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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:
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