The Dominion TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1918. A RINGING CALL TO ACTION

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 171, 9 April 1918, Page 4

The Dominion TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1918. A RINGING CALL TO ACTION

President Wilson's speech a.fc Baltimore on Saturday \yas a good blow struck in the Allied cause. Made on the anniversary of American intervention, it commands attention primarily as an affirmation that the past year has deepened and strengthened the convictions which impelled' the people of the United States to cast off neutrality and take their stand with the Ententeabove all the conviction that if the cause they have championed should be lost "their own great nation's place and mission in the world will be lost." The record of what, America has clone and is preparing to do in the'war—some of the principal items are summarised in one of today's cablegrams—supplies a splendid background to the President's assurance. But like other speeches which President Wilson has delivered since he presented his famous Message to Congresß on April 2, 1917,. the Baltimore address has at the same time a larger.purpose and a, wider appeal. On this occasion, as on others, to read the President's words is to realise that circumstances have set him in a position of rare power to deal with the vital issues of the war and to sound a call which must echo in every true heart, not only in his own nation, but throughout the Allied circle of nations. It is a fact to be gratefully acknowledged that wo owe it in no slight degree to President Wilson's masterly indictment of Germany that it is possible to say, as he has himself said, that the German propaganda deceives nobody. Few, if any, will deny that President Wilson speaks from a more commanding vantage point than the spokesman of any other nation at war. His pre-eminence may be the more readily admitted since it obviously is not clue solely to his personal powers of understanding and expression, exceptional as these powers undoubtedly are. Not a little of the weight which a.ttaches to President Wilson's war speeches and secures for them a world audience must be attributed to the fact that he speaks not as one who from the first championed the Allied cause, but as a convert to that cause, and one who brought with him in his conversion a mighty nation which adopted as the cardinal principle of its polity the absolute avoidance of entanglement in European quarrels. If the masterly speeches in which 'President Wilson has so completely torn the mask of hypocrisy from Germany's professions had never been delivered, the abandonment by the United States of its traditional policy of isolation in favour of a determination to use every resource at ife command in | bringing Germany to terms would I still brand Germany as the enemy j of all mankind, and correspondingly vindicate the nations she sought to overwhelm. All that President Wilson has said in denunciation of Germany carries tenfold weight because it is known to the whole world that even when the j war had long been in progress ho J and a great majority of liis country-1 men were' an sinus above all things. that the United States should re- ] main neutral. . ■ I

The Baltimore speech is first and fcrsniosfc a ringing call to action, and it is marked throughout by the competent grasp of essential 'facts in which President Wilson has excelled. There is little doubt that he is foreshadowing the actual courso of events in suggesting that tho Germans, when they find themselves checked on tho West front, may open another "peace offensive," offering favourable- terms in regard to Belgium, France, and Italy, provided they are given a free hand in Kussia and the East. Pkesibest Wilson is speaking not to America only, but to all Allied nations, in declaring that peace on such terms would give the military masters of Germany the essential " objects for which they are striving, and leave them free scope to develop their schemes of world domination. The picture he has drawn of a Pan-Ger-man empire of force and gain should assist potently to cement determination in every Allied country that peace shall never he concluded on such terms. With such a peace as the alternative to continued effort no other resolve can be considered by any Allied nation than that proclaimed by Ptiesident Wilson on behalf of his countrymen—a resolve to shrink from no sacrifice that may he demanded as the price of victory.