Chapter V

A few days ago I read a poem addressed to Germany, of which these lines have remained in my memory:

"Oh, land of now, oh, land of then,
Dear God, the dreams, the dreams of men!
Enslaved, immersed in greed and hate,
Where are the things which made you great?"

The things which made Germany great are not dead, and the world cannot afford to allow them to die. They belong to the immortal possessions of the human race.

They have passed, for the time being, alas, out of the keeping of the mass of the German people, whose glorious inheritance they were.

They are now in the keeping of that minority, not, perhaps, very great as yet, but growing steadily, of men in Germany itself from whose eyes the scales have begun to fall. They are in the keeping of all the nations who appreciate and cherish and are determined to maintain those great and high things which the civilized world has attained through the toil, sacrifice and suffering of its best in the course of many centuries. And, above all, they are in the keeping of the ten or fifteen millions of Americans of German descent.

As that great American of German birth, Carl Schurz, and many other brave and high-minded Germans--my own father, I am proud to say, among them--in 1848 stood in arms against Prussian oppression, for liberal ideas and right and truth and freedom, so do we stand now. In fighting for the cause of America as loyal Americans, we are fighting at the same time for the deliverance of the country of our birth from those unrighteous powers which hold it enthralled and feed upon its soul.

If ever a nation entered a war after having maintained infinite forbearance in the face of grave menace and dangers and the most intolerable affronts, and from motives as pure and high as the great blue dome of heaven, America is that nation.

We seek no reward whatsoever of a material nature. We seek no "place in the sun"--to use the German Chancellor's term--except the sun of liberty, and that we do not seek selfishly, but to share with all the world.

America is not waging a war of vengeance, notwithstanding all the injuries and measureless provocations that we have received. We have lighted a fire to purify, not to burn at the stake.

America is incapable of hating an entire people, but we do hate, we are fighting and we shall fight with every ounce of our might, the spirit which has power over the people of Germany, and which, if it were to prevail--as, under God, it never will--would destroy liberty, justice and plighted faith. It was not the people of Great Britain which America fought in the War of the Revolution, but the spirit and the ruling caste which then held sway over them. America fought then for an ideal and for liberty and independence, and sacrificed blood and treasure and suffered and endured and won. And so it will be now.

The spirit of Prussianism and the spirit of Americanism cannot live in the same world. One or the other must conquer.

In the mad pride of its contempt for democracy, Prussianism has thrown down the gauntlet to us. We have taken up the challenge and now stand arrayed by the side of the other freedom-loving nations of the world, giving our fresh strength and our boundless resources to them, who, heroically striving, have borne the heat and burden of a dreadfully long and exhausting struggle, yet stand unwearied, erect and resolute.

The enemy is of formidable strength. But even if he were far stronger than he is, even if we did not have the men and the means which are ours, even if our comrades-in-arms had not demonstrated their superb and indomitable prowess, still must our cause prevail--for there is fighting with us a force which has ever proved itself stronger than any other power on earth, and again and again has triumphed over overwhelming odds. That force, God-inspired, death-defying and unconquerable, is the soul of man.

And when--Heaven grant it may be soon!--the soul of the German people will have freed itself from the sinister powers that now keep it in ban and bondage, when it will have found again the high impulses and aims of its former self, when it will once more understand and speak the universal language of humanity and right, then, in God's own time there will be peace.

FRENZIED LIBERTY

THE MYTH OF "A RICH MAN'S WAR"

Extracts from Address given at the University
of Wisconsin, January 14, 1918

FRENZIED LIBERTY