M. Bogitchevitch: Weztere Einzelheiten tiber das Attentat

von Serajevo. (In Kriegsschuldfrage). Berlin, July 1925.
Herman Wendel: Die Hapsburger und die Siidslavenfrage. Leipzig, 1926.
Memoirs of Benes, Czechoslovak Foreign Secretary, 1927.
sh Sint imal
IRISHRY 123
(2) Ireland
White Boys—United Irishmen—Orangemen—Ribbonmen and St. Patrick’s Boys—Fenians—Land League—Moonlighters and Invincibles—Sinn Fein. 2 eg Irish are a mysterious people, difficult for strangers
to understand, poetical and shrewd, whimsical and melancholy, hospitable and suspicious. They are a mass of contradictions. They love their land and emigrate. Sport is idealised in theory, race-meetings are thronged through- out the most troubled times, fighting is ensued for fighting’s sake. Yet there is always an eye to the main chance, a zeal for coping and doping horses and making money out of sport, a shrewdness in saving skins with great show of bravery.
There is something oriental about Ireland, which, accord- ing to imaginative ethnologists, may have been originally populated by negroid Portuguese and lost tribes from Pales- tine. Women wear shawls over their heads, as though Done- gal markets were Moorish bazaars, covering their mouths and displaying little more than eyes and noses like harem ladies. Oriental also are the disregard of time and sanitation, the love of noise and tinsel, the cult of grievances and intrigues that are the seeds of secret societies.
The oppressions of Cromwell and William of Orange provoked much furtive opposition, but the first secret society to leave definite records in Ireland was the White Boys, founded in 1761 for the plunder and murder of alien officials and landlords as well as for resisting taxes and Pro- testant tithes. The name was derived from the white smocks which members wore over their clothes as a disguise.
Hostility to England was stimulated by the French Revolution, and the United Irishmen, instituted in 1791, rallied half a million of all classes within a year. They aimed at an Irish republic in alliance with French terrorists, Vowed to the strictest secrecy, communicating with one another in all sorts of mysterious ways, the members were
124 * SECRET SOCIETIES
soon scouring the whole country with armed bands, killing, robbing, burning everywhere with ruthless ferocity.
As the Government seemed powerless to protect the vic- tims, the Protestants determined to strike a blow on their own behalf and fight the terrorists with their own weapons. The Society of Orangemen was founded in 1794 by Thomas Wilson, a freemason, on masonic lines, to commemorate the “pious and immortal memory ”’ of William of Orange and perpetuate his traditions of bloodshed; to maintain the Protestant succession, the Protestant supremacy and the penal laws against Catholics. Neither side was behindhand in savagery, treachery or the regular supply of paid in- formers. Civil war became universal and, when the Orange- men were supported by English militia in 1798, they seemed to prevail. Even if we discount the outcries of imaginative Irishmen, there must still remain a terrible tale of cruelty and horror, a Sadic perpetuation of the curse of Cromwell sanguinary stains on the fearful banner of Orange.
But the Irish are no more conquerable by cruelty than by kindness. Driven out of their mud cabins to moorlands and wild places, condemned to a living Hell or a scarcely less hideous Connaught, they perfected their webs of conspiracy with all the courage of despair. An army arose from the bogs, rifles were stored in smugglers’ caves and secret cellars, grim drills were carried on by ragged men at the rising of the moon. The clergy gave their blessing from the altar. French revolutionists sent gold, ammunition, pro- mises of invasion. The day dawned in 1798, the Ninety- eight of much passionate song. All Ireland gleamed and bristled with bayonets. But the French army never came, and the rising was soon suppressed. Lord Edward Fitz- gerald died of wounds in bare time to avoid the gallows. A fresh massacre was arranged for the restoration of order.
Order was too much to expect in unruly Ireland, but organised risings were adjourned for generations. In their place came guerrilla warfare, shots behind hedges, arson, pitfalls, kidnapping by Ribbon Men and then St. Patrick’s Boys, so secret in their cunning devices that not until 1833 were revelations made by that traditional curse of Ireland,
FENIANS 125
the informer. They were bound by the most fearful oaths in all the history of secret societies, and their bitterest vows of vengeance were directed against the hated Orangemen.
At one time the Orangemen had no less than 2,000 lodges and 300,000 members, including princes and nobles. They spread to Manchester and London and the United States of America, taking a prominent part in politics and returning many members to Parliament, usually in the Whig interest. They regarded Catholic emancipation as a severe blow to their cause, and the Government tried to suppress them in 1882 and again in 1836 without much success. Indeed, they have continued their struggle against all forms of Irish Nationalism to this day. In the United States, they are now known as The Loyal Orange Institution of the U.S.A. and numbered 350 lodges with 33,000 members in 1926, opposing Roman Catholic influence and schools. One condition of their membership is that their children shall - not be brought up as Catholics or sent to convents for their education. They often work in harmony with the Ku Klux Klan.
On the other side, Colonel John O’Mahoney and Michael Doheny founded the Fenian Brotherhood in 1857 in the
~ United States to support Irish independence. The name
comes from Fene or Feinn or Fianna, the warriors of ancient Irish tribes, or perhaps from Finn, the hero of Ossianic legends almost as romantic as those of King Arthur. The organisation consisted of local circles, whose heads or centres were under a body known as a Senate. These extended rapidly to Canada, other British colonies and Ireland, the English branch being known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The main objects were to separate Canada and Ireland from Great Britain and combine them into an Irish republic. Nearly a quarter of a million members were represented at a congress at Chicago in 1863. Immense sums of money and stores of arms were collected, secret drills went on in all parts of the English-speaking world, newspapers and pamphlets were distributed broadcast. Several risings were attempted in Ireland, but with no success. Then an attempt was made to invade Canada
‘
126 SECRET SOCIETIES
after the American civil war, supported by a sort of fleet in the neighbourhood of Niagara. The British and Cana- dians, however, were warned in good time by informers, the invasion was nipped in the bud and many of its leaders were hanged. A second attempt on Canada took place in 1871, but was frustrated by the United States Government.
From 1872 onwards, the Fenians were organised on far more secret lines, adopting Anarchist methods and encourag- ing a long series of murders. One of their leaders, Patrick Ford, editor of the Ivish News of New York, founded a secret ‘“‘ Skirmishing Fund,” in 1875 for plots, as he after- wards admitted, “‘ to lay the big cities of England in ashes.” He organised a band of assassins and dynamiters whom Lord James of Hereford described as ‘‘ enemies of the human race, the lowest and most degraded of beings, unfit to be regarded as belonging to the human community.” They were responsible for the Land League in 1880 and the Phoenix Park, Dublin, murders in 1882. Their agents were known as Moonlighters and Invincibles. They established a reign of terror that lasted until 1885, not only in Ireland, but using dynamite to blow up public buildings in London, Glasgow, Liverpool and elsewhere. They would doubtless have accomplished far more than they did, but for what Sir William Nott-Bower, the City of London Police Com- missioner, calls ‘‘a merciful dispensation of Providence.” “When three Irishmen conspired to commit crime,” he says, “‘one at least (often all three) turned traitor and endeavoured to secure safety and profit for himself at the expense of his confederates, quite regardless of honour among thieves or the always much vaunted patriotism.”
The next important nationalist society in Ireland was known as Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone) and concerned itself at first with propagating the idea of complete Irish indepen- dence, discouraging enlistment and resisting all Parlia- mentary parties. In 1915, when recruits were being sought for the great war, a counter-body of Irish Volunteers was formed, adhering to the old tradition that ‘“‘ England’s danger is Ireland’s opportunity.” They organised a violent, but brief and abortive rebellion at Dublin during Easter week
DUBLIN REBELLION 127
1916, and shot many blameless people in the back. Being still refused Home Rule, they proceeded to take it by form- ing a government and parliament of their own and securing considerable power without official recognition. By the year 1920, they controlled all Irish local authorities outside Ulster, and administered justice in their own courts, carrying out their sentences according to the methods of secret murder associations. Their defiance soon prevailed over a weak British government and an act of Parliament con- stituted an Irish Free State in 1922 under the nominal sovereignty of the British Monarch. Even that loose rein was, however, intolerable to the extremists. Sinn Fein persisted in its agitation and returned a large minority of members at the general elections of 1927.
Once again, secret societies have triumphed only to reap a harvest of dead sea fruit. Privy conspiracy, internecine struggles, mutual hatred continue with even greater malig- nancy than under alien rule. Commerce and industry are dead or dying. Prosperity remains an illusive dream. The Irish are evidently condemned, as Lord Salisbury foretold, to stew for ever in their own juice.
AUTHORITIES
J. Frost: The Secret Societies of the European Revolution. London, 1876.
J. Rutherford: The Secret History of the Fenian Conspiracy. London, 1877.
Gilbert : History of the Irish Confederation. Dublin, 1882-91.
vols.
Cc. F. Doewsett : Striking Events in Irish History. 1890.
Sir William Nott-Bower: Fifty-two years a Policeman. Lon- don, 1926.
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128 “SECRET SOCIETIES
(3) Greece
Hetairis—Friends of the Muses—Philiker Society —Ypsilanti—Massacre at Chios—Byron—Navarino—Greek Independence—Secret societies revived in 1894.
THE principles of the French Revolution were let loose upon the Turkish empire, and even the so-called Greeks, descendants of heterogeneous pirates, at last began to agitate for independence, delving into memories of a very distant if not legendary past. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a number of unimportant societies were consoli- dated under the name of the Hetairis or Associations of Rhigas, the first with secret methods and national aims. Rhigas, a history professor, carried on an agitation at Vienna and Trieste, and was surrendered by Austria to the Turks, who shot him in 1798.
Greek aspirations then remained quiet until 1812, when the Friends of the Muses were founded with foreign and royal help, nominally for literary objects and the ameliora- tion of Greek conditions. Later on, they developed into the secret society of the Philiker for arming Christians against the Turks. They had seven degrees and masonic forms, professed to study alchemy, and met at night with secret and solemn ceremonies, novices kneeling with their hands between a priest’s and swearing to fight against the enemies of the faith. The head of the Philiker was unknown to the members and many believed him to be the Czar, who then as always had his finger in distant revolutionary pies. In reality, the head was Alexander Ypsilanti, who sprang from an old Byzantine family, and was in high favour with the Czar.
The headquarters of this society were transferred to Con- stantinople in 1818 and its organisation rapidly developed, founding branches in every Greek colony and making expensive military preparations. But when Ypsilanti raised the standard of revolt in 1821, it was with small
GREEK INSURRECTION 129
prospect of success against the might of the Turkish Empire. Warnings were lavished upon him, but he persisted in leading a cowardly rabble to the slaughter, which duly occurred at Dragatshau on the 19th of June. He himself contrived to escape to Austria, where he was kept in prison for seven years and died soon after his release. A portion of his followers held out for awhile under Georgakis, but were besieged in a monastery and for the most part executed as rebels.
Meanwhile, more promising insurrections occurred in South Greece and the islands, but they were repressed with great severity whenever the Turks obtained the upper hand. Chios was burnt and put to the sword, 20,000 inhabitants being slaughtered without distinction of age or sex, and 50,000 being carried off as slaves. Extravagant sympathy was aroused throughout the civilised world, and not merely among half-crazy poets and the usual apostles of disorder. Byron, as an honorary member of the secret societies, pushed himself into prominence but proved of small practical service to the insurgents. Eventually England, France and Russia intervened, the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Navarino on the 20th of October, 1827, and Greek independence was acknowledged.
Secret societies were then dissolved, as their aims were held to be accomplished, and they were not revived until 1894, when troubles became acute in Crete. Insurrections had been almost continuous there since 1821, and the skeletons of the old Hetairis were now conjured up to force the hands of the Greek government. They were active in conducting guerrilla warfare for the Greeks in Macedonia during 1896, boasting of many terrible deeds, such as biting off the ears of their adversaries, both Turks and Bulgarians ; and in 1897 the Greek Government of Delyannis armed them for a disastrous war against Turkey. They were then officially dissolved, but secret societies seem likely to remain permanent among Greeks, and account for their difficulty in settling down under any form of government.
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130 “SECRET SOCIETIES
AUTHORITIES
A. von Prokesch-Osten : Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen vom tirkischen Reich 1821 und der Griindung des hellenischen Konigreichs. Stuttgart, 1867. 6 vols.
K. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy : Geschichte Griechenlands. Leip- zig, 1870.
T. Flathe: Das Zettalter der Restauration und Revolution. Berlin, 1883.
THE SANDAL SOCIETY 131
(4) Germany
Bundschuh and Poor Conrad Societies—Tugendbund againgt Buonaparte— German Societies—Hoffman’s Union—Webrschaft militia, 1814—-Union of Young Men—Turbulent students—Secret activities since the war— Einwohnerwehr—Orgesch—Conflicting organisations—Communist Youth —Armaments in 1926—Reichswehr—National Socialists—Hitler—The Menace of 1927.
aes did more than disturb religious uniformity. His ideas soon unsettled the minds of the peasants, especially those whose improvidence had brought them within the clutches of village usurers. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, various secret societies were founded in Germany, the most prominent of these being the Bundschuh or Sandal Society in Alsace, with the peasants’ footwear as an emblem, and the Poor Conrad Society of Wurtemburg.
The special objects of the Sandal Society were to obtain relief from debts, taxes and judgments; their procedure was to harass and plunder the Jews. Their leader was Hans Ulmann, Burgomaster of Schlettstadt, and he organ- ised a rising for Holy Week, 1493, but was betrayed and executed.
The conspiracy continued, however, with redoubled secrecy and the aims of the society were expanded towards the overthrow of all authority. The headquarters were at a village near Bruchsal, where members met at dead of night to swear fidelity and secrecy with a semi-religious ritual. One of their most secret undertakings was resistance to the nobility and clergy, and visions were cherished of a golden age when all work should be abolished and everyone should fare sumptuously on the accumulations of the rich. They were not, however, very successful in enforcing their vows of secrecy. Their plans for a rising were nipped in the bud, many of them were hanged, and their leader, Jost Fritz, fled to Switzerland.
A long period of abject resignation followed, but at last
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132 SECRET SOCIETIES
Jost Fritz crept back to Alsace and found wide support for the establishment of a new Sandal Society. His followers met him in the woods at night, took fearful oaths and displayed a blue flag painted with figures of St. John the Baptist, the Blessed Virgin and a sandalled peasant on his knees. The movement spread all over Alsace, Baden and Wurtemburg, and a great rising was prepared for the autumn of 1513. But history repeated itself once more. The authorities were warned, the leader fled back to Switzerland, the gallows were busily employed. Evidently, the peasants had not yet acquired the gifts of loyalty and organisation.
In Wurtemburg, however, they contrived to persevere with more sustained efforts. An army captain assumed the leadership and provided a certain discipline, artisans of superior intelligence enrolled themselves in the peasants’ rank to form the Poor Conrad Society. A blue flag was again adopted, this time with a crucifix and kneeling peasant. Grips were introduced for the recognition of members. They accomplished no effective risings, but organised various outrages and contrived to maintain the spirit of unrest which the spread of Luther’s doctrines was fomenting.
Though they were eventually suppressed, they did much to prepare the ground for the Peasants’ War, which was carried on in Swabia and Franconia during the years 1524 and 31525 on a wide scale with terrible bloodshed and atrocities. The peasants were defeated in a pitched battle at Kénigshofen on the Tauber and subjected to such exem- plary punishment that they came to realise the futility of further organisations asa class. Their political desires were henceforth expressed by service in the ranks of Protestant leaders in the religious wars.
* * * bs * *
In 1807, the Peace of Tilsit reduced Prussia to French vassalage, and secret societies arose to resist the yoke of the invader. The best known among them was the Tugend- bund or Union of Virtue, formed at K6nigsberg by officers, officials, aristocrats and professors, only men of good repute being admitted after searching enquiries. Some
-_ = -
GERMAN PATRIOTS 133
assistance was given by the German freemasons, but they were inclined to be jealous and soon held aloof. The organi- sation was elaborate with provincial parliaments elected by the members to occupy themselves with education, science, art, charity, discipline and, in strictest secrecy, with the distribution of arms. This, however, proved too exten- sive a programme, covering practically all the departments of State, and, as the membership never exceeded 700, little of moment seems to have been accomplished. But Buona- parte’s suspicions were aroused, and he dissolved the asso- ciation at the end of 1809 without serious opposition.
The French were defeated at Leipzig in October 1813, but their spiritual intolerance still remained to be fought. German patriots began to fear for their language, traditions, manners and customs, more especially as these had been considerably undermined by the Germans themselves ever since Frederick the Great. ‘‘ German Societies’ were accordingly formed in all big cities to resist foreign, and especially French influences of every kind, one measure being to appoint officials known as “‘ Ruger,” a sort of secret service or national moral police.
There was, however, considerable opposition from the less patriotic Germans even in the field of literature and philo- sophy, while the Governments discouraged political action as well as military preparations. Jealousy, moreover, had arisen between the various States of Germany, and Prussia, which was aspiring to leadership, supported a new secret society, known as the Hoffmannsche Bund, or Hoffman’s Union, led by a turbulent lawyer of that name. It aimed not only at a general distribution of arms but at the estab- lishment of a regular national army with extensive reserves and a network of gymnastic societies, all in the interests of Prussian hegemony. The results were disappointing, the secrets were badly kept, and Hoffmann’s Union was dis- solved on the 18th of October, 1915.
Meanwhile, the German students had been sobered and embittered by long years of warfare and misfortune. Many of them returned to their studies, prematurely aged and determined to put away their pranks and dissipations and to
4
134 | SECRET SOCIETIES
devote themsélves to patriotic schemes. At Jena in 1814, a group of them founded the Wehrschaft, a sort of militia, which soon spread all over Germany. Their ideas, however, had considerably changed since the French avalanche had overwhelmed their land, and they proved this by adopting black, red and gold for their colours, as the German repub- licans did after the Serajevo war. Then the centenary of the Reformation in 1817 afforded them an occasion for noisy demonstrations. A great gathering was held at night on the Wartburg and the students were invited to follow Luther’s example by casting monarchical books into the bonfires. Kotzebue’s History of Prussia and a number of symbols of authority were accordingly burnt amid frantic excitement. Kotzebue, a Russian historian and _ philo- sopher, seems to have aroused the special animosity of the German students, and one of them murdered him in the following March.
This prompted the Government to prohibit the students’ organisations, but the only result was to render them more secret and extend their activities to the high-schools. The Janglingsbund, or Union of Young Men, was founded by a Jena student in 1821 for a united Germany and repre- sentative government. Other secret societies continued to spring up like mushrooms in the hotbeds of feverish youth. Some followed mystic traditions, others aped freemasonry. Dissensions arose between the Arminia Society, which favoured Christianity, and the Germania, which followed the atheism of the French Revolution and advocated terrorism. Words led to deeds in 1832 and 1833, students shot soldiers and many were imprisoned for life. Special laws were now passed to restrain students, but they contrived to take an active part in the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848. After that, they seem to have subsided for no special reason, and we hear little or nothing more of their activities for seventy years.
* * x * * *
Then another defeat brought fresh humiliations, exposed the limitations of German thoroughness and threatened the national existence of Germany. History repeated itself and
THE GERMAN “ REPUBLIC” 135
revolutionary poisons at home proved an even greater menace than foreign tyranny.
Dr. Franz Schweyer wrote in 1925, “‘ The loss of the war ha: utterly shattered the soul of the German people, the authority of the German State and the whole economy of Germany. Everything that survived from the pride of our past and might have illuminated the present with hopes of resurrection has been reduced to a heap of ruins by the madness of an accursed revolution. The revolutionary upheavals of 1918 have not only utterly destroyed the con- stitutional foundations of the commonwealth; they have enervated the manners and morals of the people, burthened their eccnomic life, undermined the sense of citizenship and the nation’s faith in itself and its future, relaxed the bonds of order, thrown open gates and dykes to the crassest selfish- ness and materialism.”
That is perhaps too pessimistic, for the national spirit did not die. Disarmament brought with it a menace of anarchy, but sober millions realised that the only hope of protecting life and property lay in the organisation of self-defence. It was much too soon to think of revenge or reconquest. The Bavarian Einwohnerwehr, or civic brigades, and the Orgesch or Escherich Organisation in the rest of Germany were primarily concerned with the maintenance of order. Bavaria had been sufficiently warned by the establishment of a Soviet republic at Munich, and it proved easy to es- tablish private associations of law-abiding citizens on the lines of the old fire-brigades. The work was voluntary and unpaid, quite distinct from politics and controlled by elected leaders.
But the dregs of the populace had secured all sorts of arms during the turmoils which followed the Armistice, and the civic brigades would have been helpless with cudgels or even revolvers against bombs and machine-guns. They did not aspire to become an army or to pit themselves against the ranks of their conquerors, but arms were absolutely necessary for efficient police-work ; and the next step was to consolidate the various brigades as parts of an organised whole.
136 ‘SECRET SOCIETIES
But the Entente demanded that the new brigades should be disbanded and disarmed; and the Social Democra/s supported the Entente, fearing interference with their own disorderly schemes. The result was to break up the brigades into small and ever smaller fractions with all sorts of strange names and secret methods and conflicting aims. Some desired to restore the monarchy, others to advance them- selves or their friends, and in November 1923, an attempt was made to set up a dictatorship in Bavaria.
Clearly the enemies of the new Germany were mainly those of her own household. Without pronouncing on the merits of monarchists and the demerits of republicans, it may be admitted that patriotism would be more effective with some semblance of harmony. The remnants of the Empire were distracted with plots and counterplots, charges of treason and even murder, every conceivable recrimina- tion.
“ Organisation C,’’ (C standing for Consul, the nickname of Captain Ehrhardt) aroused suspicions of criminal plots and was not well whitewashed by an acquittal in the courts. The activities of the Labour Commandos or the Black Reich- swehr led to a State trial at Landsberg in the autumn of 1926. There were accusations of murders by a secret tribunal on the lines of the medieval Vehmgericht, familiar in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Cruelty was alleged ‘“‘ with methods of savagery and horror surpassing all previous records in the history of crime.” Traitors had certainly been killed, not- ably Sergeant-major Gadicke, who was suspected of having provided Communists with arms for purposes of insurrection. Lieutenant Schutz, the leader of the Commandos admitted that he had acted under the instructions of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Reichswehr, and that his men wore Reichswehr uniform on secret service while preparing to meet a Polish invasion. The heads of the various sporting societies had not much authority over their men, who acquired the habit of meting out justice among themselves, and this habit spread to the Labour Commandos, whose individual members may have com- mitted some of the illegal acts of the so-called Holy Vehme.
a ‘i we i ai
oe og. A = te
A NEW VEHMGERICHT 137
But official responsibility was not proved, Lieutenant Schutz was acquitted, and his subordinate, Sergeant-major Klap- proth, was sent to prison with compliments from the jury as “a good German patriot, whose wrath against traitors was justified.”
The result of the trial aroused protests, and the killing of Erzberger and Rathenau also left unpleasant impressions provoking an unpopular law “ for the protection of the Re- public,” an euphemism for the prosecution of monarchists and incidentally an incitement to the increased activities of loyal societies, such as the Monarchist Steel Helmets and
- Werewolves, who were still exchanging shots with the Re- publican ‘‘ Golden Banner ”’ Society in June 1927.
And these activities made the outer proletarians equally busy. With no interest in law and order, they sought little else but the discredit and repression of all such as worked to raise Germany from the mire. Apart from the Communists, all the extremists rallied to the ‘“‘ Reichs-banner Schwarz- Rot-Gold ”’ (Black-Red-Gold National Banner Association) founded with noisy demonstrations at Magdeburg. This association was very skilfully conducted, and moderate in comparison with the many smaller societies which con- stantly arose everywhere and lacked responsible leadership.
The Communists also had their secret societies, supported by Bolshevik gold, and one of them, entitled Communist Youth, grew very strong and unscrupulous. Besides this, the Communists had the Proletarian Hundreds, organised on military lines and amply provided with arms. They were fed and supported by the Red Front-line Fighters’ Union and the Red Youth Storm Troops. All these Communists worked very actively underground and possessed an elabo- rate service of spies. It is important to remember that the German proletariat did not use methods of peaceful persua- sion or content itself with seeking victories at the polls, but prepared to use force, against which no national govern- ment could prevail so long as it remained doomed to dis- armament.
The position of German armaments in 1926 may be sum- marised as follows, with the reservation that the figure.
138 * SECRET SOCIETIES
come from German pacifist and French sources, both liable to prejudice :
The Reichswehr consisted of 100,000, the Schupos (con- stabulary) of 150,000 men, and there were also more than one hundred secret military associations, whose existence was denied until the end of 1922.
Article 160 of the Treaty of Versailles decreed that the Reichswehr should concern itself exclusively with the main- tenance of order within the territory of the Reich and with police duties on the frontiers. Its numbers were strictly limited, but were soon exceeded. For instance, the staff of a division had been restricted to twenty-five officers, but amounted to forty-three in July 1923, and so on all through the organisation. The German Government included a Minister of the Reichswehr, but his control was far from supreme. Scheidemann, a Social Democratic leader, whose statements are not above suspicion, declared in the Reichstag that the Reichswehr had become a state within the State, pursued its own policy at home and abroad, was independent of the central Government. ‘‘ While the Government pro- fesses fidelity to the Republic,” he said, “ the leaders of the Reichswehr are hand in glove with the monarchists. While Streseman is assuring the League of Nations that he is sup- porting the policy of Locarno and Thoiry and carrying on disarmament, the chiefs of the Reichswehr are encouraging irregular military formations and establishing in Soviet Russia an industry of armaments, whose products are to be used either for a war of revenge or to beat down the Republic.”’
In considering this statement we are to remember that the Social Democrats remained enemies of militarism as they had been before the war, and that German patriots regarded Scheidemann as a traitor. On a vote for increasing the German budget by 100,000,000 marks in 1926, Herr Gesler, Minister of the Reichswehr, defended patriotic associations, representing them as merely a sentimental movement, a response to the desires of kitchenmaids, a provision of music, goose-steps and kisses. He said there was no connection
etween the volunteers and the Reichswehr, which was pro- ibited from enlarging its ranks.
MONARCHIST MOVEMENTS 139
The Reichswehr was, however, unquestionably Monarchist. Its bands continued to play monarchical tunes. The soldiers of its 18th regiment deliberately dragged the repub- lican black-red-gold flag in the mud. The Reichswehr maintained the traditions of the old army and formed “ Tradition companies ” to commemorate the old regiments which were dissolved after the war and might form the nucleus of the army of to-morrow. These companies claimed pre-war privileges, including the right of fighting duels, and their critics called them reactionary.
The various military associations, more or less intimately connected with the Reichswehr, formed a Pangerman nucleus. Having arisen immediately after the war to fight the revolution, they soon evolved extensively. At first they were mainly anti-Socialist, comprising the lower middle class, farmers, workmen, big fund-owners, bankers and industrials. In 1920, the wealthier elements began to impose monarchical tendencies, which they considered synony- mous with the re-establishment of order and prosperity. Their movement was delayed by a widespread idea that the old régime was responsible for the national defeat, but early in 1921 they had become recognised as leaders of Pan- Germanism. The delay in restoring the monarchy was due merely to German dissensions, especially between Bavaria and Prussia.
The Entente Powers naturally protested against military preparations, fearing a war of revenge, and all the various German governments could do was to declare the secret societies illegal without effectively suppressing them. That was the procedure adopted in 1920 by the Saxon and Prus- sian governments against the Orgesch; in 1922 by the Prussian government against the National Socialist German Labour Party and the Union of Nationally-disposed Soldiers ; and at various times by various governments against count- less organisations ever since. The Hitler-Ludendorff rising of the 9th of November, 1923, revealed the strength and seriousness of one among the many secret movements, and many others were as ardent as ants in an ant-hill. Germany became the nursery and forcing-house of secret societies, an
140 ‘ SECRET SOCIETIES
ideal nest for the study of their rise and strenuous futility and inevitable decay.
In April 1923, a League of Patriotic Combat was formed in Bavaria to unite all German military associations. This League included (1) Hitler’s corps, officially known as Storm Troops of the German National-Socialist Workmen’s Party, National Socialists for short; (2) the Oberland Union, which mobilised the equivalent of a division during the troubles in Upper Silesia and proceeded to perfect its organi- sation ; (3) the Reichsflagge of Nuremberg and the Unter- land of Ingolstadt, on similar lines to the Oberland Union. The objects of the League, under the direction of Hitler and Ludendorff, were to further Prussian interests and under- mine the Bund Bayern und Reich, which worked for Bavaria.
Then came a truce arranged at a meeting attended by Hindenburg, Hitler, von Kahr, Escherich and various financiers including Hugo Stinnes. The result was at least outward union. There were no longer Einwohnerwehren (Inhabitants’ Defence Associations) and Oriswehren (Local Defence Associations) but Bezirksschtitzveretne (District Protection Unions), which eventually teemed all over Ger- many.
The next step was for the Bavarian military associations to organise two big demonstrations, known as German Days, one at Nuremberg on the Ist and 2nd of September, 1923, the other at Hof on the 15th and 16th. The Nationalist press talked of 200,000 to 300,000 delegates each day and the most moderate estimates admit at least 100,000.
The German “ National Socialists ’’ posed as an ordinary political party, but they employed so many mysterious methods and developed so many irresponsible ramifications that they must be regarded as a secret society.
Unlike their rivals, they did not date from the Armistice. Their founder Adolf Hitler, an Austrian, took part in the Los von Rom (Free from Rome) movement, which aimed at the establishment of an Austrian national church. At first he seemed to be merely founding a home-defence brigade in Bavaria, but the German National Socialists
HITLER I4I
distinguished themselves from other brigades by the violence of their methods and their special hostility to Jews and pro- fiteers.
The name National Socialist has aroused ridicule as a contradiction in terms, almost amounting to National Internationalist, and many are of opinion that the word Socialist was adopted merely to attract extremists. But Hitler was always very frank in denouncing the followers of Karl Marx, and he juggled in a similar way with the word Christian, which he claimed for his party. By that he seems to have meant anti-Semite, for his Volksbuch or Popular Manual, described the Church of Rome as “ the black International” and ‘‘ the chief enemy of the German people,’ while he regarded Protestantism as no more than “a half-way house.”’ According to Dr. Schweyer, his reli- gion was really a deification of the State, or a worship of the Fatherland, a gospel according to Mussolini. And, like Mussolini, he was not above borrowing tenets from the Bolsheviks.
Hitler certainly never disguised his desire to become dictator, though he sometimes found it prudent to make formal denials. In August, 1922, when trouble was brewing, he said to the Minister of the Interior, “‘ Herr Minister, I give you my word of honour that I will never in my life make a Putsch (insurrection). To this the Minister replied, “T accept your word of honour, but the time will come when you will no longer have the decision in your own hands. The torrent will flow over your head, and you will have to choose whether you will swim with it, or be thrown aside.”
And that is precisely what happened when public opinion was stirred by events in the Ruhr. It might still have been possible to remain inactive, but the accession of Ludendorff had raised the party to the rank of a government and Hitler would perhaps have been unable to restrain his followers if he had tried. In any case Hitler had no desire to see a dictatorship in the hands of another, even in the hands of King Rupert of Bavaria, whom he seems to have betrayed. That may have been one reason for Hitler’s failure. It was certainly not the firmness of the Government, which made
142 " SECRET SOCIETIES little more than formal resistance and proved reluctant to punish him after his failure.
On emerging from confinement in February 1925, Hitler made it very clear that his ambitions were undimmed. His manifesto sounded like a royal appeal for loyalty and obedi- ence, the whole organisation of his party was renewed and strengthened, he returned a block of members to Parliament, and the secret branches of his party were multiplied with feverish activity.
Few save bolshevising democrats desired to hinder the Germans from maintaining order at home, but the question soon arose whether the existing armaments were not exces- sive for such a purpose. If so, the Entente powers might be justified in insisting upon disarmament.
And there can be little doubt that the Germany of 1927 was in a position to mobilise armies amounting at least to 2,000,000 men. Colonel Reboul adumbrated many more. In his alarmist articles in the Paris Temps, he asserted the survival of at least 160,000 German officers from the war establishment, sufficing on the old lines of one officer for twenty-five men to command 4,000,000 men; and they would soon become far more numerous, for nearly all students received military training and passed into the reserve, besides which non-commissioned officers were always available from the Schupo and Reichswehr. Alto- gether he anticipated 7,000,000 instructed men, half of them affiliated to secret societies and military associations of ex-combatants, all ready to respond to the first call to arms.
As to arms, the Minister Schweyer declared in the Bava- rian Landtag in April 1921 that the Bavarian Einwohner alone possessed 240,000 rifles, 2,780 machine guns and 44 cannon, part of this material having been presented by the persons whom the Government had entrusted with the destruction of arms in excess of those tolerated by the Treaty of Versailles.
War material was hidden in the following ways: (a) confided to civilians ; (b) secret deposits in the barracks of the Reichswehr and Schupo, in empty military buildings, or walled up in cellars (as at Custrin, Kénigsberg, Berlin
GERMAN ARMAMENTS 143
and Frankfort) ; (d) “‘ chains of arms,” i.e., arms sent to brokers and distribution agents for transmission in cases marked “iron” or “steel goods”? to Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Chile and perhaps Hungary ; (e) arsenals, e.g., Ships in neutral ports. The arms were all changed or verified twice a year.
Fortifications were constructed at Kénigsberg, Custrin and Glogau, nominally against a Polish invasion, but the Poles detected a menace of attack, and dismantlement took place in the summer of 1927.
There were twenty German aeroplane factories at home and abroad in 1927, for instance the Flygindustrie in Den- mark, foreign firms undertaking to work exclusively for Germany in case of war and receiving a subvention from the Reich.
At Munich and Johannisthal, there were factories of aeroplanes dirigible from a distance and capable of dropping bombs automatically. The enterprise was under Captain Student of the Ministry of the Reichswehr and practice took place on the Reichswehr’s aerodrome at Waren in Mecklenburg. Furthermore, if we are to believe the com- patriots of Jules Verne, electro-magnetic rays against tank and aeroplane motors were also being prepared and tried by Captain Student near Nuremberg on the French aviation line between Paris and Prague. A factory was also founded at Eberswalde for ultra rays to fire explosives from a great distance.
And new kinds of gas were prepared at Oppau Lenna, recipients for them at the Aradowerft factory of Warne- munde. One of the gases becomes toxic only when brought into contact with the air. It was tried in the Bavarian forests in 1925 and again in 1926 near Schneidermuhl on the pretext of destroying the insects which devastate forests.
In the course of nine months or a year, according to Colonel Reboul, Germany could produce all the war material necessary for a long campaign, and everything was ready for mobilisation. Commissions of control had merely imposed a mask and would entail mobilisation in several stages ;
‘
144 * SECRET SOCIETIES
in other words, Germany could not repulse a sudden attack, and would need covering troops to secure a respite of two or three weeks (perhaps two months at the outside) but such troops would be supplied by the Schupo, Reichswehr and secret associations.
The timidest Frenchman, however, need fear no reprisals so long as Germany persists in disunion and halts between the restoration of a monarchy that would exalt her once more among the Powers, and an alliance with Bolshevism that would plunge her for generations beneath deeper waters beyond all hope of redemption.
AUTHORITIES
E. M. Arndt: Noch ein Wort tiber Franzosen und tiber uns. Leipzig, 1814.
W. T. Krag: Das Wesen und Wirken des Tugendbundes und anderer angeblicheu Biinde. Leipzig, 1816.
Kieser: Das Wartburgfest am 18 Oktober, 1817, in seiner Entstehung, Ausfiihrung und Folgen. Jena, 1818.
Haupt: Landsmannschaft und Burschenschaft. Leipzig, 1820.
H. Schreiber: Der Bundschuh zu Lehen im Breisgau und der Arme Konrad Buhl. Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1824.
R. Hug: Die demagogischen Umtriebe in den Burschenschaften der deutschen Universitaten. Leipzig, 1831.
F. A. Deuber: Geschichte der Bauernkriege in Deutschland und der Schweiz. 1833.
J. Voigt : Geschichte des sog. Tugendbundes oder des sitilich- wissenschaftlichen Vereins. Berlin, 1850.
R. Keil: Geschichte des jenaischen Studentenlebens. Leipzig, 1858.
R. Zéllner: Zur Vorgeschichte des Bauernkrieges. Munich, 1861.
A.Lehmann: Der Tugendbund. Berlin, 1867.