We have the right to say to the men, “Fight for your country, defend the shores of this land of ours.  Fight for your homes, for the women, and for the children.”  We have the right if that was the only reason, but in these days, when women are taking larger views of their duty to the State, we go further than that; we claim the right to hold recruiting meetings and ask men to fight for bigger reasons than are advanced ordinarily.  We say to men, “In this war there are issues at stake bigger even than the safety of your homes and your own country.  Your honor as a nation is at stake.”

We have our duties in this war.  First of all, this duty begins at home—­this duty to our home, because I always feel that if we are not ready to do our duty to those nearest to us we are not fit to do our duty far away.  And so the first duty is to ourselves and to our homes.  Then there is the duty to protect those who, having made a gallant fight for self-defense—­and by that I mean the country of Belgium—­what we owe to Belgium we can never repay, because now the whole German plan of campaign is perfectly plain to all those who are not prejudiced, and who are not affected by pan-Germanism; and, unfortunately, in their methods of warfare—­and their methods of warfare are many—­they not only fight physically, but they fight mentally and morally as well, and in this country and in France, and in every country in Europe, long before the war broke out, in fact, ever since the year 1870, they have been preparing by subtle means to take possession of Europe, and I believe their ambitions are not limited by that, they want to rule the whole world.  The whole thing is clear to any unprejudiced observer.

It is very difficult for your attacking bully to imagine that a small State—­I mean small numerically, and weak physically—­will ever have the courage to stand up and resist the bully when he prepares to attack.  The Germans did not expect Belgium to keep them at bay while the other countries involved prepared, but there is absolutely no doubt that the plan was to press through Belgium, to take possession of Paris, and then, having humiliated and crippled France, to cross the Channel and defeat us.  There is no doubt that was the plan; it is perfectly clear.  And that being so, we owe—­civilization owes—­to Belgium a debt which it can never repay.

Then we have our duty to our ally, France.  How much democracy owes to France!  France is the mother of European democracy.  There is no doubt about her claim to that.  If there had been nothing else worth fighting for in this war, in my opinion that alone would have been worth fighting for, to preserve that spirit and that democracy—­which France has given to the world, and which would perish if France were destroyed.  The people of France are a people who never have been, and I believe never will be, corrupted in the sense of thinking that material things are of more value than spiritual things.  The people of France have always been ready to sacrifice themselves for ideals.  They have been ready to sacrifice life, they have been ready to sacrifice money, they have been ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal.