If history is just and cannot be perverted by the fabrication of legends, it should show that by far the greater measure of the responsibility for this war rests with our enemies. The rule of the road at sea puts the blame in collisions on the person who causes the danger of the situation, and not on the one who makes a mistake through incorrect judgment at the last moment in his endeavour to escape from it. Our misfortune, however, did not proceed from the acqui sitiou of power, but from the weakness which did not know how to use that power either for the purpose of preserving or concluding peace, and in addition.