It has been the proud belief of some that not only would this war result in greater prestige and greater security for free institutions, but that it would effectuate the spread of democracy throughout Europe. We all hope for great things, for we believe in the ultimate triumph of free institutions, but we must not expect these things out of hand. The broken sobs of nations struggling to be independent and free so often heard in that part of the world and then heard no more, the story of Russia just now being written in contention and blood, admonishes anew that the republican road to safety and stability is encompassed by all kinds of trials and beset by countless perils. Democracy is the severest test of character which can be put upon a people, and must be learned and acquired in the rigid school of experience. It cannot be handed whole and complete to any people, though every member of the community were a Socrates. But what we have determined in this crisis, as I understand it, is that we will keep the road of democracy open. No one shall close it. If any nation shall hereafter rise to the sublime requirement of self-government and choose to go that way, it shall have the right to do so. Above all things we have determined, cost what it may in treasure and blood, that this experiment here upon this Western Continent shall justify the faith of its builders, that there shall remain here in all the integrity of its powers neither wrenched nor marred by the passions of war from within nor humbled nor dishonored by military power from without, the Republic of the fathers; that since the challenge has been thrown down that this is a war unto death between two opposing theories of government we are determined that whatever else happens as a result of this war this form of organization, this theory of state, this last great hope, this fruition of 130 years of struggle and toil, "shall not perish from the earth." So, Sir, stripped of all incidental and confusing things, the problem which our soldiers will help to solve is whether the theory of government exemplified in the dynasty of the Hohenzollerns or the theory of government exemplified in the faith of Abraham Lincoln shall prevail. It is after all a war of ideals, a clash of systems, a death struggle of ideals. Amid the sacrilege of war it is our belief that the old order passeth. In such a contest there is little room for compromise. We can no more quit than Washington could have quit at Valley Forge. We can no more compromise than Lincoln could have compromised after Chancellorsville.