We have seen the last of
neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in
which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of
responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their
governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized
states.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse
that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their
previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars
used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were
nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in
the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were
accustomed to use their fellow-men as pawns and tools. Self-governed
nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies or set the course
of intrigue to bring about some critical posture of affairs which will
give them an opportunity to strike and make conquest. Such designs can
be successfully worked out only under cover and where no one has the
right to ask questions.
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