great countries of the modern time except Germany. If they succeed they are safe and Germany and the world are undone; if they fail Germany is saved and the world will be at peace. If they succeed, America will fall within the menace. We and all the rest of the world must remain armed, as they will remain, and must make ready for the next step in their aggression; if they fail, the world. may unite for peace and Germany may be of the union.

Do you not now understand the new intrigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the masters of Germany do not hesitate to use any agency that promises to effect their purpose, the deceit of the nations? Their present particular aim is to deceive all those who throughout the world stand for the rights of peoples and the self-government of nations; for they see what immense strength the forces of justice and of liberalism are gathering out of this war. 'They are employing liberals in their enterprise. They are using men, in Germany and without, as their spokesmen whom they have hitherto despised and oppressed, using them for their own destruction,-socialists, the leaders of labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought to silence. Let them once succeed and these men, now their tools, will be ground to powder beneath the weight of the great military empire they will have set up; the revolutionists in Russia will be cut off from all succor or coöperation in western Europe and a counter revolution fostered and supported; Germany herself will lose her chance for freedom;. and all Europe will arm for the next, the final struggle.

The sinister intrigue is being no less actively conducted in this country than in Russia and in every country in Europe to which the agents and dupes of the Imperial German Government can get access. That government has many spokesmen here, in places high and low. They have learned discretion. They keep within the law. It is

opinion they utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of isolation 5 in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.

But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in every accent. 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 peoples' war, a war for freedom and justice and self-government amongst 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.

Which is the more democratic, universal military service or volunteer service?

What is your answer to President Wilson's question? Was it for some new purpose, or for some old familiar purpose, that our soldiers were sent across the sea in 1917?

Is the President's account of German intrigue chiefly argumentative or persuasive?

Discuss the danger of Germany's peace intrigue. What steps had been taken in America at this time to combat it?

What did President Wilson mean when he said our flag shall wear a new luster "?

PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY

September 26, 1917

THE declaration of war against Germany was passed by Congress with a vote of 461 to 56; and probably an even larger proportion of the citizens of the country was at that time in favor of resisting the Central Empires through force of arms. When the Selective Draft Law was enacted the people responded with remarkable good-will. Even in remote districts settled largely by citizens of foreign birth the burdens of military life were accepted with far less disturbance than had marked the enforcement of the draft in New York City in 1861. There was in 1917 no open resistance to the authority of the government; nevertheless there remained throughout the country numerous individual agitators of noisy dispositions and proGerman sympathies; and German propagandists were still able to arouse among pacifists, obstructionists, and some citizens of foreign birth, a babble of talk more or less seditious in its nature. Newspapers under German influence or control, abused their privilege of free speech; and by conflicting advice as well as by direct opposition, endeavored to prevent the nation from taking the speedy, vigorous, and unified action that is essential to military success.

The success of America's part in the war might have been seriously endangered had not the government and various organizations of patriotic citizens taken vigorous means to curb the action of spies and enemy agents and to impress upon pacifists the fact that it

was no time to talk of the blessings of peace when the country was at war. Citizens of foreign birth were also informed that cosmopolitan views must make way for American ideals.

When the United States first entered the Great War, much sympathy had been felt for the citizens of German birth whose friends and relatives were enrolled in the armies of the enemy. To a fault native citizens had been considerate of their feelings. As soon, however, as seditious talk, fanned by German intrigue, flared up among the foreign born population, resentment was everywhere aroused. Opposition to disloyal agitation became intense throughout the country, and organized effort was used to bring sedition to an end.

Not all German-Americans were pro-German in their sympathies. Certain Americans of German birth were conspicuous for their patriotic devotion to American institutions and for their abhorrence of the aims of Prussian autocracy. If Germany had hoped that through the use of subsidized newspapers and clandestine associations, she could array the entire American citizenship of German descent on the side of the Fatherland, she was defeated as completely as in any battle of the war. Among the first to shed their blood for America were citizens with German names.

Among men of German birth who at this time rendered conspicuous service to the nation was Otto H. Kahn. It was partly through his influence that late in 1917 practically every form of disloyal utterance was discontinued or stamped out. He had faith that an argumentative and persuasive appeal addressed directly to citizens of foreign birth who were speaking sedition or were adhering to their oath of allegiance with half-hearted loyalty would be effective both to seal their lips and to change their aims and sympathies.