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Updated: June 29, 2025
He related what he had achieved at Donaueschingen; that the Emperor had issued a cabinet order saying that the military authorities should be kept within legal bounds, that all the guilty persons would be punished, that the Regiment, Number Ninety-nine, had been removed from Zabern, that the absolute law of 1820 had been abolished for Alsace-Lorraine, and that no Chancellor should for one moment tolerate disregard of law by any government officials, civil or military, and remain in his position.
I have set out in another chapter, in detail, the political system from which you have seen that the Reichstag is nothing but a debating society; that the Prussians do not really have universal suffrage but, by reason of the vicious circle system of voting, the elective franchise remains in the hands of the few; and that the government of the country through the Landrate, Regierungsprasidenten and Oberprasidenten is a central system from above downwards and not the election of the rulers by the people; and, in the chapter on militarism and Zabern, I have told by what means the control of the army is kept in the hands of the class of nobles.
Our French missionary padre tells me that it was just the same in Alsace. The incident at Zabern after the manoeuvres was entirely due to the disgust and indignation of the French people at the defiling of their beds and bedrooms by the German soldiers, who had been billeted upon them. Looting, although you may not know it, is the natural impulse of primitive man. And in war we are very primitive.
This writing on the wall these letters forming the word "Zabern" the actions of the Social Democrats and their growing boldness, all were warnings to the autocracy of its waning power, and impelled that autocracy towards war as a bloodletting cure for popular discontent.
The incidents at Zabern in Alsace in 1913 are still fresh in public memory, reinforced by evidence of a similar spirit in German military proclamations in France and Belgium. But it is important to realise that these incidents are not exceptional outbursts but common Prussian practice, upheld, as the sequel to the Zabern events proved, by the highest authority.
A while before noon, the Prussians retired to their Camp again; leaving only the artillery to respond, so far as needful, and bow-wow across the Zabern ground, till the Russians lay down again. Friedrich's Hussars knew of the Russian WAGENBURG, or general baggage reservoirs, at Klein Kamin, by this time.
The soldiers charged and drove the multitude across the Square and into a side street and arrested about fifteen persons, among them the President, two Judges and the State Attorney of the Zabern Supreme Court, who had just come out from the court building and who were caught in the crowd. They were subsequently released.
I now could see the full significance of Zabern, a significance which I could not realise at the time. During the first part of the war I became angry when outsiders called us barbarians; now I feel sad. I do not blame them. But it is our system that is at fault, and we must correct it.
Of course, all this had been arranged long before anyone dreamed of any trouble in Zabern, and the Emperor could scarcely be expected to realise the gravity of the situation which suddenly arose. But this very fact created a bad impression.
In the chapter on the affair at Zabern, something will be seen of the attitude of the troops toward the civil population. At the outbreak of the war several of the deputies, sitting in the Reichstag as members from Alsace-Lorraine, crossed the frontier and joined the French army.
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