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Updated: May 6, 2025
And of course the ambition of Germany for "a place in the sun" was as coldly fierce as ever. The Pan-Germanists were impatient. But they could hardly proclaim war without saying what place and whose place they wanted. Nor was there any particular grievance on which they could stand as a colorable ground of armed conflict. The Kaiser had prepared for war, no doubt.
And thus Pan-Germanists have been looking towards every part of the horizon.
We must repudiate the sinister delusion of a “Mittel Europa” which is haunting the diseased brains of the Pan-Germanists. On the other hand, we must repudiate any offensive or defensive economic alliance between the Allied Powers. The terms of peace must be engraved on clean white marble. If a permanent peace is to be attained we must remove the deeper causes which brought about the catastrophe.
The Pan-Germanists, under the leadership of the military party, could not understand that it was possible to die through being victorious, that victories are worthless when they do not lead to peace, that territories held in an iron grasp as "security" are valueless securities as long as the opposing party cannot be forced to redeem them. There were various shades of this Pan-Germanism.
The same reasons which impelled Protestant Prussia to drive Catholic Austria from the Germanic Confederation are still in large measure subsisting to-day, and I do not think that the Hohenzollern has any intention of forcing the Habsburg into the Confederation again, merely to obey the behests of the Pan-Germanists.
"Hearing people form plans for the definite extinction of Germany seems to me like listening to the Pan-Germanists of Berlin when they talk of dividing up the continents." Then he summed up his opinion. "Imperialism will have to be crushed for the sake of the tranquillity of the world; the great war machine which menaces the peace of nations will have to be suppressed.
The Pan-Germanists may be only a small minority to-day, but they are noisy, and they are just the kind of people ever looking out for just such “unpleasant incidents.” Yes, let us be on our guard! Let us not trust to a false sense of security, and let us not put our trust in politics and politicians. Politics are so petty, and politicians so impotent.
Twenty-five years ago the Schnaebele incident brought Europe to the verge of war. Similar frontier incidents in this age of aeroplanes can happen any day. They did happen yesterday. They did not lead to serious consequences. They might lead to fatal consequences to-morrow. They might be magnified by a sensational Press and by bellicose partisans such as the Pan-Germanists.
Hence Germany could apparently sink vessels with impunity so long as the noncombatant victims belonged to other nationalities. The agitation in Germany to break the undertaking with the United States was thrashed out between the adherents of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Pan-Germanists without shaking the Chancellor's strength.
When one thinks that Servia alone, even though exhausted by two atrocious wars, is sufficient to hold in check imperial Austria; when one sees Italy remain neutral, and in reality hostile to Austria, and Russia open slowly, inexorably, her reservoir of men, resources, and infinite energy on the eastern frontier of Germany, one asks truly if the Pan-Germanists have not been the veritable plague of God for their country; the Fatherland, which men like Goethe, Kant, and Beethoven had made so cultured, so glorious, and which asked only to live and to prosper, the Pan-Germanists have isolated only to deliver it to the execration of the world.
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