September 20th

The first man I ran into today as I surveyed the wreckage of Berlin “after the whirlwind of war” was poor old XYZ. He would have a fit if he thought I put his name in my diary. Ten years ago I knew him as a daring rider at Baden-Baden, once at least the winner of the famous steeplechase. He was a gallant regimental officer three years ago; today he drags one leg and there is a curious tic to his left cheek, which suggests something quite serious that is to come. He was cold and standoffish when I ran into him in the café, but half an hour later he had tracked me to my room, and how he talks! There is nothing for him here, he says. He wants to go to China with Colonel Bauer, but there is the physical examination and he fears he cannot pass that, and I am sure his fears are well founded.

He talks and talks but, unlike so many, he really is worth listening to. How the war came and who provoked it I thought was threadbare, but certainly he looks at it from quite a different angle. He admits that the Serbian mess and the resulting murder of the Archduke complicated the situation, and that the new railway plans of the Russians to build strategic lines leading to the German frontier, as outlined by the ukase of the Tsar in March 1914, contributed to make a continuance of peace, of even a merely armed peace, impossible, but—and now I will quote his very words:

“The war came because of the inferiority complex which oppressed the hohe Herren of our Foreign Office and had caused even the All Highest many sleepless nights. We lost out at Algeciras. We truckled at Agadir. The Entente was too much for us. They had all the winning cards and our diplomatic prestige was in shreds. Then came the blow to our military prestige; the German-trained Turks were walloped by the French-trained Slavs and Greeks in the Balkan war—immeasurable disaster! Then came Gray’s plan for a conference, but for once all of our people were united against that. Since Bismarck was gone we always lost out at conferences. There was only one thing to be done and that was to re-establish the prestige of Prussian militarism by striking swiftly and hard! Unfortunately the army was in the hands of a man who had the great name of the victor of 1870 but who lacked most of the qualities that went with that name. The younger von Moltke had charming personal traits, but when the Emperor said his name was worth ten divisions to the army, he was romancing. In war it’s battalions and brigades, not names or personal qualities, that tip the scales. It is only fair to say that the younger von Moltke was not eager for his job and he admitted it. He said he was too slow for the swift-moving wars of the day, and he demonstrated this self-diagnosis at the Battle of the Marne, when he failed to assume the risks which the situation demanded and so condemned us to a war of attrition.

“He had another failing which so often besets slow-thinking, slow-moving men. Every now and then he revolted against his naturally sluggish bent and reached a lightning decision. That is illustrated by his letters to Conrad von Hotzendorf, the chief of the Austrian Army in 1909, which the Arbeiter Zeitung secured and maliciously published. In that year he tried to make the Austrians attack the Serbs, although they were even less prepared than they were in 1914. Conrad held back, but those taunts had much to do with the headlong onslaught five years later. They rankled-those taunts-and so they contributed to the outbreak of the war at the time it came. It might have been postponed, and to our advantage, but sooner or later inevitable it was.”

“And now?” I inquired.

“Vae Victis” he answered. “That, of course, will be the decision of the triumphant democracies-as it was of the victorious kings.”

“Your Austrian Allies?”

“Niederträchtiges Volk,” he mumbled. “It took an Occupation Army of two hundred thousand men to hold them in line.”

He stumbled to his feet, coughed a gas cough, and hobbled away, a sad picture of humbled arrogance. I shall pray tonight that we may never be defeated in war!