that lit the fire,
just as the firing on Fort Sumter was the proximate but not the real
cause of our Civil War. The real cause of our Civil War was, as Lincoln
said, because this nation "could not endure half slave and half free."
The real cause of the present World War is because civilization cannot
endure half military autocracy and half free democracy. "The world must
be made safe for democracy." We fight to save the intended victims of
Prussianism, to arrest the disturber of the peace, and prevent a
repetition of the offense.

The President of the United States in his great message, delivered in
the Congress of the United States on the second day of April, 1917, in
which he advised the Congress to accept the status of belligerent thrust
upon us by the acts of the Imperial Government of Germany in unlawfully
sinking our ships and killing our citizens, said: "Let us be very clear,
and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects
are.... Our object ... is to vindicate the principles of peace and
justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power
and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the
world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure
the observance of those principles. Neutrality is no longer feasible or
desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of
its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the
existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is
controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people....

"We are now about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to
liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to
check and nullify its pretensions and its power.... The world must be
made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested
foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We
desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves,
no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are
but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied
when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom
of nations can make them."

XIII

We are at war with the Menace. It is the same Menace--now grown to a
monster with four heads dominated by one brain--that over a hundred
years ago invited Lafayette to its palace at