We are at war. On April 6, 1917, the democracy of the United States of
America formally declared war against the autocracy of Germany. What are
we fighting for?
Two brutes in the shape of men engage in a savage, drunken brawl.
Bloody, cursing, dishevelled, with swollen and distorted features, and
screaming their anathemas of drunken hate, they fight with the ferocity
of beasts. Beasts they are.
A bully, a degenerate, a thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a
horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared
victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the assault, and attacks
the attacker with strength enough to save the victim, arrest the
disturber of the peace, and prevent a repetition of the offense. He has
been engaged in a fight, but he is not a beast.
The spirit of Lafayette brought him to America to fight for democracy;
he was a hard fighter but he was not a beast. And now, against that
calculating and brutal power which with the treachery of a tiger of the
jungle and all the devilish ingenuity of the highest Kultur has
assaulted the peace of the world, the armies of America are led by the
spirit of Lafayette.
For years the Prussian military autocracy has been preparing for the
leap upon its victim. The power to declare war has been kept solely and
exclusively in the hands of the military autocracy. It is responsible to
no one. The great mass of people must do as they are commanded;
obeying, not laws made by themselves acting through their duly-elected
representatives, but orders promulgated by a self-appointed few, the
military autocracy of Prussia. Woe to the unfortunate victim who refuses
to obey! With cold-blooded deliberation this military autocracy which
controls the German people has for years been preparing its huge
fighting machine. When the time to strike came, when the neighbouring
countries were least prepared to resist, Germany was deluged with the
lie that the German nation was attacked, the scrap of paper otherwise
called a treaty was torn up, and the tiger sprang. The world knows the
result.
We enter the war for two motives, one to preserve the democracies of
Europe, the other for our own preservation. The sinking of our ships by
submarines was merely the immediate cause, the match that lit the fire,
just as the firing on Fort Sumter was the proximate but not the real
cause of our Civil War. The real cause of our Civil War was, as Lincoln
said, because this nation "could not endure half slave and half free."
The real cause of the present World War is because civilization cannot
endure half military autocracy and half free democracy. "The world must
be made safe for democracy." We fight to save the intended victims of
Prussianism, to arrest the disturber of the peace, and prevent a
repetition of the offense.
The President of the United States in his great message, delivered in
the Congress of the United States on the second day of April, 1917, in
which he advised the Congress to accept the status of belligerent thrust
upon us by the acts of the Imperial Government of Germany in unlawfully
sinking our ships and killing our citizens, said: "Let us be very clear,
and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects
are.... Our object ... is to vindicate the principles of peace and
justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power
and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the
world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure
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 organized force which is
controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people....
"We are now about to accept gauge 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.... The world must be
made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested
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 made as secure as the faith and the freedom
of nations can make them."