Psycho-Phone Messages by Francis Grierson

Author:Francis Grierson [Grierson, Francis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783752381856
Google: X6n0DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Published: 2011-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

PRINCE BISMARCK

Recorded November 3d, 1920

When I imposed an indemnity of five billion francs on the French people in 1870

we knew that the money could and would be paid. But there is no parallel between Germany in 1920 and France in 1870. The Reparations Commission has only succeeded in proving its incompetence. The German delegates have shown that the Allied war claims amount to more than five hundred billion marks (gold), which is nearly four thousand billions at the present rate of exchange.

This fantastic sum, one hundred times more than France paid to Germany in 1870, is expected of a country on the verge of revolution and chaos. I charge this Commission with incompetence, extravagance, luxurious living, and claims at once absurd and ridiculous.

You punish some of the most dangerous criminals by indeterminate sentences, which frequently end after a year’s imprisonment, but you expect to hold the German people in financial bondage for more than a generation to come because of the criminal blunders of less than a hundred individuals.

I was blinded by material factors at the time of my seeming triumphs but now I can see some of the things which will never come to pass. The French and the English are repeating some of the blunders I made fifty years ago. They are counting on conditions which will never exist, like a bird sitting on a nest of mixed eggs from which the cuckoo will eventually oust all the other birds.

French people are under the illusion that Russia will meet the obligations undertaken by the late Czar. To expect such a thing shows the child-like illusions under which French fanatics are living. They are still wrapped in the swaddling clothes of politics.

We committed crimes that have brought civilization to the brink of chaos, but we are not capable of such naivete.

The logic of a Frenchman is no better than the mysticism of a Russian or the sentimentality of an Englishman. French people learned nothing from the blunders of Napoleon III and the debacle of Sedan. And the reason? They have

remained

provincial

while

the

Germans

imitated

the

commercial

cosmopolitanism of the English.

Advice is the cheapest of all things. Nevertheless, I advise your statesmen to place no reliance on sentimental contracts written on paper foredoomed to become “scraps.”

I do not hesitate to declare that no agreement signed since 1913 is worth more than the seals. In Europe, leaders and rulers have passed from an international game of chess to a national gamble with marked cards.

You have now to deal with an element which did not exist in my time. This element embraces all factions of the new radicalism, no matter in what country or under what leader. Some of these elements may unite, but they are not going to change. How, then, can you undertake to insure the future by contracts signed and sealed by elderly gentlemen with good intentions and poor judgment?

The war gave the new factions the long wished-for opportunity. They seized it in Russia, in Germany, in Poland, in Britain, and other countries. But the opportunities created by the war are one thing, the opportunities of tomorrow will be different, and it is this contingency for which your leaders are not prepared. You will have to select men of vision who will judge events as they arrive, without regard to the distant future, which belongs to no man.

One of my greatest mistakes was in separating Protestant Prussia from the interests of the Catholics of South Germany.

The new radicalism is opposed to some things which are irrevocably linked with religious doctrine.

Without the Catholic Church all Europe would be in the throes of the Commune.

The principal cause of our disintegration was that we sanctioned Protestant flirtation with modern materialism.

France is beginning to see that even a weak monarchy is better than a radical government without a God.

You may expect a return of the monarchy in more than one country. Agnostics and Protestants, moved by fear on one side, and disgust on the other, will unite for a restoration as their last hope. There will be a repetition of historic events.

Bonaparte was ushered in by the French Revolution, and his advent was

followed by three kings and one emperor.

The majority treat their rulers as children treat their toys: when the novelty wears off a change is demanded.

Political psychology and religious sentiment are not the same thing.

Nevertheless, they must be considered together. The Germans are now awaiting the hour when the inevitable change will be demanded. Events take crowns from some heads and place them on others. If the ex-Kaiser ever occupies the throne again a modern Nero will fiddle amidst the ruins of German imperialism, for you know he meddled with fiddle strings as well as with political wires.

You think it strange? The impossible is always happening. Never lose sight of the fact that an organized minority is more formidable than a disorganized majority. Three men brought about the coup d’etat that placed the outcast Louis Napoleon on the throne, one man started the Russian Revolution, I planned the overthrow of the Second Empire with the aid of Count von Moltke. The majority put their trust in numbers, but the bigger a thing grows the nearer it is to disintegration. An autocratic minority ruled in Germany, an automatic majority rules in France and England. Two men started the present rule in Moscow, both of them from the outside.

“God has been merciful to us,” said Cavour, in the Italian Senate, “He has made Spain one degree lower than Italy.” God has been merciful to Germany, He has made Russian communism more abhorrent than German socialism.

Nothing will be left undone by the French government to secure permanent occupation of the coal district of the Rhine.

Conditions will not remain long as they are. They are preparing decisive coups in Bavaria, Hanover, Austria and Hungary. New combinations will amaze your statesmen and diplomats, who are ignorant of the fact that changes and upheavals operate in cycles of three and seven. What they call chance is the working of law. Spiritual forces operate through the physical, and nature will take a hand in the reactions in Petrograd and Moscow. Cold, hunger and starvation will dissipate the hopes of the ruling minority. Untold numbers will be sacrificed.

During the French Revolution philosophers and thinkers were decapitated. In Russia such men are killed by hunger, the difference being one of method.

Such conditions will be repeated in different countries until people learn that the spiritual cannot be separated from the material without pain and slaughter.

After all the long-winded conferences and shorthand reports nothing is left but a confusion of blots on the tissue paper of time.

I may say more on another occasion.

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