The English labor leaders who themselves protested against the war at first, in hopes that the German Socialists would do the same, were doomed to be grievously disappointed, for in Germany the protests against war were still more feeble.  The newspapers, with few exceptions, as was previously pointed out, were under the control of the military leaders and the manufacturers of war materials.  These papers persuaded the German people that England, through her jealousy of Germany’s great growth in trade, had egged on Russia, France, and Serbia to attack Germany and Austria, and then had declared war herself on a flimsy pretext.  At first the entire German nation believed this.  Until Prince Lichnowsky, the former German ambassador to Great Britain, published a story in which he told how the German government had forced the war in spite of all that England could do to prevent it, the Germans thought, as their war chiefs told them, that the war was forced upon Germany by her jealous enemies.

Thus the military leaders of Germany, descendants of the old feudal nobles, were able to make the whole German nation hate the English people.

When the English ambassador to Berlin went to see the chancellor (as the prime-minister of the German Empire is called) and told him that unless German troops were immediately withdrawn from Belgium, England would declare war, for the Belgian government had a treaty signed by England promising them protection, the German chancellor exclaimed.  “What!  Would you plunge into this terrible war for the sake of a scrap of paper!” The chancellor was excited.  As you have been told before, the Germans were sure that England, being unprepared for the war, would never dare to go into it.  This threatened to upset all their well-laid plans for the conquest of France and then Russia.  For the moment the chancellor forgot his diplomacy.  He blurted out the truth.  He showed the world that honor had no place in the minds of the German war lords.  To the English a treaty with Belgium was a sacred pledge; to the Germans it was something which could be torn up at a moment’s notice if it stood in the way of their interests.

There was a violent outburst against England in all of the newspapers of Germany.  A German poet wrote a dreadful poem called “The Hymn of Hate,” in which he told how while they had no love for the Frenchman or the Russian, they had no hate for them either.  One nation alone they hated—­England!  “Gott strafe England” (may God punish England) became the war cry of the Germans.

Everything had gone according to their pre-arranged plans until England decided that her promise given to Belgium stood first, even before the terrible loss and suffering of a great war.  That any nation should put her honor before her comfort and profit, had never occurred to the war leaders of Germany.

Questions for Review