President Wilson spoke again, not only to the American public, which listened with great interest, but to the whole civilized world, which accepted with enthusiasm the good news contained in this new address. Wilson's words must have had an encouraging effect upon the oppressed peoples, victims of this long World War.

It has become clear that the great statesman in the White house in Washington, who today not only guides the course of this country, but serves as the inspired agent and almost the highest leader of the nations that are fighting for their rights, is a defender who deserves the universal and unlimted confidence which the thinking world, conscious of its fate and future, has placed in his hands.

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When Wilson speaks, he does not mouth empty words, but conveys thoughts, which facts and deeds must follow. For this reason, the reference in his Baltimore address to the lesson in Germany's Russian triumph has a special significance, as does his enormously important assurance that the United States, in accepting Germany's Challenge to the world, will win by force of arms the just peace that can come only after Germany has been vanquished.

Washington has once and for all closed its ears to the sporadic peace proposals, emanating sometimes from Berlin and more often from Vienna, since it is convinced, by the tragic example in Russia, of the bottomless abyss that separates German theory from German practice, German thoughts from words and German words from acts. Fate arranged it so that Germany, with all its skillful camonflage of beautiful and misleading must, from time to time, show its true features in ignominious reality.

The official agents of the German Reich, that is, the chancellor in Berlin and the German delegates to the conference in Brest Litovsk have, after all, "agreed" 3to the principles of Wilson's peace proposals and have spoken long and loud on a peace that would be both just and honorable. But when it passed from words to deeds, the outcome was again an offense against all laws of God and man, against all conceptions of justice and honor. The subjugation of Russia became an accomplished fact, the treaty of Brest Litovsk was violated with Ukrainia, Finland was undermined, and Rumania suffered a terrible injustice that cries to heaven for revenge.

Wilson's conclusions, then, are logical: "From this we can judge the others. They rejoice over their easy triumph in Russia, of which no capable and chivalrous nation could long be group A great nation (Russia), defenseless as a result of its own acts, has been given over for the present to their ill-favor."

And the Germans forgot their own beautiful words: "Nowhere do they bring about the reign of justice and everywhere do they impose their greater force for their own profit and toward their own greatness." They (the Germans) have 4in addition, the effrontery to call upon the nations to rejoice over the "freedom under German rule"!

The crimes committed in the East would be repeated by the German in the west, also, if the gallant Allied armies did not bar the way, armies which even the innumerable German divisions cannot vanquish.

And Wilson has arrived at the salutary conclusion that the Germans may not and must not be trusted--they betrayed themselves in Russia. Even if they now were to propose the most honorable and favorable peace terms to the Western powers, they would meet with an unconditional rejection, for neither the United States nor the Western European powers can give Eastern Europe over to plunder by Germany, eventually to by followed by a German invasion of Asia and a subsequent threat to all Europe and America.

Wilson says: "They tend undoubtedly toward subjugating to their own will all of the Slavic nations, all of the independent and ambitious nations of the 5Balkan peninsula, and all of the countries which had been misruled Turkey. They would build their imaginary 'empire of force' for their own profit and for their own economic supremacy--an empire, equally inimical to America and to Europe, which would finally engulf Persia, India, and the peoples of the Far East. Such a program cannot be reconciled with our indeals of justice, humanity, and freedom, nor can it be accepted by the rest of the modern world, which believes in the principle that each nation has a right to decide its own fate. All this is to be thrown aside for the ideal of overwhelming force, for the principle that the stronger nations gust rule over the weaker, that nations of this world must submit to the rule of those who are in a position to impose their authority upon them."

The United States cannot tolerate such a program; hence Wilson is arming this nation for a struggle to bring it about that the world will be ruled by the rights of man and nations, and that the proud German heel may not crush or dishonor the rights of anyone. And this most holy war that the history of mankind has ever seen must be won, or else "... to naught will go all that 6America loves and stands for, over which it has worked with splendid progress, and again the gates of brotherly love will be pitilessly closed before mankind."

In truth, there is no indication that the situation will reach this terrible conclusion, but such is the actual aim of the German army, and such is the state of affairs that the German army has brought about with pitiless Prussian precision wherever its barbarous feet have passed.

"And what is to be dome today" Wilson asks.

In the first place, all talk of peace is empty and barren. When America proposed an honorable peace, such a reply came from the German military commanders in Russia that today no one can have any delusions as to the intentions of militaristic Germany. That reply was a brutal German challenge represented by the shameful treaty of Brest Litovsk.

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The challenge has been accepted by Wilson and the American nation, which from this point will not hesitate before any--even the most far-reaching--sacrifice, to save the world from the German threat and to win for it such freedom as the United States itself enjoys.

And as if he were waking a row in behalf of this country, the great President says that all our thoughts, all our words and actions, must be combined into one great whole in order to create a majestic, concentrated force that will finally disperse the superiority of the Germans, who hold in contempt and dishonor everything that is dear to us.

Wilson concluded his address with an elevated exhortation that a great armed force be created which, watching German superiority, is the only thing that can decide whether justice and peace are to regulate relations among men and among nations, and which henceforth can and must stand alone in the struggle against the Germans with triumphal force, crushing to dust all violence, injustice, and foreign rule.