Chapter 16

Who Profits?

The race for power on the sea.—The “naval holiday” declined.—The declining birth-rate.—The growth of the Socialists.—The militarists of Germany.—How wars cure labor troubles.—The forces behind the war game.—Profits and press agents.

Let us turn back to the great powers of Europe. We spoke of their mad race, each nation trying to build more ships and bigger ships than its neighbors and to outstrip them in cannon and other munitions of war. The German navy had been growing by leaps and bounds. From being the sixth largest navy in the world, within ten years it had grown to second place. But, fast as the Germans built ships, the English built them more rapidly still. England built a monstrous battleship called the Dreadnaught, which was twice as heavy as any other battleship afloat. Germany promptly replied by planning four ships of the dreadnaught class, and England came back with some still larger vessels which are known as super-dreadnaughts.

At last, the English first lord of the navy, Mr. Winston Churchill, proposed to Germany that each country take a “naval holiday.” In other words, he practically said to Germany, “If you people will stop building warships for a year, we will also. Then at the end of the year, we shall be no worse off or better off than we were at the beginning.”

Germany laughed at this proposal. To her, it showed that England could not stand the strain very much longer. “Besides,” said the Germans, “it is all very well for England to be satisfied with her present navy, which is half again as large as ours. If our navy were the strongest in the world, we too would be glad to have all nations stop building warships,” and they laid down the keels of four new super-dreadnaughts.

But other things disturbed the peace of mind of the German militarists. For a long time, the population of France had not been increasing, while Germany almost doubled her numbers from 1860 to 1900. Now, to their dismay, the German birth-rate began to grow less and they saw the population of Russia growing larger by 20% every ten years. Again, they learned that Russia was about to build a series of railroads near the German frontier which would enable them to rush an army to attack Germany at very short notice. The Germans already had such railroads in their own country, but they did not propose to let their neighbors have this advantage also.

Again, France had recently passed a law forcing every young man to put three years in military service instead of two. This would increase France’s standing army by 50 per cent. The German people, who up to this time had been very docile and very obedient to the military rule, were showing signs of discontent. The Socialists, a party who represented the working people largely, and who were strongly opposed to war, had been growing very fast. In the last election, they had gained many representatives in the German congress, and had cast over 4,000,000 votes. The only thing that kept them from having a majority in the Reichstag (the German congress) was the fact that in some districts, the voters of the other parties combined against them. In this way, the military class still held control of the German government, but it was afraid that it would not be for long.

With nearly half the able-bodied men in the country spending their time drilling and doing guard duty, the other half of the population had to earn money enough to support their own families and also the families of the men in the army. As one writer has put it, “Every workingman in Europe carried a soldier on his back who reached down and took the bread out of his platter.”

The program of Bismarck was still in the minds of the military leaders of Germany. The military class must rule Prussia, Prussia must rule Germany, and Germany must be the greatest power in Europe. To their minds, war between Germany and her allies and the rest of Europe must come. Being warriors by trade and having nothing else to do, they saw that, if the great war were postponed much longer, the chances of Germany’s winning it would grow less and less. France and Russia were growing stronger and Germany was unable to catch up to England’s navy. It should be remembered that this class made up a small part only of the German nation. Their influence was all out of proportion to their numbers. They controlled the government, and the government controlled the schools and the newspapers. The people believed what they were told. They were simply parts of the war machine. Bismarck’s policy had been to crush his enemies one by one. He never entered a war until he was sure that Prussia was bound to win it. In like fashion, the German military chiefs of 1914 hoped to conquer France and Russia before England was ready. It was the old story as told by Shakespeare. “Our legions are brim full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increaseth every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline.”

Russia, too, was having her troubles. After the czar had promised the nation a constitution and had agreed to allow a duma or parliament to be called together, the military class, who were trying to keep the common people under control and in ignorance as much as possible had been able to prevent the duma from obtaining any power. It had much less freedom than the German Reichstag. It was permitted to meet and to talk, but not to pass laws. If any member spoke his mind freely, he was sent to Siberia for life. There were murmurs and threats. There were labor troubles and strikes. The people of Russia, especially those living in cities, were learning how little freedom they had, compared with citizens of other countries, and the time seemed ripe for a revolution.

It has always been the policy of kings to take the minds of their people off their own wrongs by giving them some foreign war to think about. Although the Russian government did all that it could to prevent the war without completely betraying Serbia, still the war probably put off the Russian Revolution for two years.

It must be kept in mind that in Germany and especially in Prussia there was a class of people who had no trade but war. These were the so-called Junkers (Yo͝onkers), direct descendants of the old feudal barons. They were owners of rich tracts of land which had been handed down to them by their fore-fathers. The rent paid to them by the people who lived on their farms supported them richly in idleness. Just as their ancestors in the old days had lived only by fighting and plundering, so these people still had the idea that anything that they could take by force was theirs.

Bismarck was a Junker of Junkers. He had nothing but contempt for the common people and their law-making bodies. In the early days when he was Prime Minister of the Prussian kingdom, the Congress had refused to vote to raise certain moneys through taxes that Bismarck advised, because he wanted to spend all of it in preparations for war. In spite of the vote of the representatives of the people, Bismarck went right on collecting the money and spending it as he wished. Later on, after the Prussian army had won its rapid victories, first over the Danes, then over the Austrians, and lastly over the French, the Prussian people, swollen with pride at what their armies had accomplished, forgave Bismarck for riding rough-shod over their liberties. But Bismarck was able to do what he did because he had the backing of the king and the great land-owning Junker class.

In 1870 this was the only class in Prussia that had any power. By 1914, however, a change had come about. The wonderful development of Germany’s trade and manufacturing had brought wealth and power to the merchant class and these had to be considered when plans for war were being formed.

Naturally, the outbreak of war disturbs trade very much, especially trade with foreign countries. A great deal of the German commerce, carried on with Great Britain, the United States, South America, and far distant colonies, had to travel over the ocean. German merchants would never support a war cheerfully if they thought that their trade would be interrupted for any length of time. So the Junkers, when they made up their minds to wage war for the conquest of France and Russia, persuaded the merchants that after these countries had been conquered they would be forced to give a big sum of money to Germany which would more than pay her back for the full cost of the war. Then the Russians would be compelled, as a result of the war, to promise to trade only with German merchants and manufacturers, and thus everybody in Germany would be much richer.[6]

[6] When England came in, the merchants of Germany were very down-hearted, for they saw all their over-seas trade cut off at a blow. But the Junkers called together the leading merchants and bribed them with promises. In the year 1918 one of the prominent manufacturers of Germany made a statement which got out and was published in the countries of the Entente. After telling how the blame for the war was to be laid at the door of the land-owning, military class, he confessed that he personally had been bribed to support the war by the promise of thirty thousand acres of Australian land, which was to be given to him after Germany had conquered the world. This, of course, was pure piracy; the motto of Prussia for some time had been that piracy pays.

There was one class of manufacturers who did not lose trade, but gained it through a war. This was composed of the makers of guns and munitions. They were clamorously back of the Junkers in their demands for war. These people profited by preparation for war. They kept inventing newer and stronger guns so that the weapons which they had sold the governments one year would be out-of-date the next, ready to be thrown on the scrap heap. In this way, the factories were kept working over-time and their profits were enormous. This money, of course, came out of the taxes of the common people.

Their surplus profits the munition makers invested sometimes in newspapers. It was proved in the German Reichstag in 1913 that the great gun-makers of Prussia had a force of hired newspaper writers to keep up threats of war. They paid certain papers in Paris to print articles to make the French people think that the Germans were about to attack them. These same gun-makers in Berlin tried to persuade the German people that the French were on the point of attacking them.

All of this played into the hands of the Junkers by making people all over Europe feel that war could not be avoided. Thus when the Junkers were ready to strike and the great war broke out, people would say, “At last it has come, the war that we knew was inevitable.”

Questions for Review

Why did Germany decline to take a “naval holiday”?

What is meant by “strategic railroads”?

Why were the military leaders alarmed at the growth of the Socialist Party?

What was the fate of popular government in Russia?

How did the Junkers owe their power to the feudal system?

How were the German merchants won over to war?

What part had the gun-makers in bringing on war?