In his Lectures on the Apocalypse: Critical, Expository, and Practical (1849) Canon Wordsworth (later the Anglican Bishop of Lincoln), writes, after first stating that in his opinion, the term ‘Kings of the East’ was ‘figurative, and [was] to be understood spiritually’, that:
‘[T]he Kings from the East, or Sun-rising, whose Way is prepared, are the faithful soldiers of Christ. Their Kingdom is to serve Christ’; and ‘[The] Kings of the Earth are opposed to [the] Kings of the East . . . Such, then, is the Plague which St. John announces to the World in the Sixth Vial.’ (pp. 434, 436-437, 440).
As can be seen by the title-pages of the two books heading this post: the rivalry between the German Empire and its jealousy of the Imperial splendour and vastness of the British Empire, was one of the factors (taking place under the drying up of the Turkish Empire under the Sixth Vial) that contributed to the destructive passions let loose in the outbreak of the First Word War.
In a recent work concentrating on this aspect of the First World War its author Sean McMeekin remarks:
‘[Kaiser] Wilhelm [viewed himself] strutting across the world stage as a true modern Alexander, taking in Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia and toppling the British Raj. . . . Whereas Hitler was willing to concede the British their global, sea-based empire in exchange for recognition of his own domination of the Eurasian landmass, Wilhelm wanted the British Empire too, including its crown jewels of Egypt and India.’ (The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power 1898-1918; Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 2010; pp. 2-3).
And in the chapter entitled “A Gift from Mars: German Holy War Fever” Sean McMeekin writes:
‘We may never know for sure what was said behind closed doors in Berlin as the European diplomatic crisis heated up in July 1914. The key German policy-makers, including Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg and Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, all burned their private papers from the period. Although there is clear evidence that Bethmann Hollweg (on Kaiser Wilhelm’s instructions) issued a ‘blank cheque’ inviting Vienna to retaliate against Serbia on 5 July, the extent to which the Germans deliberately sought to provoke a general European war remains controversial. . . .
‘If the evidence of premeditation in July is inconclusive, however, the extraordinary war fever which overcame the German government in August can be documented without a shadow of doubt. Audacious plans for world conquest were openly bandied about in once-conservative government ministries. The ‘gift from Mars’ meant that the gloves were finally off in Germany’s battle with Britain for global supremacy.’ (ibid. pp. 85-86)
And goes on later to state, that:
‘Because of the central role [that] the Kaiser’s jihad stratagem plays in Fritz Fischer’s controversial indictment, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, it has become customary for Fischer’s critics to dismiss these plans as peripheral to Germany’s overall war strategy. In a work still considered the gold standard, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918, Ulrich Trumpener writes that, although the anti-British holy war idea was a ‘recurring theme of the Kaiser’s famous marginalia, there is no evidence that Berlin had any coherent action plans on hand when World War I broke out’. Any measures the Germans did take to launch jihad-style uprisings against the Entente powers in August 1914, Trumpener writes, ‘bore all the hallmarks of hasty improvisation’. Those who have followed Trumpener’s analysis, such as David Fromkin, have likewise dismissed the importance of the jihad campaign, arguing that it had little bearing on either Turkey’s entry into the war or on the way the war was really fought.
‘To dismiss the importance of pan-Islam in Germany’s wartime plans, however, is to fall victim to hindsight. In 1914, if not when they were writing post-war memoirs, Germany’s leaders saw in Islam the secret weapon which would decide the world war.’ (ibid.pp. 86-87).
The quotes that follow below are taken from the two works whose title-pages are reproduced in the heading to this post - both of which were written whilst the First World War was still raging. First, from the uppermost work:
‘Backed as the [Baghdad Railway] project was by the German government, steadily growing in power and aggressiveness since the establishment of the united German Empire, it added to the already complicated Eastern Question an aggravating factor that contributed largely to the outbreak of the great war. The present struggle for supremacy among European powers resolves itself in its ultimate analysis into a rivalry for the control of the East as an adjunct to commercial expansion. The “trend towards the East” did not originate with modern Germany. It began with Greece, was taken up by ancient Rome and has actuated every Western power with ambitions to extend its commerce and its sphere of influence — Spain, Holland, England and France, and in days nearer to us Russia and Germany, Austria and Italy. Through a curious combination of circumstances, superinduced by the gradual weakening of the once dominant Turkish Empire, the struggle has shaped itself into its present aspect for a control of the great highway that is the key to the East — the nearer and the farther East.
‘A survey of the history of Asia Minor, as a resultant of the geographical contour of the region, furnishes the illustration to the thesis that the most recent events are merely the repetition on a larger scale of such as took place thousands of years ago, and at frequent intervals since. The weapons have changed, new contestants have arisen to take the place of civilizations that after serving their day faded out of sight, but the issue has ever remained the same. We are confronted by that issue to-day — the control of the highway that leads to the East. Through the war archaeological investigations and historical researches have been removed from their academic isolation to furnish the explanation for the political import of the Bagdad Railway project. The study of the remote past, so energetically pursued by European and American scholars during the past decades, is brought into the foreground through the stirring events of our days to illumine the bearings of the historic highway of Asia Minor on the issues at stake in the present world conflict. The decisive battlefields for the triumph of democracy are in the West, but the decision for supremacy among European nations lies in the East.’
(From: The War and the Bagdad Railway: The Story of Asia Minor and Its Relation to the Present Conflict; by Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph.D., LL.D.,; published J. B. Lippcott Company, Philadelphia and London, 1917; pp. 29-30).
And from the second work:
'[T]here is a very serious and a real cause for this great world battle. That cause above all others was the colonial and commercial rivalries of the several nations of Europe as they center, in their interests, around England and Germany[1] who stand at the head of the Triple Entente, and the Triple Alliance respectively. “It has long been evident to students of world politics that there is only one international situation which threatens the peace of the civilized world. That is the rivalry between England and Germany. There is no other rivalry, dispute, or misunderstanding between nations that could not be settled peacefully and quickly if this Anglo-German problem did not, directly or indirectly, retard such a settlement. German and British policies on four continents are determined or conditioned by the mutual enmity and fear of these two powers. Because British policies and interests clash with German policies and interests, Europe is divided into two great groupings of nations, which during the past half decade have almost evenly balanced the military strength of the continent, and it has been the fear of disturbing this balance that has prevented the settlement of more than one grave political and economic and social question.”[2]'
(From the Introduction to The Anglo-German Commercial and Colonial Rivalry as a Cause of The Great War; by Oscar Albert Marti, M.A.; The Stratford Company, Publishers, 1917; pp. xiii-xiv).
From footnotes:
[1] “England with her long history of successful aggression, with her marvelous conviction that in persuing her interests she is spreading light among nations dwelling in darkness, and Germany, bone of the same bone, blood of the same blood, with a lesser force but perhaps a keener intelligence, compete in every corner of the globe. In the Transvaal, at the Cape, in Central Africa, in India and the East, in the islands of the South Sea, and in the far Northwest, wherever — and where has it not? — the flag has followed the Bible, there the German bagman is struggling with the English pedlar. Is there a mine to exploit, a railroad to build, a native to convert, from breadfruit to tinned meat, from temperance to trade gin, the German and the Englishman is struggling to be first. A million petty disputes build up the greatest cause of war the world has ever seen. If Germany were extinguished tomorrow there is not an Englishman in the world who would not be richer. Nations have fought for years over a city or right of succession. Must they not fight for two hundred fifty million pounds of commerce.” — Rohrbach, “German World Policies,” p. 180. Quoted from the “Saturday Review,” September, 1897.
[2] “Review of Reviews,” XLV, p. 281.
And from Chapter I of the same work (entitled, “The Colonial Ascendancy of Great Britain”):
'The tendency of the political development of the English People according to her own historians, and Anglophiles in general, has been one steady trend towards liberty and democracy. The English speaking people have regarded themselves as the torchbearers of that civilization which the world, at the first decade of the twentieth century, realized it had attained. From the standpoint of the Germans, however, England is viewed as the great robber state that, having taken advantage of the misfortunes of the other nations, gobbled up one-fifth of the land area of the habitable world and insists on holding possession, not by virtue of her power to defend, but by reason of her ability to bluff. Germany, also, regards herself as the heir presumptive to the colonial kingdom of the world. To her, England is a colossus with feet of iron mixed with miry clay; while Germany is the stone destined to smite the image on the feet, to its utter destruction, and eventually to become the great mountain that will fill the whole earth.' (ibid. p. 1).
(For other posts on the “Kings of the East” click on the link in the Index below).
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