States, whose opinion we naturally value more than we do that of any
other people.

Most persons in this country, including all those who work for peace,
agree with you in deploring the vast armaments which European States
have been piling up, and will hope with you that after this war they may
be reduced--and safely reduced--to slender dimensions. Their existence
is a constant menace to peace. They foster that spirit of militarism
which has brought these horrors on the world; for they create in the
great countries of the Continent a large and powerful military and naval
caste which lives for war, talks and writes incessantly of war, and
glorifies war as a thing good in itself.

It is (as you say) to the peoples that we must henceforth look to
safeguard international concord. They bear the miseries of war, they
ought to have the power to arrest the action of those who are hurrying
them into it.

To get rid of secret diplomacy is more difficult in Europe than in
America, whose relations with foreign States are fewer and simpler, but
what you say upon that subject also will find a sympathetic echo here
among the friends of freedom and of peace. I am always sincerely yours,

JAMES BRYCE.

Forest Row, Sussex, Sept. 17, 1914.

A Reply by Dr. Francke

Professor of the History of German Culture at Harvard
University and Curator of the Germanic Museum; author of works
on German literature.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

In his letter of Sept. 1 President Eliot expresses the opinion that in
the present war "England, France, and Russia are fighting for freedom
and civilization." And he adds:

It does not follow that thinking Americans will forget the
immense services which Germany has rendered to civilization
during the last hundred years, or desire that her power to
serve letters, science, art, and education should be in the
least abridged in the outcome of this war, upon which she has
entered so rashly and selfishly and in so barbarous a spirit.
Most educated Americans hope and believe that by defeating the
German barbarousness the Allies will only promote the noble
German civilization.

In other words, German military and political power is to be crushed in
order to set free the German genius for science, literature, and art. It
is interesting to contrast with such views as these the following words
of Goethe, uttered in 1813: