for democracy. It was also a last appeal to German liberals to avert a catastrophe. They did not avert it, and on February 1 Germany attacked the whole neutral world.

would not submit was assured.

That America
The question

that remained to be decided was the extent of our participation in the war. Should it be merely defensive on the high seas, or should it be a separate war? The real source of confusion was the treacherous and despotic Russian Government. By no twist of language could a partnership with that Government be made consistent with the principles laid down by the PresiIdent in his address to the Senate.

The Russian revolution ended that perplexity and we could enter the war with a clear conscience and a whole heart. When Russia became a republic and the American Republic became an enemy, the German Empire was isolated before mankind as the final refuge of autocracy. The principle of its life is destructive of the peace of the world. How destructive that principle is the ever-widening circle of the war has disclosed.

II.

Our task is to define that danger so that our immense sacrifices shall serve to end it. I can not do that for myself without turning to the origins of the war in order to trace the logical steps by which the pursuit of a German victory has enlisted the enmity of the world.

We read statements by Germans that there was a conspiracy against their national development, that they found themselves encircled by enemies, that Russia, using Serbia as an instrument, was trying to destroy Austria, and that the Entente had already detached Italy. Supposing that all this were true, it would remain an extraordinary thing that the Entente had succeeded in encircling Germany. Had that empire been a good neighbor in Europe, by what miracle could the old hostility between England and France and Russia have been wiped out so quickly? But there is positive evidence that no such conspiracy existed.

Germany's place in the sun is Asia Minor. By the Anglo-German agreement of June, 1914, recently published, a satisfactory arrangement had

been reached about the economic exploitation of the Turkish Empire. Prof. Rohrbach has acknowledged that Germany was given concessions "which exceeded all expectations," and on December second, 1914, when the war was five months old, von Bethmann-Hollweg declared in the Reichstag that "this understanding was to lessen every possible political friction." The place in the sun had been secured by negotiation.

But the road to that place lay through AustriaHungary and the Balkans. It was this highway which Germany determined to control absolutely and the chief obstacle on that highway was Serbia backed by Russia. Into the complexities of that Balkan intrigue I am not competent to enter. We need, however, do no more than follow Lord Grey in the belief that Austria had a genuine grievance against Serbia, a far greater one, certainly, than the United States has ever had against Mexico. But Britain had no stake in the Austro-Serbian quarrel itself.

It had an interest in the method which the Central Powers took of settling the quarrel. When Germany declared that Europe could not be consulted, that Austria must be allowed to

crush Serbia without reference to the concert of Europe, Germany proclaimed herself an enemy of international order. She preferred a war which involved all of Europe to any admission of the fact that a coöperative Europe existed. It was an assertion of unlimited national sovereignty which Europe could not tolerate.

This brought Russia and France into the field. Instantly Germany acted on the same doctrine of unlimited national sovereignty by striking at France through Belgium. Had Belgium been merely a small neutral nation the crime would still have been one of the worst in the history of the modern world. The fact that Belgium was an internationalized State has made the invasion the master tragedy of the war. For Belgium represented what progress the world had made toward coöperation. If it could not survive then no internationalism was possible. That is why through these years of horror upon horror the Belgian horror is the fiercest of all. The burning, the shooting, the starving, and the robbing of small and inoffensive nations is tragic enough. But the German crime in Belgium is greater than the sum of Belgium's misery. It

is a crime against the bases of faith on which the world must build or perish.

The invasion of Belgium instantly brought the five British democracies into the war. I think this is the accurate way to state the fact. Had the war remained a Balkan war with France engaged merely because of her treaty with Russia, had the fighting been confined to the FrancoGerman frontier, the British Empire might have come into the war to save the balance of power and to fulfil the naval agreements with France, but the conflict would probably never have become a people's war in all the free nations of the Empire. Whatever justice there may have been in Austria's original quarrel with Serbia and Russia was overwhelmed by the exhibition of national lawlessness in Belgium.

This led to the third great phase of the war, the phase which concerned America most immediately. The Allies, directed by Great Britain, employed sea power to the utmost. They barred every road to Germany, and undoubtedly violated many commercial rights of neutrals. What America would do about this became of decisive importance. If it chose to uphold the rights it