public opinion would have permitted such a hazardous and unjustifiable adventure—­he would at worst have confronted it with the fullest sympathy of Britain and the United States, and at best with their active assistance.  Unhappily, German Kings do not allow democracy to interfere in their foreign policy; do not believe in neighborliness; and do believe in cannon and cannon fodder.  The Kaiser never dreamed of confiding his frontier to you and to the humanity of his neighbors.  And the diplomatists of Europe never thought of that easy and right policy, and could not suggest any substitute for it, with the hideous result which is before you.

The State of Belgium.

Now that this mischief has been done, and the two European thunderclouds have met and are discharging their lightnings, it is not for me to meddle with the question whether the United States should take a side in their warfare as far as it concerns themselves alone.  But I may plead for a perfectly innocent neutral State, the State of Belgium, which is being ravaged in a horrible manner by the belligerents.  Her surviving population is flying into all the neighboring countries to escape from the incessant hail of shrapnel and howitzer shells from British cannon, French cannon, German cannon, and, most tragic of all, Belgian cannon; for the Belgian Army is being forced to devastate its own country in its own defense.

For this there can be no excuse; and at such a horror the rest of the world cannot look on in silence without incurring the guilt of the bystander who witnesses a crime without even giving the alarm.  I grant that Belgium, in her extreme peril, made one mistake.  She called to her aid the powers of the Entente alone instead of calling on the whole world of kindly men.  She should have called on America, too; and it is hard to see how you could in honor have disregarded that call.  But if Belgium says nothing, but only turns her eyes dumbly toward you while you look at the red ruin in which her villages, her heaps of slain, her monuments and treasures are being hurled by her friends and enemies alike, are you any the less bound to speak out than if Belgium had asked you to send her a million soldiers?

Not for a moment do I suggest that your intervention should be an intervention on behalf of either the Allies or the Entente.  If you consider both sides equally guilty, we know that you can find reasons for that verdict.  But Belgium is innocent; and it is on behalf of Belgium that so much of the world as is still at peace is waiting for a lead from you.  No other question need be prejudged.  If Germany maintains her claim to a right of way through Belgium on a matter which she believed (however erroneously) to be one of life and death to her as a nation, nobody, not even China, now pretends that such rights of way have not their place among those common human rights which are superior to the more artificial rights of nationality.  I think, for example, that if Russia