campaign. It was the exposure of Germany herself. Know of her what we may to-day, we thought of her otherwise four years ago yesterday. She had thrown about herself a mantle which hid the sword and the thick, studded boots. She worked at science and played at art. She sang and thumped the piano. She cleaned her streets and washed her children's faces. Many persons in America and England believed that she was efficient and that her very verboten signs were guides to the ideal life. Even as the Kaiser reviewed his armies he babbled of peace; peace, to believe him, was the first object of his life.

We do not know of any writer who has condensed the proof of Germany's falsehood and cowardice into so few words as Von Bethmann-Hollweg, who, as Chancellor of the Empire, spoke as follows to the Reichstag four years ago this afternoon :

Gentlemen, we are now acting in self-defence. Necessity knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and have possibly already entered on Belgian soil. [The speaker knew that the invasion had begun.]

Gentlemen, that is a breach of international law.

The French Government has notified Brussels that it would respect Belgian neutrality as long as the adversary respected it. But we know that France stood ready for an invasion. France could wait, we could not. A French invasion on our flank and the lower Rhine might have been disastrous. Thus we were forced to ignore the rightful protests of the Governments of

Luxemburg and Belgium. The injustice-I speak openly the injustice we thereby commit we will try to make good as soon as our military aims have been attained. He who is menaced as we are and is fighting for his all, can only consider the one and best way to strike.

There stood the German Empire, intensively trained in the arts of war for forty years, pleading cowardice in extenuation of her broken word. "France could wait, we could not!" A brave man, A brave man, BethmannHollweg, unless he knew before he spoke that the whole nation had sunk to the immoral level of the cowards who invaded Belgium because they feared that on a fair field France would have beaten them! It is curious that in the whole record of German statecraft in the war, the Chancellor's confession of his empire's degradations stands out almost like a clean thing.

The Chancellor did not deceive the people except in his implication that France would have struck through Belgium if Germany had not. He did not deceive himself, either. He knew the cowardice of Germany. It is probable that he believed, as the Junkers believed, that England, too, was a coward. Prince Lichnowsky had told them the truth about England, but they had not believed. In the years of Kultur, they had forgotten what honor was like. They chose to credit the stories that England was torn with dissensions, threatened with rebellion in

Ireland and India, nervous from labor troubles, and not only physically unprepared for war but mentally and morally unfit for war. Even the telegram of Sir Edward Grey, communicated on the day of Belgium's invasion, to the German Government by the British Ambassador at Berlin, did not dispel the illusion about Great Britain:

In view of the fact that Germany declined to give the same assurance respecting Belgium as France gave last week in reply to our request made simultaneously at Berlin and Paris, we must repeat that request and ask that a satisfactory reply to it and to my telegram of this morning be received here by 12 o'clock tonight. If not, you are instructed to ask for your passports and to say that His Majesty's Government feels bound to take all steps in their power to uphold the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of a treaty to which Germany is as much a party as ourselves.

Even that memorable document, we say, did not convince Germany that common honor still lived across the Channel. The Foreign Secretary, Von Jagow, a mere tool of the Kaiser, took it mechanically; but Von Bethmann-Hollweg added to the sum of German cowardice. Brave as he had been in the Reichstag, he whimpered to Sir Edward Goschen when he saw that "12 o'clock to-night" on paper. This account of the conversation is Goschen's, but the German Chancellor later confirmed the Englishman's version:

I found the Chancellor very agitated. His Excellency at once began a harangue which lasted for about twenty minutes. He said that the step taken by His Majesty's Government was terrible to a degree; just for a word "neutrality," a word which in war time had so often been disregarded just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her.

When he added that it was a matter of "life and death" to Germany to advance through Belgium, the British Ambassador replied that it was "a matter of life and death for the honor of Great Britain that she should keep her solid engagement to do her utmost to defend Belgium's neutrality if attacked." Her utmost! Aye, she has done it!

A last gasp from the German Chancellor: "But at what price will that compact have been kept? Has the British Government thought of that?" Sir Edward Goschen replied that "fear of consequences could hardly be regarded as an excuse for breaking solemn engagements," but these words were lost. The German Chancellor had abandoned himself to the contemplation of the truth: that morning Germany had been beaten when a soldier stepped across a line. How long the decision might be in dispute Bethmann-Hollweg could not know, but he must have known that, cheating, Germany had loaded the dice at the wrong side. If she had struck fairly at France, England would have had to stand by, neutral.

The seas would be open to Germany. If France had violated Belgium's neutrality - as Germany professed to believe she intended to do - England would have attacked France, keeping the pledge made in the Treaty of London. But now, because England weighed a promise and not the price of keeping it, there could be no swift stroke at lone France, no dash eastward to subdue Russia. To-day, when Germany sees how ripe Russia was then for revolution, the remembrance of that 4th of August must be the bitterest drop in the deep cup of her regret.

The items at which we have glanced were not all or even the most important acts of Germany's dawning tragedy. It was not merely that she revealed herself to the world, but that she revealed herself to herself. The moving picture of Kultur, of fake idealism, of humaneness, which she had unreeled before our charitable eyes was stopped, and stopped forever. The film, exposed momentarily to the flame of truth, exploded and left on the screen the hideous picture of Germany as she was. No more sham for a naked nation. In went the unmasked Prussian to outrage and murder, to bind and burn. When a Government violated its word to the world, why should the individual check his passions? All the world, at first unbelieving, watched the procession of horror, and then, against its wishes, against all the ingrained faith that the long years had stored within the human