TURKISH PANDURA Its Two Aspects.—There are, indeed, two aspects of Pan Germanism—the purely national and defensive and the out spokenly chauvinistic and aggressive. The Pan-German is accus tomed to describe his endeavours as merely designed to realize, under modern conditions, the ideas of men like Fichte, Arndt and other patriots who over a century ago looked to the time when the sundered German tribes would be gathered into one political fold. In the middle of the century the political econo mists Friedrich List and Wilhelm Roscher, both forward-looking in many ways, gave more purposive form to this vague notion of an all-embracing Germanic commonwealth. List dreamed of a German empire extending from the Adriatic to the Black sea, offering scope for German colonization for centuries to come. He also predicted the eventual inclusion in that empire of Holland, holding that without control of the mouth of the Rhine Germany was "like a house whose front door is owned by a neighbour." List's speculations would appear to have given encouragement and direction to the later more definite activities of the Pan Germanist moverrtent ; for many of the imperialistic schemes which have been advanced by contemporary writers are only variations or augmentations—mostly the latter—of his ideas. List's influence can first be traced in the works of men like Paul A. de Lagarde, Gustav A. C. Frantz and Paul Dehn, who all wrote on the subject in the '7os or '8os of last century. Thus, in his Deutsche Schriften, Lagarde wrote : We must create a Central Europe which will guarantee the peace of the entire Continent from the moment when it shall have driven the Russians from the Black sea and the Slays from the South and shall have conquered large tracts to the east of our frontiers for German colonization. We cannot let loose ex abrupto the war which will create this Central Europe. All we can do is to accustom our people to the thought that this war must come.
Frantz, too, in his book Die IV eltpolitik, advocated the forma tion under German direction of a powerful confederation of States comprising, besides Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Flanders) Lorraine, Switzerland, Franche-Comte, Savoy, and, in the East, the Balkan principalities and Russian Poland.
During the years preceding the World War these ideas acquired a wide influence in Germany and were reinforced by influential political names. They had been kept alive by a host of writers of unequal merit, among the most influential being Ernst von Halle, Friedrich Lange and Ernst Hasse. The special aspect of the Pan-German question to which Hasse devoted his pen was "frontier policy," the title of his best-known book. One of his favourite schemes was the hedging of the empire on its landward frontiers by a military glacis, a day's march wide, to be settled by the families of ex-non-commissioned officers and other picked men who had had a military training. This real Landwehr was to be the rocker de bronze of which Frederick the Great spoke, a bulwark against which the attacks of Germany's enemies would hurl themselves in vain. He also advocated the incorporation in the German confederation of Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and certain French frontier districts, as well as of Bohemia and Moravia (to be taken from Austria) and parts of Western Russia. For, he wrote : "We want territory, even if it be in habited by foreign peoples, so that we may shape their future in accordance with our needs." It was only in 1891 that the Pan-Germans resorted to sys tematic organization and propagandism. The colonial movement was then in full flood, and the idea of imperial expansion had captured the national imagination in a high degree. Five years before a congress of colonial enthusiasts and organizations had been called for conference in Berlin by Dr. Karl Peters, who later acquired a sinister notoriety. A loose federation of these bodies was formed for the more successful advancement of national interests, particularly territorial expansion, and Peters was for a time accepted as its head.