170 
July 4th, 1917 
WISCONSIN HOETICUL 
SPECIAL EDITION 
sia. She must not be over- 
whelmed now! Not now, surely, 
when she is .just born into free- 
dom. Her peasants must have 
their chance ; they must go to 
school to Washington, to Jeffer- 
son and to Lincoln, until they 
know their way about in this new, 
strange world, of Government by 
the Popular Will. | 
Because of other Peoples, with 
their rising hope that the world 
may be freed from Government 
by the Soldier. 
We are fighting Germany be- 
cause she soughl to terrorize us 
and then to fool us. We could 
not believe that Germany would 
do what she said she would do 
upon the seas. 
We still hear the piteous cries 
of children coming up out of the 
sea where the Lusitania went 
dovn. And Germany has never 
asked forgiveness of the world ! 
We saw the Sussex sunk, 
crowded with the sons and daugh- 
ters of neutral nations. 
We saw ship after ship sent to 
the bottom — ships of mercy bound 
out of America for the Belgian 
starving — ships carrying the Red 
Cross and laden with e wounded 
of all nations, — ships carrying- 
food and clothing to friendly, 
harmless, terrorized peoples, — • 
ships flying the Stars and Stripes 
— sent to the bottom hundreds of 
miles from shore, manned by 
American seamen, murdered 
against all law without warning. 
We believed Germany’s prom- 
ise that she would respect the 
neutral flag and the rights of 
neutrals, and we held our anger 
and outrage in check. But now 
we see that she was holding us off 
with fair promises until she could 
build her huge fleet of submar- 
ines. For when Spring came she 
blew her promise into the air, just 
as at the beginning she had torn 
up that “scrap of paper.” Then 
we saw clearly that there was but 
one law for Germany, her will to 
rule. 
We are fighting Germany be- 
cause she violated our confidence. 
Paid German spies filled our 
cities. Officials of her govern- 
ment, received as the guests of 
this nation, lived with us to bribe 
and terrorize, defying our law 
and the law of nations. 
Wc are fighting Germany be- 
cause while we were yet her 
friends — the only great power 
that, still held hands-off — she sent 
the Zimmerman note, calling to 
her aid Mexico, our southern 
neighbor, and hoping to lure Ja- 
pan, our western neighbor, into 
war against this nation of Peace. 
The nation that would do these 
things proclaims the gospel that 
government has no conscience. 
And this doctrine cannot live, 
or else Democracy must die >* 
We are fighting Germany be- 
cause in this war Feudalism is 
making its last stand against 
on-coming Democracy. We see it 
now. This is a war against an 
old spirit, an ancient, outworn 
spirit. It is a war against Feud- 
alism — the right of the castle on 
the hill to rule the village below. 
It is a war for Democracy — the 
right of all to be their own mas- 
ters. Let Germany be feudal if 
she will ! But she must not 
spread her system over a world 
that has outgrown it. Feudalism 
plus Science, thirteenth century- 
plus twentieth, — this is the relig- 
ion of the mistaken Germany that 
has linked itself with the Turk, 
— that has, too, adopted the meth- 
od of Mahomet. “The State has 
no conscience. ’ ’ “The State can 
do no wrong.” With the spirit 
of the fanatic she believes this 
U R E 
gospel and that it is her duty to 
spread it by Force. With poison 
gas that makes living a hell, with 
submarines that sneak through 
the seas to slyly murder non-com- 
batants, with dirigibles that bom- 
bard men and women while they 
sleep, with a perfected system of 
terrorization that the modern 
world first heard of when German 
troops entered China, — German 
Feudalism is making war upon 
mankind. Let this old Spirit of 
Evil have its way and no man will 
live in America without paying 
toll to it, in manhood and in 
money. This Spirit might de- 
mand Canada from a defeated, 
navyless England, and then our 
dream of peace on the north 
would be at an end. We would 
live, as France has lived for forty 
years, in haunting terror. 
America speaks for the world 
in fighting Germany. Mark on a 
map those countries which are 
Germany’s allies, and you will 
mark but four, running from the 
Baltic through Austria and Bul- 
garia to Turkey. All the other 
nations, the whole globe around, 
are in arms against her or are un- 
able to move. There is deep 
meaning in this. We fight with 
the world for an honest world, in 
which nations keep their word, 
for a world in which nations do 
not live by swagger or by threat, 
for a world in which men think of 
the ways in which they can con- 
quer the common cruelties of na- 
ture instead of inventing more 
horrible cruelties to inflict upon 
the spirit and body of man, for a 
world in which the ambition or 
the philosophy of a few shall not 
make miserable all mankind, for a 
world in which the man. is held 
more precious than the machine, 
the system or the state. 
