But what do we mean now by peace? We mean more than a mere cessation of hostilities. We mean that the burglar shall give back all that he has grabbed. We mean that the marauder shall make good all the damage that he has done. We mean that there shall be an open league of free democratic states, great and small, to guard against the recurrence of such a bloody calamity as the autocratic, militaristic Potsdam gang precipitated upon the world in 1914. In the next chapter I shall discuss briefly the practical significance of this kind of peace and the absolute preconditions which must be realized before any conference on the subject will be profitable or even safe. The duty of the present is to fight on beside France, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, Servia, Roumania, and, we hope, Russia, "to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war." To talk of any other course is treason, not only to our country but to the cause of true Peace. Chapter VII PAX HUMANA I The trouble with the ordinary or garden variety of pacifist is that he has a merely negative idea of peace. The true idea of peace is positive, constructive, forward-looking. It is not content with a mere cessation of hostilities at any particular period of the world's history. It aims at the establishment of reason and justice as the rule of the world's life. It proposes to find the basis of this establishment in the freely expressed will of the peoples of the world. The men and women who do the world's work are the sovereigns who must guarantee this real peace of the world. That is what we are fighting for. Not pax Romana, nor pax Germanica, nor pax Britannica, but pax Humana--a peace which will bring a positive benefit to all the tribes of humanity. Since the choice by the Imperial German Government, in August, 1914, of war as the means of settling international disputes, the Allies have been fighting against that choice and its bloody consequences. Every one of them--Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia--had pleaded for arbitration, conference, consultation, to avert this fearful conflict of arms. But it was in vain. The United States of America, forced by the flagrant violation of its neutral rights to take an active part in the war, and led by its vital sympathies to the side of the Allies, committed by honor and conscience to the duty of fighting for a real peace of mankind, must carry on this war until its humane and democratic object is attained. To do less than that would be to renounce our place as a great nation, to deny our faith as Americans, and to expose our country to incalculable peril and disaster.