Then Vorwärts quoted Jagow's description of how the war began, and went on:
"All that remains of the accusations against the English Government is that it did not prevent the world war, 'although it could have done so.' Now Herr von Jagow also did not prevent the world war, but he must certainly be acquitted of the charge that he could have prevented it. He really could not, and so an emphatic statement of inability is the best excuse for him and his fellow-disputants.
"Let us establish the facts. England did not desire the war; she merely did not prevent it. The war was not popular in England; it also was not popular in Russia and France. But it has become popular. The whole world—right away across the Atlantic and the Pacific—is united in hatred against us. We, however, have for almost four years been inoculated with the view that 'England laid all the mines which caused the war'—a view which the Secretary of State, in accordance with the evidence of the Ambassador, has now declared to be false! It is, however, by this false view that the whole war policy of the German Empire has been directed—from the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought us war with America, down to those Chancellor speeches which say that Belgium must not again become England's area of military concentration.
"If all the parties concerned were convinced that the belief in England's guilt is a fiction, why did they feed this belief, and why did they pursue a policy which was based upon it? They ought rather to have appointed to the Chancellorship Tirpitz, who, perhaps, believes what he says. Instead of that, a policy of fear of Tirpitz has been pursued. Sometimes a policy against Tirpitz has been attempted, but it has always been reversed at decisive moments, out of fear of the nationalistic terror.
"This fear was, perhaps, not entirely unfounded, for agitation is unscrupulous. The older ones among us still remember very well 'an Englishwoman' who was very unpopular in many circles, but this Englishwoman was the mother of the German Kaiser. No doubt there was no more convenient method for the Government to guard the dynasty than for it to take part in, or at least to tolerate, the agitation against the English. This was the only way of preventing the agitation from turning ultimately against the wearer of the German imperial crown. But ought such intimate considerations to have been permitted to play a part when the fate of the nations was at stake?
"Let us put an end to this! At this moment we are in a battle which may be decisive and which is going in favor of the empire. But even after this battle we shall possess neither the possibility nor the moral right to treat our opponent according to the principle of 'With thumbs in his eyes and knee on his breast.' Even after the greatest military successes there exists the necessity for political negotiation. It will be easier for us to enter into this negotiation after the poisonous fog of the war lies shall have lifted. Now that Herr von Jagow has cleared up the rôle played by England at the beginning of the war, there is nothing in the way of the fulfillment of the promise made by Bethmann to 'make good the wrong committed against Belgium'!
"If it is perhaps true that everything Wilhelm II., Bethmann, von Jagow, and Lichnowsky thought was true up to three weeks before the outbreak of the war was false, then let the mistake be acknowledged and the conservative Pan-Germans be put openly in the Government, so that they, both within and without, may complete the work of a peace by force. But if this is neither desirable nor possible, then there is nothing left to do but to take a decided step ahead. For the German people cannot be satisfied with the methods of governing exercised before and during the war. * * * The German people can only endure after the war as a peace-loving nation that governs itself."
Lichnowsky's Testimony as to Germany's Long Plotting for Domination
By H. Charles Woods, F. R. G. S.
To a Britisher who has followed the trend of events in the Near East, and who has witnessed the gradual development of German intrigues in that area, there has never been published a document so important and so condemnatory of Germany as the disclosures of Prince Lichnowsky.