In short, if we wish to avoid being isolated, which is especially dangerous for Germany in our assailable position, we must have a reliable friend. Thanks to the similarities of our interests, and this treaty before you, we have two such friends. It is not love which makes them reliable, for nations may make war one upon the other because they hate, but it has never yet happened that one nation has sacrificed itself for the other for mere love. Nor do they always fight when they hate each other, for, if this were the case, France would have to be fighting incessantly, not only with us, but also with England and Italy. She hates all her neighbors. I also believe that the Russian hatred of us, which has been artificially fanned, will not last. We are united with our allies in love of peace, not only by inclination and friendship, but also by the most cogent interests of a European equilibrium and of our own future.
For these reasons I believe you will approve the Emperor's policy that has concluded the published treaty, although it increases the possibility of war.
There can be no doubt that the passage of the pending bill will add much weight to the alliance which we have joined, and that the member which is represented by the German empire will be immeasurably strengthened. The bill gives us an increase of trained troops, a possible increase of troops, which we need not summon, if we do not need them. We can leave the men at home. But, having them in reserve, we shall also have the arms for them, and this is the all-important thing. I remember the old blunderbuses furnished in 1813 for our Landwehr by England, with which I was drilled in the chasseurs. They were no weapons for war—such we cannot furnish at a moment's notice. But, when once we have the proper weapons, this new bill means an increase of the guarantees of peace, and as strong an increase of the league of peace as if a fourth great power had joined it with 700,000 men, which as you know used to be the maximum figure of a national army. This tremendous increase will also have a quieting effect, I believe, on our own people, and will somewhat alleviate the nervousness of our public opinion and of our bankers and editors. I hope you will be relieved when you realize that after this increase, and from the very moment this bill is signed and published, the men will be ready. A scanty supply of arms for them might even now be at hand, but we must secure better ones, for if we form an army of triarians, of the best human material which we have among our people, men over thirty years of age and fathers of families, then we must have for them also the best arms that can be secured. We should not send them into battle with arms which we do not deem good enough for our regular troops. These staunch men, fathers of families, and gigantic figures, as we remember them from the time when they held the bridge of Versailles, should carry on their shoulders the best of guns, and have the most complete armor and necessary clothing to ward off the hardships of the weather and other ills. In such matters we must not be saving.
After listening to the survey of forty years which I have just given it is natural that our fellow-citizens should realize the ever-present danger of a coalition against us and the possibility of a double attack, in which I, to be sure, do not believe. The thought, however, that in such a case we can have one million good soldiers for our defense on either frontier will be most reassuring to them. In addition, we can keep at home reserves of half a million and more, or even a million, sending them to the front as they may be needed. I have been told: "The result will be that the others will also increase their strength." This they cannot do, for they long ago reached their highest figure. We decreased our figures in 1867, because we believed that we could take things easy, with the North German Alliance at our disposal, and could release from service all men over thirty-two years of age. Our neighbors subsequently adopted a longer period of service, many one as long as twenty years. The minister of war will be able to explain this to you more in detail, if he will address you. In figures the others are as strong as we, but in quality they cannot equal us. Courage is the same with all civilized nations, the Russian or the Frenchman fights as bravely as the German; but our people, our 700,000 men, are experienced, rompus au métier, trained soldiers who have not forgotten anything.
In addition, no nation in the world can equal us in our material of officers and subalterns to direct such a huge army. This means the remarkable degree to which popular education has spread in Germany, and which appears in no other country. The degree of education which is needed to qualify an officer and a subaltern to command according to what the soldiers expect of them, is found with us far more extensively than elsewhere. We have more of the material out of which officers, and more out of which subalterns are made, than any other country, and we have a body of officers which no country in the world can equal.
This, and the excellence of our subalterns, who are the pupils of our officers, constitute our superiority. The other nations cannot equal us in the amount of education which qualifies an officer to fulfil the severe requirements of his station, and of good comradeship to bear all the necessary privations, and at the same time to satisfy the exceedingly difficult social demands which must be met, if the feeling of good fellowship between officers and men, which thank God exists in our army to a high and often stirring degree, is to be established without detracting from the authority of the officers. The relations existing, especially in war time, between our officers and men are inimitable,—with few evil exceptions which only prove the rule, for on the whole we may say: No German officer forsakes his men under fire; he saves them at the risk of his life, and they do the same; no German soldier forsakes his officer—we have experienced this.
If other nations are obliged to furnish with officers and subalterns equally large troops as we are intending to create by this bill, they may be forced by circumstances to appoint officers who will not succeed in guiding a company through a narrow gate, and even less in meeting the heavy obligations of the officer who is to retain the esteem and love of his men. The amount of education which is needed for this, and the amount of camaraderie and sense of honor which we find among our officers, can be elicited from no other body of officers anywhere in the world, either by rules or injunctions. In this we are superior to everybody, and that is why they cannot imitate us. I am, therefore, not at all afraid of it.
Then there is another advantage if this bill is passed. The very strength at which we are aiming necessarily renders us pacific. This sounds like a paradox, but it is not.
With the powerful engine into which we are transforming the German army one does not make an attack. If I were to come before you today, on the assumption that conditions were different from what I believe they are, and said, "We are considerably menaced by France and Russia; it is to be expected that we shall be attacked, and as a diplomat, believing my military information in these matters to be correct, I am convinced that it is better for us to have our defense consist of a bold attack, and to strike the first blow now;" and if I added: "We can more easily wage an aggressive war, and I, therefore, am asking the Reichstag for an appropriation of a milliard, or half a milliard, marks to engage in a war against our two neighbors,"—then I do not know, gentlemen, whether you would have enough confidence in me to grant my request, but I hope you would not have it.
But, if you had, it would not satisfy me. If we Germans wish to wage a war with the full effect of our national strength, it must be a war which satisfies all who take part in it, all who sacrifice anything for it, in short the whole nation. It must be a national war, a war carried on with the enthusiasm of 1870, when we were foully attacked. I still remember the ear splitting, joyful shouts in the station at Köln. It was the same all the way from Berlin to Köln, in Berlin itself. The waves of popular approval bore us into the war, whether or no we wished it. That is the way it must be, if a popular force like ours is to show what it can do. It will, however, be very difficult to prove to the provinces and the imperial states and their inhabitants that the war is unavoidable, and has to be. People will ask: "Are you so sure? Who can tell?" In short, when we make an attack, the whole weight of all imponderables, which weigh far heavier than material weights, will be on the side of our opponents whom we have attacked. France will be bristling with arms way down to the Pyrenees. The same will take place everywhere. A war into which we are not borne by the will of the people will be waged, to be sure, if it has been declared by the constituted authorities who deemed it necessary; it will even be waged pluckily, and possibly victoriously, after we have once smelled fire and tasted blood, but it will lack from the beginning the nerve and enthusiasm of a war in which we are attacked. In such a one the whole of Germany from Memel to the Alpine Lakes will flare up like a powder mine; it will be bristling with guns, and no enemy will dare to engage this furor teutonicus which develops when we are attacked.
[Illustration: ANTON VON WERNER WILLIAM I ON HIS DEATHBED]
We cannot afford to lose this factor of preëminence even if many military men—not only ours but others as well—believe that today we are superior to our future opponents. Our own officers believe this to a man, naturally. Every soldier believes this. He would almost cease to be a useful soldier if he did not wish for war, and did not believe that we would be victorious in it. If our opponents by any chance are thinking that we are pacific because we are afraid of how the war may end, they are mightily mistaken. We believe as firmly in our victory in a just cause as any foreign lieutenant in his garrison, after his third glass of champagne, can believe in his, and we probably do so with greater certainty. It is not fear, therefore, which makes us pacific, but the consciousness of our strength. We are strong enough to protect ourselves, even if we should be attacked at a less favorable moment, and we are in a position to let divine providence determine whether a war in the meanwhile may not become unnecessary after all.
I am, therefore, not in favor of any kind of an aggressive war, and if war could result only from our attack—somebody must kindle a fire, we shall not kindle it. Neither the consciousness of our strength, which I have described, nor our confidence in our treaties, will prevent us from continuing our former endeavors to preserve peace. In this we do not permit ourselves to be influenced by annoyances or dislikes. The threats and insults, and the challenges, which have been made have, no doubt, excited also with us a feeling of irritation, which does not easily happen with Germans, for they are less prone to national hatred than any other nation. We are, however, trying to calm our countrymen, and we shall work for peace with our neighbors, especially with Russia, in the future as well as in the past. When I say especially with Russia, I express the opinion that France is offering us no assurances of success in our endeavors. I will, however, not say that these endeavors are of no use. We shall never pick a quarrel, nor ever attack France; and in the many little incidents which the liking of our neighbors for spying and bribing has occasioned we have always brought about a very courteous and amicable settlement. I should consider it criminal if we were to enflame a great national war for such bagatelles. These are instances when one should say: "The cleverer of the two will yield."
I am referring, therefore, especially to Russia, and here I have the same confidence of success which I expressed a year ago, and which this liberal sheet printed in such large type, without any "running after," or as a German paper very vulgarly called it, "Kow-towing" to Russia. That time has passed. We no longer sue for love, either in France or in Russia! The Russian press and the Russian public opinion have shown the door to an old powerful and reliable friend, which we were. We do not force ourselves on anybody. We have tried to reestablish the old intimate relations, but we are running after nobody. This does not prevent us, however, from observing the treaty-rights which Russia has with us; on the contrary, it is an incentive to us to do so.
These treaty rights comprise some which not all our friends recognize as such. I mean the rights concerning Bulgaria which we won for Russia in the Congress of Berlin, and which were not contested until 1885. There is no question for me, who was instrumental in preparing the congressional decisions, and who joined in signing them, that all of us were of the opinion at that time that Russia should have a predominating influence in Bulgaria, after the latter had renounced East Roumelia, and she herself had given the modest satisfaction of reducing by 800,000 souls the extent of the territory under her influence until it included only about three million people.
Following this interpretation of the Congress, Russia until 1885 appointed the prince, a close relative of the imperial house, of whom at that time nobody believed, or could believe, that he would wish to be anything but a faithful adherent of the Russian policy. Russia nominated the minister of war and a great many officers; in short it was governing in Bulgaria. There was no doubt of this. The Bulgarians, or some of them, or the prince—I do not know which—were not satisfied with it. A coup d'état took place—a defection from Russia. Thus an actual condition has ensued which we are not called upon to remedy by a recourse to arms, but which cannot in theory alter the rights which Russia took home from the Congress of Berlin. Whether there will be difficulties, if Russia should wish to procure her rights by force, I do not know. We shall neither support nor counsel violent means, nor do I believe that they are being contemplated—I am quite sure they are not. If, however, Russia should try her luck along diplomatic lines, possibly by suggesting the intercession of the Sultan, the suzerain of Bulgaria, I deem it the duty of a loyal German policy to cling to the decisions of the Congress of Berlin, and to interpret them as all of us, without an exception, interpreted them at that time. The public feeling of the Bulgarians can alter nothing in this, so far as I am concerned. Bulgaria, the tiny little country between the Danube and the Balkans is not an object of sufficient size, I assure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end. After the war we would conceivably not even know for what we had been fighting.
I may, therefore, declare that the hostility against us shown in the Russian public opinion, and especially in the Russian press, will not deter us from supporting, at Russia's request, any diplomatic steps she may take to regain her influence in Bulgaria. I intentionally say, at her request. Formerly we have, at times, endeavored to fulfil her wishes when they had been only confidentially suggested, but we have seen that some Russian papers immediately tried to prove that these very steps of the German diplomacy had been the most inimical to Russia. They actually attacked us for having fulfilled the wishes of Russia even before they had been expressed. We did this also in the Congress of Berlin; but it will not happen again. If Russia will officially request us to support with the Sultan, as suzerain of Bulgaria, the steps which she may take in her desire to reëstablish in Bulgaria conditions according to the decisions of the Congress, I shall not hesitate to advise His Majesty the Emperor to do so. Our sense of loyalty to our neighbor demands this, for we should cherish neighborly relations with him, let the present feelings be what they may. Together we should protect the monarchical institutions which are common to both of us, and set our faces, in the interest of order, against all the opponents of it in Europe. Russia's monarch, moreover, fully understands that these are the duties of the allied monarchs. If the Emperor of Russia should find that the interests of his great empire of one hundred million people demand war, he will wage it, I do not doubt. But I do not believe that these interests can possibly demand a war against us, nor do I believe that these interests demand war at the present time at all.
To sum up: I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the great strength which God has placed in the German nation fully available. If we do not need all the troops, it is not necessary to summon them. We are trying to avoid the contingency when we shall need them.
This attempt is as yet made rather difficult for us by the threatening newspaper articles in the foreign press, and I should like to admonish these foreign editors to discontinue such threats. They do not lead anywhere. The threats which we see made—not by the governments, but by the press—are really incredibly stupid, when we stop to reflect that the people making them imagine they could frighten the proud and powerful German empire by certain intimidating figures made by printer's ink and shallow words. People should not do this. It would then be easier for us to be more obliging to our two neighbors. Every country after all is sooner or later responsible for the windows which its press has smashed. The bill will be rendered some day, and will consist of the ill-feeling of the other country. We are easily influenced—perhaps too easily—by love and kindness, but quite surely never by threats! We Germans fear God, and naught else in the world! It is this fear of God which makes us love and cherish peace. If in spite of this anybody breaks the peace, he will discover that the ardent patriotism of 1813, which called to the standards the entire population of Prussia—weak, small, and drained to the marrow as it then was—has today become the common property of the whole German nation. Attack the German nation anywhere, and you will find it armed to a man, and every man with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us.
September 16, 1894
[On September 16, 1894, when Bismarck was no longer chancellor, 2,200 Germans from the province of Posen appeared in Varzin to thank him for his devoted work in the service of the national idea, and to gather courage from him in their fight against the Polish propaganda which had gained strength under the new régime at court. The aged farm-manager, Mr. Kennemann, was the leader and spokesman of the visitors.]
Gentleman! First I must ask your indulgence, since for two days I have been upset by an unpolitical enemy called lumbago, an old acquaintance of mine for sixty years. I hope to get the better of him soon, and then to be able to stand again fully erect. At present, I must confess, I am hampered by him.
I begin by replying to the words of the previous speaker with thanks for the honor done me, addressing myself first of all to him, but then also to you. The previous speaker is as old as I. We were both born in 1815, and different walks of life have brought us together again here in Varzin after almost eighty years. The meeting gives me great pleasure, although I have not run my course as safe and sound as Mr. Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you do not do the same.
I thank you that you have spared no exertion to show your national sentiments in this way. The exertion was considerable, a night in the train, a second night on the way back, insufficient meals, and inconveniently crowded cars. The fact that you have stood all this and were not deterred by it attests the strength of your national feeling, which impelled you to bear witness to it here. That you did it here greatly honors me, and I recognize in it your appreciation of my part in the work of establishing the conditions which we are enjoying in Germany today, after years of disunion. These conditions may be imperfect, but "the best is the enemy of the good." At the time when we shaped these conditions we never asked: "What may we wish?" but "What must we have!" This moderation in our demands for union was one of the most important preliminaries of success. By following this path we have reached the results which have strengthened the pledge that your home will remain united with the German empire and the kingdom of Prussia. The proportion, in the meanwhile, of Germans in the foundation of our structure to the less reliable—I will not say loose—Polish element has become decidedly more favorable for the Germans. Our national figures are forty-eight million Germans and two million Poles; and in such a community the wishes of the two million cannot be decisive for the forty-eight million, as must be apparent, especially in an age when political decisions are dependent on a majority vote as a last resort. The forces which guarantee the union of these territories are strong enough both in the parliament and in the army to assure it, and no one can doubt that the proper authorities are ready to use these forces at the right time. No one mistakes the meaning, when the announcement is made from the highest quarters: "Ere we shall yield again Alsace, our army will have to be annihilated" (and words to this effect have been spoken). The same thing is true, to an even stronger degree, of our eastern frontier. We can spare neither, Posen even less than Alsace, and we shall fight, as the Emperor has said, to the last man, before we renounce Alsace, this protection of our Southern states. Yet Munich and Stuttgart are not more endangered by a hostile position in Strassburg and Alsace than Berlin would be endangered by a hostile position near the Oder. It may, therefore, be readily assumed that we shall remain firm in our determination and sacrifice, if it should become necessary, our last man and the last coin in our pockets for the defense of the German eastern frontier as it has existed for eighty years. And this determination will suffice to render the union between your province and the empire as positively assured as things can be in this world.
We confined our demands to what was necessary for our existence and what enabled the big European nation which we are to draw a free breath. We did not include territories where German used to be spoken, when this had been largely due to a propaganda of the German courts. More German used to be spoken in the East, North-east, and elsewhere than today. Remember our ally, Austria, and how familiar German was there in the days of Joseph II. and of the Empress Maria Theresa, when German was a greater force in parts of Hungary than it is or can be today. But, for everything we gave up in the shape of a linguistic and outward union, we have found rich compensation in the intensity of a closer union. If the older gentlemen will think back to the time before Emperor William I., they will realize that the lack of love among the various German tribes was much greater at that time than it is today. We have made notable progress in this direction, and, when we compare the unequivocal expressions of opinion from Bavaria and Saxony today with the familiar sentiments of earlier times, we must say that Germany, which for the past one hundred years had lagged behind the other people of Europe in national development, has rapidly caught up with them. Forty years ago we were far behind all other nations in national feeling and love of one another. Today we are no longer behind them.
Our fellow-countrymen from the Rhine, from the Alpine lake and the Saxon Elbe are attached to one another in affectionate sympathy, not only when they meet abroad, but also at home. A united people has been created in a remarkably short time. This proves that the medical cure which we employed, although it was of blood and iron, lanced only a sore, which had come to a head long ago, and that it gave us speedy comfort and good health. God grant that the cure will be lasting and subject to no change. How far reaching it is has been proved by the testimonials which I have received since I gave up my office. They have come from all people,—from Baden, Bavaria, Saxony, Suabia, Hessen, and from all the districts of Prussia outside the provinces of Frederick the Great. These entirely voluntary manifestations, which were arranged by no one, and which not infrequently came to me at rather inconvenient and inopportune times, have impressed me with the existence of national harmony. Every one of them has given pleasure to my patriotic heart, and has borne witness to a common feeling existing in all German races—this much I wished to say concerning the stability of the political and national union of your province today.
We often sing "Firm is the stand of the faithful guards on the Rhine," but they are standing equally firm at the Warthe and the Vistula. We cannot spare an acre of land in either direction, for the sake of principle if for nothing else. The previous speaker referred to the attempts which had been made, as a result of the movement of 1848, to shake loose the union in which we were then living in Prussia and Germany, and to disregard our boundary lines. These attempts of satisfying the wishes of our Polish neighbors ended with the action of the Prussian general von Colomb, who closed the gates of Posen to the Polish troops which, in response to promises made in Berlin, had been raised under the Prussian General von Willisen. We were obliged to conquer with Prussian troops, and in a bloody war, the army of the insurgents who fought bravely and honorably. I wish to add that even that war was not fought with the Polish people as such, but with the Polish nobility and their following. I remember speaking to some Polish soldiers of the 19th regiment, I believe, in Erfurt at that time, that is in 1850, who called the opponents only "Komorniks"—the Polish word for "contract-laborers." We should, then, not deceive ourselves into believing that even today the number of those who are opposed to the two races in Posen and in West Prussia living together peacefully is as large as statistics may claim.
This brings me to the second point touched upon by the previous speaker, the two races living together peacefully. I believe that many of you have in your employ laborers and servants who speak Polish, and that you are of the opinion that no danger comes from this lower social stratum of the population. Living together with them is possible, and no disturbance of the peace starts with them. They do not promote any movements hostile to us. I do not even mention the fact that they are possibly of another race than the nobility, whose immigration into the Slavic districts is lost in the obscure past. The statistical numbers, therefore, of those opposed to a peaceful communion of both races must be lessened by the large number of laborers and farmers. The lower classes are, in the bulk, satisfied with the Prussian government, which may not be perfect always, but which treats them with greater justice than they were accustomed to in the times of the Polish republic of nobles. They are satisfied with this. It was not part of my programme that the commission on colonization should pay special attention to small holdings of German-speaking settlers. The Polish peasants are not dangerous, nor does it make any difference whether the laborers are Polish or German. The chief thing was to create crown-lands among the big estates, and to rent them to men whom the State could permanently influence. The desire for quick sales and colonization emanated from other competent quarters than myself. It was impossible for me to supervise these measures after I had instigated them.
The difficulties which I met in the forty years of my Polish diplomacy did not start with the masses of Polish laborers and peasants, but were, I believe, occasioned largely, if not exclusively, by the Polish nobility with the assistance of the Polish clergy. Perhaps this latter term is too narrow, for I know of instances when German priests assisted in the Polish propaganda for the sake of peace. This is a peculiarity of our race—and I do not exactly wish to condemn it—that we often place our religion above our nationality. The very opposite is true of our opponents, the Poles and the French people, who regard their nationality more highly than their religion. We are suffering from this habit. We possess, however, a certain material counter-weight, provided the State government unreservedly supports the German element. The religious element has great weight in the family circle and among women, especially the Polish women, whom I have always greatly admired. The minister has a freer access to them than the local governor or the judge. There will, however, always be a powerful weight in the scales, when the Prussian government exercises its influence with firm determination and so clearly that doubts for the future are impossible. Vestigia terrent! we may say, when with 1848, no—not 1848, I mean 1831-32—the attention paid to the Polish nation became almost more pronounced in Germany than that given to the German element. Since then we have surely been able to register progress in our politics. Now I must ask your indulgence for a moment on account of my lumbago. (Voices: Sit down, Your Highness.) Sitting down does not help me. I know this visitor from years of experience. I was speaking of the possibility of having the two races living peacefully side by side. This is not impossible, for in Switzerland we see three different nationalities—the German, Italian, and French Swiss—deliberate quietly and without bitterness on matters of joint interest. In Belgium we see the Germanic Flemish form a united State with the Gallic Walloons, and we perceive that it is possible under circumstances to live peacefully together even with the Poles, when we remember East Prussia, where the Polish Masures, the Lithuanians, and the Germans work together harmoniously. Because nobody has incited the people there, no national ill feeling has appeared among them. It is true, to be sure, that the Catholic priest, with his peculiar interests, is unknown there. But look at your neighbors in Upper Silesia. Have the two races not lived there in peaceful communion for centuries, although the religious differences exist there also? What is it, then, that Silesia has not, and that has made it possible for us to live there, through centuries, in religious harmony? I am sorry to have to say it, it is the Polish nobility and the clergy of the Polish propaganda. The Polish nobles are, no doubt, very influential—more so with the Poles than the Germans—but the statistical figures are much larger than the actual number of our aggressive Polish opponents with whom we have to count.
The nobles are thinking of the time when they were all-powerful, and they cannot give up the memory of conditions when they ruled the king as well as the peasants. The Polish nobles, however, are surely too highly educated to believe that the conditions of the old Polish republic of nobles could ever return, and I should be astonished if the Polish peasants knew the history of Poland so badly that they did not recoil from the possibility of a return to the old state of affairs. The peasants must say to themselves that a "wet year," as the farmers put it, would be their lot if the nobles regained their power. Among the national-Polish representatives that are elected, you generally meet only noblemen. At least I cannot remember having seen a Polish farmer as a representative in the Reichstag or in the diet. Compare this with the election results in German districts. I do not even know whether there are Polish burghers in our sense of the word. The middle classes in the Polish cities are poorly developed. Consequently, when we reduce our opponents to their proper size, we grow more courageous in our own determination; and I should be very glad if I could encourage those who on their part are adding to the encouragement of the Polish nobles. I feel, gentlemen, that I am of one mind with you, who have traveled the hard road hither. I have no influence with other elements, but we shall not give up hope in spite of all vicissitudes.
The address of the previous speaker also referred to vicissitudes and changes. These changes have characterized our entire Polish policy, from 1815 till today. They took place whenever high Polish families gained influence at court. You all know the Radziwill family and its influence at the court of Frederick William IV. If we could make a mental test of the popular feeling of 1831 and of today, we should find that the conviction has greatly increased that we have German fellow-countrymen in the Grand duchy of Posen. The former and, I am tempted to say, childish cult of the Poles as I knew it in my childhood is no longer possible. Then we were taught Polish songs in our music lessons together with the Marseillaise, to be sure. The Polish nobleman, therefore, than whom God never created anything more reactionary, was here thrown into one pot with the French revolution, and liberalism was coupled with the cause of the Poles, because we were lacking in political perspicacity. Such feelings were ingrained in our citizens at that time. I am thinking especially of the citizens of Berlin. If today you ask the opinion of your forty-eight million fellow-countrymen, and compare their views and those of the bulk of the German army with the bugbear which had found lodging in German hearts at the time of Platen's Polish songs, you surely cannot despair of further development. We may, you must agree, register progress, although it is slow and there are lapses. It is like climbing a sandy hill or walking in the lava of Mount Vesuvius. One often glides back, but on the whole one is advancing. Your position will grow the stronger the more vigorously developed our sense of nationality will become. I ask of you, do not despair if there are clouds in the sky, especially in this rainy year which has saddened the farmers. They will disappear, and the union of the Warthe and the Vistula with Germany is irrefragable.
For centuries we have existed without Alsace-Lorraine, but no one yet has dared to think of what our existence would be if today a new kingdom of Poland were founded. Formerly it was a passive power. Today it would be an active enemy supported by the rest of Europe. As long as it would not have gained possession of Danzig, Thorn, and West Prussia, and I know not what else the excitable Polish mind might crave, it would always be the ally of our enemies. It indicates, therefore, insufficient political skill or political ignorance if we rely in any way on the Polish nobles for the safety of our eastern frontier, or if we think that we can win them to fight anywhere for German possessions, sword in hand. This is an Utopian idea. The only thing which we and you, gentlemen, can do under present conditions, and which we can learn from the Poles, is to cling to one another. The Poles, too, have parties, and used to show this even more unfortunately than we, but all their parties disappear as soon as a national question is broached. I wish the same would come to be true of us, and that in national questions we would belong primarily, not to a party, but to the nation. Let us be of as divergent opinions as we choose, but when in our eastern provinces the question arises: "German or Polish," then let the party feuds be laid aside until, as the Berliners say, "After nine o'clock." Now is the time to fight and to stand together. This is just as it is in military matters—and I am glad to see among you many who have experience in such things. Before joining an attack in war we do not ask: Shall we follow our progressive or our reactionary neighbor? We advance when the drum beats the signal, and so we should in national affairs forget all party differences, and form a solid phalanx hurling all our spears, reactionary, progressive, and despotic alike, against the enemy.
If we agree on this—and the dangers of the future are compelling us to do so—we shall win our women and children for the same strict sense of nationality. And if our women are with us, and our youths, we are saved for all time. This is one of our present tasks, to give a national education to our children. I am confident that the German women possess all the necessary qualifications for this task. I shall ask you, therefore, to join me in a toast: The German Women in the Grandduchy of Posen! And may the German idea take an ever firmer hold in your country!
April 1,1895
[The eightieth birthday of Prince Bismarck was celebrated as a national holiday everywhere in Germany. Not less than 5,250 youths from the universities and academies visited Friedrichsruh on April 1 to bear witness, before the "old man" of Germany, to their love for the emperor and the empire. After receiving a delegation from the faculties of all the universities, Bismarck addressed the students as follows:]
Gentlemen! I have just heard from the lips of your teachers, the leaders of higher education, an appreciation of my past, which means much to me. From your greeting, I infer a promise for the future, and this means even more for a man of my years than his love of approbation. You will be able, at least many of you, to live according to the sentiments which your presence here today reveals, and to do so to the middle of the next century, while I have long been condemned to inactivity and belong to the days that are past. I find consolation in this observation, for the German is not so constituted that he could entirely dismiss in his old age what in his youth inspired him. Forty and sixty years hence you will not hold exactly the same views as today, but the seed planted in your young hearts by the reign of Emperor William I. will bear fruit, and, even when you grow old, your attitude will ever be German-national because it is so today—whatever form our institutions may have taken in the meanwhile. We do not wilfully dismiss from our hearts the love of national sentiments; we do not lose them when we emigrate. I know instances of hundreds of thousands of Germans from America, South Africa, and Australia who are today bound to the fatherland with the same enthusiasm which carried many of them to the war.
We had to win our national independence in difficult wars. The preparation, the prologue, was the Holstein war. We had to fight with Austria for a settlement; no court of law could have given us a decree of separation; we had to fight. That we were facing a French war after our victory at Sadowa could not remain in doubt for anyone who knew the conditions of Europe. It was, however, desirable not to wage this war too soon nor before we had garnered to some extent the fruits of our North-German union. After the war had been waged everybody here was saying that within five years we should have to wage the next war. This was to be feared, it is true, but I have ever since considered it to be my duty to prevent it. We Germans had no longer any reason for war. We had what we needed. To fight for more, from a lust of conquest and for the annexation of countries which were not necessary for us, always appeared to me like an atrocity; I am tempted to say like a Bonapartistic and foreign atrocity, alien to the Germanic sense of justice.
Consequently since we rebuilt and enlarged our house according to our needs, I have always been a man of peace, nor have I shrunk from small sacrifices. The strong man can afford to yield at times. Neither the Caroline Islands nor Samoa were worth a war, however much stress I have always laid on our colonial development. We did not stand in need of glory won in battles, nor of prestige. This indeed is the superiority of the German character over all others, that it is satisfied when it can acknowledge its own worth, and has no need of recognition, authority, or privilege. It is self-sufficient. This is the course I have steered, and in politics it is much easier to say what one should avoid than to say what one should do. Certain principles of honesty and courage forbid one to do certain things, just as the access to certain fields is interdicted in the army maneuvers. But the decision as to what has to be done is a very different matter, and no one can be sure of it beforehand, for politics are a task which can be compared only to the navigation of unknown waters. One does not know what the weather will be or how the currents will flow, nor what storms will be raging. There is in politics this additional factor of uncertainty that one is largely dependent on the decisions of others on whom one has counted and who have failed. One never can act with complete independence. And, when our friends whose assistance we need, although we cannot guarantee it, change their minds, our whole plan has failed. Positive enterprises are, therefore, very difficult in politics, and when they succeed you should be grateful to God who has given His blessing, and not find fault with details which one or the other may regret, but accept the situation as God has made it. For man cannot create or direct the stream of time. He can sail on it and steer his craft with more or less skill, be stranded and shipwrecked, or make a favorable port.
Since we now have made a favorable port, as I conclude from the predominant although not unanimous opinion of my countrymen, whose approval is all we have worked for, let us be satisfied, and let us keep and cherish what we have won in an Emperor and an empire as it is, and not as some individuals may wish it should be, with other institutions, and a little bit more of this or that religious or social detail that they may have at heart. Let us be careful to keep what we have, lest we lose it because we do not know how to appreciate it. Germany once was a powerful empire under the Carolingians, the Saxons, and the Hohenstaufens, and when she lost her place, five, yes six hundred years passed before she regained the use of her legs—if I may say so. Political and geological developments are equally slow. Layers are deposited one on the other, forming new banks and new mountains. But I should like to ask especially the young gentlemen: Do not yield too much to the German love of criticism! Accept what God has given us, and what we have toiled to garner, while the rest of Europe—I cannot say attacked us, but ominously stood at attention. It was not easy. If we had been cited before the European Council of Elders before our French affairs were settled, we should not have fared nearly so well; and it was my task to avoid this if I possibly could. It is natural that not everything which everybody wished could be obtained under these conditions, and I mention this only to claim the indulgence of those who are perfectly justified in expecting more, and possibly in striving for more. But, above everything, do not be premature, and do not act in haste. Let us cling for the present to what we have.
The men who made the biggest sacrifices that the empire might be born were undoubtedly the German princes, not excluding the King of Prussia. My old master hesitated long before he voluntarily yielded his independence to the empire. Let us then be thankful to the reigning houses who made sacrifices for the empire which after the full thousand years of German history must have been hard for them to make; and let us be thankful to science, and those who cultivate her, for having kept alive on their hearths the fire of German unity to the time when new fuel was added and it flamed up and provided us with satisfying light and warmth.
I would then—and you will say I am an old, conservative man—compress what I have to say into these words: Let us keep above everything the things we have, before we look for new things, nor be afraid of those people who begrudge them to us. In Germany struggles have existed always, and the party schisms of today are naught but the echoes of the old German struggle between the noble families and the trade unions in the cities, and between those who had and those who had not in the peasant wars, in the religious wars, and in the thirty years' war. None of these far reaching fissures, which I am tempted to call geological, can disappear at once. And should we not be indulgent with our opponents, if we ourselves do not desist from fighting? Life is a struggle everywhere in nature, and without inner struggles we end by being like the Chinese, and become petrified. No struggle, no life! Only, in every fight where the national question arises, there must be a rallying point. For us this is the empire, not as it may seem to be desirable, but as it is, the empire and the Emperor, who represents it. That is why I ask you to join me in wishing well to the Emperor and the empire. I hope that in 1950 all of you who are still living will again respond with contented hearts to the toast
Professor of German Literature, Bryn Mawr College
To relate, in detail, the story of the life of General-Fieldmarshal Graf Helmuth von Moltke—or, as we shall briefly call him, Moltke—means to give an account of that memorable phase of modern history, perhaps, so far as Europe is concerned, the most important of the nineteenth century. This was the ascendency of Prussia, of her king and of her people, culminating in the unification and the consolidation of most of the German states into one great empire, with all its realization of military and political power, of social, economic, and, in a wide sense, of cultural eminence and efficiency. The barest outlines, however, must suffice for the present purpose.
Moltke was born at the threshold of the century the history of which he so prominently helped to shape, on October 26, 1800, at Parchim in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. On his father's side he descended from a family of the North German gentry which had come to various degrees of prominence in some German as well as Scandinavian states. No doubt he inherited the military instinct from this race of warriors, statesmen, and landholders; a race the characteristic traits of which indicated the line along which he was bound to develop, the field in which he was to manifest his greatest achievements. But there is just as little doubt that all the elements of character which exalted his military gifts and instincts into an almost antique nobility, simplicity, and grandeur—his dignity, purity, dutifulness, his profound religious devotion, and sense of humor—came to him from his mother, who was descended from an ancient patrician family of the little republican commonwealth, the once famous Hansatown of Lübeck. How far the Huguenot strain may have influenced him, through his paternal grandmother, is hard to tell, since we know but little of Charlotte d'Olivet.
After the family had moved to Holstein, where his father failed to make a success of an agricultural undertaking for which he seems to have lacked fitness, young Moltke entered the Royal Danish Military Academy as a cadet, and there passed his lieutenant's examination with distinction; but he sought and found a commission under the Prussian eagle. He entered the eighth grenadiers at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. A year later, in 1823, he was sent to what is now called the War Academy in Berlin. Only by the closest economy and by some outside work, partly literary, as we shall see, he managed to get along with his exceedingly small officer's pay. He distinguished himself however so much that he became, successively, a teacher at the Division School and an active military geological surveyor, and finally was taken into the General Staff of the Army. Becoming a first lieutenant in 1832, a captain in 1835, ahead of many of his comrades, he served exclusively in strategical positions. During the four years, 1835-39, he, with some comrades, was in the Turkish dominions for the purpose of organizing and drilling the Turkish Army. He witnessed, as an active participant, the Turkish defeat by the insurgent Egyptians at Nisib on the Euphrates, which was brought about by the indolent obstinacy of the Turkish commander-in-chief. Like Xenophon, Moltke retreated toward and reached the Black Sea. At Constantinople he obtained honorable dismissal from the Sultan. After his return to Prussia he became chief of the General Staff of the Fourth Army Corps. In 1841 he married Mary Burt, a young relative who was partly of English extraction. The union developed into an unusually happy married life, in spite of, or partly because of, their great difference in age.
[Illustration: MOLTKE ANTON VON WERNER]
His wife, by whom he had no issue, lived to see the beginning of his great achievements and fame, but died in 1868, before his proudest triumph. Various commands led him to Italy, Spain, England, and Russia as adjutant of Prussian princes. In 1858 he was appointed chief of the General Staff of the Prussian Army—the institution which he shaped into that great strategical instrument through which were made possible, from a military point of view, the glorious successes of the three wars—1864, 1866, 1870-71—and which has become the model of all similar organizations the world over.
Side by side with the overtowering political achievement of Bismarck and the more congenial life work of Roon, the minister of war, Moltke's service to his country and his king stands unchallenged in historical significance. He has indelibly inscribed his name on the tablets of history as one of the world's greatest strategists. But he did not lay down his work until extreme old age; in 1888, as he so simply put it in his request for relief from duty, he resigned his office, because he "could no more mount a horse." He, however, still remained president of the Commission of National Defense and his last speech in the German Reichstag, of which he had been a continuous member since its establishment, he delivered on May 14, 1890. He died on April 24, 1891. The nation felt that one of its great heroes had passed away.
In two congratulatory documents on the occasion of Moltke's ninetieth birthday, Theodor Mommsen, the historian, has summed up the results of the great soldier's life-work—in the address presented by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and in the honorary tablet of the German cities. These inscriptions may be found in Mommsen's Reden und Aufsaetze. Shortly after Moltke's death, in a commemorative address at the same Academy, the historian and Hellenist Ernst Curtius reviewed Moltke's relations to historical science and his achievements in military science and in history. The Academy had appointed the Fieldmarshal an honorary member in 1860 for his great achievements in the military, geographical, and historical sciences. Professor Curtius in the address draws the outlines of Moltke's character as a student, and explains how he is indebted to the teachings of Karl Ritter, the founder of scientific geography, how he clearly develops under the influence of Niebuhr, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Buch, and Erman, the physicist. He points out how Moltke, as historian and as an expert cartographer, introduces scientific spirit and work into his great creation, the German General Staff. As a strategist, however, it remains to be said that he follows in the footsteps, puts into practice and develops the methods of General von Clausewitz, the first mind who put war on an empirical and scientific basis. Moltke was intimately acquainted with Gibbon through a nearly completed rendering into German of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a translation which, unfortunately, never was printed and seems to be lost even in manuscript. As his favorite books and writers Moltke mentions, among others, Littrow's Astronomy, Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, Clausewitz's On War, Ranke, Treitschke, Carlyle. It appears, then, that his scientific equipment was of the most solid sort, enabling him to make the most valuable contributions to knowledge.
It is impossible to imagine to oneself Moltke breaking into tears, either of wrath or of despair, in great crises of his life, such as we know to have been the case with Bismarck. There is a contrast between these two men in their very makeup. There is tragedy in Bismarck's soul, in its volcanic eruptiveness and its conflicts. He is nervously high-strung in the extreme, the very embodiment, in Karl Lamprecht's terminology, of the type of "Reizsamkeit." He likes to listen to Beethoven's music and his sense of nature reveals him to be impressionable, sensitive. His gamut of emotions and feelings, and their expression, is extraordinary. Moltke, on the other hand, appears to be always in harmony with himself, he is far less impulsive than his great contemporary and friend. His feeling, always awake for nature, has no element of morbid and pathetic sentiment; in the earlier stages of its manifestation we see it slightly tinged by Romanticism. But he is at peace with nature, his great comforting mother. There is no sudden and surprising break in his mental or spiritual development. The ideal of the strategist, as antiquity saw it, appears to be consummated in his person. William James, himself an ardent pacificist, well observed that in the modern soldier there is a matter-of-factness far removed from the bluff and make-believe of modern life in general. He might have chosen Moltke as the best type of this sort of warrior. But there was much more than this scientific and dutiful soldier; there was at bottom of Moltke's nature a fine sense of proportion, an artistic vein, and, not the least element, a Christian philosophy of life just as far removed from mere perfunctory indifferentism as from cocksure dogmatic bigotry and self-sufficiency. We have striking evidence of this in the Trostgedanken, the Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence, which he laid down as the last literary utterance of his full and eventful career. But this is not all; for most astonishing of all in the richness of this well-rounded harmony of over ninety years of life is a lively source of humor, due more to endowment and inheritance from his mother than to her influence, as his letters to her bear witness. When war is declared in 1870 he remarks that a new vitality has entered his carcass, and, on the very eve of his demise, when in the morning he had attended a session of the Upper House of the Prussian Diet, loyal to his work and task to the very last moment, he closed the last and winning game of whist he played with the quotation of that grim bit of humor characteristic of Frederick the Great and his soldiery: "Wat seggt hei nu to sine ollen Suepers?"
In Moltke, if in any one, the character of the man reveals the character and style of his writing. Mommsen, in his address mentioned above, characterizes him as "the man who knew how to describe, as well as how to win, battles, the master of style in his rare speeches, the clever and sympathetic investigator of and writer on manifold ethnic life, the scientific explorer of the regions on the rivers Tigris and Euphrates." It is obvious, though, that this mastery of style, this superb union of form and content, was not attained miraculously and from the start. Still, his first production, published in 1827, a tale (Novelle) in the style of Tieck and his followers, shows distinctive talent, and a tendency toward brevity as well as adequacy of expression, not to mention a sustained sense of harmony and proportion. The young lieutenant also published, anonymously, some poetry, and showed a clever hand in translating from foreign poets. It is a pity that most of these attempts are buried in inaccessible periodicals and have never been republished. But he left the field of poetry and fiction, so far as we know, forever with his next work, the first published under his name and in pamphlet form, a work which, though of genuine political interest and love, was at the same time intended to increase his income to the level of a living wage: Holland and Belgium in their mutual relations; from their separation under Philip II., till their re-union under William I. He read more than five thousand pages of sources for the preparation of this small pamphlet. It was published in 1831, and followed within a year by another one: An account of the internal state of affairs and of the social condition of Poland. Both writings, as in fact everything else from his pen since about 1830, had a more or less direct bearing on his military vocation; since war, according to Clausewitz, is nothing but the continuation of politics by other than diplomatic means.
But the height of his literary mastery is reached in 1841 by the publication of the Letters on the condition and events in Turkey from the years 1835 till 1839, the matured fruit of those eventful and adventurous but, at the same time, constructive years in the Orient. They have been likened to Goethe's Italian Journey. The comparison is justified by striking resemblances. Both works have resulted from diaries and letters actually kept, Moltke's work, however, more faithfully retaining and professing its formal nature. But the resemblance is much closer, arising, in the so-called inner form, from a similarity of attitude, the same wide extent of interests which may be briefly called "kulturgeschichtlich," and, above all, the scientific concern in the country and its inhabitants, to which both brought the most solid and methodical qualifications. It is true, the wealth of Italy, both of antiquity and of the Renaissance, in matters literary and artistic, so exuberantly mirrored in Goethe's book of travel, is not to be found in Moltke's work. But this lack is counterbalanced by those portions dealing with historical events which Moltke actually experienced and even influenced; events, though then unsuccessful, as far as his intentions were concerned, yet important and significant for our own time, as the recent developments on the Balkan peninsula bear ample evidence. Both, Goethe as well as Moltke, are clever and artistic in handling pencil and brush as well as their descriptive pen.
And now the style, in the narrower sense. It is natural, limpid, free from all rhetorical flourishes and wordiness, placing the right word in the right place. Xenophon, Caesar, Goethe, come to mind in reading Moltke's descriptions, historical expositions, reflections. Bookish terms and unvisual metaphors, which occur in the preceding pamphlets, though rarely enough, are entirely absent. The tendency toward military brevity and precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the cumbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed. Still another point is significant, showing the writer to be of born artistic instinct. In a letter to his brother Ludwig, who was to take from Moltke's overburdened shoulders part of his laborious task of translating Gibbon, he cleverly remarks on the exuberant use of adjectives by the historian as being sometimes more obscuring than elucidating, and he simply advises the omitting of some. It is a pity that the translation seems to be lost, and with it an insight into Moltke's elaboration of his style, which a translation would reveal better than original composition. In one respect these letters about Turkey were never equalled by Moltke. Henceforth, he turned absolutely matter-of-fact, a military writer par excellence. Even in his letters those nice bits of humor and incidental manifestations of a subtle and fine nature sense grow scarcer and scarcer. There are two essays—The Western Boundary, and Considerations in the Choice of Railway Routes—both published in the Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, in 1841, and 1843 respectively, that demonstrate this tendency toward specialization. The bulk of his writings from then on falls into that technical series reserved for, and interesting chiefly to, the military man. Even his speeches in the Reichstag, few and far between, considering the extent of years over which they are spread, with all their excellent "Sachlichkeit," their directness and clearness, concern matters and problems that affect, more or less directly, his comprehensive duties as chief intellect of the military organization of his country. So, quite naturally, we see him very reluctantly yield to a gentle but persistent pressure to use his great literary talent for setting down some reminiscences from his life. He declined to publish personal memoirs, however, saying: "All that I have written about actual and real things ('Sachliches') which is worth preserving is kept in the archives of the General Staff. My personal reminiscences are better buried with me." He had turned objective in the highest possible degree, leaving behind all vanities and petty subjective points of view. But after his retirement he wrote, in 1887, on the basis of the great work on that subject by the General Staff and partly managed by himself, that short History of the Franco-German War of 1870-71, which his nation cherishes as a precious inheritance. It is "sachlich" throughout. Starting with a brief reflection on the origin of modern wars he relates the events from the point of view of the directing chief of staff of the army, closing the whole by one impressive sentence: "Strassburg and Metz, estranged from our country in times of weakness, had been regained, and the German Empire had come to a renewed existence." The work is a consummation, in literary form, of his motto "Erst waegen, dann wagen!" From the very threshold of his death we possess as the sum total of his philosophy of life those already mentioned Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a Future Existence. From the point of composition and style these are highly interesting because of the fact that, beside the final version, three extant parallel versions show the gradual working out of form and thought.
Something remains to be said about Moltke the correspondent. The letters preserved or published fully justify his being ranked among the best letter writers in German literature. Here, more than elsewhere, the subtle and finer characteristics of the man, the son, the brother, the friend, the gentle and always kindly responsive nature of a thoroughly human and Christian soul are revealed. Above all, however, and side by side with Bismarck's noble letters to his fiancée and wife, stand Moltke's charming and devoted letters to Mary Burt von Moltke. I shall not venture to describe their wealth of sentiment, of charm, of love, of interest in matters big and small. One of the long series, however, stands conspicuous among them; it is addressed to his fiancée, dated Berlin, February 13, 1842. Charming in its combination of a protective, paternal, and instructive attitude with that of the lover and prospective husband, it is unique also because of the advice given about the gentle art of writing letters, an art in which the great modern strategist excelled.
* * * * *
[Moltke spent four years, from 1836 to 1839, in Turkey, and, as was his habit, sent detailed accounts of his experiences to his family. After his return to Prussia, he collected his material, revised it, omitted all intimate family references, and published it under the title Letters Concerning Conditions and Events in Turkey. The book contained sixty-seven letters. The following is the tenth letter, dated from Pera, April 7, 1836.]
For a long time it was the task of the armies of western Europe to set bounds to the Turkish sway. Today the powers of Europe seem anxious to keep the Turkish state in existence. Not so very long ago serious concern was felt lest Islam gain the upper hand in a great part of the West, as it had done in the Orient. The adherents of the prophet had conquered countries where Christianity had been rooted for centuries. The classic soil of the apostles, Corinth and Ephesus, Nicea (the city of synods and churches), also Antioch, Nicomedia, and Alexandria had yielded to their strength. Even the cradle of Christianity and the grave of the Saviour, Palestine and Jerusalem, did homage to the Infidels, who held their possessions against the united armies of the western knights.
It was left to the Infidels to put an end to the long existence of the Roman Empire, and to dedicate St. Sophia, where Christ and the saints had been worshipped for almost one thousand years, to Allah and his prophet. At the very time when people were wrangling about religious dogmas in Constance, when the reconciliation between the Greek and the Catholic churches had failed, and the defection of forty million people from the rule of the Pope was threatening, the Moslems advanced victoriously to Steiermark and Salzburg. The noblest prince of Europe at that time, the Roman King, fled from his capital before them; and St. Stephen in Vienna came near being turned into a mosque, like St. Sophia in Byzantium.
At that time the countries from the African desert to the Caspian Sea, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, obeyed the orders of the Padisha. Venice and the German Emperors were registered among the tributaries of the Porte. From it three quarters of the coastlands of the Mediterranean took their orders. The Nile, the Euphrates, and almost the Danube had become Turkish rivers, as the archipelago and the Black Sea were Turkish inland waters. And after barely two hundred years this same mighty empire reveals to us a picture of dissolution which promises an early end.
In the two old capitals of the world, Rome and Constantinople, the same means have been employed to the same ends, the unity of the dogma to obtain unrestricted power. The vicar of St. Peter and the heir of the calif have fallen thereby into identical impotency.
Since Greece has declared her independence, and the principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia are offering only a formal recognition to the Porte, the Turks are as if banished from these, their own provinces. Egypt is a hostile power rather than a subject country; Syria with her wealth, Adana (the province of Cilicia), and Crete, conquered at the cost of fifty-five attacks and the lives of seventy thousand Mussulmans, have been lost without one sword-thrust, the booty of a rebellious pasha. The control in Tripolis, hardly recovered, is in danger of being lost again. The other African states of the Mediterranean have today no real connection with the Porte; and France in her hesitation whether she should keep the most beautiful of them as her own is looking to the cabinet of St. James rather than to the Divan at Constantinople. In Arabia finally, and in the holy cities themselves, the Sultan has had no actual authority for a long time.
Even in those countries which are left to the Porte the supreme power of the Sultan is often restricted. The people on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris show little fidelity; the Agas on the Black Sea and in Bosnia obey the dictates of their personal interests rather than the orders of the Padisha; and the larger cities at a distance from Constantinople are enjoying oligarchical municipal institutions, which render them almost independent.
The Ottoman monarchy, therefore, consists today of an aggregation of kingdoms, principalities, and republics which are kept together only by habit and the communion of the Koran. And if a despot is a ruler whose words are law, then the Sultan in Constantinople is very far from being a despot.
The diplomacy of Europe has long engaged the Porte in wars which are not in its interest, or has forced it to make treaties of peace in which it has lost some of its provinces. During all this time, however, the Ottoman Empire had to deal with an enemy at home who seemed more terrible than all the foreign armies and navies. Selim III. was not the first Sultan to lose his throne and his life in his struggle against the Janizaries, and his successor preferred the dangers of a reformation to the necessity of trusting himself to this society. Through streams of blood he reached his end. The Turkish Sultan gloried in the destruction of the Turkish army, but he had to crave the help of an all-too-powerful vassal in order to suppress the insurrection on the Greek peninsula. At this juncture three Christian powers forgot their ancient feuds. France and England sacrificed their ships and men to destroy the Sultan's fleet, and thus laid open to Russia the way to the heart of Turkey, and brought about what they had most wished to avoid.
The country had not yet recovered from these many wounds, when the Pasha of Egypt advanced through Syria, threatening destruction to the last descendant of Osman. A newly levied army was sent against the insurgents, but the generals fresh from the harem led it to destruction. The Porte applied to England and France, who were calling themselves its oldest and most natural allies, but received from them only promises. At this juncture Sultan Mahommed invoked the help of Russia, and his enemy sent him ships, money, and an army.
Then the world saw the remarkable spectacle of fifteen thousand Russians encamped on the Asiatic hills overlooking Constantinople, ready to protect the Sultan in his seraglio against the Egyptians. Among the Turks dissatisfaction was rampant. The Ulemas saw their influence wane; the innovations had hurt countless interests, and the new taxes incommoded all classes. Thousands of Janizaries, who were no longer permitted to call themselves such, and the relatives and friends of thousands of others who had been throttled, drowned, or shot down, were scattered through the country and the capital. The Armenians could not forget the persecution which they had recently suffered, and the Greek Christians, who constituted half of the populace of the original Turkish empire, looked upon their rulers as their enemies, and upon the Russians as fellow-believers in the same religion. Turkey at that time could not raise another army.
And just then France was laboring with her great event, England was carrying a load in her public debts, while Prussia and Austria had attached themselves more intimately than ever before to Russia, compelled to do so by the conditions of Western Europe.
Foreign armies had brought the empire to the brink of destruction; a foreign army had saved it. For this reason the Turks wished above everything else to possess an army of their own of seventy thousand regular troops. The inadequacy of this force for the protection of the extensive possessions of the Porte is apparent after one glance at the map. The very dimensions preclude the concentration of the troops, scattered through so many places, when one particular spot is in danger. The soldiers in Bagdad are 1,600 miles distant from those at Ushkodra in Albania.
This shows the great importance of establishing in the Ottoman Empire a well arranged system of militia. It presupposes, of course, that the interests of those who rule and those who are ruled are not at variance.
The present Turkish army is a new structure on an old and battered foundation. At present the Porte would have to look for its safety to its treaties rather than to its army; and the battles which will decide the survival of this State may as well be fought in the Ardennes or in the Waldai Mountains as in the Balkans.
The Ottoman monarchy needs above everything else a well ordered administration, for under present conditions it will scarcely be able to support even this weak army of seventy thousand men.
The impoverished condition of the country shows only too clearly in the lessened income of the State. In vain a number of indirect taxes have been introduced. A kind of tax on meat and meal is levied in a very primitive way on the street corners of the capital. The fishermen pay 20 per cent, of the catch in their nets. Weights and measures must be stamped anew every year; and all products of industry, from silverware and shawls to shoes and shirts, are stamped with the imperial seal. But the proceeds from these taxes are enriching only those who collect them. The riches melt before the avaricious eye of the administration, and the ruler of the most beautiful lands in three continents is drawing water with the leaky pots of the daughters of Danaus.
For the payment of its necessities the government must rely on the confiscation of property, as it passes to new heirs or outright, on the sale of offices, and finally on presents and the miserable means of adulterating the currency.
In regard to the confiscation of money inherited by State officials, the present Sultan has declared that he will do without it. This edict, however, instead of abolishing the practice, acknowledges the correctness of the principle. Formerly the edicts of confiscation were accompanied by the death warrants of those who were to be robbed. Today there are gentler means in use for relieving people of the surplus of their wealth.
The sale of offices continues to be the chief source of income of the State. The candidates borrow the money at a high rate of interest from some Armenian business house, while the government permits these "lease-holders" to recoup themselves by the exploitation of their provinces to whatever extent they wish. Withal, they must fear either a higher bidder, who leaves them no time to get rich, or the State, if they happen to have grown rich. The provinces know beforehand that the new pasha has come to rob them. They, therefore, prepare themselves. Interviews are held, and if no agreement is reached, war is waged, or if an agreement is broken a revolution takes place. As soon as the pasha has settled with the Agas, he stands in fear of the Porte. He, therefore, combines with other pashas for mutual protection, and the Sultan must negotiate with the future neighbors of a new pasha before he can appoint him. In a very few pashaliks, to be sure, the beginning of a better order of things has been made, the administrative and military powers have been separated, and the taxpayers themselves have agreed to higher taxes, provided they are permitted to pay them directly into the State treasury.
Presents are as customary here as everywhere in the Orient. Without a present the man of lower station is not permitted to approach his superior. If you ask justice of a judge you must take him a gift. Officials and officers in the army are given tips, but the man who receives most presents is the Sultan himself. The expedient of adulterating the currency has been used to the point of exhaustion. Twelve years ago the Spanish dollar was worth seven piasters; today it is bought for twenty-one. The man who then possessed one hundred thousand dollars has discovered that today he has only thirty-three thousand. This calamity has hit Turkey worse than it would have affected any other country, because very little money is here invested in land, and most fortunes consist of cash capital. In the civilized countries of Europe a fortune is the result of having created something of real worth. The man who wins his wealth in this way is increasing at the same time the wealth of his State. His money merely represents the abundance of goods at his disposal. In Turkey the coin itself is the thing of value, and wealth is nothing but the accidental accumulation of money within the possession of an individual. The very high rate of interest, which is here legally 20 per cent, is far from indicating any great activity of capital. It only indicates the great danger of letting money out of one's immediate possession. The criterion of wealth is the ease of its removal. The Rajah will probably buy jewelry for one hundred thousand piasters in preference to investing his money in a factory, a mill, or a farm. Nowhere is jewelry better liked than here, and the jewels which, in rich families, even children of tender years are wearing are a glaring proof of the poverty of the country.