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XI

Since this discussion began, and indeed since the tenth paper was written, the plot of the world drama now being enacted has developed with startling rapidity. Even as we have been arguing, a World League to Enforce Peace has been formed; and the United States has taken its proper place therein. The absolutism of Russia has toppled over in the twinkling of an eye; and the Russia people have taken charge. Germany, in a ruthless disregard of the rights of American citizens, has forced the United States, as a selfrespecting nation, to take up the sword against her. The United States is thus driven into an alliance with the Entente Allies. The democracies of Russia, Italy, France, England and the United States are now engaged in a death struggle with the dynasties of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs to end the only substantial military absolutism remaining in the world. Military dynasties are a threat against the peace of the world. With their lust for power and the selfish considerations that affect their policies, their respect for the solemn obligations of a treaty are much less than that of democracies. Democracies are not perfect in their sense of justice, in the certainty of peaceful policies, nor in their exact observance of treaty obligations; but they are a vast improvement in these respects over an autocracy dependent on military force.

The Prussian autocracy of Germany is the great international criminal. It has sacrificed honor; it has murdered men and women and has, in numberless ways, violated with ruthless cruelty the principles of international law to accomplish its dynastic purposes. It has dragged its allies with it, and made them participes criminis. The League of the

United States and the Entente Allies, and the Central and South American countries that may join us, is an organization of world power to visit destruction on the dynasties whose continued existence constitutes an obstruction to Law and Peace. We are properly separating the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, from the great German people and the great people of the Dual Monarchy. If we succeed, as we must, the war, dreadful as it has been in the losses and suffering it has entailed, painful and destructive as it is likely to be, will be worth all it cost. It will make the future of the world depend upon the rule of the peoples of the world, will exalt the reign of international justice, and will organize the joint forces of the world to maintain it. With the German and the Austrian and Hungarian peoples on the one hand, and the American, English, French, Italian and Russian peoples on the other, in an international conference, none will hesitate to enter a League to Enforce Peace. The popular character of all the governments, in and of itself, will render war between them less probable, will give greater sanction to their promises, and will make more practical and less burdensome a League having for its purpose compulsory procedure for the settlement of irritating international disputes.

"Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad." The people of the United States, immersed in business, lethargic with prosperity, naturally averse to war and its new horrors as shown in the present struggle, have been loath to take up the sword. They have made every honorable effort to keep out of the vortex. But Germany, in her mad desperation and with a lack of foresight that has characterized all her diplomatic policies, has forced an unwilling people to join the league of her opponents. The triumph

of Democracy in Russia and the entry of the United States into the war make clear to the world and to history that this is a war for the benefit of mankind.

The rulers of Germany have undervalued the power of the United States. They have made military efficiency their national god. A country which has, up to this time, ignored military science, and failed to maintain a trained army, arouses in them contempt. In their mad rage at England and in their desire to starve her people, they have stupidly aroused against themselves the only dangerous antagonist remaining. When money and food and supplies are more clearly the determining factor in the war than ever before, they deliberately make an enemy of the country which has greater capacity to furnish them than all other countries combined. The military unpreparedness of the United States blinds them to the enormous advantage which her accession to the ranks of their opponents gives in the test of endurance which must decide the struggle. Within a month after her declaration of war, the United States will place at the disposal of her allies the enormous sum of three billions of dollars to replenish their depleted treasuries and to strengthen the effectiveness of their serried hosts. Her resources in the production of food and war supplies are being promptly organized so that the energies of this country will be directed to feeding the peoples of her allies and supporting and maintaining the equipment of their armies. The skill and courage of her navy, with the ingenuity of her inventors, will be directed to the suppression of the sole hope of the Prussian military hierarchy, their cruel, lawless and murderous submarine.

The broad conception of the world-cause for which the United States is fighting will send the blood tingling through

her giant limbs and awaken in her that moral strength which the Hohenzollern in his plan to conquer the world has consistently ignored.

The struggle may be a long one. We do not aid our cause by under-estimating the power of our enemy or the perfection attained by her in the organization and use of physical and material resources, and of a people educated and moulded to the needs of a military autocracy. We hope the contest may end in a year. It may last double that or longer; but however long it lasts, the end is not in doubt. We were slow in getting in. We will never quit until our high purpose is attained; and the cause of Democracy is triumphant. We should not rely on the pleasing hope that our losses will chiefly be in money. We should organize our efforts and make our plans with the stern thought that many of our best lives and the flower of our youth will figure largely in the cost of our victory; but the greatness of our cause should reconcile us to every sacrifice. When we, by our intervention, shall have contributed largely to the victory, when our real enemies shall have disappeared in the deposition of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs, the influence for good that we, without motive of aggrandizement, without hope or wish to increase our territory or power, can wield in the councils of the world will be commanding and will make for a just peace and a world league to maintain it.

"God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform." It would seem that there was now being disclosed the providential plan for securing the future peace of the world. Everything that has happened is forcing on the adoption of a League to Enforce Peace. Events are shaping themselves so that when the Congress of Nations meets, after the end

shall have come, the League will be as natural a result as peace itself. How futile in the face of the facts of to-day seem the arguments that we must preserve our isolation and avoid entangling alliances! How inapplicable Washington's words, wise when uttered, become to the needs and policy of the present! The League to Enforce Peace is formed; and we have joined it. On its success and permanence depends the future peace of the sons of men.

VICTORY WITH POWER 1

No one in the wildest flight of his imagination now can think of undefeated Germany yielding either proper indemnity to Belgium or justice to Alsace-Lorraine, each of which Great Britain and the United States have made a sine

qua non. Nor will the unconquered German ruling class consent to lift the German paw and remove its crushing weight from prostrate Russia or give over to decent rule the blood-stained Christian provinces of Turkey. If the wrongs of Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine, and of Russians, Italians, Poles, Armenians, Serbians and other Slav peoples are not righted, the sacrifices of the war will have been for naught. We must, therefore, conquer the Germans if a just and lasting peace is to be secured. Therefore, the slogan of the Allies, and the cry of this country must be "Victory with Power."

Our Society was organized to make this war an instrument for the promotion of peace. It holds that the horrors of the war and the awful misery it involves must make the

1 Extracts from an address before League to Enforce Peace Convention, Phila., May, 1918.

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