THE PRUSSIAN MENACE TO AMERICAN

FREEDOM1

ELIHU ROOT (1845- )

By entering this war in April, the United States availed itself of the very last opportunity to defend itself against subjection to German power before it was too late to defend itself successfully.

For many years we have pursued our peaceful course of internal development protected in a variety of ways. We were protected by the law of nations to which all civilized governments have professed their allegiance. So long as we committed no injustice ourselves we could not be attacked without a violation of that law.

We were protected by a series of treaties under which all the principal nations of the earth agreed to respect our rights and to maintain friendship with us. We were protected by an extensive system of arbitration created by or consequent upon the peace conferences at The Hague, and under which all controversies arising under the law and under treaties were to be settled peaceably by arbitration and not by force.

We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean separating us from all great military powers, and by the bold assertion of the Monroe Doctrine 2 that if any of those

1 Mr. Root was Secretary of State under President Roosevelt. In this and many other offices of trust Mr. Root, through his broad statesmanship and keen intellectual powers, has been an instrument in establishing the American spirit.

From an address delivered at Chicago, Illinois, September 14, 1917. In pamphlet, "Plain Issues of the War," issued by the Committee on Public Information, Washington, D.C.

2 See page 74 for the foreign policy formulated under President

powers undertook to overpass the ocean and establish itself upon these western continents that would be regarded as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, and would call upon her to act in her defense.

We were protected by the fact that the policy and the fleet of Great Britain were well known to support the Monroe Doctrine. We were protected by the delicate balance of power in Europe which made it seem not worth while for any power to engage in a conflict here at the risk of suffering from its rivals there.

All these protections were swept away by the war which began in Europe in 1914. The war was begun by the concerted action of Germany and Austria - the invasion of Serbia on the east by Austria and the invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium on the west by Germany. Both invasions were in violation of the law of nations, and in violation of the faith of treaties.

Everybody knew that Russia was bound in good faith to come to the relief of Serbia, that France was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, that England was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Belgium, so that the invasion of these two small states was the beginning of a general European war.

These acts, which have drenched the world with blood, were defended and justified in the bold avowal of the German government that the interests of the German state were superior to the obligations of law and the faith of treaties, that no law or treaty was binding upon Germany which it was for the interest of Germany to violate.

All pretense of obedience to the law of nations and of

Monroe in 1823, which announced that the United States would view as a hostile action any attempt of European powers to acquire territory on the American continents.

respect for solemn promises was thrown off; and, in lieu of that system of lawful and moral restraint upon power which Christian civilization has been building up for a century was reinstated the cynical philosophy of Frederick the Great, the greatest of the Hohenzollerns, who declared: "Statesmanship can be reduced to three principles: First, to maintain your power, and, according to circumstances, to extend it. Second, to form an alliance only for your own advantage. Third, to command fear and respect, even in the most disastrous times.

"Do not be ashamed of making interested alliances from which you yourself can derive the whole advantage. Do not make the foolish mistake of not breaking them when you believe your interests require it.

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Above all, uphold the following maxim: To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them of the means of injuring you.

"When he is about to conclude a treaty with some foreign power, if a sovereign remembers he is a Christian, he is lost."

From 1914 until the present, in a war waged by Germany with a revolting barbarity unequaled since the conquests of Genghis Khan,1 Germany has violated every rule agreed upon by civilized nations in modern times to mitigate the barbarities of war or to protect the rights of noncombatants and neutrals. She had no grievance against Belgium except that Belgium stood upon her admitted rights and refused to break the faith of her treaties by consenting that the neutrality of her territory should be

The great Mongolian chieftain of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who conquered China and central Asia and has left his name in history as one of the most barbarous, cruel, and ruthless of conquerors.

violated to give Germany an avenue for the attack upon France.

She has taken possession of the territory of Belgium and subjected her people to the hard yoke of a brutal soldiery. She has extorted vast sums from her peaceful cities. She has burned her towns and battered down her noble churches. She has stripped the Belgian factories of their machinery and deprived them of the raw material of manufacture.

She has carried away her workmen by tens of thousands into slavery, and her women into worse than slavery. She has slain peaceful noncombatants by the hundred, undeterred by the helplessness of age, of infancy, or of womanhood. She has done the same in northern France, in Poland, in Serbia, in Roumania.

In all of these countries women have been outraged by the thousand, by tens of thousands, and who ever heard of a German soldier being punished for rape, or robbery, or murder? These revolting outrages upon humanity and law are not the casual incidents of war, but are the results of a settled policy of frightfulness answering to the maxim of the Great Frederick to "command respect through fear."

Why were these things done by Germany? The answer rests upon the accumulated evidence of German acts and German words so conclusive that no pretense can cover it, no sophistry can disguise it. The answer is that this war was begun and these crimes against humanity were done because Germany was pursuing the hereditary policy of the Hohenzollerns and following the instincts of the arrogant military caste which rules Prussia, to grasp the overlordship of the civilized world and establish an empire in which she should play the rôle of ancient Rome.

They were done because Prussian militarism still pursues the policy of power through conquest, of aggrandizement through force and fear, which in little more than two centuries has brought the puny mark of Brandenburg with its million and a half of people—to the control of a vast empire the greatest armed force of the modern

world.

It now appears beyond the possibility of doubt that this war was made by Germany pursuing a long and settled purpose. For many years she has been preparing to do exactly what she has done with a thoroughness, a perfection of plans, and a vastness of provision in men, munitions, and supplies never before equaled or approached in human history.

She brought the war on when she chose, because she chose, in the belief that she could conquer the earth, nation by nation.

All nations are egotistical, all peoples think most highly of their own qualities, and regard other peoples as inferior ; but the egotism of the ruling class of Prussia is beyond all example and it is active and aggressive. They believe that Germany is entitled to rule the world by virtue of her superiority in all these qualities which they include under the term "kultur," and by reason of her power to compel submission by the sword.

That belief does not evaporate in theory. It is translated into action, and this war is the action which results. This belief of national superiority and the right to assert it everywhere is a tradition from the Great Frederick. It has been instilled into the minds of the German people through all the universities and schools. It has been preached from her pulpits and taught by her philosophers and historians. It has been maintained by her govern