principles--Pan-Germanism on the one side, with its avowed purpose to
impose its hegemony and its rigid system of ideas and organization on
the rest of the world, not by consent, but by irresistible military
force; on the other side the claim of the other nations, large and
small, to maintain inviolate their freedom and individuality, and to
think and work out for themselves their own political and economic
future in their own way.

The one principle would seem the flat contradiction of all that America
stands for, the other principle would seem to be precisely the essential
idea of free self-government and democratic evolution, in which are
rooted the very life and being of America.

For this reason there is instinctive and profound sympathy on the part
of the great majority of native Americans with the cause of England and
her allies.

This sympathy is not merely the tie of blood or the unity of ideals.
Reason has convinced Americans that the supreme principles and highest
interests of America will be best safeguarded if the Allies win.

They dread instinctively what might happen if Pan-Germanism absorbed the
smaller nationalities, crushed the great free countries like France and
England, and dominated the whole world with the "mailed fist," not only
Europe and the Far East, but South America and the Pacific. Perhaps the
hint of Count Bernstorff that Canada may be treated like Belgium, and
the Monroe Doctrine like other "scraps of paper," may also have thrown
some light for Americans on a "Germanized" future! And a cast-iron
system of commercial and industrial monopoly dictated by German needs
cannot attract.

America Can't Stand Apart.

That is one side that American statesmen have to consider. There is, of
course, another.

The United States visibly form the greatest force the world has yet seen
to bring together, to unite, to assimilate, in the development of their
vast territories, measureless resources, and complicated industries, all
that is best from all the other great nations, welding slowly but
surely, through free institutions, these new elements into instruments
for the fuller realization of the generous and noble ideals for which
America stands. Perhaps an eighteenth or even fifteenth part of the
population is of German origin, a percentage not far from equal to that
contributed by the United Kingdom and Canada.

There is thus not only the broad question of avoiding war with Germany,
whose pe