It was the Kaiser who changed the terms of Austria’s ultimatum to Servia, making them impossible of fulfillment, and then cunningly slipped away on a water-trip with the fastest German cruiser behind him, that he might come rushing back and cry, “Peace, peace!” while he fenced off every peace proposal from effectively reaching Austria.  Servia was willing to agree to every demand of Austria except that which involved a change in her constitutional government, with which she could not comply in the allotted time; but even this she was willing to discuss.  The Kaiser gave Russia twelve hours to demobilize, and then declared war on her five days before Russia even withdrew her minister from Vienna.

While the Germans have gone to war to possess the land and dominate the business of their neighbors, they have not gone to war as savage tribes, seeking blood and human sacrifice as an end in itself.

I have not dealt with German atrocities in Belgium or France.  War is atrocious, and you cannot move millions of men to the slaughter of their fellow men without revealing a certain percentage of crimes kindred to murder.

In due time, all the atrocities of this war may be shown up in photographs which have been taken.  The Carnegie Peace Foundation is circulating photographs showing the atrocities in the Bulgarian wars.  It might be much more timely for them to circulate photographs showing the horrors and atrocities of human sacrifice in this most audacious war.

Previous chapters have shown how German diplomacy slipped, how the German secret service had gathered the facts of the military, financial, and political weaknesses of Russia, Great Britain, and France, yet with no ability to value properly the spirit of the peoples behind this military unpreparedness.  Germany has been described as “System without Soul.”  It remains only to show the relative weaknesses of Germany, and why she cannot win this war.

The Allies can reach round the world for men, war-supplies, and financial assistance.  Germany can get no more men, no more gold, no more outside war-supplies.  She must manufacture and be self-sustaining.

In the first six months of the war Germany has raised a loan of 4,400,000,000 marks, or about 1,100,000,000 dollars, promptly and patriotically taken by her people.

But international bankers inform me that every dollar of this and fifty percent more was gone before January 1, 1915.  This is also indicated by the expansion of her paper money and her efforts to maintain the gold basis under that paper.

As this is regarded as a life-and-death struggle for Germany, the jewelry in the Empire must go into the melting-pot.

I can well credit the reports of copper household utensils and building materials going into the melting-pot for the copper of war.

And of rubber, for which there is no substitute, I hear that above three dollars a pound is being bid in Germany, or about four times the price in the United States.