Germany Fighting for Life.
I am not defending the violation of Belgian neutrality. This,
undeniably, was a most unjustifiable action, in spite of German claims
that she was forced into it by the necessities of the situation. But I
am explaining that, even had it not occurred, still England would have
gone to war.
That was the situation.
Germany is now fighting for her very existence, and I, who am not
without knowledge of German conditions, am convinced that never has
there been a war more wholly that of a whole people than is this present
conflict, as far as Germany is concerned.
Any one who has been in even superficial touch with German public
opinion and individual feeling in any part of the empire, since the war
began, must know that there is hardly a man, woman, or child throughout
the empire who would hesitate if called upon to sacrifice possessions or
life in order to insure victory to the Fatherland. Seventy million
people who are animated by unanimous sentiment of this sort cannot be
crushed, probably not subdued.
And England is confronted by the certainty that her world leadership is
the stake for which she is fighting; that her defeat would mean the end
of the vast dominance which she has exercised throughout the world,
since the time of the Armada, through the power of her great navy.
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