The delay of the German Army, which is likely to prove disastrous to her
designs, has demonstrated in her own chosen field that there is a force
in national honor and national conscience which can put up a very
efficient resistance to Krupp guns.
It is a great mistake to suppose that all Germany is actuated by this
spirit of militarism. Frederick William Wile, for over seven years the
chief German correspondent of The London Daily Mail, in an article in
The Outlook recently said: "There are 66,000,000 Germans; 65,000,000 of
them did not want war; the other million are the war party." But he adds
that now Germany is absolutely united and that the Germans will not
stack arms "till the last among them capable of shouldering a rifle is
incapacitated, till the last copper pfennig capable of purchasing
ammunition of war has vanished from their impoverished grasp."
There is in this nothing extraordinary. Whoever is responsible for
bringing on the war, the interests, the welfare, and in some sense the
honor of Germany are apparently involved in it. And yet it may be true,
and I believe it is true, that the defeat of Germany will be its
salvation, for it will be the overthrow of the spirit of militarism
inherited from Frederick the Great, and this has been the bane of the
German Empire.
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