I 570 
 15 
 MIS 
 opy 1 
 
 AMERICANS VISION 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 
 
 LEWIS H. MACHEN 
 
 AT THE 
 
 COUNTY FAIR 
 
 FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA 
 
 OCTOBER 4, 1917 
 
AMERICA^S VISION 
 
 AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 
 
 LEWIS H. MACHEN 
 
 AT THE 
 
 COUNTY FAIR 
 
 FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA 
 
 OCTOBER 4, 1917 
 

 
 
 Press of Harry W. Wade, Al<:xandr!a, Va. 
 
 MAY ! 1818 
 
AMERICA'S VISION 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I am grateful to Mr. Hall for the cordial terms in which he has 
 introduced me. When the President of the Fairfax Fair Associa- 
 tion, Mr. Thomas R. R. Keith, invited me to speak here today I 
 could not forego the opportunity of greeting so many citizens of 
 my native county, many of whom I have known so long and held 
 so dear. But it is no easy task to add to the address to which you 
 have just listened, in which there have been discussed with force 
 and eloquence, some of the very questions I had assigned to 
 myself. 
 
 As you are probably aware, the President of the United States 
 has designated a Council of National Defense, of which my school 
 friend, the Secretary of War, is chairman, with which are associated 
 councils of defense in all the states, the chairman of the Virginia 
 council being the distinguished Superintendent of the Virginia 
 Military Institute, General Edward W. Nichols, another active and 
 able member being your countyman, Hon. R. Walton Moore. This 
 council has created a Speaker's Bureau and designated me as chair- 
 man, for the purpose of having addresses delivered from time to 
 time throughout the State upon matters pertaining to the war and 
 its incidents. 
 
 Among the objects of these activities is the constant refresh- 
 ment of the minds of the people of the country as to the causes of 
 the war, the course and manner of its progress, as well as to the 
 means by which the people may best cooperate in this momentous 
 national enterprise. This must be my excuse for going over ground 
 with which most of 3^ou are familiar and emphasizing duties which 
 some of you have already patriotically performed. 
 
 If our city had been set on fire by a band of incendiaries, even 
 through years of labor, with huge losses of lite and property, had 
 been necessary to extinguish the flames, we would not have relaxed 
 our efforts at any stage of the conflagration to identify the criminals 
 and to fix the extent of their responsibility. So when the world 
 has been kindled into war we should not cease, even as we strive to 
 save our civilization from destruction, to search for the malefactors 
 who applied the torch and to trace the various steps by which they 
 have sought to execute their felonious designs. 
 
 A few short years ago America looked out upon a world, to all 
 appearances, in profound peace. Disquieting rumors had indeed 
 reached these shores of a European power which dreamed of 
 dominating Europe, with a view perhaps to the ultimate domination 
 of the world — an octopus, whose tentacles were being rapidly ex- 
 tended into Asia and Africa and were feeling their way surrepti- 
 tiously, toward the American continent ; a power which preached a 
 gospel of war — of calculating, ruthless and freightful war — as a 
 means of political and spiritual development ; a power which had 
 seen its rise by the exercise of the mailed fist and by a policy of 
 blood and iron and which declared these methods legitimate and 
 
praiseworthy ; a power which systematically resisted the concensus 
 of a preponderance of the civilived nations for the diminution of 
 armaments, for the arbitration of international disputes and for the 
 reign of universal peace among nations. Nevertheless, America 
 hoped these things were but the vaporings of a braggart and bully- 
 ing nation, young, vigorious and rash, which, with the advance of 
 years and in the course of the evolution of the human spirit would 
 cease its boasting prattle. 
 
 July, 1914, witnessed the awakening of the world from this 
 dream of repose and safety. The assassination of a worthless prince 
 by a still more worthless anarchist was made the pretext of certain 
 demands of a large power upon a little country which could not, 
 without suicide, have been entirely granted and which were recog- 
 nized by the diplomats of Europe and America as being a deliberate 
 scheme to force war upon the smaller country. Back of Austria- 
 Hungary's demands upon Servia was clearly seen the ominous 
 power of Germany, armed, accoutred, and provisioned — fully pre- 
 pared for war — as no other nation had been at any time in the 
 history of the world. The diplomats of the civilized nations outside 
 of the Teutonic alliance had united in praying that Austria-Hungary 
 would modify those demands within the bounds of international 
 law, or would arbitrate her contentions before proceeding to 
 hostilities. The German ambassador at Vienna, since deceased, 
 openly encouraged the Austrian government to refuse to take any 
 step that would encourage the friends of peace. Then the same 
 diplomats united in the request of the German government that 
 its influence be exerted upon Austria to find some peaceful mode 
 of adjusting its grievance. No reply was made to that request, but 
 Germany continued to exchange diplomatic notes with Austria, 
 which have never been published and Avhich the world is justified 
 in believing would prove beyond a doubt that Austria, in deliber- 
 ately breaking the peace of Europe, Avas acting under the coercion 
 of her dominant ally. 
 
 Thus the world stood aghast at seeing the chariot of the modern 
 Mars, aflame with all the fires of war, start in the direction of 
 France — a country which had not been involved in the quarrel ; 
 against which no conceivable grievance could have existed upon 
 the part of Germany, except that which a robber nation might feel 
 against a nation she had robbed ; a land just recovered from a war 
 forced upon her by this same people, who had despoiled her of two 
 of her most beautiful provinces, subjected her to a humiliating 
 defeat and wrung from her a huge indemnity. Against this country, 
 lying in the sunshine of peace and happiness — against this people, 
 brilliant, liberty loving, and patriotic beyond the apparent limita- 
 lions of mortal nature, was war, most cruel, most barbarous, most 
 deliberate and unjustified, hurled by a fighting machine that 
 accounted itself, and was by the world accounted, irresistible. 
 
 Worse still, this infamous attack was made through the little 
 duchy of Luxemburg, whose neutrality Germany had guaranteed, 
 and through the small country of Belgium, not one-tenth her size 
 
and not one-twentieth her strength in military preparation, whose 
 neutrality Germany had also bound herself in honor to respect, if 
 honor ever could bind those who deliberately embarked upon an 
 enterprise of murder and plunder. 
 
 Then it was that America beheld a sight which thrilled her 
 heart, as the hearts of children are thrilled by the story of Horatius 
 at the Tiberian Bridge, or of Leonidas at the pass of Thermopylae. 
 The German Chancellor had confessed to the members of the 
 Reichstag that Belgium had been invaded in defiance of inter- 
 national law and in the execution of a great wrong. The German 
 government had made a demand upon the Belgian king and govern- 
 ment to submit to the passage of the German army, thereby secur- 
 ing to Be'gi- m safety during the war and probably an advantageous 
 a'^iance afterwards, while resistance on the other hand, inevitably 
 meant being crushed beneath the iron heel of the invader. Twelve 
 hours were given for reply. The king and council met in solemn 
 conclave in the darkness of night. There were no discussions, no 
 hesitation, no counting of cost, but a prompt refusal of the humil- 
 iating demands. Had Belgium at that moment been ruled by 
 cowards, civilization might have been set back a century ; but 
 Belgium had for a king a noble and courageous spirit, who even 
 in these days of democratic advance has half redeemed the dying 
 trade of kingship; who thought only of his country's honor and 
 of her duty to the world in its most awful crisis. 
 
 Then began that heroic resistance with a handful of devoted 
 men against a mammoth and ruthless horde who plundered, burned 
 and m.assacred the helpless inhabitants, sparing neither women 
 nor children, nor the aged nor the sick, causing the world to 
 shudder at its inhumanity, at its calculated and official fiendishness, 
 making the name of Germans a worse reproach than fifteen hundred 
 years of execration have visited upon the memory of the Huns of 
 Attila. 
 
 Schools, colleges, universities, catherals, towns, cities, hovels 
 of the poor, palaces of the rich, all were fed to the flames ; but ever 
 the hearts of the Belgian people remained true, and for that the 
 name of Be'gium will live in history as a beacon light, which for 
 a whole millennium will guide all people who wish to walk in the 
 ways of imperishable honor. 
 
 The blond beast, with savage fury, hacked his murderous way 
 through this innocent country. Liege, Louvaine, Brussels, yielded 
 to such bombardment as had never fallen upon the earth before, 
 and all the while the forces of France were gathering from the 
 quiet villages and busy cities, the peaceful vine-clad hills and vales, 
 ready and even anxious to give their lives to preserve their beautiful 
 France — "La Belle France." 
 
 Not all the decisive battles of history, not Marathon nor Tours, 
 nor Hastings, nor Agincourt, nor Yorktown, nor Waterloo, nor 
 Gettysburg, nor all of them together, perhaps, can equal the battle 
 of the Marne in value to civilization, when the barbarous Teutons 
 were turned back from well nigh the gates of Paris, through the 
 
dauntless valor of the French citizen soldier, by the matchless 
 genius of the republican soldier, Joffre. 
 
 And so America saw the opposing hosts settle down upon 
 the western front in two of the longest and strongest battle lines 
 in history, wearing each other away by years of ceaseless attack 
 and counter attack, by artillery beyond computation, by incalcu- 
 able money expense, by mines extending miles under the earth, 
 by airplanes hurling missiles from unimagined altitudes — a monot- 
 ony of slaughter, of agony, of desperate courage, but a practical 
 deadlock, broken only by the fierce but futile attack of the Teutons 
 upon Verdun and by the marvelous British thrusts at the Somme. 
 Great Britain, at the outset sent her first gallant hundred 
 thousand, most of them, alas ! to perish, and gathered from her over- 
 sea empires of Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand and South 
 Africa, her thousands who have fought with emulating valor to 
 conquer the arch enemy of the mother country. 
 
 America could not be unaware that Germany was running 
 counter to the humane instincts of the world in being the first to 
 use poisonous gasses and liquid fire; the first to drop missies from 
 aeroplanes and zeppelins upon hospitals and schoolhouses and to 
 slaughter wholesale aged persons and infants. Surely, it is impos- 
 sible to call these things brutal without insulting the brutes of the 
 jungles, which do not kill through wanton love of bloodshed. 
 
 America saw with surprise, which gradually deepened into re- 
 sentment, the virtual enslavement of the conquered peoples, the 
 deportation of Poles, Belgians, and French into Germany by the 
 thousands, and more especially the tearing from their homes and 
 communities of women and young girls with possibilities at which 
 all civilized men were shocked. Oh, Kultur, surely this was your 
 crowning infamy ! The slaughter of prisoners, the massacre of 
 civilians, the dispatching of defenseless women, the firing upon 
 the hospitals and ambulances of the Red Cross, the sinking of 
 hospital ships under safe conduct from the German government, 
 containing grain for the starving Belgians, the mutilation of little 
 children — all of these charges and others no less criminal, substan- 
 tiated by German evidence, will stand forever in the indictment 
 against the Hohenzollerns ; but this ofifense against womanhood can 
 be punished adequately only by the trial, conviction and execution, 
 according to the forms of law, of those guilty of this capital crime. 
 How else may the world deal with fiends who stand charged with 
 the systematic and official debauchery of their own women? 
 
 America was not blind to the fact that Germany's coalition 
 with Turkey could scarcely fail to bring into the war features of 
 extraordinary cruelty, yet few were prepared for the horrors of the 
 Armenian massacres, carried out with fiendish thoroughness and 
 stimulated by the hatred of Christianity, resulting in the slaughter 
 of whole communities of young and the old, of the sick and the 
 crippled, of women and little children, by the hundreds of thou- 
 sands, and the deportation of young Christian girls into Turkish 
 harems. German witnesses have described the almost unimadn- 
 
able horrors of the practical destruction of milHoiis of Armenian 
 people. It may be true, or not, that these frightful acts were insti- 
 gated and encouraged by German officers, with the approval of the 
 German government ; but none can deny that one word from the 
 Emperor of Germany would have prevented the persecution, or 
 would have stopped it at any hour of its progress. Therefore, at 
 the royal feet of William Hohenzollern will be laid this crime with- 
 out equal since Nero and Caligula bathed Rome in blood. 
 
 When America learned that the warfare was to be waged in part 
 rpon the sea she took it for granted that Germany's navy would be 
 I>rought out to fight her enemies in open battle, or if submarines 
 were used, they would be directed against ships of war in accordance 
 with international law and the dictates of humanity ; but when the 
 frightfulness of the German government was extended from the 
 land to the sea, when unarmed merchantmen and passenger vessels 
 were sunk by German submarines indiscriminately and without 
 warning, when innocent passengers, citizens of neutral countries, 
 without regard to age or sex, were hurled into the surging ocean to 
 almost certain death, America's amazement grew to indignation. 
 When more than one thousand passengers, including over a hundred 
 American citizens, some of whom were women and children, were 
 sent to their watery graves from the decks of the stately Lusitania, 
 which should have been as safe for them as their own homes, the 
 indignation of America rose to hot and passionate anger that any 
 government professing to be civilized should practice murder so 
 ruthless and so infernal. A prompt apology and a disavowment at 
 that time alone prevented hostilities between the two countries ; but 
 later America was dumbfounded at the news that the captain of the 
 submarine that performed this dastardly deed had been decorated by 
 the Kaiser, posing as the anointed agent of the Almighty. 
 
 Then followed the sinking of a dozen neutral ships carrying 
 citizens of the United States, including the Sussex, with the loss of 
 more than a score of American lives. Sternly was the German 
 government called to account, and quickly was amendment made as 
 far as possible, accompanied by assurance that the laws of war and 
 of humanity, as interpreted by the Government of the United States, 
 should be obeyed in the subsequent submarine campaign. Gradu- 
 ally America settled into a serene hope that no more offense would 
 be given, but at the worst there would be nothing more serious than 
 a strained neutrality. 
 
 Another chapter in this international tragedy was the unearth- 
 ing of far-reaching conspiracies to dynamite munition plants in this 
 country, and these were traced to the officials of the central powers 
 who, through professing feelings of friendship and enjoying 
 America's hospitality, were practicing deceit and treachery, betray- 
 ing confidence, abusing privilege and plotting anarchy, all at the 
 direction of the Imperial Government, which meanwhile, continued 
 to prate of good faith, honor and divine guidance. 
 
 Most astounding, most unbelievable, and most Satanic of all 
 was the plot of Zimmerman, under the direction of the German 
 
government, to foment an attack upon the United States by the 
 de facto Mexican Government, promising aid and comfort and 
 money without measure and five American States as a reward to 
 promote an invasion of the United States from the south in con- 
 junction with Japan, all planned and urged at a time when the 
 Teutonic diplomats in Washington were telling America that Ger- 
 many and Austria were her friends. 
 
 Finally, as a virtual declaration of war came the announcement 
 from the imperial throne that Germany would not keep her promise 
 to cease murdering Americans upon the high seas, but would close 
 the highways of the world which had been open since the days of 
 piracy. Then it was that the patience of the most patient man in 
 world broke down beneath a mountain of German perfidy and men- 
 dacity, and our President summoned in joint session the represent- 
 atives of the people in Congress assembled, laid before them in 
 words that will live while our language lives the hideous catalogue 
 of crimes which Germany had committed, and advised the recog- 
 nition of a state of war. Quickly came the response of Congress, 
 echoing the determination of the people of America to throw in 
 their fortunes with the great free peoples who were resisting this 
 international outlaw, whose destruction alone could afford reason- 
 able security to the peace of the world. 
 
 With a rapidity unequaled in history, a great, peaceable, 
 liberty-loving nation called to her defense its young men of every 
 race and class, whether rich or poor, whatever their color, creed or 
 ancestry, into one vast democratic army to assist the allies, who by 
 splendid devotion and heroic sacrifices had stemmed the torrent 
 of Teutonic barbarism that threatened to overrun the world. 
 
 America goes with solemn joy to the rescue of little Belgium, 
 so crushed, m.angled, and desolate in body, so purified with the 
 spirit of unquenchable honor; to the help of France, light-hearted 
 and happy in peace, determined and courageous in war, striving to 
 save herself from utter destruction : to the help of Italy full of 
 romantic fires, drawn from her sunny skies and from the blue waters 
 of the Mediterranean ; to the help of Russia, gigantic and chaotic, 
 dimly conscious of great possibilities, but in the throes of internal 
 adjustment whose end no man can see; to the help of tiny Servia, 
 the innocent occasion of the great world convulsion, stricken by 
 pestilence and troubled by barbarous hordes ; to the help of Greece, 
 the birthplace of democracy, with a history once glorious and later 
 checked by failures, handicapped by the domination of stronger 
 powers, now at last, with the support of the allies, throwing off her 
 treacherous king and about to enjoy the freedom of which Byron 
 sang; to the help of Britain, our old mother, that was once a tyran- 
 nical parent, from whose apron strings she felt compelled to break 
 away, and of her dominions upon which the sun never sets, all 
 administered in the interest of justice and peace, of growth in know- 
 ledge and political development. 
 
 America welcomes into the broad brotherhood of those who 
 fight for freedom, Japan, China. Siam. and all other nations of the 
 
Orient that may hear the call of world service; Cuba and all the 
 Latin-American countries, which may resent the persecution of 
 their kindred across the sea. America has appealed to the oppresed 
 and the imperiled in all the earth, aye, even to the dumb, driven 
 Teutons themselves, to make common cause against the bloated 
 Prussian despots at Berlin. 
 
 To this league of honor, so rapidly enlarging, does America 
 join her highest hopes and interests. All members have for their 
 purpose the permanent overthrow of tyranny built upon the wor- 
 ship of force and in its place the enthronement of justice ; the estab- 
 lishment of reason in the place of war; of honest dealing in the place 
 of international scoundrelism ; of knowledge in the place of sup- 
 pression of truth ; of the gospel of good will in the place of hymns 
 of hate, and of the forces that work for the salvation of the race 
 in the place of those which, if unrestrained, will lead inevitably 
 to its destruction. 
 
 Not at small cost does America enter this war, with those 
 making she has nothing to do, from whose issues she has nothing to 
 gain, except freedom from the common peril. Billions of dollars 
 have been poured and other billions will be poured into this con- 
 suming stream of world strife. Many thousands of our brave troops 
 are now in France. Other thousands will follow soon. Two million 
 Americans before many months will be under arms and ready to 
 take their places with the tattered remnants of our European allies 
 who, for three long years have presented their bodies to block the 
 ])aths of the destroyer. How many of them will return safe and 
 sound to us, who can say? 
 
 We must sufifer great loss ; pass through valleys of deep 
 shadow ; all of us must mourn ; but it will be for the success of the 
 noblest cause for which brave men and women in all the ages 
 have grieved and fought and died. 
 
 For our enemies there must be but one result, unconditional 
 surrender! When victory comes to the allies, America will hold 
 her head erect among the nations, as she could not have done if 
 she had refused to fight : her figure will stand out against the skies 
 of time as the rescuer of all the ideals, hopes and ethical purposes 
 according to which, and for whose promotion, she was born and has 
 grown into her present commanding stature. 
 
 In this supreme crisis America expects every man, woman and 
 child to do his duty. The stress of this conflict calls for the ex- 
 penditure of every ounce of the nation's energy. There must be no 
 slackers, military or civil. If one or two per cent of our population 
 are to go abroad and give their whole time and risk limb and life, 
 the other ninety-eight or ninety-nine per cent who stay at home 
 must give a part of their time and thought, a part of their comfort 
 and money, to make efTective the courage and the sacrifice of our 
 fighting forces and to sustain the government that directs their 
 activities. Everyone must contribute, without stint and without 
 complaint, freely out of his recources to make this republic the 
 decisive force in the world struggle. 
 
!0 
 
 The money expense of this national enterprise will be forty 
 or fifty million dollars a day, of which the normal national revenue 
 will be but a tithe. Extraordinary taxation has been provided for, 
 levied as equitably as possible. While flesh and blood is being 
 conscripted no one should object to the conscription of wealth, of 
 competence, or even of a part of the pittance of the poor. Indi- 
 vidual economy to the point of self-denial must be universal. The 
 greed that would seek to levy private exortion must be curbed 
 with all the power of the national and state governments. The 
 legitimate exactions of this time of economic crisis will be suffici- 
 ently trying. 
 
 The heavy financial demands upon the Federal treasury cannot 
 be met by this present generation. Money must be borrowed from 
 the accumulations and incomes of the people, upon bonds to be 
 lic|uidated, for the most part by generations to come, who will also 
 reap the fruits of the inestimable sacrifices of this time. One liberty 
 loan has been successfully floated and another has been launched. 
 There will be other bond issues — Victory bonds. Peace bonds, and 
 other kinds. Every man, and woman whose resources are more 
 than sufficient to supply food, clothing and shelter, should purchase 
 one or more of these bonds, primarily for patriotic purposes, but 
 also to promote individual thrift and the habit of investment, which 
 may curb the American vice of extravagance. They are securities 
 of the richest nation of the globe, bearing fair rates of interest, 
 and will never be worth less than on the day of the issue. They 
 will be legacies that any man might be proud to hand down to his 
 children. 
 
 There must be no failure of any one of these issues. It would 
 discourage the government, it would dishearten the people, it would 
 disappoint our allies, above all it would arouse the glee and derision 
 of our enemies, who have already pretended to mock America's 
 military and financial strength. 
 
 For more than half a century it has been the policy of this 
 government to entrust the care of the sick and the wounded among 
 the sailors and soldiers to the ministration of the Red Cross Society, 
 thus relieving the government of huge expense and of the multi- 
 jarious details of medical and surgical administration. It gives the 
 people an opportunity to assist directly in the humane endeavor 
 to repair the cruel breakage of war ; to fit again for the fighting line 
 thousands who would be lost to the man power of the army and 
 for doing the world's work after the war. 
 
 Who can value the alleviation of human suffering? Who that 
 has ever experienced the merciful anodyne of medical or surgical 
 relief, or has watched its blessings brought to assuage the agonies 
 of a loved one, could balance such a boon in the scales with mere 
 money? With what conscience may we withhold a dollar that can 
 be spared, if it might save a life, or even an hour of sufi^ering, to 
 one of our country's brave defenders — perhaps of one bound to us 
 by ties of friendship or of blood? 
 
 Other means there are for promoting the comfort of our 
 
II 
 
 soldiers. The countless women who are sewing and knitting to 
 make articles to protect the men from cold ; those who are sending 
 tobacco and other luxuries to the men at the front; all who are 
 taking thought and pains for the benefit of our troops are making 
 lighter the task of winning against a foe that omits nothing that 
 works for efficiency in their fighters. 
 
 We must not forget that our soldiers have minds as well as 
 bodies. They need literature for recreation and entertainment in 
 the camps and at the front, and for solace in the hospitals and 
 during their convalescence. They need scientific books and maga- 
 zines to keep them abreast of the most advanced knowledge of 
 gunnery, trench warfare, aviation, mechanics of all kinds, chemistry 
 and a hundred other branches which this war of machines makes 
 necessary for a soldier to know for purposes of attack and defense. 
 Books on religion and philosophy, too, are in demand for men of 
 serious minds who are engaged in a serious business, which they 
 may not survive. Some books — chiefly fiction of the chaft'y sort — 
 are being donated, but most of the literature must be carefully 
 selected by experts and bought. Buildings must be erected and 
 trained librarians put in charge. A War Library Council, appointed 
 by the Secretary of War, and a committee of the American Library 
 Association have undertaken to raise a million dollars for this 
 work, of which Virginia's share is twenty-five thousand dollars. 
 There is service for all. Whoever makes an extra eftort to increase 
 or conserve the nation's food, or supply of any other necessary 
 article, is contributing to the nation's final victory. 
 
 Above all, it must be remembered that our fighting men have 
 souls, as well as bodies and minds, and should be provided with 
 means of religious satisfaction and growth, according to their re- 
 .^pective beliefs. All of the world's great religious bodies have 
 organizations working for these ends and appealing for funds to 
 assist the supreme business of supplying our soldiers with religious 
 influences and moral safeguards against vice more deadly than the 
 artillery of the enemy. Most of the men will come back to us after 
 the war and it is to our interest that they should come morally 
 strong and clean as well as physically sound. There is the duty 
 also of maintaining a government and a society worth fighting for 
 and which our victorious soldiers will be proud to own upon their 
 return. We must guard against the social and moral deterioration 
 i.t home, which every era of warfare induces, for we must be victors 
 over ourselves, as well as over our enemies. 
 
 When the noise of battle shall have been silenced, when the 
 nations shall have gathered to dictate terms of peace to an enemy 
 once proud, but who shall then have been beaten, abased and made 
 submissive, America will sit at the council table and see to the 
 righting of the old wrongs and to the freeing of nations long held 
 in political bondage. Might shall no longer make right in inter- 
 national affairs. Little nations shall have the privilege of choosing 
 their own forms of government and of working out their own evolu- 
 tion toward freedom, without the compulsion of giant neighbors. 
 
12 
 
 For three centuries America has been the refuge of the oppressed 
 people of every clime, who have come in millions across the seas 
 to taste of freedom under the stars and stripes. Now America her- 
 self will cross the seas, carrying freedom to be enjoyed by oppressed 
 nations under their own flags. 
 
 America, we may believe, has a vision which poets and prophets 
 have had of a "parliament of men, a confederation of the world", 
 in which national grievances may be aired, and all questions 
 incapable of diplomatic adjustment, not excluding those of safety, 
 honor and vital interest, may be heard and decided by an inter- 
 national tribunal, whose judgment may be enforced by an inter- 
 national army and navy — even as a combination of free peoples 
 of today is seeking to enforce the laws of humanity and justice 
 against the central powers. Perhaps such a tribunal would make 
 mistakes, perhaps such a force would be guilty of occasional wrong ; 
 but at their worst they could not work a fraction of the evil wrought 
 by unrestrained nationalism. This war has done more damage 
 than all the private crimes in history ; than all the ruin attempted 
 by red-eyed anarchists since the world begun. No evils which 
 could come upon the earth through the possibly mistaken judg- 
 ments of an international tribunal, or through the occasional un- 
 wise use of the forces at its command, could compare with the 
 unspeakable agony, the boundless destruction, the incalculable 
 wrongs which have resulted from the hideous doctrine that every 
 nation has the right to assassinate another nation at will. No state 
 of the American union has such a right, nor has any state of a 
 single empire or federation on the globe, nor has any small nation. 
 Why, then, should the large nations be permitted to exercise it? 
 The people of the world ought not to sit again under the crushing 
 weight of growing armaments and in the terrifying shadow of the 
 threat of imminent war. The days of international terrorism, 
 please God, are gone forever. 
 
 In America's heart is no despair, but high hope, strong courage, 
 and a reliance upon the Source of all national spiritual strength. 
 America's eye has scanned the pages of history and seen the 
 progress of the world from century to century — with little halting, 
 with few backward steps — from ignorance toward knowledge, from 
 vice toward virtue, from superstition toward true religion, from 
 mental and physical slavery toward freedom, and so learns faith 
 for the future. 
 
 America's vision is at last a world chastened out of its indif- 
 ference and folly, purified by suffering, strong in the maintenance 
 of order and righteousness — a world not only safe for democracy, 
 but safe for all that is pure and high and noble in the human race, 
 a world worthy to be a footstool for the God of Justice and of Truth, 
 of Freedom and of Peace. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 018 465 836 7 #