Of these injustices, the greatest, because it is the foundation for all the rest, is the imputation of Germany's sole responsibility for the war. The German people will never endure that imputation; they should never be expected to endure it. Nothing can really be settled until the question of responsibility is openly and candidly re-examined, and an understanding established that is based on facts instead of on official misrepresentation. This question is by no means one of abstract justice alone, or of chivalry and fair play towards a defeated enemy. It is a question of self-interest, immediate and urgent. However it may be regarded by the American sense of justice and fair play, it remains, to the eye of American industry and commerce, a straight question of dollars and cents. The prosperity of the United States, as we are beginning to see, hangs upon the economic re-establishment of Europe. Europe can not possibly be settled upon the present terms of peace; and these terms can not be changed without first vacating the theory of Germany's sole responsibility, because it is upon this theory that the treaty of Versailles was built. This theory, therefore, must be re-examined in the light of evidence that the Allied and Associated Governments have done their best either to ignore or to suppress. Hence, for the American people, the way to prosperity lies through a searching and honest examination of this theory that has been so deeply implanted in their mind—the theory of a brigand-nation, plotting in solitude to achieve the mastery of the world by fire and sword.
Americans, however, come reluctantly to the task of this examination, for two reasons. First, we are all tired of the war, we hate to think of it or of anything connected with it, and as far as possible, we keep it out of our minds. Second, nearly every reputation of any consequence in this country, political, clerical, academic and journalistic, is already committed, head over ears, to the validity of this theory. How many of our politicians are there whose reputations are not bound up inextricably with this legend of a German plot? How many of our newspaper-editors managed to preserve detachment enough under the pressure of war-propaganda to be able to come forward to-day and say that the question of responsibility for the war should be re-opened? How can the pro-war liberals and ex-pacifists ask for such an inquest when they were all swept off their feet by the specious plea that this war was a different war from all other wars in the history of mankind? What can our ministers of religion say after the unreserved endorsement that they put upon the sanctity of the Allied cause? What can our educators say, after having served so zealously the ends of the official propagandists? From our journalists and men of letters what can we expect—after all his rodomontade about Potsdam and the Potsdam gang, how could we expect Dr. Henry Van Dyke, for instance, to face the fact that the portentous Potsdam meeting of the Crown Council on 5 July, 1914, never took place at all? There is no use in trying to put a breaking-strain upon human nature, or, on the other hand, in assuming a pharisaic attitude towards its simplest and commonest frailties. It is best, under the circumstances, merely to understand that on this question every institutional voice in the United States is tongue-tied. Press, pulpit, schools and universities, charities and foundations, forums, all are silent; and to expect them to break their silence is to expect more than should be expected from the pride of opinion in average human nature.
II
In examining the evidence let us first take Mr. Lloyd George's own statement of the theory. Except in one particular, it presents the case against Germany quite as it has been rehearsed by nearly every institutional voice in the United States. On 4 August, 1917—after America's entry into the war—the British Premier said:
What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail, with ruthless, cynical determination.
Except for one point, this statement sums up what we have all heard to be the essential doctrine of the war. The one missing point in Mr. Lloyd George's indictment is that the great German conspiracy was launched upon an unprepared Europe. In Europe itself, the official propagandists did not make much of this particular point, for far too many people knew better; but in the United States it was promulgated widely. Indeed, this romance of Allied unpreparedness was an essential part of the whole story of German responsibility. Germany, so the official story ran, not only plotted in secret, but she sprung her plot upon a Europe that was wholly unprepared and unsuspecting. Her action was like that of a highwayman leaping from ambush upon a defenceless wayfarer. Belgium was unprepared, France unprepared, Russia unprepared, England unprepared; and in face of an unprovoked attack, these nations hurriedly drew together in an extemporized union, and held the "mad dog" at bay with an extemporized defence until they could devise a plan of common action and a pooling of military and naval resources.
Such, then, is a fair statement of the doctrine of the war as America was taught it. Next, in order to show how fundamental this doctrine is to the terms of the peace treaty, let us consider another statement of Mr. Lloyd George made 3 March, 1921:
For the allies, German responsibility for the war is fundamental. It is the basis upon which the structure of the treaty of Versailles has been erected, and if that acknowledgment is repudiated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.... We wish, therefore, once and for all, to make it quite clear that German responsibility for the war must be treated by the Allies as a chose jugée.