Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall
belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have been
in part realized. But never before have those ambitions been based
upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination.
May I not say it is amazing to me that any group of people should be
so ill informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently
suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can
live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or
overthrow them by intrigue or force?
Any body of free men that compounds with the present German
Government is compounding for its own destruction. But that is not
the whole of the story. Any man in America or anywhere else who
supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can
continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened
upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers of Russia.
What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their
stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for
them. I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not.
You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, to
Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world; but
I did not send him on a peace mission. I sent him to take part in a
conference as to how the war was to be won. And he knows, as I know,
that that is the way to get peace if you want it for more than a few
minutes.
If we are true friends of freedom--our own or anybody else's--we will
see that the power of this country and the productivity of this
country is raised to its absolute maximum and that absolutely nobody
is allowed to stand in the way of it.
When I say that nobody ought to be allowed to stand in the way, I
don't mean that they shall be prevented by the power of Government,
but by the power of the American spirit. Our duty, if we are to do
this great thing and show America to be what we believe her to be,
the greatest hope and energy in the world, then we must stand
together night and day until the job is finished.