[Illustration:  “THE NEW OLD PRESIDENT.  LONG LIVE AMERICA!  LONG LIVE PEACE!  LONG LIVE THE AMMUNITION FACTORIES!”]

Dr. Haas was beginning to understand that the anti-American campaign in Germany which the Navy started and the Foreign Office encouraged, had had some effect.

Everything the United States does from now on will have a decisive influence in the world war.  The Allies realise it and Washington knows it.  Mr. Lloyd-George, the British Prime Minister, realised what a decisive effect American ships would have, when he said at the banquet of the American Luncheon Club in London: 

“The road to victory, the guaranty of victory, the absolute assurance of victory, has to be found in one word, ‘ships,’ and a second word, ‘ships,’ and a third word, ‘ships.’”

But our financial economic and military aid to the Allies will not be our greatest contribution towards victory.  The influence of President Wilson’s utterances, of our determination and of our value as a friendly nation after the war will have a tremendous effect as time goes on upon the German people.  As days and weeks pass, as the victory which the German Government has promised the people becomes further and further away, the people, who are now doing more thinking than they ever have done since the beginning of the war, will some day realise that in order to obtain peace, which they pray for and hope for, they will have to reform their government during the war—­not after the war as the Kaiser plans.

Military pressure from the outside is going to help this democratic movement in Germany succeed in spite of itself.  The New York World editorial on April 14th, discussing Mr. Lloyd-George’s statement that “Prussia is not a democracy; Prussia is not a state; Prussia is an army,” said: 

“It was the army and the arrogance actuating it which ordered hostilities in the first place.  Because there was no democracy in Prussia, the army had its way.  The democracies of Great Britain and France, like the democracy of the United States, were reluctant to take arms but were forced to it.  Russian democracy found its own deliverance on the fighting-line.

“In the fact that Prussia is not a democracy or a state but an army we may see a reason for many things usually regarded as inexplicable.  It is Prussia the army which violates treaties.  It is Prussia the army which disregards international law.  It is Prussia the army, represented by the General Staff and the Admiralty, which sets at naught the engagements of the Foreign Office.  It is Prussia the army which has filled neutral countries with spies and lawbreakers, which has placed frightfulness above humanity, and in a fury of egotism and savagery has challenged the world.

“Under such a terrorism, as infamous at home as it is abroad, civil government has perished.  There is no civil government in a Germany dragooned by Prussia.  There is no law in Germany but military law.  There is no obligation in Germany except to the army.  It is not Germany the democracy or Germany the state, it is Germany the army, that is to be crushed for its own good no less than for that of civilisation.”