republic, if Horace Greeley criticises Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln does not send the great editor to jail, but writes the latter, “My paramount object is to save the Union,” and vindicates himself at the bar of the nation.  An American editor or citizen would choke to death in Germany.  He could not breathe because of the mephitic gases of imperialism and militarism.  For a long time some of us did not realize what was involved, but now we do realize the difference between the fruits of democratic self-government and the fruits of military imperialism.

The last five months have brought a new realization to American citizens as to the rights and liberties of small States.  In the republic the sin of trespass is one of the blackest of sins.  Here we hold to the sanctity of property.  A man’s home is his castle, a citadel that cannot be invaded even by the power of the State.  So deep is the American hatred of trespass against property rights that imperialism finds it impossible to understand this.  Here the individual is a king of kings in his native right, and takes out an injunction against the city that wishes to trespass upon his property.  This antagonism manifests itself in the laws that safeguard the small shopkeeper against the big firm, and the small manufacturer against any company with its billion dollars of capital.  This antagonism to the sin of trespass has lent a peculiar sanctity to treaties between Canada and the United States.  We have one hundred millions of people, and Canada nine millions.  We need many things that Canada has, but it is intellectually unthinkable that “we should take what we want and explain afterward,” or that we should violate our treaty guaranteeing neutrality to Canada.  Our frontier line is three thousand miles long.  There is not a fort from Maine to Victoria.  If we adopted Germany’s position we would have to build one thousand forts, withdraw two million young men from the farm, factory, store and bank, and load the working people with taxes to support them.  In a free land, and in God’s world, there should be a place for the poor man and for the small nation.  In the olden time there was a king who had herds and flocks, and a poor man who had one pet lamb.  It came to pass that a stranger claimed the right of hospitality at the rich man’s palace, and the king sent out and took the poor man’s one lamb and gave it for food to the stranger.  And, soon or late, the time will come when history will tell the story of Germany’s taking little Belgium, and conscience, like a prophet, will indict the militarism that seized the one lamb that belonged to the poor man.  This episode is not closed.  The German representative who says that Belgium is a part of Germany may be right in terms of future government and war, but the incident has just begun in the memory of the soldiers who never can forget that they first broke their sacred treaty, and then, when the Belgian defended his home as his castle, butchered the man, who died