OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS UTTERANCES OF GERMAN RULERS, MUNROE SMITH, LL.D. Professor of Jurisprudence, Columbia University INTER I begin by taking; later I shall find pedants FREDERIC II of PRUSSIA. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK 1918 LONDON: The war was begun by the military masters of Germany. Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German professors expounded in their classrooms and German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposterous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers; but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what well advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested. . . PRESIDENT WILSON, FLAG-DAY ADDRESS, June 14, 1917. |