She has unmasked herself and we now see the hideous, distorted face of her. How can so monstrous a Thing have friends after this? Who will trade with her? Who will ever again accept a promise of hers? Who but must be ashamed of her name and her language? Anathema she will be to all peoples--the outcast of nations--living for and upon herself, where her life-doctrine of force must inevitably turn to her own destruction. This has been the fate of every world-conqueror and his nation. And, surely, none of them all has so richly deserved it as this intolerable Germany. Ask History! And, yet, to the individual, there is always left repentance and restoration--even though he, himself, must be destroyed. So, if this besotted Germany had but the courage and virtue to lay down her arms and retire behind her own borders, she could have the peace she pretends to wish for in twenty-four hours--for so little and simple and right a thing as that! I think, indeed, that the nations she has so wantonly spoiled would permit her to go without further punishment at their hands, leaving that to the very God she has so vilely exploited as her partner in her monstrous crimes. I think they would accept back the goods which she has stolen, damaged as they are, beyond redemption, glad to be rid of her and her debasing contact. But she is mad. Germany is quite mad. She would laugh, like a blood-smeared, amuck-running lunatic at any such proposition. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The madness is accomplished. I believe that it will be for the peace of the world that the rest shall be. JOHN LUTHER LONG. [Illustration] “_Don’t Stand in Our Way to Victory_” All wars bring their full measure of miseries and misfortunes, and this world war, initiated by Germany for the purpose of imposing a military domination upon Europe and America, and conducted with methods which combine the barbaric standards of the Huns and Mongols with the skilled mechanism of the twentieth century, has brought upon the world miseries that can hardly be estimated or described. There are some offsets, however, even in a contest like the present, which is a fight for the preservation of civilization against the onslaughts of scientific barbarism. No nation can take up arms for the defense of its rights and liberties and for the fulfilment of its obligations without bringing into the souls of the people some development of national and patriotic spirit. The soldiers in the trenches and the citizens working at home are fighting and working for a common cause. They come in this manner to have realization of what they owe to each other, to their country and to their consciences. We may feel assured that through the sacrifices that are being made today in our country, of lives, of labor and of wealth, there will be developed from a people which had in its prosperity been growing rich and lazy-minded and forgetful of national morality, the soul of America.