It is only
friends and partisans of the German Government
whom we have already identified who utter these
thinly disguised disloyalties. The facts are
patent to all the world, and nowhere are they more
plainly seen than in the United States, where we
are accustomed to deal with facts and not with
sophistries; and the great fact that stands out
above all the rest is that this is a people's war,
a war for freedom and justice and self-government
among all the nations of the world, a war to make
the world safe for the peoples who live upon it
and have made it their own, the German people
themselves included; and that with us rests the
choice to break through all these hypocrisies and
patent cheats and masks of brute force and help
set the world free, or else stand aside and let it
be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of
arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted
masters, by the nation which can maintain the
biggest armies and the most irresistible
armaments--a power to which the world has afforded
no parallel and in the face of which political
freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it.
Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to
stand in our way in this day of high resolution
when every principle we hold dearest is to be
vindicated and made secure for the salvation of
the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of
history, and our flag shall wear a new luster.
Once more we shall make good with our lives and
fortunes the great faith to which we were born,
and a new glory shall shine in the face of our
people.

The war was now on. All the latent power of the nation of every kind was
to be used in every way to help drive the German menace from the world.
A visit to the new world by Marshal Joffre, Viviani, Lord Asquith and
others helped to accelerate matters. No one will know until the war is
ended just what took place in the councils between these great men of
the old world and the leaders of the new.

Everyone does know, however, the instantaneous activity and enthusiasm
which seized with compelling force upon the people