We have met to-day in pursuance of a high purpose, a purpose which at
this fateful moment is one and the same wherever, throughout the
world, the language of free men is spoken and understood.
It is the purpose of a common determination to fight and to bear and
to dare everything and never to cease nor rest until the accursed
thing which has brought upon the world the unutterable calamity, the
devil's visitation of this appalling war, is destroyed beyond all
possibility of resurrection.
That accursed thing is not a nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit
which has made the government possessed by it and executing its
abhorrent and bloody bidding an abomination in the sight of God and
men.
What we are now contending for by the side of the splendidly brave and
sorely tried Allied Nations, after infinite forbearance, after delay
which many of us found it hard to bear, are the things which are
amongst the highest and most cherished that the civilized world has
attained through the toil, sacrifices and suffering of its best in the
course of many centuries.
They are the things without which darkness would fall upon hope, and
life would become intolerable.
They are the things of humanity, liberty, justice and mercy, for which
the best men amongst all the nations--including the German
nation--have fought and bled these many generations past, which were
the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of others who
had made the name of Germany great and beloved until Prussianism came
to make its deeds a byword and a hissing.
This appalling conflict which has been drenching the world with blood
is not a mere fight of one or more peoples against one or more other
peoples.
It goes far deeper. It challenges the soul and conscience of the
world. It transcends vastly the bounds of racial allegiance. It is
ethically fundamental.
In determining one's attitude towards it, the time has gone by--if it
ever was--when race and blood and inherited affiliations were
permitted to count.
A century and a half ago Americans of English birth rose to free this
country from the oppression of the rulers of England. To-day Americans
of German birth are called upon to rise, together with their
fellow-citizens of all races, to free not only this country but the
whole world from the oppression of the rulers of Germany, an
oppression far less capable of being endured and of far graver
portent.
Speaking as one born of German parents, I do not hesitate to state it
as my deep conviction that the greatest service which men of German
birth or antecedents can render to the country of their origin is
this: To proclaim, and to stand up for those great ideals and national
qualities and traditions which they inherited from their ancestors,
and to set their faces like flint against the monstrous doctrines and
acts of a rulership that has robbed them of the Germany they loved and
in which they took just pride, the Germany which had the good-will,
respect and admiration of the entire world.
I do not hesitate to state it as my solemn conviction that the more
unmistakably and whole-heartedly Americans of German origin throw
themselves into the struggle which this country has entered in order
to rescue Germany, no less than America and the rest of the world,
from those sinister forces that are, in President Wilson's language,
the enemy of all mankind, the better they protect and serve the repute
of the old German name and the true advantage of the German people.
Gentlemen, I measure my words. They are borne out all too emphatically
by the hideous eloquence of deeds which have appalled the conscience
of the civilized world. They are borne out by numberless expressions,
written and spoken, of German professors employed by the State to
teach its youth.
The burden of that teaching is that might makes right, and that the
German nation has been chosen to exercise morally, mentally and
actually, the over-lordship of the world and must and will accomplish
that task and that destiny whatever the cost in bloodshed, misery and
ruin.
The spirit of that teaching, in its intolerance, its mixture of
sanctimoniousness and covetousness, and its self-righteous assumption
of a world-improving mission, is closely akin to the spirit from which
were bred the religious wars of the past through the long and dark
years when Protestants and Catholics killed one another and devastated
Europe.
I speak in sorrow, for I am speaking of the country of my origin and
I have not forgotten what I owe to it.
I speak in bitter disappointment, for I am thinking of the Germany of
former days, the Germany which has contributed its full share to the
store of the world's imperishable assets and which, in not a few
fields of endeavour and achievement, held the leading place among the
nations of the earth.
And I speak in the firm faith that, after its people shall have shaken
off and made atonement for the dreadful spell which an evil fate has
cast upon them, that former Germany will arise again and, in due
course of time, will again deserve and attain the good-will and
respect of the world and the affectionate loyalty of all those of
German blood in foreign lands.
_But I know that neither Germany nor this country nor the rest of the
world can return to happiness and peace and fruitful labour until it
shall have been made manifest, bitterly and unmistakably manifest, to
the rulers who bear the blood-guilt for this wanton war and to their
misinformed and misguided peoples that the spirit which unchained it
cannot prevail, that the hateful doctrines and methods in pursuance of
which and in compliance with which it is conducted are rejected with
abhorrence by the civilized world, and that the overweening ambitions
which it was meant to serve can never be achieved._
_The fight for civilization which we all fondly believed had been won
many years ago must be fought over again. In this sacred struggle it
is now our privilege to take no mean part, and our glory to bring
sacrifices._
Our one and supreme task, the one purpose to which all others must
give way, is to bring this war to a successful conclusion. One of the
means toward that end is to make the Liberty Loan a veritable triumph,
an overwhelming expression of our gigantic economic strength.
To accomplish that, let each one of us feel himself personally
responsible, let each one of us work as if our life depended on the
result. And, in a very real sense, does not our national life, aye,
our individual life depend on the outcome of this war?
Would life be tolerable if the power of Prussianism, run mad and
murderous, held the world by the throat, if the primacy of the earth
belonged to a government steeped in the doctrines of a barbarous past
and supported by a ruling caste which preaches the deification of
sheer might, which despises liberty, hates democracy and would destroy
both if it could?
To that spirit and to those doctrines, we, citizens of America and
servants, as such, of humanity, will oppose our solemn and unshakable
resolution "to make the world safe for democracy," and we will say,
with a clear conscience, in the noble words which more than five
hundred years ago were uttered by the Parliament of Scotland:
"_It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honour that we
fight, but for liberty alone which no good man loses but with
his life._"