In concluding our survey of the nations and the stake of each country in the war, there is one reflection that must be obvious to all thinking men.  This little fire of last August has become a world conflagration.  The nation that first sent out her armies was Germany.  There is a high-water mark of battle in every war, and after that, the invading waves begin their retreat.  The high-water mark of Napoleon’s was Austerlitz and the waves ebbed away at Waterloo.  The high-water mark of the civil war was Gettysburg, and the tide ebbed out at Appomattox.  Belgium’s defense cost Germany the three most important weeks of the war, and her high-water mark was when she was within twenty miles of Paris.  Occasional eddies and returns of the tide there may be, but nothing is more certain than that there are ten nations and six hundred millions of men that had rather die than have militarism imposed upon themselves and their children.  Americans who admire German efficiency, the German people, and want to see German science preserved, and feel an immeasurable debt to Martin Luther, do not want Germany destroyed.  But Germany will not listen to England, nor France, nor America.  There is only one voice that can reach Germany—­it is the voice of the German-Americans in this country.  They are six million strong.  They are among the most honored and esteemed folk in American life.  Their achievements are beyond all praise.  The Germans have built Milwaukee and have done much for St. Louis.  The Germans have been great forces in Cincinnati and Chicago and New York.  What wealth among their bankers!  What prosperity among German manufacturers!  What solidity of manhood in these German Lutherans!  Was there ever a finer body of farming folk than the German landowners of the Middle West?  The republic owes the German-American a great debt as to liberty through men like Carl Schurz.  Take Martin Luther and German liberty of thought out of the republic and this land would suffer an immeasurable loss.  Many of these German-Americans own great estates and have investments in the Fatherland.  Today these six million German-Americans have the centre of the world’s stage.  This war is a conflagration that will probably burn itself out.  But if the six million German-Americans organize themselves and hold great meetings of protest in New York and Brooklyn and Chicago and Milwaukee, in St. Louis and Cincinnati; if German-American editors and bankers and business men united their voice, they would be heard.

German-American Man of the Hour.

And do they not owe something to this republic?  Having come to the kingdom for such a crisis as this, should they not use their influence with the Fatherland?  Having escaped conscription and years of military service, with heavy taxation and enjoyed the liberty of the press; having become convinced that militarism does not promote the prosperity and manhood of the people, why should they not as one man ask the Fatherland