Tools of the Russian Juggernaut

By M.J. Bonn.

Prof. Bonn is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Munich and German Visiting Professor to the University of California. The following article by him was published on Aug. 8, 1914, in the first week of war.

AS long as hostile censors muzzle truth there is no use in discussing the European military situation. Where the ingenuity of American newspaper men has failed it would be presumptuous for any one to try. But the question, Why are we at war? can be answered fairly well by anybody conversant with the facts of the European situation.

We are not at war because the Emperor, as war lord, has sent out word to his legions to begin a war of world-wide aggression, carrying into its vortex intellectual Germany, notwithstanding all her peaceful aspirations.

I may fairly claim to be a representative of that intellectual Germany which comes in now for a good deal of sympathy, but I must own that intellectual Germany, as far as I know about her, thoroughly approves of the Emperor's present policy.

She approves of it not on the principle merely "Right or wrong, my country"; she does so because she knows that war has become inevitable, and that we must face that ordeal when we are ready for it, not at the moment most agreeable to our enemies. If intellectual Germany wants to develop the moral and intellectual qualities of the German people she can do so only if there is peace—real peace—not endangered by the fear of some sudden and treacherous aggression.

We approve of the war because we realize that such a peace was no longer possible. Some of our critics are trying to show that we wanted a war, as we wanted the colonial empire of France.

We have, indeed, refused the demand made by England as the price for her neutrality—that we should not be allowed to take any part of France's colonial domains, even in case of complete victory.

We refused this stipulation, not because we were after those colonies, but because a so-called neutral power tried to impose conditions upon us she would never have dreamed of asking from France.

If we were hankering after conquest we would have made war long ago. We would have done so during the Morocco crisis, when Russia had not yet recovered from the Japanese war; when Turkey was still a mighty empire, ready to take our side, overawing the Balkan States and threatening Russia; when Rumania was our ally and when France, trying to swallow up the independent States of Morocco, but put herself morally in the wrong.

We refrained from war not because England supported France. The developments of the last week have shown that we are ready to face England, too, when needs must be. We decided for peace because we were convinced that no amount of colonial aggrandizement could compensate us for the dangers and horrors of a big European war.

Our diplomatic methods during those days may have been brusque and annoying, but our aim was peace. Though we are held up continually as the disturber of European peace, driven on by a mad desire for territorial aggrandizement, we are the only big European nation which has not increased her territory during the last twenty-five years.

Russia tried to steal the Far East and is now going half shares with England in Persia. England annexed the Boer republics and is playing with Russia for the Persian States.

France has taken Morocco; Italy, Tripoli; Austria-Hungary has formally annexed Bosnia.

Even little Servia, who is praised just now as the most just and God-fearing nation, has succeeded in wresting a large part of Macedonia, inhabited by Bulgarians, from her Bulgarian allies.

The only conquest we went in for was an exchange of a strip of West Africa, which we got from France as a kind of hush money, for her Morocco policy, England, Italy, and Spain having taken their payment in advance.

We have led no war of aggression for new territories, and we are held up to moral contempt by all those nations who have taken their shares.

We went to war because we had to keep faith with Austria. We do not and we did not approve of every step our ally has taken. But our idea of a faithful alliance is not that you can chuck your partner whenever he has made a mistake, but that you must stick to him through good and evil.

You may upbraid him privately if you dislike his methods; you may give him a fair warning, but as long as your bargain exists you must stick to it.

And our alliance with Austria is not a mere piece of political strategy, not an unholy alliance like that of republican France with despotic Russia or Anglo-Saxon England with Mongol Japan.

Our States have a common history. We are, as far as the Austrian Germans are concerned—about a third of the population of Austria—the same people. We have, and that is perhaps the most decisive point in the alliance, nearly the same position on the surface of the globe.

We are both inland empires situated in the centre of Europe, surrounded by many different nations, all of whom may bear some grudge against us.

As long as our joint frontiers are safe we can stand back to back and face calmly any unnatural confederation like the present one.

We concluded the alliance with Austria because we wanted to safeguard ourselves against foreign attack; it has turned out the alliance has involved us in war. We might have avoided the war at present if we had broken faith with our ally.

It would not have been difficult for us to find some legal quibbles, like those which Italy, following a policy of very sober national egotism, is now earnestly exclaiming to all the world.

If we had done so we should have been knaves, but we should have been fools as well. For surely nobody can believe that the forces antagonistic to Germany would have ceased to act if we had left Austria in the lurch.

Neither France nor Russia nor England would have changed their policy. They might, moreover, have tried to make Austria join in some future conspiracy against us.

There are three main causes to which the war is due:

1. The French have never forgotten their defeat in 1870 and 1871. They have always been thirsting for revenge.

2. We are at war because Russia thinks she has a mission on behalf of the Slavic world; she feels that mission can only be fulfilled by smashing Germany, the bulwark of Western idea.

3. We are at war because England has returned to her old political ideals. She means to enforce anew the balance of power and she wants to cut down Germany to that normal dead-level which alone, she thinks, is consistent with her own security.

As far as our antagonism to France is concerned, we have always looked upon it as a regrettable fact which time, perhaps, might do away with. We are just enough to understand that a country like France, with a glorious past, a gallant spirit and an undaunted courage, cannot forget the blow we dealt her forty-three years ago.

We think we have been right in retaking from her Alsace-Lorraine, belonging originally to the German Empire. But we look with a kind of envy upon her who succeeded in denationalizing the people of those provinces to such a degree that we have not yet been able to make them Germans once more.

We have always regretted that the two most civilized nations in Continental Europe should be rent asunder by an unforgotten past.

We hoped that the creation of a wonderful African empire might in the long run soothe French national feeling. We should have been always willing to come to an understanding on the existing state of affairs, but though there have been lucky statesmen in France who tried such a policy, public opinion was too strong for them. French people preferred to sacrifice the main ideas on which their republican government is based and made an alliance with Russia.

Religious, national, and political oppression in Russia against Pole, Jew, and Finn, against workingman and intellectual, is propped up by the help of liberal thinking France, whose conservatism threw a Western glamour over Russian ill-deeds.

We have regretted more than words can say it that France has annihilated herself as a power for the moral improvement of the universe by making herself a tool of the Russian Juggernaut.

We read in the papers today that after a small frontier engagement in Alsace-Lorraine the signs of mourning were taken off from the statues representing Alsatian towns on Parisian squares.

We know in our innermost hearts that they will have to be attached for a long time to come to those three emblems of human progress for which France is supposed to stand, liberty, fraternity, equality, if our arms are not successful.

We realize that the gallant spirit of the French people has furnished the mainspring which has made this war possible.

We honor her for her courage. For we know well enough that it is she alone among the partners who runs real risks. We know that she is not moved by sordid motives. But as we know her unforgiving attitude, as we knew that she was helping Russia and egging her on against us; that she was instigating Britain and Belgium as well as Serb and Rumanian, we had to take her attitude as what it was; as the firm policy of a patriotic and passionate people, waiting for the moment when they could wipe out the memory of 1870, putting nationality to the front, sacrificing their own ideals of humanity.

Would France have given up this attitude if we had not stood by our Austrian ally? Would she have broken her word to her Russian friend if we had been a little more conciliatory?

I think we would commit a libel on French honor and on French patriotism if we assumed that any step on our part could have prevented her from trying to redress the state of affairs produced by the events of 1871.