Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/25

Rh a warlike policy. It is true that such a policy demanded statesmen with some stuff in their heads and with sufficient independence to assert themselves against those interested in an imperialistic policy of force. Nor were the latter more wanting in Germany than elsewhere; they were, in fact, strengthened by the success of the peace policy. The fabulous upgrowth of Germany in the economic sphere at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century provided the means for powerful military armaments, and it created a class of force-loving industrial magnates, particularly in the iron industry. With these associated themselves those old partisans of the policy of force, the Junkers, and the greater part of the intellectuals, who were professionally engaged to proclaim the warlike glory of the Hohenzollerns and to inoculate the whole youth of Germany with the virus of megalomania.

Bismarck's successor, Caprivi, pursued the old policy of maintaining peace amid all the imperialistic conflicts of the surrounding world. But when Prince Bülow, in 1897, became at first Foreign Minister, afterwards (1900) Chancellor, and with him Tirpitz became Chief of the Admiralty, we saw a completely new orientation of our foreign policy—the transition to a world-policy, which meant, if it meant anything at all, the establishment of the German domination of the world.

In the measure in which these tendencies came more and more into the light, they produced also a complete alteration in the attitude of the world towards Germany. Formerly the world was imperialistically divided, and Germany, on the principle, divide et impera, was the most powerful factor in it; henceforth all mutual opposition among the various States was absorbed in