PAGE AMERICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN AND THE WAR 1 PRUSSIANIZED GERMANY 11 THE POISON GROWTH OF PRUSSIANISM 23 FRENZIED LIBERTY 57 THE MYTH OF "A RICH MAN'S WAR" 75 LETTER TO A GERMAN 101 AMERICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN AND THE WAR Extracts from an address before The Merchants Association of New York at its Liberty Loan Meeting June 1, 1917 AMERICANS OF GERMAN ORIGIN AND THE WAR We have met to-day in pursuance of a high purpose, a purpose which at this fateful moment is one and the same wherever, throughout the world, the language of free men is spoken and understood. It is the purpose of a common determination to fight and to bear and to dare everything and never to cease nor rest until the accursed thing which has brought upon the world the unutterable calamity, the devil's visitation of this appalling war, is destroyed beyond all possibility of resurrection. That accursed thing is not a nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit which has made the government possessed by it and executing its abhorrent and bloody bidding an abomination in the sight of God and men. What we are now contending for by the side of the splendidly brave and sorely tried Allied Nations, after infinite forbearance, after delay which many of us found it hard to bear, are the things which are amongst the highest and most cherished that the civilized world has attained through the toil, sacrifices and suffering of its best in the course of many centuries. They are the things without which darkness would fall upon hope, and life would become intolerable. They are the things of humanity, liberty, justice and mercy, for which the best men amongst all the nations--including the German nation--have fought and bled these many generations past, which were the ideals of Luther, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, and a host of others who had made the name of Germany great and beloved until Prussianism came to make its deeds a byword and a hissing. This appalling conflict which has been drenching the world with blood is not a mere fight of one or more peoples against one or more other peoples. It goes far deeper. It challenges the soul and conscience of the world. It transcends vastly the bounds of racial allegiance. It is ethically fundamental. In determining one's attitude towards it, the time has gone by--if it ever was--when race and blood and inherited affiliations were permitted to count.