say nothing of fighting an offensive campaign, is generally considered enough to create a strong presumption that Germany and not the Allies wanted war.  The official correspondence of the ante-bellum days is full of suggestions for arbitration, mediation, and other plans to preserve the peace, coming from the Allied countries.  Americans have searched in vain for a single plan for a peaceful solution coming from Germany.  On the contrary, your own version of the negotiations shows only a persistent rejection by Berlin of every peace plan, and a dogged determination to support Vienna in her assault on Servia—­an assault which, following the robbery of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria under Germany’s protection, could not be endured by a civilised world, and was, therefore, certain to cause war.

When Servia, urged by the Allies to yield as much as possible in order to prevent war, acceded to eight out of ten of Austria’s humiliating demands and agreed to arbitrate the two involving her national sovereignty, the world saw that the Allied countries did not want war, and were willing to suffer great humiliation for the sake of preventing it.  Americans do not consider that any fair-minded man possessed of ordinary commonsense can honestly believe that nations seeking to provoke war with Germany would have urged their protege to make a humiliating surrender to insolent and unjust demands.  If there were any truth in the assertion that the Allies were trying to force war on Germany, they would have advised Servia to resist, not to yield.  When Austria, backed by Germany, declared war on Servia, despite Servia’s abject and complete surrender on eight points and willingness to arbitrate the other two, there no longer existed outside of Germany and Austria the slightest doubt that Germany was forcing the war to achieve the aggrandisement which has been taught for years in your country as the natural destiny of Germany.

Germany’s guilt in forcing the war is recognised not only by Americans and other neutral peoples, but by hundreds of thousands of Germans who live in neutral countries and thus have a chance to learn more of the truth than is possible in the belligerent countries.  Germans who were in Germany when the war broke out, but who have since come to America, have told me personally that, after learning the whole truth, they can no longer doubt Germany’s responsibility for the catastrophe.  Germans who have left here to go back and fight for the Fatherland admitted to me in private conversation that they knew Germany forced the war, and that the Kaiser and the Prussian military party were alone to blame.  I know Germans who are liberally supporting the Allied cause because they believe the defeat of Prussianism is essential to a civilised Germany.  Even your rigid censorship has not prevented our receipt of occasional letters from Germans, in which they admit the uncertainty of Germany’s claim that the Allies forced the war.