Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-12
WILHELM DISCOVERS AMERICA
And Also a World Of the Spirit Of Right.
eousness in Which He Is an Alien
y. and an Outcast

| covered the new world. Two continents
Of which men had not dreamed swan
into human ken on that memorable
| October IL.
The German Kaiser, four years ago
last August, set out on a voyage of con-
quest and discovery He had his armed
legions, numbering millions of men. He
had his navy, which had been built up
with feverish haste. He planned to
make the achievement of Columbus look
like that of child finding a new toy in
his Christmas stocking.
The neiC world as rcli os 'he old 'cds
TO be his because he thought he had the
poiCer TO take them both.
Might, armed might, was his gospel.
| The doctrine Of the survival Of the fit
test was its inspiration. at was the law
| of nature" He was TO move forward
with the mercilessness of the avalanche,
the brutality of the rising tide and the
irresistibleness of the food Of many
waters. Everything that stood in his
way was to be swept aside-treaties, his
pledged word, the architectural monu-
ments of many centuries, the bodies of
womer and children, all the finer human
instincts that had refined the life of the
race from the coarser clay of primeval
barbarism.
For forty years he and his predeces-
sors had been training the German peo-
pie for this great adventure. He had
pawned all the jewels of German culture
TO bun Nth the proceeds the Wedpons Of
force ,oith tDhich to strike doVn all oppo-
sition. In August of 1914 he thought he
was ready.
The Kaiser has been voyaging for
more than four years and the vision of
the new world is dawning upon his aston
ished sight. II is not the world which
he set out for, any more than the
Americas which Columbus discovered
were the Indies of the East.
He has discovered that there is spir-
itual world mightier than all the brute
power which can be concentrated under
the command of any man. The icy ava
lanche may wreck everything in its path,
and the rising tide may tear down the
most powerful dikes that human in
genuity can contrive and the flood of
many waters may lay waste fruitful val
leys; but no force of nature can destroy
the human spirit. This man, claiming to
rule over one race by divine right and
seeking to rule over the world by right
of force, has discovered that there is
something outside of Germany that is
unconquerable. 1t is thing that no
German man of science has been able to
classify and catalogue. 1t is the instinct
of righteousness firmly planted in the
human soul that will rise in its majestic
powe- when it is threatened; an instinct
that will lead those moved by it to SUBJ
nit to every form of hardship and suf-
fering, even to death, in the struggle to
assert itself against what would over
power it.
The world which the Kaiser is begin
ming to discover is filled with men and
women ruled by that instinct. The spirit
of France has risen in this great crisis
like a thing of light and glory trans
figuring a whole race. The spirit of
England, more stolid, but none the less
determined, has been reborn in the fires
of its will, and the spirit of Italy harks
back to its prototype of the days when it
was an honor to be Roman citizen and
when those enjoying that citizenship
defied men to trample upon it with i'm
punity.
And the spirit of America! What
shall not be said of it? There were those
who insisted that we were so sordid that
no great cause could call us from our
beds of sloth to resist anything which
did not threaten our ease. But how mis-
taken this view was! How the history
of this nation was misread!
A nation founded on the rights of man
,could never consent to a corld ruled BY
the rights Of privileged force.
The pine tree may have no case against
the onrushing avalanche, but the weakest
American has a case against the most
powerful Kaiser. There is divine
po,cer moving in us that impels us to
insist that human rights are sacred. If
it were not the logical outcome of all our
traditions, what we are doing in this
war would be a miracle greater than the
raising of Lazarus from the dead. The
immortal spirit Of Righteousness breathed
into our national body in the beginning is
moping us today and zoe are fighting
'oith the forces of God that truth and
justice may not perish from the face Of
| the earth.
The outcome is as certain as the fall
Of Lucifer when he led the rebellion of
the angels in Heaven. The Hohenzollern
dynasty, which hatched this damnable
plot against the liberties of mankind, is
doomed. 1t does not need the declara-
ton Of Secretary Lansing to establish
this stupendous fact. Hohenzollernism,
by whatever name it may be called, is
before the bar of the worlds conscience