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 their natural instinct, their
habitual attitude towards life. The 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, character, or
purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian
people have been added in all their naive 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 Honor.

One of the things that has 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 counsel, 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 their
source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people
towards us (who were, no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselves
were), but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what it
pleased and told its people nothing. But they have played their part in
serving to convince us at last that that Government entertains no real
friendship for us and means to act against our peace and secu