nent by their ignorance of what was really going forward in the chancelleries of Europe, or their indifference to it. At home we have produced noble statesmen of whom we are justly proud, but hardly an international figure. In business and finance we have had potentates in plenty, but few whose influence has reached far beyond our own shores—few Rothschilds or Rhodeses. For the protection of South American republics and of our own we have upheld a Monroe Doctrine for a century; and how much do we know about those southern countries under our wing? Pitifully little. The British, French, Spanish, Germans could give us lessons about our nearest neighbors.

If this is true of Ecuador, what, say, of the Balkans? How many of our minds went absolutely void, a few years ago, at the mention of them! Many Parisians of some education could have drawn us a pretty good map of them, sketched their history, named their present rulers, and told us a little about their population and their industries. The stolid indifference of many Americans, especially of those at some distance from centers of discussion, through months and years of the present war, the feeling so humiliating to some of their compatriots that the war was a squabble between powers across the ocean who ought to have had sense enough to keep the peace, and that it was none of our business except as it raised our prices and possibly our incomes, the feeling which, translated into a thousand placards, read, "No war talk here,”—all this was evidence of an insularity unflattering to America. It is useless to multiply the uncomfortable illustrations. In one word, we were a great people apart.

Well, we are going to get over a great deal of that, and it is high time we were doing so. History does not tell a very reassuring tale of peoples that have striven to live apart, any more than memoirs give a comforting account of recluses. The comparison is not perfect, of course, but it is certain that no nation can cut itself off from the world without stunting its material and spiritual growth. For the nation as for the individual man, “A talent is developed in solitude, a character in the current of the world." Is it permissible to hazard a suspicion that while we had

talent in plenty, especially in practical and in inventive efforts, if less in pure science and in the arts, the American character, compared, for instance, with the French or the British, was a little undefined and possibly a bit loose-jointed?

Perhaps, if true, this is no more than the awkwardness of adolescence, and if so, experience is the remedy. And we are now beginning a full experience of those world problems which have been the common heritage of European peoples. Questions once all but academic here have become vital to us as full citizens of the world. We are sharing with the nations that lead in culture and achievement a cause perhaps the greatest that has actuated effort in all time. And our own part in the effort will be large, however slight it may of necessity remain as yet. Our blood and our counsels will mingle with our friends', we shall share in their triumph, and solve with them the problems of settlement that ensue. Our one hope is to do well.

But in the meantime we may gain much that is of great price, and much that is beyond price, out of the association. We may batter down that wall of American misprision and of British disdain that has separated us from the English. We shall surely demolish, if we have not already done so, that notion once so prevalent among us that the Frenchmen of today are only anemic descendants of their lusty forbears, that notion that led a prominent American magazine a few years before the war to conduct a long debate as to whether the French were a decadent race or not. We may put an end to one belief about ourselves, unmerited, if ever reputation was, yet singularly strong in the opinion of most foreigners, that we are a people who live for money. We got the reputation because there were such fortunes to be made here and so many people making them; and no prodigality or philanthropy, though in both we led the world, did much to palliate it. Whole-hearted contribution to a war not for ourselves alone, but for the world, may wipe out the last vestiges of that prejudice. Clearing away a thousand misunderstandings like these, we may conceivably hope to cement in national friendships the foundations of enduring peace.

We may win in modesty. It is a gift which visitors among us

from abroad and observers of our own travelers in foreign countries have not been prone to take as typical of us. To have founded a country on principles so new, borrowed, though they were from thinkers of the Old World, and to have made a wilderness into a world power within a century, give us natural reason for pride in ourselves. But the most reasonably proud Americans -and the present writer would fain be counted among themhave not infrequently smiled or blushed, according to their temperament and the occasion, at irrational exhibitions of boastfulness on the part of their compatriots.

To the thoughtful traveler abroad in other days, perhaps, these words will best commend themselves, for few of us have got as far as Southampton without wondering where the particular boat-load of Americans who shared the voyage could have been collected; and the wonder grew as we kept meeting parties from the boat at strategic points for sight-seeing on the Continent. People like us abroad, of course, especially in France; we are the most generous of their visitors (unless this be a boast!) and we are so happy-go-lucky that we are easy to get along with. But although they give us a warm welcome, they have an honest feeling, more of amusement than of malice, that they must expect a good deal of bragging from us. And we ourselves, when we speak of "spread-eagleism," are usually thinking of our own country. One of our weeklies that has of late been so ferocious on the trail of unwise patriots as to leave too little space to mention the other kind was itself guilty recently of saying that "What distinguishes the statesmanship of President Wilson from that of the other leaders of the Allied cause is nothing but superior rationality." Only that! Even if obviously true, the statement would be exceptionally raw. So far as the present writer knows, America is the first of the Allies to print such a statement. Supposing that an English review had said it of Lloyd-George or a French paper of Clémenceau, how should we feel about it?

Possibly we do not fully deserve the notable reputation for spread-eagleism that we have gained, but in view of the illustrations it is only fair in candor to plead guilty to having lighted a

good deal of fire under all the smoke. We could hardly have savored the famous "Yankee in King Arthur's Court" so much if we had not seen ourselves, however caricatured, in him. Many of us have been a little like him, whether in a court abroad or in the bank or grocery at home. We were the people, the brave and the free. We had the red blood, let the blue flow through whose veins it chose. We had the ships and the guns-or we should get them the minute the need came, if it ever did. We thought the French were effete; there is no use denying it, however much we may have had our eyes opened. We thought the English were stupid, more or less Dundrearys, and we stopped only too infrequently to ask how Dundrearys could manage such an empire so harmoniously. We were the clean-cut race of quick brains. We could lick the world, if the world ever required it.

To be sure, we had a good deal of dirty linen to wash at home. We had political corruption of a scale unknown in the two countries just mentioned. We had poverty undreamed-of in the first mentioned of them. We were coming to hate a captain of industry as much, and as indiscriminately, as we hated a lord. Such things we would debate among ourselves, but let a foreigner approach us upon these topics, and we turned to him our American front and proceeded to show him how, despite any little injustices, our land of promise enjoyed a certain superiority over his own outworn country. Not always did we do this, but too frequently. We may honestly disclaim arrogance; we can hardly prefer a claim to modesty.

But much of that we may now learn. The silence of French heroism may lead us to emulation. The honest confession of British muddling may teach us to acknowledge ours, if we must. The arrogance of Prussia may impress upon us the amiability of its opposite. Congestion on railroads, delays in ship-building, shortages of ammunition, of uniforms, of coal, may set us all so busy mending faults that we shall have time neither for boasting nor for writing articles in deprecation of it.

Far more important, the powerful enemy that confronts us will demand every ounce of strength that is in us and will leave us little breath for words of self-gratulation. A brigand armed

with the panoply of wealth and science is holding the world at bay. We shall find him mortal, we shall overpower him, and rid the world of his menace; but we shall know that we did not do it alone, that against him we should have been all but powerless alone, and the lesson will be a good one for our self-esteem. Learning from the British and Gallic veterans, as we must, we shall come to esteem them as we would esteem ourselves. And our foe will so tax our powers before we overcome him, will so rudely shake any over-confidence we may have felt, that in the victory we shall probably feel thanksgiving without vainglory. What veteran victor over Prussia will want to come back and teach his children any form of goosestep? There may have been a little of that when we declared war,-not much, for we had learned a great deal in three years, but there will probably be less when it is over. There was some of it in and after our clash with Spain, because that was more like an excursion than a war. But the heroes that return from Belgium will be soberer, and despite the acclamations with which we shall receive them, they will find us soberer. Let it be hoped that our modesty and our valor may be equal.

That we may win a great deal more than has been suggested here, or than can be comprehended by one mind considering so large a question, need hardly be intimated. To mention one material benefit, not of the kind, however, that was waived in our first sentences, we may learn enough about economy, personal and national, to add greatly to our well-being. At the least we may hope never again to hear-what some of us used to feel a sort of pride in-that one could feed Paris with the food that New York wastes. At the most we may expect that the education in saving which will come to people of all classes in our spendthrift nation through the Liberty Loans will endure to our benefit long after the war and possibly within a generation offset the huge cost of the struggle.

We may gain in physical manhood, despite heavy losses, by inuring millions of men to work and air. Until one sees a regiment of raw recruits, and remembers that they are chosen men, one scarcely realizes how far physical training has been the affair