Minor.  I saw a map in which the whole thing was printed in appropriate black the other day, and the black stretched all the way from Hamburg to Bagdad—­the bulk of German power inserted into the heart of the world.  If she can keep that, she has kept all that her dreams contemplated when the war began.  If she can keep that, her power can disturb the world as long as she keeps it, always provided, for I feel bound to put this proviso in—­always provided the present influences that control the German Government continue to control it.  I believe that the spirit of freedom can get into the hearts of Germans and find as fine a welcome there as it can find in any other hearts, but the spirit of freedom does not suit the plans of the Pan-Germans.  Power cannot be used with concentrated force against free peoples if it is used by free people.

PEACE RUMORS

You know how many intimations come to us from one of the central powers that it is more anxious for peace than the chief central power, and you know that it means that the people in that central power know that if the war ends as it stands they will in effect themselves be vassals of Germany, notwithstanding that their populations are compounded of all the peoples of that part of the world, and notwithstanding the fact that they do not wish in their pride and proper spirit of nationality to be so absorbed and dominated.  Germany is determined that the political power of the world shall belong to her.  There have been such ambitions before.  They have been in part realized, but never before have those ambitions been based upon so exact and precise and scientific a plan of domination.

May I not say that it is amazing to me that any group of persons should be so ill-informed as to suppose, as some groups in Russia apparently suppose, that any reforms planned in the interest of the people can live in the presence of a Germany powerful enough to undermine or overthrow them by intrigue or force?  Any body of free men that compounds with the present German Government is compounding for its own destruction.  But that is not the whole of the story.  Any man in America or anywhere else that supposes that the free industry and enterprise of the world can continue if the Pan-German plan is achieved and German power fastened upon the world is as fatuous as the dreamers in Russia.  What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity.  My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them.  I want peace, but I know how to get it, and they do not.

COLONEL HOUSE’S MISSION

You will notice that I sent a friend of mine, Colonel House, to Europe, who is as great a lover of peace as any man in the world; but I didn’t send him on a peace mission yet.  I sent him to take part in a conference as to how the war was to be won, and he knows, as I know, that that is the way to get peace, if you want it for more than a few minutes.