"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 she violated our confidence. Paid German spies filled our cities. Officials of her Government, received as the guests of this nation, lived with us to bribe and terrorize, defying our law and the law of nations.
"We are fighting Germany because while we were yet her friends—the only great power that still held hands off—she sent the Zimmermann note calling to her aid Mexico, our southern neighbor, and hoping to lure Japan, our western neighbor, into war against this nation of peace.
GOVERNMENT THAT HAS NO CONSCIENCE.
"The nation that would do these things proclaims the gospel that government has no conscience. And this doctrine cannot live, or else democracy must die! For the nations of the world must keep faith. There can be no living for us in a world where the State has no conscience, no reverence for the things of the spirit, no respect for international law, no mercy for those who fall before its force. What an unordered world! Anarchy! The anarchy of the rival wolf packs!
"We are fighting Germany because in this war feudalism is making its last stand against oncoming 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 of 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. Feudalism plus science, thirteenth century plus twentieth; this is the religion of the mistaken Germany that has linked itself with the Turk; that has, too, adopted the method of Mahomet: 'The State has no conscience,' 'the State can do no wrong.' With the spirit of the fanatic, she believes this gospel and that it is her duty to spread it by force.
"With poison gas that makes living a hell, with submarines that sneak through the seas to slyly murder non-combatants, with dirigibles that bombard men and women while they sleep, with a perfected system of terrorization that the modern world first heard of when German troops entered China, German feudalism is making war upon mankind.
LIVE IN HAUNTED TERROR.
"Let this old spirit of evil have its way and no man will live in America without paying toll to it, in manhood and in money. This spirit might demand Canada from a defeated, navyless England, and then our dream of peace on the north would be at an end. We would live, as France has lived for forty years, in haunting terror.