country yet. He should have asked them to come forward as usual and help
poor old England through a stiff fight. Then it would have been all
right.

Having thus frankly confessed my bias, which you can allow for as a
rifleman allows for the wind, I give my views for what they are worth.
They will be of some use; because, however blinded I may be by prejudice
or perversity, my prejudices in this matter are not those which blind
the British patriot, and therefore I am fairly sure to see some things
that have not yet struck him.

And first, I do not see this war as one which has welded Governments and
peoples into complete and sympathetic solidarity as against the common
enemy. I see the people of England united in a fierce detestation and
defiance of the views and acts of Prussian Junkerism. And I see the
German people stirred to the depths by a similar antipathy to English
Junkerism, and anger at the apparent treachery and duplicity of the
attack made on them by us in their extremest peril from France and
Russia. I see both nations duped, but alas! not quite unwillingly duped,
by their Junkers and Militarists into wreaking on one another the wrath
they should have spent in destroying Junkerism and Militarism in their
own country. And I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and
Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many
years of smashing one another and establishing their own oligarchy as
the dominant military power in the world. No doubt the heroic remedy for
this tragic misunderstanding is that both armies should shoot their
officers and go home to gather in their harvests in the villages and
make a revolution in the towns; and though this is not at present a
practicable solution, it must be frankly mentioned, because it or
something like it is always a possibility in a defeated conscript army