elcome it or not, that the peoples of the world are to be made subject
to the patronage and overlordship of those who have the power to enforce
it.

That program once carried out, America and all who care or dare to stand
with her must arm and prepare themselves to contest the mastery of the
world--a mastery in which the rights of common men, the rights of women
and of all who are weak, must for the time being be trodden underfoot
and disregarded and the old, age-long struggle for freedom and right
begin again at its beginning. Everything that America has lived for and
loved and grown great to vindicate and bring to a glorious realization
will have fallen in utter ruin and the gates of mercy once more
pitilessly shut upon mankind!

The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is not that what the
whole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever they
have moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment,
to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German arms
have accomplished with unpitying thoroughness throughout every fair
region they have touched.

What, then are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready even
now, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it is
sincerely purposed--a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare
alike. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the
German commanders in Russia and I cannot mistake the meaning of the
answer.

I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world shall
know that you accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice and
self-forgetfulness with which we shall give all that we love and all
that we have to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like
ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we do. Let
everything that we say, my fellow-countrymen, everything that we
henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this response till the
majesty and might of our concerted power shall fill the thought and
utterly defeat the force of those who flout and misprize what we honor
and hold dear.

Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide
whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether
right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall
determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one
response possible from us: Force, force to the utmost, force without
stin