New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915: April-September, 1915Various
History
New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915: April-September, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
We have our duties in this war. First of all, this duty begins at
home--this duty to our home, because I always feel that if we are not
ready to do our duty to those nearest to us we are not fit to do our
duty far away. And so the first duty is to ourselves and to our homes.
Then there is the duty to protect those who, having made a gallant
fight for self-defense--and by that I mean the country of Belgium--what
we owe to Belgium we can never repay, because now the whole German plan
of campaign is perfectly plain to all those who are not prejudiced, and
who are not affected by pan-Germanism; and, unfortunately, in their
methods of warfare--and their methods of warfare are many--they not only
fight physically, but they fight mentally and morally as well, and in
this country and in France, and in every country in Europe, long before
the war broke out, in fact, ever since the year 1870, they have been
preparing by subtle means to take possession of Europe, and I believe
their ambitions are not limited by that, they want to rule the whole
world. The whole thing is clear to any unprejudiced observer.
It is very difficult for your attacking bully to imagine that a small
State--I mean small numerically, and weak physically--will ever have
the courage to stand up and resist the bully when he prepares to attack.
The Germans did not expect Belgium to keep them at bay while the other
countries involved prepared, but there is absolutely no doubt that the
plan was to press through Belgium, to take possession of Paris, and
then, having humiliated and crippled France, to cross the Channel and
defeat us. There is no doubt that was the plan; it is perfectly clear.
And that being so, we owe--civilization owes--to Belgium a debt which it
can never repay.
Then we have our duty to our ally, France. How much democracy owes to
France! France is the mother of European democracy. There is no doubt
about her claim to that. If there had been nothing else worth fighting
for in this war, in my opinion that alone would have been worth fighting
for, to preserve that spirit and that democracy--which France has given
to the world, and which would perish if France were destroyed. The
people of France are a people who never have been, and I believe never
will be, corrupted in the sense of thinking that material things are of
more value than spiritual things. The people of France have always been
ready to sacrifice themselves for ideals. They have been ready to
sacrifice life, they have been ready to sacrifice money, they have been
ready to sacrifice everything for an ideal.
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