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Updated: June 29, 2025
It is unquestioned, however, that this Zabern Affair and the consequent attitude of the whole nation, as well as the extraordinary vote in the Reichstag, greatly alarmed the military party. It was perhaps the final factor which decided the advocates of the old military system of Germany in favour of a European war.
And it was no will to which righteous men could possibly submit. It came as an illiberal and ungracious will. It was the will of Zabern. It is not as if you had set yourselves to be an imperial people and embrace and unify the world. You did not want to unify the world.
The hurrahing Russians cannot keep rank at that rate of going, like a buffalo stampede; but fall into heaps and gaps: Seidlitz, with a swiftness, with a dexterity beyond praise, has picked his way across that quaggy Zabern Hollow; falls, with say 5,000 horse, on the flank of this big buffalo stampede; tumbles it into instant ruin; which proves irretrievable, as the Prussian Infantry come on again, and back Seidlitz.
Reports of the acts of Forstner and other officers were rapidly spread among the population. The two newspapers of Zabern published articles. The excitement grew, and there were demonstrations against the officials and especially against Forstner.
Affairs were brought to a head by the so-called Zabern Affair. In this affair the internal antagonism between the civil population and professional soldiers, which had assumed great proportions in a period of long peace, seemed to reach its climax.
No less than three parties, the Centrum, the Progressives and the Social Democrats, addressed interpellations to the Chancellor about this occurrence at Zabern. I was present at the debate in the Reichstag, which took place on the fourth, fifth and sixth of December, 1913.
In contrast to the Zabern affair we may note that the striking copper miners of Michigan were not obliged to apply to higher military officials for redress of wrongs claimed to have been inflicted upon them by the military. They were free to apply, and did apply, to tribunals outside of and independent of the executive.
I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity in drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword a waiter, or a shop assistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser in the affair at Zabern was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In all these matters I would avoid sentiment.
About midnight of Saturday-Sunday, there again rose bow-wowing, bellowing of Russian cannon; not from beyond the Zabern ground this time, nor stationary anywhere, but from the south some transient part of it, and not far off; one ball struck a carriage near the King's tent, and shattered it.
Imbued with these traditions and inspired by this contempt for everything civilian, the German armies invaded Belgium, and it may be safely assumed that in a country where the civilian ethos predominated, looks, words, and even deeds, expressed hostility. Such "provocation" would certainly rouse the military ego to a revenge ten thousand-fold greater than that taken at Zabern.
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