Mein Kampf
that sense. England well understood that Germany, because of increasing population, had to seek some way out, and would find it either with England in Europe, or without England in the world.
Probably owing in large part to this supposition, London itself tried at the turn of the century to effect a rapprochement with Germany. Then for the first time a fact appeared which in the last few years we have been able to observe in truly alarming fashion. People were dismayed at the thought of having to pull chestnuts out of the fire for England—as if there could ever be an alliance on any other basis than that of a mutual business deal. Such a deal could easily have been made with England. British diplomacy was at least shrewd enough to know that nothing can be expected without something in return.
If we imagine a wise German foreign policy taking over Japan’s role in the year 1904, we can scarcely grasp all the results it would have had for Germany.
Things would never have got to the point of a “World War.” The bloodshed in 1904 would have saved ten times as much in the years 1914 to 1918. And what a position would be Germany’s in the world today!
True, the alliance with Austria would then have been nonsense. For this mummy of a state allied itself with Germany, not to fight a war, but to preserve a perpetual peace which could be shrewdly used for the slow but sure extermination of Germanity in the Monarchy.
But if for no other reason, this alliance was an impossibility because after all no aggressive upholding of German national interests could be expected of a state which had not even the strength and determination to put an end to the process of de-Germanization on its very borders. If Germany had not enough national common sense and even ruthlessness to wrest control over the fate of ten million of its own race, from the impossible Hapsburg State, it could hardly be expected to set its hand to such a far-sighted and daring plan. The attitude of the old Empire toward the Austrian question was the touchstone for its behavior
144
