My Four Years in Germany

eality, the mass of the Germans, in consenting to the great sacrifice en

s concluded, Germany was almost a desert. Its population had fallen from twenty millions to four millions. The few remaining people were so starv

Palatinate only one-tenth of the population survived; in Württemberg, only one-sixth. Hundreds

o back to the Fatherland. He answers those who wish to persuade him to go back with words which seem quite appropriate to-day: "My God, where do you want to carry me? Here is peace. There is war. Here I know nothing of the arts of the court, ambitions, anger, envy, deceit, nor have I cares concerning my clothing and nourishment....

nder the heel of Napoleon. In the wars Of Frederick the Great, one tenth of the population was killed. Even the great Battle of the Nations at Leipsic in 1813 did not free Germany from war

n order to create a military autocracy. On the other hand, and, especially, in the noble class, we have in Germany a great number of people who believe in war for its own s

rick the Great, who went to the most ridiculous extr

es to the utmost to inspire him with a love of soldiery and carefully impress upon his mind that, as nothing can confer honour and fame upon a pr

head of a marvellous army with a full treasury, finally decided upon war, as he admits in his own l

ome blind instinct had driven the inhabitants of the inhospitable plains of North Germany to war and to conquest. The Cimbri and Teutones--the tribes defeated by Marius; Ariovistus, who was defeated by Julius Caesar; the Goths and the Visi-Goths; the

generals had planned and thought of war; and the Crown Prince, surrounded by his remarkable collection of relics and reminders of Napoleon, dreamed only of taking the lead in a successful war of conquest. Early in the winter of 1913-14,

ion,' which seeks to prove that war is unprofitable. He (the Crown Prince) said that whether war was profitable or not, when he came to the throne there would be war, if not before, just for the fun of it. On a previo

first of these conversations to this American lady, shows the trend of his mind and that all his admiration is centred upon Napoleon, the man who sought the mastery of

ntless facts pointed to the summer of 1914 as the time when the army

Canal was reopened, enabling the greatest war

t attention to the development of the submarine. Their aeroplanes were superior to those of other nations. They believed that in the use of poison gas, which was prepared before the outbreak of the war, they had a prize that would absolute

carry their influence to the East, and even threatened the rule of England in Egypt and India. Undoubtedly there was talk, too, of a Slav railroad to run from the Danube to the Adriatic which would cut off Germany from access to the Southern Sea. Francis Deloisi, the Frenchman, in his book published before the great war, called "De la Guerre des Balkans à la Guerre Européenne," says, "In a word, the present war (Balkan) is the w

g of this situation, the Russian General Kuropatkin, in his report for the year 1900, said, "We must cherish no illusions as to the possibility of an easy victory over the Austrian army," and he then went on to say, "Austria had eight railways to transport troops to the Russian frontier while Russia

than the invasion of Germany by Russian troops"; and, "Our Western frontier, in the event o

ion. Illuminating figures may be seen in the gold purchase of the German Imperial Bank:

or war. This belief became conviction when, in the debates of the French Senate, Senator Humbert

nd would remain out of the war. The raising of the Ulster army by Sir Edward Carson, one of the most gigantic political bluffs in all history, which had no more revolutionary or military significance than a torchlight parade during one of our presidential campaigns, was re

chleswig and Holstein to the Prussian crown, and the war of 1866 in which Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Saxony were defeated, when the Austrian kingdom of Hanover disappeared and the territories of Hesse-Cassel and Nassau, and the free city of Frankfort were added to Prussia. This war, from its declaration to the battle of K?niggratz in which the Austrians were completely defeated, lasted only two weeks. In 1870 France was defeated within a month and a half after the opening of hostilities; so that the Kaiser was implicitly believed when, on the first day of the war, he appeared on the balcon

ers, the great munition and arms factory of the Krupp's insidi

the sentiments of England in saying that England did not want war. After his return to Germany the Germans quite unfairly treated him as a man who h

which really determined the Emperor and the ruling class for war was the attitude of the whole people in the Zabern Affair and their evident and growing dislike of militarism. The fact that the Socialists, at the close of the session of the Reichstag, bo

Rome forced the people into war whenever the people showed a disposition to demand their right