civilization, were essentially political men.  War is not only a clash of arms, it is above all the most convenient exploitation of men, of economic resources and of political situations.  A battle is a fact of a purely military nature.  The Romans almost constantly placed at the head of their armies personages of consular rank, who regarded and conducted the war as a political enterprise.  The rules of tactics and strategy are perfectly useless if those who conduct the war fail to utilize to the utmost all the means at their disposal.

It cannot be denied that in the War Germany and Austria-Hungary scored the greatest number of victories.  For a long period they succeeded in invading large tracts of enemy territory and in recovering those parts of their own territory which had been invaded, besides always maintaining the offensive.  They won great battles at the cost of enormous sacrifices in men and lives, and for a long time victory appeared to shine on their arms.  But they failed to understand that from the day in which the violation of Belgium’s neutrality determined Great Britain’s entry in the field the War, from a general point of view, could be regarded as lost.  As I have said, Germany is especially lacking in political sense:  after Bismarck, her statesmen have never risen to the height of the situation.  Even von Buelow, who appeared to be one of the cleverest, never had a single manifestation of real intelligence.

The “banal” statements made about Belgium and the United States of America by the men who directed Germany’s war policy were precisely the sort of thing most calculated to harm the people from whom they came.  What is decidedly lacking in Germany, while it abounds in France, is a political class.  Now a political class, consisting of men of ability and culture, cannot but be the result of a democratic education in all modern States, especially in those which have achieved a high standard of civilization and development.  It seems almost incredible that Germany, despite all her culture, should have tolerated the political dictatorship of the Kaiser and of his accomplices.

At the Conferences of Paris and London, in 1919 and 1920, I did all that was in my power to prevent the trial of the Kaiser, and I am convinced that my firm attitude in the matter succeeded in avoiding it.  Sound common sense saved us from floundering in one of the most formidable blunders of the Treaty of Versailles.  To hold one man responsible for the whole War and to bring him to trial, his enemies acting as judge and jury, would have been such a monstrous travesty of justice as to provoke a moral revolt throughout the world.  On the other hand it was also a moral monstrosity, which would have deprived the Treaty of Versailles of every shred of dignity.  If the one responsible for the War is the Kaiser, why does the Entente demand of the German people such enormous indemnities, unprecedented in history?

One of the men who has exercised the greatest influence on European events during the last ten years, one of the most intelligent of living statesmen, once told me that it was his opinion that the Kaiser did not want the War, but neither did he wish to prevent it.