Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
physical structure constantly pulsating with life and activity--there
stands, I would say, not the Germany which I had known, but the Germany
whose limitless ambitions had transformed the world into a place of
horror. And Wangenheim’s every act and every word typified this new and
dreadful portent among the nations. Pan-Germany filled all his waking
hours and directed his every action. The deification of his emperor was
the only religious instinct which impelled him. That aristocratic and
autocratic organization of German society which represents the Prussian
system was, in Wangenheim’s eyes, something to be venerated and
worshipped; with this as the groundwork, Germany was inevitably
destined, he believed, to rule the world. The great land-owning Junker
represented the perfection of mankind. “I would despise myself,” his
closest associate once told me, and this represented Wangenheim’s
attitude as well, “if I had been born in a city.” Wangenheim divided
mankind into two classes, the governing and the governed; and he
ridiculed the idea that the upper could ever be recruited from the
lower. I recall with what unction and enthusiasm he used to describe the
Emperor’s caste organization of German estates; how he had made them
non-transferable, and had even arranged it so that the possessors, or
the prospective possessors, could not marry without the imperial
consent. “In this way,” Wangenheim would say, “we keep our governing
classes pure, unmixed of blood.” Like all of his social order,
Wangenheim worshipped the Prussian military system; his splendid bearing
showed that he had himself served in the army, and, in true German
fashion, he regarded practically every situation in life from a military
standpoint. I had one curious illustration of this when I asked
Wangenheim one day why the Kaiser did not visit the United States. “He
would like to immensely,” he replied, “but it would be too dangerous.
War might break out when he was at sea, and the enemy would capture
him.” I suggested that that could hardly happen as the American
Government would escort its guest home with warships, and that no nation
would care to run the risk of involving the United States as Germany’s
ally; but Wangenheim still thought that the military danger would make
any such visit impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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