Anglo-German competition, the increasing decadence of the Monarchy, and the consequent growing lust of conquest evinced by our neighbours had prepared the soil for war. Serbia, by the assassination, brought about an acute state of tension, and Russia profited thereby to fling herself on the Central Powers. That appears to me to be briefly an objective history of the beginning of the war. Faults, errors and omissions from the most varied sources may occur in it, but can neither alter nor affect the real nature of the case. The victorious Entente gives a different interpretation of it. They maintain that Germany let loose the war, and the terrible peace of Versailles is the product of that conception, for it serves as punishment. A neutral court of justice, as proposed by Germany, was refused. Their own witnesses and their own judges suffice for them. They are judge and prosecutor in one. In Dr. Bauer, the German-Austrian Secretary of State, they have certainly secured an important witness for their view of the case. In the winter of 1918 the latter openly declared that "three Austro-Hungarian counts and one general had started the war."[1] Were that true, then Germany would also have to bear a vast amount of blame. For the four "guilty ones" could not have incited to war without being sure of having Germany at their back, and were it true, there could only have been a question of some plot laid by the Austro-Hungarian and the German Governments, in which case Germany, being the vastly superior military element, would undoubtedly have assumed the role of leader. Bauer's statement shows that they who inflicted the punitive peace were right. 6