host. How long, slaves, will you bend your backs to
the lash of your military masters? They lied to you and made you
believe the Fatherland was attacked, and led you, dupes, into a war of
conquest. Your modern Pilate, in his blasphemous pride, with the name of
God upon his lips and the blood of innocents upon his hands, is now
crucifying Freedom upon his cross of iron. But the day of the
resurrection will come; and how will your record stand then? Awake, ye
free of Germany! When shall you come into your own?

Every hour that the coming of such a republic is shortened means just so
much less agony for the peoples of the world. There is no better pledge
for the safety of democracy. "Self-governed nations," said the President
of the United States in the message referred to above, "do not fill
their neighbour states with spies or set the course of intrigue to
bring about some critical posture of affairs which will give them an
opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be
successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the right
to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression,
carried, it may be, from generation to generation, can be worked out and
kept from the light only within the privacy of courts or behind the
carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are
happily impossible where public opinion commands and insists upon full
information concerning all the nation's affairs."

XV

What else? The union. The final act in the world-wide drama of
democracy. The union of the democracies of the world to insure mutual
protection and peace. I mean a union for this purpose of all those
governments where the people, by their representatives, control. The
union on two hemispheres of what the spirit of Lafayette foresaw,
symbolized, and battled for on both.

The union ought to include the Austrian and German people themselves. It
can never, however, include the Prussian military autocracy or any other
military autocracy. I quote again from the President's message: "A
steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a
partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be
trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a
league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its
vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they
would and render account to no one would be