Page:Patriotic pieces from the Great War, Jones, 1918.djvu/99

Rh ON TO VICTORY!

Our business is to exert the largest possible fraction of our strength at the earliest possible moment, and then to exert our constantly growing strength so fast as with the utmost energy and efficiency we can develop it, until we win the peace of overwhelming victory. This war, so far as we are concerned, was brought on by German militarism and American pacifism working together. To let either or both of them dictate the peace that is to end it would be an immeasurable disaster. We should not have any negotiations with those who committed and who glory in the Lusitania infamy, the rape of Belgium, and the hideous devastation and wholesale murders and slavery in the conquered countries. We are fighting for the fundamental sanctities of life and decencies of civilization. We are fighting for the liberty of every well behaved nation, great or small, to have whatever government it desires and to live unharming others and unharmed by others. We are sending our troops to fight abroad so that they may not have to fight at home. Germany must be beaten, and the Prussianized militaristic autocracy of the Hohenzollerns humbled or the world will not be safe for liberty-loving peoples. We must fight this war