Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/163

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THE LITERATURE OF PANGERMANISM

Armenia, Egypt and German East Africa, and in all of these there is a strong anti-English undercurrent. There are also, as far as I have been able to ascertain, no less than sixteen reviews and magazines devoted to the Oriental Question (Archiv für Wirtschaftsforschung im Näheren Orient; Deutsche Levante-Zeitung-Geist des Ostens; Orientalische Literaturzeitung, etc.) Some of these confine their investigations to particular problems (e.g. Palestina, Monatsschrift für die Erschliessung Palestinas, Zeitschrift des deutschen Palestinavereins).

The range of Pangerman literature also embraces the Far East—Japan, China, the Pacific—and Africa. Particular attention is devoted to the study of England's position in the East. It is a significant fact that the literature on England has grown very rapidly since the war, whereas France and, still more, Italy have been comparatively neglected. Russia, of course, is very diligently studied in Germany, and, since the war, increased interest has been displayed in Little Russia, or the Ukraine and the Baltic Provinces.

Extensive and all-embracing as the scope of Pangerman literature has been shown to be, it will have been noticed that it centres mainly round the Austro-Hungarian question. Pangermanism may, indeed, not inaptly be described as the German programme for the solution of that question. It is a simple programme—the absorption of the Dual Monarchy and her conversion into a German bridge to the Near and Middle East. The plan is concisely explained in a pamphlet of Dr. E. Schubert called "Deutschlands Brücke zum Orient" (1915) ("Germany's Bridge to the Orient")—a title which, in itself, summarizes the whole Pangerman movement.

What, then, has been the attitude of Austria herself to this movement? For the two decades preceding the war it is expounded by M. André Chéradame in "L'Europe et la Question d'Autriche au seuil du vingtième siècle" (1901), and by G. Weil in Le Pangermanisme en Autriche" (1904). The latter treats of German political literature, the former of the actual political movement, showing that the Germans of Austria and of Hungary had accepted the Pangerman plan, and, indeed, that the Austrian-Germans had become its most uncompromising supporters. This fact is well illustrated by the "Los-von-Rom" movement, in which thousands of Germans left the Catholic Church and joined either the Old Catholics or the Lutheran Church, not because they believed in the doctrines of the latter, but because they

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