We Americans have been greatly confused in mind in regard to the issues of this war. We have confounded causes and occasions and purposes and incidents until it has become almost impossible for any considerable number of us to form a sound and correct judgment in regard to it. But we shall emerge from that nebulous condition. We are beginning to see more clearly now, and it would not surprise me greatly if the means used for producing our confusion would some day come back, if not to plague the consciences, at least to foil the purposes of their inventors. Reply to Prof. Burgess _To the Editor of The New York Times:_ Prof. Burgess's amazing communication on Belgian neutrality omits an essential piece of evidence. Granting, for the sake of argument, that the German Empire might repudiate all treaty obligations of the earlier German confederations, (very odd law, this;) granting also the still more novel plea that Belgium had outgrown the need, and the privilege of neutralization, Germany had agreed to treat all neutral powers under the following provisions of The Hague Conventions of 1907 concerning the rights and duties of neutral powers: 1. The territory of neutral powers is inviolable. 2. Belligerents are forbidden to move troops or either munitions of war or supplies across the territory of a neutral power. * * * * * 5. A neutral power must not allow any of the acts referred to in Articles 2 to 4 to occur on its territory. This pledge the German Empire had solemnly made only seven years ago. It would seem that Prof. Burgess may accept the distinction ably made by Prof. Muensterberg between "pledges of national honor" and mere "routine agreements," placing Hague treaties in the latter category. The allegation that France and England secretly did unneutral acts in Belgium is as yet without proof of any sort, and must be interpreted by the commonsense consideration that a neutral Belgium was a defensive bulwark for France and England. To have tampered with her neutrality would have been motiveless folly. How much more decent and moral than Prof. Burgess's meticulous weighing of national reincorporation as a means of evading national obligations is Chancellor Hollweg's robust plea of national necessity! Prof. Burgess's whole moral and mental attitude in this case seems to be that of a corporation lawyer getting a trust out of a hole under the Statute of Limitations or by some reorganizing dodge. FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr. Princeton, N.J., Nov. 4, 1914. America's Peril in Judging Germany By William M. Sloane. Late Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University; ex-President National Institute of Arts and Letters and of the American Historical Association; was secretary of George Bancroft, the historian, in Berlin, 1873-5; author of works on French History.