Those who had to make the effort to keep the peace failed.  But that neither shows that they ought not to have tried with all the strength they possessed in the way they did, nor that they would have done better had they discussed delicate details in public.  There are topics and conjunctures in the almost daily changing relations between Governments as to which silence is golden.  For however proper it may be in point of broad principle that the people should be fully informed of what concerns them vitally, the most important thing is those to whom they have confided their concerns should be given the best chance of success in averting danger to their interests.  To have said more in Parliament and on the platform in the years in question, or to have said it otherwise, would have been to run grave risks of more than one sort.  It is my strong impression that Lord Grey of Fallodon took the only course that was practicable, and that, had the danger of the catastrophe to be faced again and for the first time, the course he took would, even in the light of all we know to-day, again afford the best chance of avoiding it.  He succeeded in improving greatly for the time the relations between this country and Germany, and but for the outbreak in the Near East he would probably have succeeded in navigating the dangerous waters successfully.  The chance was far from being a hopeless one, and subsequent study of the facts has strengthened my impression that down to at least about the middle of the year 1913 the chances were substantially in his favor.  A sufficiency at least of the leaders in other countries were co-operating with him, not all the leaders, but those who were in reality most important.  The war when it came was due, not only to the failure of certain of the prominent men in the capitals of the Central Powers to adhere to principles to which for a long time they had held fast, but to the accident of untoward circumstances and the contingency that is inseparable from human affairs.

Such are some of the reasons which have led me to say what I have tried to express in the pages which follow.  I have never been able to bring myself to believe that there are vast differences between the ways of thinking and habits of mind of the great and most highly civilized peoples of Europe.  I have seen something of the Germans, and what I have learned of them and of their history has led me to the conclusion that, certain traditions of theirs notwithstanding, they resemble us more than they differ from us.  If this be so, the sooner we take advantage of our present victory by seeking to turn our eyes from the past as far as can be, and to look steadily toward a future in which the misery and sin which that past saw shall be dwelt on to the least extent that is practicable, the better it will be for ourselves as well as for the rest of the world.