THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR TILL WAR.
[To ens EDITOR or THE " SPEcralroa.' '] Sut,—In the able review which you published last week of Mr. Frederick Bausman's volume, Let France Explain (a title impudent enough, I am sure), you touch altogether too gently, in my opinion, on what can be nothing else than premeditated misrepresentation. And in taking the trouble to answer it, on the other hand, you attribute to it by far too great an ultimate importance. America is not so prejudiced against France as you seem to imply, and is well enough informed, through the works of Mr. James M. Beak, Mr. Owen Wister, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, and others, ever to believe that France, and not Germany, was guilty of bringing on the War.
There may be legitimate difference of opinion as to the wisdom of the French in making an alliance with an absolute Govern- ment like that of Russia, but the error, if error it be, is largely due to Great Britain, the only other Power that could have sufficiently strengthened the hands of France against the con- stantly threatened aggression of Germany; and Great Britain selfishly, until frightened into the entente cordiale, held France at arm's length and refused helpful recognition of her increasingly critical position, as she had already done in 1870.
Every one of Mr. Bausman's arguments, except the one in relation to the Russian alliance, which is absurdly far-fetched and preposterous, was refuted in advance in my first volume, The Genesis, of what was intended to be a "History of the War-1914---" (no further volumes have been published- Putnams, 1915), of which, I believe, there should be a copy (sent by the publishers) in the office of the Spectator. I had studied the subject from the beginning of hostilities and all the official documents available which had any bearing upon it with as much care and thoroughness as was possible, and I can conscientiously claim that my effort is a clear and convincing synthesis of all the significant facts relating thereto. If Mr. Bausman had examined The Genesis of the Great War before he planned his book it may be that he would have been less bold and less shameless in his defiance of the unalterable truth.
Brie-Comte-Robert (Seine-et-Marne). France.
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