ty, its wiping out, as it proceeds, of the
accumulated savings of many former generations in structures, objects of
art, and industrial capital, and the huge burdens it is likely to impose
on twentieth century Europe. From all these points of view, it is
evidently the most horrible calamity that has ever befallen the human
race and the most crucial trial to which civilization has been exposed.
It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.

Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
neighbors. Neither was Russian mobilization in four military districts
on July 29 a cause of the war; for that was only an external
manifestation of the Russian state of mind toward the Balkan peoples, a
state of mind well known to all publicists ever since the Treaty of
Berlin in 1878. No more was the invasion of Belgium by the German Army
on Aug. 4 a true cause of the war, or even the cause, as distinguished
from the occasion, of Great Britain's becoming involved in it. By that
action Germany was only taking the first step in carrying out a
long-cherished purpose and in executing a judicious plan of campaign
prepared for many years in advance. The artificial panic in Germany
about its exposed position between two powerful enemies, France and
Russia, was not a genuine cause of the war; for the General Staff knew
they had crushed France once, and were confident they could do i