Americans believe that the German people are a great people, capable of great and good things.  They honour and admire the Germany which finds her best expression in the literature, music, and science which has justly made you famous.  But they distrust and abhor the German Government which has made the name of Germany infamous.  The heroic bravery of the German soldiers dying for their Fatherland, and the heroic fortitude of the German women who bear and suffer—­all fail to evoke any enthusiasm in this country, or in other neutral countries, because of the stain which the German military Government has put upon their sacrifices.  Your greatest victories bring no world honour to your armies because of the cloud of dishonour which hangs over every achievement of the German military machine.  There is no enthusiasm, and very little praise, for the captors of Warsaw and Vilna, for Americans remember that it was German soldiers who murdered innocent hostages from “military necessity,” who destroyed much of Louvain from “military necessity,” who violated every rule of civilised warfare and humanity in Belgium from “military necessity,” who executed a noble English nurse from “military necessity,” who wrecked priceless monuments of civilisation in France from “military necessity,” who have dropped bombs from the sky in the darkness upon sleeping women and children in unfortified places, and slaughtered hundreds of innocent non-combatants from “military necessity,” who sent babes at the breast and their innocent mothers shrieking and strangling to a watery grave in mid-ocean from “military necessity,” and who have defended every barbarous act, every crime against humanity on the specious and selfish plea that it was justified by “military necessity.”  Your Government has robbed your soldiers of all honour in the eyes of the world by making them the instruments of a military policy which the rest of the world unanimously condemns as brutal and barbarous.

It seems to thoughtful Americans who know Germany and Germans best, that the highest duty of intelligent German professors like yourself is not to attempt the hopeless task of converting the rest of the world to an approval of the methods of the German Government, but rather to use your whole influence to establish a German Government which shall have a decent respect for the opinions of the rest of the world, and shall restore Germany to the place it used to have among civilised nations.  Your greatest enemy is not the Russian, nor the French, nor the British Government.  They might defeat you in war, but they never could take away your honour.  Your greatest enemy is the Government which has dragged the fair name of Germany in the mire of dishonour, shocking the moral instincts of the whole world by acts no other civilised country would think of committing.  Your greatest enemy is the Government which stifles your individual development by making you the obedient tools of the “State,” which smothers your free thought