ised
people, and sure to lead to disaster. Your military preparations,
evident to every observant visitor, have long caused us to distrust your
Government and to consider your country a menace to the world's peace.
In a word, we admired and loved your people, although we considered them
neither perfect nor even superior to other people; but we disapproved
and distrusted your reactionary military Government.

II.

Such was our attitude when the war burst upon the world. Since that time
what opportunities have the American people had to form an intelligent
opinion as to who was wrong and who was right? What sources of
information have been open to us, what means of getting at the facts?
Have we been drowned in English lies, as several of your professors have
written me is the case? Have we relied on one corrupt party newspaper,
as you intimate is our habit? Have we been dependent on a press bought
up with English gold, as is continually asserted by the German press?

In the first place, we have relied in part upon our previous knowledge
of the German Government and the German people. The hundreds of
Americans who have studied in your universities, the thousands who have
visited your country, and the millions who have come into close contact
with Germans in this country, all have a pretty good idea of the German
type of mind, German standards of national morality, German virtues and
defects. Americans have, of course, used this information in reaching a
conclusion as to the truth or falsehood of charges against Germany. I
talked with some of our American professors just as they landed on the
pier in New York fresh from a summer in Germany which was cut short by
the outbreak of the war. They came direct from your country and were as
fully informed of the German points of view right up to the declaration
of war as were any of your citizens. Many Americans who have spent
months and even years on German soil, and who know the country and the
people intimately, have made us well acquainted with German standards
and German methods of thinking.

It is true that since the war began much of our news has come through
cables controlled by the Allies; but Americans have too much common
sense to accept such reports as final. News from biassed sources is
always accepted with reservation, and not fully believed unless
confirmed from independent sources. Furthermore, Americans have never
lacked for first-hand information from