Mr. —— ——,
————, Wisconsin.
My dear Sir:
Yours of May 16th was duly received and contents noted. In reply I want to say that your letter bears evidence of conscientious thought and your conclusions are, no doubt, honest. I assume you have written me not only for the purpose of giving your own views but also are inviting mine in return. And inasmuch as you have volunteered a doubt as to whether or not your German ancestry has colored or biased your judgment in the premises, I take the liberty of giving you my judgment on that point as I gather it from the context of this and your previous letter.
I believe your reasonings and your conclusions are from the German, not the American, standpoint. In other words, you are holding a brief for Germany and not for the United States. “How important a part” your “German ancestry plays” in this, it may be difficult for you to apprehend but your bias will readily be apparent to anyone who reads your letter. Now, you are an American-born citizen, I take it. You are an attorney-at-law and a member of the bar of Wisconsin. You owe a duty to your country which sympathy for Germany, no matter how genuine it may be, cannot diminish, much less nullify. Now the premises from which you as an American must reason are these: This country is at war with Germany. Your President, my President, our President, backed by a declaration of your Congress, my
Congress, our Congress, has proclaimed that war exists. This was done for reasons which appeared sufficient to the President and the Congress to make this declaration imperative. The loyalty and the fidelity of the President and of Congress to the people of the nation has never been questioned or challenged and I do not understand you to challenge or question them now. You are merely attempting in your letter to set your judgment against theirs. Germany is now an enemy of the United States which means that she is your enemy, my enemy, our enemy. Now, it is plain, as the Vice President remarked in a speech some time ago, that we cannot have a hundred million presidents or secretaries of state, meaning, of course, that we can only have one of each at a time and that when these officers, to whom this power has been delegated, have, with the aid of Congress, committed this government to a war, that question to all intents and purposes of the war is settled for all men who are citizens of the United States. And when the status of our relations with a foreign country is once fixed as that of war, then the time for argument has ceased and there is no longer any room for controversy between citizens upon that question. The question then, for the time being, that is to say, during the pendency of the war, is a closed and not an open one. And for the sake of your peace of mind as well as in justice to yourself as an American citizen who does not desire his loyalty questioned or to have his honorable reputation permanently impaired, you should respect, obey, and support the mandate of your country in the spirit of true and devoted American citizenship.
Now, I assume you love this country and that you love it because it is a free country and that you are here practicing your profession because of your desire to live in and to practice law in a country where fullest and freest opportunity is afforded you to work out your own destiny in your own way. In short, I assume that you favor a republican form of government and that you are devoted to America and its free institutions. I am sure that you would not have anyone believe otherwise of you because that would impute to you disloyalty and moreover it would impute to you a lack of intelligent enterprise by your remaining in a country that according to
your ideas is improperly governed instead of removing yourself to the jurisdiction of another country which more nearly squares with your ideas of good government. So, I repeat that I assume that you are here because you like to be here under a government that suits you and which you love better than any other government on earth. Now, it is evident in your letter that you love and sympathize with Germany but the question arises in my mind whether your love is for the German people or for the German government. You can easily put yourself to the test. If you love the German people then you must desire them to have as good a government as you enjoy here and it ought to make you happy that your country, if it prevails in this war, will make the German people as free and as happy as you are. If, on the other hand, you are mostly concerned in the success of the German government, that is to say, if you are mostly concerned in having the present Hohenzollern dynasty remain in power, then it would seem to be quite clear that your love is not for the German people but for the Hohenzollern dynasty and the German autocracy. In other words, your love would then be of the form and not of the substance. You cannot love this country and its institutions and at the same time love the German autocracy. These are incompatible and repugnant one to the other. They cannot both exist in the same heart at the same time. Your love for the German people, as is your love of mankind generally, is entirely compatible with your love of this country but it must be clear to you, as it must be perfectly clear to every American, that you cannot love your country and the German people and mankind generally and at the same time love the fearful German autocracy which is trying to impose or impress its system, its frightfulness, and its wish and will upon the world and which in its mad lust for power silences the promptings of conscience, scoffs at the weakness of love for human-kind, deafens its ears to the dictates of humanity, and which in pursuit of its fell purpose sets at naught all law human and divine. Now let me ask you to search your heart and see whether your love for the German fatherland is a love compatible with your duties as an American citizen—whether it is compatible with your love of liberty and humanity—whether it is compatible
with the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that all men are entitled to the right of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”! If such love is compatible with all these then your love for the German fatherland is a virtue and not a vice. But, if searching deeply into your heart you find that your love of the fatherland means that you love the relentless, ruthless, and despotic Hohenzollern dynasty and its system, pluck it out as you would a cancer, for it is a thing of evil and you cannot love it and be a good and true American.
You write “The President’s statement to the effect that the War is not directed against the German people never appealed to me.” For the reasons I have just given it should appeal to you as an American and as a lover of liberty and it should appeal to the German people themselves and their sympathizers in this country. It should appeal to lovers of liberty the world over—this statement that we are warring on a Power and not a People. We are warring on the Power because it has set its hand and might against the world and setting aside all laws of God and man it has outlawed itself and has no right to live. But in destroying this Power there is no intent, or disposition, or wish to destroy the People. The President’s statement means, as I interpret it, that the one thing that stands between peace and war with Germany is the Hohenzollern dynasty. Once let that obstacle be removed either by the German people themselves or by the arbitrament of arms and our troubles and differences with Germany are over. Now can an American citizen of German extraction who puts the welfare and happiness of the people of Germany ahead of that of the Kaiser or, in other words, ahead of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the autocratic system which that dynasty embodies and typifies, enlist himself, his sympathies, his resources, his life, in a higher and holier cause than to join in emancipating the German people from the thrall of the Hohenzollern dynasty and to save the German people whom he professes to love from a doom which an outraged world has pronounced and sealed against the ruthless and frightful Hohenzollern system? Now and here is the opportunity for all who love the German people to give proof of it. Let them all get back of the President and of
their government and to the extent of their influence, ability, might, and power help to bring to their brothers in blood across the sea that priceless boon of liberty and independence which they or their ancestors sailed the perilous seas to find here in America. Let them make sacrifice and help and fight to give to their friends and kinsmen across the ocean that which was given to most of them here without cost or sacrifice on their part.