THEPAN-GERMAN PROGRAMME.

INTRODUCTORY.

The two documents presented in this pamphletare the fullest statement of the programme ofthe Pan-German party in Germany. They were bothdrawn up in the earlier months of 1915. After theseries of rapid German successes in the West, withwhich the war opened, had seemed to come to acheck, and month after month went by without theexpected advance on Paris being resumed, it wasfelt to be necessary that the German people shouldget some more precise idea of what it was fightingfor, what it had to obtain before it could consider thatthe war had attained its end.

In March, 1915, the rumour got about that theGerman Government was contemplating a peace ofcompromise, and Pan-German circles took alarm.Pan-Germanism was not strong in the working classand many of the Radical Intellectuals disapprovedof it. But it was very strong among the countrylandowners, i.e. the class called Junkers, and the richmanufacturers, especially the great ironmasters ofthe Rhenish-Westphalian country, who wanted toget hold of the French iron-districts of Briey andLongwy. These interests were organised in anumber of powerful Associations.

If there was danger of the Government underBethmann Hollweg's direction weakening, it appearednecessary that pressure should be brought to bearupon it in time. Five Associations in March drewup a Memorandum to be presented privately to theChancellor. They were afterwards joined by a sixth,and the Memorandum in its final form was laid beforethe Chancellor on May 20, 1915. This is the first ofthe two documents here translated.

The second is the so-called "Manifesto of theIntellectuals." It was read on June 20, 1915, to agreat gathering of professors, diplomats, and highGovernment officials in the Artists' Hall (Künstlerhaus)in Berlin. It was not published, but circulatedas a "strictly confidential manuscript," and wassubmitted to the Chancellor on July 8. When 1341signatures had been appended to it the Governmentstepped in and forbade further canvassing. It istherefore claimed that the 1341 do not represent theamount of the support which the manifesto wouldhave got in the country had it been allowed free course.

The Intellectuals' Manifesto has a more extensiveprogramme than that of the Six Associations. Itincludes, not only the demands of the Associations,but the scheme commonly designated by the termMittel-Europa, with its appendix, the contro

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