PREFACE
After the Revolution of November 9th, 1918, I was requested by the People's Commissioners to enter the Foreign Office as a collateral Secretary of State. One of the first tasks which I set myself was to ascertain whether incriminating material had been removed from the archives, as many at that time feared would be the case. I saw nothing to confirm this suspicion. On the contrary, the first materials which I obtained to test it showed that important materials were at hand. I proposed to the Commissioners that, as a beginning, the documents relating to the outbreak of the war should be published. We owed that to the German people, who had a right to learn the truth about those who had hitherto guided the course of the State. It was, I urged, also necessary because nothing else could so clearly bring home to the incredulous foreigner our complete breach with the old régime.
The Commissioners agreed with me, and entrusted me with the collection and editing of the documents. My past record was, I hope, a warrant that no inconvenient material would be suppressed. The only reservation made was that I should not, like Eisner, issue the separate documents according as they came to light, but should wait until they all lay ready to hand. Politically, this was not quite the most desirable plan, for it necessarily meant the postponing of the publication and of its favourable influence on foreign countries. But it cut the ground from under the champions of the old régime, who could not say that we were garbling the material, and producing documents torn from their context, to which no evidential force could be attached.
