As conscientiously as possible, the Administration and the country pursued the course laid down by international law as that which a neutral should take. International law is the rule of conduct of nations toward one another accepted and acquiesced in by all nations. It is not always as definite as one would like, and the acquiescence of all nations is not always as clearly established as it ought to be. But in the law of war as to capture at sea of commercial vessels, the principles have been established clearly by the decision of prize courts of all nations, English, American, Prussian and French. The right of non-combatants on commercial vessels, officers, crew and passengers, either enemy or neutral, to be secure from danger of life, has always been recognized and never contested. Nevertheless, by submarine attack on English and American merchant ships without warning, Germany sent to their death one hundred and fifty American men, women and children. We protested and Germany halted for a time. We thought that if we condoned the death of one hundred and fifty we might still maintain peace with that Power.

But it was not to be, and after more than a year Germany announced her purpose to resume this murderous and illegal course toward innocent Americans. Had we hesitated, we would have lost our independence as a people; we would have subscribed abjectly to the doctrine that might makes right. Germany left no door open to us as a self-respecting nation except that which led to war. She deliberately forced us into the ranks of her enemies, and she did it because she was obsessed with the belief that the submarine was the instrument of destruction by which she might win the war. She recked not that, as she used it, it was a weapon of murder. Making military efficiency her god, and exalt

ing the appliances of science in the killing of men, she ignored all other consequences.

Germany's use of the submarine brought us into the war. But being in, we recognized as fully as any of our Allies do that its far greater issue is whether German militarism shall continue after this war to be a threat to the peace of the world, or whether we shall end that threat by this struggle in which we are to spend our life's blood. We must not therefore be turned from the stern necessity of winning this

war.

When the war began and its horrible character was disclosed, there were many religious persons who found their faith in God shaken by the fact that millions of innocent persons could be headed into this vortex of blood and destruction without the saving intervention of their Creator. But the progress of the war has revealed much, and it has stimulated our just historic sense. It shows that the world had become, through the initiative of Germany and the following on of the other nations, afflicted with the cancer of militarism. God reveals the greatness of His power and His omnipotence not by fortuitous and sporadic intervention, but by the working out of His inexorable law. A cancer, if it is not to consume the body, must be cut out, and the cutting out necessarily involves suffering and pain. The sacrifices of lives and treasure are inevitable in the working out of the cure of the world malady. But we must win the war to vindicate this view.

We are now able to see the providential punishment and weakness that follows the violation of moral law. The crass materialism of the German philosophy that exalts force above morality, power above honor and decency, success above humanity, has blinded the German ruling caste to

the strength of moral motives that control other peoples, and involved them in the fundamental mistakes that will cause their downfall. They assumed that England, burdened with Ireland, would violate her own obligation and abandon Belgium and would leave her ally France to be deprived of all her colonial possessions. They assumed that France was decadent, permeated with socialism, and unable to make a contest in her state of unpreparedness. They assumed that England's colonies, attached only by the lightest tie, and entirely independent, if they chose to be, would not sacrifice themselves to help the mother land in her struggle. How false the German conclusion as to England's national conscience and fighting power, as to France's supposed decadence and her actual patriotic fervor and strength, and as to the filial loyalty of England's daughters!

England and France since 1914 have been fighting the battle of the world and fighting for us of America. The war has drained their vitality, strained their credit, exhausted their man-power, subjected many of their non-combatants to suffering and destruction, and they have the war weariness which dulls the earlier eager enthusiasm for the principles at stake. Now, specious proposals for peace are likely to be most alluring to the faint-hearted, and most powerful in the hands of traitors.

The intervention of the United States, by her financial aid, has helped much; but her armies are needed and she, a republic unprepared, required time to prepare. The war is now to be determined by the active tenacity of purpose of the contestants. England showed that tenacity in the wars of Napoleon. Napoleon succumbed. Napoleon succumbed. General Grant, in his Memoirs, says that the battle is won not in the first day, but by the commander and the army which is ready, even after

apparent defeat, to begin the next day. It is the side which has the nerve that will win. The intervention of the United States has strengthened that nerve in England, France and Italy. But delay and disappointment give full opportunity to the lethargic, the cowardly, the factious, to make the task of the patriot and the loyal men doubly heavy. This is the temper of the situation among our European Allies.

With us at home the great body of our people are loyal and strong for the war. Of course, it takes time to convince a people, however intelligent, when very prosperous and comfortable and not well advised as to the vital concern they have in the issue of a war across a wide ocean, thousands of miles away. But we have, for the first time in the history of our republic, begun a war right. We have begun with a conscription law which requires service from men of a certain age from every walk of life. It is democratic in principle, and yet it offers to the Government the means of selection so that those who shall be sent to the front may be best fitted to represent the nation there, and those best able to do the work in field and factory, essential to our winning at the front, may be retained. We have adopted a merit system of selecting from the intelligent and educated youth of the country the company officers. The machinery of the draft naturally creaked some because it had to be so hastily constructed, but on the whole it has worked well. Those who devised it and have carried it through are entitled to great credit.

The lessons of the war are being learned and applied in our war equipment and in neutralizing, by new construction, the submarine destruction of commercial transports. Adequate measures for the raising of the money needed to finance our Allies have been carried through Congress.

Food conservation is provided for. But of course it took time for a hundred million of peace lovers and non-militarists to get ready, however apt, however patriotic, however determined.

"It is dogged' that does it." Reject all proposals of peace as ill advised or seditious, and then time will make for our certain victory.

While there has been pro-German sentiment in the United States, and while the paid emissaries of Germany have been busy trying to create as much opposition to the war as possible and have found a number of weak dupes and unintelligent persons, who don't understand the importance of the war, to aid them, our Allies should know that the whole body of the American people will earnestly support the President and Congress in carrying out the measures which have been adopted by the United States to win this war.

When the war is won, the United States will wish to be heard and will have a right to be heard as to the terms of peace. The United States will insist on a just peace, not one of material conquest. It is a moral victory the world should win. I think I do not mistake the current of public sentiment throughout our entire country in saying that our people will favor an international agreement by which the peace brought about through such blood and suffering and destruction and enormous sacrifice shall be preserved by the joint power of the world. Whether the terms of the League to Enforce Peace, as they are, will be taken as a basis for agreement, or a modified form, something of the kind must be attempted.

Meantime, let us hope and pray that all the Allies will reject proposals for settlement and compromise of every nature; that they will adhere rigidly and religiously to the