its purpose; but it is our business to see to it that the history of the rest of the world is no longer left to its handling.

To deal with such a power by way of peace upon the plan proposed by his Holiness the Pope would, so far as we can see, involve a recuperation of its strength and a renewal of its policy; would make it necessary to create a permanent hostile combination of nations against the German people, who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtile interference, and the certain counterrevolution which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty of settlement and accommodation?

Responsible statesmen must now everywhere see, if they never saw before, that no peace can rest securely upon political or economic restrictions meant to benefit some nations and cripple or embarrass others, upon vindictive action of any sort, or any kind of revenge or deliberate injury. The American people have suffered intolerable wrongs at the hands of the Imperial German Government, but they desire no reprisals upon the German people, who have themselves suffered all things in this war, which they did not choose. They believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of Governments—the rights of peoples great or small, weak or powerfultheir equal right to freedom and security and self-government and to a participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people of course included if they will accept equality and not seek domination.

The test, therefore, of every plan of peace is this: Is it based upon the faith of all the peoples involved or merely upon the word of an ambitious

and intriguing Government, on the one hand, and of a group of free peoples on the other? This is the test which goes to the root of the matter; and it is the test which must be applied.

The purposes of the United States in this war are known to the whole world, to every people to whom the truth has been permitted to come. They do not need to be stated again. We seek no material advantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people-rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and of those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. That must be based upon justice and fairness and the common rights of mankind.

We cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure, unless explicitly supported by such conclusive evidence of the will and purpose of the German people themselves as the other peoples of the world would be justified in accepting. Without such guarantees treaties of settlement, agreements for disarmament, covenants to set up arbitration in the place of force, territorial adjustments, reconstitutions of small nations, if made with the German Government, no man, no nation could now depend on. We must await some new evidence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers. God grant it may be given soon and in a way to restore the confidence of all peoples everywhere in the faith of nations and the possibility of a covenanted peace.

ROBERT LANSING, Secretary of State of the United States of America.

HE reply of the President to the Pope's peace note received enthusiastic approval throughout the United States and was unreservedly indorsed by all the influential newspapers and authorized spokesmen of the allied nations; it produced a profound impression in Germany and Austria, and was sympathetically received by all the elements of the neutral nations except those with pronounced pro-German leanings. Semiofficial news from the Vatican indicated that the Pope was disappointed.

German-Americans Approve

The German-American view was expressed by the New-Yorker StaatsZeitung in a rather favorable comment by the editor in chief in these words:

The President's note to the Pope has met with the hearty approval of all Americans. It appeals to German-Americans particularly because it dispels the mist which has heretofore hung over our participation in the war. It tells the American people plainly what they are contending for, and what they are not contending for a reply long delayed to a question which we have been waiting to have answered.

And it appeals to those of us who have not forgotten the history hickoryed into us before the sacred right of lying" was enthroned in the world.

The German-language press in this country was frankly opposed to our entrance into the war-so long as we could honorably keep out of it. Once in the war, however, a determination to support the Government occupied its editorial policies. While others have been snapping at the heels of the Administration-yelping their little seditious words of advice-destroying that unity of mind which is necessary to team work-we have presented a solid front of support. We have spoken forand to-that potential element of the American Nation which springs from Germany -always in the past a friend of America, and now unfortunately compelled to be in arms against her.

We, German-Americans, appreciate the President's note perhaps more fully than others can. We read in it a message from ourselves to our friends across the watersa message which could not have been better indited by a German himself, whose escape from "local atmosphere" had made him a citizen of the world.

We find

in the President's words an appreciation of the true worth of that great people from which we are descended-a willingness to extend to them the hand of friendship utterly lacking in the tone of our associated statesmen.

The President has at last given the American people a program about which there can be no dissension, no question, and no disagreement.

The German people would be grievously misled if they were made to believe that Americans of German descent would support any but their own Government, carrying out its constitutional duties. They would be grievously misled if by designing intrigants at home or abroad they were to be convinced that Germans abroad are not solicitous that they, too, should participate in the advantages of democracy-a democracy in fact as well as in name, which the latter have come to esteem.

The President has not only left the way open to the German people to peace. He has gone much further. He has leveled away its chief obstacles. He has repudiated the language of Old World spokesmen. He has spoken as the New World would speak.

The appearance of Woodrow Wilson as spokesman of her enemies cannot pass in Germany as a matter of no concern.

What the President said in his reply to his Holiness the Pope as to peace is what the American people would say with one voice, were a nation capable of individual articulation. The President expressed

therein what all Americans feel-and especially German-Americans-a hope and a longing that through his words the German Nation may progress to that early and enduring peace which the world so sadly needs.

The English Press

The following were characteristic comments by the leading London newspapers: The Daily News:

If the President's reply is a merciless indictment of the infamies of Prussian militarism, it is equally a passionate appeal to the German people to repudiate the evil system that has enslaved them and uses them to enslave the world. The distinction which Mr. Wilson has insisted on throughout between the people and the system is now stated with matchless force. The London Post:

At the end of three years of unspeakable strain and anxiety, it is an inesti

mable service to the Allies to find such leadership as this-strong, clear-sighted, inflexible, inspiring new courage and faith, shaming the faint-hearted, and silencing the perverse and the disaffected.

With a directness and a cogency which cannot be too much admired, President Wilson gives to the Pope's peace propɔsals the only answer which those who are not ready to capitulate to Germany could give.

Certain extremely quoted persons in this country have recently been plaintively demanding to know what we were fighting for. Others have been contending that it is necessary for British delegates to confer with the enemy at Stockholm in order that our aims might be understood. Both claims are sufficiently disposed of in President Wilson's latest note. What we are fighting for is to defeat Germany-the one condition precedent to any tolerable

peace.

The London Times:

The theoretical distinction [between the German people and their rulers] is sound enough, but we cannot help thinking that up to the present it has proved to be quite negligible in practice. Wilson is right in a sense when he says that the German people "did not choose the war." They did not choose it, because, under the Bismarckian Constitution, they have no choice at all in such high matters, but they accepted it with enthusiasm. They have given it throughout their active support. Their representatives have voted with unanimity supplies for its continuance.

French Comment

The Paris Temps:

The sentiment which inspires the entire note, just as it inspires the entire French policy, is the conviction that we cannot treat with the German Government at present.

The President of the United States in his patient negotiations regarding submarine warfare had the same experience as France in ten years of discussion of Moroccan questions, and has drawn the same conclusion. Nothing would be gained by signing tomorrow a new scrap of paper." It would not conduce to world peace. It would merely give the Prussian General Staff time to prepare for new aggression.

That surely was not the end which the Pope proposed. He said the fundamental point must be the substitution of the moral force of right for the material force of arms, but Mr. Wilson has seen clearly and explained clearly that negotiation as suggested by the Holy Father would end in an entirely different result. In Germany it would give to the Imperial

Government a renewal of strength. Outside of Germany it would compel persons who desire to remain free to create a permanent league against the German danger. It would result, in fact, in consolidating Prussian militarism and in perpetuating a régime of armed peace.

It is not to achieve this that the United States entered the war. It is not for this that we are fighting. President Wilson wants a real peace, one which will do away with the causes of war. His doctrine is logical from one end to the other. It is because he wants a pacific Germany that he rejects the idea of inclosing it within a wall. It is because he counts upon the opening of the eyes of the German people that he refuses to treat with the Hohenzollern autocracy. He has confidence in the future. He believes his idea can be imposed even on the enemy..

We join the President in this pious hope, but this hope will not be realized unless the United States perseveres indefatigably in the battle for victory of the right. The calmness with which Mr. Wilson contemplates future peace corresponds with the energy with which he will continue to conduct the war. That is the comforting impression left by, reading his note. More than ever we have faith in his untiring firmness. L'Humanite, Paris:

President Wilson's language is that of lofty reason, which ignores cupidity and hatred. It may make itself heard by the German people, whom it asks to repair the evil they have done and then to take their place among the other nations without their rights or existence being menaced.

It is to the German people that President Wilson has made reply in answering the Pope. If the Pope has been only the mouthpiece of the Central Powers, President Wilson's reply was the most direct and the wisest it was possible to make. If the German people want peace they know just on what conditions it can be obtained.

Italian Comment

The Tribuna, Rome:

President Wilson has put forward the great struggle between might and right in such a decisive way that it is impossible to wave it away by sleight of hand. That struggle must end in the absolute triumph of right without limitations and reserve, and that triumph cannot be obtained by ambiguous conciliations or subtle compromises with those who habitually violate the rights of others, and who, with their haughtiness not yet tamed by the condemnation of the world and inevitable defeat, continue such violations.

The Corriere della Sera, Milan:

President Wilson's answer sets forth the fundamental reasons why the allied powers cannot consider the Pope's proposals. The era of treaties made for breaking is past. Europe must emerge from this red inundation as another Europe. The Pope is in a neutral position which will not and can not be changed. He has a right and a duty to seek peace. This position is understood and respected by the Allies.

The Giornale d'Italia:

President Wilson once more has interpreted the voice of millions who are ready to suffer in order to assure peace to future generations. His marvelous patience and charity in dealing with past tergiversations of the German Government made it his natural right to be the first to voice on this occasion, with grave, measured speech, the sentiments of all humanity oppressed by the Teuton threat, proving that the same principles that induced the head of Catholic Christianity to invoke peace are those which induced and obliged America to enter the war.

Its Effect in Germany

German official and newspaper comment on the reply was passionate and bitter, the only important newspaper exception being the Socialist organ Vorwärts. In discussing the President's demand that peace must be negotiated by the German people, this newspaper said:

The German people are fighting this severest of all fights, not for the rights of certain families or for a distinct form of government, but for their own existence. For that reason the Socialists supported national defense, and for no other reason. The thought were unbearable that those out there are fighting, not for the maintenance of the empire, but for the preservation of conditions not worthy to be upheld. It would be unbearable to think that a single mother's son fell, not for the rights of the people, but for the privileges of certain persons.

Take the world map and look at one country after another. Everywhere the decision in political questions lies in the hands of persons chosen by the people. It is so everywhere else; why can it not be so with us?

After more than three years of war a great power says to us that it must be so with us, if we wish to reach peace. Perhaps that is not more than a pretext, but if so, it is so cleverly chosen that we cannot meet it with words but with deeds.

The Government of a country at war with us has a perfect right to demand that for the conditions under which peace is to

be concluded the people themselves shall be the guarantee. We cannot be persuaded that the German people, the most active and educated in the world, are not fit for that form of government under which other people have grown great.

The opinions of Vorwärts provoked violent criticism by the Pan-German and annexationist press. The general tone of the press throughout Germany and Austria was bitter, resentful, and extremely abusive of the President.

This comment of the Berlin LokalAnzeiger was characteristic:

President Wilson declines the Pope's mediation with the same mass of swollen phrases with which he has already satiated the German peoples. We are told that the war is not being waged against the German Nation, but against their masters."

66

The absolute mendacity of Mr. Wilson's phraseology becomes apparent when his dictum as to the rights of nations which are capable of shaping their own destinies is opposed to the wish of the German people to be governed by these very 66 masters." Mr. Wilson, therefore, does not intend to give us our liberty, but to deprive us of liberty to arrive at our own decisions.

For that matter, this whole mass of words has as its sole purpose the expression of the intention to prolong the war at any price. In this resolve Mr. Wilson, who is fighting for the freedom of mankind, orders peace meetings dispersed and pacifists arrested.

This war has exposed in its nakedness much that is low and contemptible; its remaining task was to exhibit a hero like this coldly calculating mathematician, whom a singular fate in a momentous hour has given the power over one hundred millions of people.

The Cologne Gazette, regarded as semiofficial, said:

Every word of President Wilson's note is grotesque nonsense. The climax of all the nonsense is that the German people are groaning under a cruel Government. Has not the entire German people, rich and poor, Socialist and Conservative, continually repeated that it stands firm for the Emperor and the empire? The solution of the puzzle is that Mr. Wilson wants to persevere with the war. America's business world needs the war at this conjuncture. America's future needs the big army that is just in the making.

Mr. Wilson hopes for disunity in Germany, and therefore offers the German people peace at the cost of the German Government's fall. This trick is too transparent. The German people may be