Even in
Berlin society and among the ancient German nobility there were to be found
sincere pacifists. On the other hand, there was certainly a bellicose
minority. It was composed largely of soldiers, both active and retired;
the latter especially looking with envy and disgust on the increasing
prosperity of the commercial classes, and holding that a "blood-letting
would be wholesome to purge and regenerate the social body"--a view not
confined to Germany, and one which has received classical expression in
Tennyson's "Maud." To this movement belonged also the high officials, the
Conservative parties, patriots and journalists, and of course the armament
firms, deliberate fomenters of war in Germany, as everywhere else, in order
to put money into their pockets. To these must be added the "intellectual
flower of the universities and the schools." "The professors at the
universities, taken _en bloc_, were one of the most violent elements in
the nation." "Almost all the young people from one end of the Empire to
the other have had brought before them in the course of their studies
the dilemma which Bernhardi summed up to his readers in the three words
'world-power or decadence.' Yet with all this, the resolute partisans of
war formed as I thought a very small minority in the nation. That is the
impression I obstinately retain of my sojourn in Berlin and my excursions
into the provinces of the Empire, rich or poor.
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