Commissions from Germany for the supply of arms would have been as acceptable to our factories as were those from the Allies. It is not America's fault if the German fleet does not break through the British cordon and open the way for sea communication with Germany. The superiority of the British fleet and the resulting consequences must have been known to Germany before she permitted the outbreak of this horrible war. She has no more right to make a grievance of these consequences than the Allies have a right to complain of Germany's superior preparedness and the greater perfection of her instruments of war. To believe American public opinion influenced by the profits which come to this country from the supply of arms, is to misunderstand completely the American mode of thought and feeling. Moreover these profits go to very few pockets, and public opinion here being anything but unduly complacent towards large corporations and capitalists is by no means inclined to view with favour the gathering in of these huge profits by a very limited number of individuals and concerns. You quote with approval General von Schlieffen's remark that "in war, after all, the only thing that matters is those silly old victories." You would surely not say that in the individual's daily struggle for existence or in competitive industrial strife, "the only thing that matters" is success. Rather you would be the first to grant, as you have always demonstrated in your acts, that there are certain ethical limitations laid down by the conscience and the moral conceptions of humanity, which must be respected in the struggle for success, however keen, even though the very existence of the individual and the maintenance of wife and child be at stake. Schlieffen's utterance, in the meaning which your quotation gives it, throws overboard everything that civilization and the humanitarian progress of centuries has accomplished towards lessening the cruelty, the hatred and the suffering engendered by war, and towards protecting non-combatants, as far as possible, from its terrors. It is tantamount to the doctrine of the fanatical Jesuit: "The end justifies the means."