el and Eucken, September, 1914._

"What is happening to-day surpasses every instance from the past; this
last example will be permanently characterized in the annals of the
world as the _indelible shame of England_. Great Britain is fighting for
a Slavic, semi-Asiatic Power _against Teutonism_; she is fighting, not
only in the ranks of barbarism but also on the side of _wrong and
injustice_, for let it not be forgotten that Russia began the war,
because she refused to permit adequate expiation for a miserable
assassination; but the blame for extending the limits of the present
conflict to the proportions of a world-war, through which the sum of
human culture is threatened, rests upon England.

"And the reason for all this? Because England was _envious_ of Germany's
greatness, because she was bound to hinder further expansion of the
German sphere at any cost! There cannot be the least doubt that England
was determined from the start to break in upon Germany's great conflict
for _national existence_, to cast as many stones as possible in
Germany's path, and to block her every effort toward adequate expansion.
England lay in wait until the favourable opportunity for inflicting a
lasting injury upon Germany should come, and promptly seized upon _the
unavoidable German invasion of Belgian territory_ as a pretext for
draping her own brutal national egotism in a mantle of decency.

"_Or is there in the whole world a person so simple as to believe that
England would have declared war upon France, had the latter Power
invaded Belgium?_ In that event, England would have shed hypocritical
tears over the necessary violation of international law, while
concealing a laughing face behind the mask. The most repulsive thing in
the whole business is this hypocritical Pharisaism; it merits only
contempt.

"History shows that such sentiments as these, far from guiding nations
upward, lead them along the downward path. But we of this present time
have fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon
the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the
German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the
boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future
discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which
was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the
other party has willed it so. Upon England alone rests the monstrous
guilt and