"We have seen that the n ideal of government and the American ideal cannot exist together in the world and that the Prussian ideal is of necessity vicious in its nature and degrading in its effects. ...We fight not to avenge the Lusitania, not to rebuild Louvain, not to exact reparation for murdered women and children. We fight to slay the government which taught its people to commit such damnable atrocities. We fight that never again may a great nation with cynical insolence throw in the face of the world the base assertions that treaties are scraps of paper, that necessity knows no law, that might is the right of the strongest, and that the State can do no wrong. We fight to hurl the Hohenzollern and his dangerous doctrine of divine right upon the scrap-heap of useless trumpery, and to set the German people in his place, that they may learn to rule themselves."