XII.1 Foreign Policy
I had always felt it my duty to take an interest in the great historical past of our Fatherland. The life histories of its great sons were to me of equal importance with books of devotion. Under no circumstances, not even war, would I neglect these sources of instruction and inward inspiration. And yet it would be perfectly accurate to say that mine is a non-political temperament. It was against my inclination to take any interest in current politics. Perhaps my liking for political criticism is too weak, and possibly my soldierly instincts are too strong. The latter are certainly responsible for my dislike of everything diplomatic. This dislike can be called prejudice or want of understanding. I would not have disavowed the fact, even here, if I had not had to give expression to it so often and so loudly during the war. I had the feeling that the business of diplomacy made unfamiliar demands on us Germans. No doubt this is indeed one of the principal reasons for our backwardness in matters of foreign politics. This backwardness must of course have played a larger part the more we seemed to be becoming a world people as the result of the immense development of our trade and industry and the spread of the German spirit beyond the frontiers of the Fatherland. I never found among German statesmen that sense of political power, silent but self-contained, which was characteristic of the English.
When holding my high posts of command in the East, and even after I was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the Field Army, I had never felt either necessity or inclination to mix myself up in current political questions more than was absolutely necessary. Of course I believed that in a coalition war, with its innumerable and complicated problems that affect the conduct of operations, it was impossible for the military leaders to have absolutely no say in political affairs. Nevertheless, I recognized that the standard which Bismarck had laid down for the relations between military and political leadership in war was thoroughly sound as applied to our case also. Moltke himself was adopting the Bismarckian point of view when he said: "The commander in his operations has to keep military victory as the goal before his eyes. But what statesmanship does with his victories or defeats is not his province. It is that of the statesman." On the other hand, I should never have been able to account to my conscience if I had not brought forward my own views in all cases in which I was convinced that the efforts of others were leading us on doubtful paths, if I had not applied driving power where I thought I detected inaction or aversion to action, and if I had not made the very strongest representations when the conduct of operations and the future military security of my country were affected or endangered by political measures.
It will be allowed that the borderline between politics and the conduct of operations cannot be drawn with exact precision. The statesman and the soldier must have cooperated previously in peace time, as their different spheres unconditionally demand mutual understanding. In war, in which their threads are inextricably intertwined, they have to be mutually complementary the whole time. This complicated relation can never be regulated by definite rules. Even in Bismarck's incisive phraseology the boundaries seem to overlap on both sides. It is not only the problem at issue which decides in these questions, but also the character and temperament of the men engaged in their solution.
I grant that I have covered many expressions of opinion on political questions with my name and responsibility even when they were only loosely connected with our military situation at the time. In such cases I thrust my views on no one. But whenever anyone asked what I thought, or some question cropped up which awaited, but did not find, a decision or the definition of the German point of view, I saw no reason why I should hold my peace.
One of the first political questions in which I was concerned, shortly after I assumed control of operations, was the future of Poland. In view of the great importance of this question during and after the war I think I ought to treat more fully of the manner in which it was handled.
Until of late I have never had any personal animosity against the Polish people. On the other hand, I should have been entirely lacking in patriotic instincts and the knowledge of historical evolution if I had ignored the serious dangers which the restoration of Poland involved for my country. I never had the slightest doubt that we could not expect a word of thanks from Poland for freeing her from the Russian knout with our sword and blood, as we had received little recognition for the economic and moral advancement of the Prussian Poles among us. No feeling of gratitude — so far as such a thing exists in politics — would deter a restored, free Poland from seeing irridenta in our frontier provinces.
From whatever side a solution of the Polish problem was sought, Prussia — Germany — was bound to be the unhappy party who had to pay the bill. Austro-Hungarian statesmanship appeared to see no dangers to her own existence in the creation of a free, united Poland. Indeed influential circles in Vienna and Budapest seemed to think that it would be possible to bind Catholic Poland permanently to the Dual Monarchy. In view of the thoroughly Germanophobe attitude of the Poles, this policy of Austria was pregnant with danger for us. It could not be ignored that it meant that the strength of our alliance would in future be put to a test which could not be borne in the long run. In no circumstances could Main Headquarters, anxious about our future military situation on the Eastern frontier, leave this political point of view out of sight.
In my view all these political and military considerations showed Germany that she should touch the Polish question as little as possible, or at any rate deal with it in a very dilatory fashion, to use an expression employed in such cases. Unfortunately this was not done on the German side. The reasons why we did not act with the caution that was required are unknown to me. However that may be, the fact is that in the middle of August 1916, a compact was made at Vienna between the statesmen of Germany and Austria-Hungary, a compact which provided for the speediest possible announcement of an independent Kingdom of Poland with an hereditary constitutional monarchy. Both the contracting parties had tried to make this agreement more palatable to us Germans by undertaking not to makeover any part of their ancient Polish districts to the new Polish State, and by guaranteeing that Germany should have the right to command the future army of United Poland. I considered both concessions Utopian.
The political situation behind our Eastern Front would have been completely changed by this public announcement. For that reason my predecessor had immediately, and rightly, raised his voice against it. His Majesty the Emperor decided in favor of General von Falkenhayn. However, it was now clear to everyone who knew the conditions in the Danube Monarchy that the compact made in Vienna would not remain a secret. It might be kept an official secret for a short time still, but could not be got rid of altogether. As a matter of fact, it was known everywhere by the end of August. So when I went to Main Headquarters I was faced with a fait accompli. Shortly afterwards the Governor-General of Warsaw, who was not officially responsible to me, asked me on behalf of our government to announce the Polish Kingdom as an act which could no longer be postponed. He gave me the choice between difficulties in the country and the certain prospect of a reinforcement of our armies by Polish troops, a reinforcement which would amount to five trained divisions in the spring of 1917 and one million men on the introduction of universal military service. However unfavorable was the opinion I had formed in 1914 and 1915 of the prospects of any Polish contribution to the war against Russia, the Governor-General thought he knew better. He knew how the domestic situation of the conquered country had developed since 1915, and was convinced that the priests would help us with our recruiting.
In our military situation, how could I have taken the responsibility of declining this reinforcement which was promised so definitely? But if I decided to accept it no time must be lost if we were to put fully-trained troops into the front lines by the time the next spring battles began. A victorious Germany would be able to settle the Polish question after the peace. At this point, greatly to my surprise, we met with objections on the part of the government. It was about this time that the government thought that they had discovered threads leading to a separate peace with Russia, and therefore considered it bad policy to compromise the steps they had taken by proclaiming an independent Poland. Political and military views were thus in conflict.
The conclusion of the whole business was that the hopes of a separate peace with Russia broke down, that the manifesto was published in the early days of November, and that the recruiting of Polish volunteers, to which it referred, was entirely without results. Our recruiting appeals not only received no support from the Catholic priesthood, but were openly resisted by them.
As soon as the manifesto was published, the opposition between the interests of Austria and those of Germany in the Polish problem was at once revealed. Our allies were aiming more and more openly at the union of Congress Poland with Galicia, the whole being subject to their own suzerainty. As a reply to these efforts, and failing the ability of our government to bring them to naught, I considered that the least we could ask for was a corresponding ratification of our Eastern frontier from the purely military point of view.
Of course, the fact was that all these questions could only be decided by the result of the war. I therefore sincerely regretted that they took up so much of our time during the operations. But I cannot sufficiently insist that the friction between our allies and ourselves in political matters never had the slightest influence on our military cooperation.
The role that was played by Poland in our relation's with Austria-Hungary was played by the Dobrudja in our political and military dealings with Bulgaria. At bottom the Dobrudja question amounted to whether Bulgaria was to secure possession of the Cernavoda—Constanza railway by her acquisition of the whole province. If she did so, she would control the last and, after the Orient Railway, the most important land route between Central Europe and the near Orient. Of course Bulgaria realized that the favorable moment to wring concessions from us in this direction was during the war. Turkey, on the other hand, as the country most immediately affected, asked for our political support against these Bulgarian plans. We gave her that support. Thus began diplomatic guerilla warfare in military guise, and lasted nearly a year. Put shortly the position was as follows:
The alliance concluded between us and Bulgaria provided, in case of war with Rumania, for a return to our ally of that part of the southern Dobrudja which had been lost in 1912, as well as for frontier adjustments in that region; but it said nothing about the assignment of the whole Rumanian province to Bulgaria. In accordance with this compact, as soon as the Rumanian campaign was virtually over, we had handed over the original Bulgarian portions of the southern Dobrudja to be administered by the Bulgarian Government, but established a German administration in the central Dobrudja in agreement with all our allies. As the result of a special economic agreement this German administration worked almost exclusively on behalf of Bulgaria. The northern Dobrudja, being in the military zone, was controlled by the 3rd Bulgarian Army there. As far as one could see, the matter seemed to have been arranged entirely satisfactorily. However, the satisfaction did not last for long.
The gauntlet was thrown down to us by the Bulgarian Minister-President. Even before the Rumanian campaign was over he had mooted to his ministers the idea of the cession of the whole of the Dobrudja to Bulgaria, and represented the German General Staff as the obstacle in the way of these ambitions. The result was a strong political agitation against us. At first King Ferdinand had not agreed with the proceedings of his government, but at length he felt himself compelled to yield to the general excitement. In the same way, at the outset the Bulgarian General Staff had not let themselves be drawn into the affair. They fully realized the danger of a new element of unrest being added to the political currents within their army which themselves flowed strongly and diversely. However, before long even General Jekoff felt that he could resist the pressure of the Minister-President no longer. The Bulgarian Government lost control of the movement they had started, and the result was a general political outcry against the German General Staff, an outcry which was mainly the work of irresponsible agitators and had no respect for the relations between brothers-in-arms. The obstinacy with which certain circles in Bulgaria pursued this goal of their ambitions would have been better devoted to attaining our common aims in the war.
This incident betrayed the consequences of a defective side of our compact with Bulgaria. When that compact was made, we had given the Bulgarians the most far-reaching assurances possible with regard to the aggrandizement of the country and the unification of the Bulgarian race. We should have been able to give effect to those assurances only if we had won a complete victory. Bulgaria, however, was not satisfied with these assurances. She was continually advancing fresh claims without stopping to consider whether such a small state would be able, later on, to manage her new acquisitions politically and economically.
Moreover, there was a direct military danger for us in these excessive ambitions. I have already said what a great military advantage it would have been to us to withdraw our line of defense on the western wing of the Macedonian front to the neighbourhood of Prilep. At the very suggestion of such a proceeding from our side, however, all political circles in Bulgaria joined in raising the most serious objections. They immediately feared that they would thus abandon all political claims to areas evacuated for military reasons. They preferred to risk a whole army rather than be responsible to their fellow countrymen for the abandonment of what they called the "old Bulgarian town of Ochrida." We shall see, later on, what our far-reaching concessions to Bulgaria were to involve.
The perplexities of all these innumerable political problems and counterproblems meant hours of thankless work for me, and considerably increased my aversion to politics.
The purport of our compact with Turkey was quite different from that with Bulgaria. As regards the Turkish Government we had only pledged ourselves before the war to maintain Turkey's territorial integrity. Now the Turks had lost an important part of their possessions in Asia during the first two years of the war. A very heavy burden had thus been laid on our treaty obligations. It did not seem impossible that these unhappy failures would have a harmful reaction on the conduct of operations. The Turkish Government could base claims in this direction which we should possibly not be in a position to disregard owing to political reasons. In these circumstances Enver Pasha's lofty conception of our common purpose and its decisive issues was of the very greatest value. Moreover, for the time being, the political views of the other Turkish statesmen seemed to offer a guarantee that Turkey's previous losses would not involve an excessive overdraft on our military account. We were thus certain that in case peace negotiations were opened, the Turkish Government would not tie us down to the strict letter of our compact, but would accept the recognition of a more or less formal suzerainty over a large part of the lost territory so long as we succeeded in finding a formula which would preserve the prestige of the present government.
It was thus a very important task, both for our statesmen and our military commanders, to support the existing Ottoman Government. It would not be easy to find a substitute for Enver or Talaat Pasba, who were completely and absolutely loyal to us. Of course, this does not mean that we attempted to check political currents in Turkey which had an adverse influence on the military task of the nation within the framework of the combined operations. I am referring here to my previous remarks about the Pan-Islam movement. From the military point of view it always tended to deflect Turkey into wrong paths. After the collapse of Russia, Pan-Islam sought its conquests in the direction of the Caucasus. Indeed, it cast its eye beyond them to the Transcaspian region, and finally lost itself in the distant areas of Central Asia, inspired by the fantastic ambition of uniting all men of its own culture and faith under the Ottoman sway.
It was obvious that we could not lend military support to such Oriental political dreams, but that we must demand the abandonment of these far-reaching schemes for the sake of existing military realities. Unfortunately, all our efforts failed.
How much more difficult than our efforts to exercise influence on the problems of Turkish foreign policy must be those to obtain some influence on her domestic affairs. And yet we could not refrain from making at least an attempt to acquire such influence. It was not only her primitive economic condition that impelled us. Ordinary human feelings worked in the same direction.
The surprising revival of Ottoman military power and the renascence of her ancient heroism in this fight for existence also showed up the darkest side of Turkish domination. I mean her attitude to the Armenian portions of her empire. The Armenian question embodied one of Turkey's most difficult problems. It affected both the Pan-Turkish and the Pan-Islam ideals. The whole world took a deep interest during the war in the methods with which the fanatical Turk attempted to solve it. Attempts have been made to associate us Germans with the horrible occurrences in the whole Turkish Empire, and, towards the end of the war, even in Armenian Transcaucasia. I therefore feel it my duty to touch on this question here, and indeed have no reason to pass over the part we played in silence. We never hesitated, both verbally and in writing, to exercise a deterrent influence on the savage and licentious methods of warfare which were traditional in the East, thanks to racial hatreds and religious animosities. We received soothing assurances from men high up in the Turkish Government, but were not in a position to overcome the passive resistance which was opposed to our intervention. For example, the Turks insisted that the Armenian question was essentially their own domestic concern, and were very sensitive when we referred to it. Even our officers who happened to be on the spot frequently failed in their efforts to secure some moderation in the acts of hatred and vengeance. The awakening of the beast in a man fighting a life and death battle, and inspired by political and religious fanaticism, forms one of the blackest chapters in the history of all times and nations.
Moreover, observers of neutral nationalities were agreed in their opinion that from the point of view of massacre, the contending parties, stirred as they were to their inmost depths, were just as bad as each other. This would be the natural result of the moral notions peculiar to races of this region, notions which seemed to be sanctified by the practice of the vendetta which still prevailed, or had only been out of date for a short time. The harm which was done by these massacres is quite immeasurable. It made itself felt, not only in the human and political sphere, but even in economic and military affairs. The number of the best Turkish troops who came to a miserable death by privation in the Caucasian mountain winters during the war, as the result of this policy of massacre of the Armenians, will certainly never be known. The consequence of this wholesale slaughter by every imaginable kind of privation was that another chapter was added to the tragic history of the brave Anatolian soldier, the very backbone of the Ottoman Empire. Is it the last?
XII.2 The Peace Question
It was in the very middle of our preparations for the Rumanian campaign that the peace question came to my notice. So far as I know, it was first brought up by the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Baron Burian. Those who know me and my views on war will require no further assurance that my natural human feelings welcomed such a step. For the rest, the only motive behind the part I played in this question was the interests of my Emperor and country. I considered it my duty in this matter to strive for such a solution that neither the army nor the homeland should suffer any injury. Main Headquarters had to cooperate in settling the wording of our peace offer. It was a difficult and thankless task to avoid creating an impression of weakness at home and abroad while giving all provocative expressions a wide berth. I was able to see with what a devout sense of duty to God and man my All-Highest War Lord devoted himself to the solution of this peace problem, and I do not think that he regarded a complete failure of this step as probable. On the other hand, my own confidence in its success was quite small from the outset. Our adversaries had vied with one another in putting forward excessive claims, and it appeared to me out of the question that any of the enemy governments could and would voluntarily go back on the promises which they had made to each other and their peoples. However, this view did not in any way affect my honest intention to cooperate in this work for the good of humanity.
On December 12th our readiness to conclude peace was announced to our enemies. Our answer from enemy propaganda, as well as the hostile camps, was only scorn and a rebuff.
Hot on the heels of our own peace step came a similar effort on the part of the President of the United States. Main Headquarters was informed by the Imperial Chancellor of the suggestions which the President had made through the medium of our ambassador in the United States. I myself considered that President Wilson was not exactly suited to the role of an unprejudiced intermediary as I could not overcome my feeling that the president had strong leanings towards our enemies, and more particularly England. That was indeed a perfectly natural consequence of his Anglo-Saxon origin. Like millions of my countrymen, I could not consider Wilson's previous attitude as neutral, although, possibly, it did not contravene the strict letter of neutrality. In all questions of breaches of International Law the President treated England with all possible consideration. In so doing, he had received some very severe rebuffs. On the other hand, in the question of submarine warfare, which was our only reply to England's arbitrary actions, Wilson had shown the greatest touchiness and immediately taken to threats of war. Germany signified her assent to the principle of Wilson's proposals. The reply of our enemies to Wilson was a recital of their demands, which to all intents and purposes comprised the permanent economic and political paralysis of Germany, the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary, and the destruction of the Ottoman State. To anyone who judged the military situation at that time dispassionately, it must have been obvious that the enemy's war aims had no prospect of acceptance except by a hopelessly defeated foe, and that we had no reason to regard ourselves in that position. In any case, as things were then, I should have regarded it as a crime to my country and a betrayal of our allies if I had taken any other course but absolutely refuse to consider enemy demands of that kind. In view of the military situation at the moment, my convictions and my conscience impelled me to regard no peace as a good peace which did not so secure our position in the world as to make us safe against the same kind of political oppression which had led to the present war, and enable us to offer our allies the support they required against any kind of menace. For me as a soldier it was a secondary matter along what political and geographical lines this purpose was achieved; the main thing was that it should be achieved. Further, I considered that there was no doubt that the German people and its allies would be strong enough to reject the unexampled enemy demands in arms, cost what it might. As a matter of fact, public opinion in our country was absolutely hostile to the enemy's claims. Nor was there at this time any indication of a tendency to give way on the part of Turkey or Bulgaria. I considered that the vacillation of Austria-Hungary would be overcome. The main thing was that the Austro-Hungarian public should keep before their eyes the fate which the enemy's terms meted out to the Danube Monarchy, and should give a wide berth to the delusion that, for the time being, negotiations with the enemy on fairer lines was possible. We had already discovered, in dealing with Austria-Hungary, that she was capable of far more than she herself believed. Her government must find itself faced with blunt necessity, and would then find itself equal to even greater efforts. For all these reasons it was my opinion that it was a mistake to deal with Austria-Hungary with soft words. Such words do not strengthen and encourage confidence and resolution. This is true of politicians and soldiers alike. All in good time. But when things go hard, firm demands, combined with real resolution on the part of the strong, carry the weak along quicker and farther than soft words about better times in the days to come.
In contrast to our view, President Wilson's message of January 22nd to the American Senate saw in our enemies' declaration of war aims of January 10th a more suitable basis for peace efforts than our diplomatic note, which merely expounded the principles on which we agreed to the continuation of his steps for peace. This behavior on the part of the president shook my confidence in his impartiality even further. I should not have refused my approval of the lofty and to a certain extent praiseworthy humanitarian note in his message if I had not searched it in vain for any rejection of the attempt of our enemies to hold us up as men of a lower order. Moreover, the sentence about the restoration of a single free and independent Poland aroused my distrust. It seemed to me to be aimed directly at Austria-Hungary and ourselves, to compel the Danube Monarchy to renounce Galicia, and would mean the loss of territory or suzerainty for Germany as well. In view of that, how could anyone speak of the impartiality towards the Central Powers of Wilson's mediation? For us, the message was a Declaration of War rather than a peace proposal. If we had once committed ourselves into the hands of the president we should have found ourselves on a steep slope which threatened in the long run to bring us to a peace which would have meant the renunciation of our whole political, economic, and military position. It seemed to me not impossible that after the first step of consent we should gradually find ourselves politically farther and farther in the depths and end up by being compelled to capitulate in the military sense.
In October 1918, I learned from certain publications that immediately after his message to the Senate of January 22, 1917, President Wilson had informed the German Ambassador in Washington of his willingness to take official steps for peace. The news had reached Berlin on January 28th. Until the autumn of 1918 I had never heard of this step of Wilson which apparently went pretty far to meet us. I do not know, even today, whether mistakes or a chain of adverse circumstances were responsible. In my view, war with America was inevitable at the end of January 1917. At that time Wilson knew of our intention to start unrestricted U-boat warfar on February 1st. There can be no doubt that, thanks to the English practice of intercepting and deciphering telegrams on this subject to the German Ambassador in Washington, Wilson was as well informed about this matter as about the contents of all our other cables. The message to the Senate of January 22nd, and the offer of mediation which accompanied it, were thus branded for what they were at the outset. Disaster was on its way. It could therefore no longer be averted by our declaration of January 29th that we were prepared to stop U-boat warfare out of hand if the president were successful in his efforts to establish a basis for peace negotiations. The events of 1918 and 1919 appear to me to confirm the opinions I then held at all points, opinions which were entirely shared by my First Quartermaster-General.
XII.3 Home Politics
When I was on the active list I had kept away from current questions of domestic politics. Even after my retirement they had interested me solely as a silent onlooker. I was never able to understand how it was that here and there the welfare of the Fatherland had to be sacrificed to mere petty party interests, and from the point of view of political conviction felt myself most at home in the shade of that tree which was firmly rooted in the ethico-political soil of the epoch of our great and venerable Emperor. That epoch, with what I regarded by its wonderful glories, seemed to have become part of me, and I adhered firmly to its ideals and principles. The course of events in the present war have hardly been of a kind to make me particularly enthusiastic about the developments of later times. A powerful, self-contained state in Bismarck's sense was the world in which I preferred my thoughts to move. Discipline and hard work within the Fatherland seemed to me better than cosmopolitan imaginings. Moreover, I fail to see that any citizen has rights on whom equal duties are not imposed.
In war I thought only of war. In my view of the seriousness of our situation all obstacles which prevented us from waging it with all our might should be ruthlessly removed. Our enemies were doing so and we had to learn from their example. Unfortunately, we did not do so, but pursued the phantom of international justice instead of putting our own national feeling and national strength before everything else in this fight for existence.
During the war, Main Headquarters had to take an active interest in several internal problems, especially in the economic sphere. We did not seek these problems. They thrust themselves on our attention much more than we wished. The close relations between the army and industry made it impossible for us to draw a hard-and-fast line between industrial questions at home and the conduct of operations such as we had drawn between the war zones and the homeland.
I take full responsibility for the form of the great industrial program which bears my name. The one principle which I laid down for its working-out was that the needs of our fighting troops must be supplied at any cost. I should have regarded any other foundation as a crime against our army and my country. It is true that our demands meant that the figures would reach gigantic proportions compared with what had gone before, but I did not venture to judge whether they could be attained. The program has been reproached, since the war ended, with having been dictated by despair. The inventor of that phrase has been woefully misled about the point of view under the influence of which this program came into existence.
I had devoted myself wholeheartedly to the introduction of the Auxiliary Service Law. It was my wish that in the crisis facing our Fatherland, not only every man fit to fight, but every man fit to work, and even women, should place themselves or be placed at the disposal of our great cause. I was convinced that by a law of this kind, moral as well as personal forces would be released which we could throw into the scales of war. The final form of the law certainly produced somewhat modest results which indeed differed materially from those we had had in view. Disillusioned as I was, I almost regretted that we had not tried to achieve our purpose by utilizing existing legislation, as had been proposed in other quarters. The idea of presenting the acceptance of the law as a powerful and impressive manifesto by the whole German people had made me overlook the influence of the currents of domestic politics. In the long run, the law was passed, not through the pressure of public opinion, but on the grounds of industrial necessities.
The reproach has been leveled at Main Headquarters that in the Auxiliary Service Law and the demands of the so-called "Hindenburg Program," they produced measures, ill-considered in a social, financial, and economic sense, the consequences of which can clearly be traced in our social revolution and even further. I must leave the decision of this question to some future inquiry which will not be influenced by the present currents of party politics. One thing, however, I must refer to. The absence of an Industrial General Staff, trained for war, made itself very severely felt in the course of the struggle. Experience showed that such a Staff could not be procured by magic during the war. Though our military and financial mobilization, if I may use the term, was brilliantly carried out, there was no industrial mobilization at all. What proved essential in this last respect, and therefore had to be introduced, exceeded all previous calculation. As a result of our virtually complete loss of foreign imports and the enormous consumption of material and ammunition as the result of the long duration of the war, we saw ourselves faced with quite new problems which human fancy had hardly ventured even to contemplate in peacetime. As a result of the colossal problems which affected both the army and the nation very intimately, the closest cooperation of all the state authorities revealed itself as an absolute necessity if affairs were to be conducted with a minimum of friction. Indeed, it was really vital to create a common central authority, to which all demands should be made and from which all supplies should flow. Some such authority alone would have been able to take far-seeing economic and military decisions. It would have had to act with an open mind and be assisted by economic experts who were in a position to foresee the consequences of their decisions. There was no such authority. I need not try to explain that only an unusually gifted intelligence and exceptional organizing powers could have been equal to such a task. Even if all these preliminary requirements had been fulfilled, there would still have been considerable friction.
In questions of domestic politics, the more I endeavored to avoid getting mixed up in party wrangles, or even being appropriated by one of the existing parties, the greater was my pleasure to lend my support in social questions of a general nature. In particular, I thought it my duty to take a special interest in the question of soldiers' settlements. It was the ethical side of these schemes which more than anything else appealed to me. For I know nothing more agreeable and satisfying than the sight of a little nucleus of culture in the home of a happy man. How many of our brave heroes at the front must have hoped and longed for such a thing in quiet hours? My desire is that large numbers of my loyal comrades may realize those hopes after all their sufferings and strivings!