America Fallen!. John Bernard Walker
and Amsterdam, concentrated to the east of the Rhine, drove down in a resistless offensive into Westphalia, taking the German army in the right flank and rear, and captured the great centers of artillery and ammunition supply in Essen and the surrounding districts.
Germany, realizing that, with the Krupp and other factories in the hands of the enemy, the war must end automatically, accepted the friendly offices of the Swiss Government and the peace conference opened at Geneva.
And thus it came about that there gathered on the shores of the placid lake the most momentous conclave in all the history of the world.
Contrary to universal expectation the deliberations moved forward with a swiftness which, considering the enormous interests at stake, appeared to a nervously apprehensive world simply incredible. And herein was seen the advantage, costly though it had been in blood and treasure, of carrying the gigantic struggle through to an absolutely decisive issue.
The earlier deliberations, relative to the readjustment of boundaries and territory, moved rapidly to their expected results. Russia, content with the possession of Constantinople, and the extension of her frontier to the Carpathians, agreed readily to the re-creation of Poland as an autonomous and "buffer" state between herself and Germany. To Roumania was given Transylvania on the condition, arranged previously to her entrance into the war, that she return to Bulgaria the territory wrested from her during the second Balkan War, and Servia was enlarged by the acquisition of Herzegovina and Bosnia. The boundary between Italy and Austria was rectified so as to restore to Italy her lost provinces. France, as the reward of the heroic struggle of her citizen soldiery, regained possession of Alsace and Lorraine. Japan was permitted to hold Kiao-Chou and acquire from China the lease formerly held by Germany, a pledge being given for the maintenance of the "Open Door" in that country.
So far, so good; but when it came to the insistence by the Allies on an indemnity of fifteen billion dollars, the first installments of which were to be paid into the Belgian treasury, Germany presented an adamantine front. And to the demands of Great Britain that the German fleet be reduced by the distribution of its major units among the fleets of the Allies, she retorted that if the transfer of so much as a ship's launch to a foreign flag were again suggested, Germany would withdraw at once from the convention, and "would fight it out until the last mark, the last loaf of bread, and the last man was gone!"
The convention was adjourned for a week; and in view of the uncompromising front presented by Germany and Great Britain, and the probability of a continuance of the war to the bitter end, the world was thrown into a state of profound despondency and foreboding.
The next session was marked by the most dramatic incident of the whole conference. No sooner had the meeting been declared open than the German plenipotentiary abruptly announced that he had received instructions from Berlin to state that, if no more mention were made of the dismemberment of her fleet, Germany would agree to pay an indemnity to the Allies of fifteen billion dollars, and give the customary pledges therefor.
The curt announcement of Germany's assumption of this stupendous obligation produced, even in that well-poised assembly, a barely-checked murmur of astonishment. The British plenipotentiary asked for a three days' adjournment. He was instructed by his home government to stand firm for the disruption of the German navy; but on his cabling that it was the unanimous opinion of the rest of the Allies, that the assumption by Germany of this enormous indebtedness would so far cripple her financially as to render any material increase of her naval forces impossible before the existing ships were becoming obsolete, he was instructed to accept the German conditions.
And so, on the 1st of March, 1916, the thirteen signatures which ended the greatest moral and material tragedy in the whole history of the world were appended and peace settled over the stricken people of Europe.
And, thereafter, men said to one another when they met: "How came it about that Germany so suddenly agreed to pay that fifteen-billion-dollar indemnity?"
II
THE COUNCIL CHAMBER AT POTSDAM
On the morning of the day following the signing of the Peace of Geneva, Germany's plenipotentiary, Count Von Buelow, entered the Council Chamber at Potsdam punctually at the hour appointed. There was gloom upon his face and weariness, too; for throughout the night journey to Berlin, the burden of that fifteen-billion-dollar indemnity, which the Kaiser had authorized him to impose upon stricken Germany, had lain heavily upon his mind. Heavy gloom sat also upon the faces of the distinguished company around the council board. Von Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor was there, and the foreign secretary, Von Jagow; Falkenhayn, also, the Chief of the Great General Staff, and next to him, Von Tirpitz, creator and controlling mind of the German Navy. Present also was the chief of the German Secret Service, and last, but not least, the Chief of the German Official Press Bureau.
Von Buelow had scarcely taken his seat when the murmur of desultory conversation suddenly ceased, and every man stiffened to the habitual pose of military and state decorum, as the Kaiser entered and strode to the head of the table.
Was he changed by the tragic happenings of the last twenty months? Yes, and no. The hair had whitened, and the stupendous burden of responsibility had bowed somewhat, as well it might, the shoulders upon which it had borne so heavily. But there was something in that flashing blue eye, in the set of the lips, and in the whole atmosphere of that ever-to-be-remembered face, which showed that he was still a Prussian of the Prussians, and that the indomitable spirit of the latest, if not the last of the Hohenzollerns, burned unquenched and unquenchable in the soul of the man.
Obeying the scarcely perceptible wave of his hand, the distinguished company seated themselves with their Kaiser for a council which, as subsequent events proved with lightning-like rapidity, was to be big with the fate, not this time of Europe, but of the great Western Hemisphere.
And thus he spoke:
"The Day has come and gone and Germany has lost! What may have been and what yet may be the purposes of an inscrutable Providence neither you nor I can tell. This much I do know, that if the sword was thrust into our hands by the Almighty for our own chastisement, it is for us to bow our heads in submission. That God sent us into battle for our own permanent undoing, I do not believe. Our beloved Fatherland has set up before the eyes of the world a kultur too broad and beneficent, and the influence of that kultur upon the great world outside of Germany has been too profound and will prove too lasting, for God ever to contemplate the fall and passing away of the great German Empire. As surely as gold is purified by fire, so surely shall Germany emerge, freed of all dross and with more splendid potentialities for the future, out of this seven-times heated furnace of the war.
"I ask you to consider that Germany has passed through this supreme ordeal with her vitality unimpaired and her military prestige enhanced. I will even say that she is the stronger for her territorial losses. Alsace and Lorraine have ever been a thorn in the side of Germany—the one impassable barrier to cordial relations with our great French neighbor, whose good will, as you well know, it has been my earnest endeavor to win. And as for our lost colonial possessions, I, as well as you, have long recognized that they were too widely scattered, too little coordinated, to carry much military value; moreover, as outlets for our expanding population, they have failed of their purpose.
"Of the crime of Kiao-Chou I will say no more than that Germany never forgets!
"Has Germany, then, no future beyond the seas? She has, most assuredly, and it lies (would that we had recognized the fact, and recognizing, acted upon it long ago) in the Western Hemisphere, in the southern half of the great American continent. South America beckons the German colonist and calls to us for the further exploitation of its abundant natural resources by that combination of German science, capital, and organization, with which our competitors have found it impossible sucessfully to compete.
"But