This recalls a confession made to me, long before, by a man who had lived in Belgium for twenty years, but, being still a German citizen, was called back to the army at the outbreak of war. When approaching the Belgian frontier he and others hesitated, demanding why they were being led into Belgium, and were told that France had violated the country’s neutrality, and the Belgians had called upon Germany to defend her! Only when facing Belgian troops, they realized they had been deceived; and to hesitate then meant being shot by their own men. Despised as the German race was, and probably will be for many generations to come, nevertheless their long-suffering victims were large-spirited enough to recognize the worthiness of individuals, and not hold them responsible for their nation’s crimes. But better qualities were shown only by the later troops brought from Germany to fill vast gaps in the original army hurled to death _en masse_ during the first mad effort. These entered the hideous strife when even their leaders were beginning to tremble before the gigantic storm of vengeance they had roused through the whole civilized world. And even these probably did not know the whole of their nation’s guilt. At least, one tries to believe they did not; for to think that so great a number of civilized beings could have continued the conflict if aware, from the very beginning, of their leaders’ barbarous devices, would destroy one’s faith in the stability of civilization. It seems impossible that thinking and, more or less, educated men could countenance the illegitimate aerial assaults on English and French towns; those cowardly and inexcusable air attacks upon Paris which began in the very first month of the war and continued, without mercy, to the end. The glorious capital of France now presents a mass of wounds in her very centre—in cherished localities sacred to all the world, such as the great cathedral of Notre-Dame, on which a bomb was dropped as early as October 1914, before adequate protection could be prepared! It seems as though no reasoning mind could be cognizant of these wrongs without being impressed with the conviction that right was on the side of those nations whose courage was unbroken by mean and unlawful assaults, viler than history has ever before recorded. England did not waver, and France did not waver; every dastardly blow inflicted by Germany only increased their righteous wrath; and the armies returning from the scene where their defeat was already inevitable were beginning to realize how justifiable was that wrath. They had seen thousands upon thousands of their fellows brought back mangled from invaded countries the holding of which meant nothing to them; had read the long lists of dead, and began to wonder what it was all for. On several occasions I have heard the soldiers ask that question with a look of puzzled wonder in their eyes, more eloquent than the words, “_Wofür ist eigentlich die ganze Sache_?”