ands today on your books against you; it has been
proved that your army is making use of dumdum bullets and thereby
turning a decent war into the most bloody butchery. In this Great
Britain has severed herself from every right to complain about the
violation of the rights of a people.

But aside from that--in your communication you have again emphasized the
main point. We did not declare war against Belgium, but we declared that
since Russia and France compelled us to wage a war with two fronts
(190,000,000 against 68,000,000) we had then to suffer defeat if we
could not march through Belgium; that we should do that but that we
should carefully keep from harming Belgium in any way and would
indemnify all damage incurred--our hand upon it! Would Great Britain,
had she been in our position, have hesitated a moment to do likewise?
And would Great Britain have drawn the sword for us if France had
violated the neutrality of Belgium by marching through it? You know well
enough that both these questions must be answered in the negative.

Our Imperial Chancellor has with his characteristic conscientiousness
declared that we have on our side committed a certain wrong. I cannot
agree with him in this judgment, and I cannot even recognize the
commission of a formal wrong, for we were in a situation where
formalities no longer obtain, and where moral duties only prevail. When
David, in the extremity of his need, took the show-bread from the Table
of the Lord, he was in every sense of the word justified, for the letter
of the law ceased at that moment to exist. It is as well known to you as
to me that there is a law of necessity which breaks iron asunder, to say
nothing of treaties.

Appreciate our position! Prove to me that Germany has flippantly
constructed a law of necessity; prove it to me in this hour, when your
country has gone over to our enemies, and we have half the world to
fight. You cannot do that; you could not do it on the 4th of August, and
consequently you have assumed the most miserable of pretexts, because
you wished to destroy us. From your letter, gentlemen, I must believe
that you are far from holding this view; but do you believe, and would
you really try to make me believe, that your statesmen would have
declared war against us only because we were determined to march through
Belgium? You could not consider them so foolish and so flippant.

*An Earlier Treachery.*

But I am not yet at an end. It is not