The President and I agree in purpose; we desire a peaceful solution of the dispute which has arisen between the United States and Germany. We not only desire it, but, with equal fervor, we pray for it; but we differ irreconcilably as to the means of securing it. If it were merely a personal difference, it would be a matter of little moment, for all the presumptions are on his side--the presumptions that go with power and authority. He is your President, I am a private citizen without office or title--but one of the one hundred million of inhabitants. But the real issue is not between persons, it is between systems, and I rely for vindication wholly upon the strength of the position taken. Among the influences which Governments employ in dealing with each other there are two which are pre-eminent and antagonistic--force and persuasion. Force speaks with firmness and acts through the ultimatum; persuasion employs argument, courts investigation, and depends upon negotiation. Force represents the old system--the system that must pass away; persuasion represents the new system--the system that has been growing, all too slowly, it is true, but growing for 1,900 years. In the old system war is the chief cornerstone--war, which at its best is little better than war at its worst; the new system contemplates a universal brotherhood established through the uplifting power of example. If I correctly interpret the note to Germany, it conforms to the standards of the old system rather than to the rules of the new, and I cheerfully admit that it is abundantly supported by precedents--precedents written in characters of blood upon almost every page of human history. Austria furnishes the most recent precedent; it was Austria's firmness that dictated the ultimatum against Serbia, which set the world at war. Every ruler now participating in this unparalleled conflict has proclaimed his desire for peace and denied responsibility for the war, and it is only charitable that we should credit all of them with good faith. They desired peace, but they sought it according to the rules of the old system. They believed that firmness would give the best assurance of the maintenance of peace, and, faithfully following precedent, they went so near the fire that they were, one after another, sucked into the contest. Never before have the frightful follies of this fatal system been so clearly revealed as now. The most civilized and enlightened--aye, the most Christian--of the nations of Europe are grappling with each other as if in a death struggle. They are sacrificing the best and bravest of their sons on the battlefield; they are converting their gardens into cemeteries and their homes into houses of mourning; they are taxing the wealth of today and laying a burden of debt on the toil of the future; they have filled the air with thunderbolts more deadly than those of Jove, and they have multiplied the perils of the deep.