and the Nazi regime. Favoured by the circumstances, a handful of unhesitating adventurers succeeded in terrorizing my fatherland and the world. They prepared the war in an unjustifiable manner. I do not deny their successes; I deny and always have denied their probity, and their punishment is a deep desire of all honest people. But if this punishment shall consist in a restitution of old faults which made possible this error, I call. that not a punishment but a stupidity.
The German people isa very large and, in its heart, peaceful mass needing work and supportable conditions of life. No justified feelings against a regime will be permitted to hold back the Allies from a peace not forgetting this fundamental human justice to the people. Not to restore but to correct the heavy faults of the treaty of Versailles—so I see in my mind the Allies as the real friends of the Germans.
Not one of us is able to prophes the finish of this terrible war, Sometimes I fear it will leave Europe in two halv a democratic half and a Bolshevist half including Germany. Sometimes I hope the coming peace—what a happy word!—may bring the accomplishment of the secret ideal of us all: the United States of Europe. But it is impossible to separate Germans from the realization of this ideal. And in any case. jhe beginning of the war not the right moment for propagating the resstitution of the treaty of Versailles.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.