ld. The President's masterly
series of state papers, distributed in all parts of the globe, have
indeed been so many Proclamations of Emancipation for the world's
oppressed. Not only powerful nations shall cease to exploit little
nations, but powerful individuals shall cease to exploit their fellow
men. Henceforth no wars for dominion shall be waged, and to this
end secret treaties shall be abolished. Peoples through their
representatives shall make their own treaties. And just as democracy
insures to the individual the greatest amount of self-determination,
nations also shall have self-determination, in order that each shall be
free to make its world contribution. All citizens have duties to
perform toward their fellow citizens; all democratic nations must be
interdependent.

With this purpose America has entered the war. But it implies that our
own household must be swept and cleaned. The injustices and inequalities
existing in our own country, the false standards of worth, the
materialism, the luxury and waste must be purged from our midst.

III.

In fighting Germany we are indeed fighting an evil Will--evil because it
seeks to crush the growth of individual and national freedom. Its object
is to put the world back under the thrall of self-constituted authority.
So long as this Will can compel the bodies of soldiers to do its
bidding, these bodies must be destroyed. Until the Will behind them is
broken, the world cannot be free. Junkerism is the final expression
of reaction, organized to the highest efficiency. The war against the
Junkers marks the consummation of a long struggle for human liberty in
all lands, symbolizes the real cleavage dividing the world. As in the
French Revolution and the wars that followed it, the true significance
of this war is social. But today the Russian Revolution sounds the
keynote. Revolutions tend to express the extremes of the philosophies
of their times--human desires, discontents, and passions that cannot be
organized. The French Revolution was a struggle for political freedom;
the underlying issue of the present war is economic freedom--without
which political freedom is of no account. It will not, therefore,
suffice merely to crush the Junkers, and with them militarism and
autocracy. Unless, as the fruit of this appalling bloodshed and
suffering, the democracies achieve economic freedom, the war will
have been fought in vain. More revolutions, wastage and bloodshed will