on. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and
render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart.
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of
their own.

[Sidenote: What is happening in Russia.]

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things
that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was
known by those who knew her best to have been always in fact democratic
at heart in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate
relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude toward life. The autocracy that crowned the summit of
her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the
reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or
purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian
people have been added, in all their naive majesty and might, to the
forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for
peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor.

[Sidenote: Prussia has filled America with spies.]

One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities,
and even our offices of government, with spies and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is
now evident that its spies were here even before the war began; and it
is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact proved in our courts
of justice, that the intrigues which have more than once come perilously
near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the industries of the
country, have been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and
even under the personal direction of official agents of the Imperial
Government accredited to the Government of the United States.

[Sidenote: The United States has been generous.]

Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them
because we knew that their source lay,