RAGNAROK

Slowly, like an impotent dream which winds on and never ends, the machinery of our National Government has revolved through the President, through the Senate, through the House, till that declaration which would have been made before the elapse of one hour in a despotic government has now been evolved. We are at war.

The anxiety of the last few months has been the anxiety of indecision. We have not known that to do. There is nothing more wearing on the courage of a brave people than to know that it is bound by the shackles of inaction, that in spite of all its strength it must await the weakness of the most timid of its leaders.

That time of timidity is now past. We have entered on the road which can have no turning. In the knowledge that we may not falter lies our strength.

All the great nations of the earth have entered into the unmeasurable war since the terrible days of August, 1914, save our great nation. All of them have in the war found increased strength, a new vision, a knowledge of their own unsolved ideals. There is no question now as to what England represents, or Germany, or France. In the strength of national unity for a single mighty purpose they have found themselves. The United States alone has rested with its ideals unrealized, without consciousness of its own goal.

We have been scoffed at for a nation of money-lovers, we, the greatest idealists in politics since the French Revolution. The warring powers have said, scornfully or sorrowfully, that we have forgotten our ancient tradition of liberty and of strength, bending our knees in idolatry to false gods of Mammon. They have said we no longer remember how the victorious fight. But now that we have conquered our hesitancy, now that we have conquered the vain idealism of peace, we will go into war as we have always gone into war: seeking no end but the utmost end, stopping not one stride short of victory. We will put a new idealism into the conflict of national ideals, so that other peoples may know the greatness of our national spirit, and wonder as they admire at the emerging of our power.

No man may say we go to war for increased trade or for the slaughter of little governments or for the conquest of lands beyond the seas. Our desires are clean of the thought of gain. The hope of a peace based upon national tolerance has led us to take up arms against that government which wills no peace and comprehends no tolerance. Is there now one statesman so unwise as to say we lack ideals, that our only thought is of gain while the whole world bleeds?

The German arms received the lethal blow when the United States declared war. They cannot now help but fail. It has been a boast of the Hohenzollerns that each ruler added some bit to the Prussian land. The last of the Hohenzollerns will live to see that long and cruelly-wrested land snatched from him again. Will he remember Dixmonde when he hears the troops of the five great Powers crossing the Rhine? Will his heart bleed for Louvain afresh when the allies of democracy march through the plains of Prussia?

It is the twilight of the lesser gods. Germany could have conquered Russia. She might have overrun France. She could never subdue England. She may not defend herself against them all with America and her utmost strength joined.

The pride of Germany must be bitter and frustrate when she knows that against her are allied all the great freedom-loving and self-governing Powers of the earth. Will she find her own defeat worth all the blood and iron it cost her, all her wrecked fortune, her ruined strength?

Imperialism will perish before democracy without fail and inevitably. The day of the failure of the imperialism of Germany was forewritten from that time when she made her enemy the greatest democracy of the world.