Excerpt from Address by Charles Nagel: Delivered at Sheldon Memorial Hall, St. Louis, Mo;, On the 23d of January, 1915

That was the introduction in the early part of the war, which has been followed up since then at other points; and the only difference between the two is that the one has been effective and the other was not.

That brings to my mind the point to which your chairman referred, and which should not be forgotten. Great Britain will naturally make much Of these attacks because she has not smelt foreign powder in her country for several centuries. I do not say that rejoicingly, but these are facts. Great Britain has fought many wars, and has had many peoples help her fight, but she has had no fighting on English soil. Granting that hermen have fought like brave men - and they have been and are a brave people, in spite of everything that may be said now - they have not known for centuries what it is to have English women and children subjected to the ravages of war.

Germany, on the other hand, knows what war means. She has never had a time to forget, and she is not apt to declare war hastily.

When abroad last summer I asked whether I could get a piece of Old German furniture. I knew I could get French and Italian, but I wanted a representative piece of Old German. I was told it could not be had, because the thirty years' war had left none. That is the whole story. NO one knows how that country has been devastated by wars fought upon its soil, often by foreign contending forces. Only the other day I read that no historian has ever dared to put in print the real story Of the thirty years' war. Was it very different in the Napoleonic wars? Humilia tion - heroism, but no recognition in the treaty of Vienna. Had Germany been given Elsas and Lothringen by treaty then that question would have been justly, and finally settled. She was denied even so much. She was left to take these provinces in 1870, and thus was sowed the seed for another war. Germany knows the story that England has forgotten; and the people of Great Britain are naturally more sensitive, in view of their ex perience during the last few centuries about the real sufferings of war.

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