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Show CLINCHING THE EVIDENCE. The peace conference commission appointed ap-pointed to inquire into the matter of j responsibility for the world war has concluded con-cluded its work. Pending the return of President Wilson to Paris the report has not been given out, but unofficial hints at its character have been permitted to leak out. The conclusions doubtless will fasten culpability precisely where world opinion long since placod it, upon the military madmen of Prussia, headed by the exile of Amerongeu. It is said that voluminous evidences bearing on this matter wero sifted by the commission, diplomatic correspondence figuring largely in the data. It would seem that disclosures since the collapse of German militarism have sufficed to convict the former kaiser and his group of the crime of deliberately deliber-ately plunging Europe into the abyss of war, since the most incriminating evidence is from German sources.- But additions to the indictment of Hun infamy in-famy continue to come to light. The latest disclosure deals with the correspondence corre-spondence of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador am-bassador to Berlin just before tho rulers of the dual monarchy undertook war on Serbia, following the assassinations in Sarajevo. Tho Austrian anibas-ador, in cipher dispatches to the foreign ofi'ice in Vienna, Vien-na, under date of July I'.l, 191-1, declared de-clared that Berlin that is, the imperial j government fully expected that a I negative reply from Serbia to the unwarranted un-warranted demands of the dual empire i would be followed by a declaration of iwar by Vienna. "We are counseled iwith the greatest insistence," the ambassador am-bassador telegraphed, "to pass immediately imme-diately to action and thus put the world in face of an accomplished fact." That is to say, the government of the kaiser insisted that Austria lose no time in striking at Serbia and thus compel the j world to face the- fact that the long-dreaded long-dreaded world conflict was upon it. Two days later the Austrian ambassador ambassa-dor sent another cipher dispatch from Berlin to Vienna. It informed the Aus-tro-llungarian foreign office that-the German government had every reason for believing that Great Britain would make an offer of mediation in tho hope of averting an actual rupture between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. "The Ger- j man government assures me," tho ambassador am-bassador telegraphed, "that it in no i way identifies itself with these propo- 1 sitions" that is, any British offers of mediation. "The government," tho j ambassador continued, "is absolutely: against their being taken into consideration." consid-eration." In other words, Germany made it known to her Teuton neighbor that the Hun government countenanced no mediation which would bar the step which Berlin desired the dual monarchy to take. Such an offer did come from the British Brit-ish government, When Sir Edward Grey instructed the British ambassador to Berlin to tender the mediatory offices of Great Britain if tho crisis had not progressed to actual rupture. This was three days later than the date of the Austrian ambassador's dispatch to Vienna. Serbia did reject the impossible impossi-ble demands of her powerful neighbor, and the way was opened for the v which Germany desired and to which Hun army officers drank' in many a toast to "der tag." The day was about to dawn. It soon broke in" unparalleled violence on an unsuspecting and largely unprepared world. Four years of fright-fulness fright-fulness followed before the perpetrators of this colossal crinio against humanity were beaten into subjection. Ambassador Count von Szogyeny-Marich Szogyeny-Marich 's cipher dispatches serve to clinch all the evidence which preceded them. If at the exiled kaiser is hurled -the accusing " Thou art the man!" at a Germany united behind the military monsters headed by the emperor is directed di-rected the charge of complicity in their master's crime, since not until the bloodstained blood-stained imperialism of the central powers pow-ers was overthrown did any German hesitate to avow his full support of Germany's Ger-many's wicked purposes. |