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Germans had to change their strategical plans and methods; it is true that with all their foresight there was much they did not know, did not learn, could not do, but still Pangermanism was of great help to them. Against the Allies, separated from each other, they used with advantage the old plan of Horatius Cocles. After Occidental Russia has been weakened and eliminated, naval England will have her turn—this is plainly indicated by the German push toward the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Adriatic, the Ægean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The Allies have at their disposal England (45), Canada (7), Australia (7), France (40), Algiers (2), Italy (36), a total of 137 millions. As far as military power is concerned, German Central Europe is stronger than the European Allies—the entrance of America since the elimination of Russia thus has a decisive significance, military and economic. The Pangermans are not in doubt about the United States’ strength and efficiency; their leading authors very often emphasise the American danger to Europe, and would make naïve Europeans believe that German Central Europe is the necessary counterbalance to the United States and the leader of the United States of Europe.
7. The Germans vindicate the right to their aggressive Pangerman policy in several ways, in the main it is the right of the stronger which they advocate.
The Germans fear hunger. They point to the rapid growth of their population. Up to the year 1845 France had a larger population than Germany; since that time the Germans grew rapidly, whereas France remained almost stationary. Thus was done away automatically the French danger, but there arose the Russian danger. In 1789 France was the most populous state (France 26 million, Turkey 23, Austria 19, England 17, Prussia 6, Poland 9, Russia 20 and 5 in Asia), and that explains the great influence and strength of France. Germany is now much stronger than France, and the Western nations singly, but she has to face too many enemies; around the year 2000 the population of Europe will be somewhat like this: Austria-Hungary 84 (54 and 30), Italy 58, England 145, France 84, Russia 400 (with Asia 500), United States 1,195, Germany 165. If not all Europe, Germany at least might become Cossack, and therefore the real peril for the next future is Russia; and so Germany must weaken Russia, and, as far as possible, occupy Russian territory for its own increasing population. In the West, Germany needs Antwerp; she needs the district of Briey; in general she needs territory, bread, raw materials, ports. With a brutal naïveté the Pangermans forget that other nations also need bread. “Necessity knows no law,” declares Bethmann-Hollweg as the foundation of Pangermanistic jurisprudence.
The strategical argument is of the same quality: the geographical situation of Germany, enclosed by hostile nations on three sides, demands a rectification of the frontiers, and therefore again the annexation of non-German territory. Ratzel was the one who drew the attention of the Pangermanists to the political and strategical significance of a central location (the fighting impetus from the centre, as against fighting power from the periphery, etc.). In general not merely geography, but even geology and other sciences are used in Pangermany to decide questions of right; territory similar from the geographical point of view to German territory belongs to the Germans, and German geographers systematise a special science of geo-politics.
The Germans, so runs the Pangerman argument, are the best soldiers of the world, Prussian militarism is exemplary, the German is a born soldier—militarism and war, moreover, as has been proved by Moltke, are the God-given social order, and therefore the Germans are entitled to hegemony. Darwin’s natural law of the survival of the fittest justifies Prussian militarism; Nietzsche gave to the Germans the principal and the only commandment—the will to power, the will to strength, the will to victory.
The Teutons, according to the Pangermans, have the primacy in industrial and technical branches. In addition to military successes, they
