stood.

It is the purpose of a common determination to fight and to bear and
to dare everything and never to cease nor rest until the accursed
thing which has brought upon the world the unutterable calamity, the
devil's visitation of this appalling war, is destroyed beyond all
possibility of resurrection.

That accursed thing is not a nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit
which has made the government possessed by it and executing its
abhorrent and bloody bidding an abomination in the sight of God and
men.

What we are now contending for by the side of the splendidly brave and
sorely tried Allied Nations, after infinite forbearance, after delay
which many of us found it hard to bear, are the things which are
amongst the highest and most cherished that the civilized world has
attained through the toil, sacrifices and suffering of its best in the
course of many centuries.

They are the things without which darkness would fall upon hope, and
life would become intolerable.

They are the things of humanity, liberty, justice and mercy, for which
the best men amongst all the nations--including the German
nation--have fought and bled these many generations past, which were
the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of others who
had made the name of Germany great and beloved until Prussianism came
to make its deeds a byword and a hissing.

This appalling conflict which has been drenching the world with blood
is not a mere fight of one or more peoples against one or more other
peoples.

It goes far deeper. It challenges the soul and conscience of the
world. It transcends vastly the bounds of racial allegiance. It is
ethically fundamental.

In determining one's attitude towards it, the time has gone by--if it
ever was--when race and blood and inherited affiliations were
permitted to count.

A century and a half ago Americans of English birth rose to free this
country from the oppression of the rulers of England. To-day Americans
of German birth are called upon to rise, together with their
fellow-citizens of all races, to free not only this country but the
whole world from the oppression of the rulers of Germany, an
oppression far less capable of being endured and of far graver
portent.

Speaking as one born of German parents, I do not hesitate to state it
as my deep conviction that the greatest service which men of German
birth or antecedents can render to the country of their origin is
this: To procl