he wounded are buried, and so it is in all
the communities in the country which are not occupied by the Germans. In
every town, village, home, and heart the national tribulations have
their local echo.

If all France were victim of a catastrophe of nature, an earthquake, a
conflagration, or a flood, the country would be crushed; but, no, the
contrary is now true, for the present catastrophe has been brought about
by an evil will and each one comprehends that this will, if left free to
act, will continue to do evil until it has been crushed. We have neither
the time nor the wish to complain; we fight. * * *

The people, all those who are now devoted to my policy, to our policy,
remain more faithful than ever. They keep silent awaiting the end of the
war and knowing well that in fact it is not so much a question of
Germany as of German reaction, German imperialism, and German
militarism. They know also that if the German reaction might have been
crushed sooner, the war would not have broken out. Thus, far from being
blind, public opinion is alive to the truth. The grandeur, and to speak
the whole truth, alas, the beauty of the atrocious war is that it is a
war of liberation. * * *

It is impossible that the New World should remain a simple spectator
before the gigantic struggle which is progressing in Europe. I do not
ask that the New World intervene by armed force, but that it shall not
conceal its opinion, its aversion for that horror which is called
reaction and which truly is only death; that it shall not conceal its
indignation for the abominable calculation of that reaction which is
incapable of comprehending anything of the life, the work, the science
and the art of human genius. I ask that the New World shall not remain
skeptical before the senile attacks of those armies which respect
nothing, neither women, children, old men, unfortified cities, museums,
nor cathedrals. * * *

It is impossible that the free United States, born out of the sacred
struggle against European domination, enlarged, enriched, and ennobled
by that struggle, and now in the front rank among nations as the fruit
of that struggle, should hesitate between revolution and reaction,
between right and conquest, between peace and war.

Americans are too generous to hesitate, too wise, also, for Prussian
reaction is cracking and is going to crumble; even Americans of German
origin would be acting against their own fatherland if they, by their