Fighting For Peace

his war two things h

ited States would be either drawn into it by the impulse of democrat

e person in the world to

cept the great responsi

for peace and for the A

sident

devotion to pacific conceptions of progress, his unwavering loyalty to the cause of liberty secured by law, nation

ss sincerely do they trust him now when he declares that the hour has come when we must "dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we

opportunity to observe and study the incredible blunders by which Germany led us,

of the ominous fact that Germany was the one nation of Europe which openly despised and flouted the Monroe Doctrine as an outworn superstition. Her learned professors (followed by a few servile American imitators) had poured ridicule and scorn upon it in unreadable books. Her actions in the West Indies and South America showed her contempt for it as a "

s. Our history proves the contrary. Our conscientious objections to certain shameful things, like injustice, and dishonor, and tyranny, and systematic cruelty, are stronger than

States is a pacific

forced such a nation i

and ought not to have been begun, and that the only way to put a stop to it was to join the Allies, who had

real basis of that doctrine is the right of free peoples, however small and weak, to maintain by common consent their ow

ontinent if its foundation was destroyed in ano

re the principles by which it had been begotten and made great or sink into the

for the actual or suspected hostile deeds of individuals, and the brutal avowal that in this punishment it was necessary that "the innocent shall suffer with the guilty" (see the letter of General von Nieber to the burgomaster of Wavre, August 27, and the proclamation of Governor-General von der Goltz, September 2, 1914); the introduction of the use of asphyxiating gas as a weapon of war (at Ypres, April 22, 1915); the poisoning of wells; the reckless and needless destruction of priceless monuments of art like the Cathedral of Reims; the deliberate and treacherous violation of the Red Cross, which is the sign of mercy and compassion for all Christendom; the bombardment of hospitals and the cold-blooded

the sovereignty and neutrality of the United States and forced us to choose between the surrender of our national integrity and a frank acceptance of the war which Germany was waging, not only against

; to use our territory as a base of conspiracy and treacherous hostilities against countries with which we were at peace; and to lose no opportunity of mobilizing the privileges granted by "these idiotic Yanke

nd waged against the merchant shipping of the world, thereby destroying the lives and the property of Amer

an official attitude of neutrality toward the German Government, which "did what it pleased and told its people nothing." The President generously declared that the sourc

elong to them, to maintain the purpose and continue the practices of the Potsdam gang. It is a pity, but it is true. The only way to get at the gang

other settlement of this world conflict would be a world calamity. For America and for all the Allie