This German propaganda has been all the more successful because for a very long time it encountered no serious opposition on the side of the Allies. For they, ingenuously confident in the justice of their cause, which seemed to them self-evident, have not attempted any real intellectual mobilization. Only quite lately have the Allies begun to organize the propaganda which must and ought to be carried on in foreign countries; substantial progress may be anticipated in this direction. Six main arguments have been employed to back the German propaganda. 1º. Germany has been forced to wage the war in order to resist a coalition treacherously contrived by England. Therefore Germany, a country of intellectual, scientific, and economic activity, obliged to right for its existence, deserves the sympathies of the whole world. 2º. If the neutrals are seriously injured by the war and its prolongation the responsibility rests on the Allies, who desire to destroy the German people. The neutrals should therefore take common action and bring pressure to bear on the Allies for the purpose of inducing them to acquiesce in the German victory, thus ensuring the speedy restoration of peace. 3º. To hasten this result the neutrals, and especially the United States, ought to oppose the maritime blockade which England is maintaining, under conditions the legitimacy of which, from the point of view of international law, is open to question. By refusing to supply munitions to the Allies, the United States would put an end to the butchery and thus serve the cause of humanity. 4º. Germany is really conciliatory, she wants nothing but an equitable peace. “We Germans,” declared Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, December 11th, 1915, “do not wish to set the peoples by the ears; on the contrary each will bear his share in the peaceful labour of all and in the progress of the nations.” 5º. The neutrals ought all the more to help Germany because she is fighting to ensure for all the freedom of the seas, which at present hateful England keeps in her own hands. The _Berliner Tageblatt_ (quoted by _Le Matin_ of February 18th, 1916), did not scruple to assert that the achievement by Germany of her favourite scheme “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” would secure for all nations the freedom of the sea. “If the economic mission of Germany,” said that journal, “is to guard the freedom of the road which leads from the North Sea through Central Europe to Asia Minor, and to render it more and more accessible, in the interest of all who reside along the road in question, then it is a necessary consequence of this our mission that we should have a vital interest in the sea likewise, since the Continental road in Central Europe is merely its continuation. Our interest requires that the sea shall be freed from the supremacy of a single people, that it shall be open to all honest competition.”