German People Not Blinded By Karl Lamprecht [Published in New York by the German Information Service, Feb. 3, 1915.] Denying flatly that the German people were swept blindly and ignorantly into the war by the headlong ambitions of their rulers--the view advanced by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University, and Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia--Dr. Karl Lamprecht, Professor of History in the University of Leipsic and world-famous German historian, has addressed the open letter which appears below to the two distinguished American scholars. Dr. Lamprecht asserts that under the laws which govern the German Empire the people as citizens have a deciding will in affairs of state and that Germany is engaged in the present conflict because the sober judgment of the German people led them to resort to arms. _Dr. C.W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University; Dr. N.M. Butler, President of Columbia University._ Gentlemen: I feel confident that you are not in ignorance of my regard and esteem for the great American Republic and its citizens. They have been freely expressed on many occasions and have taken definite form in the journal of my travels through the United States, published in the booklet "Americana," 1905. My sentiments and my judgment have not changed since 1905. I now refer, gentlemen, to the articles and speeches which you have published about my country and which have aroused widespread interest. I will not criticise your utterances one by one. If I did that I might have to speak on occasion with a frankness that would be ungracious, considering the fine appreciation which both of you still feel for old Germany. It would be specially ungracious toward you, President Eliot, for in quite recent times you honored me by your ready help in my scientific labors. All I want to do is to remove a few fundamental errors--in fact, only one. I feel in duty bound to do so, since many well-disposed Americans share that error. The gravest and perhaps most widely spread misconception about us Germans is that we are the serfs of our Princes. (Fuerstenknechte,) servile and dependent in political thought. That false notion has probably been dispelled during the initial weeks of the present war. With absolute certainty the German Nation, with one voice and correctly, diagnosed the political situation without respect to party or creed and unanimously and of its own free will acted. But this misconception is so deep rooted that more extended discussion is needed. I pass on to other matters.