PLAIN WORDS FROM AMERICA A LETTER TO A GERMAN PROFESSOR BY Professor DOUGLAS W. JOHNSON Columbia University, New York 1917. PUBLISHER'S NOTE. _The following letter, written by Professor Douglas W. Johnson, of Columbia University, is in reply to a letter, pleading the cause of Germany, which he received from a German correspondent. Professor Johnson's letter appeared in the "Revue de Paris" of September_, 1916. PLAIN WORDS FROM AMERICA _February_, 1916. Your two letters, with enclosed newspaper clippings, and your postal card were duly received. I can assure you that my failure to reply more promptly was not meant as any discourtesy. The clippings were gladly received, for I am always anxious to read what prominent Germans regard as able and convincing presentations of their side of disputed matters. Your own letters, particularly the long one of July 9, were read most carefully. I appreciate your earnest endeavour to convince me of the righteousness of your country's cause, and am not unmindful of the time and trouble you spent in preparing for me so carefully worded a presentation of the German point of view touching several matters of the profoundest importance to our two Governments. My failure to reply has been due to a doubt in my own mind as to whether good would be accomplished by any letter which I could write. I could not agree with your opinions regarding Germany's responsibility for the war, nor regarding her methods of conducting the war; and it did not seem to me that you would profit by any statement I might make as to the reasons for my own opinions on such vital matters. Your letters clearly showed that you wrote under the influence of an intense emotion--an emotion which I can both understand and respect, but which might well make it impossible for you to accord a dispassionate reception to a reply which controverted your own views. With your country surrounded by powerful foes, with your sons deluging alien soil in an heroic defence of your Government's decrees, with the nation you love most dearly standing in moral isolation, condemned by the entire neutral world for barbarous crimes against civilisation, you could hardly be expected to write with that scientific accuracy and care which would, in normal times, be your ideal.