It seemed at that time our evident duty to maintain as much as possible of the shattered fabric of international law. Although some persons thought we ought to enter the war at once, the President was not at that time prepared to advise such action. He still clung to the belief or the hope that, by reiterated declaration of the fundamental principles of justice and humanity, Germany might be brought to a reasonable course of conduct and that some of the principles wrought out by past centuries might be preserved. What is the value of international law if it is to be cast to the winds when observance is inconvenient? After the Sussex affair in the summer of 1916 our relations with the German government were again greatly strained, but President Wilson succeeded in getting a promise that merchantmen should not be sunk without warning and without saving lives unless the vessel should resist or attempt escape. This promise was coupled with a condition that we should compel Great Britain to surrender what Berlin asserted to be an illegal blockade. Remembering, possibly, the net into which Napoleon enticed James Madison about 107 years ago, our government did not accept the condition, but warned Germany that her obligations were "individual not joint, absolute and not relative." We rested easier; but we now realize that this willingness to forego the sinking of peaceful vessels and the taking of lives can be accounted for by the fact that the old U-boats were being destroyed and the Teutonic powers did not then have in readiness the large and improved monsters of the deep with which to carry on the work of destruction. This work broke out with some violence late in 1916, and, with the announcement that no warning would be given when ships were sunk within a war zone, cutting off nearly the whole coast of Western Europe, President Wilson sent the German ambassador home and war seemed inevitable. One of the astounding revelations of the political methods of the German foreign office was the announcement made by the Chancellor to the Reichstag and the German people, that President Wilson had broken off diplomatic relations abruptly, although the step was taken eighteen months or more after the exchange of despatches on the Lusitania crime, and half a year after the exchange of notes about the Sussex.

So far we have given only a meagre outline of the story and told it ineffectively, for not even in many words can one sketch the growing uneasiness and distrust, the sense of despair, or the conflict between despair and hope. Was the world falling? Was civilization being wrecked in the whirlwind of barbaric passion? Had Germany already destroyed civilization by bringing the world to see that there could be no faith between nations, and that at any juncture, on the spurious plea of necessity, frightful wrong could be committed? If this war ended in German victory, a victory won by years of devoted preparation, a victory won by submarines and zeppelins and poisonous gases and deportation of men, women, and children to work in the fields and factories of the conquering country, what was before the

world? German victory appeared to mean the success of ruthlessness, of conquest by military preparation; it meant the enthronement of might; and it meant that we must henceforward live in a world of struggle- -we and our children after us.

Why did President Wilson, after long effort to maintain neutrality and even hasten the coming of peace, finally advocate war? Before attempting to answer this question, let us recall the President's efforts to bring the conflicting nations to a statement of their terms, and to hold out to the world the conception of the establishment of permanent peace. The President's message on this subject came out almost simultaneously with Germany's proposal in which she suggested peace on the basis of an assumed victory for her army. Such a peace the allied nations could not accept without accepting militarism, without losing the all important objects for which millions of men had already given their lives, and probably most of us here in America believe that such proposals were put forth chiefly to make the German people believe that the Allies were the aggressors and must bear the odium of further conflict. When the President called on the warring nations to state their terms of peace, possibly he still cherished the hope that, if terms were frankly stated, negotiations might actually be begun; almost certainly he desired such open statement as would show to the world at large the real essence of the conflict and also show that we were not ready to enter the struggle until we had made every possible effort to bring peace. The President's appeal produced no very tangible results, although the Allied Powers stated their desires and purposes with considerable definiteness, and these terms did not on the whole appear to us unreasonable or unworthy.

All through this time the President and all thinking Americans were interested chiefly in the maintenance of civilization, and they looked forward not merely to victory or to acquisition of territory by one or another nation, but to the foundation of a lasting peace by the establishment of principles of justice and reason. We found that we could not paint in too dark colors the future of the world if we are all to remain under the pall of fear and suspicion and under the overwhelming burden of armament; and thus we came to see that without America's entrance into this war there was little hope for relief from the crushing weight of war and the almost equally burdensome weight of ever-increasing armed preparation. Never, it appeared, in the long history of mankind, was there such a fearful alternative; never a louder call for duty. America, without hope of profit, with no mean or subterranean purpose, must herself fight to maintain the principles of civilization and for the hope of lasting peace and propriety between nations. This growing belief that we must fight for peace, only gradually conquered most of us; for we had long believed that American influence for peace was to come from remaining peaceful; and for this principle, we may still maintain, there is much to be said. The creative forces of the world, we may still remind ourselves, have sprung from character. America, by her

successes in popular government, by a reasonable amount of respect for herself, has helped to build up the democratic spirit and the democratic power from Peking to Petrograd and from London to Quebec and Melbourne.

This, I say, we believe. But several things showed us that this just idealism is for the present impracticable. (1) German philosophy scouts and flouts the notion that a state must not use its power to dash down opposition. (2) German success would mean the victory of Machtpolitik-a victory for the very forces which pacific idealism decries.. (3) If we expected to bring into the world an appreciation of rights and duties, if we hoped for influence in the adjustment of world affairs, if we wished to see a world we could live in, it was necessary in time of trouble to do our part. The President had striven not only for our rights, but for the maintenance of law. Under much harsh criticism at home he went to the very limits of proposals; he offered his assistance; he announced that there was such a thing as being "too proud to fight;" he spoke of peace without victory;" he hoped that the war could be settled in such a way that the nations after the war could live without hatred; he insisted that the world must be based on an organization, not for war, but for peace and good neighborhood. But strive or struggle as he might, it became daily more apparent that we should have little or nothing to say after the war, if we, unwilling to act now, called upon the nations to enter into a league of peace or summoned them to the establishment of a new world order. If we held back, contenting ourselves with verbal threats and feline coaxings, we should not have a single friend in the wide world unsuspicious of our motives.

Thus far I have said little about the actual attacks on American rights and property. It is not necessary to say much, though they reached into the intolerable. Nor do I wish to dwell on affronts to American honor, for I do not highly value the code of the duelist. We can well remember, even in international affairs, that no one but one's self can stain one's honor, and that no nation can smirch another nation's spirit. We were, as I have said, confronted by a world situation in which we must play a strong, manly and honorable part. We despaired of a world in which millions of people could be thrown into war; millions of young men could be buried in trenches on the battlefield or left to rot under the festering sun of France or Poland; millions of children could be beggared or stricken by disease, because an emperor and secret government had willed it so, or because nations could not learn the simple lessons of decent intercourse. What untold anguish might have been saved, had the impetuous, sword-proud William consented to discussion as Britain pleadingly asked him to do during the last days of July, 1914!

In his war message, April 2, President Wilson announced that the American people felt no hostility to the German people, but that we could deal no longer with an ambitious, autocratic government which cast

a nation into war with no apparent hesitation and without discussing their wishes. We are told, even in these days, that there is no distinction between the people and the government of Germany and that to assert such dualism is to disregard the most evident fact. Certainly the great masses of the people have sacrificed their lives for the Fatherland, and yet one of the most whimsical products of this war is that some men here in America should be asserting the unqualified serenity of the political atmosphere of Berlin just when William announced that this war had taught him the faithfulness and reliability of the common people and that political changes must come, and when Hollweg told the junkers that their day of domination is nearing its end. William has been taught something by the war! Did he have to see a million Germans slaughtered, did he have to hear the cries of the widows and the fatherless, did he have to see blinded men learning their letters and crippled boys creeping along the streets of Berlin, before he could learn that the people could be trusted? Every incident in Germany in the last six weeks has demonstrated the weakness, not to say the criminality, of the imperial political regime. It now seems almost inevitable that if militarism is discredited by defeat, ministerial responsibility will be established in the empire, and William before long will be occupying that position of innocuous desuetude known as the kingship of a constitutional monarchy.

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"Still," some person will say, Germany is not what Russia was. To class Russia with its cruel, cheap, mercenary bureaucracy and Germany together as autocracies is to do violence to patent facts." I shall not seek to show how nearly the governmental system of the empire approaches in reality the autocratic type and how largely the responsibility for all imperial acts rests in the hands of the Prussian king and a body of irreconcilable aristocrats. Of this much could be said, but we can omit all discussion of the quasi-representative institutions of the empire. The trouble is deeper than mere forms of government; for the circle that shaped the policy of the state lived-this at least must be said within a wall of psychological superiority and inculcated obedience as the great end of being. Every effort was made even to convince the German people of their exclusive and seclusive superiority, and William himself, a king by the grace of God," was not able to see what a tragic, pathetic and humorous figure he made in the modern world of modern men. The whole psychological situation produced a dislocation of realities and a distortion of living truths.

The present war throws us into actual, if not formal alliance with Great Britain and France. We have, I think, no real or fancied interest in mere territorial readjustment which would add to the power of either of these nations, but we are justified in having confidence in the democracy of France and the liberal forces of Great Britain. Our sympathy for France ought to teach us a great lesson. It shows

us that republics are not ungrateful and that, after the lapse of one hundred and forty years, despite quarrels and disputes with the French government, we are still bound down by sentimental ties of gratitude to France. We have come to see the undying strength of friendship between the masses of men and are given new hope that democracies, if they are willing to think, cannot make war upon one another impetuously and in hatred. For England we still cherish, unfortunately, some of the old grievances that have been carried down, decade by decade, and taught through our school books to each succeeding generation. We have not been properly taught to see that our own revolution was an English revolution, in which Englishmen of this side of the ocean were striving for the development and maintenance of liberty, and that that war, too, was a war against an arrogant leadenheaded aristocracy. Misunderstanding of Britain comes from the failure to appreciate the development of liberalism in her government, until she stands forth to-day as a great representative of democracy and of belief in the power and will of the common people.

To lose sight of England's transformation, in which we have had a great part, is to lose sight of one of the most momentous developments of the last hundred years. Can we not forget crazy old George III and Lord North and the rest of his tribe, and remember the men of the middle century, the creators of modern British liberalism-Cobden, Bright and Gladstone, and a myriad of bold commoners-who battled successfully to destroy "the fortress of feudalism"? Can we not learn how deeply we are involved in the mighty structure of the British Empire as we find the lessons of our own Revolution and of our later history wrought into the policy of world-wide dominion? Can we not see that the greatest empire of all history has been built on the lessons of liberty which Britain learned from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln? Can we not see the tremendous force of democracy and individual liberty when we know that thousands upon thousands of colonials gave their lives ungrudgingly at Gallipoli and Ypres? Surely we must come to see that a democracy like France or a democratic empire like Great Britain runs our own risks, faces our own dangers, is subject to the faults and blunders which we know so well, and that we are not misled if the result of our efforts is

to uphold a structure of imperial order based on the principles of justice, the strength of which has been so dramatically shown in the past three years. Sometimes one is asked ironically when, forsooth, England became the friend of America. The answer can be quickly given, and given with absolute historical accuracy. It was when the British Parliament in 1867 passed the second Reform Bill and England became a democracy about two years and a half after the English aristocrats had fully seen their mistakes during our Civil War and had come to see that the greatest statesman the nineteenth century had as yet produced was not born in a manor house on an English countryside, but in a log-cabin in Kentucky. Like

wise it can probably be safely said that France became our real friend, a nation with which we could work with open friendliness, when, with the downfall of Napoleon III, the republican institutions of France were finally and firmly established.

In the conduct of this war we must constantly remember that we have had hopes of rendering the world safe for democracy. With all our frailties,

sess a

which we must openly confess, with all our wastefulness and with all our follies, this war has taught us, as nothing else could, that there is nothing upon which we can more safely rely than the plain sense of the plain people. Perhaps nothing shows this more conclusively than our reluctance and distaste for military conquest and our hesitation in making up our minds to fight. We may continually remember the words of Lord John Russell-and no one better than he had reason to know the truth: "All experience of human nature teaches us the fact, that men who possuperiority, real or imaginary, over their fellow creatures, will abuse the advantages they enjoy." We must remember that we entered the war for peace, and we are offering a great sacrifice for a new world order. We believed that we could not get it by chiding Europe and refusing to do our part now, for Europe needed the assistance of an external power, disinterested and high-hearted. We may remember that we have covered a continent almost as large as the whole of Europe with self-governing commonwealths. We may remember the unselfish side of the Monroe Doctrine which we try to live up to as embodying a belief that nations may live their own lives; and with a mirthless smile we can call attention to Mexico, which we have allowed to wallow in revolutions and destroy American lives and property because we believe that only by trial can nations rise and that every nation is entitled to its own undisturbed revolution if there is hope for the struggling masses. And withal we must strive to save our own real selves, our own essential character; for what would it profit us if we fought the whole world and lost ourselves? We now know, if never before, that war is horrible and demoniacally ridiculous; that peaceful relations between nations have been endangered by intrigue, greed, false pride, covetousness and suspicion; that big armies do not make for peace, but beget arrogance; that human misconduct and discourtesy may make enemies, and that nothing is more vitiating than unmanly envy or fear of a prosperous neighbor; that democracy must be the basis of a sound. political system, but it must be real, conscientious, intelligent, and open-minded, or we may plunge into cataclysmic anarchy. We may all take courage in remembering that the President of the United States has led us reluctantly and with unwilling feet into a war which we believe will help to establish democracy, humanity, and a sense of national duty without profit.

We also want text books that shall be free from foreign or sectional prejudice. Professor Morse Stephens, in the address from which I have quoted already, states that "Americans are taught from childhood to hate Britishers by the study of American history and not only the descendants of the men who made the Revolution, but every newly arrived immigrant child imbibes the hatred of Great Britain of to-day from the patriotic ceremonies of the public schools." An alumnus in a recent number of the University of Pennsylvania Alumni Register,2 declares that "It is most unfortunate that our first glimpse of patriotism as little children is through the pages of absurd school histories. Nor is the misfortune diminished by the failure of the average teacher to interpret an unintelligent flag worship into an inspiration of vital moral significance. So our early environment creates for us an imaginary world of bloodthirsty enemies and in our souls an antipathy to foreigners, which leads us to apply to them such appellations as 'dagoes,' 'sheenies,' 'chinks,' or the infinity of contempt involved in 'Dutch."

The fault is not alone with the text book. The teacher of history too frequently is unenlightened and continues to present, for example, the history of the American Revolution from a provincial and partisan viewpoint. In spite of popular prejudice to the contrary, it is high time that we should cease to implant a spirit of hatred of England, which is sufficiently fostered in this country by various anti-British organizations. Let us teach that the American patriots in fighting for what they regarded as their inalienable rights were fighting for the rights of mankind in general. Lincoln gave expression to this thought in the speech which he delivered at Independence Hall on Washington's Birthday, 1861, when he called attention to the significant point that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed "liberty not alone to the people of this country but hope to all the world throughout all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance." Modern Englishmen, indeed, have recognized that in fighting for their liberties Americans were fighting for the liberties of England and the world. Tennyson expresses this thought in his poem on England and America:

"Strong Mother of a Lion-line,

Be proud of these strong sons of thine Who wrenched their rights from thee." Sectional history that still flourishes in this country should be superseded as it is a means of perpetuating old animosities and divisions among a people that should be united in mutual sympathy, regard and admiration. Yet more than half a century after the close of the civil war, many of the large publishers of text books on American history find it necessary to have different series of texts for the North and the South. Let us hope that the day will soon come when this will no longer be true, and we shall be one people 2 April, 1917, 502-503.

united by sentiment as well as by political geography and the constitution.

Passing from these general considerations, let us consider the practical phase of the topic, namely, what share shall the school system have in the making and training of citizens? At the outset we should recognize that in many cases the schools must do the entire work, owing to the absence of proper home and other influences and agencies. They must lay the foundations for an intelligent patriotism and an enlightened public opinion. The whole educational system, therefore, should be designed to the great end of making good citizens, but it is the especial province of the teachers of history and civics to train for citizenship. Everything that promotes good citizenship will contribute to patriotism, as the one comprehends the other.

Mr. Frederick Winsor, a Concord (Mass.) Headmaster, presented a very suggestive paper at the Congress of Constructive Patriotism held in Washington last January, to which I am indebted for some of the points I shall present. Mr. Winsor truly stated that "the most important obligation implied by citizenship in a democracy is service; service of the country in time of peace by an active participation in the political life of the community, state and nation; service in time of war, either as part of the armed forces or as part of the still larger organization of agriculture and industry which support the armed forces.3 The first duty of patriotic education is to teach this lesson that the citizen has duties as well as rights, and that the most important duty is service to others, to the family, the community, the State and the Nation. The efforts should be directed to create a sense of obligation to others and greatest of all to God and Country. The chief aim of our schools and colleges should be directed to prepare the youth for citizenship, so that they shall be ready and eager to fulfill all the duties which citizenship implies. They should be inspired by the principles of unselfish patriotism, so that their attitude should not be that so frequently found in some adults, whose inquiry is, "What can my country do for me," not "What can I do for my country."

Training in the history and the traditions of the country is particularly important in our public schools, owing to the large number of children of foreign birth or parentage in our cities, as in many instances, in the very nature of the case, that is the only opportunity for them to obtain the same. And there are many striking examples of the manner in which they respond to this influence, and frequently they show a much greater enthusiasm and loyalty than some of the native born, who have inherited all their advantages and who frequently fail to value them because everything has come to them without that sacrifice and labor that it has cost the immigrant and his children.

For a constructive program to this end, I can suggest in its main features nothing better than the curriculum and method that is being followed in some

3" Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism," Washington, D. C., January 25-27, 1917, 248.