war, to break with Germany; any man with the least instinct for diplomacy might have known that the twentieth century man is so incensed by an enemy’s trespass upon his property, that Belgium would have resisted encroachment, and so cost Germany the best three weeks of the entire war.  If the history of great wars tells us anything, it tells us that the first qualification of the statesman and diplomat is an intuitive knowledge of a future that is the certain outcome of the present.  There has been no foresight on the part of the makers and advisers of this war.  Years ago, when the Austrian Emperor visited Innsbruck, the Burgomaster ordered foresters to go up on the mountain sides and cut certain swaths of brush.  At the moment the man with his axe did not know what he was doing, but when the night fell, and the torch was lifted on the boughs, the people in the city below read these words written in letters of fire, “Welcome to our Emperor.”  Today the demon of war has been writing with blazing letters certain lessons upon the hills and valleys of Europe, and fortunate is that youth who can read the writing and interpret aright the lessons of the times.

The people of the republic now realize for the first time what are the inevitable fruits of imperialism and militarism.  One of the perils of America’s distance from the scenes of autocracy is that our people have come to think that the forms of government are of little importance.  We hear it said that climate determines government and that one nation likes autocracy and another limited monarchy, that we like democracy self-government, and that the people are about as happy under one form of control as another.  This misconception is based upon a failure to understand foreign imperialism.  Superficially, the fruits of autocracy are efficiency, industrial wealth, and military power.  But now, after nearly five months of constant discussion, our people understand thoroughly the other side of imperialism.  The 6,000,000 of German-Americans living in this country, with their high type of character, millions who have left their native land to escape service in the army, the burdens of taxation involved in militarism, and the law of lese majeste, should have opened our eyes long ago.  During the last five years I have lectured in more than one hundred cities on the New Germany and the lessons derived from her industrial efficiency, with the application of science to the production of wealth, but I did not appreciate fully the far-off harvest of militarism.  And, lest an American overstate the meaning of militarism, let me condense Treitschke’s view.  He holds that the nation should be looked upon as a vast military engine; that its ruler should be the commander of the army; that his Cabinet should be under Generals; that the whole nation should march with the force of an armed regiment; that the real “sin against the Holy Ghost was the sin of military impotence; that such an army should take all it wants and the territory it needs and explain