Who launched it? Who was guilty of this crime above all crimes? The author of it, whether a ruler, a junta, or a whole nation, comes before history stained with an infamy to which no language can reach. If his assassin’s stroke is not beaten down into the dust it is all over with Europe and civilisation. Who, then, was the criminal? There is an invertebrate view according to which everybody is equally blameable and blameless for everything. The holders of this view have never gone quite so far as to take up the New Testament story, and argue that Judas Iscariot was a misunderstood man; but, were they logical, they would do so. Since they are not logical they must not be allowed to apply their mechanical and deterministic formula to the tragedy of world-history. No nation in this war is without a blot, and many blots on its past, not even Ireland. Any people that claims complete worthiness to bear the sword and shield of justice is a people intoxicated with vanity. The participants in this struggle are, like the participants and witnesses in a murder-trial, human. That does not prevent a jury adjudging the supreme guilt of blood to that one of the many imperfect individuals on whom it lies. The Great War was in its origin a Great Crime, and the documents are there to prove it. That is one advantage we possess formerly forbidden to public opinion. The Press and popular education have done much harm, but this solid good stands to their credit: they have made it impossible, as in old times, to order war in secret councils for motives undisclosed, or not disclosed till long after the events. Every belligerent Government has found itself under the necessity of issuing to the world diplomatic correspondence relating to the outbreak of the war. All the publications of the Powers engaged will be found in a single volume, _Collected Diplomatic Documents relating to the Outbreak of the European War_ (E. Ponsonby, 1_s._ net). To that volume frequent reference will be made in these pages. One omission must be noted, a hiatus more significant and sinister than any printed evidence. The influence exercised by Berlin on Vienna must be, for the historian, the central pivot of all _ante-bellum_ negotiations. But in neither of the books published by the Germanic Powers is there any real disclosure of what passed between Berlin and Vienna during that fateful period. Allegations of atrocities, too, no longer rest merely on the evidence of private persons. Formal Commissions, composed of lawyers and statesmen of international reputation, have sifted the whole mass of charges, eliminated hearsay, and committed themselves to a verdict that nothing can shake. That great prince of the Church, Cardinal Mercier, and his Bishops, have issued documents with every solemnity of form and occasion which in the early days of the struggle were not available. A whole library of comment, in which the ablest minds not only of the