Excerpt from The Stakes of Diplomacy It is a queer and very important fact, the per sistence with which hypocrisy coptinues to be the homage vice pays to virtue. [vernments will send armies forth to turn nations into ash heaps and shambles, but they always proclaim they are doing it to enhance civilization, safeguard liberty, and fulfill the wishes Of the all - highest. German officials did commit two bits of frankness before the invasion of Belgium, the one containing the phrase about a scrap of paper, the other stating that the violation of an inoffensive neutral was a wrong. But the candor proved too costly, not only with the outer world but with the German people, and ever since there has been a persistent propaganda to blur and confuse the matter. In spite of the supposed efficiency of the German state education, in spite of the supposed prussian ization of the people, their stomachs were not strong enough for the truth about the minds of their rulers. The whole ghastly business had to be overlaid with buncombe even for the greatest military people in the world. They had to be told, in fact they insisted upon being told, they were knights withodt fear and above reproach. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.