t>H 
 
 >t>J3 
 
Utf 
 
THE MENACE 
 
 OF A 
 
 PREMATURE PEACE 
 
 oAN qADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 William Howard Taft 
 
 w 
 Former President of the United States 
 
 Delivered at 
 
 MONTREAL, CANADA 
 
 September Twenty-sixth 
 Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen 
 
 Published by the 
 
 LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 
 
 70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
 
TRANSFERRED FEOM 
 
 
I] 6 13 
 
 THE MENACE OF A PREMATURE PEACE 
 
 By William Howard Taft 
 
 ENGLAND, France, Russia, Italy, and now the United States, as 
 allies, are engaged in the greatest war of history to secure 
 permanent world peace. With twenty or more millions of men 
 at the colors, with the losses in dead, wounded and captured of more 
 than twenty-five per cent., with debts piling mountain-high and reaching 
 many, many billions, they are fighting for a definite purpose, and that 
 is the defeat of German militarism. If the Prussian military caste 
 retains its power to control the military and foreign policy of Germany 
 after the war, peace will not be permanent, and war will begin again 
 when the chauvinistic advisors of the Hohenzollern dynasty deem a 
 conquest and victory possible. 
 
 The Allies have made a stupendous effort and have strained their 
 utmost capacity. Unready for the war, they have concentrated their 
 energy in preparation. In this important respect they have defeated 
 the plan of Germany "in shining armor" to crush her enemies in their 
 unreadiness. 
 
 But the war has not been won. Germany is in possession of 
 Belgium and part of northern France. She holds Servia and Roumania, 
 Poland and the Baltic Provinces of Russia. Peace now, even though 
 it be made on the basis of the restoration of the status quo, "without 
 indemnities and without annexations," would be a failure to achieve the 
 great purpose for which the Allies have made heartrending sacrifice. 
 Armaments would continue for the next war, and this war would have 
 been fought in vain. The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of 
 billions' worth of the product of men's labor, would be wasted. 
 
 He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not see the 
 stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German military 
 autocracy still to control the destinies of all of us as to peace or war. 
 Those who favor permanent world peace must oppose with might and 
 main the proposals for peace at this juncture in the war, whether made 
 in socialistic councils, in pro-German conferences, or by Pope Benedict. 
 
4 The Menace of a Premature Peace 
 
 That the Pontiff of the greatest Christian Church should wish to bring 
 to an end a war in which millions of its communion are on both sides, 
 is to be expected. That he should preserve a difficult neutrality is also 
 natural. That his high purpose is to save the world from further 
 suffering goes without saying. But the present is not the opportunity 
 of an intervening peacemaker who must assume that compromise is 
 possible. 
 
 The Allies are fighting for a principle the mainte- 
 
 NO TIME FOR , ... , ~ . + t_ r + r - . ... .. 
 
 „ ^ m »»„ T , nance of which affects the future of civilization. 
 
 COMPROMISE . 
 
 If they do not achieve it they have sacrificed 
 
 the flower of their youth and mortgaged their future for a century, and 
 all for nothing. This is not a war in which the stake is territory or 
 the sphere of influence of one nation over another. The Allies cannot 
 concede peace until they conquer it. When they do so, it will be 
 permanent. Otherwise they fail. 
 
 There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which 
 President Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring about 
 a peace that helped the parties to a settlement. The principle at stake 
 and the power and territory were of such a character that a settlement 
 might be made substantially permanent. But the present issue is like 
 that in our Civil War, which was whether the Union was to be preserved 
 and the cancer of slavery was to be cut out. Peace proposals to 
 President Lincoln were quite as numerous as those of to-day, and were 
 moved by quite as high motives. But there was no compromise possi- 
 ble. Either slavery and disunion lost or won. So to-day the great moral 
 object of the war must be achieved or defeated. 
 
 An organization of citizens in the United States, 
 
 T U 17 I CA/^IT17 Trf"! 
 
 „,„,„„ known as the League to Enforce Peace, has been 
 
 ENFORCE PEACE . & . '. 
 
 active for two years past in promoting its propa- 
 ganda. There is a similar association in England. In that League are 
 many persons who for years urged the settlement of all international 
 controversies by arbitration or judicial decision. The vortex of death 
 and destruction for the peoples of the world, which the breaking out of 
 the war portended, roused these peace lovers and promoters to devise 
 a plan for avoiding war after this should end. 
 
 The plan is a simple one. It looks to a league of all nations 
 in which all agree, first, that legal international controversies shall be 
 heard and decided by a Court; second, that controversies not to be 
 settled on principles of law shall be submitted to a Commission of 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 5 
 
 Conciliation for recommendation of a settlement ; third, that the united 
 forces of the nations of the League shall resist any nation beginning 
 war before the quarrel has been submitted to one tribunal or the other, 
 and been decided. The American League has not thought it wise to 
 attempt to enforce the judgment or the settlement recommended. Its 
 scheme is only to restrain the contending parties from resorting to 
 war until after the peaceable procedure has been had and the decision 
 rendered. The promoters of the League believe that the delay and 
 deliberation arising from this enforced peaceable procedure before a 
 war can be begun will prevent most wars, and that it is wiser not to 
 attempt too much, lest the nations decline to restrain their freedom 
 of action so much. The English plan is more ambitious in providing 
 that if the council of nations so decide they must enforce the judgment 
 or settlement. 
 
 Whatever the detailed stipulations of such a league, however, its 
 operation and success must depend on the obligations of the treaty 
 stipulations. Unless their binding effect is recognized by the nations 
 as a sacred principle, the stipulations of the league will be "writ in 
 water." The revelations and disclosures of this war will satisfy the 
 members of the league that as long as the present military caste 
 controls the German military and foreign policy, the league is im- 
 practicable, and would not be worth the parchment on which its 
 obligations would be recorded. Why have they reached this conclusion? 
 Why, as citizens of the United States, and as citizens of the world 
 anxious to promote peace, do they feel that any proposal of peace in 
 the present situation would defeat permanent world peace, and should 
 be opposed by them with all the energy they can command? The 
 answer to this question must be found in the causes of this war and 
 the revelations it has made of Germany's purpose, stripped of confusing 
 pretence and naked for the whole world to see. 
 
 Germany was long divided into little states, kingdoms, duchies 
 and other forms of one-man rule. She was the prey of political 
 intrigue and manipulation of other powers. All her well-wishers hoped 
 for and looked forward to her union. The Germans of yore had loved 
 freedom. We Anglo-Saxons were Germans once and our representa- 
 tive system can be traced back to institutions found first in the forests 
 of Germany. In the wars of the first Napoleon, Prussia and other 
 German states were subjected to a great humiliation. But the German 
 youth rebelled, organized themselves into military reserves, and finally 
 contributed much to the defeat of the man whose lust for universal 
 power finds its counterpart in the aim of the Hohenzollerns of today. 
 
6 The Menace op a Premature Peace 
 
 The Holy Alliance, retaining the principle of the divine right of kings, 
 and supporting it in all of Germany, left no opportunity for the free 
 exercise of political power by these liberty-loving German youth. In 
 1848, democratic revolutions occurred throughout Germany and in 
 Austria, but they were overcome. Many of the leaders came to the 
 United States and with their followers became our best adopted citizens. 
 When our Civil War came on, their hatred of slavery led them to 
 volunteer for their adopted country, and every battlefield of the war 
 was wet with German blood. 
 
 In Germany itself, however, the liberal element was 
 THE GERMAN nQt a n owe( i to work out its hopes. It had looked 
 MILITARISTIC . x , , ... , ~ ... . 
 
 POI ICY a umte( i an d liberal Germany with a government 
 
 based on the representative system. It was not 
 to be. Under the first William with his Prime Minister Bismarck, who 
 came to power in 1862, a definite plan was adopted of perfecting the 
 already well-disciplined Prussian army so that by "blood and iron" 
 the unity of Germany should be achieved. The whole Prussian nation 
 was made into an army, and it soon became a machine with a power of 
 conquest equaled by no other. The cynical, unscrupulous, but effective, 
 diplomacy of Bismarck first united Prussia with Austria to deprive 
 Denmark of Schleswig-Holstein by force, then secured a quarrel with 
 Austria over the spoils, and deprived her of all influence over the 
 German states by humiliating defeat in the six weeks war of 1866. 
 After this war, several German states were annexed forcibly to Prussia 
 and offensive and defensive alliances were made with others. 
 
 Then in 1870 the occasion was seized, when it was known that 
 France was not prepared, to strike at her. France was beaten, and 
 Alsace and Lorraine were taken from her. The German Empire was 
 established with a Prussian King at its head. France was made to 
 pay an indemnity of one billion dollars, with which the military machine 
 of Germany was strengthened and improved. The/i Germany settled 
 down to a period of peace to digest the territory which by these three 
 wars had been absorbed. Bismarck's purpose in maintaining the 
 superiority of his army was to retain what had been taken by blood 
 and iron, and at the same time by a period of prolonged peace to give 
 to Germany a full opportunity for industrial development and the self- 
 discipline necessary for the highest efficiency. 
 
 The marvelous work which the Germans have accomplished in 
 their field of industrial activity is known to all. The prosperity which 
 followed increased the population of Germany and crowded her borders. 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 7 
 
 Bismarck was dismissed by the present Emperor, but his policy of 
 maintaining the highest efficiency of the army was continued. And 
 then, as the success of the German system in the material development 
 of the Empire showed itself and became the admiration of the world, 
 the destiny of Germany grew larger in the eyes of her Emperor and 
 her people, and the blood and iron policy which had been directed first 
 to the achievement of the unity of Germany and then to the defense 
 of the German Empire in the enjoyment of what had been taken in 
 previous wars, expanded into a dream of Germanizing the world. The 
 German people were impregnated with this idea by every method of 
 official instruction. A cult of philosophy to spread the propaganda 
 developed itself in the universities and schools. The principle was that 
 the state could do no wrong, that the state was an entity that must be 
 sustained by force ; that everything else must be sacrificed to its 
 strength ; that the only sin the state could commit was neglect and 
 failure to maintain its power. 
 
 With that dogmatic logic which pleases the German mind, and 
 to which it readily adapts itself, this proposition easily led into the 
 further conclusion that there could be no international morality ; that 
 morality and its principles applied only to individuals, but that when 
 the action of the state was involved, considerations of honor, of the 
 preservation of obligations solemnly made, must yield if the interests 
 of the state required. These were the principles taught by Treitschke 
 in the University of Berlin and maintained by German economic 
 philosophers and by the representative of the military regime in 
 Bernhardi. 
 
 Bismarck had been keen enough in his diplomacy to await 
 the opportunity that events presented for seeming to be 
 forced into a war which he had long planned. This was the case with 
 Denmark. This was the case with Austria. This was the case with 
 France. German diplomacy has lost nothing of this characteristic in 
 the present war. Germany did not plan the killing of the Austrian 
 Archduke and his consort, but the minute that that presented the 
 likelihood of war, Germany accepted it as the opportunity for her to 
 strike down her neighbors, Russia and France, and to enlarge her 
 power. She gladly gave her consent to the ultimatum of Austria to 
 Servia that was sure to bring on war, and then posed as one driven into 
 war by the mobilization of Russia. 
 
 She knew that Russia was utterly unprepared. She knew that 
 France was unprepared. She knew that Great Britain was unprepared. 
 
8 The Menace of a Premature Peace 
 
 She herself was ready to the last cannon and the last reservist. There- 
 fore, when appealed to by Great Britain and by all the other Powers 
 to intervene and prevent Austria from forcing a universal war, Germany 
 declined to act. Not a telegram or communication between Germany 
 and Austria has ever been given to the public to show the slightest 
 effort to induce delay by Austria. While Germany would pose as having 
 acted only as Austria's ally and as unwilling to influence her against her 
 interest and independent judgment, the verdict of history unquestion- 
 ably will be that the war is due to Germany's failure to prevent it and 
 to her desire to accept the opportunity of the assassination of the 
 Austrian Archduke as a convenient time to begin a war she long in- 
 tended. The revelation of their unpreparedness is sufficient to show that 
 England, France and Russia did not conspire to bring the war on. On 
 the other hand, before the war began Germany had constructed a com- 
 plete system of strategic railways on her Belgian border, adapted not 
 to commercial uses, but only to the quick invasion of Belgium. 
 
 Indeed, every fact as the war has developed 
 A CLEAR CASE ( . . .. . t \, 
 
 ...,„„ „-„«- ».,», forms one more circumstance in the irrefragable 
 AGAINST GERMANY & 
 
 case against Germany as the Power responsible 
 
 for this world disaster. The preparation of fifty years, the false 
 philosophy of her destiny and of the exaltation of force, had given her 
 a yearning for conquest, for the expansion of her territory, the exten- 
 sion of her influence, and the Germanization of the world. She alone 
 is responsible for the incalculable destruction of this war. She led on 
 in the armament of the world that she might rule it. She promoted 
 therefore the armament of other nations. Her system was followed, 
 though not as effectively, by other countries in pure defense of their 
 peace and safety. 
 
 And now her Emperor, her Prussian military caste, and her 
 wonderful but blinded people, have the blood of the millions who have 
 suffered in this world catastrophe on their hands. The German military 
 doctrine, that when the interests of the state are concerned, the question 
 is one of power and force, and not of honor or obligation or moral 
 restraint, finds its most flagrant examples in Germany's conduct of 
 this war. 
 
 Her breach of a solemn obligation entered into by her and all the 
 powers of Europe, in respect to Belgium's neutrality, was its first 
 exhibition. It was followed by the well proven, deliberate plan of 
 atrocities against the men, women and children of a part of Belgium 
 in order to terrorize the rest of the population into complete submission. 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 9 
 
 It was shown in the prompt dropping of bombs on defenceless towns 
 from Zeppelins and other aircraft ; in the killing of non-combatant 
 men, women and children by the naval bombardment of unfortified 
 towns ; in the use of liquid fire and poison gases in battle. All of 
 these had been condemned as improper in declarations in the Hague 
 treaties. 
 
 ^T- n ..mT The Reptile Fund, which was used under Bismarck for the 
 
 GERMAN fc r 
 
 INTRIGUE bribery of the press and for the maintenance of a spy 
 
 system, has been enlarged and elaborated, so that German 
 bribery has extended the world over, and the German espionage has 
 exceeded anything known to history. The medieval use by the Hohen- 
 zollerns of dynastic kinship has paralyzed the action of the peoples of 
 Greece and Russia. And now we know by recent revelation, of the aid 
 that Swedish diplomats are furnishing to Germany in her submarine 
 warfare against neutral ships, and that it is made possible by the in- 
 fluence of the German consort of the Swedish King. 
 
 Intrigue, dishonor, cruelty, have characterized the entire military 
 policy of Germany. The rules of international law have been cast 
 to the winds. The murderous submarine has sunk without warning 
 the non-combatant commercial vessels of the enemy and sent their 
 officers, their crews and their passengers, men, women and children, 
 to the bottom without warning. Not only has this policy been pursued 
 against enemy commercial vessels, but also against neutral commercial 
 vessels, and parts of the crew have been assembled on the submarines 
 and then the submarine has been submerged and the victims left strug- 
 gling in the ocean's waste to drown. We find a German diplomat 
 telegraphing from a neutral port to the German headquarters advising 
 that if the submarine be used against the vessels of that neutral power 
 it leave no trace of the attack. In other words, the murder of the crews 
 must be complete, because "dead men tell no tales." 
 
 Having violated the neutrality of Belgium, having broken its 
 sacred obligations to that country and her people, it is now enslaving 
 them by taking them from Belgium and enforcing their labor in 
 Germany. This is contrary to every rule of international law, and is in 
 the teeth of the plainest principles of justice and honor. All these 
 things are done for the state. It is not that the nature of the German 
 people generally is cruel — that is not the case. But the minds of the 
 German people have been poisoned with this false philosophy; and the 
 ruling caste in Germany, in its desperate desire to win, has allowed no 
 consideration of humanity or decency or honor to prevent its use of 
 
10 The Menace of a Premature Peace 
 
 any means which in any way could by hook or crook accomplish a 
 military purpose. 
 
 When the war began, Germany was able to convince her people 
 and to convince many in the world that the issue in the war was not 
 the exaltation of the military power of Germany and the expansion of 
 her plan of destiny, but that it was a mere controversy between the 
 Teuton and the Slav, and Germany asked with great plausibility, "Will 
 you have the world controlled by the Slav or by the German?" Those 
 who insisted that the issue was one of militarism against the peace 
 of the world, of democracy against military autocracy, of freedom 
 against military tyranny, were met with the argument, ''Russia is an 
 ally. She is a greater despotism and a greater military autocracy 
 than Germany." As the war wore on, the real issue was cleared of 
 this confusion. Russia became a democracy. The fight was between 
 governments directed by their people on the one hand, and the military 
 dynasties of Germany, Austria, and Turkey, on the other. 
 
 Tur DiiDD^cE President Wilson says the Allies are fighting to make 
 THE PURPOSE , , . . . , _ 
 
 OF THE WAR * e wor ^ sa * e * or democracy. Some misconception 
 has been created on this head. The Allies are not 
 struggling to force a particular form of government on Germany. If 
 the German people continue to wish an Emperor it is not the purpose 
 of the Allies to require them to have a republic. Their purpose is to 
 end the military policy and foreign policy of Germany that looks to 
 the maintenance of a military and naval machine, with its hair-trigger 
 preparation for use against her neighbors. If this continues, it will 
 entail on every democratic government the duty of maintaining a similar 
 armament in self-defense, or, what is more likely, the duty will be 
 wholly or partly neglected. Thus the policy of Germany, with her 
 purpose and destiny, will threaten every democracy. This is the con- 
 dition which it is the determined purpose of the Allies, as interpreted 
 by President Wilson, to change. 
 
 How is the change to be effected? By defeating Germany in 
 this war. The German people have been very loyal to their Emperor, 
 because his leadership accords with the false philosophy of the state 
 and German destiny, with which they have been indoctrinated and 
 poisoned. A defeat of the military machine, a defeat of the Franken- 
 stein of the military dynasty to which they have been sacrificed, must 
 open their eyes to the hideous futility of their political course. The 
 German Government will then be changed as its people will have it 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 11 
 
 changed, to avoid a recurrence of such a tragedy as they have deliber- 
 ately prepared for themselves. 
 
 Men who see clearly the kind of peace which we must have, in 
 order to be a real and lasting peace, can have no sympathy therefore 
 with a patched-up peace, one made at a council table, the result of 
 diplomatic chaffering and bargaining. Men who look forward to a 
 League of the World to Enforce Peace in the future can have no 
 patience with a compromise that leaves the promoting cause of the 
 present awful war unaffected and unremoved. This war is now being 
 fought by the Allies as a League to Enforce Peace. Unless they com- 
 pel it by victory, they do not enforce it. They do not make the 
 military autocracies of the world into nations fit for a World League, 
 unless they convince them by a lesson of defeat. 
 
 ...^~.~..„ ~ And now what of the United States? When 
 
 AMERICA S PART 
 
 the war came on, there were a few in the 
 
 United States who felt that the invasion of Belgium required a protest 
 on the part of our government, and some indeed who felt that we 
 should join in the war at once. But the great body of the American 
 people, influenced by our traditional policy of avoiding European 
 quarrels, stood by the Administration in desiring to maintain a strict 
 neutrality. I think it is not unfair to say that a very large proportion 
 of the intelligent and thinking people of the United States — and that 
 means a great majority — sympathized with the Allies in the struggle 
 which they were making. But many with us of German descent, 
 prompted by a pride in the notable advance in the world of German 
 enterprise, German ingenuity, German discipline, German efficiency, 
 and regarding the struggle as an issue between Teuton and Slav, 
 extended their sympathy to their Fatherland. 
 
 As conscientiously as possible, the Administration and the country 
 pursued the course laid down by international law as that which a 
 neutral should take. International law is the rule of conduct of nations 
 toward one another, accepted and acquiesced in by all nations. It is 
 not always as definite as one would like, and the asquiescence of all 
 nations is not always as clearly established as it ought to be. But in 
 the law of war as to capture at sea of commercial vessels, the principles 
 have been established clearly by the decision of prize courts of all 
 nations, English, American, Prussian and French. The right of non- 
 combatants on commercial vessels, officers, crew and passengers, either 
 enemy or neutral, to be secure from danger of life, has always been 
 recognized and never contested. Nevertheless, Germany sank, without 
 
12 The Menace of a Premature Peace 
 
 warning, 150 American citizens, men, women and children, and sent 
 them to their death by a submarine torpedo, simply because they 
 happened to be on English or American commercial vessels. We pro- 
 tested and Germany halted for a time. We thought that if we condoned 
 the death of 150 we might still maintain peace with that Power. 
 
 But it was not to be, and after more than a year Germany 
 announced her purpose to resume this murderous and illegal course 
 toward innocent Americans. Had we hesitated, we would have lost 
 our independence as a people. We would have subscribed abjectly to 
 the doctrine that might makes right. Germany left no door open to 
 us as a self-respecting nation except that which led to war. She 
 deliberately forced us into the ranks of her enemies, and she did it 
 because she was obsessed with the belief that the submarine was the 
 instrument of destruction by which she might win the war. She 
 recked not that as she used it, it was a weapon of murder of innocents. 
 Making military efficiency her god, and exalting the appliances of 
 science in the killing of men, she ignored all other consequences. 
 
 Germany's use of the submarine brought us into the war. But 
 being in, we recognized as fully as any of our Allies do that its far 
 greater issue is whether German militarism shall continue after this war 
 to be a threat to the peace of the world, or whether we shall end that 
 threat by this struggle in which we are to spend our life's blood. We 
 must not therefore be turned from the stern necessity of winning 
 this war. 
 
 THE MORAL 
 ISSUE 
 
 When the war began and its horrible character was 
 soon disclosed, there were many religious persons who 
 found their faith in God shaken by the fact that 
 millions of innocent persons could be headed into this vortex of blood 
 and destruction without the saving intervention of their Creator. But 
 the progress of the war has revealed much, and it has stimulated our 
 just historic sense. It shows that the world had become, through the 
 initiative of Germany and the following on of the other nations, 
 afflicted with the cancer of militarism. God reveals the greatness of 
 His power and His omnipotence not by fortuitous and sporadic inter- 
 vention, but by the working out of His inexorable law. A cancer if it 
 is not to consume the body must be cut out, and the cutting out of it 
 necessarily involves suffering and pain in the body. The sacrifices of 
 lives and treasure are inevitable in the working out of the cure of the 
 world malady. But we must win the war to vindicate this view. 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 13 
 
 We are now able to see the providential punishment and weak- 
 ness that follows the violation of moral law. The crass materialism 
 of the German philosophy that exalts force above morality, power above 
 honor and decency, success above humanity, has blinded the German 
 ruling caste to the strength of moral motives that control other peoples, 
 and involved them in the fundamental mistakes that will cause their 
 downfall. They assumed that England, burdened with Ireland, would 
 violate her own obligation and abandon Belgium and would leave her 
 ally France to be deprived of all her colonial possessions. They 
 assumed that France was decadent, permeated with socialism, and 
 unable to make a contest in her state of unpreparedness. They assumed 
 that England's colonies, attached only by the lightest tie, and entirely 
 independent, if they chose to be, would not sacrifice themselves to 
 help the mother land in her struggle. How false the German conclusion 
 as to England's national conscience and fighting power, as to France's 
 decadence and patriotic fervor and strength, and as to the filial loyalty 
 of England's daughters ! 
 
 And now at the crisis of the war, when the victory must abide 
 the weight of wealth, resources, food, equipment, and fighting men, 
 the German military dynasty, contemptuous of a peace-loving people, 
 brings into the contest a nation fresh in its strength, which can furnish 
 more money, more food, and more fighting men, if need be, than any 
 other nation in the world. 
 
 But we are at a danger point. England and France 
 OF THE WAR an( * R uss * a smce 1914 have been fighting the battle 
 of the world and fighting for us of America. The 
 three years or more of war have drained their vitality, strained their 
 credit, exhausted their man-power, subjected many of their non- 
 combatants to suffering and destruction, and they have the war weari- 
 ness which dulls the earlier eager enthusiasm for the principles at 
 stake. Now specious proposals for peace are likely to be most alluring 
 to the faint-hearted, and most powerful in the hands of traitors. Russia, 
 rid of the Czar, is torn with dissensions, and the extreme socialists and 
 impractical theorists, blind to the ultimate destruction of their hopes 
 that a loss of this war will entail, are many of them turning for a 
 separate peace. 
 
 The intervention of the United States, by her financial aid, has 
 helped much; but her armies are needed and she, a republic unprepared, 
 must have the time to prepare. The war is now to be determined by 
 the active tenacity of purpose of the contestants. England showed that 
 tenacity in the wars of Napoleon. Napoleon succumbed. General 
 
14 The Menace of a Premature Peace 
 
 Grant, in his Memoirs, says that the battle is won not in the first day, 
 but by the commander and the army that is ready, even after apparent 
 defeat, to begin the next day. It is the side that has the nerve that 
 will win. The intervention of the United States has strengthened that 
 nerve in England, France and Italy. But delay and disappointment 
 give full opportunity to the lethargic, the cowardly, the factious, to 
 make the task of the patriot and the loyal men doubly heavy. This is 
 the temper of the situation among our European allies. 
 
 With us at home the great body of our people are loyal and 
 strong for the war. Of course a people, however- intelligent, when 
 very prosperous and comfortable, and not well advised as to the vital 
 concern they have in the issue of a war across a wide ocean and 
 thousands of miles away, it takes time to convince. But we have, for 
 the first time in the history of our republic, begun a war right. We 
 have begun with a conscription law which requires service from men 
 of a certain age from every walk of life. It is democratic in principle, 
 and yet it offers to the Government the means of selection so that 
 those who shall be sent to the front may be best fitted to represent the 
 nation there, and those best able to do the work in field and factory 
 essential to our winning at the front, may be retained. We have 
 adopted a merit system of selecting from the intelligent and educated 
 youth of the country the company officers of an army of a million and 
 a half or two million that we are now preparing. The machinery of 
 the draft naturally has creaked some because it had to be so hastily 
 constructed, but on the whole it has worked well. Those who devised 
 it and have carried it through are entitled to great credit. 
 
 The lessons of the three years of the war are being learned and 
 applied in our war equipment and in neutralizing, by new construction, 
 the submarine destruction of commercial transports. Adequate 
 measures for the raising of the money needed to finance the war and 
 finance our Allies, have been carried through Congress or are so near 
 enactment as to be practically on the statute book. Food conservation 
 is provided for. But of course it takes time for a hundred million of 
 peace lovers and non-militarists to get ready, however apt, however 
 patriotic, however determined. It is in the period of the year before 
 the United States can begin to fight that the strain is to come in 
 Europe. But Germany is stopped on the Western and Italian fronts. 
 The winter coming will be harder on her than on the Allies 
 
 "It is dogged that does it." Stamp on all proposals of peace as 
 ill advised or seditious, and then time will make for our certain 
 victory. 
 
The Menace of a Premature Peace 15 
 
 While there has been pro-German sentiment in the United States, 
 and while the paid emissaries of Germany have been busy trying to 
 create as much opposition to the war as possible, and have found a 
 number of weak dupes and unintelligent persons who don't understand 
 the importance of the war, to aid them, our allies should know that 
 the whole body of the American people will earnestly support the 
 President and Congress in carrying out the measures which have been 
 adopted by the United States to win this war. 
 
 PEACE THAT When the war is won ' the United States will wish 
 WILL LAST to be heard and will have a right to be heard as to 
 the terms of peace. The United States will insist on 
 a just peace, not one of material conquest. It is a moral victory the 
 world should win. I think I do not mistake the current of public 
 sentiment throughout our entire country in saying that our people will 
 favor an international agreement by which the peace brought about 
 through such blood and suffering and destruction and enormous 
 sacrifice shall be preserved by the joint power of the world. Whether 
 the terms of the League to Enforce Peace as they are will be taken 
 as a basis for agreement, or a modified form, something of the kind 
 must be attempted. 
 
 Meantime, let us hope and pray that all the Allies will reject 
 proposals for settlement and compromise of every nature ; that they 
 will adhere rigidly and religiously to the principle that until a victorious 
 result gives security that the world shall not again be drenched in blood 
 through the insanely selfish policy of a military caste ruling a deluded 
 people intoxicated with material success and power, there will be no 
 peace, 
 
LIBRARY OF ljnokwo 
 
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