Empire to secure their support. We know that war had been decreed before
the pretext on which it was declared had happened. We know Austria was
and is the creature of Germany. We have beheld the violation of innocent
Belgium, the hideous outrages on soldier and civilian, the piracy, the
murder of our own neutral citizens, and finally there came the notice,
which as an insult to America has been exceeded only by the recent
suggestion that we negotiate a peace with its authors,--the notice
claiming dominion over our citizens and authority to exclude our ships
from the sea. The great pretender to the throne of the earth thought
the time had come to assert that we were his subjects. Two millions of
our men already in France, and each day ten thousand more are hastening
to pay their respects to him at his court in Berlin in person. He has
our answer.

It would be a mistake to suppose we have already won the war. It is not
won yet, but we have reached the place where we know how to win it, and
if we continue our exertions we shall win it fully, completely, grandly,
as becomes a great people contending for the cause of righteousness.

We entered the war late and without previous military preparation. The
more clearly we discern the beginning and the progress of the struggle,
the more we must admire the great spirit of those nations by whose side
we fight. The more we know of the terrible price they paid, the
matchless sacrifices they magnificently endured--the French, the
Italians, the British, the Belgians, the Serbians, the Poles, and the
misgoverned, misguided people of Russia--the bravery of their soldiers
in the field, the unflinching devotion of their people at home, and
remember that in no small sense they were doing this for us, that we
have been the direct beneficiaries of peoples who have given their all,
the less disposition we have to think too much of our own importance.