. When you have a
chance to read certain documents which your Government does not let you
read now, you can form an impartial judgment as to whether or not
Americans and the other neutral peoples have been unjust in deciding
that Germany is responsible for the war. Until that time you will, of
course, feel that the judgment of the world does your country a terrible
wrong. The Government which caused the war is not going to let its
people read things which would shake their confidence, and cause them to
weaken in their support of the war!

If Germany really exercised a moderating influence at Vienna, and strove
to avert the war, the State papers exchanged between Berlin and Vienna
would clearly prove this, if published. Germany has every reason to
publish those papers and prove her sincerity, if she tried to prevent
the war. On the other hand, both Germany and Austria have every reason
to keep those papers secret if they were jointly planning the war. They
have kept the papers secret. Not one word of the vital correspondence
between the two Teutonic capitals has ever been made public. Even your
own people are entirely ignorant as to what exchanges really took place
in the critical days preceding the declarations of war. You only know,
and the world only knows, that Germany made the vague general assertion
that she was "exercising a moderating influence at Vienna." You can
hardly expect the world to believe such a vague generality when the
documents which would prove its truth or falsity are carefully
suppressed. Why are they suppressed? Americans, in common with the rest
of the world, are convinced that your Government does not dare publish
them because it would prove the guilt of Germany more conclusively than
do the admissions contained in papers already made public.

It is the practically universal opinion, not only in America, but in
other neutral countries as well, that the repeated excuses and shifty
evasions by which Berlin rejected every plan for mediation, arbitration,
or any other programme which would tend toward a peaceful solution of
the crisis, combined with Berlin's acknowledgment that "a free hand was
assured" to Austria, and the further fact that all correspondence
between Berlin and Vienna is carefully suppressed, are amply sufficient
to convince any fair-minded, unprejudiced man that the Berlin Government
is primarily responsible for the war. The fact that Germany has for
years published a voluminous