When wars begin between nations we usually see the leaders of thought on each side busy developing distrust among their own citizens for the people against whom they are fighting. In accordance with this fact, the people of the United States have read a great deal since August, 1914, to make them think very unkindly of Germany. This chapter is not a plea for the Germans, and I agree that they did unnecessarily cruel and impossible things in Belgium. It is not to be denied that they played a most unwise part in the war game, when they tried to steal a march on France by invading through Belgium, a thing they were pledged not to do. It pays to keep faith; and when a nation does not keep faith other nations have no recourse but to treat it as if it were a pirate. If they do otherwise, the whole game will become a pirate’s game, and good faith will disappear from international relations. If Germany may violate Belgium at will, why may she not violate Switzerland, Holland, or any other state that stands in her way; and who would not expect her to do it, if no powers faced her that were willing and able to dispute her will? It is not improbable that German leaders understood this as well as we who now pass it under review. They must have made their calculations on arousing the opposition of the world and proceeded with the expectation that they would gain so much by their sweep through forbidden Belgium that they could defy the world. And if things had gone well for them, the calculation would have been well made. For if Germany had carried France off her feet and placed her in a position to offer no further menace during the next ten years, and if she had dealt a similar blow to Russia, what power could have checked her in the future decade? By glancing at the situation in Europe today we may see how an intrenched Germany defies the united and unwhipped world. How much more might she not have had her way, if the thrust through Belgium had succeeded! Let us suppose that the game of bad faith had proved successful as planned, what would have been the result? Probably Great Britain would have wakened slowly to her peril, but her position was such that she could have done nothing. Her fleet would have been useless against an enemy that rules on land. Her army could not have met the combined Teutonic armies, and she would have had no allies. Meanwhile, Germany and Austria at their leisure could have digested the Balkans and drawing Turkey into their net could have established a “Mittel-Europa” that would have left the rest of the world at their mercy. These were alluring stakes to play for, and it is not hard to see how a nation whose leaders have thrown aside the homely motto that “Righteousness exalteth a nation” would be willing to take a chance in order to obtain them.