Excerpt from The War and Its Origin Only a few weeks before the outbreak of the war, a brilliant celebration was held in the little university town of Groningen, in Holland, where many British marines and other prisoners are now interned. It was a really international gathering, of a kind that will be very rare indeed for many years to come. Representatives were gathered together from most of the great universities of the odd. In their presence, and in the hearing also of Queen Wilhelmina, the Rector Magnificus reminded us of how his university had been founded to take a the work of Louvain and Tourney, in the days when, three hundred years ago, the Dutch provinces were wrestling with the power of Spain for an independent national existence and for liberty of conscience. How little did we think, in those piping days of race, that within a few short weeks the neighbouring country of Belgium would be overrun by an even more ruthless conqueror; and that the head of a world-famous German university, whose hand we clasped in cordial friendship, would now be handing out honorary degrees to two leading representatives of the Krupp works at Essen, in recognition of their diabolical preemin ence in the forging of death-dealing weapons of war! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.