omission as a measure for judging the actions of others. The frivolousness with which post Bismarckian Germany allowed her position in terms of power politics to be threatened in Europe by France and Russia, without undertaking any serious countermeasures, far from allows us to impute similar neglect to other powers or to denounce them in moral indignation, if indeed they attend to the vital needs of their Folks better.
If pre War Germany had decided upon a continuance of the former Prussian continental policy instead of her peaceful world and economic policy with its fateful repercussions, then first of all she could have raised her land power to that superior height formerly enjoyed by the Prussian State, and secondly she need not have feared an unconditional enmity with England. For this much is sure: if Germany had used all the enormous means which she squandered on the Fleet for the strengthening of her Land Army, then her interests might have been fought for in a different way, at least on the decisive European battlefields. And the Nation would have been spared seeing a Land Army, worse than inadequately armed, slowly bleed to death against an overwhelming world coalition, while the Navy, at least in its decisive combat units, rusted away in the harbours in order finally to terminate its existence in a more than ignominious surrender. Let us not find excuses for the leaders, but have the courage rather to admit that this lay in the very nature of such a weapon for us. For at the same time the Field Army was pulled out of one battle and hurled into another without regard to losses and any other hardships. The Land Army was really the German weapon, grown out of a hundred year tradition, but in the end our Fleet was only a romantic plaything, a parade piece that was built for its own sake, and which again for its own sake could not be risked. The whole benefit which it brought us is disproportionate to the terrible enmity with which it saddled us.
If Germany had not taken this development, at the turn of the century we still could have reached an understanding with England, which at that time was ready for one. To be sure, such an understanding would have lasted only if had been accompanied by a fundamental shift in our foreign policy goal. Even at the turn of the century Germany could have decided upon a resumption of the former Prussian continental policy, and, together with England, prescribed the further development of world history. The objection of our eternal temporisers and doubters that this would nevertheless have been uncertain is based on nothing but personal opinions. English history up to now speaks against it in any case. By what right can such doubters presume that Germany could not have played the same role as Japan? The stupid phrase that Germany thereby would have hauled England’s chestnuts out of the fire could just as much be applied to Frederick The Great who, ultimately, on European battlefields, helped to facilitate England’s conflicts with France outside Europe. It is almost stupid to cite the further objection that nevertheless England one day would have gone against Germany. For then even in such a case Germany’s position, following a successful defeat of Russia in Europe, would be better than it was at the start of the World War. On the contrary, if the Russian Japanese war had been fought in Europe between Germany and Russia, Germany would have received such a purely moral increase in power that, for the next thirty years, every other European power would have carefully weighed whether to break the peace and let itself be incited into a coalition against Germany. But all these objections always spring from the mentality of pre War Germany which itself as an opposition knew everything, but did nothing.
The fact is, at that time England made an approach to Germany, and there is the further fact that Germany for her part could not make up her mind to emerge from the mentality of this eternal temporising and hesitation and come to a clear stand. What Germany refused at that time was solicitously tended to by Japan, and thereby she achieved the fame of a world power in a relatively cheap way.
If nobody in Germany wanted to do this under any circumstances, then we necessarily should have joined the other side. Then we could have utilised the year 1904 or 1905 in a conflict with France, and had Russia at our rear. But these temporisers and delayers wanted that just as little. Out of sheer caution, sheer hesitation and sheer knowledge, they were never able to establish what they really wanted at any hour. And only therein lies the superiority of English statesmanship, for that country is not ruled by such smartalecks who can never brace themselves for an action, but by men who think naturally and for whom politics most surely is an art of the possible, but who also take all possibilities by the forelock, and really strike with them.
Once Germany, however, had shunned such a fundamental understanding with England, which, as already noted, would have made durable sense only if in Berlin a clear continental territorial political aim had been arrived at, England began to organise the world resistance against the country threatening British interests as regards her dominion of the seas.
The World War did not proceed as had been thought at the beginning in view of our Folk’s military efficiency, which was not presumed to be what it was even in England. To be sure, Germany was finally overcome, but only after the American Union had made its appearance on the battlefield, and Germany had lost the support of her rear in consequence of the internal collapse of the homeland. But the actual English war aim had not been achieved thereby. Indeed, the German threat to English supremacy on the seas was eliminated, but the American threat, with a considerably stronger base, took its place. In the future the greatest danger to England would not be in Europe any more at all, but in North America. In Europe itself at this time, France is the State that is most dangerous to England. Her military hegemony has an especially threatening significance for England, in consequence of the geographical position which France occupies vis-a-vis England. Not only for the reason that a great number of vitally important English centres seems to be almost defencelessly exposed to French aerial attacks, but even by means of artillery fire a number of English cities can be reached from the French coast. Indeed, if modern technology succeeds in producing a considerable increase in the firing power of the heaviest artillery, then a bombardment of London from the French mainland does not lie beyond the limits of the possible. But it is even more important that a French submarine war against England would possess a wholly different basis than the earlier German one during the World War. France’s broad encampment on two seas would make it very difficult to carry out sealing off measures which could be easily successful vis-a-vis the confined triangle of water.
Whoever in presentday Europe tries to find natural enemies against England will always chance upon France and Russia: France as a power with continental political aims, which in truth, however, are only a cover for very widely demarcated intentions of a general international political character; Russia as a threatening enemy of India and the possessor of oil sources which today have the same importance once possessed by iron and coal mines in past centuries.
If England herself remains true to her great world political aims, her potential opponents will be France and Russia in Europe, and, in the other parts of the world, especially the American Union in the future.
n contrast no inducement exists to make eternal England’s enmity against Germany. Otherwise English foreign policy would be determined by motives that lie far beyond all real logic, and therefore could have a decisive influence on the determination of the political relations among nations perhaps only in the head of a German professor. No, in the future, in England positions in accordance with purely expedient points of view will be taken up just as soberly as has happened for three hundred years. And just as for three hundred years allies could become England’s enemies and enemies again become allies, so will this also be the case in the future as long as general and particular necessities call for it. If, however, Germany comes to a fundamentally new political orientation which no longer contradicts England’s sea and trade interests, but spends itself in continental aims, then a logical ground for England’s enmity, which would then be just hostility for hostility’s sake, would no longer exist. For even the European balance of power interests England only as long as it hinders the development of a world trade and sea power that may threaten England. There is no foreign policy leadership at all which is less determined by doctrines that bear no relation to life’s realities than the English. A world empire does not come into being by means of a sentimental or purely theoretical policy.
Hence the sober perception of British interests will be determining for English foreign policy in the future too.
Whoever cuts across these interests will thereby also be England’s enemy in the future. Whoever does not touch them, his existence will also not be touched by England. And whoever can be useful to her from time to time will be invited on England’s side regardless of whether he had been an enemy in the past or perhaps can again become one in the future.
Only a bourgeois national German politician can manage to refuse a useful alliance for the reason that later, perhaps, it can end in enmity. To impute such an idea to an Englishman is an insult to the political instinct of this Folk.
Naturally if Germany does not set herself any political goal, and we muddle through planlessly from one day to the other as up to now without any guiding thought; or if this goal lies in the restoration of the borders and
