2. In the days between July 23 and July 30, 1914, when M. Sazonoff emphatically declared that Russia could not tolerate an attack upon Serbia, we rejected the British proposals of mediation, although Serbia, under Russian and British pressure, had accepted almost the whole ultimatum, and although an agreement about the two points in question could easily have been reached, and Count Berchtold was even ready to satisfy himself with the Serbian reply.
3. On July 30, when Count Berchtold wanted to give way, we, without Austria having been attacked, replied to Russia's mere mobilization by sending an ultimatum to Petersburg, and on July 31 we declared war on the Russians, although the Czar had pledged his word that as long as negotiations continued not a man should march—so that we deliberately destroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement.
In view of these indisputable facts, it is not surprising that the whole civilized world outside Germany attributes to us the sole guilt for the world war.
GERMANY'S WAR SPIRIT
Is it not intelligible that our enemies declare that they will not rest until a system is destroyed which constitutes a permanent threatening of our neighbors? Must they not otherwise fear that in a few years they will again have to take up arms, and again see their provinces overrun and their towns and villages destroyed? Were these people not right who prophesied that the spirit of Treitschke and Bernhardi dominated the German people—the spirit which glorifies war as an aim in itself and does not abhor it as an evil; that among us it is still the feudal knights and Junkers and the caste of warriors who rule and who fix our ideals and our values—not the civilian gentleman; that the love of dueling, which inspires our youth at the universities, lives on in those who guide the fortunes of the people? Had not the events at Zabern and the Parliamentary debates on that case shown foreign countries how civil rights and freedoms are valued among us, when questions of military power are on the other side?
Cramb, a historian who has since died, an admirer of Germany, put the German point of view into the words of Euphorion:
Träumt Ihr den Friedenstag?
Träume, wer träumen mag!
Krieg ist das Losungswort!
Sieg, und so klingt es fort.
Militarism, really a school for the nation and an instrument of policy, makes policy into the instrument of military power, if the patriarchal absolutism of a soldier-kingdom renders possible an attitude which would not be permitted by a democracy which had disengaged itself from military-junker influences.
That is what our enemies think, and that is what they are bound to think, when they see that, in spite of capitalistic industrialization, and in spite of socialistic organization, the living, as Friedrich Nietzsche says, are still governed by the dead. The principal war aim of our enemies, the democratization of Germany, will be achieved.
JEOPARDIZING THE FUTURE