that we shall as a matter of
course protect those of you here in our land and care for you and do
everything for you? If we have made the greater pledge, surely we can
manage these trifles.

But you, my dear fellow-countrymen, we are all thinking with one mind on
what is now going on about us. It is a very grave but a splendid time.
Whatever in the last analysis we shall go through, at present there is
no longer any one of us who any longer regards life in the role of a
blase or critical spectator, but each one of us stands in the very midst
of life, and, indeed, in the very midst of a higher life. God has of a
sudden brought us out of the wretchedness of the day to a high place to
which we have never before spiritually attained. But always where life
emerges, a higher life or merely life itself, wherever there is a thirst
for life, there is it set close around by death, as at every birth when
something new comes to the light of day, and so if the most precious
thing is to be gained, then death will stand close by life. But this we
also know, that when death and life intertwine in this fashion, the fear
of death vanishes away; in the intertwining, life only appears and full
of life man goes through death and into death. It brings to my mind an
old song, the powerful song of victory of our fathers:

It was a famous battle,
Fought 'twixt Life and Death;
Life came out the victor,
Triumphant over Death;
Already it was written
How one Death killed the other,
So making mock of Death!

Death which is willingly met kills the great death and secures the
higher life. Death makes us free. Thus spake Luther.

Let me say a few words in closing. Before all of us there stands in time
of crisis an image under which are the plain words: "He was faithful
unto death, yea, even to death on the cross." Now the time for great
faithfulness has come for us, for this obedience for which our neighbors
in former times have ridiculed us, saying: "See, these are the faithful
Germans, the men who do all on command and are so obedient!" Now they
shall see that this great obedience was not mere discipline, but a
matter of will. It was and still is discipline, but it is also will.
They shall see that this great obedience is not pettiness and death, but
power and life.

From the east--I say it once more--the desert sands are sweeping down
upon us; on the west we are opposed by old enemies and treacherous
friends. Whe