James W. Gerard

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They who ask themselves when it will be possible to propose to the people of any nation after the war a compensation for its enormous sacrifices, forget that the conquered will be so exhausted that there will be no question of being able to draw from a conquered nation the least pecuniary indemnity. All that can be imposed on the conquered will be the abandonment of some rags of frontier territory. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And while Americans did not dare use their own language in Berlin in time of peace between the two countries yet after the outbreak of war, newspapers in the United States, printed in German, owned by Germans and German sympathisers, dared to attack America and her President.
The autocracy always hope to divide us, to make of us a Russia, torn by Maximalists and Minimalists, by Militarists and Bolsheviki and, consequently, impotent for war. ”

“ Going one day to a proof establishment to try a gun I opened by mistake a door which led to a great room where thousands of German military rifles were being fitted with telescopes. These telescopes have crossed wires, like those in a surveyor's instrument, and it is only necessary in aiming to fix the centre of the crossed wires on the game and pull the trigger. A clever arrangement enables the wires to be elevated for distant shooting.
So great is the discipline of the German people that game on these estates is seldom, if ever, touched by the peasants. There is no free shooting in Germany. ”

“ In the long run a paid propaganda always fails. It is like paying money to blackmailers. The blackmailer who has once received money becomes so insatiable that even the Bank of England will not satisfy him in the end. Sometimes the newspapers which are not bought, but are equally corrupt, become vehement in their denunciation of the country making the propaganda in the hope of being bought and in the hope that their bribe money will be in proportion to their hostility. Corrupted public men who are not bribed often become sternly virtuous and denunciatory with a similar hope. ”

“ I do not blame the von Lachnows because they fight tooth and nail for the retention of their old privileges—because they endeavour to hold the common people in a serfdom almost as complete as that of the Dark Ages. The dawn of constitutional government will be their twilight, the twilight of the Gods of militarism, of privilege, and of caste. ”

“ Every one sympathises with the Poles and hopes for the establishment of a really free and independent Poland, and not a Poland under the rule or protection of either Austria or Germany. It will be a great experiment, because in the past the great state of Poland, one of the greatest in Europe, was broken because of the incapacity of the Poles to rule themselves. Their armies showed great bravery, the Polish cavalry, winged like angels, terrified enemy cavalry horses and charged often to victory ”

“ That older, kindlier Germany was the nation tempered and softened by the suffering of the Napoleonic wars. After the battle of Jena, where Napoleon rubbed the face of Prussia in the mud of defeat, there came on Germany that period of privation which left its impress so deeply on the German as to make thrift his first characteristic. A spirit of lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism imbued the whole people. Young girls cut off their long golden hair to be sold for the Fatherland. ”

“ 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 ”