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THE MYTH OF A GUILTY NATION


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THE MYTH OF A
GUILTY NATION

BY

ALBERT JAY NOCK
("HISTORICUS")

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new york B.W. HUEBSCH, Inc. mcmxxii


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COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
THE FREEMAN, Inc.
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc.


PRINTED IN U. S. A.


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PREFACE

This book is made up of a series of articles originally published in theFreeman. It was compiled to establish one point and only one, namely:that the German Government was not solely guilty of bringing on the war.I have not been at all concerned with measuring the German Government'sshare of guilt, with trying to show that it was either great or small,or that it was either less or more than that of any other Government orassociation of Governments. All this is beside the point. I do not byany means wish to escape the responsibility of saying that I think theGerman Government's share of guilt in the matter is extremely small; sosmall by comparison with that of the major Powers allied againstGermany, as to be inconsiderable. That is my belief, demonstrable as Ithink by such evidence as has now become available to any candid person.But this has nothing whatever to do with the subject-matter of thisvolume. If the guilt of the German Government could be[Pg 6] proved to be tentimes greater than it was represented to be by the publicity-bureaux ofthe Allied Powers, the conclusion established in the following chapterswould still remain. Guilty as the German Government may have been;multiply by ten any estimate that any person, interested ordisinterested, informed or uninformed, may put upon its guilt; the factremains that it was far, very far indeed, from being the only guiltyparty concerned.

If there were no practical end to be gained by establishing thisconclusion, if one's purpose were only to give the German Government thedubious vindication of a tu quoque, the effort would be hardly worthmaking. But as I say at the outset, there is at stake an extremelyimportant matter, one that will unfavourably affect the peace of theworld for at least a generation—the treaty of Versailles. If the GermanGovernment may not be assumed to be solely responsible for the war, thistreaty is indefensible; for it is constructed wholly upon thatassumption. It becomes, not a treaty, but a verdict pronounced after themanner of Brennus, by a superior power which, without regard to justice,arrogates to itself the functions of prosecutor, jury and judge.

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It is probably superfluous to point out that this treaty, conceived inthe pure spirit of the victorious Apache, has, in practice, utterlybroken down. It has not worked and it will not work, because it sets atdefiance certain economic laws which are as inexorable as the law ofgravitation. The incidence of these laws was well understood and clearlyforetold, at the time of the peace-conference, by an informed minorityin Europe, notably by Mr. Maynard Keynes

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