es and
armaments; when Germany--alone amongst the great nations--rejected our
offer of a treaty of arbitration?

Years before the war, Nietzsche, than whom no man had greater
influence in shaping the trend of German thought in the past thirty
years, wrote:

"You shall love peace as a means to prepare for new wars. You
say that a good cause may hallow even war, but I say to you
that it is a good war which hallows every cause."

On July 29, 1914, the well-informed German newspaper, _Vorwaerts_,
declared:

"The camarilla of war-lords is working with absolutely
unscrupulous means to carry out their fearful designs to
precipitate a world war."

In October, 1914, three months after the outbreak of the war,
Maximilian Harden, one of the ablest and most influential of
German publicists, wrote:

"Let us renounce those miserable efforts to excuse the
actions of Germany in declaring war. It is not against
our will that we have thrown ourselves into this gigantic
adventure. The war has not been imposed upon us by others
and by surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to
will it. We decline to appear before the tribunal of united
Europe. We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone
counts and no other--one principle which contains and sums
up all the others--_might_."

I could go on for hours quoting similar views and sentiments from the
utterances of leading German writers and educators before and since
the war. It is worth mentioning, though, that Maximilian Harden has
seen a new light, and for some time has been courageously speaking and
writing in a very different strain. There are a number of influential
men in Germany who, like him, have undergone a change of mind and
heart. Strong and outspoken assertions of liberal sentiment and
independent aspirations have found utterance in that country in the
course of the last six months, such as have not been heard within its
frontiers these many years.

A defensive war! There are certain telegrams (generally unknown in
Germany, even to this day) from Sir Edward Grey, the British Minister
for Foreign Affairs, to the British Ambassador in Germany, sent during
the week preceding the outbreak of the war in Europe, which by
themselves are conclusive testimony to the contrary. In these
messages, the British Foreign Minister went almost on his knees to beg
Germany to consent to a conference in order to avoid