What are the forces that have set the nations in movement? I
do not seek to establish responsibility. Whosoever it may be, those who
have let loose the conflict have behind them peoples of one mind. That,
perhaps, is the most surprising feature in an epoch when economic,
social, and moral interests are so interwoven from one end of the earth
to the other that the conqueror himself must suffer cruelly from the
ruin of the conquered.
The Governments have determined the day and the hour. They could not
have done it in opposition to the manifest will of the nations. Public
sentiment has seconded them. What is it then which rouses man from his
repose, impels him to desert his gains, his home, the security of a
regular life, and sends him in eager search for bloody adventures?
This problem involves different solutions because it embraces a number
of cases. Between the Russians, the French, the English, the Germans
there is a similarity of will, but not, it seems, an analogy of
sentiment. I shall undertake to analyze the case of Germany. It has
peculiar interest on account of its importance, of its definiteness, of
the comparisons to which it leads, and the reflections which it
suggests.
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