Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/529

No. 178] they are stretching out their arms to you ; they are your brothers ; they are doubly so : nature made them such, and social ties have strengthened these sacred claims ; more than half of this people is composed of your fellow-countrymen, of your friends, of your relatives. They have fled from tyranny to the uttermost parts of the world, and tyranny has pur sued them even there ; oppressors, equally avaricious and ungrateful, have forged fetters for them, and the worthy Americans have welded these fetters into swords to drive back their oppressors. — The New World then is going to count you in the number of the monsters hungering for gold and blood, who have ravaged it ! Germans, you whose most marked characteristic has always been fairness, do you not shudder at such a reproach? —

To these motives, of a nature to touch men, must one join the motives of an interest affecting equally slaves and free citizens?

Do you know what nation you are going to attack? Do you realize the power of the fanaticism of liberty? It is the only fanaticism which is not odious, it is the only one which is worthy ; but it is also the most powerful of all. — You do not know it, O blind peoples, you who think yourselves free, while grovelling under the most hateful of all despotisms, the despotism which forces men to commit crimes ! You do not know it, you whom the whim or the cupidity of a despot may arm against men who deserve well of all mankind, since they are defending its cause, and preparing a refuge for it ! — O mercenary warriors, O satellites of tyrants, O enervate Europeans, you are going to fight men stronger, more industrious, more courageous, more active than you can be : they are inspired by a strong interest, you are led on by vile lucre ; they are defending their property, and are fighting for their hearths; you are leaving yours, and are not fighting for yourselves. It is in the bosom of their country, in their native clime, aided by all the resources of home, that they are making war against hordes which the Ocean spewed forth, after having prepared their defeat : the most powerful and the most sacred motives urge on their valor, and summon victory in their train. Chiefs who scorn you while making use of you, will oppose in vain their harangues to the irresistible eloquence of liberty, of need, of necessity. In short, and to say all in one word, the cause of the Americans is just: heaven and earth condemn the one which you do not blush to uphold. —

O Germans, who can have infused in you this thirst of combat, this barbarous frenzy, this odious devotion to tyranny? — No, I will not compare you to those fanatical Spaniards, who destroyed for the sake of