was confirmed in his belief that Germany was not responsible for World War I. To assist Barnes with his writings against the so-called Kriegschuldlüge ("war guilt lie"), the Germans put Barnes into contact with Milos Boghitschewitsch, a former Serbian diplomat living in Berlin. He was considered disreputable as, in exchange for German gold, he provided false testimony about the actions of the Serbian government in 1914. In 1926, Barnes published The Genesis of the World War, the first American book written about 1914 that was based upon the available primary sources. He argued that World War I was the result of a Franco-Russian plot to destroy Germany. Wegerer wrote about The Genesis of the World War that it would be "scarcely possible to provide a better book than this one". Barnes was opposed to the idea of World War I as "just war", which he believed to have been caused by the economic imperialism of France and Russia. In 1925, Barnes wrote: If we can but understand how totally and terribly we were "taken in" between 1914 and 1918 by the salesmen of this most holy and idealistic world conflict, we shall be the better prepared to be on our guard against the seductive lies and deceptions which will be put forward by similar groups when urging the necessity of another world catastrophe in order to "crush militarism", "make the world safe for democracy", put an end to all further wars, etc. In his preface to The Genesis of the World War, Barnes called World War I an "unjust war against Germany". Barnes wrote in his preface that: the truth about the causes of the World War is one of the livest and most important practical issues of the present day. It is basic to the whole matter of the present European and world situation, resting as it does upon an unfair and unjust Peace Treaty, which was itself erected upon a most uncritical and complete acceptance of the grossest forms of war-time illusions concerning war guilt. Barnes said when writing The Genesis of the World War, he was compelled by "an ardent desire to execute an adequate exposure of the authors of the late World War in particular". According to Barnes, the responsibility for World War I was as follows: In estimating the order of guilt of the various countries we may safely say that the only direct and