the league of nations a mere instrumentality for serving the purposes of victorious European powers is one it should not have been necessary to come from South America.

America failed at the peace conference because of the abandonment of Americanism by the man who misrepresented the United States in a failure so monumental that it constitutes one of the greatest calamities in history. To President Harding comes the opportunity to make the best of a most difficult situation, and to substitute, in so far as it is now possible, the spirit of Americanism for that of traditional Europeanism, in the war settlement and the world's reconstruction.

-December 18, 1920.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concession, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliance of ambition, corruption or infatuation.-George Washington.

Let those gentlemen who consider themselves quite too respectable and decent to mingle in our elections, remember that God Almighty will hold them responsible for the manner in which they discharge their duty as voters. That right and privilege is not given to them for their benefit, or to be used at their pleasure, but for my benefit, for your benefit, and for the benefit of the thirty millions of people in the United States. If one sees an unworthy man go to the polls and take possession of the government, and he will not prevent it, if there be such a thing as future responsibility as we all believe that man will have something to answer for upon that final day when all of us must account for our acts.-Thomas Corwin.

WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR IN THIS WAR?

Tremendous injury has been done to the American cause in this war by mis-statements of American justification for participation in it. Both by seditious agitators and by vainglorious politicians and press agents we have been told that we are in the war to force certain academic, political and economic theories on the rest of the world by force of arms, as Mahomet thrust his religion on Asia by the sword.

No government worthy of being considered civilized would send its sons to the firing line to vindicate the mere political or economic opinions of any man, party or faction. The only cause for which any nation has any moral right to go to war is the necessary defense of the people's fundamental rights of person and property against foreign or domestic aggression. Any nation worthy of the people's protection must protect its people. It must make not only their own country, but the world in general safe for them, so long as they are proceeding within their rights under treaties and international law.

We are in this war for one cause, and one cause only, and that is to make the world safe for America and Americans: to make the whole world understand that the nation which gratuitously insults and assaults our flag, or those entitled to its protection, must suffer the consequences which in a century and a third of American history always befell those who attacked every American by attacking every American's flag. We are in a war of national defense, and not of international propaganda: the claims set up to the contrary are mere matters of opinion, unauthorized by any public decision, unjustified by public opinion, and vastly harmful to the American cause.

To insure, hereafter, that respect for American rights always firmly enforced by this government prior to that abandonment of national duty and responsibility in Mexico which gave Europe mistakenly to understand that anyone could spit on the American flag who cared to do so and would find us "too proud to fight," we must fight the central empires to a decisive conclusion. No mere agreement to respect these rights hereafter would now be sufficient. We must make our adversaries understand that the American eagle still has a beak and talons. We must not only force Germany to recognition of our national rights, but pull the fangs which she repeatedly sunk into us while we were neutrals.

We are not animated by racial or dynastic hatred, by trade riv

alry or territorial greed. We are out for the plain, old-fashioned cause of American safety on sea and land which sent Decatur against the Barbary pirates. We do not aspire to historic immortality as arbiters of the world's destiny; our job is to work out our own high destiny, and a big enough job it is. We are not in the war to establish world-wide socialism, communism, free trade or internationalism; we are in the war to beat and disarm the bully we are fighting and to make it impossible for this or any other thug hereafter to swish a club around our ears with the command to stand and deliver.

If we could only dam the flood of drivel that has been let loose in this country to drown out good old-fashioned American patriotism, and clear the whole atmosphere by a plain statement of what every sincere American understands we are really in the war for, the effect would be electrical. The people have shown their devotion to the republic; they will continue to do so; but if appealed to in the name of national, rather than of international and academic ideals which are bothering the brains only of the word artists and millennium makers and which no civilized government would send its soldiers to fight and die for, the unified and stimulated efforts of Americans will be irresistible.

This motto is enough: Our cause is our flag! -February 9, 1918.

Storms, in the political atmosphere, may occasionally happen, by the encroachments of usurpers, the corruption or intrigues of demagogues, or in the inspiring agonies of faction, or by the sudden fury of popular frenzy; but, with the restraints and salutary influences of the allies before described, these storms will purify as healthfully as they often do in the physical world, and cause the tree of liberty, instead of falling, to strike its roots deeper. In this struggle the enlightened and moral possess also a power, auxiliary and strong, in the spirit of the age, which is not only with them, but onward, in everything to ameliorate or improve.

When the struggle assumes the form of a contest with power, in all its subtlety, or with undermining and corrupting wealth, as it sometimes may, rather than with turbulence, sedition or open aggression by the needy and desperate, it will be indispensable to employ still greater diligence; to cherish earnestness of purpose, resoluteness in conduct, to apply hard and constant blows to real abuses, rather than milk-and-water remedies, and encourage not only bold, free and original thinking, but determined action.-Levi Woodbury.

The stability of this government and the unity of this nation depend solely on the cordial support and earnest loyalty of the people.-Ulysses S. Grant.

THE AIMS OF AMERICA NEED NO EXPLANATION

OR APOLOGY

Despite all the conspicuous pronouncements to the contrary, altruism in American international relations is not a recent invention. From the days of Washington this republic has maintained an altruistic attitude toward the rest of the world. So patent is this fact to any friendly student of American history that it is unnecessary to explain it to anyone not unfriendly, in his heart, to the United States of America. It is true that we have been misrepresented by prejudiced critics abroad and prejudiced critics, possessed by the spirit of European provincialism and only nominally Americans, here at home. There is only one incident in our history which can with any degree of justice be called a departure from our consistent policy of disinterested friendship for all the world. That is the Mexican war, which was precipitated by sectional politicians who represented not the people of any portion of the republic, but the old special property interest of human slavery which long since ceased to be a dominant factor in American politics. This war was, however, an outgrowth of the rebellion of Texas against an intolerant tyranny, and viewed in the light of years, it cannot be said that the occupation of our Pacific slope by Americans was a blow to civilization. The outcome was altruistic so far as the republic is concerned, and it was a service of immeasurable value to those states whose status would be that of Lower rather than of American California if the Mexican war had not been fought.

Barring this possible exception we have fought no selfish war, we have done no selfish thing. On the contrary we have done a great many things, expressive of the spirit of the American people, which prevents the belief on the part of anyone disposed to be fair with the American nation, that we have not been altruistic in our attitude toward our neighbors and the world in general. Vastly the strongest of all nations in the western hemisphere, it has been within our power at all times to take anything we wanted. We have used our power only to prevent land grabbing European nations, to whom we are told we must now explain our altruism, from seizing territory in the hemisphere. Immediately following the Civil war, when we had an army and navy strong enough to defeat any nation, we ordered France out of Mexico instead of going in, as many urged we should, to displace one invader with another.

Our attitude in China prevented the European nations to whom we are now explaining that we have turned over a new leaf and are now unselfish, from seizing territory after the expedition of the allies to Pekin following the Boxer uprising. Only the meanest and most prejudiced critics of the United States assume that our record in the Spanish-American war fails to support this theory of American altruism. We did a thing without parallel in history when we withdrew from Cuba, and when we established in Porto Rico and the Philippines a government which blessed, rather than bled, the people of these dependencies, flung by fate into our hands to their own infinite betterment. Hostile critics of the United States talk about our "taking Panama." We did nothing of the kind. We had no selfish purpose in Panama. We were putting through there a vast project not more beneficial to the United States than to the rest of the world, and most of all to Colombia, whose politicians attempted to blackmail the United States and inflict injury upon Panama while holding up the consummation of this great altruistic project, paid for by the people of the United States.

If our history as a nation had not been marked by altruism, no profession of unselfish purposes now would weigh against the record. To friends of the United States, it is unnecessary to ex-. plain that we have no designs of territorial aggression in this war. To the peoples of the United States, who understand that no one in this country has any such thought of such a thing, such professions are totally unnecessary protestations of suddenly acquired national virtue.

We are in this war to make the world safe for this republic; to preserve our rights and our self respect as a nation; to prove that we are neither too proud nor too cowardly to take up arms in defense of the flag for which the soldiers of Washington, of Lincoln and of McKinley shed their blood. It is unnecessary to explain the altruism of our aims either to our allies or our enemies. Only one thing counts now, and that the weight of our military resources cast into the scale against the power which has insulted and assaulted the republic.

---June 22, 1918.

There is a sort of courage, which, I frankly confess it, I do not possess, a boldness to which I dare not aspire, a valour which I cannot covet. I cannot lay myself down in the way of the welfare and happiness of my country. That, I cannot I have not the courage to do. I cannot interpose the power with which I may be invested a power conferred, not for my personal benefit, nor for my aggrandizement, but for my country's good-to check her onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough, I am too cowardly for that.-Henry Clay.