Page:Great Speeches of the War.djvu/109

Rh American publicist, was present at one and heard Bernhardi affirming the necessity and righteousness of a war, and declaring as strongly as he could that it was Britain and not France that stood in Germany's way. The fact is that, in the face of all the testimony that has come to us, it is impossible to doubt that Germany was determined on war at the earliest convenient opportunity — she choosing the ground and the hour—and had prepared for it to a degree we have not even yet fathomed.

Nor is there the slightest ground for doubt that the immediate objective of the war was to clear Britain out of the way of Germany's march to the domination of the world. France was regarded as an obstacle easily removed. England was, and is, the foe. That is not guessed. It is declared, not by one or two Germans, but by scores, and placed beyond doubt by books and newspapers, and by the military caste. "World Power or Downfall" was the accepted motto; and "downfall" meant first the subjugation and vassalage of Great Britain, and next that of the United States, crowned by universal dominion. The Hamburger Nachrichten wrote: "We have taken the field ; but at bottom it is England we are fighting everywhere." It is not co-operation that is sought, but control; not comradeship in the service of humanity, but domination for its own sake and for the glory of German "culture." That, too, is placed beyond doubt.

And if we go a little deeper we discover that the poisoned sources from whence springs this aggressive and domineering attitude of Prussia is in the totally false conception it has formed of the State on the one hand, and of war on the other. Their doctrine is that the State is and must be military, and that war is the breath of its nostrils. The State is not a collection of brothers in a home, where liberty and equality of opportunity reign, but an armed camp, where men and women and children are all trained to take their place in wars of aggression, planned without regard to the rights of other communities, large or small; to public law or the sacredness of treaties, to the dictates of the universal conscience, or the claims of men, women, and children who are non-combatants. If you accept dogmas of that kind, you are only deceiving yourselves, if you do not expect a huge crop of horrible and devastating results.

Nor need I keep out of this category of certainties, after the experience of these five months, the fact that neutrality