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Page 71
From Gaston Choisy's clever character sketch of General Keim, we learn
that as a soldier or tactician, he was a man of no note. He has no ability
as a thinker or as a speaker, but this he has: "the courage of his
vulgarity." "At the age of 68, suffering from Bright's Disease, he
travelled all Germany, his great head always in ebullition, gathering
everywhere for the war-fire all the news, all the stories and all the lies
susceptible of aiding the Cause." "Without Bismarck's authority, he had
his manner--a mixture of baseness, of atrocious joviality, a studied
cynicism and a lack of conscience." "How generous are circumstances! The
spirit of Von Moltke the silent, with the speech of an _enfant terrible_,
an endless flow of language, an endless course of words."
To the Chauvinists of France, Keim is indeed Germany. As to his own
country, Von Ferlach sagely remarks: "Keims and Keimlings unfortunately
are all about us. But they are a vanishing minority." The great culture
peoples do not hate one another. ("Die grossen Kultur-volker hassen
einander nicht.")
Next on the black list, comes General Frederick von Bernhardi, with his
_Germany and the Next War_, the need to obliterate France, while giving
the needed chastisement to England. A retired officer of cavalry, said to
be disgruntled through failure of promotion, a tall, spare, serious, prosy
figure, a writer without inspiration, a speaker without force. Germany has
never taken him seriously; for he lacks even the clown-charm of his rival
Keim, but the medi�val absurdities and serious extravagances in his
defense of war are well tempered to stir the eager watchdogs in the rival
lands. In spite of his pleas, "historical, biological and philosophical,"
for war, he is a man of peace, for which, in the words of General
Eichhorn, "one's own sword is the best and strongest pledge."
Doubtless other retired officers hold views of the same sort, as do
doubtless many who could not be retired too soon for the welfare of
Germany. Into the nature of their patriotism, the Zabern incident has
thrown a great light. "Other lands may possess an army," a Prussian
officer is quoted as saying, "the army possesses Germany."
The vanities and follies of Prussian militarism are concentrated in the
movement called Pangermanism. Behind this, there seem to be two moving
forces, the Prussian Junker aristocracy, and the financial interests which
center about the house of Krupp. The purposes of Pangermanism seem to be,
on the one hand, to prevent parliamentary government in Germany; and on
the other, to take part in whatever goes on in the world outside. Just
now, the control of Constantinople is the richest prize in sight, and that
fateful city is fast replacing Alsace in the passive role of "the
nightmare of Europe." The journalists called Conservative find that
"Germany needs a vigorous diplomacy as a supplement to her power on land
and sea, if she is to exercise the influence she deserves." And a vigorous
foreign policy is but another name for the use of the War System as a
means of pushing business. From the daily press of Germany may be culled
many choice examples of idle Jingo talk, but analysis of the papers
containing it shows their affiliation with the "extreme right," a small
minority in German politics, potent only through the indiscretions of the
Crown Prince, and through the fact that the Constitution of Germany gives
its people no control over administrative affairs. The journals of this
sort--the _T�gliche Rundschau_, the _Berliner Post_, the _Deutsche
Tageszeitung_, and the _Berliner Neueste Nachrichten_ are the property of
Junker reactionists, or else, like the _Lokal Anzeiger_, the
_Rheinisch-Westphalische Zeitung_, the organs merely of the War trade
House of Krupp. Out from the ruck of hack writers, there stands a single
imposing figure, Maximilian Harden, the "poet of German politics," who
"casts forth heroic gestures and thinks of politics in terms of �sthetics,
the prophet of a great, strong and saber-rattling nation," whose force
shall be felt everywhere under the sun.
Bloodthirsty pamphlets in numbers, are listed by Nippold. But the
anonymous writers ("Divinator," "Rhenanus," "Lookout," "Deutscher,"
"Politiker," "Activer General" and "Deutscher Officier") count for less
than nothing in personal influence. They do little more than bay at the
moon.
Impressive as Nippold's list seems at first, and dangerous to the peace of
the world, after all one's final thought is this: How few they are, and
how scant their influence, as compared with the wise, sane, commonsense of
sixty millions of German people. The two great papers that stand for peace
and sanity, the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, with
the _M�nchener Neueste Nachrichten_, are read daily by more Germans than
all the reactionary sheets combined. The Socialist organ _Vorwaerts_,
avowedly opposed to monarchy as well as to militarism, carries farther
than all the organs of Pangermanism of whatever kind.
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