THE SENATE HAS SPOKEN

A new page was written in the history of our free nation when the Senate in prolonged night session gave ratification to the President's message and declared that by hostile acts a state of war exists between the United States and the German Empire. The loyalty of the House is unquestioned; it will not in the least delay to second what the Senate has clearly, though tardily, said.

Our nation enters on the sixth great war of its history. Five times before, as dependent colonies, as a small republic, as a great Power, it has raised the standard of battle. Each time it was goaded to humiliation before it was willing to enter on the final and most awful test of national greatness. We have never rushed blindly nor conquest-mad to war. We do not rush blindly now. We have endured beyond the point of all endurance, because the sense of justice and forebearance is so keen in us as a people that we hesitate lest one right thinking man might say we have been over-hasty. We may endure no longer, no longer if we desire honor from great nations or pride in ourselves.

We have always gone to war for the utmost just causes, for our national freedom, for the freedom of the high seas, for the freedom of the Lone Star State, for the freedom of the slaves, for the freedom of tyrannized Cuba. We go to war now for the freedom of the German people. We are true to our history. We have kept our national faith in freedom. We go to war for a cause no less just.

Our enemies may be blinded by the Senate's unfortunate delay, and construe that hesitancy as weakness. They should know that no group of head-strong and coldly disloyal men may make the greatest of republics pusillanimous. Those Senators who raised their clamorous voices against war are proof not of our indecision, but of our true freedom. In more autocratic countries they would have been hanged.

The first battle has been fought. La Follette has been defeated. The next thing is to conquer Germany.