A remarkable statistical fact concerning the war, which I ran across in London, was a computation that the deaths in the navy were substantially equal to those in the army, from the beginning of the war up into November.  Of casualties in the army, only about 10 per cent are deaths.  There are few wounded to be returned home from a naval disaster.  When the English army had suffered about 60,000 casualties, making about 6000 men killed, at the same time from the naval service 6000 boys in blue had gone down to watery graves.

CHAPTER XIV

Is it the people’s war?

German Socialism—­German Unity—­A Reverse Political System—­Business Men without Political Influence—­A Voice from the People—­The German War Lord.

In America there is no greater conflict of opinion than over the question of the relations of the German people to the present war.  There are those who declare most emphatically that when the German people once understand this war there will be revolution in Germany, uprising of the socialists, and the sure overthrow of the Hohenzollern dynasty.

Such opinions are not well based, and their authors do not understand the German temperament, the principles of German government, German organization, or German Socialism.

Socialism in Germany is neither of the destructive order of that in Russia, nor of the wild varieties found in America; nor has it even the order of the Socialism of England.  Twenty years ago the Socialism of Germany might be recorded as against the invasion of Belgium, and the bonds of Socialism existing between Belgium, France, and Germany might have interfered with the war programme.

But Socialism in Germany has passed the stage of labor-agitation.  Indeed, it has been transformed in the reign of the present Kaiser from agitation against capitalism within the empire to agitation for the expansion of Germany in the territory of its neighbors throughout the world, that German labor may, through German arms, enter into and possess the land without.  German Socialism is thus allied with German militarism, and it has also become the respectable party of opposition in the Reichstag.  The middle classes of Germany of late years have voted for Socialistic candidates whenever they disagreed with the government.  It is the party of protest and of opposition.  It is a party of the empire, not of any world socialistic movement.

Germany is thoroughly knit together in support of its government and its Kaiser.  The German people do not seek a constitutional government like England, or a republican form of government like France or the United States.  They believe their situation and safety in the middle of Europe call for a more autocratic form of government, and one not too quickly responsive to popular sentiment.