y and fellow-citizens, however fully and
unreservedly, if we do it in resigned and oppressed silence. I believe
we should speak out. We must give voice to our unflinching loyalty and
to our deep conviction of the justice of America's cause.

It is hard indeed for us to arraign publicly the country from which
we sprang and to turn against our own kith and kin, however deep our
detestation of their wrongdoing under the spiritual and actual sway of
the Prussian caste and however sincere our allegiance to America. It
will be easily understood by all fair-minded men that right-thinking
persons will shrink from so speaking and acting as to lay themselves
open to the accusation of being time-servers or popularity seekers,
and to expose their motives to misconstruction.

These scruples are honourable, and they are felt by many whose
patriotic loyalty and devotion are beyond all question. But, to my
thinking, they are stamped out by the iron tread of the times.

I believe that we should speak out, we Americans of German birth,
because we have been misrepresented to our fellow-citizens and to the
world by a small minority of professional spokesmen and pernicious
agitators, by no means all of German birth.

We must protect the German name, as far as it is in our keeping, in
America, if, alas, we cannot protect it elsewhere.

It has always, and rightly, been an honoured name here, and those who
bore it have ever done their full share for the common weal, in the
works of peace no less than in every crisis of the Nation's history.
Let us do what in us lies to preserve the names we bear in honour and
good standing amongst our fellow-citizens.

I believe that we should speak out, because our voices may reach the
ear and the conscience of the German people when no other voices can,
and because they _will_ reach the ear of its rulers. These, I know,
counted upon the moral, if not the actual, support of the German-born
in America to the extent, at least, of preventing our joining the war,
and now, when we have joined, they count upon that support to agitate
for an inconclusive and unrighteous peace.

I believe that we should speak out to convince our native-born
fellow-citizens that our fundamental conceptions of right and wrong
are like theirs, that _the taint is not in the German blood, but in
the system of rulership_, that we are with them and of them
wholeheartedly, single-mindedly and unreservedly; because if we failed
in con