One of these was the campaign by arms. It suddenly invaded Belgium, a peaceful neutral country, whose neutrality it was pledged to respect, and which it has treated with the utmost cruelty, murdering, or reducing to the slavery of forced labor, its civilian and noncombatant inhabitants. It has similarly enslaved the inhabitants of Poland, and has encouraged its Turkish allies to massacre their innocent Armenian subjects. A CAMPAIGN OF FALSEHOOD The other campaign was one of falsehood, conducted by speeches and through the press, and intended to mislead public opinion. It was an effort to deceive both its own people and neutral nations by mendacious misrepresentations of German aims, purposes, and conduct, and by equally false descriptions of the aims, purposes, and conduct of Germany's antagonists, and especially of the British Government and the British people. It tried to represent the war as having been forced upon Germany by Britain. Germany, it said, was merely defending herself against an unprovoked attack. She desired to live at peace with her neighbors, developing her own resources, cherishing no aggressive designs. Her enormous army and navy had been created only to protect her against the jealous and malicious enemies by whom she was surrounded, and especially against Great Britain. Britain, it seems, was envious of Germany. Being herself "a decadent nation"--this was the prevailing German the commercial competition of Germany, and tried to keep the latter out of all foreign markets. British policy--so they said--under the direction of King Edward VII., had formed alliances with France and Russia in order to hem in Germany, and after trying to block Germany's outlets in Africa and Asia, contrived this war to destroy by arms the rival whom she could not face up to in trade and manufacturing industry. While these accusations were brought against Britain, attempts were made to excuse the invasion of Belgium by the false stories, dropped as soon as they had served their temporary purpose, that French officers had been sent into Belgium to help to organize the Belgian troops against Germany and that French aviators had been flying over German territory.