Each government engaged in the European War has issued a White, Green, Blue or Yellow Book, explaining the causes which led to its entry into the great conflict.

These books are all interesting, and are full of valuable documentary information; but, if the busy people of America are to understand the reasons for their own participation in the war, some shorter cut to the desired end must be devised.

We, therefore, offer a BLACK AND WHITE BOOK, in which our nation's reasons for going to war are set forth in pictures, a universal language which can be read at a glance by any one who has eyes to see.

On August 1st, 1914, we were at peace with all the world. We were bound by ties of blood to every race on earth.

Particularly close and intimate were our relations with the German people, whom we welcomed to our shores as among our most desirable citizens.

Then, far away from us, apart from our interests or concerns—like a tragedy being played on the other side of the footlights—broke the frightful war of 1914. We looked on fascinated, but not convinced of the reality of its cruelty.

For a little over eight months we watched it, when, on April 22nd, 1915, there appeared in the New York papers an advertisement stating that the great passenger ship “LUSITANIA” would sail on the 7th of May for Liverpool.

In the next column, in equally conspicuous type, appeared a sinister warning to Americans, telling them to keep off the seas at peril of their lives. This was signed, “IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY, Washington, D. C.”

On May 7th came the fulfilment of the threat, and we awoke to the fact that we were not an audience looking at a tragedy, but the victims of the tragedy itself.

Not until then was it brought home to us that our good German friends, whom we thought we knew so well, had been inoculated with the virus of a Junker madness, and that we were dealing with a people who had cast from them every restraint of fair fighting and had become the outlaw nation of the world.

In the following pictures the Artist has attempted to show “Why we are at war.”

—W. A. ROGERS.