Until within a few months of our entrance into the war the vast majority of our people, probably no less than nine-tenths of those who were reading and thinking about it, saw in it nothing more than one of those recurring European quarrels, such as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers had watched from this side the Atlantic with growing determination that this country should not be entangled in their strife. All that vast majority believed profoundly that the United States should hold aloof from this war for the same reasons that it had kept out of the previous bloody struggles. The American people can scarcely be blamed that they did not for a long time perceive the real cause of the war--the desire of the German Emperor and his people to win world dominion and establish a German autocracy over the conquered peoples. For no nation, and very few individuals, even among the near neighbors of Germany, at first realized that this was the goal of the Kaiser and his Government. Some of those nations had now and then apprehended danger, but only each one for itself, but upon the fingers of one hand could be counted the statesmen and publicists of Europe who perceived the intention of world conquest, until the field-gray legions had been started upon the adventure. And those few who had declared such a conviction concerning German purpose had had their trouble for their pains. For no one had heeded their warning. Slowly, as evidence accumulated that convicted Germany out of her own mouth and was surveyed in the light of the event to which it all pointed, did the governments and peoples that were being attacked come to a realization of the truth. The American people were still longer in understanding the full significance of the purpose with which Germany launched the war. For their knowledge that through many centuries one after another of the European powers had striven through blood and devastation and agony to gain dominance over the others made them for a long time heedless of the meaning of the accumulating evidence and led them, in all honesty and conscientiousness, to absolve themselves of any responsibility or obligation. German propaganda of the most insidious and plausible sort, its sources well concealed, was busy everywhere and, although it had no success in changing the direction of the spontaneous sympathies of the people, it did aid in preventing them from discerning for many months the real cause and purpose of the war.