He criticizes me for saying that there was in Germany before 1914 a war party alongside of a peace party.  It was really only the Bethmann group, he declares, that believed in peace being built on anything else than preponderance in armed power.  The tradition of the German nation and the view of all sensible statesmen in Germany, e.g., Prince Buelow and the Emperor himself as a rule, was that the foundation of a lasting peace could only be laid with armaments.  Now if this is so it is plain how the war came about.  The “shining armor” oration in Austria, some years before war broke out, was simply one among many illustrations which so alarmed civilized nations that they huddled together for protection against this school of statesmen.  Bethmann’s was the true policy had he been allowed to carry it out.  It is possible that he thought he had a better chance of carrying it out than could have been the case were they to be present, when he got the Emperor and Tirpitz to keep away from Berlin after the meeting at Potsdam on July 5.  Unfortunately he underestimated the tendencies of Berchtold, Conrad von Hoetzendorf, Forgasch, and others in Vienna, who, with no misgivings such as those of Tirpitz as to the outcome, had determined on “losgehen.”  The proximate cause of the war was Austrian policy.  A secondary cause was the absence of any effective attempt at control from Berlin.  The third and principal cause was the Tirpitz theory of how to keep the peace, the theory that had come down from Frederick the Great and his father, and was barely a safe one in the hands of even a Bismarck.

The only circumstances that could have justified Germany in her tacit encouragement to Austria to take a highly dangerous step—­a step which was almost certain to bring Russia, France, and England into sharp conflict with the Central Powers—­would have been clear proof that the three Entente nations were preparing to seize a chance and to encircle and attack Germany or Austria or both.

Now for this there is no foundation whatever.  Russia, whatever Isvolsky and other Russian statesmen may have said in moments of irritation over the affair of Bosnia and Herzegovina, did not want to plunge into war; France did not desire anything of the kind; and, as for England, nothing was more remote from her wishes.  It was only in order to preserve the general peace that we had entered the Entente, and the method of the Entente policy, the getting rid of all specific causes of difference, was one which had nothing objectionable in it.  We urged Germany also to enter upon this path with us.  We offered to help her in her progress toward the attainment of a “place in the sun.”  The negotiations which took place with Sir Edward Grey in London after my return from Berlin in 1912 are evidence of our sincerity in this, for they culminated in agreement on the terms of a detailed Treaty, under which a vast number of territorial questions were settled to mutual satisfaction.  We did not either