Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace,
and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that
promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations? Their
present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the
world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of
nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and
of liberalism are gathering out of this war. They are employing
liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and
without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and
oppressed, using them for their own destruction--socialists, the
leaders of labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence.
Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground
to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will
have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all
succor or co-operation in western Europe and a counter revolution
fostered and supported; Germany herself will lose her chance of
freedom; and all Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle.
The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this
country than in Russia, and in every country in Europe to which the
agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access.
That Government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They
have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is opinion they
utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their
masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no
danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the
center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic
dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of
isolation in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the
Government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.