be secured through solemn compacts, (which should include the establishment of a permanent international judicial tribunal, supported by an international force,) Americans see, in the treatment by the German Government of the Belgian neutralization treaty as nothing but a piece of paper which might be torn up on the ground of military necessity, evidence of the adoption by Germany of a retrograde policy of the most alarming sort.  That single act on the part of Germany—­the violation of the neutral territory of Belgium—­would have determined American opinion in favor of the Allies, if it had stood alone by itself—­the reason being that American hopes for the peace and order of the world are based on the sanctity of treaties.

(g) American public opinion, however, has been greatly shocked in other ways by the German conduct of the war.  The American common people see no justification for the dropping of bombs, to which no specific aim can be given, into cities and towns chiefly inhabited by non-combatants, the burning or blowing up of large portions of unfortified towns and cities, the destruction of precious monuments and treasuries of art, the strewing of floating mines through the North Sea, the exacting of ransoms from cities and towns under threat of destroying them, and the holding of unarmed citizens as hostages for the peaceable behavior of a large population under threat of summary execution of the hostages in case of any disorder.  All these seem to Americans unnecessary, inexpedient, and unjustifiable methods of warfare, sure to breed hatred and contempt toward the nation that uses them, and therefore to make it difficult for future generations to maintain peace and order in Europe.  They cannot help imagining the losses civilization would suffer if the Russians should ever carry into Western Europe the kind of war which the Germans are now waging in Belgium and France.  They have supposed that war was to be waged in this century only against public, armed forces and their supplies and shelters.

These opinions and prepossessions on the part of the American people have obviously grown out of the ideals which the early English colonists carried with them to the American wilderness in the seventeenth century, out of the long fighting and public discussion which preceded the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in the eighteenth century, and out of the peculiar experiences of the free Commonwealths which make up the United States, as they have spread across the almost uninhabited continent during the past 125 years.

The experience and the situation of modern Germany have been utterly different.  Germany was divided for centuries into discordant parts, had ambitious and martial neighbors, and often felt the weight of their attacks.  Out of war came accessions of territory for Prussia, and at last German unity.  The reliance of intelligent and patriotic Germany on military force as the basis of national greatness is