atants of the enemy state, and the positions which they occupy, but
will in like manner seek to destroy the total intellectual and material
resources of the latter."

XII

We are at war. On April 6, 1917, the democracy of the United States of
America formally declared war against the autocracy of Germany. What are
we fighting for?

Two brutes in the shape of men engage in a savage, drunken brawl.
Bloody, cursing, dishevelled, with swollen and distorted features, and
screaming their anathemas of drunken hate, they fight with the ferocity
of beasts. Beasts they are.

A bully, a degenerate, a thug of the city, a brigand of the country, a
horse thief of the western plains, attacks a weaker and unprepared
victim. A man with red blood in his veins sees the assault, and attacks
the attacker with strength enough to save the victim, arrest the
disturber of the peace, and prevent a repetition of the offense. He has
been engaged in a fight, but he is not a beast.

The spirit of Lafayette brought him to America to fight for democracy;
he was a hard fighter but he was not a beast. And now, against that
calculating and brutal power which with the treachery of a tiger of the
jungle and all the devilish ingenuity of the highest Kultur has
assaulted the peace of the world, the armies of America are led by the
spirit of Lafayette.

For years the Prussian military autocracy has been preparing for the
leap upon its victim. The power to declare war has been kept solely and
exclusively in the hands of the military autocracy. It is responsible to
no one. The great mass of people must do as they are commanded;
obeying, not laws made by themselves acting through their duly-elected
representatives, but orders promulgated by a self-appointed few, the
military autocracy of Prussia. Woe to the unfortunate victim who refuses
to obey! With cold-blooded deliberation this military autocracy which
controls the German people has for years been preparing its huge
fighting machine. When the time to strike came, when the neighbouring
countries were least prepared to resist, Germany was deluged with the
lie that the German nation was attacked, the scrap of paper otherwise
called a treaty was torn up, and the tiger sprang. The world knows the
result.

We enter the war for two motives, one to preserve the democracies of
Europe, the other for our own preservation. The sinking of our ships by
submarines was merely the immediate cause, the match