World War I Endings (1)

Before 1914 friends of peace in all countries, but especially in
English speaking lands, had hoped that there would never again be a
real war between civilized nations.

Among the people of the United States and Great Britain it was
unbelievable that any group of responsible rulers would deliberately
plot, in the twentieth century, the enslaving of the world through
military force, as we now know that the war lords of Prussia and
Austria planned it. However, the plot was not only made but was almost
successful. They made, though, a great mistake in the case of England.
They were sure that she would not enter the war. Her turn was to come
later on, after France and Russia had been crushed. The German leaders
were also mistaken in calculating the time that Russia would take to
mobilize her troops. In 1904, at the outbreak of the war against
Japan, the Russian soldiers had become so drunk that it was many weeks
before they could be gotten into any kind of military shape. But at
the outbreak of the great "world-war" the order of the Czar which
stopped the sale of strong drink changed all of Prussia's plans.
Instead of taking two or three months to assemble her army, Russia had
her troops marching in a mighty force through the German province of
East Prussia three weeks after the war had opened. The result was that
the German soldiers had to be sent back from northern France to stop
the victorious march of the Slavs. The battle of the Marne, fought in
the first week of September, 1914, decided the fate of the world. It
hung in the balance long enough to prove that a small addition to the
forces on either side might have made all the difference in the world
in the final outcome. The little British army, which was less than
one-eighth of the force of the Allied side, probably furnished the
factor that defeated the Germans. The presence in the battle of the
German troops who had been withdrawn to stop the Russians, might have
given victory to the invaders.

Germany made a mistake, also, in expecting Italy to join in the attack
on France. Any one of these three factors might have won the war in
short order for the forces of Austria and Germany. With France
crushed, as she might have been, in spite of her heroic resistance,
without the help of the tiny British army, or with the intervention of
Italy on the side of her former allies, it would have been no
difficult task for the combined forces of Germany and Austria to pound
the vast Russian armies into confusion, collect a big indemnity from
both France and Russia, and be back home, as the Kaiser had promised,
before the leaves fell from the trees.

As has been said, the great majority of the citizens in nations where
the people rule, could not believe that in this day and age the rulers
of any civilized country would deliberately plot robbery and piracy on
so grand a scale. They had looked forward to the time when all nations
might disarm and live in peace with their neighbors. In France alone,
of all the western nations, was there any clear idea of the Prussian
plan. France, having learned the temper of the Prussian war lords in
1870, France, burdened by a national debt heaped high by the big
indemnity collected by the Germans in '71, looked in apprehension to
the east and leaped to arms at the first rattling of the Prussian
saber.

Germany, up to 1866 renowned chiefly for her poets, musicians, and
thinkers, had since been fed for nearly fifty years upon the doctrine
that military force is the only power in the world worth considering.
Some of the German people still cling to the high ideals of their
ancestors, but the majority had drunk deeply of the wine of conquest
and were intoxicated with the idea that Germany's mission in life was
to conquer all the other nations of the world and rule them for their
own good by German thoroughness and by German efficiency. It may take
many years to stamp this feeling out of the German nation. As they
have worshipped force and appealed to force as the settler of all
questions, so they will listen to reason only after they have been
thoroughly crushed by a superior force. The sufferings brought upon
the German nation by the war have had a great effect in making them
doubt whether, after all, force is a good thing. As long as the people
could be kept enthusiastic through stories of wonderful victories over
the Russians, the Serbians, and then the Roumanians, they were
contented to endure all manner of hardships.

Someone has said that no people are happier than those living in a
despotism, if the right kind of man is the despot. So the German
people, although they were governed strictly by the military rule,
nevertheless, were contented as long as they were prosperous and
victorious in war. With the rumors and fears of defeat, however, they
began to doubt their government. There are indications that sweeping
reforms in the election of representatives in the Reichstag and in the
power of that body itself will take place before long.