Whatever pain, then, your Germany may give
me, whatever reasons I may have to stigmatize
as criminal German policy and the means it employs,
I do not attach responsibility for it to the people
which is burdened with it and is used as its blind
instrument. It is not that I regard, as you do, war
as a fatality. A Frenchman does not believe in
fatality. Fatality is the excuse of souls without
a will. War springs from the weakness and stu-
pidity of nations. One cannot feel resentment
against them for it; one can only pity them. I do
not reproach you with our miseries; for yours will
be no less. If France is ruined, Germany will be
ruined, too. I did not even raise my voice when I
saw your armies violating the neutrality of noble
Belgium. This flagrant breach of honor, which
incurs the contempt of every upright conscience,
is quite in the political tradition of your Prussian
kings; it did not surprise me.

But when I see the fury with which you are treat-
ing that magnanimous nation whose only crime has
been to defend its independence and the cause of
justice to the last, as you Germans yourselves did
in 1813 . . . that is too much! The world is re-
volted by it. Keep these savageries for us

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