On Tuesday and Wednesday the Times published the text of
an article which the notorious General von Bernhardi wrote for the New York Sun after months of silence. It is indeed a different Bernhardi who writes ; one can hardly recognize in the writer of these rather pathetic explainings- away the merciless and confident author of Germany and the Next War. General von Bernhardi has evidently been charged to coo for the benefit of American readers. How he can have hoped that the American public would be taken in by what he has written we cannot pretend to explain. The explanation would require a complete understanding of the German military mind, and that, we admit, is beyond us. In his books he talked of the need of a sudden and overwhelming advance; he spoke of war as a valuable agent in political and moral development ; he laid it down that France must be "completely overthrown so that she can never again get in our way," and eo on. Now he tells us that Germany has always been just, honourable, pacific, and generous to weaker nations; and that the war has been maliciously forced upon her, principally through the ambitious greed of Britain.
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