In "gratitude" for this our merchants were persecuted for years by your merchants, because of a wild hatred for Germans, which, by the way, had a most disagreeable effect upon the races of other colors. In "gratitude," with but few exceptions which we will not forget, we are now abused and belittled by your press before all of Europe and America as if we were assassins, vagabonds, enemies of culture and murderers, far worse than the Russians. As thanks for that you have entered upon a war against us, for which even Sir Edward Grey could not at first give a good reason until the injury of Belgium neutrality luckily came to his assistance. Our people are, therefore, now rightly embittered against England because through your groundless participation you have made more difficult the war against Russia and France, for which one alone, the Czar of Russia, bears the blame. But despite this great bitterness they would never approve the demolition of your country and your nation, because of their respect for your great past and your share in the development of culture in Europe. You, however, joined an alliance as a third great power, whose only purpose is our dissolution and destruction. Merely for reasons of justice and of moral courage a Pitt, a Burke, a Disraeli would have withdrawn their participation in such an alliance, which--Oh, heroic deed--falls upon the Germans by threes, no, by fours or fives. Your present-day statesmen, wholly unworthy of representing a people with your past and your inheritance, incite the Mongolians and blacks against us, your brother nation. They steal and permit our small and insufficiently protected colonies to be stolen and no not care a jot for all considerations of Europeans' culture and morals. *An Unnatural Russian Alliance.* England, once the home and the refuge for all free spirits from the days of the Inquisition, from Rousseau until Freiligrath and Karl Marx, England has allied herself with Russia--the prison and the horror of all friends of liberty! Hear ye, hear ye illustrious dead, who lived and struggled for the freedom and the greatest possible joy of mankind, and shake in your tombs with disgust and with horror! But you living ones, and you, Bernard Shaw, the foremost of all English artists, do everything in your power to break this terrible alliance and make it powerless for England. Much more lies in the balance for her than is understood by your present nearsighted politicians, who have in mind only the momentary advantages. The destruction of the German power is not the only thing in question here; no, it concerns a great part of civilized Europe in regard to the suspension of their hard-won political liberty; and England, the people of the Magna Charta, the first free Constitution, can never be a party to that. That is why we call to you, Bernard Shaw, in the name of Europe, and ask you for your voice in the struggle.