Our Part in the Great War

tself: a people of mixed blood, divergent ideals, intent on the work at hand, furious in its pleasures, with the vitality of a new race in it, sprinting at top sp

sun, prosperity and peace, a righteousness of well-being. It is a philosophy that fits snugly into a new country of tonic climate and economic opportunity, distant by three thousand miles from historic quarrels and the pressure of crowded neighborhood. We believe that, by coming on the scene with a lot of vitality and good cheer, we can clean up the old bothers

akes a look and crosses to the other side, preferring to maintain its tip-top spirits and its complacency. It does not cure a broken arm, and it leaves Belgium to be hacked through. The New America trusts its melting-pot automatically to remake mixed breeds over n

ain our work and pleasures, deciding that with the causes and objects of this war we were not concerned. That was the clear decision of the

pleasures, and came across the sea, some to nurse, and some to carry swift relief over dangerous roads; still others to fight behind trenches and over the earth, no few of them to die. Nearly forty thousand men have enlisted. Many hundred young college boys are

believe that the historic America has spoken and has acted in this war. In a time when our country, perplexed by its own problems of mixed blood and warring ideas, bewildered by its great possessions, busy with its own vast work of shaking down a continent, has made a great refusal, it is good to have the spectacle of some thousands of young Americans, embracing poverty, taking dangers and ev

rance and Belgium and England have made us. I am only saying that a minority in our population has seen that the Alli

other days, has clearly recognized that no such torture has come in recent centuries as German hands d

um is not sufficient. Will they, I wonder, be moved, if one rises from the dead. We shall see, for in this book I give the words of those who have, as it were, risen from t

disturbed when we see a wave of excitement pass over the country at the arrival of a German submarine-dinners of honor, interviews with the "Viking"-Captain-and, in the same month, a perfect calm of indifference greeting the report of the French girls of Lille sent away and of families broken up and scattered. We that are shocked by the cold system of the German conquerors, and publish the fact

which created our country-ideas brought across from the best of England, and freshened from the

etween England, France and America? America would be as happy as the Sabine girls

ed un-American. We ask you to throw our beliefs, too, into the vast new seething mass. Let us contribute to the great experiment a little of the old collective experience. Because the marching feet

cient, unfaded freedom in England. We are moved as Lincoln was moved when he wrote to the operatives

ar. Whatever might have been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Republic. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the measures of administration which have been and to al

t the past actions and influences of the United States were generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have, therefore, reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances to some of which you kindly allude induce me expecially to expect that if justice and good faith should be practiced by the United States, they would encounter no hostile

n subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expres

course. It is idle to talk of a return to the past. The statesmanship of Franklin is not the statesmanship of to-day. What Lincoln felt is out of tune with the new America. We must go on with the vast new turmoils, the

ssertion of selfhood as a people. Religious revivals no longer draw the mind of the mass people. But the idea of nationality sweeps them. It gives them the sense of kinship, it answers the desire for something to which to tie. It is easily possible that this idea will fade as the God of the Churches and the creative love of beauty faded. The Mazzini and Lincoln type of man may pass as the poet and the saint, Knights and Samurai, passed. But not in our time, not in a few hundred years to come. Nationalism may be only one more of the necessary "useful lies," one more illusion of the hum