FOREIGN OPINION

Sarajevo's anniversary

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the assassination, in Sarajevo, of the hereditary archduke of Austria, the Times writes:

The history of the great war is engraved in the soul of humanity. This is not the opportunity to recall the horrors and splendors of the terrible drama as it unfolded through a thousand vicissitudes, from Mons, the Marne, Ypres and Verdun to the debacle and the surrender of the defeated invaders. The murder in Sarajevo was only the spark that ignited the explosives accumulated over generations. This war, like most great wars, had a material and moral aspect.

Materially, the struggle was for the hegemony of Europe, but in this material aspect it was a conflict between German culture and historical civilization, between the idolatry of force and faith in the moral right of 'where civilization arose... Germany seized the opportunity of the crime which presented itself to precipitate the war. She was aware that she could amply satisfy her immediate ambitions and lay the secure foundations for even more grandiose future ambitions. We know in part what the result was. Five years to the day after the murder in Sarajevo, she was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles. But the war which followed Sarajevo had other consequences whose full value and scope we have not yet been able to assess.

The German press, for its part, protests against the legend of Germany's responsibility.

The Voss Gazette (Democrat) declares

The worst thing in the Treaty of Versailles is the clause on German guilt, it is the monstrous falsification of history by which the sole responsibility for the war is placed on the Germany. The policy from 1890 to 1914 was very bad, it is true, but Germany's intentions were peaceful, although the means employed were the very opposite of what should have been.

The Vorwaerts (socialist) also protests against what it calls "the legend of Germany's sole responsibility." The socialist organ refers to the testimony of the nationalist deputy, Admiral von Tirpitz, "who was already right when he wrote that Germany was dragged into the war."