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Updated: June 10, 2025
Unfortunately we must recognize the fact, however, that the Italian view is widespread among the Socialists of other neutral countries." Germany's revolutionary party lost no time in hoisting the banner of "no annexations."
There were many thousands of German settlers, especially in southern Brazil: the Pan-German League assiduously laboured to organise these settlers, and to fan their patriotic zeal, by means of schools, books, and newspapers. But the Monroe Doctrine stood in the way of South American annexations.
The western provinces of Prussia were to be incorporated with other German annexations to form the new kingdom of Westphalia; Prussian Poland was to be converted into the duchy of Warsaw under the crown of Saxony, to which a right of passage through Silesia was reserved; and Berlin with other great Prussian fortresses were to remain in the hands of the French until an exorbitant war indemnity should have been paid.
We have declared to Europe that we wish for no annexations or conquests, and will attempt none; we have quite enough with the two million five hundred thousand Mussulmans in Algeria; it would be madness to add fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand more to them, and a hundred and fifty leagues to our frontier.
So long as the exploitation of undeveloped countries is directed by companies having no object in view except dividends, so long as financiers prompt the policy of Governments, so long as military expeditions, leading up to annexations, are undertaken behind the back of the public for reasons that cannot be avowed, so long will the nations end with war, where they have begun by theft, and so long will thousands and millions of innocent and generous lives, the best of Europe, be thrown away to no purpose, because, in the dark, sinister interests have been risking the peace of the world for the sake of money in their pockets.
It was, indeed, this fear which mainly drove Britain, in spite of, or perhaps because of, her free trade theories, into a series of large annexations in regions where her trade had been hitherto predominant. Again, the most perturbing feature of the relations between the European powers also contributed to produce an eagerness for colonial possessions.
On the 25th, which was Christmas Day for the Germans but not by the unreformed Russian calendar, Von Kühlmann announced Germany's adhesion to the Russian programme of no annexations and no indemnities on condition that the Entente accepted the same principle; and an adjournment was made until 4 January to wait for its reply.
We committed no crimes, planned no secret treaties, devised no annexations or indemnities. We envied no one. We examined the entire world and found it worth while. Bless their hearts, men don't have to have anything to talk about. They just talk. And there is only one rule for being a good talker: learn how to listen.
They insist that the war shall not end in vindictive action of any kind; that no nation or people shall be robbed or punished because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong. It is this thought that has been expressed in the formula "No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities."
Someone proclaimed that now the Russian people should have peace, and when Prof. Milioukoff, foreign minister for the new government, assured France and England that Russia would stick by them to the last, a howling crowd of workingmen threatened to mob him. "No annexations and no indemnities," was the cry of the socialists. "Let us go back to conditions as they were before the war.
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