THE UNITED STATES AT WAR

When the German Emperor in his New Year’s message said that victory would remain with Germany in 1917 he must have known that the submarine war would be inaugurated to help bring this victory to Germany. In May, 1916, Admiral von Capelle explained to the Reichstag that the reason the German blockade of England could not be maintained was because Germany did not have sufficient submarines. But by December the Kaiser, who receives all the figures of the Navy, undoubtedly knew that submarines were being built faster than any other type of ship and that the Navy was making ready for the grand sea offensive in 1917. Knowing this, as well as knowing that President Wilson would break diplomatic relations if the submarine war was conducted ruthlessly again, the Kaiser was a very confident ruler to write such a New Year’s order to the Army and Navy. He must have felt sure that he could defeat the United States.

To My Army and My Navy!

Once more a war year lies behind us, replete with hard fighting and sacrifices, rich in successes and victories.

Our enemies’ hopes for the year 1916 have been blasted. All their assaults in the East and West were broken to pieces through your bravery and devotion!

The latest triumphal march through Roumania has, by God’s decree, again pinned imperishable laurels to your standards.

The greatest naval battle of this war, the Skager Rak victory, and the bold exploits of the U-boats have assured to My Navy glory and admiration for all time.

You are victorious on all theatres of war, ashore as well as afloat!

With unshaken trust and proud confidence the grateful Fatherland regards you. The incomparable warlike spirit dwelling in your ranks, your tenacious, untiring will to victory, your love for the Fatherland are guaranties to Me that victory will remain with our colours in the new year also.

God will be with us further!

Main Headquarters, De, 1916.

WILHELM.

THE KAISER’S NEW YEAR ORDER TO THE ARMY AND NAVY

Ambassador Gerard warned the State Department in September that Germany would start her submarine war before the Spring of 1917 so the United States must have known several months before the official announcement came. But Washington probably was under the impression that the Chancellor would not break his word. Uncle Sam at that time trusted von Bethmann-Hollweg.

Diplomatic relations were broken on February 1st. Ambassador Gerard departed February 10th. Upon his arrival in Switzerland several German citizens, living in that country because they could not endure conditions at home, asked the Ambassador upon his arrival in Washington to urge President Wilson if he asked Congress to declare war to say that the United States did not desire to go to war with the German people but with the German Government. One of these citizens was a Prussian nobleman by birth but he had been one of the leaders of the democratic forces in Germany and exiled himself in order to help the Liberal movement among the people by working in Switzerland. This suggestion was followed by the President. When he spoke to the joint session of Congress on February 1st he declared the United States would wage war against the Government and not against the people. In this historic address the President said:

“I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.

“On the 3rd of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Government, that on and after the 1st day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.

“That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the imperial Government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its under-sea craft, in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk, and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.

“The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the prescribed areas by the German Government itself, and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.

“I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilised nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law, which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view at least of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded.

“This minimum of right the German Government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity, and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except these, which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world.

“I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of non-combatants, men, women and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.

“The present German warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.

“When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.

“Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used, against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks, as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances grim necessity, indeed to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all.

“The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defence of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be.

“Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual; it is likely to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents.

“There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are not common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

“With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it, and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defence, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

“What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable co-operation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits in order that our resources may, so far as possible, be added to theirs.

“It will involve the organisation and mobilisation of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible.

“It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy’s submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States, already provided for by law in case of war, at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service; and also the authorisation of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training.

“It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation. I say sustained so far as may be by equitable taxation because it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be produced by vast loans.

“In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as possible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces with the duty for it will be a very practical duty of supplying the nations already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They are in the field, and we should help them in every way to be effective there.

“I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several executive departments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees measures for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which the responsibility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall.

“While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them.

“I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

“Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circumstances.

“We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilised states.

“We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval.

“It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellowmen as pawns and tools.

“Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions.

“Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation’s affairs.

“A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.

“It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart.

“Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

“Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?

“Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke for their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life.

“Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose, and now it has been shaken, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.

“One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.

“Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues, which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official agents of the imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

“Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them, because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience.

“That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

“We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend, and that in the presence of its organised power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the democratic governments of the world.

“We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included, for the rights of nations great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political liberty.

“We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.

“Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

“I have said nothing of the governments allied with the imperial Government of Germany, because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the imperial Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the ambassador recently accredited to this Government by the imperial and royal Government of Austria-Hungary, but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

“It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck.

“We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through all these bitter months because of that friendship exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.

“We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose.

“If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there, and without countenance, except from a lawless and malignant few.

“It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance.

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

After this speech was printed in Germany, first in excerpts and then as a whole in a few papers, there were three distinct reactions:

1. The Government press and the circles controlled by the Army published violent articles against President Wilson and the United States.

2. The democratic press led by the Vorwaerts took advantage of Wilson’s statements to again demand election reforms.

3. Public feeling generally was so aroused that the official North German Gazette said at the end of a long editorial that the Kaiser favoured a “people’s kingdom of Hohenzollern.”

The ammunition interests were among the first to express their satisfaction with America as an enemy. The Rheinische Westfaelische Zeitung, their official graphophone, said:

“The real policy of America is now fully disclosed by the outbreak of the war. Now a flood of lies and insults, clothed in pious phraseology, will descend on us. This is a surprise only to those who have been reluctant to admit that America was our enemy from the beginning. The voice of America does not sound differently from that of any other enemy. They are all tarred with the same brush those humanitarians and democrats who hurl the world into war and refuse peace.”

The Lokal Anzeiger, which is practically edited by the Foreign Office, said President Wilson’s attempt to inveigle the German people into a revolt against the dynasty beats anything for sheer hypocrisy in the records of the world.

“We must assume that President Wilson deliberately tells an untruth. Not the German Government but the German race, hates this Anglo-Saxon fanatic, who has stirred into flame the consuming hatred in America while prating friendship and sympathy for the German people.”

The Lokal Anzeiger was right when it said the German people hated America. The Lokal Anzeiger was one of the means the Government used to make the German people hate the United States.

The North German Gazette, which prints only editorials dictated, or authorised by, the Secretary of State, said:

“A certain phrase in President Wilson’s speech must be especially pointed out. The President represents himself as the bearer of true freedom to our people who are engaged in a severe struggle for their existence and liberty. What slave soul does he believe exists in the German people when it thinks that it will allow its freedom to be meted out to them from without? The freedom which our enemies have in store for us we know sufficiently.

“The German people, become clearsighted in war, and see in President Wilson’s word nothing but an attempt to loosen the bonds between the people and princes of Germany so that we may become an easier prey for our enemies. We ourselves know that an important task remains to us to consolidate our external power and our freedom at home.”

But the mask fell from the face of Germany which she shows the outside world, when the Kaiser issued his Easter proclamation promising election reforms after the war. Why did the Kaiser issue this proclamation again at this time? As early as January, 1916, he said the same thing to the German people in his address from the throne to the Prussian Diet. Why did the Kaiser feel that it was necessary to again call the attention of the people to the fact that he would be a democrat when the war was over? The Kaiser and the German army are clever in dealing with the German people. If the Kaiser makes a mistake or does something that his army does not approve it can always be remedied before the mistake becomes public.

Last Fall a young German soldier who had been in the United States as a moving picture operator was called to the General Staff to take moving pictures at the front for propaganda purposes. One week he was ordered to Belgium, to follow and photograph His Majesty. At Ostend, the famous Belgian summer resort, the Kaiser was walking along the beach one day with Admiral von Schroeder, who is in command of the German defences there. The movie operator followed him. The soldier had been following the Kaiser several days so His Majesty recognised him, ordered him to put up his camera and prepare to make a special film. When the camera was ready His Majesty danced a jig, waved his sceptre and then his helmet, smiled and shouted greetings to the camera man then went on along the beach.

When the photographer reached Berlin and showed the film to the censors of the General Staff they were shocked by the section of the Kaiser at Ostend. They ordered it cut out of the film because they did not think it advisable to show the German people how much their Emperor was enjoying the war!

The Kaiser throughout his reign has posed as a peace man although he has been first a soldier and then an executive. So when the Big War broke out the Kaiser had a chance to make real what had been play for him for forty years. Is it surprising then that he should urge the people to go on with the war and promise them to reform the government when the fighting was over?

The Kaiser’s proclamation itself shows that the Kaiser is not through fighting.

“Never before have the German people proved to be so firm as in this war. The knowledge that the Fatherland is fighting in bitter self defence has exercised a wonderful reconciling power, and, despite all sacrifices on the battlefield and severe privations at home, their determination has remained imperturbable to stake their last for the victorious issue.”

Could any one except a soldier who was pleased with the progress of the war have written such words?

“The national and social spirit have understood each other and become united, and have given us steadfast strength. Both of them realise what was built up in long years of peace and amid many internal struggles. This was certainly worth fighting for,” the Emperor’s order continued. “Brightly before my eyes stand the achievements of the entire nation in battle and distress. The events of this struggle for the existence of the empire introduce with high solemnity a new time.

“It falls to you as the responsible Chancellor of the German Empire and First Minister of my Government in Prussia to assist in obtaining the fulfilment of the demands of this hour by right means and at the right time, and in this spirit shape our political life in order to make room for the free and joyful co-operation of all the members of our people.

“The principles which you have developed in this respect have, as you know, my approval.

“I feel conscious of remaining thereby on the road which my grandfather, the founder of the empire, as King of Prussia with military organisation and as German Emperor with social reform, typically fulfilled as his monarchial obligations, thereby creating conditions by which the German people, in united and wrathful perseverance, will overcome this sanguinary time. The maintenance of the fighting force as a real people’s army and the promotion of the social uplift of the people in all its classes was, from the beginning of my reign, my aim.

“In this endeavour, while holding a just balance between the people and the monarchy to serve the welfare of the whole, I am resolved to begin building up our internal political, economic, and social life as soon as the war situation permits.

“While millions of our fellow-countrymen are in the field, the conflict of opinions behind the front, which is unavoidable in such a far-reaching change of constitution, must be postponed in the highest interests of the Fatherland until the time of the homecoming of our warriors and when they themselves are able to join in the counsel and the voting on the progress of the new order.”

It was but natural that the Socialists should hail this declaration of the Kaiser’s at first with enthusiasm.

“Internal freedom in Prussia that is a goal for which for more than one hundred years the best heads and best forces in the nation have worked. Resurrection day of the third war year will go down in history as the day of the resurrection of old Prussia to a new development,” said the Vorwaerts.

“It has brought us a promise, to be sure; not the resurrection itself, but a promise which is more hopeful and certain than all former announcements together. This proclamation can never be annulled and lapse into dusty archives.

“This message promises us a thorough reform of the Prussian three class electoral system in addition to a reform of the Prussian Upper House. In the coming new orientation the Government is only one factor, another is Parliament, the third and decisive factor is the people.”

Other Berlin newspapers spoke in a similar vein but not one of them pointed out to the public the fact that this concession by the Kaiser was not made in such a definite form, until the United States had declared war. As the United States entered the war to aid the democratic movement in Germany this concession by the Kaiser may be considered our first victory.

As days go by it becomes more and more evident that the American declaration of war is having an important influence upon internal conditions in Germany just as the submarine notes had. The German people really did not begin to think during this war until President Wilson challenged them in the notes which followed the torpedoing of the Lusitania. And now with the United States at war not only the people but the Government have decided to do some thinking.

By April 12th when reports began to reach Germany of America’s determination to fight until there was a democracy in Germany the democratic press began to give more serious consideration to Americans alliance with the Allies. Dr. Ludwig Haas, one of the Socialist members of the Reichstag, in an article in the Berlin Tageblatt made the following significant statements.

“One man may be a hypocrite, but never a whole nation. If the American people accept this message [President Wilson’s address before Congress] without a protest, then a tremendous abyss separates the logic of Germans from that of other nations.

“Woodrow Wilson is not so far wrong if he means the planning of war might be prevented if the people asserted the right to know everything about the foreign policies of their countries. But the President seems blind to the fact that a handful of men have made it their secret and uncontrolled business to direct the fate of the European democracies. With the press at one’s command one can easily drive a poor people to a mania of enthusiasm, when they will carry on their shoulders the criminals who have led to the brink of disaster.”

Dr. Haas was beginning to understand that the anti-American campaign in Germany which the Navy started and the Foreign Office encouraged, had had some effect.

Everything the United States does from now on will have a decisive influence in the world war. The Allies realise it and Washington knows it. Mr. Lloyd-George, the British Prime Minister, realised what a decisive effect American ships would have, when he said at the banquet of the American Luncheon Club in London:

“The road to victory, the guaranty of victory, the absolute assurance of victory, has to be found in one word, ‘ships,’ and a second word, ‘ships,’ and a third word, ‘ships.’”

But our financial economic and military aid to the Allies will not be our greatest contribution towards victory. The influence of President Wilson’s utterances, of our determination and of our value as a friendly nation after the war will have a tremendous effect as time goes on upon the German people. As days and weeks pass, as the victory which the German Government has promised the people becomes further and further away, the people, who are now doing more thinking than they ever have done since the beginning of the war, will some day realise that in order to obtain peace, which they pray for and hope for, they will have to reform their government during the war not after the war as the Kaiser plans.

Military pressure from the outside is going to help this democratic movement in Germany succeed in spite of itself. The New York World editorial on April 14th, discussing Mr. Lloyd-George’s statement that “Prussia is not a democracy; Prussia is not a state; Prussia is an army,” said:

“It was the army and the arrogance actuating it which ordered hostilities in the first place. Because there was no democracy in Prussia, the army had its way. The democracies of Great Britain and France, like the democracy of the United States, were reluctant to take arms but were forced to it. Russian democracy found its own deliverance on the fighting-line.

“In the fact that Prussia is not a democracy or a state but an army we may see a reason for many things usually regarded as inexplicable. It is Prussia the army which violates treaties. It is Prussia the army which disregards international law. It is Prussia the army, represented by the General Staff and the Admiralty, which sets at naught the engagements of the Foreign Office. It is Prussia the army which has filled neutral countries with spies and lawbreakers, which has placed frightfulness above humanity, and in a fury of egotism and savagery has challenged the world.

“Under such a terrorism, as infamous at home as it is abroad, civil government has perished. There is no civil government in a Germany dragooned by Prussia. There is no law in Germany but military law. There is no obligation in Germany except to the army. It is not Germany the democracy or Germany the state, it is Germany the army, that is to be crushed for its own good no less than for that of civilisation.”

The United States entered the war at the psychological and critical moment. We enter it at the moment when our economic and financial resources, and our determination will have the decisive influence. We enter at the moment when every one of our future acts will assist and help the democratic movement in Germany succeed.