Whenever I see a soul afflicted by the unjust judgments of others I seek to set the balance true, as I should have done on earth; but I am not here to upset the law of cause and effect. When I can help, I help; but I am more useful in preventing the setting up of evil causes than I could ever be in deflecting the legitimate course of effects. When I urge men to help the Masters in holding back the awful karma of Germany, I am not talking sentimentally. I am talking as a just judge. The German people have been deceived by their leaders and have followed blindly a course they have not understood. Collectively they are responsible to the other races, but individually they are not responsible in the same degree; for they have been themselves deceived, and they do not know that their cause of national aggression is unjust and of satanic origin. It is the hope of those Teachers who can watch from the outside and above, that the docile German people should not be forever hated by the world because the arrogant war-party has hurled them at their neighbors. I am not condoning the unlovely traits in the German character, or in the character of any other people; but of all the races engaged in this gigantic struggle, the German race knows least about the causes that hurled it forward. A spoon-fed press and the penalties of _lèse majesté_ have kept them from knowing anything which could have made them less flexible instruments in the hands of their leaders. The karma of those whose headstrong and arrogant policy precipitated this war is an individual karma, and it will have to be worked out by individual suffering and so-called punishment; but the karma of the great mass of the German people is a race karma. They have let themselves be led on to their own defeat. Think how the very law of reaction will throw the light of popular and democratic investigation into the darkest nooks and crannies of the German nation and government _after_ this war. Those who have been deceived to their hurt will demand to be deceived no more. In twenty years the life of the German government will be as open as that of the United States. The so-called “muck-raker” will arise with a lantern on his hat. Also by the law of reaction England will be shaken out of her sluggishness that has filled her shops with the wares of other countries because she was too slack to make her own. By that same law a demand will arise for an uncorrupt political machine in France. One or two things have happened in France which she prefers for the moment to keep to herself. The great shock of this war will cause each nation to examine itself more closely, to look into its own motives, to see wherein it fails to come up to the very exigeant standard demanded by the New Time. Look also for changes in Russia, and Austria will be but another name for change.