The New Germany

Excerpt

The following account of events in Germany during the period from the Armistice to the Treaty of Versailles was written mostly in the summer of 1919. But the events of the succeeding period from the signature of the Treaty to its ratification during the autumn and winter call for no alteration and but little addition to the text. The six months hereinafter described from February to August were a—perhaps the—critical period for Germany and for Europe. It was the formative and creative stage for New Germany and for New Europe. If the whole phase through which Central Europe passed after the collapse of the Central Powers is considered as the genesis of a new age, then the week of actual revolution was a phase of intense heat and fierce energy, in which the old political organisms were boiled down to their most simple and essential types and in which the germs of new political institutions appeared in primitive forms such as the Councils. Thereafter came the period under review, in which the old and new types fought for a survival of the fittest; and the old—aided by the general cooling off of the revolution—to some extent reasserted their supremacy. Indeed during this last winter I have even occasionally thought that the types of old Germany might succeed in suppressing the new, thereby making it necessary to change the title and tone of this book. But I know this impression is largely due to the pessimistic and perverted point of view towards all events in Central Europe affected by the British Press with few exceptions. For our "Dailies" Germany is only a subject for "scare heads" and "stories," in which adventurous special correspondents see the Kaiser emerging from the Netherlands to re-ravage Europe like the Brontosaurus out of the Nyassa swamp. Whereas the reality seems to be that reaction has moderated as the revolution became more amenable, and that a "modus vivendi" between the two is now more of a possibility than it was.

It now seems less probable than it did last summer that the solution in Germany will be a "second revolution" as in Russia. Weak as it is politically, the present German governmental system seems too strong police-ically to be overthrown by force. The situation to-day in Germany rather suggests that in Great Britain two years hence than that in Russia two years ago.

The new Germany of this winter of 1919-20 is essentially, then, the same as that of last summer. It is not the old Germany of the autumn of 1914, nor the young Germany of the autumn of 1917. But it has developed rapidly in some respects in the course of this winter. Thus the rough and ready rule by Frei-Corps expeditions and garrisons has been supplemented by a gendarmerie (Sicherheitswehr); and the middle-class militia (Bürgerwehr) has been replaced by an organisation of armed special constables (Einwohnerwehr).

The effect and perhaps the object of this change is to obscure the class character of the conflict between reaction and revolution—between property and the proletariat. The police is no longer a weapon for use by a possible militarist reaction or monarchist restoration, and in return it will be supported by the moderate revolutionaries.

Reaction and revolution are reuniting as reconstruction; and this tendency appears in all regions of political activity. Thus the revolutionary Council system now seems established as a secondary representative institution supplementary to Parliament.

This development is, however, not due to maturity of political experience—as it would be in similar conditions in an Anglo-Saxon community—but merely to mortal weakness. German political vitality, owing to mediæval calamities, has always been low in modern times. Now, as a result of a four years' frenzy of war and a fifth year in a fever of revolution, German political vitality is a very flickering flame. So long as France and Great Britain continue to enforce the principles and procedures of the Treaty of Versailles and of the Paris Council, Germany will remain a danger to Europe—a danger, not because of its recent relapse into a Conservative reaction, nor even because of the decreasing risk of a Communist "second" revolution, but because Germany is an essential and vital member of our European body politic that is being kept in a morbid, even moribund, condition by the provisions of the peace. The Paris diplomatists have not yet learnt the lesson taught by a great French diplomatist two hundred years ago at the time of the last great European settlement but one. M. de Callières then wrote in his treatise on diplomacy—"We must think of the States of which Europe is composed as being joined ... in such a way that they may be regarded as members of one Republic, and that no considerable change can take place in any one of them without affecting the condition or disturbing the peace of all the others."

A majority of the rank and file of Greater Britain does so think of Germany to-day, but unless and until it can compel its rulers to act accordingly it will not get peace....