Germany, The Next Republic? Part 18

"While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them.

"I have exactly the same thing in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and the justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.

"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organised force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people. We have seen the last of neutrality in such circ.u.mstances.

"We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilised states.

"We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval.

"It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellowmen as p.a.w.ns and tools.

"Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked only under cover and where no one has the right to ask questions.

"Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged cla.s.s. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs.

"A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants.

"It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart.

"Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

"Does not every American feel that a.s.surance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?

"Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her people that spoke for their natural instinct, their habitual att.i.tude toward life.

"Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose, and now it has been shaken, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of honour.

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.

"Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues, which have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official agents of the imperial Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

"Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them, because we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience.

"That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.

"We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend, and that in the presence of its organised power, always lying in wait to accomplish we know not what purpose, there can be no a.s.sured security for the democratic governments of the world.

"We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included, for the rights of nations great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the trusted foundations of political liberty.

"We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion.

We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.

"Just because we fight without rancour and without selfish objects, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without pa.s.sion and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair play we profess to be fighting for.

"I have said nothing of the governments allied with the imperial Government of Germany, because they have not made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and our honour. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, avowed its unqualified indors.e.m.e.nt and acceptance of the reckless and lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the imperial Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Government to receive Count Tarnowski, the amba.s.sador recently accredited to this Government by the imperial and royal Government of Austria-Hungary, but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other means of defending our rights.

"It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck.

"We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage between us--however hard it may be for them, for the time being, to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with their present Government through all these bitter months because of that friendship--exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise have been impossible.

"We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship in our daily att.i.tude and actions toward the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their neighbours and to the Government in the hour of test.

They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose.

"If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there, and without countenance, except from a lawless and malignant few.

"It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance.

"But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

"To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. G.o.d helping her, she can do no other."

After this speech was printed in Germany, first in excerpts and then as a whole in a few papers, there were three distinct reactions:

1. The Government press and the circles controlled by the Army published violent articles against President Wilson and the United States.

2. The democratic press led by the _Vorwaerts_ took advantage of Wilson's statements to again demand election reforms.

3. Public feeling generally was so aroused that the official _North German Gazette_ said at the end of a long editorial that the Kaiser favoured a "people's kingdom of Hohenzollern."

The ammunition interests were among the first to express their satisfaction with America as an enemy. The _Rheinische Westfaelische Zeitung_, their official graphophone, said:

"The real policy of America is now fully disclosed by the outbreak of the war. Now a flood of lies and insults, clothed in pious phraseology, will descend on us. This is a surprise only to those who have been reluctant to admit that America was our enemy from the beginning. The voice of America does not sound differently from that of any other enemy. They are all tarred with the same brush--those humanitarians and democrats who hurl the world into war and refuse peace."

The _Lokal Anzeiger_, which is practically edited by the Foreign Office, said President Wilson's attempt to inveigle the German people into a revolt against the dynasty beats anything for sheer hypocrisy in the records of the world.

"We must a.s.sume that President Wilson deliberately tells an untruth.

Not the German Government but the German race, hates this Anglo-Saxon fanatic, who has stirred into flame the consuming hatred in America while prating friendship and sympathy for the German people."

The _Lokal Anzeiger_ was right when it said the German people hated America. The _Lokal Anzeiger_ was one of the means the Government used to make the German people hate the United States.

The _North German Gazette_, which prints only editorials dictated, or authorised by, the Secretary of State, said:

"A certain phrase in President Wilson's speech must be especially pointed out. The President represents himself as the bearer of true freedom to our people who are engaged in a severe struggle for their existence and liberty. What slave soul does he believe exists in the German people when it thinks that it will allow its freedom to be meted out to them from without? The freedom which our enemies have in store for us we know sufficiently.

"The German people, become clearsighted in war, and see in President Wilson's word nothing but an attempt to loosen the bonds between the people and princes of Germany so that we may become an easier prey for our enemies. We ourselves know that an important task remains to us to consolidate our external power and our freedom at home."

But the mask fell from the face of Germany which she shows the outside world, when the Kaiser issued his Easter proclamation promising election reforms after the war. Why did the Kaiser issue this proclamation again at this time? As early as January, 1916, he said the same thing to the German people in his address from the throne to the Prussian Diet. Why did the Kaiser feel that it was necessary to again call the attention of the people to the fact that he would be a democrat when the war was over? The Kaiser and the German army are clever in dealing with the German people. If the Kaiser makes a mistake or does something that his army does not approve it can always be remedied before the mistake becomes public.

Last Fall a young German soldier who had been in the United States as a moving picture operator was called to the General Staff to take moving pictures at the front for propaganda purposes. One week he was ordered to Belgium, to follow and photograph His Majesty. At Ostend, the famous Belgian summer resort, the Kaiser was walking along the beach one day with Admiral von Schroeder, who is in command of the German defences there. The movie operator followed him. The soldier had been following the Kaiser several days so His Majesty recognised him, ordered him to put up his camera and prepare to make a special film.

When the camera was ready His Majesty danced a jig, waved his sceptre and then his helmet, smiled and shouted greetings to the camera man--then went on along the beach.

When the photographer reached Berlin and showed the film to the censors of the General Staff they were shocked by the section of the Kaiser at Ostend. They ordered it cut out of the film because they did not think it advisable to show the German people how much their Emperor was enjoying the war!