The Allies will, in accordance with the general principles of justice, bring Germany to account for her unheard of crimes, and will exact a full reparation for the enormous moral and material injuries which she has done them. Therefore it is necessary to set forth the causes of the war by a general survey of the facts, to the end that in the eyes of the civilized world, it may be clearly demonstrated that Germany must pay, and legitimately so, the price of a responsibility which, in all justice, should rest on her and on her alone. To understand the practical necessity of such a survey, if we are to influence the opinion of neutrals, it is needful to bear in mind that all discussions which, so far, have been held on the causes of war, have been merely based on diplomatic documents published by the various belligerents, and that these documents merely refer to facts which preceded the outbreak of war only by a few weeks. But in a discussion which turns on a multitude of texts, belonging to different dates, all more or less near each other, and therefore liable to be confused, nothing is easier than for subtle, interested and dishonest reasoners like the Germans, to interpret the same facts in different ways, and so to arrive at conclusions diametrically opposed to the truth. In fact, this is exactly what has happened. * * * * * Thanks to its intense intellectual mobilization, which has been foreseen and carried out as powerfully as its military mobilization, Germany has succeeded, by fallacious interpretations of diplomatic documents, in profoundly misleading neutrals, even honest neutrals, as to the real responsibility for the outbreak of war. Nothing could give a better idea of the effect thus produced by Germany than the following remarks of the _Swiss_ Colonel Gortsch published in the _Intelligenzblatt_ of Berne: “The events which happened at the end of July have convinced every reasonable man that Germany has been provoked to war, and that the Emperor William II. has waited long before he took up this challenge. History will lay the main guilt of the war and its intellectual responsibility on England; Russia and France will be considered as her accomplices.... It is the British policy, openly and selfishly free from any scruples, which has caused the World-War” (quoted by the _Echo de Paris_, 3rd January, 1916).