When the Entente's demand that I and the German army leaders should be surrendered for trial before Entente tribunals became known, I immediately asked myself whether I could be of use to my fatherland by giving myself up before the German people and the German Government had expressed themselves regarding this demand. It was clear to me that, in the opinion of the Entente, such a surrender would so seriously shake the prestige of Germany, as a state and people, for all time, that we could never again take our place, with equal rights, equal dignity, and equal title to alliances, in the first rank of nations, where we belonged.

I recognized it as my duty not to sacrifice the honor and dignity of Germany. The question resolved itself into deciding whether there was any way to give myself up which might benefit the German nation and not subject it to the above-mentioned disadvantages. Were there such a way I should have been ready without hesitation to add another sacrifice to those already made.

The question of my giving myself up has also been debated—as I know—in well-meaning and earnest German circles. Wherever this was due to psychological depression or failure to realize the impression which self-chastisement, self-debasement, and fruitless martyrdom in the face of the Entente must arouse, all that was needed was to recall the materially political origin of the Entente's demand, cursorily mentioned above, in order to arrive at a clean-cut decision—in other words, at an emphatic refusal.

It was otherwise with the considerations based upon the assumption that I might, by taking upon myself, before the eyes of the whole world, the responsibility for all important decisions and acts of my Government connected with the war, contribute toward making the fate of the German nation easier. Here was not an act of unpolitical sentimentality, but, on the contrary, a deed which, in my eyes, had much to commend it. The thought that, according to the Constitution of the Empire then in force, not I, but the Chancellor alone as was well known—bore the responsibility, would naturally not have bothered me with regard to this.

Had there been even the slightest prospect of bettering Germany's situation by taking such a step, there would have been no possible doubt for me personally as to what I should do. Already I had shown my personal willingness to sacrifice myself when I left the country and gave up the throne of my fathers, because I had been erroneously and deceivingly assured that I could, by so doing, make possible better peace terms for my people and prevent civil war. I should likewise have made this further attempt to help my people, despite the fact that, in the meantime, one of the considerations in favor of it which have been urged upon me—viz., the prevention of civil war—had already turned out to be false.

RECALLS PLIGHT OF VERCINGETORIX

There was, however, no possibility of helping the German people by such an act. Surrender of my person would have had no result beyond our obedience to the demand from the Entente that I be given up. For no tribunal in the world can pronounce a just sentence before the state archives of all the nations participating in the war are thrown open, as has been done, and is still being done, by Germany.

Who, after the unprecedented judgment of Versailles, could still summon up optimism enough to believe that the Entente nations would place their secret documents at the disposal of such a tribunal? Therefore, after careful reflection on my part, I gave the decisive importance that was their due to the above-mentioned weighty considerations of personal and national dignity and honor, and rejected the idea of giving myself up. It was not for me to play the rÔle of Vercingetorix, who, as is well known, relying upon the magnanimity of his foes, surrendered himself to them in order to obtain a better fate for his people. In view of the conduct of our enemies during the war and in the peace negotiations, it was surely not to be assumed that the Entente would show any greater magnanimity than did CÆsar when he threw the noble Gaul into chains, subsequently had him executed, and, in spite of what Vercingetorix had done, enslaved his people just the same.

I wish to remark in a general way that it has always proved wrong to follow the suggestions of the enemy or to heed them to any extent. The well-meant suggestions regarding my giving myself up, emanating from Germans, also grew from the soil of the enemy demands, though perhaps partly unknown to those making them. For that very reason it was necessary to refuse to heed them.

Thus the only solution remaining is an international, nonpartisan court, which, instead of trying individuals, shall examine and pronounce judgment upon all the happenings leading to the World War, in all the countries taking part therein, after all the national archives, not merely those of Germany, have been opened up. Germany can well agree to this mode of procedure. Whosoever opposes it pronounces judgment upon himself!

My standpoint on the subject here discussed is expressed in the letter reproduced below, which I addressed, under date of April 5, 1921, to Field Marshal von Hindenburg, and which the latter has made public in the meantime. To make matters clearer, the letter which preceded it, from the Marshal, is also given.[10]

HINDENBURG'S LETTER

Hanover, March 30, 1921.

Your Imperial and Royal Majesty:

I beg to thank Your Majesty most respectfully for his gracious interest in the illness of my wife. She is not yet out of danger.

I have little that is pleasant to report from our country. The troubles in Central Germany are more serious than they are represented to be by the Prussian Government. I hope that they will soon be suppressed.

The effects of the Versailles peace decree lie ever more crushingly upon the German people, and the object of this peace—the policy of annihilation of our enemies—comes more plainly to the fore every day. For the purpose of justifying this policy of force the fairy tale of German war guilt must be adhered to.

The spokesman of the enemy alliance, Mr. Lloyd George, is little disturbed by the fact that, on December 20th of last year, he declared that no statesman wished war in the summer of 1914, that all the nations had slipped or stumbled into it. In his speech at the London conference on March 3d he calmly remarked that Germany's responsibility for the war was fundamental, that it was the basis on which the Peace of Versailles was erected, and that, if the admission of this guilt should be refused or given up, the treaty would become untenable.

Now as before, the question of war guilt is the cardinal point in the future of the German nation. The admission of our alleged "guilt" regarding the war, forced from the German representatives at Versailles against their judgment, is wreaking frightful vengeance; equally so the untrue acknowledgment of Germany's "complicity" which Minister Simons gave at the London conference.

I agree with Your Majesty to the uttermost depths of my soul—in my long term of military service I have had the good fortune and honor to enter into close personal relations with Your Majesty. I know that all the efforts of Your Majesty throughout your reign were bent toward maintaining peace. I can realize how immeasurably hard it is for Your Majesty to be eliminated from positive co-operation for the fatherland.

The Comparative Historical Tables compiled by Your Majesty, a printed copy of which Your Majesty sent me recently, are a good contribution to the history of the origin of the war and are calculated to remove many an incorrect conception. I have regretted that Your Majesty did not make the tables public, but limited them instead to a small circle. Now that the tables, owing to indiscretions, have been published in the foreign press, partly in the form of incomplete excerpts, it seems to me advisable to have them published in full in the German press.

To my great joy I have heard that there has been an improvement recently in the health of Her Majesty. May God help further!

With the deepest respect, unlimited fidelity and gratitude, I am Your Imperial and Royal Majesty's most humble servant,

(Signed) Von Hindenburg,

Field Marshal.

THE KAISER'S LETTER

House Doorn, April 5, 1921.

My Dear Field Marshal:

Accept my warmest thanks for your letter of March 30th, ult. You are right. The hardest thing of all for me is to be obliged to live in foreign parts, to follow, with burning anguish in my soul, the awful fate of our dear fatherland, to which I have devoted the labors of my entire life, and to be barred from co-operation.

You stood beside me during the dark, fatal days of November, 1918. As you know, I forced myself to the difficult, terrible decision to leave the country only upon the urgent declaration of yourself and the rest of my counselors who had been summoned that only by my so doing would it be possible to obtain more favorable armistice terms for our people and spare it a bloody civil war.

The sacrifice was in vain. Now, as well as before, the enemy wishes to make the German people expiate the alleged guilt of "Imperial Germany."

SILENT UNDER ATTACKS

In my endeavor 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 (?). The purpose inspiring me when I prepared the historical tables was this: To bring together strictly historical material by a systematic enumeration of sober facts, such as might enable the reader to form his own judgment 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.[11]

Truth will hew a way for itself—mightily, irresistibly, like an avalanche. Whoever does not close his ears to it against his better judgment must admit that, during my twenty-six-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 victory beckoned us. In any event, we assuredly would not have singled out the year 1914, when we were confronted by a 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 most 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.

CALLS ACCUSATION FUTILE

God is my witness that I, in order to avoid war, went to the uttermost limit compatible with responsibility for the security and inviolability of my dear fatherland.

It is futile to accuse Germany of war guilt. To-day there is no longer any doubt that not Germany, but the alliance of her foes, prepared the war according to a definite plan, and intentionally caused it.

For the purpose of concealing this, the allied enemies extorted the false "admission of guilt" from Germany in the shameful Peace Treaty and demanded that I be produced before a hostile tribunal. You, my dear Field Marshal, know me too well not to be aware that no sacrifice for my beloved fatherland is too great for me. Nevertheless, a tribunal in which the enemy alliance would be at once plaintiff and judge would be not an organ of justice, but an instrument of political arbitrariness, and would serve only, through the sentence which would inevitably be passed upon me, to justify subsequently the unprecedented peace conditions imposed upon us. Therefore, the enemy's demand naturally had to be rejected by me.

But, in addition, the idea of my being produced before a neutral tribunal, no matter how constituted, cannot be entertained by me. I do not recognize the validity of any sentence pronounced by any mortal judge whatsoever, be he never so exalted in rank, upon the measures taken by me most conscientiously as Emperor and King—in other words, as the constitutional, not responsible, representative of the German nation—since, were I to do so, I should thereby be sacrificing the honor and dignity of the German nation represented by me.

Legal proceedings having to do with guilt and punishment, instituted solely against the head of one of the nations which took part in the war, deprive that one nation of every vestige of equality of rights with the other nations, and thereby of its prestige in the community of nations. Moreover, this would cause, as a consequence, the impression desired by the enemy that the entire "question of guilt" concerns only this one head of a nation and the one nation represented by him. It must be taken into consideration, moreover, that a nonpartisan judgment of the "question of guilt" is impossible, if the legal proceedings are not made to include the heads and leading statesmen of the enemy powers, and if their conduct is not subjected to the same investigation, since it goes without saying that the conduct of the aforesaid one nation at the outbreak of the war can be judged correctly only if there is simultaneous consideration of the actions of its opponents.

A real clearing up of the "question of guilt," in which surely Germany would have no less interest than her foes, could be accomplished only if an international, nonpartisan tribunal, instead of trying individuals as criminals, should establish all the events which led to the World War, as well as all other offenses against international law, in order thereafter to measure correctly the guilt of individuals implicated in every one of the nations participating in the war.

Such an honest suggestion was officially made in Germany after the end of the war, but, so far as I know, it was partly refused, partly found unworthy of any answer at all. Furthermore, Germany, immediately after the war, unreservedly threw open her archives, whereas the enemy alliance has taken good care so far not to follow such an example. The secret documents from the Russian archives, now being made public in America, are but the beginning.

This method of procedure on the part of the enemy alliance in itself, combined with overwhelming damaging evidence coming to hand, shows where the "war guilt" is really to be sought! This makes it all the more a solemn duty for Germany to collect, sift, and make public, by every possible means, every bit of material bearing on the "question of guilt," in order, by so doing, to unmask the real originators of the war.

Unfortunately, the condition of Her Majesty has become worse. My heart is filled with the most grievous worry.

God with us!

Your grateful

(Signed) Wilhelm.