The Emperor of Germany and the Junkers of his Prussia forced the present war. They prepared for it during years while the rest of the world was keeping peace. They justified it to their people on the ground that Germany needed new territory, new trade, new markets. Although she was gaining the trade and markets without war, Germany’s leader made this their excuse to their people, and when they were ready they went to war for the purpose of imposing their form of government upon peoples who did not want it, of forcing their rule upon nations opposed to their ideas. Serbia lay in their path of conquest into Asia, and so they caused Austria, their tool, to make an excuse of the assassination by a Serbian of an Austrian archduke, and declare war on the small nation. Then Germany invaded Belgium, with which it was not at war, to get to France, against which war had been declared. Belgium resisted. England entered the conflict. The struggle was on. Month after month the aggressions of Germany caused new nations to break off relations with her. Italy and Japan entered the war. China, most peaceful of nations in her relations with the outside world, broke off relations. One after another of the South American republics were forced to do the same. The United States, after a long period of patient endurance of German insults, attacks on our commerce, intrigues and plots in our own country, restriction of our maritime activities in defiance of international law, was finally driven to announcement of the existence of a state of war. The lines were drawn. Democracy was making a stand for its life against autocracy, the freemen of the world against the bondsmen. It is right and fitting that the United States of America should take her place in a war which is being fought for those principles for which she has stood since her coming into nationhood. For more than a century and a quarter she has been, like the Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York, a symbolic figure to the world beaconing men to freedom. It is in line with her history that she should go to Europe for the same cause for which she has fought all her wars--defense of the weaker against the stronger, the right of people to determine their own governments, the right of all to be free. There is a story told of General Pershing’s entrance into Paris. He was taken to the tomb of Lafayette. His hosts crowded about him, waiting for his speech. But, like all American soldiers, Pershing is no orator. “Well, Lafayette,” he said, “we’re here!” That was all. But France, hearing, understood. America was there, to fight side by side with them, to suffer with them, to die with them, that the cause of liberty for which Lafayette had fought on two continents might live. The world war had menaced the United States in its sacred institution of freedom, and the United States had met the challenge, and had come to fight for that which is dearer than life--honor, and right, and justice. CHAPTER III