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Show We Must Fight to the End . All America stands behind President Wilson in his decision that - America must fight on, till Germany is defeated utterly, till the Hohenzollern autocracy is overthrown or impotent. : But, lest those aris who cry, "We have fought enough our enemy asks peace!" lest those arise to confuse us, -we must examine ex-amine the case and know, in our own minds, why we have not fought chough. No matter vhal the Germans now say, no mattefwhat the Hohenzollerns now promise, we have hot yet made the. world "safe for democracy." Not even safe for human beings to live in. - There will be more wars, but if we are to makelhem harder - to happen; if we are to make them impossible at the nod of an autocrat, not only must the autocrats be. made powerless, but the nation which sought to conquer the world for autocracy must be rendered incapable of making another such "attempt. We cannot trust the Hohenzollerns everybody agrees to that ' But what we must also realize is this: We cannot trust the German nation. . And so, -with 'no thought of punishment, but solely for the safety of the world, we must fight on until the German nation, untbte-4-figM 4wgWr-ahalMlwww down it. arms and give Itself, up. completely to contemplation of the uselessness of war and conquest con-quest Before we can deal justice to the German nation we must be deadly sure that the German nation is ready to receive justice at our hands. There can be no bargaining with the Germans society does not bargain with its criminals; neither does it punish them unduly." But before criminals get justice they must be tried; and so must Germany be tried, in the court of the nations not while she is a world-criminal, beaten and seeking to escape, but after she is a world-prisoner, defeated and impotent e "But the kaiser, not the German people, Is responsible for the Hunnish crlmest" Such runs the latest specious plea for peace-af-the-least-price. , It is not true. The German people are rational beings, who cannot blame . ther rulers entirely for German crimes. . The soldiers who murdered Edith Cavell, the officers who raped Belgian girls, the U-boat crews who sank the Lusitania, the Vandals who laid waste to northern France, the runners who fired . from behind the crucifix, the men who used captive women as shields, the tricky beings who rose crying "kamerad!" while com-panions com-panions sighted machine guns from between their legs these were not German kaisers; these were German people. And the world cannot believe that the reform of such as these would be accomplished even by the downfall of their leader. The lesson must sink deeper. The German people, shorn of their Prussian arrogance, must realize to the uttermost that warfare does not pay. Until they do, there are no guarantees the world can accept that will safeguard future generations from another such disaster, see When the Hohenzollerns are dethroned or their power Is one, when Germany Is prostrate and her armies disbanded then we will know that the world can be made safe for humanity as for democracy. These consequences tcr Germany imiotTrevenge. Theyare the reasonable, rational conclusion of that which we started out to do. We entered this war to defeat Germany absolutely. The slogan "On to Berlin" was the popular definition of our purpose. To do anything less than that would be a job half done, carrying with it all the well known results of Ineffectiveness. And that is not the American way. - ' |
