With all the respect we feel for the United States, we cannot find this attitude of their Government either fair or dignified.  I offer these remarks in no spirit of uncalled-for criticism, but because I see how much the moral authority of the United States and their splendid situation as the providential peace makers of some future—­alas! still far off—­day has been impaired by the aforementioned proceedings.  We cannot help considering them as so many acts of ill-disguised hostility against ourselves and of compliance with our foes.  How can you expect, then, to have your good offices accepted with confidence by both belligerent parties when the times are ripe for them?  It seems like the throwing away of a magnificent opportunity, and I think that those who, like yourself, cherish for your country the noble ambition of being some day the restorer of peace, should exert themselves to prevent practices which, if continued, would disable her to play any such part.

In your letter you strike the keynote of what I cannot help considering the partiality of Americans for the Entente powers.  It is the idea that “in the western area of conflict, at least, there is an armed clash between the representatives of dynastic institutions and bureaucratic rule on the one hand with those of representative government and liberal institutions on the other.”  I can understand that it impresses some people that way, but I beg to enter a protest against this interpretation of the conflict.

Liberal or less liberal institutions have nothing to do with it in the west; the progress of democracy in Germany will not be stopped by her victory, it will rather be promoted by it, because the masses are conscious of bearing the burden of war and of being the main force of its vigorous prosecution, and they are enlightened and strong enough to insist on a proper reward.  Rights cannot be denied to those who fulfilled duties involving self-sacrifice of the sublimest kind with unflinching devotion.  No practical interest of democracy then is involved in the conflict of the western powers.

As to their representing liberal institutions in a higher or lower degree, I am perfectly willing to admit England’s superior claims in that respect, but I am not at all inclined to recognize such superiority in modern France, republic though she calls herself.  The omnipresence and omnipotence of an obtruding bureaucratic officialism is just what it has been under the old monarchy; religious oppression has only changed sides, but it still flourishes as before.  In former times the Roman Catholic religion was considered as a State religion and in her name were dissent and Freemasonry oppressed; today atheism is the official creed, and on its behalf are Catholic believers oppressed.

Separation of Church and State, honestly planned and loyally fulfilled in America has been perverted in modern France into a network of vexations and unfair measures against the Church and her faithful servants; the same term is used and this misleads you to cover widely different meanings.  In a word, it is a perfect mistake to consider modern France as the “sweet land of liberty” which America is.  A German citizen, with less show of political rights, enjoys more personal freedom than is granted to a French one, if he happens to differ from the ruling mentality.