New Britain herald., 1917-06-14
PRESIDENT EXPOSES
 GERMANY'S PURPOSE
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(Continued From First Page). amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens from their allegiance and some of these agents were men connected with the official embassy of the German government itself here in our own capital. They sought by
 violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to 1 incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance with her,-and that, not by indirection. but by direct suggestion from the foreign office in Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of the high seas and repeatedly exe- cuted their threat that they would send to their death any of our people who ventured to approach the coasts of Europe. And many of our own people were corrupted. Men began to look upon their own neighbors with suspicion and to wonder in their hot resentment and surprise whether there was any community in which hostile intrigue did not turk. What great nation in such circumstances would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired peace, 1t was de- nied us and not of our own choice. This flag which we serve would have
 been dishonored had we withheld our hand.
 Still Friends of German People. "But that is only part of the story. We know now as clearly as we knew
 before we were ourselves engaged that we are not the enemies of the
 German people and that they are not
 our, enemies. They did not originate
 or desire this hideous war or wish
 that we should be drawn into 1t: and
 we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will
 some day see 1t, as well as our own.
 They are themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at last stretched it's ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole world is in the grip of that power
 and is trying out the great battle
 which shall determine whether it is to be brought under it's mastery or fling itself free.
 "The war was begun by the mili- tary masters of Germany. who proved to be also the masters of Austria
 
 garded nations as peoples. men, wo- men, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom gov ernments existed and in whom gov- ernments had their life. They have regarded them merely as serviceable
 organizations which they could by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They have re-
 garded the smaller states, in par ticular. and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force. as their natural tools and instruments of domi- nation Their purpose has long been avowed. The statesmen of other na-
 tions, to whom that purpose was in-
 credible, paid little attention; re-
 garded whlt German professors ex-
 pounded in their classrooms and Ger
 man writers set forth to the world
 as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs, as preposter- ous private conceptions of German destiny, than as the actual plans of responsible rulers, but the rulers of Germany themselves knew all the while what concrete plans, what we'll advanced intrigues lay back of what the professors and the writers were saying. and were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of Balkan states with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey to drill her armies and make interest with her government, developing plans of sedition and re- bellion in India and Egypt, setting their fires in Persia The demands made by Austria upon Servia were a mere single step in a plan which compassed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped those demands might not arouse Europe. but they meant to press them whether they did or not, for they thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms
 Berlin's Dream of Dominance Their plan was to throw a broad belt Of German military power and political control across the very cen- ter of Europe and beyond the Medi- terranean into the heart of Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bull garia or Turkey or the. ponderous states of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become part of the Central German empire. absorbed and dominated by the same forces and 1n- fuences that had originally cemented the German states themselves. The dream had it's heart at Berlin. It could have had a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of peoples played no part in it at all. It con- templated binding together racial and political units which could be kept together only by force.-Czechs, Mag l vars, Croats. Serbs, Roumanians.