much more widely spread and reinforced by the application of ideas of biological evolution.* Since the state is force, "der Staat ist Macht," the supreme test of the right of survival among states is their ability to make war successfully and to conquer their competitors. "Success alone justifies war." To understand German diplomacy and German psychology we must understand that every other state was regarded therefore as a rival and an enemy. States live not on their own inner strength, but on other states. Such conceptions Mr. Vernon Kellogg found to be very generally accepted by the members of the German General Staff, and naturally they assumed that all other countries held the same views but merely lacked the logic to formulate or the sincerity to avow them. Too long a peace was to this highly important and advanced wing of German thought a national calamity, and Germany had been at peace in Europe for over forty years. The time had come for the great catharsis which would restore the

* Cf. Vernon Kellogg, "Headquarters Nights," in Atlantic Monthly, vol. 120, pp. 145–153.

† General von Moltke, quoted by Jules Cambon in the "French Yellow Book," Document No. 3. Harden has also said: "Our success will absolve us."

state to its pristine health. Nowhere is this view more unreservedly expressed than in Bernhardi's "Germany and the Next War," and nowhere is it more clearly implied than in the military preparations made after 1911.

There was to be sure a small part of the population which understood but did not agree with this doctrine, and a very much larger part which did not understand such metaphysic and biology. According to the report of the French consuls in Germany in 1913 these consisted principally of the workmen, artisans, and peasants (peaceloving by instinct), a few of the nobility engaged in business, the members of the commercial classes whose enterprises depended on credit or were supported by foreign capital. "These classes of people either consciously or instinctively prefer peace to war; but they are only a sort of makeweight in political matters, with limited influence on public opinion, or they are silent social forces, passive and defenseless against the infection of a wave of war-like feeling."

However, as we have seen, the party in favor

* "French Yellow Book," Document No. 5.

of peace, though it may have been the numerical majority, possessed no actual power. The real possessors of power in Germany were the party of the army and the Pan-Germanists, and as a matter of fact the two are almost co-ordinate. A German of authority, Kurt Eisner, writing in the Neue Zeit, April 23, 1915, made the following summary:

"Who wields the decisive influence on the trend of foreign politics in Germany? Who gives the life impulse to economic driving forces.? Absolutely none other, for a quarter of a century, than the Pan-Germans. They have acquired a greater influence on the shaping of national policy than even the mightiest combination of interests among the great landowners and capitalists. In the course of years they have put through more measures than all the political parties and all the parliamentary subdivisions of Germany taken together.'

They were busily preparing for the "inevitable" conflict which they themselves had made inevitable. Germany had increased her military establishment very decidedly in the years from 1911 to 1914. Her standing army in time of peace following these changes had grown from

544,000 to 815,000. During this period the Wehrverein conducted a very active campaign through the press and its efforts were rewarded not only by this increase in the size of the army, but also by the granting of a special war levy in the way of taxes on income and property, which was to net 250,000,000 marks for war purposes. When a nation in time of peace begins to mortgage its capital in the interest of its war establishment, the situation may well be considered threatening.

The explanations offered in the Reichstag were to the effect that recent events in the Balkans had altered the balance of power in Europe. This should be remembered when we consider the reasons why the Central Empires were so eager a year later to attack Serbia. The levy included large sums for modern material as well as a special fund which trebled the war treasury, kept in reserve for the first requirements for the mobilization; raising it from 150,000,000 marks in gold to 300,000,000 in gold plus 150,000,000 in silver. The only people to vote against this bill were the Poles, the Socialists, and the Alsace-Lorrainers.

One of the keenest observers in Berlin before the war was Baron Beyens, the Belgian minister. "We can hardly fail to see," he says, "in the 1913 act a preparation for making war at a not distant date. Its call to arms is as clear as the note of the bugle that summons men to the fight." * This is made increasingly plain from a secret report concerning this action which was prepared at Berlin on March 19, 1913, and which came into the hands of M. Etienne, the French Minister of War. It was printed as an enclosure in the second document of the "French Yellow Book," and contains a striking sentence, which shows how closely the projected war was connected with the idea of fulfilling Germany's high mission. "Neither ridiculous shriekings for revenge by French chauvinists, nor the Englishmen's gnashing of teeth, nor the wild gestures of the Slavs will turn us from our aim of protecting and extending Deutschtum all the world over."

But in addition to the desire to prepare for war, this same memorandum makes plain that it was part of the policy of the militarists to * Cf. Beyens, “Germany Before the War," p. 128.