K 



LETTER TO SENATOR DRESSELHUYS 



HOTEL TACOMA 



TACOMA, WASHINGTON, U. S. A. 

 September 30, 1918 

 H. C. Dresselhuys, 



Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament, 

 The Hague, Netherlands. 



In response to your kind request, I herewith enclose a formal 

 statement. I may also add that great as is the desire for peace 

 in this country I should hesitate to advise an attempt at 

 mediation of the form indicated by you, because at the 

 present time it would not be likely to prove successful. 



I have great sympathy with the purposes indicated in your 

 valued letter and I am sure that mediation on the part of the 

 government of the Netherlands is most natural and desirable. 

 But I am forced to doubt whether the special proposals 

 would achieve the desired result. 



The people of this nation, as of all others, are longing eagerly 

 for peace. By peace, however, they do not mean mere cessa- 

 tion of hostilities. They demand such solution of the European 

 anarchy as will put an end to international war. 



To some minds this involves a crushing of the Central Powers. 

 To others it waits on the awakening of the German people, 

 their recognition of the truth that they have been betrayed 

 by their own leaders, also that their national organization, 

 civil and military, constitutes a perpetual menace to their 

 neighbors. This menace rests especially in the fact that in 

 Germany neither the people nor their representatives can do 

 anything contrary to the will of the King of Prussia. Peculiarly 

 dangerous is the adjustment whereby the German army ceases 

 to be a national army, but is rather the personal bodyguard or 

 perquisite of the Kaiser. Furthermore, its officers are for the 

 most part drawn from a hereditary, privileged caste over which 

 the people have no control. It is manifest that no league of 

 nations can be composed of self-governing or more or less 

 democratic groups on the one hand, with on the other an 

 autocratic ruler responsible to no one, who does not scruple 

 to use his military power as an asset in trade. 



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