country, just as all pro-German American men, whatever their
descent, are traitors, whether they realize it or not. What was the
cause of the roar of indignation that went up all over the United
States on Aug. 1? Anti-Germanism? Not a bit of it. If Russia had made
the declaration of war the roar would have been as immediate and as
loud. It was the spontaneous protest of the spirit of democracy
against an arrogant autocracy that dared to plunge Europe into war and
the world into panic, without the consent of the people; the manifest
of a mediaeval power by an ambitious and unscrupulous group over
millions of industrious, peace-loving men who had nothing to gain and
all to lose.

It has been pointed out over and over again how diametrically opposed
are the German and American ideals; therefore, it seems incredible
that every American who champions the cause of a powerful and
sublimely egotistic nation does not realize that what he hopes to see
is not only the victory of the German arms in Europe, but the eventual
destruction of democracy, the annihilation of the spirit of America as
epitomized in the Declaration of Independence. I have not the least
apprehension of immediate war with Germany, any more than of physical
defeat at her hands did she, with the rest of Europe prostrate, make a
raid on our shores; but it seems hardly open to question that with
Europe Prussianized, we, the one heterogeneous race, and always ready
to absorb and imbibe from the parent countries, should lose, in the
course of half a century, our tremendous individual hustle, and
gratefully permit a benevolent (and cast iron) despotism (not
unnecessarily of our own make) to do our thinking, perhaps to select
our jobs and apportion our daily tasks.

For that is what it almost amounts to now in Germany, and it is for
this reason, no less than to escape military service, that so many
millions of Germans have immigrated to this country. Unlike the vast
majority of the bourgeois and lower classes, a kindly but stupid
people, they were born with an alertness of mind and an energy of
character which gave them the impetus to transfer themselves to a land
where life might be harder but where soul and body could attain to a
complete independence. Their present attitude is, however
unconsciously, hypocritical, but it is not altogether as traitorous as
that of the American born, who has not the excuse of that peculiar
form of sentimentality which has fermente