assigning the territory of Fiume to Croatia, would have meant setting all the forces of Slav irredentism against Italy.

These considerations are of no practical value inasmuch as events have taken another course. Nobody can say what would have happened if the Carthagenians had conquered the Romans or if victory had remained with Mithridates. Hypotheses are of but slight interest when truth follows another direction. Nevertheless we cannot but repeat that it was a great fortune for Europe that victory was not decided by Russia, and that the decisive factor proved the United States.

It is beyond all possible doubt that without the intervention of the United States of America the War could not have been won by the Entente. Although the admission may prove humiliating to the European point of view, it is a fact which cannot be attenuated or disguised. The United States threw into the balance the weight of its enormous economic and technical resources, besides its enormous resources in men. Although its dead only amount to fifty thousand, the United States built up such a formidable human reserve as to deprive Germany of all hopes of victory. The announcement of America's entry in the War immediately crushed all Germany's power of resistance. Germany felt that the struggle was no longer limited to Europe, and that every effort was vain.

The United States, besides giving to the War enormous quantities of arms and money, had practically inexhaustible reserves of men to place in the field against an enemy already exhausted and famine-stricken.

War and battles are two very different things. Battles constitute an essentially military fact, while war is an essentially political fact. That explains why great leaders in war have always been first and foremost great political leaders, namely, men accustomed to manage other men and able to utilize them for their purposes. Alexander, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, the three greatest military leaders produced by Aryan civilization, were essentially political men. War is not only a clash of arms, it is above all the most convenient exploitation of men, of economic resources and of political situations. A battle is a fact of a purely military nature. The Romans almost constantly placed at the head of their armies personages of consular rank, who regarded and conducted the war as a political enterprise. The rules of tactics and strategy are perfectly useless if those who conduct the war fail to utilize to the utmost all the means at their disposal.

It cannot be denied that in the War Germany and Austria-Hungary scored the greatest number of victories. For a long period they succeeded in invading large tracts of enemy territory and in recovering those parts of their own territory which had been invaded, besides always maintaining the offensive. They won great battles at the cost of enormous sacrifices in men and lives, and for a long time victory appeared to shine on their arms. But they failed to understand that from the day in which the violation of Belgium's neutrality determined Great Britain's entry in the field the War, from a general point of view, could be regarded as lost. As I have said, Germany is especially lacking in political sense: after Bismarck, her statesmen have never risen to the height of the situation. Even von Bülow, who appeared to be one of the cleverest, never had a single manifestation of real intelligence.

The "banal" statements made about Belgium and the United States of America by the men who directed Germany's war policy were precisely the sort of thing most calculated to harm the people from whom they came. What is decidedly lacking in Germany, while it abounds in France, is a political class. Now a political class, consisting of men of ability and culture, cannot but be the result of a democratic education in all modern States, especially in those which have achieved a high standard of civilization and development. It seems almost incredible that Germany, despite all her culture, should have tolerated the political dictatorship of the Kaiser and of his accomplices.

At the Conferences of Paris and London, in 1919 and 1920, I did all that was in my power to prevent the trial of the Kaiser, and I am convinced that my firm attitude in the matter succeeded in avoiding it. Sound common sense saved us from floundering in one of the most formidable blunders of the Treaty of Versailles. To hold one man responsible for the whole War and to bring him to trial, his enemies acting as judge and jury, would have been such a monstrous travesty of justice as to provoke a moral revolt throughout the world. On the other hand it was also a moral monstrosity, which would have deprived the Treaty of Versailles of every shred of dignity. If the one responsible for the War is the Kaiser, why does the Entente demand of the German people such enormous indemnities, unprecedented in history?

One of the men who has exercised the greatest influence on European events during the last ten years, one of the most intelligent of living statesmen, once told me that it was his opinion that the Kaiser did not want the War, but neither did he wish to prevent it.

Germany, although under protest, has been forced to accept the statement of the Versailles Treaty to the effect that she is responsible for the War and that she provoked it. The same charge has been levelled at her in all the Entente States throughout the War.

When our countries were engaged in the struggle, and we were at grips with a dangerous enemy, it was our duty to keep up the morale of our people and to paint our adversaries in the darkest colours, laying on their shoulders all the blame and responsibility of the War. But after the great world conflict, now that Imperial Germany has fallen, it would be absurd to maintain that the responsibility of the War is solely and wholly attributable to Germany and that earlier than 1914 in Europe there had not developed a state of things fatally destined to culminate in a war. If Germany has the greatest responsibility, that responsibility is shared more or less by all the countries of the Entente. But while the Entente countries, in spite of their mistakes, had the political sense always to invoke principles of right and justice, the statesmen of Germany gave utterance to nothing but brutal and vulgar statements, culminating in the deplorable mental and moral expressions contained in the speeches, messages and telegrams of William II. He was a perfect type of the miles gloriosus, not a harmless but an irritating and dangerous boaster, who succeeded in piling up more loathing and hatred against his country than the most active and intelligently managed enemy propaganda could possibly have done.

If the issue of the War could be regarded as seriously jeopardized by England's intervention, it was practically lost for the Central Empires when the United States stepped in.

America's decision definitely crippled Germany's resistance—and not only for military, but for moral reasons. In all his messages President Wilson had repeatedly declared that he wanted a peace based on justice and equity, of which he outlined the fundamental conditions; moreover, he stated that he had no quarrel with the Germans themselves, but with the men who were at their head, and that he did not wish to impose on the vanquished peace terms such as might savour of oppression.

President Wilson's ideas on the subject have been embodied in a bulky volume.[1] Turning over the pages of this book now we have the impression that it is a collection of literary essays by a man who had his eye on posterity and assumed a pose most likely to attract the admiration of generations as yet unborn. But when these same words were uttered in the intervals of mighty battles, they fell on expectant and anxious ears: they were regarded as a ray of light in the fearsome darkness of