Nay, why should we mothers curse you?  Lo! flesh of our flesh are ye;
But, by soul of Mary who bore the Christ-man murdered at Calvary,
Into our own shall the mothers come, and the glad day speed apace
When the law of peace shall be the law of the women that bear the race;
When a man shall stand by his mother, for the worldwide common good,
And not bring her tears and heart-break nor make mock of her motherhood.

The Way to Peace

AN INTERVIEW WITH JACOB H. SCHIFF.

One of the leading American financiers and noted philanthropist; founder of Jewish Theological Seminary and of Semitic Museum at Harvard University; a native of Germany and member of the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., bankers.

By Edward Marshall.

American as I am in every fibre, and in accord as I feel with every interest of the country of my adoption, I cannot find myself in agreement with what appears to be, to a considerable extent, American opinion as to the origin and responsibility for the deplorable conflict in which almost all of Europe has become involved.

For many reasons my personal sympathies are with Germany.  I cannot feel convinced that she has been the real aggressor; I believe that war was forced upon her, almost as if by prearrangement among the nations with whom she now contends; I cannot but believe that they had become jealous and envious of her rapid and unprecedented peaceful development and had concluded that the moment had arrived when all was favorable for a union against her.

Although I left Germany half a century ago, I would think as little of arraying myself against her, the country of my birth, in this the moment of her struggle for existence, as of arraying myself against my parents.

But while I steadfastly believe this war to have been forced upon Germany against her will, I also believe that circumstances which were stronger than the Governments of England and France, her present enemies, were necessary to overcome an equally definite reluctance upon their part.

In other words, I cannot wholly blame the English Government, or the French Government, any more than I can wholly blame the German Government.

Let us see how the great tragedy came about.  It is safe to pass rapidly over the Servian-Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Austro-Hungarian complication which served as the immediate precipitant of hostilities.  It has been detailed repeatedly in THE TIMES and other American publications.

It had reached a point at which the Austro-Hungarian Government felt compelled to take extreme measures by means of which to safeguard the integrity of the empire.

The firm but fatal ultimatum to Servia followed, the reply to which, suffice it to say, was unsatisfactory to Austria, who could not accept the suggestion of an investigation into the circumstances attending the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand through a commission or court on which she was not represented.