the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of
the Balkans, and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and in Asia,
from the impudent and alien dominion of the Prussian military and
commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves to say that we do not wish in any way
to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair
of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or
politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way.
We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in
all matters, great or small. We shall hope to secure for the peoples of
the Balkan peninsula and for the people of the Turkish Empire the right
and opportunity to make their own lives safe, their own fortunes secure
against oppression or injustice and from the dictation of foreign courts
or parties.

And our attitude and purpose with regard to Germany herself are of a
like kind. We intend no wrong against the German Empire, no interference
with her internal affairs. We should deem either the one or the other
absolutely unjustifiable, absolutely contrary to the principles we have
professed to live by and to hold most sacred throughout our life as a
nation.

The people of Germany are being told by the men whom they now permit to
deceive them and to act as their masters that they are fighting for the
very life and existence of their Empire, a war of desperate self-defense
against deliberate aggression. Nothing could be more grossly or wantonly
false, and we must seek by the utmost openness and candor as to our real
aims to convince them of its falseness. We are in fact fighting for
their emancipation from fear, along with our own,--from the fear as well
as from the fact of unjust attack by neighbors or rivals or schemers
after world empire. No one is threatening the existence or the
independence or the peaceful enterprise of the German Empire.

The worst that can happen to the detriment of the German people is this,
that if they should still, after the war is over, continue to be obliged
to live under ambitious and intriguing masters interested to disturb the
peace of the world, men or classes of men whom the other peoples of the
world could not trust, it might be impossible to admit them to the
partnership of nations which must henceforth guarantee the world's
peace. That partnership must be a partnership of peoples, not a mere
partnership of governments. It might be impo