When I recall the image
of this peaceful population, journeying to business every week-day with a
movement so regular, or seated at table on Sundays in the cafes in the open
air before a glass of beer, I can find in my memories nothing but placid
faces where there was no trace of violent passions, no thought hostile to
foreigners, not even that feverish concern with the struggle for existence
which the spectacle of the human crowd has sometimes shown me elsewhere."
A similar impression is given by the dispatch from M. Cambon, French
Ambassador to Berlin, written on July 30, 1913.[4] He, too, finds elements
working for war, and analyses them much as Baron Beyens does. There are
first the "junkers," or country squires, naturally military by all their
traditions, but also afraid of the death-duties "which are bound to come
if peace continues." Secondly, the "higher bourgeoisie"--that is, the
great manufacturers and financiers, and, of course, in particular the
armament firms. Both these social classes are influenced, not only by
direct pecuniary motives but by the fear of the rising democracy, which
is beginning to swamp their representatives in the Reichstag. Thirdly,
the officials, the "party of the pensioned." Fourthly, the universities,
the "historians, philosophers, political pamphleteers, and other apologists
of German Kultur.
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