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War StoriesThe Russian RevolutionThe controller, as he is called on the Siberian railroad, w... When Germany Lost The War No man knows exactly when and where the three and twenty al... Alan Seeger As England and the world lost Rupert Brooke, so America and... The World War The story of the World War is the story of the control of t... Let Us Save The Kiddies At 12:20 noon, on Saturday, May 1, 1915, there steamed out ... Rupert Brooke Among the losses that the World War has caused--many of the... Raemaekers There are many ways of fighting, and the Germans, in their ... The Charge Of The Black Watch And The Scots Greys Sometimes a retreat is in reality a great victory. It has b... Marshal Foch A Great German philosopher said many years ago that history... Defense Of LiÉge To Germany's unfair and treacherous proposal that Belgium b... A Place In The Sun The history of Rome about 1500 years ago tells us of "the w... A Ballad Of French Rivers Of streams that men take honor in The Frenchman ... Can War Ever Be Right? After England had entered the war against the Central Power... Carry On! It's easy to fight when everything's right, And yo... A King Of Heroes "King" is not a word that will go out of use when the world... The Queen's Flower On July 25, 1918, nearly every person in Washington, the ca... The Case Of Serbia But Belgium is not the only little nation that has been att... The Melting Pot America has been called the "crucible" or the "melting pot"... They Shall Not Pass The caves described in the Arabian Nights are not more wond... At School Near The Lines The boys and girls in America have listened with great inte... |
Why We Fight GermanyBecause of Belgium, invaded, outraged, enslaved, impoverished Belgium. We cannot forget Liége, Louvain, and Cardinal Mercier. Translated into terms of American history, these names stand for Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Patrick Henry. Because of France, invaded, desecrated France, a million of whose heroic sons have died to save the land of Lafayette. Glorious, golden France, the preserver of the arts, the land of noble spirit, the first land to follow our lead into republican liberty. Because of England, from whom came the laws, traditions, standards of life, and inherent love of liberty which we call Anglo-Saxon civilization. We defeated her once upon the land and once upon the sea. But Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Canada are free because of what we did. And they are with us in the fight for the freedom of the seas. Because of Russia--new Russia. She must not be overwhelmed now. Not now, surely, when she is just born into freedom. Her peasants must have their chance; they must go to school to Washington, to Jefferson, and to Lincoln, until they know their way about in this new, strange world of government by the popular will. Because of other peoples, with their rising hope that the world may be freed from government by the soldier. We are fighting Germany because she sought to terrorize us and then to fool us. We could not believe that Germany would do what she said she would do upon the seas. We still hear the piteous cries of children coming up out of the sea where the Lusitania went down. And Germany has never asked the forgiveness of the world. We saw the Sussex sunk, crowded with the sons and daughters of neutral nations. We saw ship after ship sent to the bottom--ships of mercy bound out of America for the Belgian starving, ships carrying the Red Cross and laden with the wounded of all nations, ships carrying food and clothing to friendly, harmless, terrorized peoples, ships flying the Stars and Stripes--sent to the bottom hundreds of miles from shore, manned by American seamen, murdered against all law, without warning. We believed Germany's promise that she would respect the neutral flag and the rights of neutrals, and we held our anger and outrage in check. But now we see that she was holding us off with fair promises until she could build her huge fleet of submarines. For when spring came, she blew her promise into the air, just as at the beginning she had torn up that "scrap of paper." Then we saw clearly that there was but one law for Germany, her will to rule. We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against on-coming democracy. We see it now. This is a war against an old spirit, an ancient, outworn spirit. It is a war against feudalism--the right of the castle on the hill to rule the village below. It is a war for democracy--the right of all to be their own masters. Let Germany be feudal if she will. But she must not spread her system over a world that has outgrown it. We fight with the world for an honest world in which nations keep their word, for a world in which nations do not live by swagger or by threat, for a world in which men think of the ways in which they can conquer the common cruelties of nature instead of inventing more horrible cruelties to inflict upon the spirit and body of man, for a world in which the ambition of the philosophy of a few shall not make miserable all mankind, for a world in which the man is held more precious than the machine, the system, or the State. SECRETARY FRANKLIN K. LANE, June 4, 1917. Next: General Pershing Previous: The Mexican Plot
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