twns 



The Days of a Man 1914 



Dr. Hans Wehberg of Diisseldorf, one of the high- 

 est authorities on International Law, published 1 



. ' \ 



near the close of the war an analysis of the current 

 feeling of many of the signers of the unfortunate 

 document. Fifteen of them were no longer living; 

 twenty-three could not be heard from; sixteen still 

 held the same views. One of these last (Von Duhn) 

 "had gone over the document sentence by sentence 

 and would not change a word/ 5 The remaining thirty- 

 nine took a very different attitude. Dr. Wilhelm 

 Forster never gave permission to use his name; Dr. 

 Schmidlin claimed "never to have seen the senseless 

 and luckless manifesto." Most of the signers did not 

 see the document and assented by telegraph without 

 clear understanding of its contents save that it had 

 been approved by Drs. Harnack and Nernst. Some 

 , repudiated it almost as soon as it appeared. Eight 

 "would not have signed had they understood what 

 it was." Still others "would have denounced it had 

 the crimes in Belgium been known to them at the 

 time." Thirty-nine stated that they could "not now 

 stand for the assertions made." Speaking for the 

 majority, Dr. Herbert Eulenberg said : 



Misgivings For four weeks, though with misgivings, we all believeti that 

 Germany had exercised only her sacred right of defense. On 

 that ground alone we then supported our military group. 



A short time afterward, by way of partial atone- 

 ment, sixty-eight other "professors and statesmen 

 of Germany" issued their manifesto, asserting the 

 nation's good intentions but warning the people of 

 dangers ahead. Among other things they stated that 

 "Germany entered the war with no thought of con- 



1 Berliner Tageblatt, October 27, 1918. 



1:658 n 



