persons, many of them women and children. And now Germany asks what the world will think of her for killing one or two of her own people!
The whole truth will never be known, but more than 100,000 citizens of Belgium and France were put to death on various pretexts; thousands of women made the sport of violent beasts who wore the Kaiser's uniform; thousands of little children maimed and tortured and every conceivable barbarity and infamy committed upon them. And yet Germany apologizes for killing two more persons! And Dr. Dernburg counts upon the future friendhip of America!
It must be the just men and brave men of America who shall constitute the court to determine the treatment of the foreign element in America. All of those men within our gates who retain their sympathy for Germany are enemies of this country after the war as much as they were during the war. They must share then in the defeat of Germany and must pay the losses of the loser. The victor decides. "We are the victors. Let the foreign element reflect on that—we are the victors, not they, in this fight which they elected. It is only the man who makes the dollar his Ten Commandments who will feel toward Germany in America after the war as he did before.
What we Americans need is not so much a League of Nations as a League of Americans. The soul of the American Protective League—renamed, rechristened and reconsecrated—must go marching on even though the League be disbanded, its unseen banner floating no more over a definite organization. As citizens we must unite in a common purpose, or the war will have been lost for us no matter what shall be the treaty at Versailles. If we open our hearts and homes again to the former traitors at our own table, then we have lost this war. It is of little consequence what is done with the Kaiser—he is too pitiable a figure to be able to pay much, even with his life. But Kaiserism in America, still growing, still reaching out in the old ways—that is a different thing. We were leagued against that once, and must be leagued against it forever.
It is accurate enough to say that this war was no lofty thing in any phase. It was much like any other war, based on the biological impulse of nations to go to war almost
