camp, until the German autocracy either brings every nation under
its dominion or is forever wiped out as a form of government.

We are in this war because we were forced into it: because Germany
not only murdered our citizens on the high seas, but also filled
our country with spies and sought to incite our people to civil
war. We were given no opportunity to discuss or negotiate. The
forty-eight hour ultimatum given by Austria to Serbia was not,
as Bernard Shaw said, "A decent time in which to ask a man to
pay his hotel bill." What of the six-hour ultimatum given to
me in Berlin on the evening of January thirty-first, 1917, when
I was notified at six that ruthless warfare would commence at
twelve? Why the German government, which up to that moment had
professed amity and a desire to stand by the _Sussex_ pledges,
knew that it took almost two days to send a cable to America! I
believe that we are not only justly in this war, but prudently
in this war. If we had stayed out and the war had been drawn
or won by Germany we should have been attacked, and that while
Europe stood grinning by: not directly at first, but through an
attack on some Central or South American State to which it would
be at least as difficult for us to send troops as for Germany.
And what if this powerful nation, vowed to war, were once firmly
established in South or Central America? What of our boasted
isolation then?

It is only because I believe that our people should be informed
that I have consented to write this book. There are too many
thinkers, writers and speakers in the United States; from now
on we need the doers, the organisers, and the realists who alone
can win this contest for us, for democracy and for permanent