



Produced by Irma Spehar and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)





ENGLAND AND GERMANY

BY

DR. E. J. DILLON


WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

THE HON. W. M. HUGHES, M.P. PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA

BRENTANO'S NEW YORK

CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. LONDON

1917

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK
ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY SUFFOLK

TO

H.S.H. ALICE
PRINCESS OF MONACO

THIS PARTIAL PRESENTMENT OF THE
BEGINNINGS OF A WORLD
CATACLYSM




INTRODUCTION


Behind any human institution there stand a few men--perhaps only one
man--who direct its movement, protect its interests, or serve as its
mouthpiece. This applies to nations. If we wish to know for what a
nation stands and what are its ideals and by what means it seeks to
realise them, we shall do well to know something of the men who lead
its people or express their feelings.

It is of vital importance that we should understand the attitude of
every one of the nations--both friends and enemies--involved in this
war. For in this way only can we know what is necessary to be done to
achieve victory.

And the remarkable man who has written this book knows those who lead
the warring nations in this titanic conflict very much better than
ordinary men know their own townsmen.

Dr. Dillon has moved through the chancelleries of Europe. He has seen
and heard what has been denied to all but very few. In the Balkans,
that cauldron of racial passions which, overflowing, gave our enemies
an ostensible cause for this war, he moved as though an invisible and
yet keenly observant figure. He could claim the friendship of
Venizelos and other Balkan statesmen. He has travelled as a monk
throughout the mountain fastnesses, he has slept in the caves of
Albania. He understands the people of all the Balkans, speaks their
tongues as a native, and knows and assesses at their true value their
leaders.

At the time of the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and the
Archduchess, Dr. Dillon was in Austria, and he remained there through
those long negotiations in which Germany tenaciously clung to her
design of war.

How well he knows Germany let his book speak. His knowledge of Russia
is profound. A master of many languages, he occupied a chair at the
Moscow University for many years, and his insight into Russian
politics is deep.

In this book he speaks out of the depth of his knowledge, and tells
the people of Britain what this war means to them, and what needs to
be done before we can hope for victory. He speaks plainly because he
feels strongly.

It may be that we cannot agree with him in everything that he says.
But no one, after reading Dr. Dillon's remarkable book, will any
longer regard the war as but a passing episode. It is a timely
antidote to that fatal delusion.

For this war is a veritable cataclysm, and the future of the world
hangs upon the result. We must change our lives. Insidiously, while we
have called all foreigners brothers and sought foes amongst ourselves,
the great force of barbarism, in a new guise and with enormous power
of penetration and annexation, has worked for our undoing. This force
now stands bared, in the hideous bestiality of Germany's doctrine of
Might, and it can be defeated only by an adaptation of its methods
that will leave nothing as it was before.

Dr. Dillon's unfolding of the story of German preparation is, it will
be admitted, one of fascinating interest. Of its value as a
contribution to political and diplomatic history it is not for me to
speak. But to its purpose in keying all men to the pitch; all to a
sense of the great events in which we are taking part, I bear my
testimony. "Germany is wholly alive, physically, intellectually, and
psychically. And she lives in the present and future" (p. 311). And
the living force of Germany requires us to rise to the very fulness of
our powers; for as the champions of truth and right we must prove
ourselves physically and morally stronger than the champions of
soulless might.

Germany is wholly alive; but she is alive for evil. We whose purpose
is good, whose cause is justice and whose triumph is indispensable if
honest industry and human right are not to disappear from mankind, are
as yet not fully alive to the immensity and necessity of our task. We
must awaken, or be awakened, ere it be too late.

Germany is living in