If I have expressed myself freely, in some respects even bluntly, I hope you will make allowance for the honest and deep anger and grief that move me when I see how, through a needless war wantonly started, Germany and England-France, the three countries of Europe whom the world most needs, the three races from whom humanity has most to expect, are engaged in tearing one another to pieces in senseless fury.
I have welcomed with hope certain signs in the last few weeks which seem to indicate that more moderate, fairer and calmer sentiments, a more correct understanding, and more far-sighted views are beginning to get a foothold in certain circles in Germany.
You have so incontestably vindicated the prowess of your arms, and so impressively demonstrated the power, courage, self-sacrificing patriotism and high ability of your nation, that no possible suspicion can attach to you of yielding under compulsion, should you rise to the moral heroism of taking the first step towards dispelling the dreadful misery which weighs upon Europe through this appalling war.
What is done, is done. The guilt will be adjudged by history. Eleven months ago it was you who spoke the fateful word that meant war. Will it now be you to first speak the redeeming word that shall bring hope of peace?
Whether such a word from you—a word, not of victorious peace, but of righteous peace, a word of human feeling and of political moderation, of conciliation, aye, and of atonement where due—would now be listened to by your opponents, in view of their bitterness at your actions and their mistrust of your intentions, and would actually bring peace, I do not know.
But of this I am sure: that such a step would be welcomed with gratitude, gladness and sympathy by all at least of the non-combatant nations, and that it would be set down as a moral asset for you in the ledger both of history and of contemporary opinion. Nor can I doubt that, even regarded merely from the point of view of politics, it would be wise, well-judged and timely.
Yours sincerely,
(Sgd.) Otto H. Kahn.
Note.—To this letter a short note merely of acknowledgment was received, containing the intimation that, in view of the wide divergence of views between the writer and the recipient, no useful purpose could be served by continuing the correspondence.