s purpose. The raison d'etre of the great Pan-German League, of the
powerful Navy League with one million and a half members, and of the
other great German organisations is war. Bear with me while I read to
you extracts from some of these writings. I respectfully ask a patient
hearing. I would not did I not feel it to be important that from
representative Germans themselves you should learn the dominating
purpose that has directed and determined the course of German activity
in every department of its national life for the last quarter of a
century."

For almost half an hour the speaker read extracts from the pile of
books on the table beside him. "I think I may now fairly claim to have
established first the fact of vast preparations by Germany for war and
the further fact that Germany cherishes in her heart a settled Purpose
of War." It was interesting to know how this purpose had come to be
so firmly established in the heart of a people whom we had always
considered to be devoted to the cultivation of the gentler arts of
peace. The history of the rise and the development of this Purpose to
War would be found in the history of Germany itself. He then briefly
touched upon the outstanding features in the history of the German
Empire from the days of the great Elector of Brandenburg to the present
time. During these last three hundred years, while the English people
were steadily fighting for and winning their rights to freedom and
self-government from tyrant kings, in Prussia two powers were being
steadily built up, namely autocracy and militarism, till under Bismarck
and after the War of 1870 these two powers were firmly established
in the very fibre of the new modern German Empire. Since the days of
Bismarck the autocrat of Germany had claimed the hegemony of Europe and
had dreamed of winning for himself and his Empire a supreme place among
the nations of the world. And this dream he had taught his people to
share with him, for to them it meant not simply greater national glory,
which had become a mania with them, but expansion of trade and larger
commercial returns. And for the realisation of this dream, the
German Kaiser and his people with him were ready and were waiting the
opportunity to plunge the world into the bloodiest war of all time.

At some length the speaker proceeded to develop the idea of the
necessary connection between autocracy and militarism, and the relation
of autocratic and military power to war