The Making of a State/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
GERMANY AND THE WORLD REVOLUTION
(From Washington to Prague. Nov. 20—Dec. 20, 1918)
The Slavs themselves will not seek this fight. Should it come, the fortune of war may waver for a while; but I am sure that, at last, the Germans will be crushed by preponderant foes in East and West. And the hour will be at hand for them to curse even the memory of the five-milliard genius[1] whom they extol—when those five milliards have to be paid back with usury.—Francis Palacký, “Memoranda.” Epilogue to the year 1874.
AT sea again, and no German submarines to fear! A last chance to rest and reflect—if I were not President! Not only on land but at sea I felt at every turn that my personal freedom and private life were gone. Now I was a public, official personage, always and everywhere official. Thus it had to be, since my fellow-citizens, and foreigners too, demanded it; and even on board ship the secret police of Governments kept watch over the new-born Head of a State.
By a happy chance I sailed on my wife’s birthday. My daughter Olga and I kept it quietly, amid roses as ever, and memories—no, not memories, for the thoughts and feelings of two souls which, despite distance, cleave to each other, are something more than a memory.
The sea, the sea! Rest for nerves and brain. Nought but sea and sky by day and night. The throb of the engines and propellers goes unheeded. In my exile I had lost the habit of regular sleep. I doubt, indeed, whether I slept well for five consecutive nights during the whole four years. My brain was ever working, like a watch, considering, comparing, reckoning, estimating, judging what the next day would bring forth on the battlefields or among Governments, a constant measuring of distances and of deviations from the goal. The sea lulls. Even the life on board is soothing. I went over the “Carmania” and the officers explained to me the progress in the art of navigation. I thought of my first voyage from France to America forty years before and of the old-fashioned steamers of the time. Then I had travelled as an unknown man with no position, yet full of hope and enterprise. Now I was returning from the same New York, perhaps on the self-same course, as President of a State, and equally full of hope that my work would prosper. In America, and afterwards in England and everywhere, numbers of people asked me what it felt like to be President since I had secured independence for our people. They took it for granted that I was the happiest man on earth. In Prague a well-known German writer visited me so that, as he said, he might see with his own eyes a really happy man. Happy?
As President I thought only of going on with the task in hand, and of the responsibility which all of us who were capable of thinking politically would have to bear. I felt neither happy nor happier than before, though knowledge of the inner consistency, of the internal logic of my long life’s work gladdened me. From a review of my own life and of what I had done abroad, I went on to review the world war, the political evolution of Europe since 1848, that is to say during my lifetime, and sought to trace amid a multitude of details the scarlet thread of cause and effect.
“So we are free, shall be free. We have an independent Republic! A fairy-tale,” I said to myself, again and again, now unconsciously, now consciously and aloud, “that we are really f-r-e-e and have our own Re-pub-lic!”
Yet, in my mind, stillness reigned. Day after day I paced the deck, gazing across the waves; though the sense of new duties, new tasks, knocked ceaselessly at the door of my brain; anxieties about the peace negotiations and their outcome, care upon care. One thing was clear-despite science and philosophy, reason and wisdom, prudence and foresight, the lives of men and of peoples run, in large measure, otherwise than they will and wish. Still, there is in them a logic which they perceive retrospectively. The efforts and plans of the most gifted political leaders, of the men who make history, reveal themselves as vaticinatio ex eventu.
The whole war through I had compared the plans and efforts of each belligerent party with those of the other. On the German side there had plainly been preparedness, a thoroughly thought-out undertaking on a large scale, with bold intent to fashion the future development of Germany, of Europe and of the world; but the outcome had shown the fatal mistakes of a people undeniably great, a people of thinkers qualified in many ways to teach all nations. On the other side, the Allies had lacked unity, both singly and as a whole. They had no positive plan—both sides wished to win, but that is no plan—they made big political and strategical blunders, and were nevertheless victorious not only by reason of their own superiority but thanks also to the errors of the foe. To me, the battle of the Marne seems an example of this human blindness on a large scale. If we assume that the French themselves did not expect to win it, as several French strategists have admitted, and that the Germans lost it only through the mistake of a subordinate officer, Colonel Hentsch, whom the literature of the Marne Battle has made notorious, does not the question “Why?” seem the more insistent? Or, to take another example: In 1917 and at the beginning of 1918 the Austrians and, perhaps, the Germans as well, could have got from the Allies peace terms under which we, and the other nations now liberated, would have won far less. The Allies were disposed to make peace; some of them too much so; a clear, honest word from Vienna about Belgium, and an open breach with Germany would have softened the hearts of England and France towards Austria-Hungary. But the insincerity of the official policy pursued in Vienna and Berlin, and their incorrigible arrogance and blindness, helped the Allies to hold out and to conquer. Who, at the beginning of the war, expected the overthrow of Russia and the establishment of a Communist Republic? Who foresaw the Revolution that came forth from the war and altered the political face of Europe and of the whole world? Shakespeare has put it very wisely:—
Yet a belief that Providence watches over us and the world is no reason for fatalistic inactivity but rather for optimistic concentration of effort, for a strict injunction to work determinedly, to work for an idea. Only thus are we entitled to expect the so-called “lucky accident” that springs from the inner logic of life and history, and to trust in God’s help. In my work abroad and throughout my life I remember case after case in which my plans failed, and the result was nevertheless better than my original design. How impatient I was, for example, whenever the Allied armies made slow progress; yet the very protraction of the war enabled us to make ourselves known by propaganda and to enter the field with our own forces! Had the Allies triumphed speedily we should not have won our independence. Austria would have survived in one form or another. In my messages to Prague I urged that members of Parliament and journalists should be sent abroad to help me. They were not sent, the work was done without them and, as I saw on reflection, it was better that we should have been alone and obliged to strain every nerve in systematic and united work. The Siberian Anabasis, and many another incident, helped us unexpectedly in much the same way. Going back still further, I often think how unwillingly I left Vienna in 1882 to settle in Prague, what epoch-making plans I then had and how, instead of pursuing them, I was compelled in Prague to study our people thoroughly and to enter political life at an early stage. The whole of life is shot through with paradox. Many a “lucky accident befell me at home and abroad. It was by accident that, after the outbreak of war, I was able to justify my journey to Holland in the eyes of the police and that I had a passport, good for three years, which had been issued just before the war. (It seems that the police superintendent in Prague, Křikava, fell into disgrace because he allowed me to travel abroad.) Only by a lucky chance did I get over the frontier to Italy; the frontier official was very doubtful whether he should let me pass, and before his telegraphic request for instructions could be answered I had got away. From Switzerland I wanted to go home once more and had asked for a visa, but friends in Prague heard, in the nick of time, that I should have been arrested and condemned immediately. Again, in 1916, when I was in London, I was to have crossed the English Channel on the “Sussex”; but the date did not suit Dr. Beneš, who telegraphed me to postpone my visit to Paris. The “Sussex” was sunk by the Germans—the incident evoking an emphatic American protest. When I was going to Russia in the spring of 1917 the ship was only saved from a German mine during the crossing from Scotland to Norway by the Captain’s presence of mind at the very last moment. And by how many lucky accidents did I not profit during the Russian Revolution and the fighting in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kieff! Were I more superstitious than I am, I might fall into the Emperor William’s error and think myself a special instrument of God. But theological belief, I repeat, ought not to seduce us either into fatalism or into pride, and we should never forget that Providence has to care for others as well. Dr. Beneš is also entitled to claim good fortune. He succeeded in carrying on the work in Prague under the eyes of the police, in organizing the “Maffia” and in crossing the frontier with such a passport that I was horror-stricken when I saw it. It had been “arranged so amateurishly that it would have aroused my suspicions at the first glance—but the German frontier official never noticed it. Nor was Huza touched when he often passed with me unscathed through the street fighting in Russia. Once we were going with Klecanda to the Kieff railway station to see Muravieff, when a shot was fired, the bullet striking a telegraph post in front of us. So close to us did it fly that we felt the air it displaced. The same Providence watched over us both.
People often made merry over the idea that Professors like Wilson, Masaryk and Beneš, and men of science like Štefánik, should decide questions of international policy. Our professorships mattered little; and there are professors and professors. What mattered was that we, at least we three Czechoslovaks, had won our positions by work and diligence, and that I was born poor and never grew rich. Thus I gained knowledge of men and of life and, with all my theorizing, remained practical. The same is true of Beneš and Štefánik. I never wanted to be a professor; I wanted to be a diplomatist and a politician. In Vienna, when I was unable to enter the Oriental Academy and to take up a diplomatic career, I was very unhappy; yet I ended by becoming a politician and a diplomatist! Though I wished not to be a professor, fate soon made a teacher of me. After a short apprenticeship as an artisan, I had to give lessons in order to earn my living as a high school and university student. Nor, later, was I to be spared a professorship; yet it did me no harm and even helped me politically.
In philosophy I strove to attain scientific precision, concreteness and realism. The philosophy of the schools estranged me, for it was a survival and continuation of medieval Scholasticism. Metaphysics I did not like, for I found no satisfaction therein. In my eyes philosophy was, above all, ethics, sociology and politics. I might be styled, in the jargon of the learned, an “activist” or, perhaps, a “voluntarist,” for I have always been active: a worker. I have never recognized an antagonism between theory and practice, that is to say, between correct theory and right practice; and just as I opposed one-sided intellectualism I stood out against practice divorced from thought. Plato was my first and chief political teacher; then Vico, Rousseau, Comte, Marx and others. My first considerable work “On Suicide” gives in a nutshell a philosophy of history and an analysis of our modern era; and in it I first laid stress upon the importance and the necessity of religious feelings in modern men and in society. Metaphysical experience I found in art and particularly in poetry; and poetry, albeit realistic poetry, helped me in political life. I have always been a reader of philosophic and scientific works, without neglecting pure literature and literary criticism. My imagination I exercised deliberately and, thanks to scientific precision, I escaped becoming fantastic. In science, it is a question of acquiring an accurate method. I sought to develop a critical faculty as a preservative against shallowness, and insisted on strict and pitiless analysis, even in history and sociology; but the analytical method was for me a means, not an end. The end was synthesis and organization, as all my writings show. Nor do I regret my critical work or my exposure of the Königinhofer and Grünberger manuscripts, though they had long been regarded as one of our national treasures. I regret only the mistakes which I made. My opponents deplored my rationalism, claiming that the Fatherland and the national consciousness of our people were being endangered, although I was on principle hostile to the one-sided rationalism that takes no account of the feelings and of the will, or of their psychological and ethical significance. True, I did not recognize the rightness of all feelings; and the lengths to which parochialism could go was shown when I was obliged to demonstrate in a court of law that my work “On Suicide” did not advocate suicide.
In political life I studied and observed men in the same way as I study characters in novels or in modern poetry. One must know men, select them and assign to them suitable tasks if one is to organize them politically. At an early stage I acquired the habit of observing the people with whom I had to deal, or who were prominent in public life, as though I intended to write a book about them. I collected all possible data upon friend and foe, and gathered biographical material upon those who played an active political part. Before meeting statesmen and public men, I read their writings or speeches and got as much information as I could about them. This habit really began in childhood. At the age of fourteen, when I was about to become a teacher, Lavater’s “Physiognomy” fell into my hands. I read it eagerly and grasped its importance for teachers. Hence, possibly, my continual study of men—and of myself.
Soon after settling in Prague I was drawn into politics and came into touch with all our leaders. My first experience as a member of the Austrian Reichsrat and of the Bohemian Diet (1891–98) gave me pleasure but did not satisfy me. I was oppressed by the partisanship, the narrowness, the sectarian spirit of the small parties and groups; and, above all, I felt the need of a better political education and of getting others to work with me. I was still immature. In Parliament I was concerned not only with party politics but with culture, that is to say, politics in a broader sense, unpolitical politics, and with journalistic work. After my first brief experience of Parliament I gave myself up therefore to the study of our national rebirth, of Dobrovský,[2] Kollár, Palacký, Havlíček and their contemporaries. From them I learned how our people could evolve, and what our aim and our essential task in future would be.
The Czech question I always conceived as a world-problem. Therefore I constantly compared our history with that of Austria as a whole and of Europe. The object of all my journalistic writing and of my books was, so to speak, to fit our people into the structure of world-history and world-politics. Since we lived under the sign of Austria, Europe knew little of us. Hence my journeys throughout Europe and America and my eagerness to study the chief civilized countries and their history, philosophy and literature. I travelled in Austria, Germany, America, England, Russia, the Balkans and Italy. To France I did not go because I had learned her language and followed the course of her culture since my schooldays. The value of this experience of the world proved itself during the war, as did my knowledge of languages.
In the second period of my membership of Parliament, from 1907 onwards, I made Austria and the whole Austrian structure the subject of careful investigation. In Vienna and elsewhere I collected information upon the Emperor, the Court and the Hapsburg family, observing very keenly the principal Archdukes, like Francis Ferdinand and Frederick. During the sittings of the Reichsrat, which I did not fail to attend, I often read political works and memoirs; and, as a member, I made myself familiar with the mechanism of the State and of public administration. Nor did I forget the army. When people began to talk of General Conrad von Hötzendorf, I gathered facts about him, and had more than one dispute with Machar, whose opinion of Conrad was more favourable than mine. In the army I had a number of acquaintances and friends who had passed through the Vienna military academy and were thus able to explain to me the whole composition of the Austro-Hungarian forces and of the higher command. And I was well-informed of Austrian military designs.
Why did I do all this? Thoughtful people might have gleaned the reason from the constant interest I took in the problem of revolution, and from my views on historical and natural rights in conjunction with the problem of what constitutes real democracy. On this account I came into conflict with the Government party, and also with our Radicals in regard to tactics. I could not tell them why the question of revolution interested me so deeply and, indeed, disquieted me; for I expected circumstances to arise in which I should have to settle the question practically; and I confess that I hoped the cup would pass from me. I may have been unjust to our Radicals in connection with the “Youth” movement, for it was a beginning, a first essay which exerted a certain educational influence. In principle, I still disagree with Radicalism; for an experienced man, who is capable of historical and political thought, draws his programme from the observation and study of contemporary history and carries it out consistently. A political man, a statesman, goes his own way and puts his ideas into practice, whereas Radicals are often as blind as Reactionaries. Both do the opposite of what their opponents do, and live by contrariness. Neither did nor do I believe in the so-called “golden mean,” the unthinking policy and tactics of living from hand to mouth.
It was because I knew the Slav world, and the Southern Slavs and Russia in particular, that I came into collision with Aehrenthal[3] over the Balkan policy of Austria-Hungary. For our current Slavism I had little liking. The pro-Slav “twaddle”—as Neruda once called it—was repugnant to me; and I could not stand the “patriots” and “Slavophils” who had not even learned the Russian alphabet and were obliged to speak German with Russians and with foreigners generally. I remember vividly how angry my nearest colleagues were when I began a discussion on the Slovak question and gave much space to it in the “Naše Doba” and in the “Čas.” To me, an abstract and narrow political allegiance and patriotism, coupled with ignorance of our real people in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, seemed totally inadequate. From childhood I thought it my duty towards the Czechs to acquire concrete understanding of the character, views and life of our people in Slovakia as well as in Moravia and in Bohemia. The rights of Prague are assuredly as good as those of any Slovak village—though too many people in Prague do not live the life Neruda lived, but content themselves with coffee-house theories and pothouse imaginings. As a Czechoslovak and a Slav I feel at home with the country-folk and with their dialects; and, philosophically, I stand with Hus, Chelčický[4] and Žižka, down to Havlíček and his successors. At home and in Vienna parochialism oppressed me, the parochialism of Prague and the characteristic parochialism of Austria. Pettiness does not proceed from geography but from men, characters, manners. One does not become a citizen of the world merely by travel of the ordinary sort, or by official international intercourse, but by penetrating spiritually into the life of individuals, of nations and of mankind. It was my own great good fortune and happiness that, in my journey through life, I met Charlotte Garrigue, in whom French blood and American vigour were united. Without her I should never have seen clearly either the sense of life or my own political task. Thus France and America helped me and, through me, helped our nation to win beneficent freedom.
I can only indicate, not describe, how life prepared me for the work that fell to my lot during the world war, how I conceive purposefulness in individuals, in nations and in humanity, and how single lives are organically combined with the life of whole communities. Despite my political vigour I can say, with a clear conscience, that I never came forward unbidden, that I never sought prominence. I was begged and driven to take up the matter of the Königinhofer manuscripts; I was challenged to make a stand in the Hilsner affair; into the conflict over the Agram High Treason and Friedjung trials and with Aehrenthal, my Croat university students literally dragged me. Even my literary work consists largely of answers to questions that were forced upon me. There is deep truth in the words “He lives well who is well hidden,” and they apply not only to monks but to politicians. And, if it be permissible to compare small things with great, God guides the Universe and none sees Him. He never shows Himself, and takes, assuredly, no delight in the praise of countless priests.
A second wholesome rule, which many ignore, is not to want always to be first. It is enough to be second or third. I am a very strong individualist, yet I know that others exist besides me, that I do not live by myself alone but by the life and work of my fellow-men and of those who have gone before. An observant public man and practical politician soon sees that few things are new in the world and that he brings little that is new into it. Moreover, in political life we must think not only of organizing, leading and doing but of coordinating, working together and disciplining ourselves. Perhaps everybody would like to be a small Napoleon, but normal men like equally to obey, and obey gladly. Above all, patience is necessary, everywhere, in everything and especially in politics. Without patience there is no true democracy. A democrat may be dissatisfied, uneasy, but he must not be impatient. Patience is a pledge of humaneness.
The Errors of Germany.
The wireless news from Europe which reached us on board ship necessarily turned my thoughts once again to the war. Among the items were the documents published by the Bavarian Government on the war-guilt question and the statement they evoked from the German ex-Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg; the entry of Marshal Foch into Strasburg on November 25, and, finally, the solemn abdication of the Emperor William in Holland. The Kaiser’s manifesto was more than an abdication: it was a recognition of the Revolution.
The theory that Germany was “stabbed in the back” and that the Allied victory was solely due to the demoralization of the army, to Socialist agitation and to internal revolution is untenable. Even were it sound, it would furnish new proof of the Germans’ shortsightedness and ignorance of their own domestic conditions. If the influence of the German Social Democrats is to be taken into account, the influence of Socialists and pacifists in Allied countries cannot be ignored; and the French have likewise a theory of a “stab in the back” which, according to some of them, prevented Foch from crossing the Rhine into Germany. The truth is that war-weariness grew simultaneously in all belligerent countries, and grew for the same reasons.
Attentive observation of the development of the belligerent armies, and of the strategy and tactics on both sides, led me to the conclusion that the strategy and tactics of the French were superior to those of the Germans. At first, I had feared that the Germans would be superior; but the course of the war convinced me that their very Prussianism, that is to say, their outward orderliness and their mechanical precision, rendered them militarily weaker than the French. Prussian absolutism and, towards the end, the Kaiser’s influence, did harm even to the army, which grew stiff and relied bureaucratically upon its organization, upon numerical preponderance and upon sundry technical advantages such as the rapid movement of troops on well-built strategic railways. The French army, on the other hand, had benefited by being republicanized, by being permeated with a greater spirit of freedom and by being criticized in the same spirit. German tactics, based upon phalanxes in close formation and on the idea of turning the enemy flank, proved less effective than the French system of advancing in shorter columns marching in echelon. Even militarily, the Germans were centralist and absolutist, while the French were individualist and republican. During the war the French called their field tactics “le système D.,” that is, “se débrouiller” or “Use your wits.” And French soldiers, both individually and as leaders, knew how to use their wits.
English and French military experts often told me that General von Schlieffen’s strategical plan was good in itself but unsuited to the world war, perhaps because it was inaptly amended by General von Moltke, the German Chief of General Staff, who extended the Western army as far as Switzerland, whereas, according to Schlieffen, it should have reached only as far as Strasburg; or, as I am inclined to think, because the plan had been bureaucratized. My interest in it, as providing for a war on two fronts, and my enquiries about it among military experts, were prompted in part by the similarity between the geographical position of Germany and that of our future State. I had long noted the differences of opinion and the waverings in the German Supreme Command. The question was whether the main effort ought to be made on the West or on the East, against France or against Russia. In answering it the Germans were influenced by their leading military authority, Clausewitz, who taught them that the enemy’s strongest point must always be their objective. But who were the stronger, the Russians or the French? The elder Moltke wished, in his later years, to stand on the defensive in the West and to take the offensive against Russia with the whole strength of the German army. His plan, which was worked out in detail in the eighties of last century, was in accordance with the political situation, for England was then hostile to Russia. Bismarck and General Count Waldersee, who succeeded the elder Moltke as Chief of General Staff, agreed with it. Schlieffen, who succeeded Waldersee in 1891, found it no easy task to withstand Moltke’s authority, though he was disposed to think that the main attack should be directed against France and that Austria should deal with Russia. Under him, the General Staff and the Kaiser decided in this sense; and, according to some accounts, the Emperor William was really the author of Schlieffen’s plan.
But in 1914 the political situation was essentially different. England stood with France and Russia, and Italy and America presently joined the Allies. The balance of forces and their disposition were other than they had been in the time of the elder Moltke. The occupation of Belgium led, moreover, to tactical changes that were not in harmony with Schlieffen’s main postulates. Moltke the younger took over Schlieffen’s plan for the war of 1914 but gave it up after the battle of the Marne and returned to that of his uncle, Moltke the elder. It was then too late, and the change merely shows the perplexity of the German Supreme Command. To some extent the Germans were carrying out the concept of the elder Moltke when they beat the Russians in the East and waged a war of movement, while they fought a war of position in France and were really on the defensive. The French adapted their tactics to their own numerical inferiority, whereas Germany trusted too much to her traditional numerical preponderance; and she failed to change strategy and tactics when the other Allies came into the field alongside of the French. At the moment of the final German offensive in 1918, the Germans possessed numerical superiority or, at least, equality of numbers. Yet they lacked mobility and the gift of improvisation. True, they sprang some surprises in detail upon their enemies, as, for instance, with their long-range guns; and though they had conscientious Generals, they lacked real military leaders. Hence their incapacity for unitary action on a grand scale and their addiction to small sporadic enterprises and partial successes which served only to mislead them. It was always a puzzle to me why they besieged Verdun so violently and obstinately. What might they not have done had they thrown the greater part of their army into Russia when Stürmer was in power in 1916!
It may be that, in this war, the military leaders, not on the German side alone, were not masters of the situation. For the first time the war was literally a war of masses, of whole peoples, a democratic war if the term is not inappropriate. It would almost seem that, in democratic war, the leader of an immense host cannot take decisions by himself but has to consult other leaders, since battles and the war as a whole can only be won by the coordination of separate armies. Voltaire wrote long ago that the biggest armies can do nothing big, that they neutralize each other, and that such war brings naught save woe to peoples. In high degree this is true of the world war.
But the defeat of Germany was not due to military deficiencies alone. As Clausewitz rightly said, war is the pursuit of political ends by other means; and the whole German estimate of the situation in Europe and in the world, and even of the situation in Germany, was wrong. The pan-German scheme—the German army and its corps of officers were pan-German in tendency—was erudite, but of dubious quality. The Germans miscalculated the balance of forces, political, military and economic; they over-estimated themselves and their allies and under-estimated their foes. At the outset they under-estimated England and, until the last moment, they disbelieved obstinately in the military mobilization of America. By experiments they proved to their own satisfaction that the Americans could not cross the Atlantic; and in their own imagination they exaggerated the power of submarines, of which, in any case, they had too few. The way they deceived themselves about Austria is almost incomprehensible, for they must have seen, at a very early stage in Galicia and Serbia, how incapable the Austrian commanders were. To my mind, the campaign against Italy likewise reveals the incapacity of Austria, and of Germany too; for a better and more vigorous leader of the Austro-Hungarian and German troops would have utilized Northern Italy more effectively against France. On the Allied side only the French and, to some extent, the Italians were in a position to take the field with armies already organized on the basis of compulsory military service and animated by military traditions, whereas the British and American armies were largely improvised—conclusive proof of the inefficacy of Prussian militarism. Even in a military sense, absolutist monarchism was defeated by democracy.
Nor did the Germans take the industrial supremacy of the Allies sufficiently into account. The British were soon able to cope with the German submarines. The Americans invented deadlier gases than the Germans but refrained from using them for reasons of humanity. Edison helped the army by a number of successful inventions which accomplished more than the miracles people expected him to perform, for they increased the fighting efficiency of his fellow-countrymen. And just as the Germans relied too much on material forces and on the mechanism of organization, so they failed to comprehend moral forces and to understand the ethical strength of England and America, Italy and Serbia. They believed France degenerate and were blind to the degeneracy of Austria-Hungary. In fact they were beaten in the field by their own science, their history, their philosophy, their policy, and by Prussian militarism.
In saying this I do not belittle the military achievements of the Allied armies, all of which helped the French to gain the final victory. The British navy kept the seas open for the Allies and made it possible for food-stuffs, munitions and raw materials to reach them. As soldiers, the British distinguished themselves by their power of resistance and exemplary tenacity; and when Field-Marshal Haig attributes the Allied victory to a miracle, he recognizes the severity of German pressure but criticizes at the same time the lack of unitary leadership among the Allies. True, enemy leadership was not unitary, but the Germans managed at least to keep the politicians and strategists of Vienna within bounds. And during the whole war the Germans certainly showed admirable endurance, efficiency and skill in details. They stood out stubbornly against the greater part of the world. All respect to them!
The American share in the victory is generally recognized. It consists not only in the contribution of fresh and valiant troops at a critical moment but in the circumstance that the United States joined the Allies at all. Before coming into the war America had helped them by supplying food-stuffs and war material; afterwards she helped them by the great authority which President Wilson acquired throughout the world. In no respect was the shortsightedness of the Germans so obvious as in their treatment of America in America, and in their failure to understand the situation after the American Declaration of War.
Neither ought we to forget the other Allies, above all unhappy Russia. Her share in the successful defensive operations at the beginning of the war deserves to be dwelt upon, for Russia, with France, bore the brunt of the fighting before England had created big armies, Italy had joined the Allies and America had decided upon active intervention. Though outward and quantitative, not inward and qualitative, the power of Russia inspired the West with hope in dark hours, as it inspired likewise the Austrian Slavs, Serbia and Roumania. It formed a moral armament and enhanced endurance and pertinacity. The initial Russian successes against Austria had at once a military and a politico-psychological importance which found expression in the first phases of our revolution. Our joy in Russia’s share in the victory and in the services she rendered is clouded to-day not only by the thought of the defeat and catastrophe that befell her afterwards—mainly in consequence of her internal rottenness—but also by critical knowledge of the moral quality of her merits and sacrifices. Her sacrifices were not made consciously for ideal aims in the same degree as those of the other Allies. Most of the Russian dead fell less in the service of an idea, of a nation, of a State, than as the passive victims of ambitions which they neither knew nor understood. The greatest of Russian wars was fought by the old Tsardom, for whose sins and crimes hecatombs of human sacrifices had to pay; and the origins and aims of this Russian war are to be sought in the unhappy un-Russian policy of old Russia. Thus, despite the sad tragedy of them, the remarkable efforts and sufferings of Russia are depreciated in our eyes, and the only compensation is that, without them, Russia might not have been freed so soon and so completely from the bad old system. But at what a price had this freedom to be bought!
Italy, too, played her part in the victory early and late in the war, and Roumania and Greece brought welcome help to the greater Powers. And what shall we say of Serbia who, despite disaster, held out to the end against enemy superiority, suffered all the horrors of which the Austro-Magyar soldiery were capable, retreated valiantly through the Albanian mountains and stood loyally side by side with the Allies on the Salonika front till she finally reaped the fruits of her heroism?
Why the War Came.
What is the meaning of the world war, of so immense a mass phenomenon in the history of Europe and of mankind? The Marxist explanation is inadequate. Materialism is scientifically impossible, and the economic doctrine of historical materialism is one-sided. The way it is expounded in relation to capitalism is not wholly wrong, but it is partial, incomplete and vague. The conception of capitalism itself is indefinite. Assuredly, there were wars long before the capitalist system, and nobody has shown in what measure this system engenders or develops war. Are we to understand by “capitalism” the economic system as a whole? Or finance, financiers and bankers in particular? Or heavy industry? If so, in what countries? Capitalism exists in all countries, and thus capitalism would be fighting capitalism. Then which capitalism is the decisive factor? We are brought back to the main question—which of the belligerent parties took the offensive and which were on the defensive?—a point of great weight in determining the character of the war.
Nobody doubts that economic interest or, more precisely, auri sacra fames, has always been an incentive to war; but other motives also play their part. Do not historians, including Marxist historians, constantly maintain that, in modern times, States and their rulers and leading statesmen have waged war to increase their power, authority and prestige, to extend their territories at the expense of neighbours, to subjugate peoples and to acquire colonies? Large States are taxed with “Imperialism”; and, as aims of offensive war, love of power, ambition, greed, racial and national hatreds are alleged.
Nor is it enough to explain the world war as a result of nationalism. Otherwise, we should have again to ask—what nationalism? There is nationalism in all countries. What is the substance of the nationalism that is supposed to have caused the war? Who attacked and who merely resisted attack? Certainly national antagonisms were among the causes of the war, but one cannot regard them as its sole cause. Economic and other motives entered into it. The peoples themselves were not legal parties to it but were involved in it indirectly in so far as they were organized into and represented by States. The States themselves did not appear to pursue a solely national policy; they were influenced by all kinds of complicated factors—dynastic aims, the interest of Governments, the influence of statesmen and politicians, of journalists, of Parliaments, of parties and of various intellectual tendencies. It is precisely the task of history and of the philosophy of history—which will have to be sounder than the pan-German and nationalist philosophy—to establish with scientific precision who directed and determined the policy of a State, who took the decision at a given moment and for what reasons. England and America certainly did not join in the war from motives of nationalism, though they recognized the principle of nationality and above all the right of the small European peoples to independence and freedom. For this reason the war cannot be described as a struggle between Germans and Slavs or Germans and Latins. It was a world war. Its origin and development show plainly that nationality or even national chauvinism was but one of several factors, another of which was religious. Yet the war is rarely interpreted as a fight between Churches and creeds, although the Orthodoxy of the Russians and the Serbians, the Catholicism of Austria, the Protestantism of the Germans and the Catholicism of the French, played a part in it. Indeed, none of the usual stereotyped definitions are applicable to it. It cannot be called a war of dynasties, of prestige, of religion, of liberation, of races, of expansion, or predatory or colonial. Therefore the quantitative description, a “world war,” indicates its special character and meaning.
The Rival War Aims.
The character of the world war is, to a great extent, discernible in a comparison of the respective war aims of the two belligerent parties and of their programmes—the programme of the West, which was that of the immense majority of mankind, and the programme of Germany, which was supported by a minority grouped round the Central Powers. This division of nations into two camps had not merely a temporary military significance but corresponded to different conceptions of civilization, to divergent ideas and views of life and conduct.
I am well aware that an attempt tersely to define racial and national aims, or conceptions of civilization, is bold even to rashness. Yet an analysis of the war in the light of history seems to warrant it. The universal Theocracy of the Middle Ages, centralized under the leadership of the Papacy, gave place, during the modern era, to the growing independence of individual States and Nations. The Reformation, classical Humanism, Science, Art and Philosophy, striving towards a fresh comprehension and knowledge of Nature, of men and of social relationships, established new spiritual and ethical ideals and foundations for the organization of society. By the Reformation, by Humanism, Science, Art and Philosophy, the Great Revolution in England, France and America was prepared, and its main result was that the Church, or, rather, the Churches, were separated from the State. In the West, in Europe as well as in America, the tendency towards the separation of the Churches from the State gradually became general. Religion lost nothing by it; on the contrary, it gained, as politics gained; and, like the State, public institutions and social arrangements shed, little by little, their ecclesiastical character. Science and Philosophy, Education, Ethics and, largely, even Religion were divorced from the Church. In regard to the State which, after the Reformation, had assumed the leadership of the community and, like the Church before it, had become absolutist, the French Revolution proclaimed the principles of “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity.” The rights of men and of citizens were enunciated and codified, France and America became Republics, England—and, presently, for a time—France also, became a constitutional monarchy. Against the old aristocratic system—monarchism is but a form of that system—Democracy developed in various shapes, degrees and qualities.
The revolutionary process was not exhausted in the French Revolution. A series of revolutions followed; and we are still in the midst of this phase of development, for other revolutions arose in and through the world war. Not in the political sphere alone but in all domains the revolutionary tendency showed itself as a perennial phenomenon. Yet it is possible that, in the world war, the transitional period of revolution came to an end, not the old régime alone.
The ideal of the French Revolution was humanity, that is to say, ethical sympathy, respect of men for their fellow-men, a recognition of human personality, the principle that human beings must not be used merely as tools or chattels by other human beings. Politically and socially, these principles imply equality between all citizens of a State, and the bringing of nations and States nearer to each other on the basis of a common humanity. Juridically, the existence of an equal natural right to freedom and equality was believed in; and individuals, as well as communities and nations, were recognized as possessing this right. The idea of natural right is ancient. We inherited it from the Greeks and the Romans, and it was sanctified by the Church and the Churches. Gradually its essence was defined, politically and socially. And closely bound up with the humanitarian ideal was the yearning for enlightenment, knowledge and culture. Hence the general recognition of Science during the past century and the efforts to found a new scientific philosophy; hence the constant attempts to organize education, to make schooling compulsory, to popularize scientific knowledge; hence also the growth of journalism and the diffusion of the press.
The Great Revolution, and the mighty changes in life and thought which it entailed, allowed the idea and the ideal of progress in all departments of human effort to take root—the belief that individual peoples and the whole of mankind have the power gradually to attain a higher, nay, the highest, plane of perfection and contentment.
These, it seems to me, are the leading ideas of the European West. (I say “the West,” though I may be thinking in the first place of France; for the West—France, England, America, Italy and the other Romance nations—form a civilized whole, as is clearly shown by the reciprocal influence of the Western peoples upon each other and by their political evolution.) To put it briefly: During the Middle Ages, mankind—mankind being then the Europe of the Holy Roman Empire—was organized extensively by the Roman Catholic Theocracy. Democracy arose through the Reformation and the French Revolution, Democracy being an attempt to organize mankind intensively. Democracy is, in my eyes, the antagonist of Theocracy. We are now in a period of transition from Theocracy to Democracy on a humanitarian basis.
Germany and Europe.
In the Middle Ages, German thought and culture formed part of those of Europe; but in more modern times they were increasingly differentiated and isolated. The Prussian State, which the Reformation strengthened, was aggressive from the outset and dominated Germany. The idea of the State, the so-called “Statism,” prevailed also in Western Europe, though there the State became an organ of Parliament and of public opinion. In Germany, on the contrary, the monarchical State was literally deified, and its absolute power generally recognized. Indeed, it was not until the end of the world war that the King of Prussia, in his capacity of German Emperor, decided in favour of the parliamentarization of Germany. Prussia and Germany were really an organized Caesarism; and Frederick the Great, Bismarck, William I and William II, were, unlike Napoleon, strange Tsarist Caesars. The word “Tsar” is of course derived from “Caesar,” but how widely the word differs from the idea it ostensibly expresses! The Prussian officer, the soldier, became the German criterion for the organization of society and, indeed, of the world. The soldier and war were regular institutions. Nor did the Reformation, classical Humanism, Science, Art and Philosophy prevail over Theocracy in Germany so thoroughly as they prevailed in the West; for the German people accepted the Reformation only in part, and the German Lutheran Reformation adapted itself to Catholicism. Thus there arose a sort of Caesaro-Papism, albeit distinct from the Russian Caesaro-Papism. In course of time pan-German Imperialism took the place of Lessing’s, Herder’s, Goethe’s, Kant’s, and Schiller’s humanitarian ideals, which were derived from secular and Western evolution and from participation in it. The catchword “Berlin-Baghdad” represented an endeavour to secure mastery over Europe, and thus, eventually, over Asia and Africa also—an endeavour which, in itself, expresses an ideal of the ancient world. Germany cherished and sought to realize, even geographically, the ideal of the Roman Empire. The Western ideal tends, on the contrary, to organize the whole of mankind and, above all, to link Europe with America and with other continents. In the world war they were thus linked.
In doctrine and policy pan-Germanism declined to recognize the right of peoples to independence; Germany was to be lord and master over all. In its expansiveness, pan-Germanism proclaimed the multi-racial State as ideal, an ideal of which Austria-Hungary, alongside of Germany, was to be a living exemplification—without forgetting the Russian State which had been fashioned, in so remarkable a degree, after the Prussian model. The Allies, on the other hand, proclaimed the right of all States, small as well as big, to independence; and the outcome of their programme is the League of Nations, which is the culmination of the democratic ideals formulated and, to some extent, realized in America. Philosophically, the Germans rejected the idea of natural rights and substituted for it that of historical rights. Though Kant was recognized as the leading philosopher, his inclination towards natural right and towards the standards of Rousseau was spurned as humanitarian; and Darwin’s doctrine was invoked in support of historical right and of the theory of mechanical evolution founded on the “survival of the fittest,” or strongest. Thus war and the waging of war came to be looked upon as divine ordinances. The English naturalist’s theory was invoked by Prussian militarism in support of its aristocratic military postulates, of which the main outcome was the so-called “Realpolitik,” the claim that all right is born of might—might, in its turn, being identified with violence. In the name of this doctrine, the German people were declared to be the ruling race. Even since the war, the pan-German identification of might, or power, with violence has been upheld by Professor Schäfer in his “State and Society,” published in 1922. He maintains that right, or law, is solely the expression of might (page 264) and he subtly treats might as equivalent to force. He writes: “The thing cannot be otherwise; force and might can create right.”
Goethe or Bismarck?.
The Germans themselves have sometimes expressed the difference between the new Germany and the old in the catchwords “Weimar or Potsdam? Goethe or Bismarck? Kant or Krupp?”
The Prussianization of Germany was political in the first instance. Taking advantage of the decay of the “Holy Roman Empire of German Allegiance,” that remnant of Roman Catholic theocracy, the Prussian theocracy dominated Germany and Austria by its strong, unitary, military and administrative organization. Little by little Prussianism secured control of all efforts to advance education and culture, and made of Germany outwardly a well-ordered Empire. Not only in politics, philosophy, science and art, but even in theology this Prussianism expressed itself. As soon as the leading men and classes in a nation begin to rely on might and violence, the wells of sympathy dry up. People lose interest in knowing the feelings and thoughts of their neighbours, since the mechanism of the State, the word of command, the fist, suffice for all purposes of intercourse. They cease to think freely and their learning becomes barren of living ideas.
This is the explanation of the great errors and faults of German history and in German thought before and during the war. Bismarck, with his overbearing treatment of those about him, is the type of the domineering Prussian. Were I to make a diagram of the development of German ideas it would be:—
| Goethe—Kant—Frederick the Great |
| Hegel |
Moltke—Bismarck—William II—Lagarde—Marx—Nietzsche |
Marx, for his part, after running through Feuerbach’s philosophy that “a man is what he eats,” turned Hegel’s pantheism and Absolute Idealism into materialism. He took over the mechanism of the Prussian organization, with its State authority and almighty centralization, even though he conceived the State itself as subject to economic conditions. His relationship to the method and the tactics of Prussianism explains the circumstance that, in the world war, the German Marxists associated themselves for so long with the pan-Germans and gave uncritical support to Prussian policy despite their Socialism and their revolutionary tenets. Indeed, the undemocratic notion that large economic units are indispensable corresponds to Prussian “supermanishness”; and Marx’s own view of the Slav peoples was not different from that of Treitschke or Lagarde. And Nietzsche sought refuge from egomaniac isolation—from “solipsism”—in the Darwinian right of the stronger. The sway (and the Church) of a new aristocracy were to be founded upon the “blonde beast,” Christian theocracy being replaced by a theocracy of the superman.
Yet I do not conceive the antithesis between Goethe and Bismarck, Kant and Krupp in the sense of a Parsee dualism, for a psychologist might find elements of Prussian “Realpolitik” even in Kant and Goethe. The real antithesis would be between Beethoven and Bismarck. In Beethoven I see a German genius unspoiled by Prussia. His art springs from pure, true inspiration. It speaks from heart to heart, as Beethoven sometimes thought it did. The Ninth Symphony is a hymn of humanity and democracy. Let us not forget how Beethoven upbraided Goethe, the Olympian of Weimar, for bowing low before the seats of the mighty. And “Fidelio” is unique. Shakespeare alone has expressed the love of man and wife with equal strength; nor in the whole literature of the world is there another instance of conjugal love, so pure and strong, for even the greatest poets have taken as their theme the romantic state of pre-nuptial love. In the “Missa Solemnis,” too, Beethoven pours out his passionate religious faith, the faith of the modern man rising above traditional ecclesiastical forms to heights undreamed of save by the maturest spirits of our time! Yet Haydn taxed Beethoven, albeit in friendly fashion, with disbelief in God!
And with Beethoven I couple his great teacher, Bach, and Bach’s religious music; and, in philosophy, Leibnitz, whose yearning to melt the Churches into one is the natural outcome of his doctrine of the Monads and of his fundamental conception of universal harmony. Pan-German chauvinists see in Leibnitz’s humanitarian aspirations an effect of his Slavonic blood. I, however, look upon his philosophy as a continuation of Platonism, albeit with strong traces of the subjectivism which Kant and his followers were presently to overdo.
I regret that my musical education is not sufficient to permit me to detect the workings of the German spirit in the brilliant line of great musicians—Bach, Handel, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann; but the Prussian spirit certainly found a musical exponent in Richard Wagner, a genius whose work is a synthesis of decadence and Prussianism. Alas! the splendid, noble and beauteous music of Germany took too light a hold on the hearts of peoples; the effects of Prussification were stronger.
The Decline of German Thought.
After Kant, and in large measure through his influence, German thought took the wrong road. He strove against the one-sidedness of English empiricism, and particularly the scepticism of Hume, by means of the equally one-sided intellectualism of an ostensibly pure creative reason. He built up a whole system of a priori eternal truths, and thus opened the door to all the fantastications of German subjectivism, or “Idealism,” which necessarily led to egomaniac isolation, or “solipsism,” to aristocratic individualism and to supermanishness based on force. From a scepticism born of his dislike of theology and metaphysics, Kant—like Hume before him—returned at last to ethics and worked out an essentially moral view of the Universe. But his followers held fast to his earlier subjectivism and, in the name of “Idealism,” gave themselves up to arbitrary constructions of the Universe, to a metaphysical Titanism, or cult of the gigantic, which necessarily led the German subjectivists into moral isolation. The fanciful imaginings of Fichte and Schelling brought forth the nihilism and pessimism of Schopenhauer. The Titans grew angry and ironical—though anger and irony in a Titan are a contradiction in terms—and finally fell into despair. Hegel and Feuerbach sought refuge in a sort of State police and in a materialism which helped them to escape from metaphysical cobweb-spinning. They subordinated themselves to the Prussian corporalism which had already found strong expression in Kant’s “categorical imperative”; and the German universities became the spiritual barracks of a philosophical absolutism that culminated in Hegel’s deification of the Prussian State and Monarchy.
For his State absolutism Hegel provided—under the title of dialectics and evolution—a Machiavellian doctrine based on denial of the incompatibility of violence and right; for he deduced his right from might and force. Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer rejected this doctrine verbally. In reality, it was Nietzsche who became the philosophical product of the Hohenzollern parvenus and of pan-German absolutism. Nor did Hegel proclaim only the infallibility of the State. He preached the saving virtue of war and militarism as well. Then Lagarde and his disciples conceived the philosophy and policy of pan-Germanism—the policy which the war overthrew on the battlefields of France.
With the fall of the Prussian regiments fell also the philosophy which (in von Hartmann’s words) had preached the extermination of the Poles or (in those of Mommsen) the smashing of the hard Czech skulls, the suppression of the decadent French and of the haughty English. The war, which answered the question “Goethe or Bismarck?” “Weimar or Potsdam?” weighed Prussian pan-Germanism in the balance and found it wanting.
In repudiating the one-sidedness of German thought, from Kant onwards, I do not say that German philosophy or all German thought is dubious, nor do I say that it is feeble, superficial or uninteresting. On the contrary, it is interesting and deep, though deep because it was not and could not be free. It is a scholasticism like that of the Middle Ages, conditioned and limited by a ready-made creed laid down in advance. Just as the Prussian State and Prussianism are absolute, so German philosophy and German idealism are absolute, violent and untrue. They mistake the hugeness of a colossal Tower of Babel for the grandeur of a humanity united in Freedom.
German Decadence.
The dilemma “Goethe or Bismarck?” had a strong influence upon my personal development. I received my secondary education in German schools, I wrote and published a number of my works in the German language, and I knew German literature well. It was more accessible to me than other literatures, and Goethe was my first and principal literary teacher. Alongside of Goethe I studied Lessing, Herder, and something of [[Author:Karl Lebrecht Immermann |Immermann]]. As a man and as a character Schiller appealed to me more than Goethe, but I preferred Goethe as poet, artist and thinker, though his boundless egoism is a golden bridge to Prussian pan-Germanism. From these names it may be seen that, while I could not altogether escape German Romanticism, it attracted me far less than French Romanticism, and that its influence upon my culture was transient, not fundamental. Its reactionary quality repelled me. And though I read modern German literature and studied the development of the drama, I found English and French literature of the same period more nourishing. There is more in them for the modern man.
But it was Goethe who gave me a standard by which to measure all literatures—including our own. His searching analysis of the modern man, especially the modern German man, set his successors, in Germany and elsewhere, a principal and weighty task—that of overcoming Faustism, of doing in literary art what Kant would fain have done in philosophy, of vanquishing scepticism, subjectivism, pessimism, irony and their corollary—violent supermanishness. Indeed, the word superman was coined or given currency by Goethe.
German literary critics rightly date modern literature from Hebbel, who analysed the conditions of the period following the French Revolution, grew up in the era of Reaction and saw through it. Yet he bowed to it in so far as he overvalued the State in too Hegelian a fashion, and sacrificed—unnecessarily—the individual to it. His conception of the State is, in fact, Hegelian. Hence his lack of sympathy with the Revolution of 1848, though he himself was in revolt against society as then constituted, a revolt in which one feels nevertheless some indecision. His observation of contemporary social problems and of the moral fissures in aristocratic and middle-class society was keen. Problems like those of suicide, of the relationship between women and men, of love, he pondered much and presented in many forms. Here, again, his peculiar waverings revealed themselves. He rejected the antiquated view of women but feared to fall into the extreme of advocating their emancipation.
True, such indecision is characteristic of transitional periods. It affected Hebbel’s art as well as his views. As a dramatist he is downright and realistic while bearing in himself the elements of Romanticism and delighting in the unusual. To historical figures, such as his “Judith,” he lends new significance by fresh interpretation; but in his lyrics his artistic indecision crops up again. There is too much reflection in them, too little lyrical poetry. Therefore he cannot, in this respect, be compared with Goethe. None the less his relationship to Goethe interested me, particularly the way in which he lends to the Titanism of Holofernes and Herod certain of the attributes of a State. He took a narrow, a gross, one may almost say a Prussian view of them. As regards form he seems to have imitated Goethe; for, in his later dramas at least, his art approaches the classical form of “Iphigenie.”
One reason why I read so much of Hebbel was that he had lived in Vienna, where I still found living memories of him. To me it seemed that the unhappy influence of Austria and Vienna could be most clearly traced in the work of this North German. In Vienna, too, the theatre led me to pay heed to the Austrian poets, particularly Grillparzer, in whom the Austria of Metternich and her fatal influence on great men can be best studied, as Grillparzer’s autobiography proves. A similar case is that of our Bohemian-German writer, Stifter. The same fatal influence I detected also in Raimund, Bauerfeld, and Anzengruber; while Nestroy expressed the spirit of Vienna. All of them wrote in Austrian handcuffs. To Grillparzer, Vienna was a “Capua”; and, to Anzengruber, Austria was a “murderess” of the mind.
Under the absolutism of Prussia and the Hapsburgs, and especially under the Metternich system after the Revolution, no free, liberating literature could blossom. The most gifted men were either vanquished by Reaction, as in the case of Hebbel, or broken, as Grillparzer was broken. The discontent of smaller men found utterance in mere protests, after the fashion of Stirner and Nietzsche. Heine fled to France, while Richard Wagner made his peace with Imperialism and its outward brilliance. Finally, the younger writers adapted themselves too lightly to the successive phases of Prussian policy, or bowed their heads in non-political retirement. All eyes were dazzled by the triumph of Prussia. Indeed, the exaggerations and vulgarities of German “Naturalism,” “Modernism,” Decadence and Symbolism—as the various literary fashions were named—the incoherence of Impressionism and the feeble megalomania of the so-called “Expressionism” reflect the moral crisis and the decay of the new German society after 1870.
In Prague I had followed the course of German literature, and, by comparing it constantly with Czech, French, British, American, Scandinavian and Russian literature, I became convinced that German civilization and culture were passing through a real crisis in which their weakness, their inadequacy, not to say their breakdown, were revealed. To this weakness may be attributed both the striking influence of Scandinavian, Russian and French writers upon them and the perpetual German attempts to return to the past and, above all, to Goethe. From such an attempt, in which weakness and strength were strangely mingled, the writings of Gerhart Hauptmann seem to have sprung.
“Expressionism” is pre-eminently German, an aspect of German subjectivism, and therefore damned from birth. The Expressionists are nothing but interpreters of Kantian or neo-Kantian doctrine and of subjectivism after the manner of Nietzsche. Expressionism, as Herman Bahr describes it, creates a universe of its own. The expressionist poet and critic Paulsen—it is something more than an accident that he should be the son of the philosopher Paulsen who was a follower of Kant—explains that the poet bears in himself the “finished forms” (a Kantian term) out of which the whole world grows. This is subjectivism in all its violent absurdity. Paulsen says rightly that expressionism is essentially German. And I do the Germans no wrong if I say that, during the war, their literature was more chauvinistic than any, in quantity and quality, or that German writers and journalists drove their people towards war, in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. There were exceptions, like Stilgebauer, Unruh, Förster, Schücking, Nippold and Grelling, but they were exceptions.
Militarism and Suicide.
There is an essential connection between “supermanishness,” “militarism,” war and suicide. In my first work on “Suicide as a Social Mass-Phenomenon of Modern Civilization,” which appeared in 1881, I essayed an explanation of the surprising and terrible fact that, in modern times, from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, the number of suicides has increased everywhere in Europe and America, particularly among the most enlightened peoples. This increase has been so marked that suicide must be regarded as a pathological condition of modern society; and the disposition of modern human beings to commit suicide is linked with their growing psychosis, or mental morbidity.
Careful analysis of motive in individual cases of suicide led me to the conclusion that its chief cause is a weakening of character consequent upon loss of religious feeling. Viewed in historical perspective, modern suicide and modern mental ailments appear as effects of a period of transition, of immaturity in the modern outlook on life and of a resulting inadequacy in the organization of society.
Throughout Christendom, the Catholic theocracy of the Middle Ages established a unitary view of life and a political system in harmony with it. But in the modern era—which is modern for that very reason—Catholic theocracy fell into decay and is still decaying, the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity being marked by a revolution in religion, science, philosophy and art. The new era was, and is, clearly one of transition, a phase of spiritual and moral anarchy; and alike in their philosophical scepticism and in their efforts to overcome scepticism, Hume and Kant were both interpreters of this modern phase. The permanent ecclesiastical authority, once so generally recognized, lost its power—was, indeed, bound to lose it—by reason of its absolutism, of its premature, artificial and forcible establishment of a universal outlook and political system. Against this spiritual absolutism, revolution broke out along the whole line, within the Church and outside it. A real consensus of view, that is to say, catholicity, lasting catholicity of outlook, could not be dictated from above or imposed by force; it could have been attained only by free agreement in the light of experience and reason. Men withstood infallibility, absolutism and the inquisitorial spirit, and rebelled against them. Exaggerated, revolutionary individualism and subjectivism sprang up; and they, in their turn, led to egomania and “solipsism,” to spiritual and moral isolation, to general anarchy in place of the earlier systematic Catholicism. Belief and the disposition to believe were vanquished by scepticism, criticism, irony, negation and disbelief. Men lost their peace of mind, grew restless, inconstant, nervous. Some sought in Utopian dreams outlets for their artificially stimulated energies—and in their seeking and doing suffered disillusionment after disillusionment. Idealists gave themselves up to the pursuit of pleasure, yet found in it no contentment. Pessimism spread, theoretically and practically, joylessness and discontent, vexation and despair—the parents of weariness, nervousness, morbid introspection and suicidal mania.
From a psychological standpoint, modern society is pathologically irritated, torn asunder and divided. It is in process of transformation. The statistics of suicide form, as it were, an arithmetical table of this mental and, at the same time, moral and physiological sickness. In Europe and America the average number of suicides is about one hundred thousand a year, the increasing proportion of child suicides being especially characteristic. For the benefit of those who are impressed only by big figures, we may say that, in ten years, one million, and in fifty years, five million people do away with themselves. Yet the total of war losses horrifies us—as though the suicide of one child, despairing of life and of itself, were less tragic and less significant of the modern life of civilized peoples than the death of men in war! What are we to think of a society, of its organization, of its humanity, if it can look upon this state of things with calm indifference?
Murder and blood-lust are, psychologically, the opposites of suicide and suicidal mania; for suicide is violence done to itself by an introspective, self-centred soul, whereas murder is violence done by the soul to others; it is an abnormal “objectivization.” Subjective individualism, which becomes intensified into superior self-sufficiency and Titanic pseudo-godlikeness, ends by being unbearable. In the last resort, men of this temper do violence either to themselves or to their neighbours, and commit suicide or murder.
The Psychology of Suicide.
It was the study of modern revolutionary tendencies and of the specifically Russian terrorist anarchism that forced me to reflect on the psychology of suicide and murder. True, poets and thinkers, from Rousseau and Goethe onwards, have long dwelt upon it, and modern statisticians, sociologists and psychiatrists have zealously analysed what are called “moral statistics.” Yet European society still fails to realize the gravity of the problem, and literary critics have been unable to grasp the main ideas of great thinkers. Rousseau’s Saint-Preux is the first well-defined type of the superman; and though Rousseau merely toys with the subject, he reveals the moral sickness that drives his superman to suicide. Faust, Goethe’s full-blooded superman, is actually holding the phial of poison to his lips when his omniscient discontent is checked and he is saved by the happy accident of the sound of Easter bells falling on his ear. Goethe himself confesses that he once fell into this mood. But another of his heroes, Werther, could not be saved and ended his romantic sickliness in death. For post-revolutionary France, de Musset analyses the mal du siècle; and his hero, Rolla, the god-slayer, is likewise driven to suicide. In Manfred, Byron lays bare this modern malady for English readers; while, among the Russians, we have an almost cruel analysis of intellectual distraction, from Pushkin’s Onegin to Tolstoy’s Levin, an analysis which Dostoyevsky enhances by implacable realism and illustrates in characters of drastic brutality. Dostoyevsky’s short sketch “The Condemned” is an attempt to turn the modern logic of suicide into a syllogism. The Scandinavians—Jacobsen, Garborg and practically all writers since Strindberg—take these weary modern souls to pieces, performing, indeed, the operation on their own souls. And, among the most modern German writers, Wasserman shows how devoid of piety the younger generation are, how they identify freedom with insolence, godlessness with courage, and pleasure—seeking with strength; how they denounce “bourgeois narrow-mindedness” yet are fearful of microbes; how loveless, neutral and heartless they are. Naturally, Wasserman’s hero commits suicide. Wasserman knows his Dostoyevsky, as Kasimir Edschmid, a leader of the “Expressionists,” knows him, although the latter defines “Expressionism” as a struggle of dwarfs against God, a struggle that necessarily ends in their conversion and regeneration under the influence of the watchwords “Love, God and Righteousness.”
Modern militarism, especially Prussian militarism, is a scientific and philosophic system of objectivization, of compulsory escape from morbid subjectivity and suicidal mania. I repeat “modern militarism”; for the fighting spirit of savages and barbarians, or even the fighting spirit of medieval knights and mercenaries is, psychologically and morally, very different from the scientifically coordinated military system of the modern absolutist State. Savages and barbarians fight from aboriginal savagery, or driven by want or hunger; but, in the world war, disciples of Rousseau and Kant, Goethe and Herder, of Byron and de Musset stood in the trenches. And when, in the spirit of Hegel, Werner Sombart praises German militarism and boasts of the Fausts and Zarathustras in the trenches, he fails to understand how severely he is, in reality, condemning German and European civilization. The fighting of these modern, civilized men is a violent effort to get away from the perplexities that arise in the ego of the superman; and, for this reason, the intelligentsia were no whit behind the peasants and workmen in fighting spirit, but rather outdid them. This phenomenon struck me first when I saw the Serbian intelligentsia in the Balkan wars. In modern war, adversaries do not face each other eye to eye, hand to hand. They destroy each other from a distance, abstractly, invisibly, killing through and by ideas—German idealism translated into the tongue of Krupp. Even defensive war, which alone is morally admissible, thus becomes repugnant; and this is why Democracy has so hard a task in training democratic soldiers, in building up a democratic army composed of soldiers consciously on the defensive, not seeking to conquer and to subjugate by main force, yet brave and ready to sacrifice their own lives. Militarism and modern war are of a piece with Rousseau’s “State of Nature,” with Comte’s lapse from Positivism into Fetishism, and with the Romanticist yearning for an unreasoning, animal, vegetative life. Neither the great theorist of modern Democracy nor the founder of Positivism nor the Romanticists saw that the “State of Nature,” Fetishism and animality signify barbaric blood-lust and a war of all against all. The natural man knows naught of suicide from modern weariness of life, exhaustion and neurasthenia. If he ever kills himself it is in rage at some affront or at the failure of some vigorous effort, whereas the modern man suffers from morbid suicidal mania, from lack of energy, fatigue or dread born of mental and moral isolation, of barren megalomania, and supermanishness. Militarism is an attempt of the superman to escape from diseases which nevertheless it aggravates. The German “Nation of Thinkers and Philosophers” had the greatest number of suicides, developed the completest militarism and caused the world war.
At the same time the psychological contrast between suicide and slaying, between the killing of self and the killing of others, explains why the number of suicides decreased everywhere during the war, especially in the victorious countries. Attention was riveted upon the actual fighting. Men became more objective, less subjective. Indeed, I believe that the moral significance of the world war stands out clearly as an effort to find, in objectivism, freedom from exaggerated subjectivism. The war and the way it was waged grew out of the ethical and mental condition of the modern man and of his whole culture, as I have briefly described it; and the modern antagonism between objectivity and subjectivity is a protracted historical process which was revealed in the war and in its long duration. The universality and the length of the war gave it its peculiar character.
It was, as I have said, a war of peoples, not between the standing armies of former days but between new armies formed on the basis of compulsory military service, armies of reservists. Professional soldiers were comparatively few, though the Kaiser and his Generals and a proportion of their men were soldiers of the old type. The war took on a visage of its own, and the characteristics of the belligerent nations came into play because it was a war of masses. The character of war depends upon the character of the soldiers. If, as pacifists tell us, war lets loose all evil impulses—rage, hatred, and blood-lust—it was not the war itself that engendered them; they were present in the belligerent nations before the war. The devils of 1914 were not angels in 1918. Besides, as I have said, the world war bore an abstract scientific impress. It was a war of position, not a war of movement; it was marked by anonymous and invisible killing until ultimately victory was won in great part by superiority in scientific war-industry and by the mathematical utilization of great masses. But post-war military literature upon the philosophical significance of the war proves conclusively that, on account of its long duration, the decisive factor in it was the general moral condition of the belligerent peoples and armies, not the military training and skill of their leaders. Modern men waged it. And it behoves us to recognize the good qualities of the fighters on both sides, for the very length of the war brought out their great moral strength, their heroism, tenacity and devotion. It showed what modern men are capable of and what they could do were they to rid themselves of the desire to rule over others, and were they not to suppress in themselves the fellow-feeling that is born in every man. True, they would need also to overcome the whole modern hankering after Titanism, and the selfishness of morbid subjectivism and individualism; for supermanishness necessarily ends in suicide and war.
Inadvertently, my analysis is confirmed by the German historian, Lamprecht, who sought, with so much vigour and enthusiasm, to vindicate the Germans in the war. In his history of Modern Germany, written before the war (“Zur jüngsten deutschen Vergangenheit,” published in 1904), he rightly describes the epoch as one of “irritability,” and adduces both the Emperor William and Bismarck as its characteristic types. In truth, the German superman, the Titan, is a nervous creature who seeks relief from chronic excitement in death or in war, that is to say, in an excitement still more acute.
However true this may be of all nations, it is especially true of the Germans. Their philosophers, artists and other active minds pushed subjectivism and individualism to the point of absurd egomania, with all its moral consequences. Nietzsche’s superman, the Darwinian “beast,” was to prove a remedy for the inhuman folly of “solipsism.” In their spiritual isolation, the German philosophers and men of learning, historians and politicians, proclaimed German civilization and culture as the zenith of human development; and, in the name of this arrogant claim to superiority, Prussian pan-Germanism asserted its right to expansion and to the subjugation of others by sheer force. The Prussian State, its army and its fighting spirit became antidotes to morbid subjectivism. Prussian pan-Germanism is answerable for the world war, morally responsible for it, even if the Austro-Hungarian system shared its guilt and was, in a sense, still guiltier. The people of philosophers and thinkers, the people of Kant and Goethe, which claimed for itself the proud task of enlightening the world, was not entitled to seek in war a way out of the blind alley into which its one-sided, albeit highly refined, culture had led it. Nor could it honestly adopt and support the deceitful and short-sighted policy of the degenerate Hapsburgs. Corruptio optimi pessima.
The awakening of a religious spirit during and after the war bore out my reading of the war itself. The modern tendency towards suicide is, in the last resort, attributable to the decline of religion and of spiritual and moral authority. When, in so many quarters, men call so earnestly for a religious revival, is it not a sign that they are becoming aware of the singular moral condition of European society out of which the war arose? What a fiasco, what a relapse into Rousseau’s “State of Nature” after all our boasting of progress, of our having escaped from the Middle Ages! But when we speak of religion we need to say exactly whether we mean positive, official, ecclesiastical, or non-ecclesiastical faith. No catchword can suffice to define so intricate a matter. In all the countries where I happened to be during and after the war I observed the religious phenomena to which it had given rise and noted the positive and literary forms in which they found expression. I watched the soldiers, comparing the influence of army chaplains upon them, and upon the wounded and the dying, with that of doctors, nurses and laymen. I felt that there was a yearning for religion but that the creeds of the Churches had, and have, far less influence than was supposed. Among our Legionaries in Russia there was a temporary disposition, political rather than religious, to embrace Orthodoxy; but I met not a few soldiers in whom experience of the war had stimulated religious feelings and reflections. Only a small minority of them were satisfied with ecclesiastical dogma.
And the question remains whether and in what degree the religion of the Churches can suffice. Why have the Churches and their creeds lost ground? Why do men—the intelligentsia in the first place but also the masses—turn away from them? Why are medieval theocratism and its organization of society declining? In the world war three of the oldest theocracies—Austria, Russia and Prussia—fell. Catholicism failed to save Austria-Hungary, Orthodoxy did not save Russia, nor did Lutheranism avail Prussia. Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Lutheranism failed to prevent the war, just as they had failed to impede the genesis and the development of the general moral condition out of which the war arose though, like the medieval Church itself, these Churches wielded spiritual authority over society and, in conjunction with the State, temporal authority as well. Why did they lose their influence?
We are, in truth, faced by the great antagonism between the Churches and modern thought, modern feeling and aspiration, in philosophy, art, science, ethical and political ideals and, in a word, modern culture as a whole; and also by the question how this antagonism can be got rid of. To say that the modern man has been led astray by pride and that he must repent in sackcloth and ashes is no solution, for it has been recommended fruitlessly for centuries by orthodox theologians. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the old régime and ecclesiastical religion were alike restored without effecting any real improvement. New revolutions supervened in ideas and in politics until finally another revolution was wrought by the world war. And, whatever might be the result of attempts at restoration now, they would assuredly not mend matters.
Let us examine the various elements and factors in religion. Among them are views upon the transcendental, views upon God and immortality, the teachings of theology and of metaphysics, worship, the sense of the relationship of man to God and the Universe, ecclesiastical organization and authority—the priesthood and its hierarchy or theocracy—and morality or the relationship of man to man alongside of his relationship to God and the Universe. The concept of religion is identified with the concept of faith, of childlike faith, and this faith is placed in opposition to reasoned critical scientific knowledge, theology versus metaphysical philosophy. As against determinist science and scientific philosophy, religion offers the believer a non-determinist faith in the miraculous. Religion identifies itself with mysticism, with belief in the possibility of direct communication of human souls with God and with the transcendental world; and this mystic communion is set above mundane morality. What do we mean when we say that we need religion and build our hopes upon it? Do we wish to return to the creeds and the doctrines of the Church? If so, of which Church? Is there to be a complete return, a philosophical Canossa? Even though war and revolution have strengthened the religious spirit, has morality, personal and social morality, also been strengthened? In most countries, complaints may be heard of the demoralization caused by the war, not merely among people whom the war made rich but of widespread laxity, slothfulness and dishonesty, and of the decline of morals in the young. If morals are a weighty element in religion-as they certainly are it is not so easy to assert that religion has been fostered by the war. I have noticed and notice that many people, even those scientifically educated, have fallen into divers forms of mysticism, spiritualism and occultism. But is this type of religious re-awakening really desirable? It seems to me that, religiously, we are in much the same position after the war as we were before it.
The crisis of the modern man is general. It is a crisis involving the whole man, and the whole of spiritual life. Modern life in its entirety, all its institutions, its whole outlook on the world and on the problem of existence need to be revised. An inner lack of unity, an atomization in individuals and in society, a general mental anarchy, a struggle between past and present, fathers and children, the antagonism of the Churches towards science, philosophy, art and the State, permeate the whole range of modern civilization. If we seek peace of mind for ourselves, where and how are we to find it? In the effort to attain spiritual freedom, many fall into excessive individualism and introspection. Hence their spiritual and moral isolation. Many give themselves up to materialism and to a mechanical conception of the Universe. Maybe, we have all cultivated the intellect too one-sidedly and have forgotten the harmonious cultivation of all our spiritual and physical powers and faculties. In their opposition to the Churches and religion, not a few were satisfied with mere scepticism and negation, and thought it enough to be political revolutionaries. Though they were convinced that no lasting organization of society is feasible without agreement on the primary conceptions of life and of the world, they revolted against ecclesiastical discipline, only to become the slaves of parties, groups and factions. Any talk of or call for morality and moral restraint they denounced as antiquated moralizing, and piety and a religious life as superstition. Restlessness, discontent and scepticism; weariness born of disjointedness; pessimism, irascibility and despair ending in suicidal mania, militarism and war—these are the dark sides of modern life, of modern man, of the superman.
After the war a conviction spread that Europe and civilized peoples were in process of final decline. While the pan-Germans often proclaimed, before the war, the decline of the Latin races and of the French in particular, German philosophers of history, like Spengler, now announce the decline of the Germans likewise and of the whole of the West. Some look for salvation to Russia or to the Far East, though Russia suffered overthrow in the war as well as Germany and Austria; and it is certainly characteristic of German literature that Russian influence upon it has grown, an influence noticeable also in France, England and America.
I do not believe in a general and final degeneration and decadence of our civilization. The war was an acute crisis within a chronic crisis for which not we alone but our forefathers are to blame. We were bound to change what they bequeathed to us; but in changing it we erred again and again. Yet honest confession of error is the beginning of improvement. The war and its horrors excited us all, and we stand helpless before the mighty historical riddle of an event unprecedented in human history. But excitement is not a programme. We need calm and frank analysis and criticism of our civilization and its elements, and must make up our minds to reform concentrically every sphere of thought and action. There are enough thinking people in all enlightened countries to set about these reforms, hand in hand.
A Philosophy of the War.
Thus far I have tried to grasp and to explain, psychologically and sociologically, the crisis through which modern men and European civilization and culture are passing. Now I wish briefly to review it in the setting of its historical development. The philosophy of the war which I am propounding was conceived as soon as the war began. It forms a synthesis of my pre-war contributions to the philosophy of history, and I am now expressing it tersely in the shape in which I finally sketched it out during the voyage across the Atlantic on my way home. Afterwards I developed it, particularly by means of a thorough analysis of representative personalities of the modern era, like Rousseau and Goethe, and by a more precise definition of various mental and spiritual tendencies. I may perhaps publish this work separately. For the moment, this summary of it must suffice, so as not to distort the proportions of the present volume.
The fight between the Central Powers and the Allies was a fight of Theocracy—albeit an enfeebled and expiring Theocracy—against Democracy. The Central Powers were led by Prussia which, in recent decades, had adopted the programme of Bismarck, the most skilful and consistent warden of the old medieval political and ecclesiastical régime. The political idea of Germany, a Germany Prussianized and led by Prussia, culminated in the principle of a Prussian Monarchy independent of the people, and forming, in Bismarck’s eyes, the antithesis to modern Parliamentarism and Democracy. The Emperor William went so far as to declare himself expressly an instrument of God, and his official style “By the Grace of God” took on an anti-democratic sense and meaning. The Monarchy by Divine Right and Divine Grace stood over against the democratic principle “of the people, by the people, for the people.”
This absolutism was a continuation of the medieval conception of Empire. The Imperium bequeathed by Rome to the Germans was administered by the bigoted Hapsburgs who, amid the religious and political excitement of the Reformation, carried through a violent Counter-Reformation. Prussia became Protestant and strove with Austria for overlordship in Germany until Austria was finally expelled. Then Germany took over the Roman Imperium, the Imperial dignity, on her own account. It is one of the many perversities of history—though when we talk of “history we really say “human beings”—that the Roman Catholic supra-national—and therefore really “Catholic”—Imperialism of the Holy Roman Empire was carried forward by a Protestant and national German State, and that the Roman Catholic State which had stood at the head of the Catholic Imperium renounced its Holy Roman Imperial dignity, proclaimed itself a secularized Austrian Empire and ended by accepting a subordinate position as the advance-guard of Germany in the East. Hence the senselessness of Austrian and Prussian policy in the modern era.
Under Prussia, Germany turned the Catholic idea of the Holy Roman Imperium into a pagan Roman and German national ideal. By means of pan-German philosophy it developed its forcible “Urge Towards the East” into a general programme, that is to say, into an aspiration to rule over the Old World of Europe, Asia and Africa. To this end its colonial policy and its alliance with the declining Ottoman Empire were alike directed.
After a first attempt to form a “League of the Three Emperors” the Triple Alliance was founded under the economic and political pressure of Prussia. In it, Italy had no organic position, for the Triple Alliance really signified German domination over Austria-Hungary. It is characteristic that the beginnings of the Triple Alliance are to be found in Bismarck’s negotiations with the Magyars or, rather, with Andrássy, as I have pointed out in speaking of Magyar propaganda in America; and, as Austrian Catholic politicians have insisted, the Magyar State was in the hands of Calvinists—of whom Tisza was an outstanding example—and of Freemasons. For this reason the alliance of Hungary with Prussia was by no means incompatible with the postulates of pan-Germanism, false though they were. Nor is it of little moment that, from 1849 onwards, the Magyars were antagonistic to Russia and that, as an Asiatic people, they were doubtless prepared to fall in with German ideas of expansion eastwards. For the same reason it was easy for Germany to secure Turkish acquiescence. I cannot say whether the non-Slav element in the mixed blood of the Bulgars predisposed them also to join the Turks and the Germans in the war. By religion, the Bulgarian dynasty was Catholic; politically, it was Austrian and therefore also German; and, like the other Allies and friends of Prussia, the Bulgars were subject to German educational influences.
Similarly, the initial uncertainty and wavering in the attitude of the Vatican towards the struggle between Germany and the Allies was determined by the old relationship between Austria and Papal Rome, and by consideration for the large Catholic minority in Germany. Practically and historically, the Triple Alliance represented the Middle Ages and the absolutist monarchical régime as it evolved after the weakening of ecclesiastical absolutism during the modern era; and, politically, pan-Germanism became the chauvinistic programme of Prussian militarism. Against it France, Russia, the British Empire, Italy, the United States and the other Allies took their stand, all of them, with the exception of Russia, being democratic, constitutional or republican States. Modern Democracy ranged itself against Theocracy.
In contra-distinction to Germany and Austria, the Allies accepted the modern principle of nationality for all peoples and supported the cause of small States and nations, a cause of far-reaching importance, as I have shown when referring to the zone of little peoples who lie between the Germans and the Russians. The democratic principle implies that small States and nations stand on a footing of equality with the big, just as the rights of the so-called “small man” within his own community are, in theory, equal to those of the wealthy and powerful. In foreign affairs the consistent application of the democratic principle is, however, only beginning; and even in the domestic affairs of individual States it has hardly gone beyond the initial stages. But, by accepting the principle of nationality, the Allies guarded themselves against Chauvinism. True, Germany too was “national,” though she conceived her “nationality” as something superior to the “nationality of others. The Allies, on the other hand, recognized both the principle of nationality and also the “catholic”—in the sense of “universal”—principle of humanity, and were bound to recognize it if only by reason of the support given to their cause by the great majority of the national States throughout the world. Thus five continents, and the nations inhabiting them, were ipso facto united by the “catholic” humanitarian ideal—which postulated the organization of mankind into a friendly whole-against national-chauvinist pan-Germanism with its spiritual, ethnographical and geographical limitations. President Wilson’s League of Nations, organically interwoven with the Peace Treaties, is the first great practical attempt to set up a world-organization which, in virtue of its very dimensions and of the idea it represents, excels and refutes the pan-German programme of subjugating the Old World. In the war, the New World and, indeed, the whole world, resisted the pan-German conception of the future of the Old World. As a result, the democratic principle spread from the field of domestic politics into that of international relations. The war overthrew the three centres of theocratic absolutism (the Russian, the Prussian and the Austrian); new Republics and new democracies arose and, with them, the fundamental principles of a new international policy. The League of Nations grew politically stronger and was adopted as a programme by all modern and truly democratic politicians and statesmen. The “United States of Europe” ceased to be a Utopia. The dream that one great Power should rule the continent of Europe, and that a number of States and nations should ally themselves against other States and Nations, paled before the establishment of a pacific society of all States and Nations.
In this way the war and the Allied victory altered the face of Europe and of the world. The Caesarism of the three greatest States and of two of the greatest nations in Europe is gone. Numerous smaller peoples—the Czechoslovaks, the Poles, the Yugoslavs, the Roumanians, the Finns, the Letts, the Lithuanians and others—have been liberated and, through the League of Nations, provision has been made to assure the future of racial minorities. May we not hope that these political changes will stimulate endeavours to bring about a renascence and regeneration in ethics and culture? Is there no warrant for this hope in the changes that took place, during the war and the revolution it entailed, within the belligerent countries themselves and among other peoples? The flower of those peoples were in the field, lay in the trenches and were forced to reflect upon the war and its meaning; nor did they alone experience the horrors of war. Their wives and children, mothers and fathers felt them too. Is it conceivable that, after such experience, a considerable majority, at least, of honest minds should not espouse the new ideal, the ideal of democracy and humanity, and should not strive for regeneration? Along the whole line the trend of events is against the old régime. This is the true meaning of the war and of the post-war era; for the war has freed even Germany from the old régime and, in her freedom, Germany will escape from her spiritual isolation, will win a moral victory over Bismarckianism and will return to the ideals of her Goethe, her Kant and, above all, to those of her Herder and Beethoven.
In London Again.
These and like thoughts were in my mind as we drew near the English coast on November 29, 1918. On reaching harbour, and at the railway terminus in London, military and diplomatic honours reminded me once more that I was the Head of a State. That evening I spent with my dear friends and fellow-workers, Steed and Seton-Watson. But what a difference between the position then and the position in May 1917 when I started from London on my—unforeseen—journey round the world! Yet my cares had not grown fewer; for, if old cares had lifted, new cares had filled their places.
In London I stayed till December 6 and saw many friends, Dr. Burrows, Lord Bryce, Mr. R. F. Young, Lady Paget and others; and, at a lunch to which Mr. Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, invited me, I met a number of political personages, among them Lord Milner, Mr. Churchill and the Secretary of the King, for the King himself was not then in London. The Germans had just proposed to the Allies that a commission should be set up to investigate the question of war guilt. Naturally we talked of the whole political outlook, the end of the war and the task of the impending Peace Conference, though my conversation with Mr. Balfour turned chiefly on the philosophy of religion. Mr. Churchill showed great interest in Russia and in our Legions there, and he was especially pleased that I had stopped Bolshevist agitation among our men without using force. I could not help comparing the standpoint of British with that of German statesmen. What a difference between a really constitutional and Parliamentary spirit and the declining Caesarism of Russia, Prussia, and Austria!
While I was in London, conferring with Foreign Office officials who were likely to take part in the Peace Conference—Sir William Tyrrell, Sir Eyre Crowe, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst and my old acquaintance, Sir George Clerk, and was visiting the chief members of the diplomatic corps—I had my first experience of a characteristic diplomatic incident. The column erected at Prague in honour of the Virgin Mary (as a monument of the Hapsburg victory over our people in the Battle of the White Mountain during the Counter-Reformation) had been thrown down, and the Vatican took occasion to draw attention to the matter in London. I do not know in what form the Vatican communication was made, as I was not officially notified; and, though I was unaware of the details of the incident at Prague, I knew that the removal of the column had often been demanded by our people who had doubtless thrown it down in a moment of political excitement, not in a spirit of religious intolerance. In this sense I was able to explain it.
Meanwhile, events on the continent were proceeding apace after the defeat of the Central Powers. On December 1 the British troops crossed the German frontier, and I well remember what an impression the news made in London. On the same day the German Crown Prince renounced all his rights to the Prussian Crown and to the German Imperial dignity; while, in Serbia, Prince Alexander took over the Regency and the Serbo-Croat-Slovene State became a reality. Tidings of the last days of the Austrian Empire reached me also in London—particularly, by special messenger, an account of the way the Austrians had sought to turn to account the meeting of our delegates at Geneva. Some Austrian agents had tried to pry into our delegates’ political disposition, and more than one member of our delegation seemed to have fallen into the trap and to have dilated upon the difference between my views and those of Dr. Kramář and his followers. Reports that these delegates were wavering in their opposition to Austria were then sent by the Austrian agents to Vienna; but Dr. Beneš soon came from Paris and cleared up the position in unmistakable fashion. Yet the episode served to remind me of the position I had held in our political world at home before the war, and to make me feel that men rarely undergo a thorough change of heart. They would doubtless say: “Masaryk as President Good; but he has no Party behind him. He is an idealist, more of a philosopher than a politician.” Would not the old antagonisms be revived? Would all political men and parties be able to forget past conflicts and controversies? Very soberly I weighed the pros and cons, and examined the principles on which I should have to act. More than once I reviewed the whole list of men with whom I should have to deal and to work, for I knew them all pretty well. Upon the policy needful for our restored State I felt no manner of doubt, and I was quite certain that I must not give way on the most important issues or on matters of principle; but I closed emphatically the whole chapter of my personal dislikes.
Paris, Padua—and Home.
Reaching Paris on December 7, I paid my first official visit to the President of the French Republic, M. Poincaré, in order to thank him by word of mouth for all the help he and France had given us; and, at an official dinner, I saw him again. Then I spent some hours with our troops at Darney, inspected them, visited the wounded and, on the way back to Paris, drafted my first Presidential Message. From morning to night I paid and received visits. The Foreign Minister, M. Pichon, showed the utmost cordiality, and I met a large number of the principal public men, including the President of the Chamber, M. Deschanel, and the Prime Minister, M. Clemenceau. Though Clemenceau had long interested me I had never met him in person. His acquaintances had told me that he had, at first, been somewhat pessimistic about the war and the future of France. Therefore it was, psychologically, the more noteworthy that he should have found the energy to work as he worked, not merely to conquer his own pessimism and scepticism but to serve France. True, there is more than one sort of sceptic. Clemenceau’s speeches and Parliamentary activity had attracted my attention long before, as had his literary work—his novel “Les Plus Forts” and his philosophy of history “Le Grand Pan,” in which his alleged scepticism stands out in high relief. In the early stages of the war he was not particularly well-disposed towards us, and Austrian and Magyar propagandists spread the report that he was pro-Austrian. When he became Prime Minister on November 16, 1917, a part of the French press reproduced Magyar statements that he would be pro-Magyar because his daughter was alleged to have married a Magyar and his sister-in-law was a Viennese But the vigorous, matter-of-fact way in which he dealt with the affairs of Prince Sixtus of Parma belied these stories; and, as he had disapproved of my policy in Russia because I refused to take our army to Roumania, I was all the better pleased to hear him admit that events had proved me to be right. Besides, it was Clemenceau himself who had made the agreement about our Legions with Dr. Beneš as early as December 1917 and January 1918.
With Clemenceau’s right-hand man, M. Philippe Berthelot, I discussed every question of importance that was likely to affect the post-war order in Europe and in the Near East. He was an interesting personality, not merely on account of his political position but as a keen observer of the course of world events. He favoured consistently the removal of Turkey from Europe, in accordance with the original Allied plan. The eminent journalist, M. Gauvain; Professor Denis; Colonel House, who had invited Dr. Beneš to take part in the Armistice Conference; the American Ambassador, Mr. W. G. Sharp; the British Ambassador, Lord Derby; the Serbian Minister, M. Vesnitch; and Dr. Trumbitch, with whom I discussed in detail our future cooperation with the Southern Slavs, were among the men whom I met or with whom I renewed acquaintance in Paris.
There, too, the outlines of the Little Entente were agreed upon. I negotiated first with the Roumanian statesman, M. Take Jonescu, who presently brought the Greek Prime Minister, M. Venizelos, to me. In accordance with the situation then existing, we contemplated a close understanding with the Southern Slavs and the Poles, as well as with the Roumanians and the Greeks, who had made a Treaty of Friendship with Serbia at the time of the Balkan wars. Though we were fully aware of the obstacles in our path, and particularly of the territorial disputes between the Southern Slavs and the Roumanians, we agreed to clear the ground for ulterior co-operation during the impending Peace Conference. The idea of the Little Entente was, so to speak, in the air. It had been developed by our joint work with the Roumanians and the Poles in Russia, by our close relations with the Southern Slavs in all countries during the war, by common enterprises like the Rome Congress of the Oppressed Hapsburg Peoples, and by the organization of the Mid-European Democratic Union in America. On the basis of this experience, I put forward in my book, “The New Europe,” the demand that, alongside of the big Entente, similar groups should be formed, above all among the Little States of Central Europe.
Before leaving Paris I was able once more to thank M. Briand—whom I met in the by no means unpolitical drawing-room of our friend, Madame de Jouvenel—for having been the first among Allied statesmen to accept our political programme. And, once again, France was the first Allied State to accredit a Minister to our Republic in Prague. He was M. Clément-Simon who, appointed on December 12, started for Prague with me on December 14. The British military attaché, Sir Thomas Cunninghame, who had been appointed to Prague and Vienna, also accompanied us. We went by way of Italy, where, on the frontier at Modane, a General awaited me with an invitation to stay with King Victor Emmanuel at Padua. In fact, the King himself received me at Padua railway station and I was his guest until the morrow. Thus for the third time in my life I met a Monarch—if I except Prince Alexander of Serbia whom I had seen in London. The first was the Emperor Francis Joseph, who made a point of appearing to be the greatest aristocrat in Europe, and posed accordingly as a Monarch everywhere and in everything, whereas the King of Italy was strictly constitutional and unaffected. The second was King Ferdinand of Roumania. At Padua there was a question whether toasts should be exchanged at dinner. Both King Victor Emmanuel and I thought it superfluous, though had I thought otherwise the King would have submitted the text of his toast to his Government. It was my first lesson in constitutionalism.
An inspection of our troops stationed near Padua—the Infantry one day, the Cavalry on the next—ended my work abroad. It was in Italy that my voluntary exile had begun, and in Italy it came to a close. I started for home on December 17, a detachment of our Italian Legionaries, under General Piccione, accompanying me. On the journey my thoughts dwelt on my impending task. The travelling through Austria compelled me to reflect once again upon the disappearing Hapsburg Empire; and as we passed through Brixen on December 18, all my ideas on Havlíček and Czech policy revived. Havlíček had taught me much; and his words “A reasonable and honest policy” rang in my ears the whole way from Brixen homewards.
It was on Friday, December 20, that we reached the Bohemian frontier. Many a tear was shed by the exiles who thus reached home again after years of wandering, and more than one kissed our Bohemian soil. The Head of the administrative district, a Czech whose accent proved him to have been born a German, made a first official report; and then the members of my family and the political delegates could be greeted. Friday has always been for me a special day of destiny. I do not know whether other men have such days but, in my case, the weightiest and happiest events have often happened on Fridays. I escaped from Austria in December 1914 on a Friday; President Wilson’s final answer to Austria and our national Declaration of Independence were issued on a Friday; and on a Friday I set my foot once again on Czech earth after four years’ labour abroad.
We stayed that night at Budějovice, or Budweis, so as not to reach Prague at night. Next day we went on through Veselý, Tábor—full of Hussite memories—Benešov and, at last, reached Prague.
What were my feelings as the people of Prague gave me so splendid a reception, and as I drove through the streets in a democratic motor-car instead of the gilded carriage that would have been too reminiscent of times that were past? Was I glad, was I joyous? Seeing the rejoicings, the wealth of costumes, colours, banners, decorations and flowers, answering the warmth of the greetings, what were my thoughts? The heavy work awaiting me, the work of building up our restored State decently and well, constantly weighed on my mind; nor did this train of thought cease when, in the afternoon, I pledged myself solemnly “In honour and conscience to act for the weal of the Republic and of the people, and to respect the laws.”
Then, having visited my wife in a nursing home, I slept for the first time in the Castle, that is to say, I spent a sleepless night. Next day, Sunday, December 22, I delivered my first message in the Castle, reviewing briefly what we had done abroad. It had been submitted to and technically revised by the Council of Ministers. The Castle, not the Parliament, was chosen as the scene of this ceremony, although the choice raised the question whether the gathering in the Castle was or was not a National Assembly. The question was solved by incorporating the Message in the report of the Parliamentary Committee appointed to draft the reply to it, and by including it also in the verbatim report of the Assembly’s proceedings.
- ↑ Bismarck, who compelled France to pay an indemnity of 5,000,000,000 francs after the war of 1870–71.
- ↑ Joseph Dobrovský (1753–1829), a Liberal Czech priest, ex-Jesuit and Freemason who was among the “awakeners” of the Czech national spirit at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. In fearlessness and love of truth he resembled Hus.
- ↑ Count Aehrenthal, Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister 1906–1912.
- ↑ Peter Chelčický, a disciple of John Hus and founder of the Bohemian Brotherhood Church in the fifteenth century. He was opposed to war on moral grounds and preached the doctrine of conquest by meekness and humility.