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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



© Committee on Public Information 



'the: world must have a peace that wile make needless the marshaling 



oe armies^ 



and had only been given to gain time, and 

 that, when an increase of Germany's 

 submarine fleet warranted, the promise 

 would be broken without hesitation or 

 compunction. What a commentary on 

 Bernstorff's estimate of the sense of 

 honor and good faith of his own govern- 

 ment! 



DECEIVED BY MILITARY CLIQUE OE BERLIN 



Before this war began we would not 

 have thought any government on earth 

 capable of such indifference to truth. 

 We admit that we have been the dupes of 

 the military clique in Berlin, because dis- 

 honesty of this sort seemed to us incon- 

 ceivable in these days of international 

 honor and Christian civilization. But 

 I believe that the nations, and I am cer- 

 tain that the United States, will never 

 again be caught in a net of duplicity 

 equal to that which was spread all over 

 the world by the Berlin Government. We 

 have learned our lesson and it has cost 



us dear. We will never have to learn it 

 again. 



In this consideration of Prussianism, 

 with its pagan philosophy and its perver- 

 sion of the German mind, I shall not 

 attempt to enter upon a recital of the hor- 

 rible brutalities perpetrated by the Ger- 

 man armies in the prosecution of the war. 

 They have been too often told to require 

 repetition. It would be the needless 

 reading of a catalogue of black deeds of 

 cruelty, which would sicken a tiger, by a 

 nation which claims not only to be moral 

 and possessed of humane sentiments, but 

 to be actually commissioned by the Su- 

 preme Being to carry out His will. 



I only mention them here as a further 

 manifestation of the revival in Germany 

 of the adoration of brute strength and 

 pitiless war and of the subordination of 

 every noble instinct to the heartless ma- 

 terialism of the ruling class, who seek 

 only power and possessions without re- 

 gard to the means by which they are 



