Italy had joined what Italy considered a defensive alliance, but not an offensive alliance, and chose to regard the outbreak of this war as an offensive movement on the part of Germany, and for that reason has refused to participate in the struggle.

I say for that reason because, having been accustomed to reading, all my life, long diplomatic documents, really having been trained, you might say, almost in the school of Ranke, who was the inaugurator of an entirely new school of historical writing based on the criticism of historical papers, I have come to realize that the dispatches of trained diplomats are for the most part purely formal, and that while these respective publications of Great Britain and of Germany have a certain value, yet nevertheless the most important plans are laid in the embrasures of windows, where important men stand and talk so that no one can hear, or they are arranged and often times amplified in private correspondence which does not see the light until years afterward, and that the most important historical documents are found in the archives of families, members of which have been the guiding spirits of European policy and politics.

So that what the secret diplomacy of the last years may have been is as yet utterly unknown, and certainly will not be known for the generation yet to come and perhaps for several generations.  The student in almost any European capital is given complete access to everything on file in the archives, including secret documents, only down to a certain date.  That date differs in various of these storehouses, but I think in no case is it later than 1830.

If you ask why, there are the sensibilities of families to be considered, there is the question of hidden policies which they do not care to reveal, and then there is the whole matter of who the examining student is.  For instance, certain very important papers were absolutely denied to me, as an American, in Great Britain—­or at least excuses were made if they were not absolutely denied—­which were opened to an Englishman who was working upon the same subject at about the same time.

The reason for such observations at the present hour is plain enough.  Public opinion is formed upon what the public is permitted to know, and is not formed upon the actual facts which the public is not permitted to know.  And for that reason Americans, remote as we are from the sources of information, and especially remote from that most delicate of all indications, the pulse of public opinion in foreign countries, ought to be extremely slow to commit themselves to anything.

Attack on Sir Edward Grey.

Now, we have just had a very interesting incident.  THE NEW YORK TIMES printed recently what the British call their “White Paper,” as well as the German “White Paper.”  The editors of our most important journals announced that they had read and studied those papers with care, and that on the face of those papers, beyond any peradventure, Germany was the aggressor.  German militarism had flaunted itself as an insult in the face of Europe.  Germany had violated neutrality, Germany had committed almost every sin known to international law, and therefore the whole German procedure was to be reprobated.