WHO ARE THE HUNS?

IV A Foreword.
most brilliant judicial minds of Germany, and a man of that incorruptible
intellectual honesty which another German, Friedrich
Nietzsche, lifted to the level of a great ideal. His work upon
the world war and the breakdown of international law has
been acclaimed as one of the most significant and authoritative
in Germany—where the national thoroughness and love of exact
truth have been nobly maintained through all the stress and
distress of war—in sharp and luminous contrast to the debacle
of reason, justice and logic shown in the countries of her enemies,
and also, alas, in many so-called neutral lands.
The original work, "Der Weltkrieg und der Zusammenbruch
des Vôlkerrechts," of which this English edition is an
abridgment, has passed into the third edition in Germany.
Each successive edition has been carefully revised by the
author and all necessary corrections made in the light of subsequent
events and official testimony up to about July, 1915.
All inaccuracies or doubtful statements have been eliminated
in so far as this has been possible. Dates, names, places, when
not forbidden by the military censorship, have been given,
and where American or English sources have been quoted and
the original texts were not available, these have been retranslated,
as plainly marked, from the German translation.
The work is a tremendous and an incontrovertible indictment
of the entire Entente in diplomacy, intrigue and warfare
and at the same time a simple and logical justification of Germany's
cause. It is not propaganda but protest, it is not even
protest so much as an appeal to that sense, of justice and sanity
which, despite the terrible inroads made upon it by the violences
and asperities of war, must remain the fundament of all civilization.
It approaches the great question of international law and
morality not so much from the viewpoint of the patriot, as from
that of the jurist and the historian. And in those passages in
which an added emphasis or feeling are encountered, Dr. Mtiller-
Meiningen speaks rather as the inclusive humanitarian than
the exclusive patriot.
The book possesses a special interest for us Americans. Its
appeal is quiet, proud, almost unexpressed, and if we will only give
ear to it, it cannot but redound to our intellectual and national
advantage—provided the dissipation of erroneous conceptions