We are quite sure that you could never have been betrayed into such a statement if you had been acquainted with the real motives which actuate the British Nation in the present crisis.

Permit us, in the interests of a better understanding now and subsequently, to state to you the grounds on which we, whose obligations to Germany, personal and professional, are simply incalculable, have felt it our duty to support the British Government in its declaration of war against the land and people we love so well.

We are not actuated by any preference for France over Germany—­still less by any preference for Russia over Germany.  The preference lies entirely the other way.  Next to the peoples that speak the English tongue, there is no people in the world that stands so high in our affection and admiration as the people of Germany.  Several of us have studied in German universities.  Many of us have enjoyed warm personal friendship with your fellow-countrymen.  All of us owe an immeasurable debt to German theology, philosophy, and literature.  Our sympathies are in matters of the spirit so largely German that nothing but the very strongest reasons could ever lead us to contemplate the possibility of hostile relations between Great Britain and Germany.

Nor have we the remotest sympathy with any desire to isolate Germany, or to restrict her legitimate expansion, commercial and colonial.  We have borne resolute witness against the endeavor made by foes of Germany to foment anti-German suspicion and ill-will in the minds of our fellow-countrymen.

The Sanctity of Treaties.

But we recognize that all hopes of settled peace between the nations, and indeed of any civilized relations between the nations, rest on the maintenance inviolate of the sanctity of treaty obligations.  We can never hope to put law for war if solemn international compacts can be torn up at the will of any power involved.  These obligations are felt by us to be the more stringently binding in the case of guaranteed neutrality.  For the steady extension of neutralization appears to us to be one of the surest ways of the progressive elimination of war from the face of the earth.  All these considerations take on a more imperative cogency when the treaty rights of a small people are threatened by a great world power.  We therefore believe that when Germany refused to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which she herself had guaranteed, Great Britain had no option, either in international law or in Christian ethics, but to defend the people of Belgium.  The Imperial Chancellor of Germany has himself admitted, on Aug. 4, that the protest of the Luxembourg and Belgian Governments was “just,” and that Germany was doing “wrong” and acting “contrary to the dictates of international law.”  His only excuse was “necessity”—­which recalls our Milton’s phrase, “necessity, the tyrant’s plea.”  It has cost us all the deepest pain to find the Germany which we love so intensely committing this act of lawless aggression on a weak people, and a Christian nation becoming a mere army with army ethics.  We loathe war of any kind.  A war with Germany cuts us to the very quick.  But we sincerely believe that Great Britain in this conflict is fighting for conscience, justice, Europe, humanity, and lasting peace.