will at once arouse a spirit of opposition in every independent mind. These things cannot be settled by an ex officio judgment issued ex cathedra, especially when the evidence available was necessarily very incomplete. Least of all would a judgment of this kind be accepted 1 by a nation, such as the Germans, who are prone to controversy and have an unlimited supply of historical students searching for a subject to which they may devote their time and abilities. Whatever internal differences there might be among them, they could all join in attempting to disprove an accusation which they professed to believe was most dishonouring to their country. Let us say in passing that the point of dishonour is rather overdone; when we remember the methods by which Bismarck carefully engineered the war with Austria in 1866, we should scarcely expect the Germans to say that action of this kind in 1914 necessarily dishonours the whole nation.

And so we get a new mass of propagandist literature similar in character, and perhaps almost equal in amount, to that of the war-time days. There are in Germany dozens of societies, many of them obviously with considerable means at their disposal, issuing books and pamphlets which are distributed broadcast not only at home but in foreign countries. The centre of the movement is the monthly journal, 'Die Kriegsschuldfrage,' which is entirely devoted to this subject; it is an invaluable guide to the whole literature; in it every new document, every particle of evidence, is analysed and discussed; but the writers have no discrimination, they never allow a single point, however unimportant, to be made against Germany. Their great fault as propagandists is that they always overstate their case and, in fact, many of the writers become so obsessed with their subject that they seem to have lost the power to think outside the prescribed groove. The spirit of the whole thing is really not historical investigation but political propaganda. The object is not to disentangle what really happened, but to make the best possible case for Germany with the avowed desire of undermining the authority of the Peace settlement.

The strongest weapon in the German armoury was one repeatedly urged, even in 1919, by the German

Delegation at Versailles. You assert,' they said, 'that
it was Germany, and Germany alone, which was respon-
sible for the outbreak of the war. How can you be sure
of this until the whole of the facts have been disclosed?
You are arguing on insufficient evidence. If there is to
be a final judgment, then it must be by an impartial
tribunal which has access to the documents of all the
Governments concerned.' Since then they have set to
work on their side to provide the requisite material in
the fullest way. We have first of all the four volumes
containing a full publication of the documents for the
few weeks before the outbreak of war-the so-called
Kautsky Documents-and then the great work which
has just been completed in fifty-four volumes, containing
a very voluminous selection of the German official corre-
spondence from the years 1871 to 1914. In these two
collections we find the answer to much which was
formerly obscure, both as regards the immediate out-
break of war and the course of policy during the years
before it. Let us recognise that, so far as it is possible
to judge, the editing of these publications shows the
high qualities which in dealing with the text of docu-
ments has become a tradition in Germany. It does not
follow that we shall be equally able to accept the inter-
pretation of the new evidence which German writers
put forward. But even in regard to this matter, the
best historians confess that on the whole the conclusions
to be drawn are very unfavourable to the skill and
wisdom by which German policy was directed. The
most important individual editor of documents is Herr
Stieve, who deals specially with the relations between
Russia and France during the few years before the war,
when M. Isvolsky was Ambassador in Paris. The method
adopted is first to publish an admirable edition of the
whole of the Isvolsky correspondence, which has com-
pletely superseded the 'Livre Noir.' This would, how-
ever, obviously not be sufficient. There are not many
who have the skill and industry to wade through and
interpret a great mass of documents, letters, despatches,
and telegrams, and then there is always a danger that
the uninitiated reader might, if left to himself, come to
a wrong conclusion. Herr Stieve has brought out &
shorter and more popular work consisting of well-chosen

of

of its 80%

sible

of the b

t selections with a running commentary in which stress is laid on every point favourable to Germany, and those which might afford arguments against Germany are suppressed or ignored. We may give a single instance of the way in which this is done. He begins his book with an account of Isvolsky's earlier career, tracing the steps by which he came to be what he had not originally been, a confirmed opponent of Germany and Austria. Now, of course, in this development the essential point is the crisis of 1909, when the German Government, by a veiled ultimatum, forced Russia, practically by the threat of war, to accept the Austrian requirements 1 regarding Serbia. As every one knows, that which made war almost inevitable in 1914 was the fact that the Germans were trying once again to do that which in 1909 they had done with success. About all this, however, Herr Stieve says not a word, and in so doing is of course followed by the sheep-like crowd who read and reproduce his writings.

Among the books published one of the most interesting is that by the Crown Prince. It is composed not without skill and is written in a style of rather engaging simplicity. The pose, too, is well selected. The son, moved by filial affection, sets out to defend his father from the unjust charges brought against him, and the Crown Prince, in his involuntary retirement, seeks for some method by which he can be of service to his Fatherland. The greater part of the book is a review of German history from 1871 onwards, with the object of disproving the accusation that Germany repeatedly threatened Europe with an unprovoked war. We cannot, of course, follow the Crown Prince through the whole of his historical investigations; there is, however, one fundamental point on which it seems necessary to correct him, namely, his treatment of article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. He first assumes that this article is, and is meant to be, the foundation and justification of the whole of the treaty; and then he asks the question why this declaration, without which, according to the view of its authors, the whole of the treaty would have been impossible, was not placed at the head and beginning of the treaty. If this was not done, there must be some special reason for hiding it away. The reason

1

can be no other than the bad conscience of the men who devised it.' This picture of what happened is one in which the leaders of the Allies, desirous as they were to impose on Germany conditions which would otherwise have been quite unjustifiable, determined, although they knew that it was false, to put forward the justification of German responsibility for the war. At the same time, when they came to the drafting of the treaty they realised that solemnly to lay this down in the preamble would even for them be too gross a proceeding, so they hid it away in the 231st Article.

Could anything be more grotesque, or show a more complete misunderstanding of the attitude of the Allies on this point? One thing can be asserted positively, that there was not among them the slightest doubt as to the truth of the charges made against Germany in this matter. They may have been right or wrong in their belief, but the belief was there. There were great differences of opinion on such matters as to whether it should be included in the formal indictment brought against the German Emperor, but these differences turned on quite different matters, the responsibility of the head of the State, the difficulty of creating a court to try such a charge; but those who most strongly opposed the formulation of the charge never wavered in their insistence that the accusation was fully justified and proven. The suggestion that it was a deliberate fiction put up for political reasons is completely and absolutely baseless. As to the Crown Prince's question why it was placed in article 231 and not in the preamble to the treaty, the answer is simple. So far as most of the treaty went, this point was irrelevant, except for the particular matter of reparation. The rest of the treaty was not avowedly, and only to a partial extent really based upon the responsibility of Germany for the war. In regard to the most important section, the territorial settlement, this was discussed and argued on perfectly different grounds. The whole of the territorial clauses were based partly on the pre-armistice agreement and partly on a consideration of what would be the wisest for the future peace and security of Europe. The first of these considerations involved the general principle that no territory should be separated from Germany unless

there was real ground to believe that this separation would be in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants. For instance, the very long discussions on the Polish frontier turned almost entirely on the evidence available as to whether the inhabitants were Polish or German; it was assumed that if they were Polish they ought, and would desire to be, included in the new Polish State.* And when proposals were made that the whole left bank of the Rhine should be separated from Germany, they were rejected on the ground that, as such a settlement would obviously be contrary to the wishes of the population and inconsistent with the pre-armistice agreement, it could not be defended on moral grounds, and it would also quite certainly tend to produce war in the future.

There were, however, two chapters in the treaty to which the question of Responsibility was particularly relevant. The first is the military clauses, for the disarmament which was imposed on Germany as the first stage to a more general disarmament, was avowedly based on the principle that German militarism had been responsible for the great rivalry in armaments. The other is the Reparation chapter, and it was for this reason that the clause dealing with Responsibility was inserted here. The reasons why it had to be dealt with are generally ignored. They arose from the state of opinion in the allied countries. It will be remembered that there was a great agitation against what was called letting Germany off. In 1871 the Germans had compelled France to pay the whole and more than the whole of the cost of the war; popular opinion demanded that this precedent should be followed. There were two reasons against it: the first was that this would be inconsistent with the terms of the pre-armistice agreement, the second that the cost of the war was so enormous that to demand the whole from Germany was completely out of the question. There were very serious differences among the Allies themselves as to the course which should be pursued, and the first step was to come to an agreement on this point. Article 231 was originally

* The Danzig settlement stands apart; it was an attempt to carry out the principle stated by President Wilson, that Poland should have a free and secure access to the sea.'