ratic 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 a corruption
seated at its very heart.

"Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a
common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest
of their own.

"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening
things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?

"Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact
democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the
intimate relationships of her people that spoke for their natural
instinct, their habitual attitude toward life.

"Autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as
it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in
fact Russian in origin, in character or purpose, and now it has been
shaken, and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all
their native majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for
freedom in the world, for justice and for peace. Here is a fit partner
for a league of honour.

"One of the things that have served to convince us that the Prussian
autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very
outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities
and even our offices of government with spies, and set criminal
intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of council, our
peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.

"Indeed, it is now evident that its spies were here even before the war
began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact
proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues, which have more
than once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating
the industries of the country, have been carried on at the instigation,
with the support, and even under the personal direction, of official
agents of the imperial Government accredited to the Government of the
United States.

"Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have
sought to put the most generous interpretation possible upon them,
because we knew that thei