duct.
In return for our submission you promised efficiency and you
promised us more, the conquest of the world. You have failed and
we are going to overthrow you."

It is the knowledge of this that makes the Emperor and the
autocracy ready to take any chance, anxious to continue the war
in the hope that some lucky stroke, either of arms or of
propaganda, will turn the scale in their favour, because they
know that any peace that is not a German peace will mean the end
of autocracy and probably of the Hohenzollerns.

And all the while the people are told that the war is a defensive
war, although the German armies fight far in enemy territory in
France, in Russia, in Italy, in Serbia, and in Roumania. They
always are told, too, that it is Germany who is desirous of
making peace and that the Allies refuse.

Last summer (1917) when an interview I had with the Chancellor in
which he named the peace terms of the autocracy was published,
the interview was repudiated by the Chancellor, who stated that
these terms were not his. I am sure that they are not his and
were not his, but I am equally sure that they are the terms and
were the terms of the autocracy of Prussia as stated by him.
Shortly after this the newspapers confirmed part of these terms,
telling of the talk in Germany of the guarantees to be exacted in
case Belgium was surrendered by the Germans, which guarantees
amounted to the absolute control of that unfortunate country and
"rectification of the frontiers" demanded by Germany on the
Eastern Front.

Outside of Germany the propagandist and the pacifist and other
agents of the Central Empires have proclaimed that this war is
not a war of conquest or aggression.

But the evidence is to the contrary.

Kaiser and pastors, Reichstag members and generals, orators and
journalists, have all at different times during the war declared
themselves in favour of conquest.

And it is extraordinary as showing the masterful manner in which
the poor German people are led astray that most of the men making
these declarations for annexation are able at the same time to
cry that Germany is fighting a defensive war and is prevented
from making peace only by the wicked Allies.

The King of Bavaria, speaking early in 1915 at a banquet, said,
"I rejoice because we can at last have a reckoning with our
enemies and because at last we can obtain a direct outlet from
the Rhine to the sea. Ten months have gone by. Much blood has
bee