by a muzzled press under police control, which makes your learned men ridiculous in the eyes of the world by training them to blind, unthinking support of the Government and credulous belief in whatever falsehoods it chooses to impose upon you for military and political purposes, which hurls you into a disastrous war without your knowledge or consent, and which brings down upon you the contempt of the whole world for crimes you would not yourselves commit, but which you must forsooth defend “for the good of the State.”

Americans believe that a Government which provokes a war and deceives its people to secure their support, should be destroyed; that a Government which breaks its treaties and murders an innocent neutral nation, shooting innocent hostages to prevent sniping by those whose homes are violently attacked, should be destroyed; that a Government which systematically and repeatedly bombards unfortified towns and villages, killing hundreds of innocent women and children, should be destroyed; that a Government which torpedoes unarmed passenger ships, drowning helpless men, women, and children by the thousand in shameful defiance of law and every instinct of humanity, should be destroyed; that a Government which in cold blood executes a woman nurse like Miss Cavell should be destroyed; that a Government which ruthlessly destroys works of art and monuments of civilisation and levies crushing indemnities on captured cities, in defiance of the well-established laws of war, should be destroyed.  In the opinion of Americans, a Government which did any one of these things would not be fit to exist in a civilised world.  A Government which has done all of them and much more that is equally barbarous and brutal, must, in the opinion of the American people, be utterly destroyed.

Americans hoped for many long years that the German people would themselves throw off the incubus of the military Government which was crushing out their individuality and making their country an object of distrust and fear to all those interested in the progress of civilisation; but if you will not rid yourselves of the monster which has dishonoured and disgraced you before the world, then, in American opinion, the safety of the world and the future of Germany require that the present German Government shall be destroyed through military defeat.  For this reason the American people are praying earnestly for Allied victory.  While there is a sincere effort to maintain the technical neutrality enjoined by the President, there is no neutrality possible on the moral issues involved.  Americans may not violate the neutrality of the nation by giving concerted military support to the Allies; but they are practically unanimous in giving their whole moral support to the nations engaged in the necessary task of destroying the monstrosity of Prussian militarism.  Every aid which they can render the Allies without violating national neutrality is being given, not because