recurrence of such a catastrophe improbable if not impossible.

I recall those dark days last Spring after the defeat of Italy, the loss of Chemin-des-Dames by the French, the defeat of the Portuguese in Flanders and the breakdown of the British Fifth Army in Picardy. It seemed that nothing could stop the German armies and, as they drew closer and closer toward Paris, the question was asked with greater and greater anxiety, "Who can stop the onslaught?' How proud I was as an American in those dark days, to see the American standard raised high at Chateau Thierry and carried victoriously onward through St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest toward the River Rhine. In this critical period of the world's history, when the peoples of the earth cry out for leadership, is the United States going to stand up to the standard of leadership erected by her soldiers? That is the issue!

It was a great surprise to me upon returning to this country to find that the very principles for which the American

soldier has been dying on the battlefields of France were being condemned on the floor of the United States Senate; and what is the argument he hears? He is told that in 1848 the United States had trouble with Mexico that we got what we wanted, and he is asked if such a case should recur would we wish to leave it to foreigners.

If this war has established any principle it has established the principle that there is a moral law above the state and to that moral law the state must answer. It was the Kaiser who believed that the state was all supreme and irresponsible.

The trouble with certain Senators is that they are steeped in the philosophy of Kaiser Wilhelm, the philosophy we fought to kill, the philosophy that died with the defeat of Germany.

And who are these fearful foreigners? It now happens that there are about two million "Yanks" who, by close associa tion, by living in the same dugouts with "Poilus" and "Tommies," have learned a new lesson. We have discovered that

the Britisher, Frenchman, and Italian are two-legged animals, like ourselves, who eat, sleep, fight; yes, and even think as we do, and we have about made up our minds that we can better put our trust in these fearful foreigners than in certain men who claim to represent us in the United States Senate.

Throughout the great war the world. has turned to America for moral leadership. It now rests with the power of a United American opinion to lead the world to the victory of Peace by the establishment of an effective League of Nations.

SPEECH DELIVERED BY

CAPTAIN THOMAS G. CHAMBERLAIN

Before the Southern Congress for a League of Nations, Atlanta, Georgia, February 28, 1919.

THE fight for a League of Nations will go on, but so far as this trip is concerned we are approaching the end of the trail. Those of you who attended the World's Fair in 1915 at San Francisco remember the statue of the duck baby, and those lines

"Thus ever it is in this world of ours, The brightest light must fail,

There is a tear in the eye and an aching heart, When we come to the end of the trail."

So it is that I feel about this trip.

Great changes are wrought by war. A few months ago I was riding in a box car

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WHY WE FOUGHT

49

in France, a car with holes in it large enough to throw a cat through while the temperature was several degrees below zero. The car bore that label which has become a slogan with the American Expeditionary Forces, " 40 Hommes, 8 Cheveaux." I translate it, not because I doubt that there are those who do not speak the language of our glorious ally, but because I have reason to doubt my own pronunciation. As one of the men in my battery said when writing home to his mother, "I studied French for two years before I came over here and speak it perfectly, but these people don't know their own language.' 40 Hommes, 8 Cheveaux,-40 men, 8 horses, and the only difference was that the horses had straw to sleep on. My bunkie on that box car was an Italian, who spoke no English. I know that he spoke no English; I also know that I speak no Italian. Because several weeks later he came to me and said something that sounded like the Latin I once learned and forgot. I thought he wanted to visit one of the towns in the