The acuteness of our peril was well set forth in a conversation
that took place last year between an aged German officer of the
Franco-Prussian war and a French officer who won his medal in the same
campaign, both of whom had sought a rest in the village of Vevey upon
the banks of Lake Geneva. For weeks the two old men on their wheeled
chairs had passed each other without recognition. One morning, it is
said, the German officer saluted. After expressing sorrow over the
losses of the war, solely "for the purpose of making conversation,"
as he claimed, the German officer raised a question. First of all he
insisted that he spoke merely as a private citizen who loved his fellow
men, and represented in no sense the rulers in Berlin: "Suppose the
German armies were to withdraw from Belgium and France, and agree to
restore the devastated regions and repay England for her sunken ships.
Do you think the Allies would then return to the conditions of 1914,
granting the Fatherland the trade privileges that then were hers? For,"
added the officer, "it is quite certain that Germany could never raise
the billions of indemnity involved in the restoration of Belgium and
France, and England's ships, unless she was free to buy raw material,
kept her factories intact and also her three thousand and more
passenger ships, freight ships, sailing vessels and her battle-ships
to protect her fleet."
To all of which, it is said, the Frenchman answered, in substance, as
follows: "What you really mean is this,--that if France and England
laid down their arms, and allowed Germany to keep her land uninvaded,
her fleet intact, that so far from raising ten or twenty billions to
restore Belgium and France and recompense England, the Kaiser would
simply load one or two millions of his veterans on the three thousand
of his ships, and sail away to New York, and assess the twenty or
fifty billions on the American people. You must remember," said the
French officer, "that England and France do not betray their friends.
They do not count their treaties 'scraps of paper.' My country will
never consent to hand the United States over to the armies and the
battle-ships of Germany."
The genuineness of this brief discussion is beyond all doubt. The
time has fully come therefore for every American and manufacturer and
merchant, every farmer and financier, to realize that we have _got_
to win this war, otherwise there will be no United States. We are
unprepared for war or even self-defense. After ten months of war
Secretary Baker tells us frankly that thus far we have not one single
machine gun completed, that not until April will there be one rifle,
for each of a little army of a half-million men, while the other
investigations have brought home the fact that it is the French and
British army that stand between us and the Kaiser's troops, and that it
is England's battle-ships that hold the Kaiser's war fleet behind the
Kiel Canal. It is the British bulldog that keeps the German rat in the
Kiel hole. On one side of the American silver dollar we have written
these words, "In God we trust," and on the other we should write these
words, "And in England's battle-ships."