It is in the full disclosing light of that
thought that all policies must be conceived and executed in this midday
hour of the world's life. German rulers have been able to upset the
peace of the world only because the German people were not suffered
under their tutelage to share the comradeship of the other peoples of
the world either in thought or in purpose. They were allowed to have no
opinion of their own which might be set up as a rule of conduct for
those who exercised authority over them. But the congress that concludes
this war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the
hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run
with those tides.
All these things have been true from the very beginning of this
stupendous war; and I cannot help thinking that if they had been made
plain at the very outset the sympathy and enthusiasm of the Russian
people might have been once for all enlisted on the side of the Allies,
suspicion and distrust swept away, and a real and lasting union of
purpose effected. Had they believed these things at the very moment of
their revolution and had they been confirmed in that belief since, the
sad reverses which have recently marked the progress of their affairs
towards an ordered and stable government of free men might have been
avoided.
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