6,000,000, must we withdraw from productive industry
12,000,000 men for at least two or three of the best years of their
young life? Must we start in on a programme of ten dreadnoughts a year
instead of building ten colleges and universities for the same sum of
money? Of late Americans who love their country have been searching
their own hearts. Merchants hitherto busied with commerce are asking
themselves whither this country is drifting. Is Germany to compel us to
become a vast military machine? This military question is a subject of
discussion on the street cars and in the stores, at the dining room
table. No articles in paper and magazine are so eagerly read and
analyzed. The American ideal is not a military machine, but a high
quality of manhood. To make men free, with the gift of self-expression;
to make men wise through the public school and the free press; to make
men self-sufficing and happy in their homes, through freedom of
industrial contracts; to make men sound in their manhood through
religious liberty for Jew and Gentile and Catholic and Protestant--these
are our national ideals. America stands at the other pole of the
universe from imperialism and militarism. So far from being willing to
desert the political faith of the fathers, this war has confirmed our
confidence in self-government. Liberty to grow, freedom to climb as high
as industry and ability will permit, liberty to analyze and discuss the
views of President, Congress, Governor--these are our rights. In a
military autocracy there can be no liberty of the printing press. If a
man criticises the Kaiser, he goes to jail; in this republic, if Horace
Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the
great editor to jail, but writes the latter, "My paramount object is to
save the Union," and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation. An
American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany. He could not
breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism. For
a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do
realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government
and the fruits of military imperialism.

The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens
as to the rights and liberties of small States. In the republic the sin
of trespass is one of the blackest of sins. Here we hold to the
sanctity of property. A man's home is his castle, a citadel that