But the guilt of Germany is betrayed by the selection by Germans of Sir Edward Grey as the especial subject of hatred among all the hated British race. Nothing but the consciousness of guilt can explain the extraordinary vituperation of the British Minister who did in 1914 precisely what he was highly praised for doing in 1913 in a speech in the Reichstag by Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. That was the speech calling on the Reichstag for an increase of about 136,000 men in the German army, an addition of $50,000,000 a year to the military budget, and a non-recurring capital tax for military purposes of $250,000,000. The difference between 1913 and 1914 was not in anything that Sir Edward did, but in the fact that before the army increase of 1913 Germany was not prepared for war and supported Sir Edward's efforts for peace. After that increase Germany was prepared for war, and would do nothing to support Sir Edward's efforts to avert war, and the coarse abuse of Sir Edward is a "smoke box" designed to conceal the changed position of Germany. Dr. von Jagow, Foreign Minister from 1913 to 1916, has been put forward to reply to Prince Lichnowsky, but agrees with the Prince that England did not desire war, and that Sir Edward Grey, who is described by a German divine as having "a cancerous tumor in place of a heart," acted in good faith in his efforts to find a peaceful solution for the difficulty. One American writer finds the origin of the war in the rival interests of Germany and England in the Bagdad Railway, but Dr. Paul Rohrbach, now or recently of the German Colonial Office, has admitted that just before the war opened the interests of the two nations were settled by a treaty, in which England made surprisingly large concessions. This is also stated by Prince Lichnowsky. So that the testimony of three particularly eminent Germans destroys the fiction that England attacked Germany because it was jealous of German commercial expansion.