The process is worth accelerating by every means possible; and what I have here done is meant to assist it. There are many persons in the country who are not politicians, and who are capable and desirous of approaching a matter of this kind with intellectual honesty. Quite possibly they are not aware, many of them, that the Versailles treaty postulates the sole responsibility of the German Government for bringing on the war; undoubtedly they are not acquainted with such evidence as I have here compiled to show that this assumption is unjust and erroneous. Having read this evidence, they will be in a position to review the terms of the Versailles treaty and reassess the justice of those terms. They will also be able to understand the unwillingness, the inability, of the German people to acquiesce in those terms; and they can comprehend the slowness and difficulty wherewith peace and good feeling are being re-established in Europe, and the extreme precariousness and uncertainty of Europe's situation--and our own, in consequence--throughout a future that seems longer than one cares to contemplate. The reader will perceive at once that this book is a mere compilation and transcription of fact, containing not a shred of opinion or of any original matter. On this account it was published anonymously in its serial form, because it seemed to me that such work should be judged strictly as it stands, without regard to the authority, or lack of authority, which the compiler might happen to possess. Almost all of it is lifted straight from the works of my friends Mr. Francis Neilson and Mr. E. D. Morel. I earnestly hope--indeed, it is my chief motive in publishing this book--that it may serve as an introduction to these words. I can not place too high an estimate upon their importance to a student of British and Continental diplomacy. They are, as far as I know, alone in their field; nothing else can take their place. They are so thorough, so exhaustive and so authoritative that I wonder at their being so little known in the United States. Mr. Morel's works,[1] "Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy," "Truth and the War," and "Diplomacy Revealed," are simply indispensable. Mr. Neilson's book "How Diplomats Make War,"[2] is not an easy book to read; no more are Mr. Morel's; but without having read it no serious student can possibly do justice to the subject. ALBERT JAY NOCK FOOTNOTES: [1] "Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy." $1.25. "Truth and the War." $1.25. E. D. Morel. New York: B. W. Huebsch. "Diplomacy Revealed." E. D. Morel. London, 8 & 9 Johnson's Court: National Labour Press. [2] "How Diplomats Make War." Francis Neilson. New York: B. W. Huebsch. $2.00 THE MYTH OF A GUILTY NATION I