[Speech in Washington Monument Grounds, June 14, 1917.]
We know now clearly, as we knew before we ourselves were engaged in the War, that we are not enemies of the German people, and they are not our enemies. They did not originate, or desire, this hideous war, or wish that we should be drawn into it, and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it themselves, as well as our own. They themselves are in the grip of the same sinister power that has stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us.
The War was begun by the military masters of Germany, who have proved themselves to be also the masters of Austria-Hungary. These men never regarded nations as peoples of men, women, and children of like blood and frame as themselves, for whom Governments existed and in whom Governments had their life. They regarded them merely as serviceable organizations, which they could, either by force or intrigue, bend or corrupt to their own purpose. They regarded the smaller States, particularly, and those peoples, who could be overwhelmed by force, as their natural tools and instruments of domination.
Their purpose had long been avowed. The statesmen of other nations, to whom that purpose was incredible, paid little attention, and regarded what the German professors expounded in their class-rooms and the German writers set forth to the world as the goal of German policy as rather the dream of minds detached from practical affairs and the preposterous private conceptions of Germany's destiny than the actual plans of responsible rulers. But the rulers of Germany knew all the while what concrete plans, what well-advanced intrigue, lay at the back of what professors and writers were saying, and were glad to go forward unmolested, filling the thrones of the Balkan States with German princes, putting German officers at the service of Turkey, developing plans of sedition and rebellion in India and Egypt, and setting their fires in Persia.
The demands made by Austria upon Serbia were a mere single step in the plan which compassed Europe and Asia from Berlin to Bagdad. They hoped that these demands might not arouse Europe, but they meant to press them, whether they did or not. For they thought themselves ready for the final issue of arms. Their plan was to throw a belt of German military power and political control across the very center of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of Asia, and Austria-Hungary was to be as much their tool and pawn as Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, or the ponderous States of the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to become a part of the Central German Empire, absorbed and dominated by the same forces and influences that originally cemented the German States themselves.
The dream had its heart at Berlin. It could have had its heart nowhere else. It rejected entirely the idea of the solidarity of race. The choice of peoples played no part at all in the contemplated binding together of the racial and political units, which could keep together only by force. And they actually carried the greater part of that amazing plan into execution.
Look how things stand. Austria, at their mercy, has acted, not upon its own initiative or upon the choice of its own people, but at Berlin's dictation ever since the War began. Its people now desire peace, but they cannot have it until leave is granted from Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are, in fact, but a single Power. Serbia is at its mercy should its hand be but for a moment freed; Bulgaria consented to its will; Rumania is overrun by the Turkish armies, which the Germans trained into serving Germany, and the guns of the German warships lying in the harbor at Constantinople remind the Turkish statesmen every day that they have no choice but to take their orders from Berlin.
From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested by Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? "Peace, peace, peace" has been the talk of her Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the advantage. A little of the talk has been public, but most of it has been private, through all sorts of channels. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed which the German Government would be willing to accept.
That Government has other valuable pawns in its hands besides those I have mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of France, though with a slowly relaxing grasp, and practically the whole of Belgium. Its armies press close on Russia and overrun Poland. It cannot go farther—it dare not go back. It wishes to close its bargain before it is too late and it has little left to offer for the pound of flesh it will demand. The military masters under whom Germany is bleeding see very clearly to what point fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. It is their power at home of which they are thinking now more than of their power abroad. It is that power which is trembling under their very feet.
Deep fear has entered their hearts. They have but one chance to perpetuate their military power, or even their controlling political influence. If they can secure peace now, with the immense advantage still in their hands, they will have justified themselves before the German people. They will have gained by force what they promised to gain by it—an immense expansion of German power and an immense enlargement of German industrial and commercial opportunities. Their prestige will be secure, and with their prestige their political power.