Germany, The Next Republic? eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 219 pages of information about Germany, The Next Republic?.

Germany, The Next Republic? eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 219 pages of information about Germany, The Next Republic?.

Neither did the German General Staff count upon the Russian Revolution going against them.  Germany had expected a revolution there, but Germany bet upon the Czar and the Czar’s German wife.  As Lieutenant Colonel von Haeften, Chief Military Censor in Berlin, told the correspondents, Germany calculated upon the internal troubles in Russia aiding her.  But the Allies and the people won the Russian Revolution.  Germany’s hopes that the Czar might again return to power or that the people might overthrow their present democratic leaders will come to naught now that America has declared war and thrown her tremendous and unlimited moral influence behind the Allies and with the Russian people.

Rear Admiral Hollweg’s calculations that 24,253,615 tons of shipping remained for the world freight transmission at the beginning of 1917, did not take into consideration confiscation by the United States of nearly 2,500,000 tons of German and Austrian shipping in American ports.  He did not expect the United States to build 3,000 new ships in 1917.  He did not expect the United States to purchase the ships under construction in American wharves for neutral European countries.

The German submarine campaign, like all other German “successes,” will be temporary.  Every time the General Staff has counted upon “ultimate victory” it has failed to take into consideration the determination of the enemy.  Germany believed that the world could be “knocked out” by big blows.  Germany thought when she destroyed and invaded Belgium and northern France that these two countries would not be able to “come back.”  Germany thought when she took Warsaw and a great part of western Russia that Russia would not he able to continue the war.  Germany figured that after the invasion of Roumania and Servia that these two countries would not need to be considered seriously in the future.  Germany believed that her submarine campaign would be successful before the United States could come to the aid of the Allies.  German hope of “ultimate victory” has been postponed ever since September, 1914, when von Kluck failed to take Paris.  And Germany’s hopes for an “ultimate victory” this summer before the United States can get into the war will be postponed so long that Germany will make peace not on her own terms but upon the terms which the United States of Democracy of the Whole World will dictate.

One day in Paris I met Admiral LeCaze, the Minister of Marine, in his office in the Admiralty.  He discussed the submarine warfare from every angle.  He said the Germans, when they figured upon so many tons of shipping and of supplies destroyed by submarines, failed to take into consideration the fact that over 100 ships were arriving daily at French ports and that over 5,000,000 tons of goods were being brought into France monthly.

When I explained to him what it appeared to me would be the object of the German ruthless campaign he said: 

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Germany, The Next Republic? from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.