‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes political downfall. England has become the champion of a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen, the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that the earth holds, the Japanese. ‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the British world-empire will split off in all directions. The world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations, and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your country’s action. ‘If I have offended you by what I have written, just consider I cannot do otherwise than say what is my opinion. My personal esteem for you is not altered by what is taking place.’ Letter No. 3. From Sir John Wolfe Barry to Mr. A. B.: October 4th, 1914. ‘I have read with profound interest and grief the copy of the letter of August 29th from your German friend. The rancour which it displays is beyond words. It is apparently useless to criticise its contents looking to the frame of mind of the writer, who, I think and fear, expresses the present general feeling in Germany of hatred and anger with our country. Many of his statements and arguments are however absolutely and fundamentally erroneous and are capable of complete refutation. ‘The poisoning of German thought in respect of Great Britain does not date from anything done by King Edward and still less from Sir Edward Grey or the present or former Ministry. It began long earlier in the antagonism between the military class and what may be termed the liberal aspirations of many thoughtful Germans when the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick William, married our Princess Royal. Both were in sympathy with liberal ideas and they were violently opposed by Bismarck and the blood-and-iron school, while the youth of Germany were systematically taught by the professors and writers of Germany, under the encouragement of Bismarck and his school of thought, to hate and despise Great Britain. There is not and never has been a corresponding feeling here towards Germany.