2. The Berlin Schemers and Their Plot

After all the Germans at home and abroad understood the Pan-German scheme of seditious intrigue in foreign countries and the vast web was spun and thrown out over all the cities and continents where the Kaiser's representatives were living, the second thing to be done was to make the plan clear by spreading it out like a great map. The method used, therefore, was pictorial.

The Department of Publicity in Berlin became experts on geography. They began to issue ill.u.s.trated maps so that the rudest German peasants and the German colonists living in Milwaukee or El Paso, in Rio Janeiro or Buenos Aires, in Brussels or St. Petersburg, in Melbourne or Calcutta, could easily understand the method and the goal.

Out of twenty maps issued in Berlin and reproduced by Andre Cheredame, no one is more important than the one marked "The Old Roman Empire." The simplest German miner understood the map at a glance and realized its meaning for the members of the Pan-German League. Here is old Rome marked world capital. Here is Caesar Augustus called the first world emperor. Here is Carthage with its capital looted and Roman peasants remaining after the victory to move into rich men's houses and estates of North Africa. And here also were the maps of conquered Palestine, Ephesus, Athens and Corinth. To be sure the old Romans had to become soldiers, but, later, did not each Roman soldier live in the rich gardens around Thebes, Ephesus and Corinth?

Instantly the imaginations of the German peasants and workmen kindled.

The Kaiser was right. What had been in Rome must be in Berlin. The Elbe must succeed the Tiber. Berlin shall be the second world-capital. Our Wilhelm shall be the second world-emperor. Germania shall be written straight across Europe from Hamburg on the North Sea to Bagdad on the Persian Gulf. Germans alone shall be allowed to carry weapons, as once only the Roman was allowed to own a spear; only Germans shall be allowed to hold t.i.tle deeds to lands, even as once only Romans could hold a field or a house in fee simple. Old Rome won by becoming a military State.

Did not the people of Rome go forth as soldiers and return with triumphal processions, with treasures of loot that took days to pa.s.s along the Appian Way, while the Romans stood cheering and the women and children sang and threw flowers in the path? Why should not the German army, between the reaping of the wheat in July and the threshing of the wheat in October, return from Brussels and Paris laden with treasure, while a second triumphal procession marched down Wilhelmstra.s.se?

The German peasants kindled at this dream. Why should the German have to live always on bologna sausage, drink beer, eat sauerkraut and live in ugly houses when the people of Paris and London drank champagne, ate roast fowl, wore French laces and the finest English wools? It was a wicked shame. Surely the German was intended for something better than sauerkraut and beer!

"Two weeks and we will be in Brussels. Three weeks and we will have Paris. Two months and we will loot London."

This was the plan. How significant that letter, taken from the dead body of a German boy found in No Man's Land, near Compiegne.

"Within three days, Liebschen, we will be in Paris. I intend to bring you a pocketful of Paris rings and jewels, with Paris gowns and laces."

From the body of a German boy found near Luneville was taken this letter saying that, with his three companions, he had picked out four French farms and left the houses standing, and that his friends and himself had picked out these farms as permanent homes. Later he added that Heinrich thought it would be much better for them to wait until they smashed England and made Canada a German colony. Then they could own, not small French farms, but vast Canadian farms with a hundred tenants working for him in the valleys around Toronto and the vineyards of Winnipeg and orchards of Hudson Bay.

Most shrewd and cunning, the plotters of the Potsdam gang. They knew how to feed the fires of envy and avarice in the German people. Every few weeks they placed new material in the hands of every German at home and abroad. They reminded each poor peasant and foreign colonist that he was a superman, and that by day and by night he was to prepare for the time when he would become the head of all the people of the town or industry with which he was related. Poor Germans in foreign countries dreamed their dreams of the time when they would be appointed by the Kaiser and Foreign Minister to take charge of the village in Mexico, the mine in Chile, or when they would be the tax collector in some distant province.

We know now, from letters that have been found, that the German soldiers in France carried in their pockets a description by the German historian Curtius of the triumphal procession along the Appian Way, when the Roman conquerors came home loaded with loot. These skillful German plotters printed at the bottom of Curtius's description the statement that each German soldier must look forward to a similar return from London, Paris and Brussels to march through the streets of Munich and Berlin.

What a dream was this German dream! What treasures were to be brought into Berlin! What marbles and bronzes of Rodin stolen from Paris! At last Berlin was to own beautiful paintings, for the treasures of the Louvre were to be the Kaiser's.

Never was there such a dream dreamed by peasants who soon were to become princes and kings and patricians. The German had exchanged the rye bread of 1913 for the "fog bank" of 1918; had given up German beer to grasp only empty, breaking bubbles. But it was a great dream while it lasted.

In pursuance of his hope he sacrificed three million German boys, left dead in the fields of Flanders and France. He sent home four million German cripples. He filled the land with vast armies of widows and orphans.

It could not have been otherwise. There has never been, and never will be, but one world city--Rome; and there has never been but one world-emperor--Caesar Augustus. There is to be one universal kingdom--and that is the kingdom of G.o.d, the kingdom of love, justice, peace and good-will. The German has been pursuing a will-o'-the-wisp.

A world-kingdom will come, but no Kaiser will rule over that empire of love. In that world-parliament all the races shall be represented as equals; then the earth that has long been a battle-field shall become an Eden garden, where all are patriots towards the world-kingdom, and scholars towards the intellect, and self-sufficing towards the family, and obedient towards their G.o.d.

3. German Superiority a Myth That Has Exploded

Several years before the great war began a Dutch humorist wrote a play on German megalomania. He portrayed a German schoolroom in Prussia.

Thirty or forty embryonic Prussians are at the desks and a Prussian schoolmaster is in the chair.

"Children, what is the greatest country in the world?"

All shouted vociferously, "Germany!"

"What is the greatest city in the world?"

"Berlin!"

"Who is the greatest man in the world?"

"The Kaiser!"

"Should there ever be, children, a vacancy in the Trinity, who is best fitted to fill the position?"

"The Crown Prince!"

"Who are the chosen people of the good old German G.o.d?"

"The German people!"

Never was there a finer bit of sarcasm and yet the Germans were never able to understand the play. The Kaiser, the War Staff, the Cabinet, down to the last wretched creature working in the stables and the sewers, reading the play, exclaimed:

"What is the man driving at? Why, of course the Germans are the greatest people in the world--we admit it!"

Now, during the last few years the Germans have spent untold millions in propagating this myth of superiority, and yet the German intellect has never even had a second-rate position. Call the roll of all the tools that have redeemed men from drudgery and you will find that Germany's contributions are hopelessly inferior to the other nations.

The new industrial era began with the locomotive and steamship; James Watt invented the one and Stevenson the other.

The new era of physical comfort began with the loom; a Frenchman named Jacquard and an Englishman named Arkwright made men warm for their work in winter. Garments within the reach of the poor man in forest and factory, field and mine, means the cotton gin, and that gin is the gift of an American. The sewing machine changed woman's position, but the world owes that to our own Elias Howe.

We owe the telegraph to an English inventor and, in part, to Morse. We owe the cable in part to Lord Kelvin and, in part, to Cyrus Field. We owe the telephone to Bell and the wireless to Marconi.

Holland invented the submarine, Wright the airplane, McCormick the reaper and Edison the phonograph.

An American invented the German submarine; an American invented the German torpedo; an American invented the German machine-gun; an American invented the Murphy b.u.t.ton, the yellow fever ant.i.toxin, the Dakin solution.

An English physician discovered the circulation of the blood, Jenner gave us vaccination, Lister antiseptics, France the Pasteur serums and the Curie radio discoveries, while a Bulgarian, Dr. Metchnikoff, discovered the enemies of the blood.

It was from France, England and the United States that Germany stole the typewriter, the steel building, the use of rubber, the aniline dyes, reenforced concrete bridges, air-brakes, the use of electricity.

One of the most amazing volumes in the world is the "History of Tools and Machinery." We have all known for a long time that there is not one single German name among the eight great masters of painting that begins with Rembrandt and includes men like Velasquez and Giotto. We have long known that there is no German sculptor of the first cla.s.s nor a German sculptor that is within ten thousand leagues of Rodin, Michael Angelo or Phidias. We have long known that Schubert and Schumann and Rubinstein and Haydn and Chopin were all Jews, and that three-fourths of the other so-called German musicians were Jews whose ancestors suffered such frightful political disabilities in Germany and were so regularly looted of all their property that they gave up their Hebrew names and took German, just as now thousands upon thousands of Germans in this country, ashamed of their names, are Americanizing their family t.i.tle.

The simple fact is that if a Jew will only write the creative music, like that of Beethoven, a German whose gift is detail will conduct the orchestra.

The German can standardize a machine, providing an Englishman, a Frenchman or an American will first invent it. The German will gather up the remnants and sc.r.a.ps and odds and ends in a clothing factory--but, oh, think of an American gentleman having to wear the coat that was cut by a tailor in Berlin or Munich! Having during ten different summers looked at their garments, all one can say is that the German men and women are covered up but not clothed.

For thirty years the Germans have paid their representatives to stand on the corner of the street and bawl out to every pa.s.ser-by: "Great is the Kaiser! Great are we Germans! Let all people with cymbals, sackbut, shawms and psaltery cry aloud, saying 'Great is the Kaiser and all his people!'"

And now suddenly the myth has burst like a bubble. The delusion is exploded. The Kaiser has found out that it is dangerous to blow too much hot air into a German bladder.

Measured around the stomach in the Hofbraus in the presence of a barrel of beer, the Prussian and the Bavarian are great; but the hat band requires the least material of any made in four countries.

For the time has come to confess this simple fact that for any one great tool, or art, or contribution to science created by a German there are four invented by either an American, an Englishman or a Frenchman.

4. German Intrigues