opinion of Americans the official documents, and especially the admissions made by your Government in its attempted defence, prove that the German Government forced the war in order to satisfy the ambitions of the military party which has long been in control.  When you have a chance to read certain documents which your Government does not let you read now, you can form an impartial judgment as to whether or not Americans and the other neutral peoples have been unjust in deciding that Germany is responsible for the war.  Until that time you will, of course, feel that the judgment of the world does your country a terrible wrong.  The Government which caused the war is not going to let its people read things which would shake their confidence, and cause them to weaken in their support of the war!

If Germany really exercised a moderating influence at Vienna, and strove to avert the war, the State papers exchanged between Berlin and Vienna would clearly prove this, if published.  Germany has every reason to publish those papers and prove her sincerity, if she tried to prevent the war.  On the other hand, both Germany and Austria have every reason to keep those papers secret if they were jointly planning the war.  They have kept the papers secret.  Not one word of the vital correspondence between the two Teutonic capitals has ever been made public.  Even your own people are entirely ignorant as to what exchanges really took place in the critical days preceding the declarations of war.  You only know, and the world only knows, that Germany made the vague general assertion that she was “exercising a moderating influence at Vienna.”  You can hardly expect the world to believe such a vague generality when the documents which would prove its truth or falsity are carefully suppressed.  Why are they suppressed?  Americans, in common with the rest of the world, are convinced that your Government does not dare publish them because it would prove the guilt of Germany more conclusively than do the admissions contained in papers already made public.

It is the practically universal opinion, not only in America, but in other neutral countries as well, that the repeated excuses and shifty evasions by which Berlin rejected every plan for mediation, arbitration, or any other programme which would tend toward a peaceful solution of the crisis, combined with Berlin’s acknowledgment that “a free hand was assured” to Austria, and the further fact that all correspondence between Berlin and Vienna is carefully suppressed, are amply sufficient to convince any fair-minded, unprejudiced man that the Berlin Government is primarily responsible for the war.  The fact that Germany has for years published a voluminous war literature, has taught her people to think and live in terms of war, and was fully prepared with enormous reserves of materials when war came; whereas the Allied countries were notoriously unprepared and in no condition to ward off the first blows of a surprise attack, to