“If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; but if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there, and without countenance, except from a lawless and malignant few.

“It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you.  There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us.  It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilisation itself seeming to be in the balance.

“But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—­for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.  God helping her, she can do no other.”

After this speech was printed in Germany, first in excerpts and then as a whole in a few papers, there were three distinct reactions: 

1.  The Government press and the circles controlled by the Army published violent articles against President Wilson and the United States.

2.  The democratic press led by the Vorwaerts took advantage of Wilson’s statements to again demand election reforms.

3.  Public feeling generally was so aroused that the official North German Gazette said at the end of a long editorial that the Kaiser favoured a “people’s kingdom of Hohenzollern.”

The ammunition interests were among the first to express their satisfaction with America as an enemy.  The Rheinische Westfaelische Zeitung, their official graphophone, said: 

“The real policy of America is now fully disclosed by the outbreak of the war.  Now a flood of lies and insults, clothed in pious phraseology, will descend on us.  This is a surprise only to those who have been reluctant to admit that America was our enemy from the beginning.  The voice of America does not sound differently from that of any other enemy.  They are all tarred with the same brush—­those humanitarians and democrats who hurl the world into war and refuse peace.”

The Lokal Anzeiger, which is practically edited by the Foreign Office, said President Wilson’s attempt to inveigle the German people into a revolt against the dynasty beats anything for sheer hypocrisy in the records of the world.