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German Problems and Personalities

BY

CHARLES SAROLEA

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1917

_All rights reserved_


[Illustration: Charles Sarolea]


CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                   PAGE

INTRODUCTION                                                1

I. AN AMERICAN PREFACE                                      7

II. MY FORECASTS OF 1906 AND 1912                          12

III. THE CURSE OF THE HOHENZOLLERN                         53

IV. THE GERMAN WAR-TRIUMVIRATE                             85
  (i.) Nietzsche.
  (ii.) Montaigne and Nietzsche.
  (iii.) Treitschke.
  (iv.) Bernhardi.

V. FREDERICK THE GREAT                                    136

VI. THE APOTHEOSIS OF GOETHE                              142

VII. THE SERVICE OF THE CITY IN GERMANY                   148

VIII. THE NEGLECT OF GERMAN                               159

IX. MECKLENBURG, THE PARADISE OF PRUSSIAN JUNKERTHUM      164

X. THE GERMAN RACE HERESY AND THE WAR                     169

XI. A SLUMP IN GERMAN THEOLOGY                            183

XII. THE GERMAN ENIGMA                                    189

XIII. THE TRAGIC ISOLATION OF GERMANY                     196

XIV. RUSSIA AND GERMANY                                   203

XV. THE PEACEMAKER OF GERMANY: PRINCE VON BUeLOW           218

XVI. THE SILENCE OF HERR VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG             226

XVII. THE COMING REVOLUTION IN GERMANY                    231

XVIII. VIA PACIS                                          248

APPENDIX: THE PRIVATE MORALITY OF THE PRUSSIAN KINGS      255




GERMAN PROBLEMS AND PERSONALITIES




INTRODUCTION BY THE LITERARY EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK "TIMES"


Three years ago there was one man in Europe who had a political sight
so clear that his words then written seem to-day uncanny in their
wisdom.[1]

    [1] One of the most eminent American theologians, Bishop
    Brent, wrote in an article on "Speculation and Prophecy": "In
    Dr. Sarolea's volume, 'The Anglo-German Problem,' published
    in 1912, there is a power of precognition so startling that
    one can understand a sceptic of the twenty-first century
    raising serious doubts as to whether parts of it were not
    late interpolation." Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton in his
    "Crimes of England" applied to the "Anglo-German Problem" the
    epithet "almost magical."

This man saw the present war; he saw that Belgium would be invaded by
Germany; he saw that the Germans hated England with a profound and
bitter hate; that German diplomatic blunders had placed that nation in
almost complete isolation in the world; that the Triple Alliance was
really only a Dual Alliance, popular feeling in Italy becoming
increasingly hostile to Austria and to Prussia; that Germans felt
their culture to be superior to the civilization of the rest of the
world, and themselves to be a superior race, with the right to rule
other peoples; that Prussianism and Junkerism and militarism were in
complete control of the German soul; that Germany had ambitions for
world empire, a recurrence of "the old Napoleonic dream"; that the
danger to European peace lay with Germany and not with England; that
Germans believed war to be essentially moral and the mainspring of
national progress; that the whole German people had become
Bismarckian; that the Germans hoped to obtain by a victory over
England that shadowless place in the sun toward which they began to
leap when they beat France in 1870.

The seer who thus saw is Dr. Charles Sarolea, who recently came to the
United States in the interests of his country, one of the most
distinguished of Belgian scholars, a friend of King Albert, holder of
Belgian decorations and honours from British learned societies, for
the last fourteen years Belgian Consul in Edinburgh, and for the last
twenty-one years head of the French and Romance Department at the
University of Edinburgh. His vision was set out in "The Anglo-German
Problem," written in 1912, now published in an authorized American
edition, perhaps the most accurate forecast which has been penned of
to-day's conflict, and certainly one of the most exact analyses of the
German nation made before the world learned, since last August, to
know it as it is--as Sarolea, master delineator of a nation's
character, drew it. Clear, sane, calm, logical, strong--such is Dr.
Sarolea's book, with its "rare perspicacity" and "remarkable sense of
political realities," in the words of King Albert's appreciation of
the work.

Dr. Sarolea, looking at Germany from the British Isles, where he was
writing, perceived that "war is actually unavoidable" unless a
spiritual miracle was wrought; that Europe was "drifting slowly but
steadily toward an awful catastrophe." Why? Because Germany was
strong, envious, ambitious, conceited, arrogant, unscrupulous, and
dissatisfied. It was in Germany that "the pagan gods of the Nibelungen
are forging their deadly weapons," for Germans believe national
superiority is due to military superiority. Dr. Sarolea named as a war
year this very year[2] in which we now are when he said:

    [2] 1915.

"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