No, there's never yet come a moment when there was the slightest
chance of peace. Did the Emperor not say last year that peace would
come in October, and again this year in October? Since he said it,
how can it come?

The ambitions and the actions of men, my friend, are determined by
their antecedents, their surroundings, and their opportunities--the
great deeds of men before them whom consciously or unconsciously
they take for models, the codes they are reared by, and the chances
that they think they see. These influences shaped Alexander and
Caesar, and they shaped you and me. Now every monarch on the
Continent has behind him the Napoleonic example. "Can I do that?"
crosses the mind of every one. Of course every one thinks of
himself as doing it beneficently--for the good of the world.
Napoleon, himself, persuaded himself of his benevolent intentions,
and the devil of it was he persuaded other people also. Now the
only monarch in Europe in our time who thought he had a chance is
your friend in Berlin. When he told you last year (1914) that of
course he didn't want war, but that he was "ready," that's what he
meant. A similar ambition, of course, comes into the mind of every
professional soldier of the continent who rises to eminence. In
Berlin you have both--the absolute monarch and the military class
of ambitious soldiers and their fighting machine. Behind these men
walks the Napoleonic ambition all the time, just as in the United
States we lie down every night in George Washington's feather-bed
of no entangling alliances.

Then remember, too, that the German monarchy is a cross between the
Napoleonic ambition and its inheritance from Frederick the Great
and Bismarck. I suppose the three damnedest liars that were ever
born are these three--old Frederick, Napoleon, and Bismarck--not, I
take it, because they naturally loved lying, but because the game
they played constantly called for lying. There was no other way to
play it: they _had_ to fool people all the time. You have abundant
leisure--do this: Read the whole career of Napoleon and write down
the startling and exact parallels that you will find there to what
is happening to-day. The French were united and patriotic, just as
the Germans now are. When they invaded other people's territory,