country who are not politicians, and who are capable and desirous of approaching a matter of this kind with intellectual honesty. Quite possibly they are not aware, many of them, that the Versailles treaty postulates the sole responsibility of the German Government for bringing on the war; undoubtedly they are not acquainted with such evidence as I have here compiled to show that this assumption is unjust and erroneous. Having read this evidence, they will be in a position to review the terms of the Versailles treaty and reassess the justice of those terms. They will also be able to understand the unwillingness, the inability, of the German people to acquiesce in those terms; and they can comprehend the slowness and difficulty wherewith peace and good feeling are being re-established in Europe, and the extreme precariousness and uncertainty of Europe's situation—and our own, in consequence—throughout a future that seems longer than one cares to contemplate.
The reader will perceive at once that this book is a mere compilation and transcription of fact, containing not a shred of opinion or of any original matter. On this account it was published anonymously in its serial form, because it seemed to me that such work should be judged strictly
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