Manufactured premises are the forerunners of unsound and delusive deductions—a stultification of reason—and demand the cultivation of a form of self-hypnotism which is fatal to national or individual progress. A few observant people noted this dangerous habit even in the early literature of the German nation, and watched with keen interest its cultivation in all spheres of activity in recent years. This explains the stupendous failure of German judgment in all matters of national and international importance, of the impossibility of the peoples of that nation to see anything from any other point of view but their own, of their crass stupidity in gauging the psychology of other nations, and particularly that of the American nation. In the foregoing we have fundamentals worthy of consideration. They must occupy the attention of all thinking people who wish to make a contribution towards the uplifting of mankind and the establishment of a standard of reasoned guidance and control which should make another barbarous conflict unthinkable and therefore impossible. Naturally, every nation is ready enough with a more or less humane reason for its madness. Self-protection, an altruistic regard for the rights of smaller nations, a sense of high duty towards mankind at large, all these pleas have been urged as explaining the single principle which has drawn this or that nation into the whirlpool. And each and every nation must surely have pleaded liberty as their excuse at some time or another, liberty being one of those adaptable terms that may be used to mean almost anything. Before the war Germany was maintaining a right for “liberty” of expansion, a defensive use of the word that has hardly anything in common with the American use at the present time. On the other hand philosophers, economists, psychologists, commercial experts, and the public at large have been busy with a dozen other theories of the primary causes of the war. We have heard much talk of race hatred, of business rivalry, of high commercial and political intrigues, and a dozen other influences, and all of them have been put forward at one time or another as the sole reason for the present welter of blood and fury. We have, in fine, so many reasons from which to choose that we may be quite sure no single one of them can possibly afford us an inclusive and adequate explanation.