Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/17

Rh have demanded it. But so long as there was any possibility that the Government would itself publish these documents, I did not wish to anticipate it with my elaboration of the material.

And now they have in fact appeared, and I have no longer any reason for delay.

I have no doubt that my views will be much contested—there can be no view of the war to which everyone would assent. And no language is more ambiguous, none is so much intended to be read between the lines, as that of diplomacy, with which we are here almost exclusively concerned. The Kaiser alone discards all diplomatic methods of expressing himself. The clearness of his utterances leaves nothing to be desired. And his marginal comments afford the rare satisfaction to a people of seeing, for once, an Emperor in undress.

Yet, in spite of all diplomatic disguises, the Austrian documents have brought about an almost unanimous agreement as to the guilt attaching to Austrian statecraft. For anyone who has reached the point of rightly estimating this fact, the language of the German documents will not present much difficulty in enabling him to pass judgment on German statecraft as well.

In view of all that has now become so clear, the temptation was strongly felt to show how sorely the German people were misled, especially by those in the ranks of the Majority Socialists, who so violently attacked the position of myself and my friends during the war, and who defended most strongly the war-policy of the Imperial Government. Truly, of their conceptions there remains to-day nothing but a heap of broken crockery.

But just for this reason it is hardly necessary at the present day to do battle with David, Heilmann, and