STAND FAST, YE FREE! I FROM the outset of this war two things have been clear to me. First, if the war continued it was absolutely inevitable that the United States would be either drawn into it by the impulse of democratic sympathies or forced into it by the instinct of self-preservation. Second, the most adequate person in the world to decide when and how the United States should accept the great responsibility of fighting beside France and Great Britain for peace and for the American ideal of freedom was President Wilson. His sagacity, his patience, his knowledge of the varied elements that are blended in our nationality, his sincere devotion to pacific conceptions of progress, his unwavering loyalty to the cause of liberty secured by law, national and international, made him the one man of all others to whom this great decision could most safely be confided. The people of the United States believed this in the election of 1916. They trusted him sincerely then because "he kept us out of the war" until the inevitable hour. No less sincerely do they trust him now when he declares that the hour has come when we must "dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have" (President's Message to Congress, April 2, 1917), to defend ourselves and the world from the Imperial German Government, which is waging "a warfare against mankind.” In the quiet, but never idle, American Legation at The Hague there was an excellent opportunity to observe and study the incredible blunders by which Germany led us, and the unspeakable insults and injuries by which she compelled us, to enter the war. Our adherence to the Monroe Doctrine |