with the resources of the whole circle of commerce at their back-they have not strength to conquer Ger

many.

That is why they have been compelled to turn to us.

If we should fail for the present

the war would go on and on. It cannot end until we succeed.

We shall not fail in the end. There is something in the vast and prolific life of America that is utterly assuring. The creator will overcome the destroyer.

P

RESIDENT WILSON refuses point-blank to deal with the representatives of the militaristic viewpoint and absolute autocracy in Germany. He intends to help the will of the German people to break through. All those who seek the success of democracy in Germany will understand Wilson's demands and indorse them. They will realize, nevertheless, that the fight has not been made easier for them. The military autocracy, feeling itself threatened, will picture the demand of Wilson as an impudent interference in internal affairs; as an insult, and will know how to win over those easily convinced. Of course these methods will not prevail in the

* Dr. Alfred H. Fried, winner of the Nobel peace prize in 1911, is a German anti-militarist who has kept out of jail by going to Switzerland. In Zurich he is editing the monthly magazine called Die Friedens Warte-The Peace Watch, or Observer -which contains articles by German antimilitarists in and out of Germany. It is from Dr. Fried's own comment on current events in the central empires that these extracts were translated for the Chicago Daily News.

end, but the fight will be lengthened and embittered.

Well and good. We pacifists must bow before this. Out of the mouth of the President of the American republic comes the breath of the learned man, speaks the spirit of a new epoch in human history, which for years we predicted and helped prepare for. We prepared for it in this Germany, in which medieval minds mocked us and turned us over to the ridicule of the unthinking mob. They did not realize how much they were preparing for the suffering of the people, the woe of the country, when they opposed us-we who desired to lead the great and talented German people to the new ideas that dominate the coming epoch, and who wanted to protect it from the hard clash with these new rising ideas. We wanted to save our people from the shambles and commercial disintegration, and they caused us to be overridden by the noise trawling of the protective leagues, the navy leagues, and the pan-German groups.

If the people had heeded us, if they had prepared for international cooperation, for recognition of justice in the relations between nations, for organization and understanding, for recognition of the rights of others and respect for foreign possession— had they thrown aside that moribund faith in blood and iron-then they would not now have to face a world coalition, would not have to hear those ideas for which we fought coming from the head of a foreign nation, behind which stands an untouched Army of many millions and enormous wealth. After the German people have been bleeding and dying for three years this Army comes to demand a hearing for those same views for which we fought decades ago. We would have had it otherwise!

The principal weapon of the German militarists against Wilson's demands will be the excuse that one foreign country may not interfere in the internal affairs of another. That is an empty, hypocritical phrase. It is hypocritical because the representatives of a system which is founded on war can with the least justice reject foreign interference. War has but one sole object-to mix in the affairs of other nations by force. Is not that which German militarism performs in Belgium, northern France, Poland, Lithuania and Courland a drastic interference in the internal affairs of foreign nations?

Sovereignty has a limit, which begins where its own affairs harm the affairs of others. Any state has the right to take measures to protect itself against the internal affairs of an

other state if these threaten its interests, just as in our civil life, while respecting the inviolability of individual freedom we would protect ourselves should any one start a dynamite factory in his home or keep cholera patients secreted there. In a world which is determined no longer to incur the enormous penalty of war, which wants to introduce justice in the place of might, every nation has the right to protect itself against a warlike horde in the neighborhood and to mix into its affairs so that this general danger will dis

appear.

The representatives of the democratic spirit in Germany do not possess the necessary backbone, else they would not have been so thoroughly embarrassed by President Wilson's demand for the democratization of Germany just because the reactionaries declaimed, all in one voice: "Ah, you want just exactly what our enemies want!" In view of the fact that Germany has twenty-five enemies, it is very difficult to wish for anything for Germany to-day which an enemy does not want. These shouters for "triumph" should have been answered by being made ridiculous. Are we not to work for that which is good simply because it is the desire of an enemy, who wants it because it benefits him also? Are we therefore to keep autocracy and militarism simply because a democratic Germany gave other nations advantages which, seen in the right light, would also be beneficial to us? Are we to translate into practical use the old anecdote: "It will serve my father

right if my hands freeze off. Why doesn't he buy me some mittens?" And why did German democrats fear the windy arguments of their opponents to such an extent that they forgot their own ancient demands in Iview of the desires of Wilson?

If some one had suggested to me that I stood entirely on Wilson's platform, I would reply: "You are mistaken, my friend; Wilson is standing entirely on my own." I made these same demands at the time when the President of the United States was still a figure in the twilight of history. I am pleased today to have such a mighty colleague

in this effort. So might the German democrats speak who since 1848 have demanded what the world asks today for the general good of humankind, including Germany.

Away with such false shame and away with "democrats" like Dr. Julius Lissner (privy councilor), who thinks that he must make such concessions to the blood-besotted pack of reactionaries that he speaks of Wilson as a friend "from whom may God protect us," and who tries to make his highly important note to the Pope ridiculous as a salving tract.

"Germany, in my opinion, would only make peace now on terms enabling her to benefit by the war, into which she wantonly plunged the world. That would mean that Germany would profit by her own wicked venture, and it would be an encouragement for any buccaneering empire in the future to repeat the experiment. Napoleon's failure taught France a lesson she never forgot. A similar lesson must be burned into the hearts and memories of every Prussian before this war is done with. It is not a question of territorial readjustment or indemnities, but pre-eminently a question of the destruction of a false ideal which has intimidated and enslaved Europe, or would have done so had it been triumphant. It is an ideal in which force and brutality reign supreme as against the ideal of the world peopled by free democracies and united in an honorable league of peace. That is the ideal enshrined at Potsdam, where they have been plotting and scheming how to enslave their neighbors. That has been their dream and our nightmare. There will be no peace, no liberty, until that shrine is shattered and its priesthood dispersed and discredited forever."-Premier Lloyd George of Great Britain.

"That this war should have been waged at all; that it should have come as it did, and that it should have been fought with the unspeakable horror and cruelty that have characterized it, has caused the destruction of everything in which men for

merly believed-their faith in justice and freedom and humanity. The problems of the war are nothing compared to the problems which will come after the war. There are both practical and moral tasks ahead of us, and we shall turn to America for help in meeting them. We have got to rebuild our cities, but also we have got to rebuild the hearts of men, to reestablish in them the old faith in the elemental principles of justice and freedom and humanity."-Commissioner H. W. Garrod of the British Ministry of Munitions.

The Public, New York.-"If the nations shall, at the conclusion of the war, enter into an international league embodying the spirit of the congresses and conferences at The Hague, but enlarged in scope to cover the wider field that has grown out of the war, they will have laid one stone of the foundation of peace. For by this means the nations can draw together; closer contact will lead to better understanding; and this will bring a recognition of mutual interests. When peoples grasp the fact that national boundaries have no more to do with economics than they do with the weather, and that different nations are as much dependent upon each other's prosperity as are different parts of the same nation, they will be ready for the broader policy that will usher in universal free trade, and unhampered production. Force will not bring these; they come only of reason."

MR. PRESIDENT, DELEGATES OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:

I esteem it a great privilege and a real honor to be thus admitted to your public councils. When your executive committee paid me the compliment of inviting me here, I gladly accepted the invitation because it seems to me that this, above all other times in our history, is the time for common counsel, for the drawing together not only of the energies but of the minds of the Nation. I thought that it was a welcome opportunity for disclosing to you some of the thoughts that have been gathering in my mind during the last momentous months.

CRITICAL TIME IN HISTORY

I am introduced to you as the President of the United States, and yet I would be pleased if you would put the thought of the office into the background and regard me as one of your fellow citizens who has come here to speak, not the words of authority, but the words of counsel; the words which men should speak to one another who wish to be frank in a moment more critical perhaps than the history of the world has ever yet known; a moment when it is every man's duty to forget himself, to forget his own interests, to fill himself with the nobility of a great national and world conception, and act upon a new platform elevated above the ordinary affairs of life and lifted to where men have views of the long destiny of mankind. I think that in order to realize just what this moment of counsel is it is very desirable that we should remind ourselves just how this war came about and just what it is for. You can explain most wars very simply, but the explanation of this is not so simple. Its roots run deep into all the

obscure soils of history, and in my view this is the last decisive issue between the old principles of power and the new principles of freedom.

WAR STARTED BY GERMANY

The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they started it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made await the verdict of history. And the thing that needs to be explained is why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in the world was-as enviable a position as any nation has ever occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful intellectual and material achievements. All the intellectual men of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching training particularly in the principles of science and the principles that underlie modern material achievement. Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent industries in the world, and the label "Made in Germany" was a guarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She had access to all the markets of the world, and every other who traded in those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost irresistible competition. She had a "place in the sun."

GERMANY'S INDUSTRIAL GROWTH Why was she not satisfied? What more did she want? There was nothing in the world of peace that she did not already have and have in abundance. We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of the

population of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew faster than any American cities ever grew. Her old industries opened their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest. And yet the authorities of Germany were not satisfied. You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important industry in Germany upon which the Government has not laid its hands, to direct it and, when necessity arose, control it; and you have only to ask any man whom you meet who is familiar with the conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of national competition to find out the methods of competition which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage and support of the Government of Germany. You will find that they were the same sorts of competition that we have tried to prevent by law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods cheaper than we could sell ours at a profit to themselves they could get a subsidy from the Government which made it possible to sell them cheaper anyhow, and the conditions of competition were thus controlled in large measure by the German Government itself.

BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY

But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there was lying behind its thought in its dreams of the future a political control which would enable it in the long run to dominate the labor and the industry of the world. They were not content with success by superior achievement; they wanted success by authority. I suppose very few of you have thought much about the Berlin-Bagdad railway. The Berlin-Bagdad railway was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half a dozen other countries; so that when German competition came in it would not be resisted too far, because there was always the possibility of getting German armies into the heart of that country quicker than any other armies could be got there.

Look at the map of Europe now! Germany in thrusting upon us again and again the discussion of peace talks about what? Talks about Belgium; talks about northern France; talks about Alsace-Lorraine. Well, those are deeply interesting subjects to us and to them, but they are not talking about the heart of the matter. Take the map and look at it. Germany has absolute control of Austria-Hungary, practical control of the Balkan States, control of Turkey, control of Asia Minor. I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appropriate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad-the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of the world. If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began. If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in-always provided the present influences that control the German Government continue to control it. I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan-Germans. Power can not be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people.

PEACE RUMORS

You know how many intimations come to us from one of the Central Powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief Central Power, and you know that it means that the people in that Central Power know that if the war ends as it stands they will in effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their populations are compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, and notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dominated. Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall belong to her. There have been such ambitions before. They have been in part realized, but never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination,