Germany -- Foreign relations; Germany -- Intellectual life; Germany -- Politics and government; World War, 1914-1918
“Believing, as they do, that to-day they are rich and prosperous
mainly because in 1870 they beat the French people, why should they
not believe and trust that in 1915 they would become even stronger and
richer if they succeeded in beating the English?”
And the conflict, when it comes, will be “a political and religious
crusade,” rather than a mere economic war, for the conflict between
England and Germany “is the old conflict between liberalism and
despotism, between industrialism and militarism, between progress and
reaction, between the masses and the classes.”
So many other important points are made in Dr. Sarolea’s closely
written book, in which practically every sentence contains a fact, an
idea, or a prophecy, that it is not possible in this review to do more
than present a few of them in the summary which follows. Though the
present tense is used by Dr. Sarolea and the reviewer, it should be
constantly remembered that Dr. Sarolea was thinking in 1912, not since
August, 1914.
Germany is in “tragic moral isolation.” The moral and intellectual
influence of German culture is steadily diminishing. Other nations
feel a universal distrust and dislike toward Germany. So great is
this antipathy that the Germans imagine there is a malignant
conspiracy against them. An upstart nation, suddenly wealthy and
powerful, Germany has developed an inordinate self-conceit and
self-assertion. The German glories in being a realist. He thinks only
of political power and colonial expansion. Might is the supreme test
of right. He constantly emphasizes the indelible character of the
German race. Germans are suffering from “acute megalomania.” They
think the English decadent, the French doomed to premature extinction,
the Russians “rotten.” Germany is the “reactionary force in
international politics.”
England believes the building of the German Navy is mainly directed
against her, though Germany says she is building to protect her
colonies and commerce. Yet it is not reasonably possible so to account
for the German fleet.
The greatest danger to England is not invasion of the British Isles,
but invasion of Belgium and France. These countries are the “Achilles
heel of the British Empire.” The German strategic railways on the
Belgian frontiers show that Germany is far more likely to invade
Belgium than England, Belgium again becoming the cockpit of Europe.
Germany feels that she has grievances against England; thus her
hatred. She thinks England has checked her commercial expansion. But
this is not true, for English Free Trade has been one of the most
important contributory causes of German prosperity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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