ended the throne of St. Peter, with words and
deeds which will cleanse the Church from the stain of this silence.

As for you socialists who on both sides claim to be defending liberty
against tyranny--French liberty against the Kaiser, German liberty
against the Czar, is it a question of defending one despotism against
another? Unite and attack both.

There was no reason for war between the Western nations; French,
English, and German, we are all brothers and do not hate one another.
The war-preaching press is envenomed by a minority, a minority vitally
interested in maintaining these hatreds; but our peoples, I know, ask
for peace and liberty and that alone. The real tragedy, to one situated
in the midst of the conflict and able to look down from the high
plateaus of Switzerland into all the hostile camps, is the patent fact
that actually each of the nations is being menaced in its dearest
possessions--in its honor, its independence, its life. Who has brought
these plagues upon them? Brought them to the desperate alternative of
overwhelming their adversary or dying? None other than their
governments, and above all, in my opinion, the three great culprits, the
three rapacious eagles, the three empires, the tortuous policy of the
house of Austria, the ravenous greed of Czarism, the brutality of
Prussia. The worst enemy of each nation is not without, but within its
frontiers, and none has the courage to fight against it. It is the
monster of a hundred heads, the monster named Imperialism, the will to
pride and domination, which seeks to absorb all, or subdue all, or break
all, and will suffer no greatness except itself. For the Western nations
Prussian imperialism is the most dangerous. Its hand uplifted in menace
against Europe has forced us to join in arms against this outcome of a
military and feudal caste, which is the curse not only of the rest of
the world but also of Germany itself, whose thought it has subtly
poisoned. We must destroy this first: but not this alone; the Russian
autocracy too will have its turn. Every nation to a greater or less
extent has an imperialism of its own, and whether it be military,
financial, feudal, republican, social, or intellectual, it is always the
octopus sucking the best blood of Europe. Let the free men of all the
countries of Europe when this war is over take up again the motto of
Voltaire: "_Ecrasons l'infame!_"

When the war is over! The evil is done now, the torrent let l