l public opinion, about war and peace, to which
nations that go to war think it desirable to appeal for justification or
moral support.

These publications have been read with intense interest by impartial
observers in all parts of the world, and have in many cases determined
the direction of the readers' sympathy and good will; and yet none of
them discloses or deals with the real sources of the unprecedented
calamity. They relate chiefly to the question who struck the match, and
not to the questions who provided the magazine that exploded, and why
did he provide it. Grave responsibility, of course, attaches to the
person who gives the order to mobilize a national army or to invade a
neighbor's territory; but the real source of the resulting horrors is
not in such an order, but in the Governmental institutions, political
philosophy, and long-nurtured passions and purposes of the nation or
nations concerned.

German Desire for World Empire.

The prime source of the present immense disaster in Europe is the desire
on the part of Germany for world empire, a desire which one European
nation after another has made its supreme motive, and none that has once
adopted it has ever completely eradicated. Germany arrived late at this
desire, being prevented until 1870 from indulging it, because of her
lack of unity, or rather because of being divided since the Thirty
Years' War into a large number of separate, more or less independent,
States. When this disease, which has attacked one nation after another
through all historic times, struck Germany it exhibited in her case a
remarkable malignity, moving her to expansion in Europe by force of
arms, and to the seizure of areas for colonization in many parts of the
world. Prussia, indeed, had long believed in making her way in Europe by
fighting, and had repeatedly acted on that belief. Shortly before the
achievement of German unity by Bismarck she had obtained by war in 1864
and 1866 important accessions of territory and leadership in all
Germany.

With this desire for world empire went the belief that it was only to
be obtained by force of arms. Therefore, united Germany has labored with
utmost intelligence and energy to prepare the most powerful army in the
world, and to equip it for instant action in the most perfect manner
which science and eager invasion could contrive. To develop this supreme
military machine universal conscription--an outgrowth of the conception
of the