Читать книгу Boche and Bolshevik. Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian Prisons онлайн

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DOCTRINE OF WAR

It is difficult for Englishmen to understand how all those years the Germans lived in the shadow of war. Every student of German affairs knows that the Government controlled the organs of public opinion and with what fine cunning and persistence it infected the national mind with its doctrine of war. I am concerned here only to give a few instances of how the poison worked. When I came back to Bonn from my first summer vacation in 1905, my chief asked me what people in England were saying about the war. “What war?” I answered. “Why,” he said, “the war between England and Germany.” So accustomed had they become to the idea of this war, that long before it broke out, they spoke of it as something present and real. Extremely instructive were the antics of the German Government after the publication of the interview with the Kaiser in the Daily Telegraph in 1908. It will be remembered that the German people were furious because in this interview the Kaiser denied that the German Fleet was to be used against England, alleging it was for use against Japan. The nation felt it had been tricked, because it would not have spent so much money to provide against a war with Japan. To allay the excitement, the Government sent round an article to the little provincial papers, intimating that the Kaiser’s interview was a well-intentioned effort to befool the English. Then it went on to say in so many words: our fleet is not intended to be used against Japan, it is intended to be used if England should ever introduce Protection and Colonial Preference. Our fleet must be so strong that England would never dare to embark on such a policy. This article did not, of course, appear in the leading journals, because then it would have attracted too much attention in England. As it is, it appears to have gone unnoticed.