Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/102

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82
DRAMATIC MOMENTS

we are throwing our weight against the Hohenzollerns. Since the beginning of the Republic the one-man despotism has been incessantly planning our destruction in secret. It is now our final determination to be rid of predatory powers that consult neither parliaments nor peoples, and apart from the principles involved, hard historical experience has shown us that it is only from such as these that our democratic government and our peaceful country is endangered. Napoleon was the first. The Kaiser is the last. But there were many in between, of whom, more hereafter.

Thomas Jefferson was President. Passionately followed by many, and hated with fury by others from that day to this, he was the founder of the great school of government of which Woodrow Wilson is the latest exponent. The careers of the two men in the presidential chair bear a striking resemblance.

In domestic affairs Jefferson was the devoted champion of "the plain people," whose ambition to translate the simple philosophy of