The President's Flag Day address formed another in that series of popular confidential addresses which he has made to the people. In it without circumlocution he reiterated our cause against Germany as he has seen it.

It is strange to many men that the President continues to mark a definite line between the German government and the German people, as though that powerful people were burdened like any group of serfs with a government which held them in close subjugation. Some months ago we could blithely believe that, and pity those seventy millions who were bound so harshly by Junkertum to the wheel of war. But the history of the world as man constitutes it shows that a like view is fallacious. No cabal of autocratic rulers could have forced a nation, either by lies or threats or cajoling, to that unity for sacrifice which has come over the German people.

The nation has seen the power and the glory of empire, as other nations, some greater and some less, have seen it for centuries, and united it is willing to give the very limit of its strength for empire. It is Persia risen again, without the wisdom of Persia, who had tolerance for subject peoples. It is revolutionary France, without the ideal vision of France. It is Rome.

If Germany wins that which she desires to win, or holds that which she has already won, the bargain will be worth the cost, and that material strength and spiritual elevation which go with conquest will be hers. It will not be her rulers' nor her generals', but the possession of the people which have waged this war with full desire, the possession of the people and of their children.

If Germany loses, and is humbled to the bitter defeat which is visited on the overpresumptuous, no doubt then she will grow repentant, as, it is recorded, the devil grew repentant when taken ill. She will then blame her rulers and her generals, openly because they led her after barren conquest, secretly because they failed.

Was it Napoleon who had dreams of empire a century ago, or the French? Was it Attila who scourged God, or the Huns? That nation is a nation of exceeding fools which fights for conquest without knowing, the desire for conquest, nor the value of conquest. And no nation of exceeding fools was ever able to fight as has Germany. Or to fight at all, for that matter.