This chapter is not written to reconcile American readers to the German side of the controversy that now engages the attention of all men. I wish to enable the reader to have a clear view of the people with whom we fight. It is they with whom we must deal in building up the system out of which the future is to be constructed again; and we shall not know how to deal with them if we do not see their point of view and know what they are thinking about. If in some of their ideals they are superior to other peoples, and if their organization of individuals into the state has some elements of strength not found in other systems, it is not for us to seek to destroy the advantage they have won. It would be better for us to adopt their good points, in order that we might the more surely defeat them on the field of battle. Having won the victory we desire, we should certainly not seek to destroy that which we cannot replace. Live and let live, a principle which Germans have ignored in some important respects, must be recognized after the military ambition of Germany is broken, if we are to have an enduring peace. CHAPTER VIII THE FAILURE OF THE OLD EUROPEAN SYSTEM Much has been written to prove that one side or the other was responsible for the present war. Minute facts, as the words in a dispatch, or the time at which the troops were mobilized, or whether or not a preliminary summons of troops to the colors was in itself an act of mobilization, have become the subjects of bitter debate. Such questions will have to be settled by the historians of the future years: they cannot be discussed here with any profit, since this book is an appeal to the reason of men on each side of the controversy. Back of the events of July, 1914, is a more fundamental cause of the war. It is the breakdown of the systems of concert and balance to which the powers had trusted themselves. Castlereagh and Metternich allowed themselves to slip into these theories, when they set aside the suggestion of a federated Europe, which came from Alexander I. Granted that the tsar’s dream was too ethereal for a world steeped in selfishness, it does not follow that a policy entirely devoted to the balancing of selfishness with selfishness would have preserved peace. On the other hand, we must admit that nations are not idealists. Selfishness is their doctrine. So long as the project of a federation is viewed idealistically it is practically impossible. But if it ever comes to be admitted by the people who count in political things that it is for the interests of the nations to adopt it, that is, if it is brought within what we may call the sphere of selfishness, it ceases to be idealistic and comes to be a subject worthy of the consideration of the practical statesman.