the
blockade, declared their willingness to suffer and starve if the slaves
in America might be freed.

Abraham Lincoln at that time represented the American people as the
British Government did not represent the British people. We are
concerned today with peoples rather than governments.

It remained for an American President to announce the moral issue of the
present war, and thus to solidify behind him, not only the liberal mind
of America, but the liberal elements within the nations of Europe. He
became the democratic leader of the world. The issue, simply stated, is
the advancement of democracy and peace. They are inseparable.
Democracy, for progress, demands peace. It had reached a stage, when, in
a contracting world, it could no longer advance through isolation: its
very existence in every country was threatened, not only by the partisans
of reaction from within, but by the menace from without of a militaristic
and imperialistic nation determined to crush it, restore superimposed
authority, and dominate the globe. Democracy, divided against itself,
cannot stand. A league of democratic nations, of democratic peoples, has
become imperative. Hereafter, if democracy wins, self-determination, and
not imperialistic exploitation, is to be the universal rule. It is the
extension, on a world scale, of Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy, the
application of democratic principles to international relationships, and
marks the inauguration of a new era. We resort to force against force,
not for dominion, but to make the world safe for the idea on which we
believe the future of civilization depends, the sacred right of
self-government. We stand prepared to treat with the German people when
they are ready to cast off autocracy and militarism. Our attitude toward
them is precisely our attitude toward the Mexican People. We believe,
and with good reason, that the German system of education is
authoritative and false, and was more or less deliberately conceived in
order to warp the nature and produce complexes in the mind of the German
people for the end of preserving and perpetuating the power of the
Junkers. We have no quarrel with the duped and oppressed, but we war
against the agents of oppression. To the conservative mind such an
aspiration appears chimerical. But America, youngest of the nations, was
born when modern science was gathering the momentum which since has
enabled it to overcome, with a bewildering rapid