America in the War

“WE have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been as secure as the faith and the freedom of the nation can make them.” WHETHER it is that an invigorating climate has given our Anglo-Saxon blood a piquant Gallic flavor or because Europe sent us for ancestors only those light-hearted and adventurous souls with a spirit akin to that we admire in the French people, true it is that Americans have always had an especial liking for France and the French. They were our first allies as they are the latest. From Lafayette and Rochambeau to Joffre and Viviani, a host of Frenchmen have won the affectionate regard of Americans and are numbered with our national heroes.

But our relation to the French has a deeper foundation than admiration for a courageous and accomplished race which for centuries has made generous contribution to the sum of the world’s knowledge and achievement. The French were early settlers on this continent; LaSalle and Champlain were the forerunners of a host of French explorers and settlers whose descendants are today taking active and honorable part in the life of community and nation.

Before the war one of the foremost French statesmen said to me, with a certain note of sadness, that in the course of two thousand years of advancing civilization his countrymen had lost something of their initiative: that he believed it would not now, for instance, be possible to build up in France vast industrial organizations like those which are so effectual in establishing the commercial prestige of the United States.

If that were true before the war, it can scarcely be credited now. France has never failed to provide effective military organization for the protection of western civilization against the repeated attacks of her enemies from the east. She defeated the forces of Mohammedanism and saved Christianity. Time and again through the Middle Ages she beat back the invading Huns and kept them from overrunning Europe. The victory at the Marne which definitely stopped their latest irruption is only the latest and greatest of many such victories by which France has laid mankind under lasting obligation. And the industrial organization which supplies the armies of France with the products of farm and factory, and even produces a surplus for her allies, including the United States, is additional proof that the genius of the French race is neither decadent nor limited, but as broad as all human activity and as ardent today as when Joan of Arc inspired kings and peasants alike with her mystic fervor.

With their French allies Americans can work in most cordial understanding and sympathy. That subtle spirit of unselfish dedication to country which has won for the French the admiration of the world consecrates the alliance of the peoples who are giving their sons in common sacrifice to save liberty to the world. Out of the heat and turmoil of war bonds are being forged between the Allied nations which time and circumstance can never sever. On that alliance the hope of civilization depends; from it may come, in God’s good time, some great forward step in the march of progress which began at a manger in Bethlehem.