risies and patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which can maintain the biggest armies and the 5 most irresistible armaments, a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in the face of which political freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our 10 way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes 15 the great faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people.

THE DELIVERERS

By The Outlook. (1917)

been that the This has been many govern- 20

A COMMON, if not prevalent, opinion has only justifiable war is a war of defense. expressed in many forms and explains mental acts. Our own entrance into the war has been repeatedly justified on the ground that it was necessary as the only effective means of defending our rights on the sea. One reason why France is free from the aspersions which have been cast on other nations on both sides of this 25 war is that she is manifestly fighting in defense of her own soil.

There is, however, a higher right than that. It is the right of succor, of deliverance, of rescue.

The war which the United States is waging against Ger- 30 many is only in part a war of self-defense. It is chiefly a

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war for the succor of oppressed peoples, for the deliverance of civilized lands from the hands of the barbarian, for the rescue of the public law of nations, and of the right of mankind to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As our soldiers land in France and take their places in the line beside the French and the English, as our sailors watch the seas for hostile submarines, and as our aviators give battle in the air, they are asserting the right of the American people to defend themselves, their ships, and 10 their territory; but they are doing something more than that.

They are coming to the rescue of the Belgian people, whose brave King refused to barter the honor of his country for cash, and chose rather to endure with his people un15 speakable suffering.

They are coming to the rescue of France, whose treasury of art and whose liberty have alike been put into peril of destruction by a Power that is as ruthless in its denial of liberty as it is in its destruction of the monu20 ments of art.

They are coming to the rescue of those free institutions of the English people which we have inherited from them and on which our own freedom is built.

They are coming to the rescue of the Russian people, 25 beside whom it is an honor to fight for liberty because they have already done so much to rescue themselves.

They are coming to the rescue of that nation, the latest of the great countries of Europe to achieve its own liberation, that nation that has been called the crowned repub30 lic Italy.

They are coming to the rescue of backward, impoverished, oppressed peoples of Europe and Asia-to the rescue of the Serbians and Montenegrins, who chose to fight rather than to become vassals of an arrogant Austria; 35 to the rescue of the Poles, whose continued subjection is essential to the remnants of the old unholy Holy Alliance;

to the rescue of the Armenians, who have suffered at the hands of the brutal Turk and Kurd and from the designs of the more cruel, because more resourceful, mind of the ruthless Prussian; to the rescue of the Greeks from the consequences of their trust in their own 5 faithless ruler.

They are coming to the rescue of the fabric of the public law of nations the sacred observance of treaties and of the principles of morality in the conduct of nations -which is the only fabric from which there can ever be 10 erected permanent peace.

And, not least of all, they are coming to the rescue of the peoples of the Central Empires themselves, who have been denied by their rulers even the knowledge of what civil liberty means.

AN AMERICAN CREED

By The Outlook. (1917)

I AM an American.

I believe in the dignity of labor, the sanctity of the home, and the high destiny of democracy.

Courage is my birthright, justice my ideal, and faith in humanity my guiding star.

By the sacrifice of those who suffered that I might live, who died that America might endure, I pledge my life to my country and the liberation of mankind.

WHY WE ARE FIGHTING GERMANY

BY FRANKLIN K. LANE. (AUGUST, 1917)

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WHY are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to 25 fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our

shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. At each new offense 5 the invasion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scarborough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas and on and on through the months we said: "This is war archaic, uncivilized war, but war! All rules 10 have been thrown away: all nobility; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify we will not intervene. It is not our war.'

Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium which opened the war, led to the 15 invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction of selfinterest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril.

We talked in the language and in the spirit of good 20 faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was construed as cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to invade us. We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discovered 25 that we were thought to be a nation of mere money makers, devoid of all character until, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier; that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation upon 30 a narrow path of national subservience. We talked as men talk who hope for honest agreement, not for war, until we found that the treaty torn to pieces at Liège was but the symbol of a policy that made agreements worthless against a purpose that knew no word but success.

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And so we came into this war for ourselves. It is a war

to save America - to preserve self-respect, to justify our

right to live as we have lived, not as some one else wishes us to live. In the name of freedom we challenge with ships and men, money, and an undaunted spirit, that word "Verboten" which Germany has written upon the sea and upon the land. For America is not the name of so much 5 territory. It is a living spirit, born in travail, grown in the rough school of bitter experiences, a living spirit which has purpose and pride, and conscience-knows why it wishes to live and to what end, knows how it comes to be respected of the world, and hopes to retain that respect by living on 10 with the light of Lincoln's love of man as its Old and New Testament. It is more precious that this America should live than that we Americans should live. And this America, as we now see, has been challenged from the first of this war by the strong arm of a power that has no sympathy 15 with our purpose and will not hesitate to destroy us if the law that we respect, the rights that are to us sacred, or the spirit that we have, stand across her set will to make this world bow before her policies, backed by her organized and scientific military system. The world of Christ a neg- 20 lected but not a rejected Christ has come again face to face with the world of Mahomet, who willed to win by force.

With this background of history and in this sense, then, we fight Germany.

Because of Belgium-invaded, outraged, enslaved, impoverished Belgium. We cannot forget Liège, Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into terms of American history, these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Patrick Henry.

Because of France invaded, desecrated France, a million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land of Lafayette. Glorious golden France, the preserver of the arts, the land of noble spirit the first land to follow our lead into republican liberty.

Because of England - from whom came the laws, tradi

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