when the troops
were made stationary by the war of position and fresh enemies were
constantly rising up against us, when Italy, Roumania, and finally
America appeared on the scene, then did the German generals achieve
miracles of strategy. Hindenburg and Ludendorff became gods in the
eyes of the German people; the whole of Germany looked up to them and
hoped for victory through them alone. They were more powerful than
the Emperor, and he, therefore, less than ever in a position to oppose
them.

Both the generals drew the wellnigh unlimited measure of their power
direct from the Entente, for the latter left the Germans in no doubt
that they must either conquer or die. The terrified and suffering
people clung, therefore, to those who, as they believed, alone could
give them victory.

5

Anglo-German competition, the increasing decadence of the Monarchy,
and the consequent growing lust of conquest evinced by our neighbours
had prepared the soil for war. Serbia, by the assassination, brought
about an acute state of tension, and Russia profited thereby to fling
herself on the Central Powers.

That appears to me to be briefly an objective history of the beginning
of the war. Faults, errors and omissions from the most varied sources
may occur in it, but can neither alter nor affect the real nature of
the case.

The victorious Entente gives a different interpretation of it. They
maintain that Germany let loose the war, and the terrible peace of
Versailles is the product of that conception, for it serves as
punishment.

A neutral court of justice, as proposed by Germany, was refused. Their
own witnesses and their own judges suffice for them. They are judge
and prosecutor in one. In Dr. Bauer, the German-Austrian Secretary of
State, they have certainly secured an important witness for their view
of the case. In the winter of 1918 the latter openly declared that
"three Austro-Hungarian counts and one general had started the
war."[1]

Were that true, then Germany would also have to bear a vast amount of
blame. For the four "guilty ones" could not have incited to war
without being sure of having Germany at their back, and were it true,
there could only have been a question of some plot laid by the
Austro-Hungarian and the German Governments, in which case Germany,
being the vastly superior military element, would undoubtedly have
assumed the role of leader.

Bauer's statement shows that they who inflicted the punitive