In the sense which Prussianism or militarism is here used it denotes a mental attitude or view. It is a condition of mind which is partisan, exaggerated and egotistical, and is developed by environment and training. Just as the professional spirit in any other occupation leads to an exhibition of exaggerated importance, the despotic doctrine of militarism assumes superiority over rational motives and deliberations. Everything must be sacrificed to perpetuate and maintain the honor and prestige of the military. WHAT MILITARISM IS. What that militarism is and what it has done to America, and to the whole world, is best summed up in the words of Secretary Lane, of the Department of the Interior, at Washington, who in an address before the Home Club of the Department on June 4, 1917, just when America was beginning to send forces to Europe, said: "America is at war in self-defense and because she could not keep out; she is at war to save herself with the rest of the world from the nation that has linked itself with the Turk and adopted the methods of Mahomet, setting itself to make the world bow before policies backed by the organized and scientific military system. "Why are we fighting Germany? The brief answer is that ours is a war of self-defense. We did not wish to fight Germany. She made the attack upon us; not on our shores, but on our ships, our lives, our rights, our future. For two years and more we held to a neutrality that made us apologists for things which outraged man's common sense of fair play and humanity. "At each new offense--the invasion of Belgium, the killing of civilian Belgians, the attacks on Scarborough and other defenseless towns, the laying of mines in neutral waters, the fencing off of the seas--and on and on through the months, we said: "'This is war--archaic, uncivilized war, but war. All rules have been thrown away; all nobility; man has come down to the primitive brute. And while we cannot justify, we cannot intervene. It is not our war.' IN WAR TO DEFEND RIGHTS. "Then why are we in? Because we could not keep out. The invasion of Belgium, which opened the war, led to the invasion of the United States by slow, steady, logical steps. Our sympathies evolved into a conviction of self-interest. Our love of fair play ripened into alarm at our own peril. "We talked in the language and in the spirit of good faith and sincerity, as honest men should talk, until we discovered that our talk was construed as cowardice. And Mexico was called upon to cow us. "We talked as men would talk who cared alone for peace and the advancement of their own material interests, until we discovered that we were thought to be a nation of mere moneymakers, devoid of all character--until, indeed, we were told that we could not walk the highways of the world without permission of a Prussian soldier, that our ships might not sail without wearing a striped uniform of humiliation upon a narrow path of national subservience.