DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH
DEUTSCHLAND
ÜBER ALLAH
BY
E. F. BENSON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXVII
DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLAH
IT was commonly said at the beginning of this war that, whateverGermany’s military resources might be, she was hopelessly and childishlylacking in diplomatic ability and in knowledge of psychology, fromwhich all success in diplomacy is distilled. As instances of this gravedefect, people adduced the fact that apparently she had not anticipatedthe entry of Great Britain into the war at all, while her treatment ofBelgium immediately afterwards was universally pronounced not to be acrime merely, but a blunder of the stupidest sort. It is perfectly truethat Germany did not understand, and, as seems likely in the light ofinnumerable other atrocities, never will understand, the psychologyof civilised peoples; she has never shown any signs up till now, atany rate, of “having got the hang of it” at all. But critics of herdiplomacy failed to see the root-fact that she did not understand itmerely because it did not interest her. It was not worth her while tomaster the psychology of other civilised nations, since she was out notto understand them but to conquer them. She had all the information shewanted about their armies and navies and guns and ammunition neatly andcorrectly tabulated. Why, then, since this was all that concerned her,should she bother her head about what they might feel on the subjectof gas-attacks or the torpedoing of neutral ships without warning? Aslong as her fumes were deadly and her submarines subtle, nothing furtherconcerned her.
But Europe generally made a great mistake in supposing that she couldnot learn psychology and the process of its distillation into diplomacywhen it interested her. The psychology of the French and English was auseless study, for she was merely going to fight them, but for years shehad been studying with an industry and a patience that put our diplomacyto shame (as was most swiftly and ignominiously proven when it cameinto conflict with hers) the psychology of the Turks. For years she hadwatched the dealings of the Great Powers with Turkey, but she had neverreally associated herself with that policy. She sat quietly by and sawhow it worked. Briefly it was this. For a hundred years Turkey had beena Sick Man, and for a hundred years he had been kept alive in Europeby the sedulous attentions of the Physician-Powers, who dared not lethim die for fear of the stupendous quarrels which would instantly ariseover his corpse. So there they all sat round his bed, and kept him alivewith injections of strychnine and oxygen and, no less, by a policy ofrousing and irritating the patient. All through the reign of Abdul Hamidthey persevered: Great Britain plucked his pillow from him, so to speak,by her protectorate of Egypt; Russia tweaked Eastern Rumelia from him;France deprived him of his hot-water bottle when she snatched at theConstantinople quays, and they all shook and slapped him when he went towar with Greece in 1896, and instantly deprived him of the territoryhe had won in Thessaly. That was the principle of European diplomacytowards Turkey, and from it Germany always held aloof.
But from about the beginning of the reign of the present German Emperor,German or rather Prussian diplomacy had been going quietly about itswork. It w