es; and the textile workers of the
northern counties, whose mills could not get cotton on account of the
blockade, declared their willingness to suffer and starve if the slaves
in America might be freed.

Abraham Lincoln at that time represented the American people as
the British Government did not represent the British people. We are
concerned today with peoples rather than governments.

It remained for an American President to announce the moral issue of the
present war, and thus to solidify behind him, not only the liberal mind
of America, but the liberal elements within the nations of Europe. He
became the democratic leader of the world. The issue, simply stated, is
the advancement of democracy and peace. They are inseparable. Democracy,
for progress, demands peace. It had reached a stage, when, in a
contracting world, it could no longer advance through isolation:
its very existence in every country was threatened, not only by the
partisans of reaction from within, but by the menace from without of a
militaristic and imperialistic nation determined to crush it, restore
superimposed authority, and dominate the globe. Democracy, divided
against itself, cannot stand. A league of democratic nations, of
democratic peoples, has become imperative. Hereafter, if democracy wins,
self-determination, and not imperialistic exploitation, is to be the
universal rule. It is the extension, on a world scale, of Mr.
Wilson's Mexican policy, the application of democratic principles to
international relationships, and marks the inauguration of a new era. We
resort to force against force, not for dominion, but to make the
world safe for the idea on which we believe the future of civilization
depends, the sacred right of self-government. We stand prepared to treat
with the German people when they are ready to cast off autocracy and
militarism. Our attitude toward them is precisely our attitude toward
the Mexican People. We believe, and with good reason, that the German
system of education is authoritative and false, and was more or less
deliberately conceived in order to warp the nature and produce
complexes in the mind of the German people for the end of preserving and
perpetuating the power of the Junkers. We have no quarrel with the
duped and oppressed, but we war against the agents of oppression. To the
conservative mind such an aspiration appears chimerical. But America,
youngest of the nations, was born when modern science was gat