“America is always ready to fight for the things which are American.”  Even in these sombre days that mark the anniversary of our entrance into the war.  But let it be remembered that it was in the darkest days of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln boldly proclaimed the democratic, idealistic issue of that struggle.  The Russian Revolution, which we must seek to understand and not condemn, the Allied defeats that are its consequences, can only make our purpose the firmer to put forth all our strength for the building up of a better world.  The President’s masterly series of state papers, distributed in all parts of the globe, have indeed been so many Proclamations of Emancipation for the world’s oppressed.  Not only powerful nations shall cease to exploit little nations, but powerful individuals shall cease to exploit their fellow men.  Henceforth no wars for dominion shall be waged, and to this end secret treaties shall be abolished.  Peoples through their representatives shall make their own treaties.  And just as democracy insures to the individual the greatest amount of self-determination, nations also shall have self-determination, in order that each shall be free to make its world contribution.  All citizens have duties to perform toward their fellow citizens; all democratic nations must be interdependent.

With this purpose America has entered the war.  But it implies that our own household must be swept and cleaned.  The injustices and inequalities existing in our own country, the false standards of worth, the materialism, the luxury and waste must be purged from our midst.

III

In fighting Germany we are indeed fighting an evil Will—­evil because it seeks to crush the growth of individual and national freedom.  Its object is to put the world back under the thrall of self-constituted authority.  So long as this Will can compel the bodies of soldiers to do its bidding, these bodies must be destroyed.  Until the Will behind them is broken, the world cannot be free.  Junkerism is the final expression of reaction, organized to the highest efficiency.  The war against the Junkers marks the consummation of a long struggle for human liberty in all lands, symbolizes the real cleavage dividing the world.  As in the French Revolution and the wars that followed it, the true significance of this war is social.  But today the Russian Revolution sounds the keynote.  Revolutions tend to express the extremes of the philosophies of their times—­human desires, discontents, and passions that cannot be organized.  The French Revolution was a struggle for political freedom; the underlying issue of the present war is economic freedom—­without which political freedom is of no account.  It will not, therefore, suffice merely to crush the Junkers, and with them militarism and autocracy.  Unless, as the fruit of this appalling bloodshed and suffering, the democracies achieve economic freedom, the war