In my endeavour to subordinate all personal considerations to the welfare of Germany, I keep myself completely in the background. I am silent in the face of all the lies and slanders which are spread abroad concerning me. I consider it beneath my dignity to defend myself against attacks and abuse.
In accordance with this policy of restraint, I have also kept the "Historical Tables" mentioned by you strictly objective and made them accessible only to a narrow circle of acquaintances. I am utterly at a loss to understand how they have now become public through some sort of indiscretion or theft (2). The purpose inspiring me when I prepared the historical tables was this: To bring together strictly historical material by a systematic enumeration of sober acts, such as might enable the reader to form his own judgement of the historical happenings preceding the war. I found my most convincing sources, be it remarked, in the literature which has sprung up after the war, particularly in the works of natives of the enemy countries. Therefore I am glad that you find my modest contribution to history useful.
As to your suggestion to make the tables,, which have been completed in the meantime, accessible to the German press, I thank you, and will follow it.*
Truth will hew a way for itself—mightily, irresistibly, like an aval-ancha. Whoever does not close his ears to it against his better judgement must admit that, during riy This has meanwhile been done. The "Comparative Historical Tables from 1878 tothe Outbreak of the War in 1914" were published in December, 1921, by K. F. Koehler, Leipsic 26-year reign previous to the war. Germany's foreign policy was directed solely to the maintenance of peace. Its one and only aim was to protect our sacred native soil, threatened from the west and the east, and the peaceful development of our commerce and political economy.
Had we ever had warlike intentions we should have struck the blow in 1900, when England's hands were tied by the Boer War, Russia's by the Japanese War, at which time almost certain vic tory beckoned us. In any event, we assuredly would not have singled out the year 1914, when we were confronted ® compact, overwhelmingly superior foe. Also, every impartial man must acknowledge to himself that Germany could expect nothing from the war, whereas our enemies hoped to obtain from it the complete realization of the aims which they had based long since upon our annihilation.
The fact that my zealous efforts and those of my Government were concentrated, during the critical July and August days of 1914, upon maintaining world peace is being proved more and more conclusively by the mesh recent literary and documentary publications in Germany, and, most especially, in the enemy countries. The most effective proof thereof is Sazonoff's statement: "The German Emperor's love of peace is a guarantee to us that we ourselves can decide upon the moment of war." What further proof of our innocence is needed? The above means that the intention existed to make an attack upon one who was absolutely unsuspecting.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.