As for the contents of this volume, what is the good of dwelling upon them? It is an established fact, at the present moment, that the Germans have introduced into war a new law, a new morality. This law and this morality are obviously contrary to the ideas which humanity has hitherto formed of these great subjects and to the impulses which urged and still urge humanity to endeavour to mitigate the permissible sufferings and horrors which war between civilised nations entails. The Germans have taken quite a different line. They appear to have made it their business to practise everywhere, in different forms, the abuse of force. It is a method, and one, too, which has something spacious about it. But a method is something which confesses or proclaims itself. We do not blush for a method, we blush for an unpremeditated, precipitate act, not for conduct coldly calculated with the purpose of attaining a supreme end, the righteousness of which justifies everything in the thought of those who aim at it. What is the meaning, then, of all these shufflings, these denials, disputings or flimsy vindications of facts? Why these shameless apologies among neutrals? Why these pamphlets, these articles scattered broadcast over two hemispheres, these idyllic pictures of movements of German troops to whom the peasants, peasants of France, express (in a language which betrays clumsy falsehood) their good wishes for a safe return to their native land. Why all this effort, if not from the necessity to justify themselves, a necessity which in these souls who profess to be emancipated from the vain prejudices of the world is even stronger and more deeply rooted than the desire to compel everything by force? Is not this necessity the clearest and most invaluable of admissions? But that is not the whole story. By a contradiction which would have something grotesque about it if the tale of bloodshed and destruction made such an expression permissible, those who every day shamelessly violate the law of nations are the first to protest with impassioned vehemence against what in their opponents they assert to be a violation of the law of nations, as if the right to trample right under foot was a privilege of Germany. I am well aware that on that point also we are critical, but even though there were some motive for being critical, a thing which is by no means proven, we must admit that a nation which has signed certain declarations designed to mitigate as far as possible the severities of war, and which, as soon as it becomes belligerent, no longer holds itself bound by these same declarations, is not justified in trying to pose as punctilious in the matter.