The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1917-12-04

tense against deliberate aggression.
Nothing could be more grossly or
wantonly false, and we must seek by
the utmost opehness and candor as to
our real aims to convince them of it's
falseness. We are, in fact, fighting
for their emancipation from fear,
along with our own, from the fear as
well as from the fact of unjust attack
by neighbors or rivals or schemers
after world empire No one is threat
ening the existence of the independ-
ence or the peaceful enterprise of the
German empire.
For Their Emancipation.
"The worst That can happen to the
detriment Of the German people is
this, that ii they should still, after
the war is over, continue to be obliged
to live under ambitious and intrigu-
ing masters, interested to disturb the
peace Of the world. men or classes of
men, whom the other peoples of the
world could not trust, it might be
impossible to admit them to the part
nership Of nations, which must hence
forth guarantee the world peace.
THAT partnership must be a part
nership Of peoples. not a mere part
nership of governments. 1t might be
impossible, also, in such untoward cir
cumstances, to admit Germany to the
free economic intercourse, which must
inevitably spring out Of the other part
,nerships Of a real peace. But there
would be no aggression in that, and
such situation, inevitably because Of
distrust, would in the very nature of
things, sooner or later, cure itself by
processes which would assuredly
set in.
"The. wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war, will have to be
righted. That of course. But they
cannot and must not be righted by the
commission of similar wrongs against
Germany and her allies.
People Isolated. rs
"rhe world will not permit the COM
mission of similar wrongs as a means
of reparation and settlement. The
thought of the plain people here and
everywhere throughout the world, the
people who enjoy no privilege and
have very simple and unsophisticated
standards of right and wrong Is the
air all the governments must hence
forth breathe if they would live. It
is in the full disclosing light of that
though that all the policies must be
conceived and executed in this midday
hour of the worlds life. German rul-
ers have been able to upset the peace
of the world only because the Ger
man people were not suffered under
their tutelage to share the comrade-
ship Of the other people of the world,
either in thought or in purpose. They
were allowed to have no opinion of
their own which might bet set up as
a rule Of conduct, for those who exer-
else authority over them. But the
congress that concludes this war will
feel the full strength of the tides that
run now in the hearts and consciences
Of free men everywhere. Its conclu-
sions will run with those tides
Giving a plain warning, however,
that he would not hesitate to ask for
a declaration of war on Turkey and
Bulgaria when he considered it neces'
sary, the president said:
eve shall 60 wherever the neces-
stiles Of this war carry US, but it
seems to me that we should 60 only
where immedi and practical con-
sideration lead us and not heed any
Others"
Peace, the president told congress,
can come only when the Prussan au-
tocracy is beaten down; when the
German people make peace with the
world through rulers the world can
trust, when they make reparation for
the wrongs their present rulers have
done and when the ehslaved people
of Belgium, northern France and: the
Balkans have been set free.
The World Awake.
Statesmen must by this time have
learned that the opinion of the world
is everywhere wideawake and fully
comprehends the issues involved. No
representatives of any self-gOverned
nations will dare disregard it by at
tempting any such covenants of self
ishness and compromise as were en-
tered into at the congress of Vienna.
All these things have been true
from the very beginning of this stu
pendous war, and l cannot help think
ing that if they had been made plain
at the very outset the sympathy and
enthusiasm of the Russian people
might have been once for all enlisted
on the side of. the allies, suspicion
and distrust swept away and a real
and lasting union of purpose effected.
Had they believed these things at the
very moment of their revolution and
had they been confined in that belief
since, the sad reverses which have
recently marked the progress of their
affairs toward an ordered and stable
government of free men might have
been avoided.
"The Russian people have been poi
soned by the very same falsehoods
that have kept the German people in
the dark, and the poison has been ad-
ministered by the very same hands.
The only possible antidOte Is the
truth. 1t cannot be uttered too plain
ly or too often.
Speaks for All Nations.
"Tcom every point of view, there
fore, it has seemed to be my duty to
speak these declarations Of purpose,
TO add these specific interpretations
of what l took the liberty OF saying
to the senate in January. Our en-
trance into the war has not altered
our attitude toward the settlement