Try to realize, every one of you, what we are going through!  Only a few weeks ago all of us were peacefully following our several vocations.  The peasant was gathering in this Summer’s plentiful crop, the factory hand was working with accustomed vigor.  Not one human being among us dreamed of war.  We are a nation that wishes to lead a quiet and industrious life.  This need hardly be stated to you Americans.  You, of all others, know the temper of the German who lives within your gates.  Our love of peace is so strong that it is not regarded by us in the light of a virtue, we simply know it to be an inborn and integral portion of ourselves.  Since the foundation of the German Empire in the year 1871, we, living in the centre of Europe, have given an example of tranquillity and peace, never once seeking to profit by any momentary difficulties of our neighbors.  Our commercial extension, our financial rise in the world, is far removed from any love of adventure, it is the fruit of painstaking and plodding labor.

We are not credited with this temper, because we are insufficiently known.  Our situation and our way of thinking are not easily grasped.

Every one is aware that we have produced great philosophers and poets, we have preached the gospel of humanity with impassioned zeal.  America fully appreciates Goethe and Kant, looks upon them as cornerstones of elevated culture.  Do you really believe that we have changed our natures, that our souls can be satisfied with military drill and servile obedience?  We are soldiers because we have to be soldiers, because otherwise Germany and German civilization would be swept away from the face of the earth.  It has cost us long and weary struggles to attain our independence, and we know full well that, in order to preserve it, we must not content ourselves with building schools and factories, we must look to our garrisons and forts.  We and all our soldiers have remained, however, the same lovers of music and lovers of exalted thought.  We have retained our old devotion to all peaceable sciences and arts; as all the world knows, we work in the foremost rank of all those who strive to advance the exchange of commodities, who further useful technical knowledge.  But we have been forced to become a nation of soldiers in order to be free.  And we are bound to follow our Kaiser, because he symbolizes and represents the unity of our nation.  Today, knowing no distinction of party, no difference of opinion, we rally around him, willing to shed the last drop of our blood.  For though it takes a great deal to rouse us Germans, when once aroused our feelings run deep and strong.  Every one is filled with this passion, with the soldier’s ardor.  But when the waters of the deluge shall have subsided, gladly will we return to the plow and to the anvil.

It deeply distresses us to see two highly civilized nations, England and France, joining the onslaught of autocratic Russia.  That this could happen will remain one of the anomalies of history.  It is not our fault; we firmly believed in the desirability of the great nations working together, we peaceably came to terms with France and England in sundry difficult African questions.  There was no cause for war between Western Europe and us, no reason why Western Europe should feel itself constrained to further the power of the Czar.