INTRODUCTION 



We live in resounding times the issue of which no 

 man can see. Already those in high places through- 

 out the world are trying to distinguish between the 

 final issues that seemed so fateful in the end of last 

 July and the deep currents that hurried the nations 

 into the abyss of war. When the time comes to see 

 events in perspective, historians may give a verdict 

 less coloured by the prepossessions that now rightly 

 beset us. In this little book I discuss a theory of 

 war, rather than an actual war, or its causes. But 

 partly as an introduction which may explain a bias 

 I am at no pains to conceal, and partly as a small 

 contribution to the data for historians, I submit 

 here a statement of the reflection thrown by Germany 

 since 1884 on a private person whose activities have 

 been far removed from the considerations that may 

 be supposed to influence statesmen, and who has 

 had nothing to hope or to fear from Governments, 

 international commerce or high finance. I am a Scot, 

 and all Scots, they say, are poHticians, but at the 

 least I have been in every sense of the word an un- 

 official politician. 



In the spring of 1884 I was a new-made and 

 somewhat premature graduate of the University of 

 Aberdeen, with a little money and at a loose end until 

 October, when I was due at Oxford. I decided to 



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