The review. [volume] (High Point, N.C.) 1908-19??, 1917-12-06

Iutely contrary to the principles we
have protested to live by and to hold
most sacred throughout our life as
nation.
The people of Germany are being
told by the men whom they now per
NIT to deceive them and to act as
their masters that they are fighting
for the very life and existence OF
their empire, war of desperate self
defense against deliberate aggression
| Nothing could be more grossly or
wantonly false, and we must seek by
the utmost openness and candour as
to our real aims to convince them OF
its falseness. We are, in fact, fight
| ing for their emancipation from fear,
along with our own-from the fear
as we'll as from the fact of unjust at
| tack by neighbors or rivals or schem-
ers after world empire. No one is
threatening the existence or the in
dependence or the peaceful enterprise
of the German empire.
The worst that can happen to the
detriment of the German people is
this, that if they, should still, after
the war is over, continue to be oblig-
ed to live under ambitious and in
triguing masters interested to dis
turb the peace of the world, men or
classes of men whom the other peO-
pies of the world could not trust, it
might be impossible to admit them
to the partnership of nations which
must henceforth guarantee the
no tn
be a partnership of peoples, not q
mere partnership of governments. 1t
might be impossible, also, in such
untoward circumstances, to admit
Germany to the free economic inter-
course which must inevitably spring
out of the other partnerships of
real peace. But there would be no
aggression in that; and such situa-
ton, inevitable because of distrust,
would in the very nature of things
sooner or later cure itself by pro-
cesses which would assuredly set in.
TIE wrongs, the very deep wrongs,
committed in this war will have 10 be
righted. That, of course. But they
can not and must not be righted by the
commission Of similar wrongs against
Germany and her allies. The world will
not permit the commission of similar
wrongs as a means of reparation and
settlement. Statesmen must by this
time have learned that the opinion Of
the world is everywhere wide awake
and fully comprehends the issues in
volved. No representative of any self
governed nation will dare disregard it
by attempting any such covenants of
selishness and compromise as were
entered into at the congress Of Vienna.
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 govern 9nents must henceforth
breathe if they would live. 1t is in the
full disclosing light Of that thought
that all policies must be conceived and
executed in this midday hour of the
worlds life: German rulers have been
able to upset the peace of the world
only because the German people were
not suffered under their tute1age to
share the comradeship Of the other
peoples of the world either in thought
or in purpose. They were allowed to
have no opinion of their own which
might be set up as q rule OF conduct
for those who exercised authority over
them. But the congress that con-
cludes this war will feel the full
strength of the tides that run now in
the hearts and consciences of free men
e.
with those tides.
ALL these things have been true from
the very beginning of this stupen-
dous war; and I cannot help thinking
that if they had been made plain at
the very outset the sympathy and en-
thusiasm of the Russian people might |
have been once for all enlisted on the |
side of the allies, suspicion and dis |
trust swept away, and real and last |
ing union of purpose effected. Had |
they believed these things at the |
very moment of their revolution and |
had they been confirmed to that belief !
since, the sad reverses which have re-
Gently marked the progress of their |
affairs towards an ordered and stable |
government Of free men might have |
been avoided. The Russian people |
have been poisoned by the very same !
ialsehoods that have kept the German |
people in the dark and the poison has /
been administered by the very same |
hands. The only possible antidote is
The truth. 1t cannot be uttered too
plainly or too often.
From every point of view, therefore,
It has seemed to be my duty to speak
;hese declarations Of purpose, to add
;hese specific interpretations to what
took the liberty or saying to the
senate in January. Our entrance into
he war has not alAarod our attitude