THE PEACE OF COMPLETE VICTORY
October 23, 1917
It is stated in a press report from Washington that the Allies wish the United States to stop sending men abroad and use its ships for food and munitions instead, but that the Administration will not agree to the plan, and furthermore that the Administration is determined that there shall be no peace until Germany is completely beaten. If the report is correct, the Administration is absolutely right on both points.
As to the first point, we can well understand, in view of the steady U-boat campaign, how greatly the Allies desire food and munitions, and we regretwith bitter shame the folly of our Government in dawdling and delaying for six vital months after the German note of January 31 last before seriously beginning the work of building big, swift cargo boats. But this cannot alter the fact that for the sake of our honor and our future world usefulness we must ourselves fight and not merely hire others to fight for us. If we do not follow this course, our children’s heads will be bowed with humiliation. With proper energy we could already have had some hundreds of thousands of men in the firing line, and we should send our troops over as rapidly as possible, with the purpose to put at least two million men against the German lines next year, an entirely possible programme if the Government will lend its energies with a single mind to the task.
As regards the second point, every decent citizen should make the pacifist and the home Hun realize that agitation for a premature peace, for a peace without victory, is seditious. Shame on every man, and above all on every public servant and every leader of public opinion, who endeavors to weaken the determination of America to see the war through and at all costs secure an overwhelming triumph for the principles for which we contend. If Germany is left unbeaten, the Western Hemisphere will stand in cowering dread of an assault by Germany’s ruthless and barbarous autocracy. The liberties of the free peoples of the world are at stake.
We must now fight with all our might on European soil beside our allies or else fear the day when wewill have to fight without allies beside our burning homes. While this war lasts, the cause of our allies is our cause, their defeat would be our defeat, and whoever assails them or defends Germany is a traitor to the United States. There must be no negotiated peace. Belgium is entitled to an enormous indemnity and France to annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. By her marine murders and her shore raids and her utter treachery and abominable cruelty, Germany has made herself the outlaw among nations, and with her we should negotiate only through the mouths of our cannon. All who now advocate a negotiated peace with her are seeking to betray civilization in the interest of brute force and international outrage. The United States owes her entrance into this war almost as much to the American pacifist as to the German militarist, and now the former is meanly eager once more to serve the latter by securing an unjust peace. Let every brave and patriotic American spurn the base counsels of the pro-Germans and pacifists, and insist that this country, at whatever cost, fight steadfastly until the war closes with Germany’s complete overthrow.