It is, and is to be, the gigantic struggle of these times between the
forces which make for liberty and righteousness and those which make
for the subjection of the individual man, the exaltation of the State,
and the enthronement of physical force directed by a ruthless collective
will. It threatens a sweeping betrayal of the best hopes of mankind.
Each of the nations involved, horrified at the immensity of the
disaster, maintains that it is not responsible for the war; and each
Government has issued a statement to prove that some other Government is
responsible for the outbreak. This discussion, however, relates almost
entirely to actions by monarchs and Cabinets between July 23 and Aug.
4--a short period of hurried messages between the Chancelleries of
Europe--actions which only prove that the monarchs and Ministers for
Foreign Affairs could not, or at least did not, prevent the
long-prepared general war from breaking out. The assassination of the
Archduke and Duchess of Hohenberg on the 28th of June was in no proper
sense a cause of the war, except as it was one of the consequences of
the persistent aggressions of Austria-Hungary against her southeastern
neighbors.
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