years of our ignoble neutrality between right and wrong. The pacifists and pro-Germans played the game of the profiteers, and worked hand in hand with them to keep this country at peace, and therefore to continue the opportunity for profiteering. Ninety per cent. of the profiteering stopped just as soon as we went to war. Most of the well-to-do men of this country, of the men who are free from the menace of immediate want and who have given their sons a good education, have been the very men whose sons have freely and eagerly gone to the war. There is an occasional wealthy man, the owner of a set of newspapers, or an automobile factory, or something of the kind, who improperly succeeds in getting his son excused from service, on the plea that he is needed in the business. But usually it will be found that this man is himself an upholder of pacifism, or of some of the movements of the very people who have announced that they are against the war. In this country the real upholders of the war are the men who themselves have shown, or whose sons have shown, that they were willing to pay with their bodies for the principles they advocated.

Mr. Kahn's rebuke to those noxious demagogues who try to aid Germany and hurt America by prattling about this being "a rich man's war" is rendered all the stronger because he insists on heavy progressive taxation of incomes and profits for war purposes. This taxation should go up to, but under no circumstances go in the slightest degree beyond, the line at which it interferes with or limits production or prevents the fullest development of our business resources during the war. We need to speed up production to the very top limit. While this war lasts we have a right to demand of every man, whether capitalist, or labourer, or farmer, that his prime effort and motive be to win the war, for this is the people's war, America's war—the war of all of us. The Government should see that every man does his full part. Therefore it should see that the rich man does his full part. Therefore, not merely in his interest but in the national interest, it should also see that no frantic extremist, under the plea of forcing the rich man to do his full part, renders it impossible for him to do anything at all. So to act would bring lasting damage to the community, and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, would create a condition which would bring the war to a standstill.

This is a capital study of the problems which are of vital interest at this moment to all Americans who love their country, and who wish while serving their country also to serve all the free nations of civilized mankind.

Theodore Roosevelt.

  Sagamore Hill,
      June 15, 1918.

FOREWORD

This book should be in every man's home; every woman should read it. It is a pity that it is not in every German's home. But before your ordinary man can grasp its full significance, it is as well that he should know something of the man who wrote it, and still more why he wrote it.

Mr. Otto H. Kahn, one of the leading financiers of America, and widely renowned for his manifold charities, his strenuous public life, and his generous patronage of the Arts, is of German blood and was born in Germany. But, from his great-grandparents, who were French Alsatians, he inherited a great love of France. His father, after taking part in the German Revolution of 1848, fled to America, became naturalized as an American citizen, and finally returned to Germany after ten years of banishment. From this father, Kahn inherited the love of liberty.

He left Germany when he was twenty-one years old, after having served his year in the army; and, deciding to find his future elsewhere, gave up his German nationality thirty years ago. Returning, however, almost every year, to visit the country of his birth, and having important relations with governmental, business, social, and other circles, he had exceptional opportunities for becoming acquainted with and studying the development of German mentality and morality under the influence of Prussianism. That development filled him with horror and dismay. Long before the war he realized the terrible menace to the entire world which was subtly concealed in the poison growth of Prussianism. As he himself here puts it in one of his speeches: "From each successive visit to Germany for twenty-five years I came away more appalled by the sinister transmutation Prussianism had wrought amongst the people and by the portentous menace I recognized in it for the entire world. It had given to Germany unparalleled prosperity, beneficent and advanced social legislation, and not a few other things of value, but it had taken in payment the soul of the race. It had made a Devil's Bargain."

When the war broke out, in 1914, Otto Kahn did not hesitate for a second on which side to take his stand. For him, neutrality in the fight between light and darkness, between right and atrocious wrong, was unthinkable. And as he felt and thought, being a man of honour, of courage, and of decision, so he acted, totally regardless of the consequences to himself. He had "searched his conscience in sorrow and in anguish"; and where it led him there he followed unhesitatingly. Although his most important business relations were in Germany, although he knew that he would be attacked in Germany and by all pro-Germans as a renegade, and would have to face a very difficult position even in America as long as America was neutral, he at once became a firm, open, and active adherent of the cause of the Allies, and threw his entire influence, personal and financial, on their side. No work for the Allies remained without his support. The calculated expectations of the German Government on German-American aid, particularly their reliance on access to the money market of America, were disappointed and defeated; the chief part of the credit for that vital result was due to Otto Kahn.

But, perhaps the greatest service to the Allied cause which Mr. Kahn rendered—which he was the first, as well as the most prominent, American of German blood to render—was his oratory through the United States. There are about twelve million Americans of German descent in the United States, and many more millions spring from races more or less affiliated with them. Most of these went to America over twenty-five years ago; they did not know modern Germany; they did not believe the accounts of German atrocities as reported in the Press; they were unable to realize the hideous change which had come over Germany since they or their parents had left it; they did not understand the origin, the cause, and the meaning of the war. And many Americans, especially in the West, held the like views.

Mr. Kahn, notwithstanding threats and malignities, went out to speak to them—individually, through newspaper articles, or at great mass meetings. He brought to bear the authority of his personality, fortified by the confidence and prestige which attach to it; and he made it plain that he spoke, not from hearsay, but from personal experience, observation, and knowledge. He succeeded in showing up modern Germany as it is, and in proving its horrible guilt for the war. He pleaded in flaming words to Americans of German birth that not only did their oath of allegiance compel them to be whole-heartedly and