r of liberation--a liberation not of ourselves alone, but of all the
world, from that body of barbarous doctrine and inhuman practice which
has estranged nations, has held back the unity and progress of the
world, and which has stood revealed in all its deadly iniquity in the
course of this war.

In such wars for liberty there can be no compromise. They are either
won or lost. In your case it was freedom and unity or slavery and
separation, in our case military power, tyrannously used, will have
succeeded in tearing up treaties and trampling on the rights of others,
or liberty and public right will have prevailed. Therefore, we believe
that the war must be fought out to a finish, for on such an issue there
can be no such thing as a drawn war.

In holding this conviction, we have been inspired and strengthened
beyond measure by the example and the words of your great President.
Once the conflict had been joined, he did not shrink from bloodshed. I
have often been struck at the growth of both tenderness and stern
determination in the face of Lincoln, as shown in his photographs, as
the war went on.

Despite his abhorrence of all that was entailed, he persisted in it
because he knew that he was sparing life by losing it, that if he
agreed to compromise, the blood that had been shed on a hundred fields
would have been shed in vain, that the task of creating a united nation
of free men would only have to be undertaken at even greater cost at
some later day. It would, indeed, be impossible to state our faith
more clearly than Lincoln stated it himself at the end of 1864.

"On careful consideration," he said, "of all the evidence it seems to
me that no attempt at negotiation with the insurgent leader could
result in any good. He would accept nothing short of severance of the
Union, precisely what we will not and cannot give. His declarations to
this effect are explicit and oft repeated. He does not deceive us. He
affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves; . . . between him and us the
issue is distinct, simple, and inflexible. It is an issue which can
only be tried by war and decided by victory."

That was the judgment of the greatest statesman of the nineteenth
century during the last great war for human liberty. It is the
judgment of this nation and of its fellow-nations overseas to-day.

"Our armies," said Lincoln, "are ministers of good, not evil." So do
we believe. And through all the carnage and sufferi