We are at war with the Menace. It is the same Menace—now grown to a monster with four heads dominated by one brain—that over a hundred years ago invited Lafayette to its palace at Potsdam to review the Prussian army, and then cynically suggested to him an end upon the scaffold. It is the same Menace, now from its four mouths spitting its spume of hate upon a chaotic world, that thrust the body of the champion of democracy into a dungeon, but could not kill his soul. Our present war against this creature of evil is but one more act in the drama begun by the spirit of Lafayette.

How shall this act end? Listen to this. I quote largely from AndrÉ ChÉradame, a man who deals not in platitudes and conceits to tickle the vanity of a nation, but in cold, hard facts.

In 1914, when the war began, Prussian militarism controlled Germany, with a population of sixty-eight millions; and Germany had one ally, Austria-Hungary, of whose thirty million people a majority were directly antagonistic to Berlin. By the spring of 1915 it had extended and organized its power among these thirty million Austro-Hungarians, who until that time had taken orders from their own independent military chiefs. In the fall of 1915 it joined hands with Bulgaria and Turkey over the corpse of Serbia. Thus, since the beginning of the war, has been formed the Quadruple Alliance, dominated by Prussian militarism.

This alliance, or Prussia before the alliance was completed, has since the beginning of the war seized Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, part of France, and most of Roumania. The population now controlled by Prussian militarism is about one hundred and seventy-five million people. The economic resources controlled by it show a corresponding increase. Before the war began, Prussia planned for a Pan-Germanism of this nature, and this plan has now been almost completed.

If Prussia can now, by granting pretentious but ineffective political reforms to its own people and by fighting a defensive war until the contest becomes a deadlock, hold this Pan-Germany in its present position, then after peace has been declared it can organize this vast additional strength in man power and resources which it has gained, can Prussianize this additional one hundred million, can, by the same intrigue which it has used in the past, undermine during this period of peace the internal defensive effectiveness of the democracies, and when the time comes can strike again. And if the democracies are unable to win now, what chance will they have then?

Drop the scales from our eyes and look clearly at the facts, hard as they are. The Menace has been fighting a winning fight. By merely keeping a deadlock for the rest of the war, and forcing a truce under the guise of peace, the Menace will win; provided, however, that it is not expelled by the German people themselves. This is the strength—and the weakness—of the foe against which we have declared war.

The Prussian looks a long way ahead. M. ChÉradame, in his work, "Le Complot Pan-Germaniste DemasquÉ," recites the following incident: "In 1898, before Manila, the German Rear-Admiral von Goetzen, a friend of the Kaiser, said to the American Admiral Dewey, 'In about fifteen years my country will begin a great war.... Some months after we have done our business in Europe we shall take New York and probably Washington, and we shall keep them for a time.... We shall extract one or two billions of dollars from New York and other towns.'" The months referred to by the German sailor may be turned into years, and the one or two billions may be multiplied by ten—but the Prussian looks a long way ahead.