only the nations of Europe but also upon the United States of
America.

We are engaged in a war against the greatest military power the
world has ever seen; against a people whose country was for so
many centuries a theatre of devastating wars that fear is bred
in the very marrow of their souls, making them ready to submit
their lives and fortunes to an autocracy which for centuries has
ground their faces, but which has promised them, as a result of
the war, not only security but riches untold and the dominion of
the world; a people which, as from a high mountain, has looked
upon the cities of the world and the glories of them, and has
been promised these cities and these glories by the devils of
autocracy and of war.

We are warring against a nation whose poets and professors, whose
pedagogues and whose parsons have united in stirring its people
to a white pitch of hatred, first against Russia, then against
England and now against America.

The U-Boat peril is a very real one for England. Russia may either
break up into civil wars or become so ineffective that the millions
of German troops engaged on the Russian front may be withdrawn
and hurled against the Western lines. We stand in great peril,
and only the exercise of ruthless realism can win this war for us.
If Germany wins this war it means the triumph of the autocratic
system. It means the triumph of those who believe not only in
war as a national industry, not only in war for itself but also
in war as a high and noble occupation. Unless Germany is beaten
the whole world will be compelled to turn itself into an armed