THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



547 



Peace the world may seek with pas- 

 sionate longing, but not a peace which 

 contains the seeds of future wars and 

 future suffering. When an end comes 

 to this great war, as it will come, it must 

 result in a peace that is final and en- 

 during. 



"an unstable peace: would be a curse" 



Surely mankind has not borne this bur- 

 den of agony for naught. After all this 

 woe and waste, a temporary and unsta- 

 ble peace would be a curse rather than a 

 blessing. 



A firm foundation must be found and 

 is to be found in the frank and clear 

 declaration by President Wilson of the 

 aims which the Republic seeks in this 

 war and which, with God's help, it will 

 attain, whatever the cost may be. Noth- 

 ing less will satisfy the American people ; 

 nothing less will content the democracies 

 of the world. 



The conditions which prevailed prior 

 to August, 1914, produced this conflict. 

 It is not, then, in a return to the status 

 quo ante that lasting peace is to be found, 

 though that, with domination of the 

 Slavic peoples on their eastern borders, 

 appears now to be the minimum terms of 

 the Teutonic powers. To restore those 

 pre-war conditions would be to invite a 

 new disaster. Peace must rest on a more 

 substantial basis, for the world seeks to 

 have done with war and with conditions 

 which produce war. 



However long it may take, however 

 great the sacrifice may be, physical might 

 uncontrolled by morality must never 

 again be considered a standard of inter- 

 national right. Justice must and will be- 

 come the supreme force in human affairs. 

 No other result will insure civilization 

 against the evil passions which today con- 

 vulse the earth. 



THE BLOOD OF THE BRAVE NOT SHED 

 IN VAIN 



I do not believe — in fact, it seems to 

 me to be unbelievable — that the blood of 

 brave and devoted hearts, so generously 

 poured out on land and sea in the cause 

 of liberty, is being shed in vain, or that 

 the vast treasures, wrested from the 

 earth by man's enterprise and industry, 



are being wasted in the support of so 

 sacred a cause. 



But these lives and these riches have 

 been wasted unless from the ashes of 

 these sacrifices, which have been offered 

 on the altar of liberty, there arises a peace 

 which shall endure. It cannot be that 

 the merciful Ruler of the Universe has 

 permitted humanity to suffer all this 

 without conferring a lasting blessing. 



The conditions which brought on this 

 war are rooted in the past and are not 

 of sudden or spontaneous growth. They 

 are the natural development of influences 

 which have been long at work in Prus- 

 sianized Germany and which the rest of 

 the world ought to have perceived, but 

 did not. 



We can now with a clear vision look 

 back through the history of Prussia and 

 see the motives which inspired the con- 

 duct of her rulers. We can now read 

 the words of Prussia's statesmen and of 

 the masters of recent German thought 

 with understanding minds. 



THE CENTRAL THOUGHT OF PRUSSIANISM 



We now recognize that the policies of 

 the Imperial Government of Germany 

 and the boasted "kultur" of the German 

 people have been concentrated on the 

 single purpose of expanding the territory 

 and power of the Prussian Emperor of 

 Germany until he, through the possession 

 of superior force, became the primate of 

 all the rulers of the earth. World do- 

 minion was the supreme object. That 

 was and is the central thought of Prus- 

 sianism. 



It excited the cupidity of the govern- 

 ing and wealthy classes of the Empire 

 and dazzled with its anticipated glories 

 and by its promise of a boasted racial su- 

 periority the German millions who were 

 to be the instruments of achievement. 



Germans of high and low degree be- 

 lieved dominion over all nations to be the 

 destiny of their race, and with a devotion 

 and zeal worthy of a better cause turned 

 their energies into those channels which 

 would aid the ruling class in their plans 

 to attain the summit of earthly power, 

 Germany's vaunted "place in the sun." 



I know that many Germans indig- 

 nantly deny that this ambition for su- 



