TWO SPEECHES IN THE REICHSTAG. T WO striking speeches have been
delivered this week in the German Reichstag,—one on Monday, on the Colonial, and the other on Wednesday, on the military policy of the Empire. The first is, on the whole, pleasant to Englishmen to read. We have all admitted the right of Germany, if she pleases, to commence a Colonial career, and have witnessed her arrival in New Guinea and East Africa uncomplainingly; but it is vain to deny that her proceedings are watched with a secret jealousy, and a fear that her ambition will either arrest the progress of this country in Africa, or furnish grounds for a most unnecessary and unwelcome quarrel. The new Chan- cellor of the Empire, however, is clearly no fanatic for Colonial extension. His subordinate, Baron von Marschall, was authorised by him to declare that it was a primary object with the Government to move "hand-in-hand" with the English in Africa; and General von Caprivi himself honestly admitted that he scarcely believed in Colonies at all. Their foundation "exercised at first a negative in- fluence on national power ;" "a Colonial policy was matter of faith and hope no less in its ethical than in its financial and political aspect," and those who thought that by colouring bits of the map of Africa with blue, Germany would become a tremendous Power, were, he said, utterly mistaken. Indeed, the Chancellor evidently thought that faith and hope would be taxed for a long time, for he made perhaps the most discouraging admission ever uttered by a Minister responsible for Colonies,—namely, that in war-time he should not defend them, but should, when victorious by land, demand that any Colony which "had fallen into the grip of an enemy" should be restored. That is not encouraging for speculators in Colonies, nor is the further admission that the desire for them was originally encouraged only in order to foster national feeling, which was dying away too rapidly with the con- tinuance of peace, the inference being that the Govern- ment of Germany does not care for Colonies in themselves. This was notoriously Prince Bismarck's feeling, and it is obviously shared by General von Caprivi, though he adds that? a Colonial policy being once started, it is difficult or impossible to recede. It is most unlikely that a Govern- ment actuated by sentiments like these will risk the hostility, or even the annoyance of a Power like Great Britain, in order to secure some particular patch of African territory ; and it is about particular patches, not territory in general, that the jealousy of England is excited. Germany, to speak plainly, is welcome to the whole of the Congo State if she can get it, though it is two-thirds the size of India, or to any other African province ; but she is not welcome to a territory which would break the connection between our dominion on the Zambesi and our prospective dominion round. the Lakes and the head-waters of the Nile. We see no reason to believe that General von Cfmrivi will be unreasonable in the negotiations, more especially as he energetically desires something in which we can materially help or retard German development. He was once Minister of Marine, and he says Germany needs coaling-stations of her own, and to obtain them must, in the end, "enter for peaceful purposes into closer relations with some trans- marine nation,"—that is, must substitute a transmarine alliance for a Colonial policy. The only nation with coaling- stations all over the earth is the British.
The second speech was not less striking, and much more depressing. Indeed, we do not remember to have read in our time a speech quite so menacing to the happiness of European mankind. Count von Moltke, who regards war as a great professor of the art interested in his subject, but without enthusiasms and without illusions, sees evidently no hope either that war will become less formidable, or that military preparations can be allowed to slacken. War, says the keen-eyed man of eighty-nine, who at sixty-six struck down Austria, and at seventy France, is as probable as ever, though the States have grown cautious, though "Cabinet wars" have ended, and though Governments will think twice before they allow new wars to commence. The "forces that militate against peace will be found in the peoples themselves," in the "attempts of the masses to secure rapidly and by violence improvements in their condition," in the "ambitions of nationalities and races," and in the general discontent with the existing state of things. These causes will produce war, for some Governments are weak, and in spite of all the assurances of peace, the nations are arming as fast as ever ; and if war breaks out, the con- sequences may be worse than is believed. The next war will not—remember, it is the greatest soldier in the world who is speaking—be short in its duration. The Great Powers of Europe are so armed, that "no one of them can be shattered in one or two campaigns so completely as to confess itself beaten and to accept peace on hard terms, or so as not to recover, after a year or so perhaps, to renew the conflict." Gentlemen, "it may be a Seven Years' War, it may be a Thirty Years' War,— woe to him who sets fire to Europe, and is first to apply the torch to the magazine !" No wonder the German Chamber, in which every man has been a soldier, and most men have seen a campaign, listened to the speaker in rapt silence, fearing to lose a word. That is by far the most appalling prediction yet uttered about the next war, and it comes from the soldier who, of all men alive, best compre- hends what the new armies will do, how equal they are, and what will be the effect in retarding victory, or, in other words, in protracting hostilities, of the new rings of fortifications. They break down a hope which had somehow grown strong, the hope that even with nations in the field, wars, however bloody, would be short, and that, however sanguinary they might be, civilisation would be spared the old horrors and the old destruction. It is not so, says, in his "quiet and clear" voice, the nonagenarian General, who twice "or- ganised victory ;" the very existence of civilisation will in the next war be at stake, and if the enemy enters a State, the losses will be greater than all that State has expended in preparation. "What is the most brilliant finance worth, if the enemy gains a footing within the country ?" Count von Moltke evidently expects that in a long war, an enemy, once on the soil, would resort to requisition and to rapine, and tells how Napoleon extorted £40,000,000 from Prussia, then an impoverished State, and how a French Marshal, recalled from Hamburg, "carried away a bank in his breeches-pocket, as his memento of the in- vasion." The warning seems incredible in our day, and in the present state of civilisation ; but this generation has no conception of what a long war means, how it brutalises all concerned, or how completely, when the magazines begin to be exhausted, every consideration, moral, political, and even military, is made to give way to the daily maintenance of the invading army in comfort, and to the immediate needs of the conquering State. There is no preventive, says the old Marshal—who, as we have repeatedly said, regards war purely as an art, and neither extenuates its horrors nor is shocked by them—except in perfect preparation. "For a long time past the sword alone has kept the sword in its sheath," and though it seems strange to ask again for more, and ever more money, there is no help, unless you would be defeated. No wonder that when the Marshal sat down, it was certain that not only the money would be voted, but the men, though the demand for eighteen thousand addi- tional troons a year means, under the three years' system, a. draft of fifty-four thousand more lads to be withdrawn from industry and maintained in constant preparation in the barracks ; or that, on the following day, the absolute refusal of the Government even to discuss a shorter term of service was accepted without sign of irritation, and as a sad necessity of the hour. The speech of Count von Moltk.e brings into strong relief one element in the Continental situation which in this country, protected as it is by the sea, is too often for- gotten,—the terrible strain under which the nations must 11 living. This apprehension of war, war which will not be short, has lasted, says the Field-Marshal, for ten years ; and for all that appears, it may last for another twenty. Actual war is only prevented by the preparations made to resist it, and those preparations of themselves keep up the fear that it must one day occur. Imagine the strain which that situation must of itself pro- duce, the constant anxiety, not only among soldiers, but among all whose business would stop in the event of invasion, the constant watchfulness of all neighbours' movements, the international hate which a protracted fear of invasion must necessarily produce. We know what it was here between 1805 and 1813, and the English were islanders, and could, by destroying fleets, make invasion almost a physical impossibility ; while the Germans can do nothing except prepare ever larger and larger forces, every addition to which takes something from their happiness. The body of the people have all the anxieties of soldiers, without their hopes or their in- centives, and must feel as if life were always overhung by a possibility almost as depressing as a known liability to madness or some dreadful disease. It is a sad situa- tion for Europe, if the Field-Marshal is right, and one which may make observers doubt whether the arming of the nations is really such a triumph of civilisation. It did not help between 1795 and 1815 to keep off war, and it has not helped between 1880 and 1890 to mitigate a strain which is only better than the actual invasion which, after all, it may not prevent. The situation is bad enough even for France, which always thinks itself in danger ; but Germany, with enemies on both sides, is paying a monstrous price for the privilege of keeping two provinces the loss of which she had in 1870 forgotten except in histories, and which even now, twenty years after their capture, would give a plebiscite in favour of reunion with their old masters. It is a useless question to ask, as well as a conventional one ; but still, in it lies the kernel of much of European policy,—How much has Alsace-Lorraine cost Germany, in cash and recruits and energy, since 1871?
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