Count Mocchi di Cellere, the Italian Ambassador to the United States,
in his address at the Italian anniversary celebration, said:
Literally speaking, this is the third anniversary of Italy's
formal entry into the war. But perhaps I need not remind you,
gentlemen, that our struggle against the enemy goes back to the
time when, some twenty centuries ago, on those selfsame fields
and mountains that are now a part of our common allied front, the
Roman eagle was already waging that fight against the barbarians
in which the American eagle has more recently joined us.
The struggle of today is to us Italians the rounding-out of
a tremendous cycle of world history, in which, alone of all
civilized nations, Italy was in at the beginning and is in at the
finish. Since the time when Roman law laid the foundations for the
international intercourse of the world, the struggle has gone on
against Teutonic brutality. We are in it as a nation with all the
traditions and survivals of centuries, with all the memories of
the race, with all the influences of obscure ancestral heredities.
One verse of our national hymn reminds us that no Teuton stick
ever curbed Italy, and that the children of Rome do not bow their
necks to a yoke. That was the blunder of the enemy--he did not
realize that to a liberty-loving people the spirit of freedom is
like the breathing of pure air, an essential of life. Sometimes a
man does not know how essential it is until some one tries to take
it from him. Then he must die or revolt. Italy revolted. * * *
Whatever the enemy may have to say or may desire others to
believe about it, Italy is not in this war for any base and
selfish motives of conquest, imperial or unlawful territorial
aggrandizement. While in fact fighting for the liberation of
mankind threatened with oppression and slavery, Italy is aiming
at the liberation of her oppressed sons within and beyond the
boundary imposed upon her by an iniquitous treaty.
For the freedom of our country we need security on land and sea;
a security which nature herself had assured us with well defined
geographic boundaries and which the violence of oppressive and
barbarous nations has too long stolen from us. Now we see our duty
clear; and faithful to our duty, we will not lay down our arms
until the freedom of mankind, which implies the freedom of our
oppressed brothers, and the security of our land, is attained.
Secretary Lansing delivered the chief address at the commencement
exercises of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y., June 10. He said in
part:
It is hardly open to debate, in the light of subsequent events,
that the philosophical and political ideas which have been taught
for years from the university platforms, from the pulpits, and
through the printed word to young and old in Germany, excited in
them an insolent pride of blood and infused into their national
being an all-absorbing ambition to prove themselves supermen
chosen by natural superiority and by Divine mandate to be rulers
of the earth. Not only in Germany, but among those of German
descent in other lands, has this pernicious belief spread, linking
Germans everywhere to the Fatherland in the hope that they would
be considered worthy to share in the future glory of the masters
of the world. * * *
A decade before the war Reiner, inspired with the imperialism of
Prussia, announced: "It is precisely our craving for expansion
which drives us into the paths of conquest, in view of which all
chatter about peace and humanity can and must remain nothing but
chatter."
Not less ominous to liberty are the words of Professor Meinecke:
"We want to become a world people. Let us remind ourselves that
the belief in our mission as a world people has arisen from our
originally purely spiritual impulse to absorb the world into
ourselves."
Observe that extraordinary phrase, "to absorb the world into
ourselves." To conceive such a national destiny is to resurrect
the dead ambitions of an Alexander or a Caesar; to teach it as
a right to young men is to sow in their minds an egotism which
breeds distorted conceptions of individual honor and justice, and
gives to them an utterly false standard of national life.
Not alone from the lecturer and the essayist came this idea that
the Germans are a superior race set apart to rule the world. It
was preached in the pulpits as a Divine truth by those who even
had the effrontery to support their assertions by references to
the Holy Scriptures. Listen to some of the thoughts proclaimed by
ordained ministers of Christ to their German congregations:
"It may sound proud, my friends, but we are conscious that it is
also in all humbleness that we say it; the German soul is God's
soul; it shall and will rule over mankind."
May we be spared the consequences of a German "humbleness" which
fairly struts and swaggers, and which finds further expression in
the words of another Doctor of Divinity when he declares: "Verily
the Bible is our book. It was given and assigned to us, and in
it we read the original text of our destiny, which proclaims to
mankind salvation or disaster as we will it."
"As we will it!" There in four words is the whole story of the
Prussian doctrine of the "superman," of a "place in the sun."
Paganism, tinctured with modern materialism and a degenerate type
of Christianity, broods today over Germany. Christian ministers
have proclaimed Jehovah to be the national deity of the empire,
a monopolized German God, who relies on the physical might of
His people to destroy those who oppose His will as that will is
interpreted by His chosen race. Thus the Prussian leaders would
harmonize modern thought with their ancient religion of physical
strength through brutalizing Christianity.
In view of the spirit of hypocrisy and bad faith manifesting
an entire lack of conscience, we ought not to be astonished
that the Berlin Foreign Office never permitted a promise or a
treaty engagement to stand in the way of a course of action
which the German Government deemed expedient. I need not cite
as proof of this fact the flagrant violations of the treaty
neutralizing Belgium--and the recent treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
This discreditable characteristic of the German foreign policy
was accepted by German diplomats as a matter of course and as
a natural if not a praiseworthy method of dealing with other
Governments.
Frederick the Great, with cynical frankness, once said: "If there
is anything to be gained by it, we will be honest. If deception
is necessary, let us be cheats." That is in brief the immoral
principle which has controlled the foreign relations of Prussia
for over 150 years.
It is a fact not generally known that within six weeks after the
Imperial Government had, in the case of the Sussex, given to
this Government its solemn promise that it would cease ruthless
slaughter on the high seas, Count Bernstorff, appreciating the
worthlessness of the promise, asked the Berlin Foreign Office to
advise him in ample time before the campaign of submarine murder
was renewed, in order that he might notify the German merchant
ships in American ports to destroy their machinery because he
anticipated that the renewal of that method of warfare would in
all probability bring the United States into the war.
How well the Ambassador knew the character of his Government, and
how perfectly frank he was! He asked for the information without
apology or indirection. The very bluntness of his message shows
that he was sure that his superiors would not take offense at the
assumption that their word was valueless and had only been given
to gain time, and that, when an increase of Germany's submarine
fleet warranted, the promise would be broken without hesitation
or compunction. What a commentary on Bernstorff's estimate of the
sense of honor and good faith of his own Government!
We must go on with the war. There is no other way. This task must
not be left half done. We must not transmit to posterity a legacy
of blood and misery. We may in this great conflict go down into
the Valley of Shadows, because our foe is powerful and inured to
war. We must be prepared to meet disappointment and temporary
reverse, but we must, with American spirit, rise above them; with
courageous hearts we must go forward until this war is won.