those who signed the document of Intellectuals who has been able to believe—have you been able to believe, Mr. Brentano, with your quick and perspicacious mind?—that this reply from Berlin did not imply war as a fatal consequence; for any nation accepting it was certain to be treated in future, by Germany, as the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy treated Servia? How, then, knowing the initial pretext of the war, are you able to realize that there was no other relation between this cause and the effect produced than the will of those who made use of it to provoke either a dishonoring humiliation for the countries accepting such a situation, or a general conflagration? How, then, do you, and the signatories of your appeal, dare to state: "It is not true that Germany provoked the war"? You dare to speak of proofs taken from authentic documents. Those published by Great Britain, Russia, and Belgium are known. All agree; and they give clear proof that the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was pronounced with full complicity of the Berlin Chancellery. They prove, moreover, that the German Ambassador at Petrograd, fearing a withdrawal on the part of Hungary, precipitated events while your Emperor kept himself out of the way. Meanwhile, your General Staff had, in underhanded manner, mobilized a portion of its troops, by individual call, while in France we waited, unable to imagine that the German Government had resolved to engage in European war without motives. In the pocketbooks of your reservists have been found forms calling them to the army long before the end of July. Our friend and colleague, Courcelle-Seneuil, has seen the military book of a German living in Switzerland, at Bex, containing this call.

Bismarckian Loyalty.

Correspondence of official nature has been stopped at the Cape, which should have reached in full time officers of the German Navy, warning them to prepare for mid-July. Such advance taken by your troops has rendered the task the more difficult for ours. We were very simple, for we believed in the affirmations of your statesmen. You state that these are loyal war methods; so be it. That belongs to the diplomatic rules of loyalty bequeathed by Bismarck to his successors. But to attempt to carry on this falsehood, you have no longer the excuse of its utility. It is clear to all, except, it seems, the representatives of science and art in Germany, who are sufficiently devoid of perspicacity to ignore it.

They affirm, moreover, that Germany has not violated the neutrality of Belgium; she merely contented herself with "taking the first step." Beyond the authentic proofs which have been published, we would draw your attention to an undeniable fact. Trusting in the treaty which guaranteed Belgium neutrality—and at the foot of which figured Germany's signature—in the promise made a short while ago to the King of the Belgians by your Emperor, we unfortunately left our northern frontier unguarded. You must be aware, professor, that the English did not move until Belgian soil had been effectively violated. It is true that we knew the plan of campaign set forth by Gen. Bernhardi, but we naïvely believed that, whatever might be the opinion of a General, the Chancellor of the Empire would consider a treaty bearing the imperial signature as something more than a mere "bit of paper." Germany has also been untrue to her signature by violating the treaty of neutrality of Luxembourg. You forgot to state that there also you only "took the first step." Your appeal echoes the German papers, which declare that it was the Belgians, and particularly the women, who "began against your troops." An American paper replied by stating that if it was the Belgian women who attacked German soldiers on Belgian soil, what were the soldiers doing there? The truth is that your troops, obeying their officers, as is proved by papers which have been seized and which you would find quoted in the report presented by the Belgian Commission to President Wilson, have executed orders which seem inspired by the ferocious inscriptions of Assyrian Kings, no doubt exhumed on the Bagdad railway line; and you think it quite natural that massacre and arson should have been perpetrated at Louvain because the civil population fired on your soldiers; but an inquiry made together with the representatives of the United States (whom you deign to consider sufficiently to ask them to represent your defenses) proved that the civil population was unarmed. If you today approve of the burning of the Louvain Library, have you until now approved of the destruction of the library at Alexandria? It is true there was no Deutsch Kultur there. The result of German culture as regards military matters is to place your soldiers on a stratum of civilization anterior to that of the Vandals, who, when taking Hippone, spared the library.

In Paris, if one of us passing, on Friday, Oct. 9, in the Rue d'Edimbourg, to an office of the Societe d'Economie Politique, situated at No. 14, had passed near to that address, he might have been murdered by a bomb thrown from one of your Taubes on the civil population of a town whose bombarding had not been notified. Another Taube caused, through the throwing of a bomb, a fire at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. You cannot, to excuse such an assault, invoke the pretext put forward to excuse the destruction of the Cathedral of Rheims. No observer could have caught sight of a German soldier from the top of the towers.

Barbarian Soldiery.

Your co-signatories and you express indignation because the civilized world describes your soldiers as barbarians. Do you therefore consider such deeds as those specified to be a high expression of civilization? And here is the dilemma: either you are in ignorance of these deeds, then you are indeed very careless, or you approve of them, in which case you must make the defense of them enter into your works on right and ethics. In doing so you would only be following the theories of your military authors who have insisted on the necessity of striking terror into the hearts of the civil population, in order that it may weigh on its Government and its army so strongly that they may be forced to ask for peace. But those of your colleagues who profess psychology must, if they have approved such a theory, confess today that they made a great mistake; for such deeds, far from forcing the people to cowardly action, awaken indignation in all hearts and fire the courage of our soldiers. Nevertheless, your military authors have not stated that theft was a means of assuring victory. And yet the Crown Prince, your Emperor of tomorrow, gathered together at the castle of the Count of Baye articles in precious metals, belonging to a collection, which he had carefully packed up and sent off. Some of your officers' trunks have been found stuffed with goods which would constitute the stock of a second-hand clothes seller. Do you and your co-signatories include in German science and art the science and art of housebreaking? Are the law professors and the economists willing to defend such a manner of acquiring property? And, if so, what becomes of your penal code?

You and your co-signatories affirm that the present struggle is directed against "German culture." If such culture teaches that the rights of men include contempt of treaties, contempt of private property, contempt of the lives of non-combatants, you cannot be surprised that the other nations show no desire to preserve it for your benefit and their detriment.

It is not by arms but by arguments and facts that economists like us, faithful to the teachings of the physiocrats and of Adam Smith, have sought to protect ourselves against it. On the eve of the war, at the inauguration of Turgot's Monument, we set forth his ideas of liberty and humanity in opposition to the German realpolitik. We hope that the present events will cure those among our professors whom it had contaminated, and that they will cease to constitute themselves accomplices of that, form of Pan-Germanism which they introduced to public opinion and to our legislation. The acts of your diplomatists and of your Generals, and the approbation given them by you and other representatives of German science, are a terrible demonstration, but conclusive, of the dangers and vanity of German culture. You are its true destroyers.

Militarism and Civilization.

"Without our miltarism," say you, "our civilization would have been annihilated long ago." And you invoke the inheritance of Goethe, Beethoven, Kant. But Goethe, born in the free city of Frankfort, lived at the Court of Charles Augustus, which was a liberal and artistic centre ever threatened by Prussia. But Beethoven was of Flemish origin, and lived in Holland until the age of twenty-four, spending the rest of his life in Vienna, and he has nothing in common with Prussian militarism, so redoubtable for Austria. But Kant, if he was born and lived at Könisberg, the true capital of the Prussian Kingdom, welcomed the French Revolution, and when he died in 1804 it was not Prussian militarism which had recommended his writings to the world.

But the solidarity which you establish between German militarism and German culture, of which you and your colleagues claim to be the representatives, is a proof of the confusion of German conceptions.

To present Goethe, Beethoven, and Kant to the world you surround them with bayonets. In the same manner every tradesman and every merchant throughout Germany has got into the habit of saying: "I have four million bayonets behind me!" Your Emperor said to some tradesmen who complained of bad business: "I must travel!" And he went to Constantinople; he went to Tangier, after the speech at Bremen. In every one of his words, in each of his gestures, he affirmed the subordination of economic civilization to military civilization. He considered that it was his duty to open up markets and assert the value of German products with cannon and sword. Hence his formidable armaments, his perpetual threats which held all nations in a constant state of anxiety.

There is the deep and true cause of the war. And it is due entirely to your Emperor and his environment. We readily understand that the greater number of "representatives of German science and art" who signed the appeal are incapable of fathoming this fact; but this is not your case, you who denounced the abuses and consequences of German protectionism, and we remember that at the Antwerp Congress you agreed with us in recognizing its aggressive nature.

In conclusion, we beg to express the deep consideration which we feel for your science, hitherto so unerring.