Prince Lichnowsky's high social rank, his agreeable manners, and the generous hospitality which he showed in Carlton House Terrace gave him a position in English society which facilitated the negotiations between England and Germany, and did much to diminish the friction that had arisen during the time that Prince Bülow held the post of German Chancellor.
The pamphlet which is here translated gives an account of his London mission; after his return to Germany he has lived in retirement in the country, but has contributed occasional articles to the Press. The pamphlet, which was written in August, 1916, was not intended for publication, but was distributed confidentially to a few friends. The existence of it had long been known, but it was only in March of this year that for the first time extracts from it were published in the Swedish paper _Politiken_. Longer extracts have since appeared in the London Press; for the first time a complete translation made from the German original is now placed before the public.
Never perhaps in history has the world seen so great an exhibition, as at the outbreak of this war, of the murderous and corrupting power of the organised lie. All Germany outside the governmental circles was induced to believe that the war was a treacherous attack, plotted in the dark by "revengeful France, barbaric Russia, and envious England," against the innocent and peace-loving Fatherland. And the centre of the plot was the Machiavellian Grey, who for long years had been encircling and strangling Germany in order at the chosen moment to deal her a death-blow from behind. The Emperor, the princes, the ministers, the bishops and chaplains, the historians and theologians, in part consciously and in part innocently, vied with one another in solemn attestations and ingenious forgeries of evidence; and the people, docile by training and long indoctrinated to the hatred of England, inevitably believed and passionately exaggerated what they were told. From this belief, in large part, came the strange brutalities and ferocities of the common people of Germany at the opening of the war, whether towards persons who had a right to courtesy, like the Ambassadors, or a claim on common human sympathy, like the wounded and the prisoners. The German masses could show no mercy towards people guilty of so hideous a world-crime.