erce. They tried to 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 seas and repeatedly executed 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 lurk. What great nation, in such
circumstances, would not have taken up arms? Much as we had desired
peace, it was denied us, and not of our own choice. This flag under
which we serve would have been dishonored had we withheld our hand.

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 it; and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their
cause, as they will some day see it, as well as our own. They are
themselves in the grip of the same sinister power that has now at
last stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. The whole
world is at war because 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 its mastery or fling itself free.

THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONFLICT

The war was begun by the military masters of Germany, who proved to
be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men have never regarded
nations as peoples, men, women and children of like blood and frame
as themselves, for whom governments existed and in whom governments
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 regarded the smaller states, in
particular, and the peoples who could be overwhelmed by force, as
their natural tools and instruments of domination. Their purpose has
long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that
purpose was incredible, paid little attention; regarded what German
professors expounded in their class-rooms and German writers set
forth to the world as the goal of German polic