It is always hard for a man to believe in the sincerity, friendliness, and peaceful intentions of one against whom he is himself engaged in plotting an injury. German distrust of England was based upon the surest of all foundations--upon her own fixed and envious determination to overthrow our empire and rob us of our property. Her own mind being filled with this ambition, how could she be otherwise than incredulous of our expressions of goodwill? How could she conceive that we were so blind as not to have penetrated her thoughts, so deaf as not to have heard the threats which her public characters { 71} were proclaiming so openly? Consequently when British Statesmen uttered amiable assurances they were judged guilty of a treacherous dissimulation.... One can only shrug one's shoulders, marvelling at the nightmares and suspicions which a bad conscience is capable of producing even among intelligent people.
It has been the fashion for half a century or more to talk of the Balkans as the danger-point of European peace. In a sense this is true. The crust is very thin in that region, and violent eruptions are of common occurrence. But the real danger of upheaval comes, not so much from the thinness of the crust, as from the violence of the subterranean forces. Of these, by far the most formidable in recent times have been the attitude of public opinion in Germany towards England--the hatred of England which has been sedulously and systematically inculcated among the people of all ranks--the suspicions of our policy which have been sown broadcast--the envy of our position in the world which has been instilled, without remission, by all and sundry the agencies and individuals subject to the orders and inspiration of government. An obsession has been created, by these means, which has distorted the whole field of German vision. National ill-will accordingly has refused to yield to any persuasion. Like its contrary, the passion of love, it has burned all the more fiercely, being unrequited.
The fact which it is necessary to face, fairly and squarely, is that we are fighting the whole German people. We may blame, and blame justly, the Prussian junkers, the German bureaucracy, the Kaiser himself, for having desired this war, schemed { 72} for it, set the match to it by intention or through a blunder; but to regard it as a Kaiser's war, or a junkers' war, or a bureaucrats' war is merely to deceive ourselves. It is a people's war if ever there was one. It could not have been more a people's war than it is, even if Germany had been a democracy like France or England.