Winning a Cause | Page 5

or worse than slavery, of the able-bodied women and men from the conquered territory--when Americans learned these horrors one after another, they at last were forced to acknowledge that, like the brutal Assyrian kings who sought to terrify their enemies into submission by standing as conquerors upon pyramids of the slain, the modern Huns sought mastery by Frightfulness.
When most Americans came to realize that Germany was fighting a war to conquer the world, first Russia and France, then England, and then the United States--for she had written Mexico that if she would attack the United States, Germany and Mexico would make war and peace together--when they came to know the German nature and the idea of the Germans, that Might makes Right and that truth, honesty, and square dealing like mercy, pity, and love are only words of weaklings; that they were a nation of liars and falsifiers and the most brutal of all people of recorded history; when, added to this, the Americans realized that for over two years France and England had really been fighting for everything for which the United States stood and which her people held dear, for her very life and liberty, then America almost as one man declared for war.
Meanwhile Germany had declined to recognize the laws of nations which allowed America to sell munitions to the Allies. She had scattered spies through the United States to destroy property and create labor troubles. She had challenged the right of peaceful Americans to travel on the high seas. She had sunk the Lusitania with a loss of one hundred twenty-four American lives; the Sussex, the Laconia with a loss of eight Americans, the Vigilancia with five, the City of Memphis, the Illinois, the Healdton, and others. She had tried to unite Mexico and Japan against us.
Not until then, after the American people had become fully aware of the German character and purposes, did Congress on April 6, 1917, declare a state of war existed between Germany and the United States. On that day the outcome of the war was decided. Through her hideous selfishness, her stupidity, and her brutality, Germany, after having spent nearly fifty years in preparation, lost her opportunity for world dominion. The resources and the fighting power of what she looked upon as a nation of cowardly, money-loving merchants decided the conflict.

AMERICA COMES IN
We are coming from the ranch, from the city and the mine, And the word has gone before us to the towns upon the Rhine; As the rising of the tide On the Old-World side, We are coming to the battle, to the Line.
From the Valleys of Virginia, from the Rockies in the North, We are coming by battalions, for the word was carried forth: "We have put the pen away And the sword is out today, For the Lord has loosed the Vintages of Wrath."
We are singing in the ships as they carry us to fight, As our fathers sang before us by the camp-fires' light; In the wharf-light glare, They can hear us Over There When the ships come steaming through the night.
Right across the deep Atlantic where the Lusitania passed, With the battle-flag of Yankee-land a-floating at the mast We are coming all the while, Over twenty hundred mile, And we're staying to the finish, to the last.
We are many--we are one--and we're in it overhead, We are coming as an Army that has seen its women dead, And the old Rebel Yell Will be loud above the shell When we cross the top together, seeing red.
KLAXTON.

PERSHING AT THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE
They knew they were fighting our war. As the months grew to years Their men and their women had watched through their blood and their tears For a sign that we knew, we who could not have come to be free Without France, long ago. And at last from the threatening sea The stars of our strength on the eyes of their weariness rose; And he stood among them, the sorrow strong hero we chose To carry our flag to the tomb of that Frenchman whose name A man of our country could once more pronounce without shame. What crown of rich words would he set for all time on this day? The past and the future were listening what he would say-- Only this, from the white-flaming heart of a passion austere, Only this--ah, but France understood! "Lafayette, we are here."
AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR.
[Illustration: "Lafayette, We Are Here!" The immortal tribute of General John J. Pershing at the grave of the great Frenchman. Notice the difference between the American and French salutes.]

AMERICA ENTERS THE WAR
SPEECH BY LLOYD GEORGE, BRITISH PREMIER,
APRIL 12, 1917
I am in the happy position of being, I think, the first British Minister of the Crown who, speaking on behalf of the people