the American
girl! Yet why would not the killing of a French sister under the Red
Cross be just as wicked?

Here I break off--uncompleted--my narration of the evil choice of war
and the crimes in the conduct of war which have made the name of Germany
abhorred.

The Allies, from the beginning, have pleaded for peace and fought for
peace. America, obeying her conscience, has joined them in the conflict.

But what do we mean now by peace? We mean more than a mere cessation of
hostilities. We mean that the burglar shall give back all that he has
grabbed. We mean that the marauder shall make good all the damage that
he has done. We mean that there shall be an open league of free
democratic states, great and small, to guard against the recurrence of
such a bloody calamity as the autocratic, militaristic Potsdam gang
precipitated upon the world in 1914.

In the next chapter I shall discuss briefly the practical significance
of this kind of peace and the absolute preconditions which must be
realized before any conference on the subject will be profitable or even
safe.

The duty of the present is to fight on beside France, Great Britain,
Italy, Belgium, Servia, Roumania, and, we hope, Russia, "to bring the
Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war."

To talk of any other course is treason, not only to our country but to
the cause of true Peace.

Chapter VII

PAX HUMANA

I

The trouble with the ordinary or garden variety of pacifist is that he
has a merely negative idea of peace.

The true idea of peace is positive, constructive, forward-looking. It is
not content with a mere cessation of hostilities at any particular
period of the world's history. It aims at the establishment of reason
and justice as the rule of the world's life. It proposes to find the
basis of this establishment in the freely expressed will of the peoples
of the world.

The men and women who do the world's work are the sovereigns who must
guarantee this real peace of the world.

That is what we are fighting for. Not pax Romana, nor pax Germanica, nor
pax Britannica, but pax Humana--a peace which will bring a positive
benefit to all the tribes of humanity.

Since the choice by the Imperial German Government, in August, 1914, of
war as the means of settling international disputes, the Allies have
been fighting against that choice and its bloody consequences. Every one
of them--Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia--had