demands and agreed to arbitrate the two involving her national
sovereignty, the world saw that the Allied countries did not want war,
and were willing to suffer great humiliation for the sake of preventing
it. Americans do not consider that any fair-minded man possessed of
ordinary commonsense can honestly believe that nations seeking to
provoke war with Germany would have urged their _protégé_ to make a
humiliating surrender to insolent and unjust demands. If there were any
truth in the assertion that the Allies were trying to force war on
Germany, they would have advised Servia to resist, not to yield. When
Austria, backed by Germany, declared war on Servia, despite Servia's
abject and complete surrender on eight points and willingness to
arbitrate the other two, there no longer existed outside of Germany and
Austria the slightest doubt that Germany was forcing the war to achieve
the aggrandisement which has been taught for years in your country as
the natural destiny of Germany.

Germany's guilt in forcing the war is recognised not only by Americans
and other neutral peoples, but by hundreds of thousands of Germans who
live in neutral countries and thus have a chance to learn more of the
truth than is possible in the belligerent countries. Germans who were
in Germany when the war broke out, but who have since come to America,
have told me personally that, after learning the whole truth, they can
no longer doubt Germany's responsibility for the catastrophe. Germans
who have left here to go back and fight for the Fatherland admitted to
me in private conversation that they knew Germany forced the war, and
that the Kaiser and the Prussian military party were alone to blame. I
know Germans who are liberally supporting the Allied cause because they
believe the defeat of Prussianism is essential to a civilised Germany.
Even your rigid censorship has not prevented our receipt of occasional
letters from Germans, in which they admit the uncertainty of Germany's