My Four Years in Germany by Gerard, James W., 1867-1951

It is unquestioned, however, that this Zabern Affair and the consequent attitude of the whole nation, as well as the extraordinary vote in the Reichstag, greatly alarmed the military party.

It was perhaps the final factor which decided the advocates of the old military system of Germany in favour of a European war. Usually in past years when the Reichstag in adjournments had risen and cheered the name of the Emperor, the Social Democrats absented themselves from the Chamber, but when the Reichstag adjourned on May twentieth, 1914, these members remained in the Chamber and refused either to rise or to cheer the Emperor. The President of the Reichstag immediately called attention to this breach of respect to the Emperor, upon which the Socialists shouted, "That is our affair," and tried to drown the cheers with hoots and hisses at which the other parties applauded tumultuously

This occurrence I know greatly incensed the Emperor and did much, I believe, to win his consent to the war.

CHAPTER V

PSYCHOLOGY AND CAUSES WHICH PREPARED THE NATION FOR WAR

To the outsider, the Germans seem a fierce and martial nation. But, in reality, the mass of the Germans, in consenting to the great sacrifice entailed by their enormous preparations for war, have been actuated by fear.

This fear dates from the Thirty Years' War, the war which commenced in 1618 and was terminated in 1648. In 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia was concluded, Germany was almost a desert. Its population had fallen from twenty millions to four millions. The few remaining people were so starved that cannibalism was openly practised. In the German States polygamy was legalised, and was a recognised institution for many years thereafter.

Of thirty-five thousand Bohemian villages, only six thousand were left standing. In the lower Palatinate only one-tenth of the population survived; in Wurttemberg, only one-sixth. Hundreds of square miles of once fertile country were overgrown with forests inhabited only by wolves.

A picture of this horrible period is found in the curious novel, "The Adventurous Simplicissimus," written by Grimmelshausen, and published in 1669, which describes the adventures of a wise peasant who finally leaves his native Germany and betakes himself to a desert island which he refuses to leave when offered an opportunity to go back to the Fatherland. He answers those who wish to persuade him to go back with words which seem quite appropriate to-day: "My God, where do you want to carry me? Here is peace. There is war. Here I know nothing of the arts of the court, ambitions, anger, envy, deceit, nor have I cares concerning my clothing and nourishment.... While I still lived in Europe everything was (O, woe that I must appear witness to such acts of Christians!) filled with war, burning, murder, robbery, plundering and the shame of women and virgins." The Munich weekly, "Simplicissimus," whose powerful political cartoons have often startled Europe, takes its name from this character.