Now that this mischief has been done, and the two European thunderclouds have met and are discharging their lightnings, it is not for me to meddle with the question whether the United States should take a side in their warfare as far as it concerns themselves alone. But I may plead for a perfectly innocent neutral State, the State of Belgium, which is being ravaged in a horrible manner by the belligerents. Her surviving population is flying into all the neighboring countries to escape from the incessant hail of shrapnel and howitzer shells from British cannon, French cannon, German cannon, and, most tragic of all, Belgian cannon; for the Belgian Army is being forced to devastate its own country in its own defense.
For this there can be no excuse; and at such a horror the rest of the world cannot look on in silence without incurring the guilt of the bystander who witnesses a crime without even giving the alarm. I grant that Belgium, in her extreme peril, made one mistake. She called to her aid the powers of the Entente alone instead of calling on the whole world of kindly men. She should have called on America, too.

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