s opinion they
utter now, not sedition. They proclaim the liberal purposes of their
masters; declare this a foreign war which can touch America with no
danger to either her lands or her institutions; set England at the
center of the stage and talk of her ambition to assert economic
dominion throughout the world; appeal to our ancient tradition of
isolation in the politics of the nations; and seek to undermine the
Government with false professions of loyalty to its principles.

THIS IS A PEOPLES' WAR

But they will make no headway. The false betray themselves always in
every accent. It is only friends and partisans of the German
Government whom we have already identified who utter these thinly
disguised disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the world, and
nowhere are they more plainly seen than in the United States, where
we are accustomed to deal with facts and not with sophistries; and
the great fact that stands out above all the rest is that this is a
Peoples' War, a war for freedom and justice and self-government
amongst all the nations of the world, a war to make the world safe
for the peoples who live in it and have made it their own, the German
people themselves included; and that with us rests the choice to
break through all these hypocrisies and patent cheats and masks of
brute force and help set the world free, or else stand aside and let
it be dominated a long age through by sheer weight of arms and the
arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters, by the nation which
can maintain the biggest armies and the most irresistible
armaments--a power to which the world has afforded no parallel and in
the face of which political freedom must wither and perish.

For us there is but one choice. We have made it. Woe be to the man or
group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high
resolution, when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated
and made secure for the salvation of the nations. We are ready to
plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new luster.
Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great
faith to which we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face
of our people.

XI

AN APPEAL TO THE BUSINESS INTERESTS

(_July 11, 1917_)

My Fellow-countrymen,--The Government is about to attempt to
determine the prices at which it will ask you henceforth to furnish
various supplies which are necessary for the prosecution of the war,