August 23, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
capital was made throughout the German Empire to provide 
a war fund. 
(b) As against this the Powers now known as "The Allies" 
were preparing nothing. Upon the contrary they were, from 
various causes, falling back from the military positions they 
had held as against Prussia some years before. Such few 
dispositions as they did take, for example, the French law 
of Three Years' • Ser\'ice, were undertaken long after the 
corresponding and menacing Prussian moves and even so 
were eagerly debated, always cut down, and in some cases 
actually refused by the Parliaments. The events of the first 
months of the war amply confirmed the truth that Prussia 
had prepared and that the Allies had not. 
We may summarise the first point, then, and say without 
fear of contradiction before history —for the matter is sus- 
ceptible of positive proof — that Prussia designed war after the 
harvest of 1914, and that no trace of a similar design and 
preparation was apparent on the side of the French, the 
English, or the Russians, but on the contrary and most 
unfortunately, quite the reverse of such preparation. 
(2) The particular circiunstances surrounding the actual 
outbreak of the war tell exactly the same tale. The ultimatum 
to Serbia by the Austrian Government is not to be paralleled 
in any other diplomatic document whatsoever in the history 
of Europe. It made war inevitable and was intended to make 
war inevitable. Its acceptance would have destroyed Serbia 
as an independent State, and a State so challenged is sure to 
fight rather than be so destroyed without a blow. 
Austria's Ultimatum 
At this point again let us pause and note that the fact of no 
similar diplomatic instrument being drawn up in all the 
diplomatic history of Christendom is overwhelming. That 
note cannot be excused on the plea that such things have been 
done before, and had resulted in the submission of the small 
and assumedly guilty party and so saving war. It was a 
document unique and therefore damning, and its object was 
the conquest of a small State whose strategic position made 
it the key of the east. 
For a full month after it was launched it was clearly 
believed in the countries afterwards forming the great 
Alliance that it could never be acted upon. It was thought to 
* be only an excessive claim which would be modified. The 
proof of this is that the countries afterwards forming the 
great Alliance took no steps for any coming war, while the 
Central Powers arranged everything for a conflict which they 
had precipitated and desired. 
In the last stages of the negotiations to which this extra- 
ordinary note gave rise, there appeared something which, if 
possible, was more significant still. The countries now form- 
ing the Alliance, suddenly seeing a precipice in front of them, 
made the most vigorous efforts to prevent the fall of their 
nations into that precipice. They appealed to arbitration ; 
they appealed to delay. Arbitration and delay were refused 
at the eleventh hour. 
That again is not a matter of opinion or debate. It is a 
matter of positive history. We further know from a com- 
parison of tests, both in the secret diplomatic correspondence 
now published and in the public diplomatic correspondence of 
the time, that Prussia insisted upon her subject States and her 
Allies adopting this position. 
{3) The positive act which provoked the European war was 
also an act upon the part of Prussia. This would be a secondary 
point if the first two were not established. But the first two 
are estabUshed. That a man is the first to strike a blow in a 
quarrel is not in itself proof that he is the aggressor, but if it 
be proved that he has prepared for the blow and insolently 
determined to launch it in spite of appeals for peace, then 
that first blow is not only corroborative evidence of his in- 
tentions, but cumulative evidence as well. The positive act 
which determined the war after those amazing preliminaries 
of which I have spoken, was a challenge delivered simul- 
taneously by Prussia io France and to Russia bidding the 
' latter to submit to grave humiliation in tiie person of the small 
Slav State and the other to abandon its Ally. On this there 
is no historical debate or question whatsoever, nor is any 
possible. It was Prussia that said to Rnssia : 
" Unless you abandon Serbia to her fate, I and all my 
Alliance fully prepared make war agairst you at once," and 
it was Prussia which at the same moment and hour said to 
France : " Unless you abandon your AUiance with Russia, 
I will make war against you." 
(4) The war being thus (a) prepared for three years ; (b) 
provoked, and (c) declared by Prussia at the head of her de- 
pendencies, was enthusiastically and universaUy applauded 
by tlie whole German people. 
Of this proposition the proof does not consist in diplomatic 
documents or a comparison of dates,, but in something even 
more formidably true, the vjoice of a whole people. Great 
crowds everywhere frenzied for war ; iimumerable written 
statements in the Press applauding war, and the whole chorus 
shouting that war would be glorious and was for German 
right ; universally expressed contempt of supposedly weaker 
peoples about to be conquered— all these provide a testimony 
to a true national act, a universal German insistence upon 
forcing war, as overwhelming as ever a popular movement 
has provided in history. The tiling was unanimous and 
instinct with an insolent certitude of victory that will never 
be forgotten. That victory was declared absolved from the 
old moral laws of Europe and, not justified but supported 
by some fantastic philosophy of might, worthy of its originators 
and apologists. Not a word was heard of any other kind 
until the defeat came. Nxithing said after the defeat can 
obliterate our memory of those days, and those who pretend 
that the things were not said, and that the cry was not imi- 
versal, are hars. 
(5) Prussia entered upon her victorious war. She knew 
herself and her dependents to be overwhelmingly superior in 
numbers against the French ; in equipment, in science, and in 
rapidity against the Russians. She had not believed that the 
English would join the French — so much is true — but she did 
believe after this junction was effected that the war would 
be won by her before the long process of developing the latent 
strength of Britain could be completed. . 
We know what followed. Prussia, in the very moment of 
victory on the West, suffered the overwhelming disaster of 
the Marne. She was driven to ground and pinned and, in 
spite of the most furious efforts, has remained pinned ever 
since. Her successes upon the East, due to her great 
superiority in industrial power over the Slavs, availed her 
nothing as against the rigid tenacity which gripped her between 
the Alps and the North Sea, and which permitted the vast 
latent power of Britain to develop itself. She fought like a 
beast in the toils against that net ; she was beaten at Ypres 
and at Verdim. She failed. She knew then that she was 
defeated, and from that moment she has intrigued for a peace 
that would save her from the doom t^at was inevitable if 
her enemies were but steadfast. 
(6) In the process of this first insolent and uncompromisingr 
claim to break all right and to assert what she pleased to he 
advantage, Prussia in detail transgressed first one and then 
the other of nearly all the conventions which have kept 
European warfare a civilized thing. She began by throwing 
away a solemn treaty to which her name had stood. It was 
indeed the fourth or fifth time she had done that in her history, 
but it was the most flagrant case. She proceeded to the 
massacre of innocent civilians, to wholesale burning and whole- 
sale theft ; thence to the introduction of instruments of war- 
fare hitherto foreign and unknown, beginning with the use of 
burning oil, then going on to poison gas, to which she reluc- 
tantly compelled (to her own hurt) her intellectually superior 
■ foes. She went further, she massacred ; non-belligerents upon 
the high seas and ended by massacring neutrals as well. 
There is not one of all these abominations in which she did 
not take the first step. France and England took the first 
step in initiating fighting in the air ; proper recoimaissance 
from the air by photography more and more highly developed ; 
the increase of heavy guns and the creation of new types in 
these ; protective helmets ; barrage fire in its more and more 
perfected forms ; the methods of destroying observation 
balloons, etc., etc. ; these and twenty otfier legitimate steps 
in the increase of military power were the corresponding steps 
to those which in the progress of Prussia have been steps 
illegitimate ; the lowering of a standard of chivalry and the 
debasing of arms : murder, the destruction of monuments, 
the bombardment of open towns — Prussia was pioneer in 
these. In not one inrtovation of the sort were the Allies guilty. 
There is, then, no question of two parties to a quarrel 
each preparing for his advantage over the other, each watching 
his moment, and both at last springing at each other's throats. 
Still less is there a question of balancing evils done one against 
the other by two parties equally infuriated and blinded 
in the conflict. There is on the one side preparation ; a con- 
tempt for pledges, a proclamation of superiority indifferent 
to right, followed' after defeat by more and more desperate 
atrocities and, at last, appeals for peace. 
On the other side there is, at first, the natural unprepared- 
ness of men who neither desired nor expected such a catas- 
trophe ; their awakening ; their agony of preparation to repair 
the wrong and at last, thank God, their ability to begin the 
chastisement. There is upon the one side no single act with 
which it can reproach itself of innovation in barbarity or 
falsehood. On the other side a positive claim that such 
innovations were to be made at its own discretion, and to be 
forgotten in the victory that would succeed. 
There is not in all history a clearer case of right against 
wrong, if only it be admitted that there is a right and is a 
