James W. Gerard

“ Every country of the world to-day is in a state of siege, is conserving food and materials, but not yet has Germany sent forth her useless mouths, to Holland, to Scandinavia and to Switzerland, a sign that not yet is the pinch of hunger in the Empire imperative.
Since I arrived in America in March, 1917, I have been like Cassandra, the prophetess fated to be right, but never believed. I said then Germany would never break because of starvation, or fail because of revolution, and that her man-power was great.
We have not made sacrifices enough in this war, there are too many useless mouths. ”

“ It is impossible to make peace with Germany as at present constituted, because that peace will be but a truce, a short breathing space before the German military autocrats again send the sons of Germany to death in the trenches for the advancement of the System and the personal glory and advantage of stuffy old generals and prancing princes.
The world does not believe that a free Germany will needlessly make war, believe in war for war's sake or take up the profession of arms as a national industry. ”

“ Fortunately, the great majority of American citizens of German descent have, in this great crisis of our history, shown themselves splendidly loyal to our flag. Everyone had a right to sympathize with any warring nation. But now that we are in the war there are only two sides, and the time has come when every citizen must declare himself American -- or traitor!
We must disappoint the Germans who have always believed that the German-Americans here would risk their property, their children's future, and their own neck, and take up arms for the Kaiser. ”

“ Nobody knows, of course, whether the present Crown Prince will succeed Emperor William—nobody knows the fortunes of war or the fate that this war has in store for the Hohenzollerns but while I personally like the Crown Prince, admire his skill in sports, his amiable ways, his smiles to the crowd, I know also of his crazy belief in war. And so long as a ruler persists in this, he is as dangerous to the peace of the world as a man with a plague to the health of a small community. ”

“ Too many Germans, to-day, feel that they are mere dust before the almost countless royalties of the German Empire. And these royalties are too prone to feel that the kingdoms, dukedoms and principalities of Germany and their inhabitants are their private property. The Princes of Nassau and Anspach and Hesse, at the time of our Revolution, sold their unfortunate subjects to the British Government to be exported to fight the Americans. Our American soil covers the bones of many a poor German peasant who gave up his life in a war from which he gained nothing. ”

“ As President Wilson said in his message to Russia of May twenty-sixth, 1917: "The war has begun to go against Germany, and, in their desperate desire to escape the inevitable ultimate defeat, those who are in authority in Germany are using every possible instrumentality, are making use even of the influence of the groups and parties among their own subjects to whom they have never been just or fair or even tolerant to promote a propaganda on both sides of the sea which will preserve for them their influence at home and their power abroad, to the undoing of the very men they are using." ”

“ In 1848, the movement started in France spread all over Europe. The burdened horse on the road evinces a tendency to get out of hand at the mere sight of another horse cavorting about a pasture. The Germans are in blinders and driven by heavy hand, but forgotten as liberty is in Germany, the German Michael, the peasant chained to the soil, the hard-driven, poorly paid worker of the cities, at least, will exhibit a spirit of uneasiness, when across the line he sees Ivan, the Russian moujik, capering about, free from restraint and running things at his own sweet will. ”

“ At the close of the war the soldiers who have fought in the mud of the trenches for three years will most insistently demand a redistricting of the Reichstag and an abolition of the inadequate circle voting of Prussia. And when manhood suffrage comes in Prussia and when the industrial population of Germany gets that representation in the Reichstag out of which they have been brazenly cheated for so many years, it may well be that a great liberal party will be the only defence of private property against the assault of an enraged and justly revengeful social democracy. ”

“ WHEN GERMANY WILL BREAK DOWN I remember a picture exhibited in the Academy at London, some years ago, representing a custom of the wars of the Middle Ages.
A great fortress besieged, frowns down on the plain under the cold moonlight. From its towering walls the useless mouths are thrust forth—if refused food by the enemy, to die—the children, the maimed, the old, the halt, the blind, all those who cannot help in the defence, who consume food needed to strengthen the weakened garrison. ”

“ We are engaged in a war against the greatest military power the world has ever seen; against a people whose country was for so many centuries a theatre of devastating wars that fear is bred in the very marrow of their souls, making them ready to submit their lives and fortunes to an autocracy which for centuries has ground their faces, but which has promised them, as a result of the war, not only security but riches untold and the dominion of the world ”

“ It is natural enough, though not particularly edifying, that in a war each party ascribes all the guilt thereof to the opponents and poses as the innocent who maliciously was surprised when not dreaming of any harm. But the cantankerous way in which almost the whole political and intellectual Germany has handled this question and has treated it as a crime not to take in every respect the German view of the case and of all the details of warfare has strengthened the feeling that this nation has come to regard itself as a sort of high judge of Europe. ”

“ From the time when he is four years old, the German is disciplined and taught that his government is the only good and effective form. The teachers in the schools are all government paid and teach the children only the principles desired by the rulers of the German people. There are no Saturday holidays in the German schools and their summer holidays are for only three to five weeks. You never see gangs of small boys in Germany. Their games and their walks are superintended by their teachers who are always inculcating in them reverence and awe for the military heroes of the past and present. ”

“ On each side of them, lining a vast plain that fades in the distance, lie the dead—stiff, cold, grey, reproachful;—yet all the victims of those conquerors, as well as all their battalions do not equal the countless number that have already drenched a forgiving earth with their dying blood in this war:—victims all of the vain-glorious ambition of a single mortal—the German Kaiser. ”

“ There will be scattered riots in Germany, but no simultaneous rising of the whole people. The officers of the army are all of one class, and of a class devoted to the ideals of autocracy. A revolution of the army is impossible; and at home there are only the boys and old men easily kept in subjection by the police.
There is far greater danger of the starvation of our Allies than of the starvation of the Germans. Every available inch of ground in Germany is cultivated, and cultivated by the aid of the old men, the boys and the women, and the two million prisoners of war. ”

“ We extend to your Royal Highness our heartiest greeting as the illustrious guest of this country and the envoy of the wise and noble ruler of our Fatherland, whom the world recognises and respects as prince of peace and as the representative of a great and mighty nation that by its own power has united its people and achieved its present prominent position among nations of the earth. ”

“ I have always stated that Germany is possessed yet of immense military power; and, to win, the nations opposed to Germany must learn to think in a military way. The mere entrance, even of a great nation like our own, into the war, means nothing in a military way unless backed by military power.
And there must be no German peace. The old régime, left in control of Germany, of Bulgaria, of Turkey, would only seek a favourable moment to renew the war, to strive again for the mastery of the world. ”

“ One-tenth of Frederick the Great's people fell, but to the poverty-stricken peasant woman of Prussia, lamenting her husband and dead sons, did it matter that the rich province of Silesia had been added to the Prussian Crown? What was it to that broken mother whether the Silesian peasants acknowledged the Prussian King or the Austrian Empress? Despots both. And what countless serfs fell in the wars between the King and the Empress! I once asked von Jagow when this war would end. ”

“ It was impossible for any government to resist the popular demand for the use of this illegal means of warfare, because army and navy and people were convinced that ruthless submarine war spelled success and a glorious peace.
But this peace, of course, meant only a German peace, a peace as outlined to me by the Chancellor; a peace impossible for the Allies and even for the world to accept; a peace which would leave Germany immensely powerful and ready immediately after the war to take up a campaign against the nations of the Western hemisphere ”

“ Why to-day an ordinary coal miner in Pennsylvania can earn $5,000 a year—a sum greater than the pay of a Prussian or Austrian general! Why should this miner go back to insult and slavery?
The greatest problem of Germany comes after the war—when these millions of men, trained for four years or more to murder, shall return. It will be hard for them to settle down to regular work, impossible for them to submit again to the iron discipline of German civil life. Will they not, as Bloch predicts, possibly, re-enact the horrors of the French Commune, or even those of the French Revolution? ”

“ And aside from the violation of Belgian neutrality, what would have become of England and of the world if the Prussian autocracy had been left free to defeat--one by one--the nations of the earth? First, the defeat of Russia and Serbia by Austria and Germany, the incorporation of a large part of Russia in the German Empire, German influence predominant in Russia and all the vast resources of that great Empire at the command of Germany. All the fleets in the world could uselessly blockade the German coasts if Germany possessed the limitless riches of the Empire of the Romanoffs. ”

“ To stand apart in Europe is the very essence of life for Switzerland. It is regrettable therefore that German money and German propaganda and some sympathy for Germany among the officers of the army should have touched the fine flower of Swiss neutrality. A triumphant Prussia and a free Switzerland cannot exist in the same Europe. ”

“ Although thinking Germans know that if they do not win the war the financial day of reckoning will come, nevertheless, owing to the clever financial handling of the country by the government and the great banks, there is at present no financial distress in Germany; and the knowledge that, unless indemnities are obtained from other countries, the weight of the great war debt will fall upon the people, perhaps makes them readier to risk all in a final attempt to win the war and impose indemnities upon not only the nations of Europe but also upon the United States of America. ”

“ The crew of every Swedish ship that lands here should be given our viewpoint; every Swede who returns to Sweden should go as a missionary—we must not permit Sweden, whose people are bound to us by ties of blood and friendship, by the hospitality which we offered to every Swedish immigrant, to be ranged among our enemies by the German-admiring aristocrats of Sweden who by birth, training and education are opposed to democracy, who hope, if Germany wins, to gain as great an ascendancy in the government as the Prussian Junkers possess in Germany. ”

“ Terrorism—"Schrecklichkeit"—has always formed a part, not only of German military inclination, but of German military policy. I often said to Germans of the Government, "Are you yourselves subject to being terrorised? If another nation murdered or outraged your women, your children, would it cause you to cringe in submission or would you fight to the last? If you would fight yourselves, what is there in the history of America which makes you think that Americans will submit to mere frightfulness; in what particular do you think Americans are so different from Germans?" ”

“ I sincerely hope that after the war the workingmen of this country will induce delegates of their German brothers to make a tour of America. For when the German workingmen see how much better off the Americans are, they will return to Germany and demand shorter hours and higher wages; and the American will not be brought into competition with labour slaves such as the German workingmen of the period before the war.
As one goes through the streets of Berlin there are no evidences of poverty to be seen; but over fifty-five per cent of the families in Berlin are families living in one room. ”

“ We are warring against a nation whose poets and professors, whose pedagogues and whose parsons have united in stirring its people to a white pitch of hatred, first against Russia, then against England and now against America.
The U-Boat peril is a very real one for England. Russia may either break up into civil wars or become so ineffective that the millions of German troops engaged on the Russian front may be withdrawn and hurled against the Western lines. ”

“ When these zealous, scheming men gain the power of kingship, they usually bring disaster to their country. Their subjects find no compensation in the personal ambitions which hurry a nation into the miseries of war. Better Charles II, dallying with his ringletted mistresses, than an Alexander the Great; better Henry the Fourth of France, the "ever-green gallant," than Frederick the Great, bathing his people in blood. "Happy nations have no history."
William the Second, the present German Emperor, might well be called the Restless Emperor. ”

“ Does it not seem to you ridiculous that the two States of New York and New Jersey should have more chauffeurs in them than there are soldiers in our army? My companions from the Twelfth Regiment that have honoured me by coming here to-day, and more men like them throughout the country, have done what they can. But they can't do it all. There must be a public sentiment if we are to maintain ourselves as a nation. If we had a million men under arms to-day we should not be near the edge of war. ”

“ A Prince so fond of a good time, one who loves dancing and racing, hunting and shooting, with a shrewd eye and cool head, might make an ideal king, but the one dark shadow in the background is the Crown Prince's real love for war. From his seat in the Royal Box in the Reichstag, he has applauded violently and ostentatiously utterances looking toward war: he had made himself the head of the war party, and the Militarists look to him as their chief. ”

“ I feel that now when we are at war with Germany perhaps it would cause embarrassment to this man should I publish his name. In a country where a man may be sent to jail for speaking without respect of some act of the Kaiser's ancestors, committed more than four hundred years ago, it is dangerous for any German to put his name to utterances which might not march with the wishes of despotic Germany. ”

“ PRESIDENT WILSON AND PEACE Once the Kaiser said to me, "I wish I had as much power as your President. He has far more power than I have."
What would the Kaiser say of the power and prestige now enjoyed by the President of the United States?
At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to make the world safe for Democracy." ”

“ Tannenberg thought Italy would declare war on France. He was wrong in his confidence that France was decadent, wrong in believing that England and the United States would only talk but would not fight, yet right in his belief that revolution would break out in Russia. In fact, I think that for years after the Franco-Russian Alliance, Germany was preparing a Russian revolution to break out on whatever day the Russian troops were ordered to their colours. He says that France will be so thoroughly defeated that the "war ought not to leave her more than eyes to cry with." ”

“ The American who goes to Mexico and there develops a railroad or a plantation, a commercial business, a bank or a mine, is not only adding to the wealth of Mexico, but any money which he makes after paying his due share of taxes there, is brought back by him to the United States, is subject to taxation, [259] and by just so much not only lightens the tax burden of other Americans, but adds to the power in trade of the whole country.
A business man who is taxed too much on any profits that he makes will, like the Spaniard, invest his capital in Government bonds. ”

“ Our farmers are entitled to cheaper labour. Why should not enemy aliens work our farms? We do not propose to make the Austrian and German and Hungarian women agricultural slaves as the Germans made the Russian women caught by the war within the borders of Germany, nor have we the right, I believe, to force civilian prisoners to work. But we can give these civilian men instead of meat twice a day, now given them, the same food which the Germans give their prisoners, until the enemy aliens volunteer to work in our fields. ”

“ The region of the Ukraine, in Southern Russia, is supposed to be clamouring for freedom and independent [334] existence. Long before the Russian revolution, I and all the diplomats of Germany were flooded with newspapers, pamphlets and literature about the longing of the Ukraine—all as plainly issued by the Germans as if they had been stamped with the Royal arms of Prussia and the seal of the General Staff.
The Lithuanians, too, stir uneasily. There is, perhaps, more in their claim; they request the world not to confuse them with the Poles and they protest against incorporation with Poland. ”

“ May the United States of America help a disunited Europe to find the way out of the deadly miasmatic jungle into which it has lost itself.
THE HELPLESSNESS OF EUROPE
BY —— ——, MEMBER OF THE REICHSTAG
Europe is in the position of a wanderer who has gone astray into a swamp. In vain he labours to regain firm ground. The more frantically he struggles the surer he is to become submerged. Like an infant child he is unable to help himself. Help must come from people outside the swamp.
We are now in the third year of the biggest, the most fratricidal and the most hopeless war the world has ever seen. ”

“ There is nothing in the war for the German who is not a noble or a junker, an officer or an official. German victory will only bend the collar of caste and servitude, low wages and militarism tighter on the German neck. Sooner or later the deceived German will discover this; revolution will not come during the war, but after it, unless it closes with a German peace, or unless in anticipation of revolt, rights are granted to the people. ”

“ The French nation is too much impressed by the memory of her great past and the part played by her in European politics to stand being pitied and patted like children of tender age. It will be respected as an equal who acts with the full knowledge of the state of things and is too much given to political reflection to accept willingly any view of the war that visibly is coloured by the interest of Germany in the dissension between the two great Powers of Western Europe. The anti-German feeling runs still very high in France ”

“ THE KAISER AND "LÈSE-MAJESTÉ" The talents and ability and agreeable personality of the German Emperor must not blind us to the fact that he is the centre of the system which has brought the world to a despair and misery such as it never has known since the dawn of history. We must remember that all his utterances disclose the soul of the conqueror, of a man intensely anxious for earthly fame and a conspicuous place in the gallery of human events ”

“ But it was the deciding vote of the Great General Staff that finally embarked the German nation on this dangerous course.
I do not think the Emperor himself, unless backed by the whole public opinion of Germany, would dare to withstand the Great General Staff which he himself creates. They are so much his devotees that they would overrule him in what they consider his interest.
Whatever thinking the Emperor does nowadays is more or less on his own account. There is to-day no shining favourite who has his ear to the exclusion of others. ”

“ Unless the war ends with a victory so decisive for the Allies that an era of universal peace shall dawn for the world, each nation will constitute itself an armed camp fearing always that the German, with his lust for war and conquest, will again terrorise the world by a sudden assault. ”