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who have worked most unselfishly for the world; and this is a matter not only of pride for us, but above all of responsibility.

I had an intuition of all this when I decided to come to America, on a mission of which this book is the condensed expression. When I had lived among the Americans for a time they made me realize that my intuition was right. But the results of my observations have gone far beyond what I expected, though in the expected sense. Never shall I be able to acknowledge what encouragement and strengthening of my beliefs has been given to me by all those who have received me in this country. Their desire to know more about France was not less than my own desire to have her better known. Now it is becoming every one's task in both nations to stimulate the exchange of information, to choose among it, and thus to develop the relations which will result from it. We have to welcome any form of co-operation and exchange, moral or material, official or private. But there is one form of exchange in which I believe most: it is that of individuals. The personal meeting of elements from both countries having corresponding interests, and especially the individual comradeship that can be developed between young men and women from France and from America must be

encouraged by every means. Only those relations are active and flexible enough for the complexity of the new conditions. We admire the work accomplished by societies and collective organizations,1 because its best result is the extension of opportunities for individuals to come in touch with each other. The best and most effective part of our knowledge we owe not to papers or public meetings, but to long and direct conversations with those few specially qualified to inform us about what we are eager to learn.

Not the least important influence in the mutual relation and formation of Young France and New America is that development of sport, which had its revival in France about twenty years ago, and was in full process of expansion just before this crisis. The last great sporting manifestation was when the Marquis de Polignac organized his "Collège d'Athlètes" in Rheims, for the practice of Lieutenant Hébert's famous "natural method." France was rapidly working toward a physical

1 In the first rank of these organizations comes the "Féderation de l'Alliance française aux Etats-Unis et au Canada," which is known by all the friends of France. Thanks to the remarkable activity of some of its members, and first of all Mr. Delamarre, general secretary of the Federation, it has, in a few years, more than doubled the number of its groups in this country.

transformation of the race. All of us had training in some sport or another. America need not be told that sport brings a morality of its own, a sense of honour and of physical and moral cleanness, of actual and not illusory value in the development of men. The relations of men with women, and the education of women have been transformed in France since what I may call the generalization of sport. But one has to come in personal touch with the younger elements of the country to perceive this change, whose consequences I regard as of first-rate importance.

More and more we are going to see morals becoming "a branch of æsthetics.” 1 This formula, which would have scared the moralists of the Victorian epoch, does not even surprise to-day, and I know that thousands of young men and women are applying it, consciously or not. Combined with an increased consciousness in his destiny, man has developed a more powerful sense of the part he can play in it.

We live in a feverish and burning period, when the world has become a furnace, and all human values are fused like melting metal. And we feel

1 André Gide.

that now is the right time to forge and to hammerto forge and to coin here and now the figure and form of our alliance.

So, when the crisis is past and when the world grows cold again, we shall find this union of ours fastened and riveted in such a manner that it may never be destroyed.

EASTHAMPTON, August 31, 1917.

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