And we know that Germany cannot be wiped from the face of the earth.

* * * * *

[05]

     “Athenwood,” Newport, R.I.,

     Sept. 17, 1914.

Today I have received from Germany a pamphlet entitled “Truth About Germany, Facts About the War.”  The correctness and completeness of its statements are vouched for by thirty-four persons, whose names are recorded therein as members of an Honorary Committee.  I know personally seventeen of these thirty-four persons, and have known them for years, some of them intimately.  With six of them I have labored as a colleague in university work.  I have been introduced into their homes, have broken bread at their tables and have conversed with them long and often upon the problems of life and culture.  They are among the greatest thinkers, moralists and philanthropists of the age.  They are the salt of the earth!  The great theologian Harnack, the sound and accomplished political scientist and economist von Schmoller, the distinguished philologian von Wilamowitz, the well-known historian Lamprecht, the profound statesman von Posadowsky, the brilliant diplomatist von Buelow, the great financier von Gwinner, the great promoter of trade and commerce Ballin, the great inventor Siemens, the brilliant preacher of the Gospel Dryander, the indispensable Director in the Ministry of Education Schmidt.  Two of them are, in a sense, our own countrywomen, the Baroness Speck von Sternburg and Frau Staats-minister von Trott zu Solz.  The latter is the granddaughter of our own John Jay.  I have known her, her mother and her grandfather.  No statement was ever issued which was vouched for by more solid, intelligent, and conscientious people.  Its correctness, completeness and veracity cannot be doubted.  As I read it the emotions which it arouses make both speech and sight difficult.  I wish it might come into the hands of every man, woman, and child in the United States.

     (Signed) John W. Burgess,

Ex-Dean Faculties of Political Science, Philosophy, Pure Science and Fine Arts, Columbia University; Roosevelt Professor of American History and Institutions at Friedrich Wilhelms University, Berlin, 1906; Visiting American Professor at Austrian Universities, 1914-15.

Under the head of “An Anti-British Pamphlet,” The London Times of Aug. 23, 1914, noted as follows: 

The Vossischezeitung gives extracts from a brochure issued under the auspices of a committee of such prominent Germans as Prince Buelow, Herr Ballin, Dr. von Gwinner, and Field Marshal von der Goltz, for the purpose of “opening the eyes” of the United States regarding the causes of the present war.  Copies of this pamphlet are being given to all Americans returning home from Germany.  One chapter, headed “Neutrality by Grace of England,” scoffs at the idea of England today being the defender of neutral States