days showed in very fact that they were ready to accept death rather than lose their liberty.

In Lincoln's deathless Gettysburg speech and second inaugural he solemnly pledged the honor of the American people to the hard and perilous task of preserving the union and freeing the slaves.

The pledge was kept. The American people fought to a finish the war which saved the union and freed the slave. If Lincoln and the men and women behind him had wavered, if they had grown faint-hearted and had shrunk from the fight, or had merely paid others to fight for them, they would have earned for themselves and for us the scorn of the nations of mankind.

The words of Lincoln will live forever only because they were made good by the deeds of the fighting men.

So it is now. We can make the President's message of April 2nd stand among the great state papers in our history; but we can do so only, if we make the message good; and we can make it good only if we fight with all our strength now, at once; if at the earliest possible moment we put the flag on the firing line and keep it there, over a constantly growing army, until the war closes by a peace which brings victory to the great cause of democracy and civilization, the great cause of justice and fair play among the peoples of the world.

THE RIGHTS OF MANKIND

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

WE fight for our own rights. We fight for the rights of mankind. This great struggle is fundamentally a struggle for the fundamentals of civilization and democracy. The future of the free institutions of the world is at stake. The free people who govern themselves are lined up against the governments which deny freedom to their people.

Our cause is the cause of humanity. But we also have bitter wrongs of our own which it is our duty to redress. Our women and children and unarmed men, going about their peaceful business, have been murdered on the high seas, not once, but again and again and again.

With brutal insolence, after having for well-nigh two years persevered in this policy, Germany has announced that she will continue it, at our expense and at the expense of other neutrals, more ruthlessly than ever.

The injury thus done to us as a nation is as great as the injury done to a man if a ruffian slaps his wife's face. In such case, if the man is a man, he does not wait and hire somebody else to fight for him; and it would be an evil thing, a lasting calamity to this country, if the war ended, and found us merely preparing an army in safety at home, without having sent a man to the firing line; merely having paid some billions of dollars to other people so that with the bodies of their sons and brothers they might keep us in safety.

From a speech delivered in Chicago, April 28, 1917.

I ask that we send a fighting force over to the fighting line at the earliest possible moment, and I ask it in the name of our children and our children's children, so that they may hold their heads high over the memory of what this nation did in the world's great crisis.

I ask it for reasons of national morality no less than for our material self-interest. I ask it for the sake of our self-respect, our self-esteem.

Our children will have to read the history of what we have done during this war. Let us make the chapter that yet remains to be written one that our children shall read with pride; and they will read it only with a feeling of self-abasement, unless they read that in the times that tried men's souls we have shown valor and endurance and proud indifference to life when the honor of the flag and the welfare of mankind were at stake.

Put the flag on the firing line, and valiant men behind it; and keep it there, sending over a constantly growing stream of valiant men to aid those who have first gone.

In the Civil War there were many men who went to the front to pay with their bodies for the high faith of their souls. There were some men who hired others to go as substitutes to the front. Which ones among these men are the ones to whom we look back with pride those who faced the bullets or those who paid with dollars to buy the willingness and ability of other men to fight? There is no need to answer.

In exactly the same way there should be no need to answer now the question as to whether we are merely to spend billions of dollars to help others fight, or to stand in the fighting line ourselves.

By all means spend the money. A prime essential is to furnish the Allies all the cargo ships they need for food and all the craft they need to help hunt down the sub

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marines. By all means aid them with food and ships and money, and speedily; but do not stop there.

Show that we can fight, as well as furnish dollars and vegetables to fighting men. At the earliest possible moment send an expeditionary force abroad, show our German foes and our allied friends that we are in this war in deadly earnest, that we have put the flag on the firing line, and that we shall steadily increase the force behind that flag to any limit necessary in order to bring the peace of victory in this great contest for democracy, for civilization, and for the rights of free peoples.

AT THE TOMB OF WASHINGTON

M. VIVIANI AND MR. BALFOUR

RENÉ VIVIANI

WE could not remain longer in Washington without accomplishing this pious pilgrimage. In this spot lies all that is mortal of a great hero. Close by this spot is the modest abode where Washington rested after the tremendous labor of achieving for a nation its emancipation. In this spot meet the admiration of the whole world and the veneration of the American people. In this spot rise before us the glorious memories left by the soldiers of France, led by Rochambeau and Lafayette; a descendant of the latter, my friend M. Chambrun, accompanies us. I esteem it an honor as well as satisfaction for my conscience to be entitled to render this homage to our ancestors in the presence of my colleague and friend, Mr. Balfour, who so nobly represents his

On April 30, 1917, representatives of the three great democracies paid homage to America's soldier and statesman at the tomb of Washington, and pledged themselves, each to the other, in the name of the dead to prosecute the present mighty struggle against autocracy on the lines he himself had followed in bringing America into being.

The British laid upon the tomb a wreath bearing the inscription given at the end of Mr. Balfour's peech.

A bronze palm such as France gives to her soldier dead was laid on the tomb by French privates, and General Joffre, the hero of the Marne, said, "In the French Army all venerate the name and memory of Washington. I respectfully salute here the great soldier and lay upon his tomb the palm we offer our soldiers who have died for their country." M. Viviani, Minister of Justice and former premier of France, advanced before the tomb and delivered this address.