Having spread the gospel of force for so long, Prussianised Germany can understand but one counter-argument—force. We must give her back blow for blow—a harder blow in return for each blow she gives us. "Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just"; and our quarrel is just. All the same, to make war successfully we must make it with a whole heart. We must hold it to be a holy war; we must preach a jihad, remembering always, now that the Chinese Empire is a republic, now that Russia by revolution has thrown off the chains of autocracy, that we are fighting not only to punish the enemy for wrongs inflicted and insults overpatiently endured; not only to make the seas free to honest commerce; not only for the protection of our flag and our ships and the lives of our people at home and abroad—but along with England, France—yes, and Russia—are fighting for the preservation of the principles of constitutional and representative government against those few remaining crowned heads who hold by the divine right of kings, and who believe that man was created not a self-governing creature but a vassal.

Merely because we are willing to give of our wealth and our granaries and our steel mills, we cannot expect to have an honourable share in this war, and to share as an equal in its final settlement. We must risk something more precious than money; something more needful than munitions; we must risk our manhood. We cannot expect England's navy to stand between us and harm for our coasts, and France's worn battalions to bear the brunt of the trench work.

Knowing nothing of military expediency, I yet believe that, for the moral effect upon the world and for our own position, when the time for making peace comes it would be better for us, rather than the securing of our own soil against attack or invasion, that an American flag should wave over American troops in Flanders; that a Texas cow-puncher should lead a forlorn hope in France; that a Connecticut clockmaker should invent a device which will blunt the fangs of that stinging adder of the sea, the U-boat, and—who knows?—perhaps scotch the poison snake altogether.

Maybe it is true that, in our mistaken forbearance, we have failed and come short. Maybe we have endured too long and too patiently; we can atone for all that. But——

Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.