Having spread the gospel of force for so long, Prussianised Germany can
understand but one counter-argument--force. We must give her back blow
for blow--a harder blow in return for each blow she gives us. "Thrice is
he armed that hath his quarrel just"; and our quarrel is just. All the
same, to make war successfully we must make it with a whole heart. We
must hold it to be a holy war; we must preach a jihad, remembering
always, now that the Chinese Empire is a republic, now that Russia by
revolution has thrown off the chains of autocracy, that we are fighting
not only to punish the enemy for wrongs inflicted and insults
overpatiently endured; not only to make the seas free to honest
commerce; not only for the protection of our flag and our ships and the
lives of our people at home and abroad--but along with England,
France--yes, and Russia--are fighting for the preservation of the
principles of constitutional and representative government against those
few remaining crowned heads who hold by the divine right of kings, and
who believe that man was created not a self-governing creature but a
vassal.
Merely because we are willing to give of our wealth and our granaries
and our steel mills, we cannot expect to have an honourable share in
this war, and to share as an equal in its final settlement. We must risk
something more precious than money; something more needful than
munitions; we must risk our manhood. We cannot expect England's navy to
stand between us and harm for our coasts, and France's worn battalions
to bear the brunt of the trench work.
Knowing nothing of military expediency, I yet believe that, for the
moral effect upon the world and for our own position, when the time for
making peace comes it would be better for us, rather than the securing
of our own soil against attack or invasion, that an American flag should
wave over American troops in Flanders; that a Texas cow-puncher should
lead a forlorn hope in France; that a Connecticut clockmaker should
invent a device which will blunt the fangs of that stinging adder of the
sea, the U-boat, and--who knows?--perhaps scotch the poison snake
altogether.
Maybe it is true that, in our mistaken forbearance, we have failed and
come short. Maybe we have endured too long and too patiently; we can
atone for all that. But----
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.