PEACE
November 12, 1918
Four years and a quarter have passed since Germany, by the invasion of Belgium, began the World War and made it at the same time a war of cynical treachery and of bestiality and of inhuman wrongdoing. Almost from the beginning our governmental authorities were well informed of the organized brutality with which it was waged and of the fact that the Kaiser and the leading soldiers, politicians, and commercial magnates of Germany had deliberately plunged the world into war because they expected to profit by conquest, while the Socialist Party aided and abetted them in the hope of sharing some of the profit.
The rest of us ordinary Americans were successfully hoodwinked because the facts were concealed from us. But gradually the truth leaked through to us. First we learned that the stories of the atrocities were true. Then, although not until much later, we found out that there was ample proof that Germany had brought on the war to gratify her greed for gold and her arrogant and conscienceless lust for world domination. Finally we were permitted to learn that Germany intended to strike us down as soon as she had made the free nations her victims. Now ourtroops have played a manful part, a part not only heroic and efficient, but also of decisive consequence in the final terrible struggle.
It is not pleasant to think that the two first crushing blows in bringing about the end, the overthrow of Bulgaria and the overthrow of Turkey, were due in no way to us, but solely to our allies, England and France. We never made war on either offending nation; we remained neutral, and this exhibition of feeble diplomacy on our part made us onlookers instead of partakers of the triumph. But with Austria, after much hesitation and wabbling, we did finally go to war, and, although our part was very small, we have a modest right to share the general satisfaction over the victory. In the case of Germany, however, we played a really great part, and although until the very end we were unable to put on the fighting line any tanks or field guns or battle planes, and relatively only a small number of machine guns and bombing and observation planes, our soldiers themselves were probably on the average the finest troops who fought in Europe.
And now the German imperial military and capitalistic authority has been beaten to its knees and forced to accept all the terms the Allies have imposed upon it. The able and wicked men who thought to wade through a sea of blood to world domination must now bow their heads before the outside peoples whom they have so cruelly wronged and face the sullen distrust and hostility of their own people, whom they misled by promising them a share in theprofits of successful guilt. Their doom has come upon them.
A little over a month ago the Administration embarked upon a career of note-writing with Germany, which, if unchecked, might have meant a peace of practical profit to Germany. But the feeling of the American people, especially in the West, showed itself in such direct and straightforward fashion that this effort was soon abandoned. Moreover, at the recent election, the American people, with the issue squarely before them, declared that they were the masters of their public servants and not rubber stamps, and that this was the people’s war and not the war of any one man or any one party, and that loyalty to ourselves and our allies stood ahead of adherence to any man. Germany has been beaten down abroad and at home. The pro-Germans and the pacifists and the defeatists and the Germanized Socialists, and all the crew who stand for any form of either Bolshevism or Kaiserism, have been warned that they shall not betray this Nation.