.. 
 
 MY 
 
 OUNTRY'S 
 PART 
 
 By Mary Synon 
 
 ^;r _ A >*s >-//^ A^ 
 
 ttHt^f 
 
 57
 
 MY COUNTRY'S PART
 
 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY SYNON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 CHICAGO NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1918. BT 
 CHARLES SCBIBNBR'S SONS
 
 TO 
 
 THOMAS S. ENRIGHT 
 
 JAMES B. GRESHAM 
 
 MARLE B. HAY 
 
 PRIVATES IN THE RANKS OP 
 
 THE AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 
 
 WHO WERE THE FIRST TO DIE IN FRANCE 
 
 IN OUR WAR AGAINST GERMANY 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED 
 
 2223980
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. "My GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" ... 1 
 
 II. THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 40 
 
 III. WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS . 53 
 
 IV. How THE WAR CAME TO THE UNITED 
 
 STATES 65 
 
 V. How THE UNITED STATES WENT INTO WAR 77 
 
 VI. WHAT THE UNITED STATES Is DOING IN 
 
 THE WAR 85 
 
 VII. REAR-LINE TRENCHES 93 
 
 VIII. THE AMERICAN'S PART 110 
 
 IX. THE UNITED STATES AND INDIVIDUAL 
 
 FREEDOM 121 
 
 X. THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL 
 
 PEACE . 131
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 General Pershing's veterans direct from the trenches in 
 France marching to the City Hall, New York City 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Belgium refugees between Malines and Brussels ... 66 
 
 President Wilson delivering his war message .... 80 
 
 Recruits of the National Army waiting at the booths of a 
 
 National Army cantonment 90 
 
 Children selling thrift stamps 104 
 
 Boys at work in their war garden 110 
 
 The launching of the U. S. S. Accoma 118 
 
 An immigrant family qualified to enter the United States 128
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 
 
 WHAT can an American boy or an American 
 girl do for our country? 
 
 The ways are many. Every man, woman, 
 and child in the United States has the duty of 
 defending the nation. In time of war every 
 American must be in spirit, if he cannot be in 
 actual duty, a soldier. A soldier's part is to 
 guard his nation. An American's part is to 
 guard America. The guarding may be done 
 by saving the food that the government asks 
 its citizens to save, by buying War Thrift 
 Stamps, by buying Liberty Bonds, by working 
 for the Red Cross, or for other patriotic organ- 
 izations; but it must be done with the idea that 
 our country is our first concern, our first care. 
 
 Every American must be watchful for his 
 country's welfare. How may he do this duty? 
 By remembering always that he is, first of all,
 
 3 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 an American. No matter what country his 
 father or mother, or grandfather or grandmother 
 came from, he is American, with the rights and 
 privileges and obligations of his citizenship. 
 And he must have no divided allegiance. 
 
 The story of what one American boy could 
 do for his country is told in the story that 
 follows. Some people call this a fiction story. 
 But the root of it is truth. For every boy and 
 every girl in the United States can hold to the 
 love of country that John Sutton's grandmother 
 put into his soul through the incidents that 
 make up the tale of 
 
 "My GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 
 
 My grandmother was at the basement win- 
 dow, peering into the street as if she were 
 watching for some one, when I came home from 
 school. "Is that you, John?" she asked me 
 as I stood in the hall stamping the snow from 
 my boots. "Sure!" I called to her. "Who'd 
 you think I was? A spirit?" 
 
 She laughed a little as I went into the room
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 3 
 
 and flung down my books. My grandmother 
 hasn't seen any one in ten years, though she 
 sits day after day looking out on the street as 
 if a parade were passing; but she knows the 
 thump of my books on the table as well as she 
 knows the turning of my father's key in the 
 lock of the door. "Tis a lively spirit you'd 
 make, Shauneen," she said, with that chuckle 
 she saves for me. "No, 'twas your father I 
 thought was coming." 
 
 "What'd he be doing home at this time?" 
 
 "These are queer days," she said, "and 
 there are queer doings in them." 
 
 "There's nothing queer that I can see," I 
 told her. 
 
 "I'm an old, blind woman," she said, "but 
 sometimes I see more than do they who have 
 the sight of their two eyes." She said it so 
 solemnly, folding her hands one over the other 
 as she drew herself up in her chair, that I felt 
 a little thrill creeping up my spine. "What do 
 you mean?" I asked her. "Time'll tell you," 
 she said.
 
 4 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 My mother came in from the kitchen then. 
 "Norah forgot to order bacon for the morning," 
 she said. "Will you go to the market, John, 
 before you do anything else?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm going skating," I protested. 
 
 "It won't take you five minutes," said my 
 mother. She seemed tired and worried. The 
 look in her eyes made me feel that there was 
 trouble hanging over the house. My mother 
 isn't like my grandmother. When things go 
 wrong, my grandmother stands up straight, 
 and throws back her shoulders, and fronts ahead 
 as if she were a general giving orders for at- 
 tack; but my mother wilts like a hurt flower. 
 She was drooping then while she stood in the 
 room, so I said, "All right, I'll go," though 
 I'd promised the fellows to come to the park 
 before four o'clock. 
 
 "And look in at the shop as you go by," 
 my grandmother said, "and see if your father's 
 there now." 
 
 "Why shouldn't he be?" my mother asked. 
 
 There was a queer sound in her voice that
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 5 
 
 urged me around past my father's shop. My 
 father was there in the little office, going over 
 blue-prints with Joe Krebs's uncle and Mattie 
 Kleiner's father and a big man I'd never seen 
 before. I told my grandmother when I went 
 home. "I knew it," she said. "I knew it. 
 And I dreamed last night of my cousin Michael 
 who died trying to escape from Van Diemen's 
 Land." 
 
 : 'You knew what?" I asked her, for again 
 that strange way of hers sent shivery cold over 
 me. 
 
 "Go to your skating," she bade me. 
 
 There wasn't much skating at Tompkins 
 Square, though, when I found the crowd. The 
 sun had come out strong in the afternoon and 
 the ice was melting. "Ground-hog must have 
 seen his shadow last week," Bennie Curtis said. 
 All the fellows Joe Carey and Jim Dean and 
 Frank Belden and Joe Krebs and Mattie Kleiner 
 and Fred Wendell and the rest of them had 
 taken off their skates and were starting a tug
 
 6 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 of war in the slush. Mattie Kleiner was the 
 captain on one side and Frank Belden the cap- 
 tain on the other. Mattie had chosen Joe 
 Krebs and Jim Dean and Joe Carey on his side. 
 Just as I came along he shouted that he chose 
 me. Frank Belden yelled that it was his choice 
 and that he'd take me. "He don't want to be 
 on your side!" Mattie cried. "He's with the 
 Germans !" 
 
 "Well, I guess not," I said, "any more than 
 I'm with the English. I'm an American." 
 
 "You can't be just an American in this 
 battle," Frank Belden said. 
 
 "Then I'll stay out of it," I told him. 
 
 They all started to yell "Neutral!" and 
 "Fraid cat!" and "Oh, you dove of peace!" 
 at me. I got tired of it after a while, and I 
 went after Mattie hard. When I'd finished 
 with him he bawled at me: "Wait till your 
 father knows, he'll fix you !" 
 
 "What for?" I jeered. 
 
 "For going against his principles, that's 
 what," Mattie Kleiner roared.
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 7 
 
 "I'd like to know what you know about 
 my father's principles." I laughed at him. 
 
 "Well, I ought to know," he cried. "I 
 heard him take the oath." 
 
 "What oath?" we all demanded, but Mattie 
 went off in surly silence. Joe Krebs and Joe 
 Carey trailed after him. I stayed with the 
 other fellows until it was dark. Then I started 
 for home. 
 
 Joe Carey was waiting for me at the corner. 
 "Do you believe him, John?" he asked me. 
 "Do you believe Mattie about the oath?" 
 
 "How's that?" I parried. I seemed to 
 remember having heard a man who'd been at 
 the house a fortnight before whispering some- 
 thing about an oath, and I knew that I'd heard 
 my mother say to my grandmother: "I pray 
 to God he'll get in no trouble with any oaths or 
 promises." I kept wondering if Mattie Kleiner's 
 father and Joe Krebs's uncle and the big man 
 with the blue-prints who'd been in my father's 
 shop had anything to do with it. "Oh, Mattie's 
 talking in his sleep," I said.
 
 8 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 "Well, maybe," said Joe Carey; "but 
 he wasn't sleeping the night they had the 
 meeting in his house. He was on the stairs 
 going up to the top floor, and he kept the 
 door open a little way and he heard every- 
 thing they said, and nobody at all knew he 
 was there." 
 
 Joe Carey's eyes were almost popping out 
 of his head, and so I knew that Mattie had been 
 telling him a long story. "I guess he didn't 
 hear very much," I said. 
 
 "You bet he did," Joe declared. "He heard 
 them reading the letters telling people not to 
 go on the ships because they were going to be 
 sunk, and he heard them talking about bombs 
 and munition factories. He says that he heard 
 your father say that he'd gladly lay down his 
 life for the sake of Ireland." 
 
 "But Ireland's not in this war!" 
 
 "Sure it is! Mattie says the Germans are 
 going to free Ireland if they beat England. 
 That's why the Irish ought to be with the 
 Germans. Mattie says your father'll be awful
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 9 
 
 ashamed that you wouldn't go on his side. 
 Mattie says your father 
 
 "I don't give a whoop what Mattie says 
 about my father," I told him. "I guess I can 
 take my own part." 
 
 "I guess you'll have to," said Joe. 
 
 As I went up the street toward our house 
 I had that queer feeling that comes sometimes 
 after I've been away for a while, a fear that 
 something terrible has happened while I've 
 been gone and that I'll be blamed for it. It 
 was dark on the street, for people hadn't lighted 
 the lamps in the basement dining-rooms, and 
 I was hurrying along when suddenly a man's 
 voice came over my shoulder. I hadn't heard 
 his step behind me at all, and I jumped when 
 he spoke. "Where does Mr. John Sutton live ? " 
 he asked me. 
 
 "Right there." I pointed to our house. 
 
 "Do you know him?" he asked. Through 
 the dark I could see that he was a tall man with 
 sharp eyes. I knew that I had never seen him 
 before, and that he didn't look like any of the
 
 10 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 men who came to my father's machine-shop. 
 "Don't you know Mr. Sutton?" he repeated. 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "Know him well, sonny?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "How well?" 
 
 "He's my father." 
 
 He whistled softly, then laughed, turned 
 on his heel, and strode down the street. I 
 watched him to see if he'd take the turn toward 
 the shop, but he turned the other way at the 
 corner. I thought that I'd tell my grandmother 
 about him but my mother was with her in the 
 dark when I went in. They were talking very 
 low, as if some one were dead in the house, 
 but I heard my mother say, "If I only knew 
 how far he's gone in this !" and my grandmother 
 mutter: "Sure, the farther he goes in, the 
 farther back he'll have to come." I stumbled 
 over a chair as I went into the room with them, 
 and they both stopped talking. 
 
 I could hear the little hissing whisper my 
 grandmother always makes while she says the
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 11 
 
 rosary, but I could hear no sound from my 
 mother at all until she rose with a sigh and 
 lighted the gas-lamp. She looked at me as if 
 she hadn't known I'd been there. "Have you 
 any home work to do to-night, John?" she 
 asked me. 
 
 "No, ma'am," I said. "It's Friday." 
 
 "Then I want you to come to church with 
 me after your dinner," she said. 
 
 "Oh, I don't want to go to church," I'd 
 said before my grandmother spoke. 
 
 "Twill be a queer thing to me as long as 
 I live," she said, "that those who have don't 
 want what they have, and that those who 
 haven't keep wanting." 
 
 The telephone-bell rang just then up in the 
 room that my father used for an office, and I 
 raced up to answer it. A man's voice, younger 
 than that of the man who'd spoken to me, came 
 over the wire. "Say, is this John Sutton's 
 residence?" it asked. "And is he home? And, 
 if he isn't, who are you?" 
 
 "What do you want?" I called.
 
 12 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 "Information. This is The World. We hear 
 that there's to be a meeting of the clans to-night, 
 and we want to know where it's to be held." 
 
 "I don't know," I said. 
 
 "Can you find out?" 
 
 "No," I lied. "There's nobody home." 
 
 "Won't your father be home for dinner?" 
 
 Even then I could hear his key turning in 
 the lock, could hear him passing on his way 
 up to his bedroom, but a queer kind of caution 
 was being born in me. "No, sir," I said. 
 
 "Who was that?" my grandmother asked 
 me when I went down. 
 
 I told her of the call, told her, too, of the 
 man who had stopped me on the street. Her 
 rosary slipped through her fingers. "I feared 
 it," she said. Then the whisper of her praying 
 began again. 
 
 At dinner my father was strangely silent. 
 Usually he talks a great deal, all about politics, 
 and the newspapers, and the trouble with the 
 schools, and woman suffrage, and war. But 
 he said nothing at all except to ask me if the
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 13 
 
 skating were good. My mother was just as 
 quiet as he, and I would have been afraid to 
 open my mouth if my grandmother hadn't 
 started in to tell about New York in the days 
 she'd come here, more than sixty-five years 
 ago. She talked and talked about how dif- 
 ferent everything had been then, with no tall 
 buildings and no big bridges and no subways 
 and no elevateds. "Faith, you can be proud of 
 your native town, John," she said to my father. 
 
 "I wish I'd been born in Ireland," he said. 
 
 She laughed. "And if I'd stayed in Ireland 
 I'd have starved," she said, "and little chance 
 you'd have had of being born anywhere." 
 
 "It might have been just as well," he said 
 bitterly. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said; "there's Shauneen." 
 
 He rose from the table, flinging down his 
 napkin. "I won't be home till very late," he 
 said to my mother. 
 
 She stood up beside him. "Do you have 
 to go, John?" she asked him. 
 
 "Yes," he said.
 
 14 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 "Oh, John," she said, "I'm afraid." 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 "Of what may happen you." 
 
 "Nothing'll happen me," he said. 
 
 I wanted to tell him of the strange man 
 who had halted me on the street, and of the 
 telephone call, but my father's anger was rising 
 and I feared to fan it to flame. My grand- 
 mother said nothing until after my father had 
 gone. Then she spoke to my mother. 
 
 "Don't you know better," she asked her, 
 "and you eighteen years married to him, than 
 to ask John not to do something you don't 
 want him to do?" 
 
 My mother began to cry as we heard the 
 banging of the door after my father. "Well, 
 if you can do nothing else," my grandmother 
 said, "you'd better be off to church. Keep 
 your eyes open, Shauneen," she warned me 
 while my mother was getting her hat and coat. 
 
 It was a grand night, with the evening star 
 low in the sky, like a lamp, and the big yellow
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 15 
 
 moon just rising in the east. The wind blew 
 sharp and salt off the water, but there was a 
 promise of spring in the air, saying that it must 
 be almost baseball time. We went over to the 
 Jesuit church, walking slowly all the way. 
 There we knelt in the dark until I was stiff. 
 As we came out my mother stopped at the holy- 
 water font. "John," she said, "will you promise 
 me that if you ever marry you'll never set any 
 cause but God's above your wife?" 
 
 "No, ma'am, I won't," I said, vaguely un- 
 derstanding that my father had hurt my mother 
 by his refusal to stay at home, and wondering 
 what cause he had set above her. As we walked 
 toward the car-line I remembered what Joe 
 Carey had told me of Mattie Kleiner's speech 
 about my father. "Do you have to go to Ireland 
 to die for Ireland?" I asked her. She clutched 
 my hand. "My grandfather died for Ireland," 
 she said, "and he wasn't the first of his line to 
 die for her. But I pray God that he may have 
 been the last." She said no more till we came 
 into our own house.
 
 16 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 My grandmother was still at the window 
 of the dining-room. There was no light, and 
 my mother did not make one. 'There was 
 another telephone call," my grandmother said. 
 "Norah answered it. 'Twas the newspaper 
 calling again for John to ask about the meeting. 
 She said she knew nothing about it and that 
 no one was here to answer." 
 
 "Do you suppose," I said, "it was detec- 
 tives ? " 
 
 They said nothing, and I could feel a big 
 lump coming up my throat. I thought they 
 might not have heard me until my grandmother 
 said: "Do you know, Kate, where the meeting 
 is?" 
 
 "I don't know, and I don't want to know," 
 my mother cried. She turned to me sharply. 
 "Go to bed, John," she said. 
 
 "I know where the meetings are," I blurted 
 out, eager enough for any excuse to put off 
 the hateful order. 'They're at Mattie Kleiner's 
 house, because he hides on the stairs when they 
 come, and he heard them take the oath."
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 17 
 
 "Is that Matthew Kleiner's boy?" my 
 grandmother asked, so quietly that I thought 
 she had not realized the importance of my 
 news. 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 
 "Go to bed, Shauneen." She repeated my 
 mother's order. 
 
 I went up-stairs, leaving the two of them 
 silent in the dark. I whistled while I undressed, 
 but I shivered after I had turned out the light 
 and jumped between the sheets. I was going 
 to lie awake waiting for my father's return, 
 but I must have dozed, for I thought that it 
 was in the middle of the night that something 
 woke me. I knew, as soon as I woke, that some 
 one was in my room. I could feel him groping. 
 I tried to speak, but my tongue stuck to the 
 roof of my mouth. Then I heard a faint 
 whisper. "Shauneen," it said. 
 
 So far away it seemed that I thought it 
 might be a ghost until my grandmother spoke 
 again. : *Your mother's in bed now," she said. 
 "Put on your clothes as quick as you can."
 
 18 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 "What is it?" I whispered. 
 
 "We're going to Matthew Kleiner's, you 
 and I," she said. "I'd go alone if I could see." 
 
 "What time is it?" 
 
 "Between ten and eleven." 
 
 I pulled my clothes on as fast as I could. 
 Then stealthily as thieves we crept out from 
 my room and down the stairs. I held my grand- 
 mother's hand and wondered at its steadiness. 
 When we had come outside the basement door 
 she halted me. "Look down the street for the 
 tall man," she bade me. There was no one in 
 sight, however, and we walked along sturdily, 
 turning corners until we came to Kleiner's. 
 
 It was a red-brick house in a row, not a 
 basement house like ours, but with a cellar 
 below and an attic above its two main floors. 
 There was no light on the first floor, but 
 I thought that I saw a stream behind the drawn 
 curtains up-stairs. I found the bell and pushed 
 on it hard. No one came for a long time. I 
 rang again. I could see shadows back of the 
 shades before Mattie Kleiner's mother came.
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 19 
 
 "What is it?" she demanded before she opened 
 the door. 
 
 "Tell her that your mother's sick and that 
 you've come for your father," my grandmother 
 ordered me. I repeated what she'd said. Mrs. 
 Kleiner opened the door. "Oh," she cried, "it 
 is Mrs. Sutton and little John. Oh, you did 
 frighten me. Is the mother very sick? I shall 
 call the father." 
 
 "Let me go to him," my grandmother said. 
 We were inside the hall then, and I put her 
 hand on the railing of the stairway. She had 
 started up before Mrs. Kleiner tried to stop 
 her. "I've a message for him," said my grand- 
 mother. Mrs. Kleiner and I followed her. At 
 the top of the stairs I turned her toward the 
 front room, for I could hear the murmur of 
 voices. I passed a door and wondered if Mattie 
 Kleiner were hiding behind it. "Oh, we must 
 not go in," Mrs. Kleiner pleaded. "The men 
 will not want us to go in." She tried to stop 
 us, but my grandmother turned, looking at 
 her as if she could see her. "I've always fol-
 
 20 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 lowed my own conscience, ma'am," she said, 
 "not my husband's, nor my son's, nor any other 
 
 man's." 
 
 From within the front room came the sound 
 of the voices, growing louder and louder as we 
 stood there, my grandmother alert, Mrs. Kleiner 
 appalled, I myself athrill. I could hear my 
 father's voice, short, sharp. "It's our great 
 opportunity," he was saying. "We have only 
 to strike the blow at England's empire, and 
 the empire itself will arise to aid us. Twenty 
 thousand men flung into Canada will turn the 
 trick. French Quebec is disaffected. What if 
 soldiers are there ? We can fight them ! W^e 
 may die, but what if we do? We will have 
 started the avalanche that will destroy Car- 
 thage!" 
 
 There were cries of "Right !" to him. Then 
 a man began to talk in German. His voice 
 rang out harshly. From the murmurs that 
 came out to us we knew that the men were ap- 
 plauding his words, but we had no idea of what 
 the words were. Mrs. Kleiner stood w r ringing
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 21 
 
 her hands. "Who's in there ? " my grandmother 
 asked her. 
 
 "I do not know," she insisted. 
 
 "Joe Krebs's uncle is there," I said. "I 
 know his cough. And Mr. Winngart who keeps 
 the delicatessen-shop. And Frank Belden's 
 father; and that's Mr. Carey's voice." 
 
 "They just meet for fun," groaned Mrs. 
 Kleiner. 
 
 "Sure, I saw that kind of fun before," said 
 my grandmother, "when the Fenians went 
 after the Queen's Own." 
 
 My father's voice rose again. "We are 
 ready ,to fire the torch ? We are ready to send 
 out the word to-night for the mobilization of 
 our sympathizers? We are ready to stand to- 
 gether to the bitter end ? " 
 
 "We are ready !" came the shout. 
 
 Then my grandmother opened the door. 
 
 Through the haze of their tobacco smoke 
 they looked up, the dozen men crowded into 
 the Kleiners' front bedroom, to see my grand- 
 mother standing before them, a bent old woman
 
 22 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 in her black dress and shawl, her little jet bonnet 
 nodding valiantly from its perch on her thin 
 white hair. She looked around as if she could 
 see every one of them. My father had sprung 
 forward at her coming, and, as if to hold him 
 off, she put up one hand. 
 
 "Is it yourself, John Sutton, who's talking 
 here of plots, and plans, and war?" she said. 
 Her voice went up to a sharp edge. She flung 
 back her head as if she defied them to answer 
 her. All of them, my father and Joe Krebs's 
 uncle and Mattie Kleiner's father and Mr. 
 Carey and Mr. Winngart and the big man who'd 
 had the blue-prints in the shop, and the others, 
 stared at her as if she were a ghost. No 
 one of them moved as she spoke. 'Tis a fine 
 lot you are to be sitting here thinking ways to 
 bring trouble on yourselves, and your wives, 
 and your children, and your country. Who 
 are there here of you ? Is it yourself, Benedict 
 Krebs, who's going out to fight for Germany 
 when your own father came to this very street 
 to get away from Prussia ? Is it you, Matthew
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 23 
 
 Kleiner, who gives roof to them who plot against 
 America, you, who came here to earn a living 
 that you couldn't earn at home? Is it you, 
 Michael Carey, who's helping them hurt the 
 land that's making you a rich man ? Shame on 
 you; shame on you all !" 
 
 "Why shouldn't we fight England?" Joe 
 Carey's father said with a growl. "You'd be 
 the last one, Mrs. Button, that I'd think'd set 
 yourself against that." 
 
 "Tis not England," said my grandmother, 
 "that you fight with your plots. 'Tis America 
 you strike when you strike here. And, as long 
 as you stay here, be Americans and not 
 traitors !" 
 
 They began to murmur at that, and my 
 father said: :< You don't know what you're 
 talking about, mother. You'd better take John 
 home. This is no place for either of you." 
 
 "No more than it's a place for you," she 
 said. "Will you be coming home with me 
 now?" 
 
 "I will not," my father said.
 
 24 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 "Faith, and you'll all be wishing you had," 
 she told them, "when the jails'll be holding 
 you in the morning." 
 
 "The jails!" The big man who had held 
 the blue-prints came closer to us. "What is 
 it you say of jails? You have told the police, 
 then?" 
 
 "I didn't need to," my grandmother said. 
 : 'The government men have been watching 
 this long time. 'Twill be at midnight that 
 they'll come here. But 'tis not myself they'll 
 be finding." I saw the men's glances flash 
 around the room through the smoky haze be- 
 fore she called: "Come, Shauneen." I took 
 her hand again and led her out of the room. 
 Just before the door closed after us I saw that 
 my father's face had grown very white, and 
 that Mattie Kleiner's father had dropped his 
 pipe on the floor. 
 
 Outside the house I spoke to my grand- 
 mother tremblingly. "Do the police really 
 know?" I asked her. She gave her dry little 
 chuckle. "If they don't, they should," she
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 25 
 
 answered; "but I was born an O'Brien, and 
 I've never known one of them yet that ever 
 told the police anything. No, Shauneen," she 
 laughed, "'twas the high hill I shot at, but I'm 
 thinking that the shot struck. We'll watch." 
 
 We crossed the street and waited in the 
 shadow of the house at the corner. For a little 
 while all was quiet at Kleiner's. Then I saw 
 the tall man come out with Joe Krebs's uncle. 
 After a time my father came out with Mr. Winn- 
 gart and Mr. Carey. They walked to the other 
 corner and stood there a moment before they 
 separated. "Shall we go home now?" I asked 
 my grandmother after I had told her what I 
 had seen. 
 
 "Not yet," she said. "I've one more errand 
 to do this night." I thought it might have 
 something to do with the tall man who'd spoken 
 to me or with the telephone call, and I won- 
 dered when she sighed. "I'm a very old 
 woman," she seemed to be saying to herself. 
 "I'll be ninety-one years come Michaelmas 
 Day. Some of the world I've seen, and much
 
 26 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 of life. Out of it all I've brought but a few 
 things. I'd thought to give these to my son. 
 But She paused". "How old are you, 
 Shauneen ? " she asked me. 
 
 "Fourteen," I said. 
 
 "Old enough," she nodded. She turned 
 her head as if she were looking for something 
 or some one. Then: "Do you know your way 
 to the Battery?" she asked me. 
 
 "Sure," I told her. "Are you going there?" 
 
 "We are." 
 
 It had been quiet enough in our part of 
 town. It was quieter yet when we came to 
 Bowling Green and walked across to the Bat- 
 tery. Down there, past the high buildings and 
 the warehouses, we seemed to have come into 
 the heart of a hush. To the north of us the 
 sky was afire with the golden glow from the 
 up-town lights. In front of us ran the East 
 River and the North River. Out on Bedloe's 
 Island I could see the shining of the Goddess 
 of Liberty's torch. Every little while a ferry-
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 27 
 
 boat, all yellow with lights, would shoot out 
 on the water. A sailing-vessel moved slowly 
 after its puffing tug. The little oyster-boats 
 were coming in from the bay. A steamer glided 
 along past it as I walked with my grandmother 
 out toward the old Castle Garden. 
 
 On the Saturday before Joe Carey and I 
 had come down to the piers, prowling all after- 
 noon on the docks, watching the men bringing 
 in the queer crates and boxes and bags while 
 we told each other of the places from where 
 the fruits and spices and coffee and wines had 
 come. There were thousands and thousands 
 of ships out there in the dark, I knew, and I 
 began to tell my grandmother what some of 
 the sailors had told us of how the trade of the 
 world was crowding into New York, with the 
 ships all pressing the docks for room. "If you 
 could only see it!" I said to her. "I can see 
 more than that," she said. Then: "Take me 
 to the edge of the waters," she bade me. 
 
 Wondering and a little frightened, I obeyed 
 her, trying to solve the while the mystery of
 
 28 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 her whim to bring me to the deserted park in 
 the middle of the night. "Is Castle Garden 
 over there?" she pointed. :< Then I've my 
 bearings now." 
 
 She stood alone, a little way off from me, 
 staring seaward as if she counted the shadowy 
 ships. The wind blew her thin white hair from 
 under her bonnet and raised the folds of her 
 shawl. There in the lateness of the night, alone 
 at the edge of the Battery, she didn't seem to 
 be my grandmother at all, but some stranger. 
 I remembered the story I'd read somewhere of 
 an old woman who'd brought a pile of books 
 to a King of Rome, books that she threw away, 
 one by one, as he refused them, until there was 
 but one book left. When he'd bought that one 
 from her he'd found that it was the book of 
 the future of the empire, and that he'd lost all 
 the rest through his folly. As I looked at my 
 grandmother I thought she must be like the old 
 woman of the story. Even her voice sounded 
 strange and deep when she turned to me. 
 
 "It was sixty -five years ago the 7th of
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 29 
 
 November that I first stood on this soil," she 
 said. "'Tis a long lifetime, and, thank God, 
 a useful one I've had. Burdens I've had, but 
 never did I lack the strength to bear them. 
 Looking back, I'm sorry for many a word and 
 many a deed, but I've never sorrowed that I 
 came here.." 
 
 I would have thought that she had forgotten 
 me if she hadn't touched my arm. 'You've 
 heard tell of the famine, Shauneen," she went 
 on, "the great famine that fell on Ireland, 
 blighting even the potatoes in the ground? 
 We'd a little place in Connaught then, a bit 
 of land my father was tilling. We hadn't much, 
 even for the place, but we were happy enough, 
 God knows, with our singing and dancing, and 
 the fairs and the patterns. Then little by little, 
 we grew poorer and poorer. I was the oldest of 
 the seven of us. My mother and my self 'd be 
 planning and scraping to find food for the rest of 
 them. Every day we'd see them growing thinner 
 and thinner. Oh, mavrone, the pity of it ! And 
 thcv looking at us betimes as if we were cheat-
 
 30 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 ing them of their bit of a sup ! Sometimes now 
 in the dark I see them come to my bed, with 
 their soft eyes begging for bread, and we having 
 naught to give them. B rigid she was the 
 youngest of them all died. Then my father 
 went. 
 
 "I used to go down to the sea and hunt the 
 wrack for bits of food. There by the shore I 
 would look over here to America and pray, 
 day after day, that the Lord would send to us 
 some help before my mother should go. You 
 don't know what it is to pray, Shauneen. Your 
 father cannot teach you and your mother hopes 
 you'll never learn. For prayer is born in agony, 
 avick, and grief and loss and sorrow. But be-' 
 cause you are the son of my soul I pray for you 
 that life may teach you prayer. For when you 
 come to the end of the road, Shauneen, you'll 
 know that 'tis not the smoothness of the way, 
 but the height of it and the depth of it, that 
 measures your travelling. Far, far down in 
 the depths I went when I prayed over there 
 on the bleak coast of Connaught.
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 31 
 
 "God answered my prayer. There came 
 from America food to us. There came, too, 
 the chance for me to come here with the promise 
 of work to do. 'Twas a drear day when I left 
 home. How I cursed England as I looked back 
 on the hills of Cork harbor, all green and smiling 
 as if never a blight had cast its shadow behind 
 them ! 
 
 "Twas a long, dreary sailing. Nine weeks 
 we were in the crossing. A lifetime I thought 
 it was between the day I looked on the western 
 sea from the Connaught mountains and the 
 day when I stood here looking back toward 
 home. Sure life is full of lifetimes like those." 
 
 She paused a moment, but I felt as if I were 
 under a spell that I must not break by word 
 of mine. A cloud came over the moon and all 
 around us grew shadowy. The big throb that 
 the city always beats at night kept sounding 
 like the thrumming of an orchestra waiting for 
 the violin solo to start. 
 
 "I'd plenty of them before many years." 
 My grandmother's voice came like the sound
 
 32 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 for which the thrumming had waited. "Did 
 you ever think what it means to the poor souls 
 who come here alone for their living? When 
 you've a house of your own, Shauneen, with 
 men servants and maid servants, don't forget 
 that your father's mother worked out for some 
 one. They were kind people, too, who took 
 me to their homes. Don't forget that either. 
 For 'tis my first memory of America. Kind 
 they were, and just. They helped me save 
 what I earned and they showed me ways of 
 helping my folks at home. I'd brought out 
 Danny and James and Ellen and Mary before 
 the war. I met each one of them right here at 
 Castle Garden. That's why I always think 
 of this place as the gateway through which 
 the Irish have come to America. Sure Ellis 
 Island's been for the Italians and the Jews and 
 the Greeks. We didn't wait outside the door. 
 We came straight in," she chuckled. 
 
 "My mother wouldn't come from the old 
 place. Long I grieved over her there in the 
 little house where my father and Brigid had
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 33 
 
 died, but after a while I knew she was happier 
 so. Sometimes, Shauneen, I think of Ireland 
 as an old woman, like my mother, sitting home 
 alone in the old places, grieving, mourning, 
 with her children out over the world, living the 
 dreams of her nights by the fire. 'Twas here 
 we found the freedom the Irish had been fight- 
 ing for. 'Twas here, away from landlords and 
 landholding, away from famine and persecution, 
 that we found that life need not be a thing of 
 sorrow. 'Twas here I met your grandfather. 
 
 "I'd notjiing of my own, and your grand- 
 father had but a trifle more when we married. 
 I suppose 'tis brave that people would call us 
 now. We didn't think that we were. We were 
 young and strong and we loved each other. 
 And we were getting along fairly well we'd 
 started the payments on a bit of a house of 
 our own after your father was born when 
 the war came down on us. 
 
 'Your grandfather went with the brigade. 
 Not twice did we think whether or not he should 
 go. We knew that he owed his first duty to
 
 34 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 the country that had called him, and sheltered 
 him, and given him work and hope and freedom. 
 For he was a boy from home as I was a girl 
 from home. I stood on the curbstone the day 
 he marched by, with your father in my arms, 
 and I cheered for the flag. 'Sure he'll be walk- 
 ing to meet you when you come back ! ' I 
 called, lifting up the child. Your grandfather 
 never came back. He fell at Marye's Heights." 
 When she spoke again her voice had changed 
 more to her e very-day tone. "Well, I raised 
 your father," she said, "and I thought I was 
 raising him well. My arms were strong. I 
 worked at the wash-tub morning, noon, and 
 night. It wasn't long till I had a laundry of 
 my own. I thought to give my son all that I'd 
 ever wanted for myself. Perhaps that was 
 where I made my mistake. I thought too much 
 of the things that money can buy in those years 
 when money was so hard to earn. Perhaps 
 'twas myself and no other who taught your 
 father the cold, hard things of life, though, 
 God knows, I'd no thought to do it. He's a
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 35 
 
 good man in many ways, but he's not the man 
 I want you to be. He's a good hater but he's 
 not a good lover. And, faith, what's there in 
 life but love?" 
 
 I moved a little then, and my grandmother 
 swung me around, with her two hands on my 
 shoulders, and, blind as she is, stared at me as 
 if she were looking right down into my heart. 
 "Shauneen," she said, "I have prayed, day 
 and night, that your father might be to America 
 the good citizen his father was. I have prayed 
 that if America should ever need him he would 
 stand ready for her call. I have prayed that 
 he'd love America as I have loved America. 
 I love Ireland, mavrone. Always in my heart 
 do I see her hills as they looked on the morning 
 I looked back on them from the sea. But I 
 love America, too, and I wanted my son to 
 love her even more than I do. I've wanted 
 him to love this land as my fathers and their 
 fathers loved Ireland. 'Twas not that I wanted 
 him to forget my land; when he was a lad like 
 you I'd tell him tales of Ireland's glory and of
 
 36 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 Ireland's woe. How was I to know that all it 
 would do for him was to rouse the black hate 
 for England ? I taught him love for Ireland, 
 but never did I teach him to set my land above 
 his own. 
 
 "For 'twas America gave us our chance, 
 Shauneen, when we'd no other place on earth 
 to seek. Hard days we've known here, too, 
 days when even the children jeered at us, but 
 we've never felt the hand of the oppressor upon 
 us since we touched our feet on these shores. 
 We've been free and we've prospered. Fine 
 houses we have and fine clothes; and 'tis a long 
 day since I knew the pinch of hunger. This is 
 our debt. Tell me again, Shauneen, what you 
 see out there?" 
 
 I told her of the shining lights, of the funnels 
 of the steamers, of the piled piers, of the little 
 oyster-boats, of the great liners waiting the 
 word for their sailing. 
 
 ''Twould be a fine sight," she sighed. "Do 
 you think me a madwoman to bring you here ?" 
 she went on, as if she had read my thought.
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 37 
 
 "Perhaps I am that. Perhaps I'm not. For 
 you'll remember this night when you've for- 
 gotten many another time, just as I remember 
 the day when my mother took me to the shrine 
 at Knock. For this is the shrine of your coun- 
 try, Shauneen, this old Castle Garden, where 
 your people set foot in the land that's given 
 them liberty. Here it was that I told my 
 brothers and my sisters of the future before 
 them. Here it is that I'm telling you that your 
 country will be the greatest nation of all the 
 world if only you lads stay true to her. That's 
 why I've brought you here to-night, Shauneen. 
 I'm an old, old woman. I've not long for this 
 earth. But I've this message for you; it's 
 yours; this duty that your father shirks when 
 he plots with black traitors who'd drag us into 
 wars that are not of our choosing. Raise your 
 hand, Shauneen. Say after me: 'As long as I 
 live., God helping me, I shall keep my country first 
 in my heart and, after God, first in my soul ! ' ' 
 
 Through the misty moonlight there came 
 to me the memory of my mother's plea at the
 
 38 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 door of the church, my mother's cry: " Promise 
 me that you'll set no cause but God's before 
 your wife!" Some battle of spirit struggled 
 within me. For an instant I was silent. Then, 
 suddenly, as if the moon had ridden above the 
 cloud, I saw the right. "Since all true causes 
 come from God," I said to myself, "it is right 
 to set my own country above anything else 
 that may ever come." And I said the words 
 after my grandmother. 
 
 She took my face between her hands and 
 kissed me. " God keep you, Shauneen," she said, 
 "for the woman who'll love you, and the chil- 
 dren you'll teach, and the land you'll serve ! " 
 
 Then through a sleeping city my grand- 
 mother and I went home. 
 
 Our country's part is to keep the flame of 
 freedom burning above the darkness of the 
 world. Our part is to feed that flame with the 
 oil of our love of our country. No matter what 
 our duty may be, whether it be great or small, 
 let us do it as our country asks; that we may
 
 "MY GRANDMOTHER AND MYSELF" 39 
 
 keep our land the place where men may live 
 in freedom, in justice, in peace. 
 
 We have come upon troubled times. We 
 have enemies at home as well as abroad. We 
 have those who would cry "Peace at any price," 
 when our country knows that the only endur- 
 ing peace is one which is won with honor. We 
 have those who would barter American ideals 
 for immediate comfort, those who would sell 
 the future for the present. It is our part, the 
 part of each and every American, to stand firm 
 for those principles which America has cherished 
 and for which she fights to-day. It is our part 
 to be American, to think American, to pray 
 American. It is our duty to remember what 
 America does for us. It is our privilege to do 
 what we can for America. Every man, woman, 
 and child in the United States, not in active war 
 service in army or navy, is nothing less than a 
 licensed pilot, steering the ship of his patriotism 
 among rough waters. It is his part to steer it 
 straight, and, as the President said of the na- 
 tion, "God helping him, he can do no other."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 
 
 IN the last days of April, 1918, fifty men 
 in the khaki of the army of the United States 
 of America landed at an Atlantic port. Their 
 coming, unheralded and almost un welcomed, 
 marked one of the most important events in 
 the history of our country. For they were the 
 first homecoming veterans of the American 
 Expeditionary Forces, men who had fought 
 under Pershing on the soil of France for the 
 principles that inspired our nation's entrance 
 into the world war. 
 
 There was the man who had fired the first 
 American gun in the battles. There was the 
 man who had stood beside the first man killed 
 in action. There was the man who had brought 
 five German prisoners back into camp after 
 the rush on the trenches. Wounded, disabled, 
 made unfit for further immediate service, they 
 
 40
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 41 
 
 had been sent home; and they came back to 
 their country, the advance-guard of the greatest 
 army the United States has ever assembled 
 and one of the greatest armies the world has 
 ever seen, to bear witness to the fact that 
 America has actually taken her place in the 
 world struggle. 
 
 They had fought under German fire. They 
 had stood beside French soldiers and British 
 soldiers in the attack. They had received their 
 baptism of blood. They had set the flag of 
 the United States of America on the battle- 
 fronts in the standard that bears the flags of 
 those nations which are defending the rights 
 of democracy against the invasion of autocracy. 
 They are of the first division of an American 
 army to fight a battle for America in the fields 
 of Europe; and they had come home to give 
 testimony of what America's part in the great 
 war really is. For they are the first of the mil- 
 lions of fighters whom the nation has gathered 
 for the winning of the war. 
 
 Even when the United States entered the
 
 42 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 great war on the 6th of April, 1917, the part 
 that we would take in the conflict was not clearly 
 defined. Would we send an army abroad ? 
 Would our navy fight? Or would we merely 
 defend our own shores against possible attack, 
 and supply the other nations at war with Ger- 
 many with food, munitions, and other supplies ? 
 The question was soon answered by American 
 honesty which thundered that the only way 
 to wage war was to send soldiers to the scene of 
 battle. Preparations never equalled in the his- 
 tory of the world went into effect for the pur- 
 pose of conveying our soldiers over the ocean, 
 of supplying them and equipping them, and of 
 standing back of the troops and peoples of the 
 Allies who were already at war with Germany. 
 Not, however, until more than a year after 
 the beginning of our part in the war was the 
 issue of exactly what the United States would 
 do on the battle-fronts settled. Then the Presi- 
 dent of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, 
 gave the order that General John Pershing, in 
 command of the American Expeditionary Forces,
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 43 
 
 should place the American force at the disposi- 
 tion of General Foch of France, commander- 
 in-chief for the armies of the Allies. The Amer- 
 ican Expeditionary Forces slipped into place, 
 and American soldiers began the actual fight- 
 ing of America's war. 
 
 For the war into which our nation has en- 
 tered is, in spite of the fact that it is being fought 
 on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, as much 
 America's war and a war of defense as if it 
 were being fought along our own Atlantic sea- 
 board against an invading army. It is being 
 fought for the same principles which are the 
 only ones great enough to force our country 
 to war, principles of freedom for the individual, 
 freedom for the free-governed nations, and of 
 ultimate, lasting peace for the world. It is 
 being fought against the forces of aggression, 
 of greed, of injustice. It is being fought against 
 the intention of Germany to dominate the 
 world. 
 
 In every war there are two great issues 
 battling against each other. Men fight for one
 
 44 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 or the other. Nations fight for one or the other. 
 There have been wars of conquest waged by 
 strong nations against weaker ones, wars of 
 religion, wars of territorial aggression, wars of 
 defense, wars of trade, wars of high moral ideals. 
 This is a war where the issue is sharply set. It 
 is a war where democracy fights against au- 
 tocracy, where liberty fights against bondage, 
 where freemen fight to keep their freedom 
 against men who strive to take it away from 
 them. 
 
 There are two kinds of nations in the world, 
 those nations which believe that governments 
 derive their just powers from the consent of 
 the governed and those other nations which 
 believe that power comes from God to Kings 
 to be used over people who have nothing to 
 say about its use. The first is a democracy, 
 even though it have a monarch nominally as its 
 head. The other is an autocracy. And, since 
 this is a war of democracy against autocracy, it 
 is really a war of the free people of the world 
 against the bondsmen and their masters.
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 45 
 
 There was a time when all the great nations 
 of the world had Kings. It was part of the 
 evolution of the social system. Nations need 
 leaders, and there were men so strong that they 
 were able to seize and hold leadership, keeping 
 it for their sons so that the people came to ac- 
 cept one family as its rulers. But in time some 
 nations began to emerge from the yoke that 
 these rulers set upon them. The people, who 
 had been serfs and slaves, began to demand 
 a voice in the government. Kings and nobles 
 began to lose power in these nations with the 
 awakening of the people. The signing of the 
 Magna Charta in England by King John 
 marked the transfer of power from the King. 
 Bit by bit in those nations tending toward 
 liberal government the shift of power took 
 place. 
 
 It was not until the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century, however, that the theory 
 of free government flowered and bore fruit. 
 Then the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain, 
 situated along the western Atlantic seaboard,
 
 46 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 revolted against the imposition of a tax that 
 the colonists considered unjust, went to war, 
 and won the war. They established the United 
 States of America, a nation which has been 
 from that day to this a genuine democracy, a 
 free republic based absolutely on the doctrine 
 that power came from the people, and that 
 government exists merely as the steward of that 
 power. 
 
 It was through the aid given to the Colonies 
 by France, brought by Lafayette and Rocham- 
 beau, that the War of the Revolution was won. 
 The French soldiers, returning home at its close, 
 took with them reinforcement of the spirit of 
 desire for freedom that was already animating 
 France and which in time brought about the 
 beginnings of the French Revolution, a war 
 which changed France from a monarchy where 
 the King said with truth "I am the state" to 
 a real democracy. 
 
 The example of the United States of America 
 
 .inspired other nations of Europe toward the 
 
 ideal of a government in which the people should
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 47 
 
 have a voice. Our republican institutions have 
 had a reflex upon English institutions so that 
 to-day Great Britain, in spite of having a 
 nominal King, is one of the most democratic 
 governments in the world. The King of Italy 
 holds his power as a result of a war in which the 
 people of Italy wrested freedom from Austrian 
 domination. And Russia, at the time when it 
 went into war, was moving toward a more 
 elastic form of government. That it failed in 
 the experiment was due to German intrigue, and 
 not to lack of desire of the Russian people for 
 self-government . 
 
 On the other hand, the people of the Central 
 Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary, have 
 accepted sometimes with mutterings of revolt, 
 but eventually with resignation the idea that 
 their rulers derived authority from some divine 
 source. Few nations in modern times have 
 had less voice in the government of their coun- 
 try than the people of Germany. For, under 
 the German constitution, Germany is governed 
 by its Emperor, with its legislative power in
 
 48 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 two bodies, the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. 
 Now, the United States puts its legislative power 
 into two bodies, the Senate and the House of 
 Representatives. France puts power into the 
 Chamber of Deputies, England into the House 
 of Commons and the House of Lords. But 
 England is shearing the power of the House of 
 Lords, and in our country the Senate and the 
 House of Representatives are elected by and 
 are directly responsible to the voters of the 
 country. Here, as in France and in England, 
 the vote is not restricted by wealth or by class. 
 In Germany the vote is so arranged that 370 
 rich men have the same voting power as 22,324 
 poor men in one district, Cologne; while the 
 Bundesrat is merely a diplomatic assembly, 
 representing the kingdoms of the German Em- 
 pire, an assembly which the King of Prussia 
 absolutely dominates, and through which he 
 becomes, as Emperor of Germany, absolute 
 ruler of the empire. For the Reichstag has no 
 power to make or unmake ministries, or to 
 control the Emperor in any way. The Emperor
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 49 
 
 appoints the chancellor, and the chancellor is 
 answerable only to him. So that in the long 
 run, although it has a constitutional form, the 
 government of Germany is the Emperor of 
 Germany and the military group known as 
 Junkers with whom he has surrounded him- 
 self. 
 
 The Emperor of Germany and the Junkers 
 of his Prussia forced the present war. They 
 prepared for it during years while the rest of 
 the world was keeping peace. They justified 
 it to their people on the ground that Germany 
 needed new territory, new trade, new markets. 
 Although she was gaining the trade and markets 
 without war, Germany's leader made this their 
 excuse to their people, and when they were 
 ready they went to war for the purpose of im- 
 posing their form of government upon peoples 
 who did not want it, of forcing their rule upon 
 nations opposed to their ideas. Serbia lay in 
 their path of conquest into Asia, and so they 
 caused Austria, their tool, to make an excuse of 
 the assassination by a Serbian of an Austrian
 
 50 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 archduke, and declare war on the small nation. 
 Then Germany invaded Belgium, with which it 
 was not at war, to get to France, against which 
 war had been declared. Belgium resisted. 
 England entered the conflict. The struggle 
 was on. 
 
 Month after month the aggressions of Ger- 
 many caused new nations to break off relations 
 with her. Italy and Japan entered the war. 
 China, most peaceful of nations in her rela- 
 tions with the outside world, broke off rela- 
 tions. One after another of the South American 
 republics were forced to do the same. The 
 United States, after a long period of patient 
 endurance of German insults, attacks on our 
 commerce, intrigues and plots in our own coun- 
 try, restriction of our maritime activities in 
 defiance of international law, was finally driven 
 to announcement of the existence of a state of 
 war. The lines were drawn. Democracy was 
 making a stand for its life against autocracy, 
 the freemen of the world against the bonds- 
 men.
 
 UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD WAR 51 
 
 It is right and fitting that the United States 
 of America should take her place in a war which 
 is being fought for those principles for which 
 she has stood since her coming into nation- 
 hood. For more than a century and a quarter 
 she has been, like the Statue of Liberty in the 
 harbor of New York, a symbolic figure to the 
 world beaconing men to freedom. It is in line 
 with her history that she should go to Europe 
 for the same cause for which she has fought 
 all her wars defense of the weaker against the 
 stronger, the right of people to determine their 
 own governments, the right of all to be free. 
 
 There is a story told of General Pershing's 
 entrance into Paris. He was taken to the tomb 
 of Lafayette. His hosts crowded about him, 
 waiting for his speech. But, like all American 
 soldiers, Pershing is no orator. "Well, Lafay- 
 ette," he said, "we're here!" That was all. 
 But France, hearing, understood. America 
 was there, to fight side by side with them, to 
 suffer with them, to die with them, that the 
 cause of liberty for which Lafayette had fought
 
 52 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 on two continents might live. The world war 
 had menaced the United States in its sacred 
 institution of freedom, and the United States 
 had met the challenge, and had come to fight 
 for that which is dearer than life honor, and 
 right, and justice.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 
 
 THE history of the human race has been 
 the history of man's struggle toward freedom. 
 Because certain nations have seen the light 
 sooner than others, they have been the object 
 of attack by these others, primarily because 
 the rulers of the latter have been shrewd enough 
 to see that revolution is contagious. A free 
 neighbor threatens the existence of a monarch 
 who derives his power from the force with which 
 he has surrounded himself and from the blind- 
 ness of his own people. A free neighbor is there- 
 fore a menace to autocracy, and something to 
 be crushed. 
 
 When the people of France, inspired by the 
 example of the United States, arose in revolu- 
 tion against their monarch, the revolution shook 
 the thrones of Europe. The King of France 
 was closer in blood to other royal families of 
 
 53
 
 54 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 Europe than he was to the people whom he 
 had governed. The Queen of France was a 
 Hapsburg, of the royal family of Austria, whose 
 representatives were in almost every royal 
 house of the Continent of Europe. The success 
 of the French Revolution was the handwriting 
 on the wall; and every Belshazzar on a throne 
 had a Daniel of statesmanship to tell him what 
 it meant. 
 
 Almost at once the Kings of Europe rallied 
 against France, because free France threatened 
 the existence of the Kings. France fought val- 
 iantly. The military establishment which she 
 had to assume to protect her rights, however, 
 swung her out of the republican form of govern- 
 ment she had set up, and Napoleon Bonaparte, 
 who won her wars, became her Emperor. The 
 change, however, did not swing back the French 
 people into any slavish acceptance of royalty. 
 They held, in spite of Bonaparte's court, their 
 fundamental democracy; and it was a demo- 
 cratic army which France sent across Europe. 
 Napoleon himself said that every private car-
 
 WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 55 
 
 ried a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack. 
 Every man had a chance for promotion. Every 
 man had a chance to better his life. And, be- 
 cause France remained fundamentally demo- 
 cratic, the Kings battled against Bonaparte. 
 They defeated him, finally; but they did 
 not defeat France, for its spirit remained 
 free. 
 
 Germany, nearest neighbor to France, had 
 never known democracy. Once part of the 
 vast kingdom known as the Holy Roman Em- 
 pire, she had disintegrated into little states, 
 kingdoms, duchies, and archbishoprics, each 
 ruled by one-man power. Sometimes a King, 
 stronger than the others, drew the kingdoms 
 together for purposes of warfare against other 
 countries. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 
 fought against Austria. With him the power of 
 Prussia rose. After his death it declined so that 
 Napoleon found the conquest of Prussia easy, 
 and went about it so thoroughly that he made 
 the French conquest a profound humiliation to 
 the Prussians. Even his defeat at Waterloo
 
 56 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 failed to pay the debt Prussia cherished against 
 the French. 
 
 It was in the time of Napoleon that the 
 German people came nearer to freedom of spirit 
 than they had been before or have been since. 
 For in fighting a foreign enemy who sought 
 power even as the Hohenzollern ruler of Ger- 
 many seeks it to-day, the youth of Germany 
 glimpsed the truth of democracy. With Napo- 
 leon's defeat they stood ready to move forward 
 toward it. But again the Kings intervened. 
 
 There was formed in Europe at that time 
 the Holy Alliance, that same group of Kings 
 and Kingmakers who sought to restore to Spain 
 its revolting colonies in South America, and 
 who held firmly to the idea of the divine right 
 of Kings. This Holy Alliance throttled free 
 thought in Germany. By 1848 revolutions for 
 the right of freedom surged up throughout the 
 German states and kingdoms and principalities. 
 They were beaten down by the ruling powers, 
 one helping the other. It was at this time that 
 the German emigration toward the United
 
 WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 57 
 
 States began, for the leaders of the revolution 
 sought a land where they could be free. Those 
 who stayed came in time to accept the system 
 which the rulers imposed upon them. 
 
 The putting down of the revolution of 1848 
 gave Prussia increased power. She had a dis- 
 ciplined standing army, and a military estab- 
 lishment. In 1862 William I became King. 
 He made Bismarck his prime minister, and the 
 march of Prussia toward world conquest began. 
 
 Bismarck made the whole Prussian nation 
 into an army. Then he made alliance with 
 Austria to secure the duchy of Schleswig-Hol- 
 stein from Denmark. Then he provoked a 
 quarrel with Austria so that Prussia might 
 deprive her of all influence over the other Ger- 
 man states. He won his object in a six-weeks' 
 war in 1866. But he was not satisfied with the 
 power he had won, for democratic France 
 democratic for all her acceptance of another 
 Napoleon for her throne still threatened the 
 power of Kings who claimed that their power 
 came from God, and not from their people.
 
 58 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 Prussia waited its chance. When France 
 was unprepared, a quarrel was brought on, 
 and the blow struck. Prussia took Alsace and 
 Lorraine from her. Then the King of Prussia 
 was made Emperor of Germany. 
 
 The territory which Prussia had acquired 
 for the German Empire, for Alsace and Lor- 
 raine are the richest mineral districts of France, 
 gave Germany opportunity for that industrial 
 development which has marked her history 
 since the Franco-Prussian War. Germany's 
 population overcrowded her territorial space. 
 Germany grew rich and prosperous. Germany 
 became highly efficient in mechanical arts. 
 German trade reached out over the world, but 
 found the barriers of the establishment of other 
 nations. The German army remained a great 
 machine, officered by Prussian nobles. Ger- 
 many grew so mighty that she grew to believe 
 that might makes right. She had the might, 
 and she made ready to exercise it. 
 
 First of all, she needed trade routes. She 
 needed a way to the sea more open than the
 
 WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 59 
 
 Hamburg harbors. She wanted a road to Asia. 
 She wanted to control the gateway to the rich 
 Orient. She wanted an empire that would 
 contain Austria-Hungary as well as Germany 
 proper. And she set out to win it all. 
 
 In 1914 the situation was this: Francis 
 Joseph, Emperor of Austria, was an old man, 
 a sick man. His empire, composed of scores 
 of nationalities, held together by a thin thread. 
 If he died, it might disintegrate into groups of 
 free peoples. Serbia, its near neighbor, had 
 won independence. The Balkan wars had 
 shifted power to small states that stood be- 
 tween Germany and the Orient. Russia was 
 disaffected. A revolution might come at any 
 time that would dethrone the Czar. Unless a 
 war, and a great war, was started, many and 
 great free nations would soon surround Ger- 
 many, cutting her off from the way to the Orient. 
 France, her hated neighbor, flaunted her free 
 institutions in her face and remembered Alsace 
 and Lorraine. England cut 'her off from un- 
 restricted rule of the sea. To be sure, she was
 
 60 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 not eager to force war with England, since the 
 German navy had not arrived at the point of 
 preparedness of the German army. England 
 could wait until Germany had conquered the 
 rest of Europe. Then, when England was con- 
 quered, too, Germany would punish the United 
 States for our "international impertinence" as 
 Bismarck called our policy of the Monroe Doc- 
 trine. It was the time to strike. Germany, as 
 usual in the Bismarckian policy, made the oc- 
 casion. 
 
 Down in Bosnia, a Balkan state which Aus- 
 tria had seized and held against the will of its 
 people, an anarchist threw a bomb which killed 
 an Austrian archduke in June, 1914. For a 
 time no action came of the happening. Then 
 Austria announced that she had discovered that 
 the assassination was the result of a Serbian 
 plot, known to the Serbian Government, Bos- 
 nia's neighbor and the friend of her freedom. 
 Therefore she declared war on Serbia. Ger- 
 many gave her consent to the ultimatum. She 
 was taking her opportunity.
 
 WHAT THE GREAT WAR REALLY MEANS 61 
 
 Knowing that a war of Austria against 
 Serbia would open a way for her own progress 
 toward the East, Germany, being prepared to 
 the last gun and last man, forced the issue. 
 She knew that Russia would rise against her, 
 but she knew, better than the Russian Govern- 
 ment did, how unprepared Russia was. On the 
 first day of August, 1914, she declared war 
 against Russia. On the fourth day of August 
 the Reichstag, the people's legislative body of 
 Germany, met and for the first time learned 
 officially of what had been done. By that time 
 the German Government had put itself in a 
 position of war against Russia, France, Great 
 Britain, and Belgium, a fact which proves how 
 little the German people had to say about the 
 making of actual warfare. 
 
 In utter contempt of a treaty which had 
 been signed Germany invaded Belgium on the 
 way to France. Belgium resisted the invasion. 
 A Chinese schoolboy, writing of the event in a 
 school in western Canada months afterward, 
 phrased the story better than any historian
 
 62 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 has done. "Germany," he wrote, "said to 
 Belgium: 'Let me through.' Belgium said: 'I 
 am not a road. I am a nation." And Bel- 
 gium proved to the world how strong a small 
 nation may be in courage. For she resisted 
 Germany so well that France had time to gather 
 her forces for defense. The drive to Paris was 
 stopped. Prussia had announced that its armies 
 would be in Paris in an almost incredibly short 
 time. 
 
 In the meantime Germany made alliance 
 with the Sultan of Turkey. The war on the 
 eastern front began. Hordes of Austrians and 
 Germans swarmed over Poland into Russia, 
 and back again as Russia beat them back, then 
 forward again as Russia collapsed. In Egypt, 
 in Palestine, in Mesopotamia war has raged. 
 Japan joined. China broke off relations with 
 Germany. Japan holds troops at the eastern 
 end of the Russian-Siberian railway, waiting 
 for the word of the Allies to strike westward. 
 
 In the west the war has remained almost 
 stationary since the initial sweep of the German
 
 hordes; but eastward Germany has driven her 
 armies toward her goal. Russia has disinte- 
 grated, pulled apart by the insidious forces of 
 German intrigue. Germany has the open way 
 to the East. She has the resources of Austria- 
 Hungary, of Russia, of Asia Minor at her com- 
 mand. 
 
 Had it not been for Germany's idea that 
 she could conquer the world in one war, an 
 idea supported by her eastward conquests, she 
 might be nearer to ultimate success than she 
 is to-day. For the entrance of the United States 
 into the war, provoked by German measures 
 of attack on American commerce, has materially 
 changed the issue. It has put heart into the 
 Allies, as well as opening up the field of supplies 
 of men and munitions for them. Our country 
 has barely begun to fight, for it has taken a 
 year to bear to France the necessary troops 
 and equipment. 
 
 However long the war may be, it is one that 
 must be fought to the end. For, as a river puri- 
 fies itself as it flows, so has the issue of the war
 
 64 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 defined itself as it has progressed. In its be- 
 ginning Germany strove to make the world 
 believe that it was a trade war between Aus- 
 tria and Serbia which Russia had entered for 
 the injury of Austria and which had been forced 
 on Germany in Austria's defense. Then she 
 claimed that she fought England "for the free- 
 dom of the seas." The war against Belgium 
 was "a military necessity," the submarine war- 
 fare against neutral nations "a retaliatory 
 measure against blockade." But in the long 
 run Germany's war is the war of the military 
 caste of the world against the free peoples, the 
 war of government holding power by force 
 against government holding power by popular 
 vote, the war of military establishment against 
 peaceful ideals; and until it is won by those 
 who fight Germany there can be no lasting 
 peace in the world.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO THE UNITED STATES 
 
 THE great war, beginning in 1914, brought 
 to most Americans no idea that our country 
 would ever be more than a watcher of it. That 
 we ourselves would one day become part of 
 it and one of the greatest parts of it was 
 something beyond the imagination of most 
 men. America had lived apart from other na- 
 tions. For, although our government had made 
 treaties with foreign nations, and become part 
 of The Hague Conference, and been drawn to 
 some extent into international politics, we had 
 none of the ambitions which draw nations into 
 ordinary wars. We had no desire for colonies, 
 we had no jealousy of other nations, we had 
 no fear of neighboring governments. In fact, 
 Americans believed that wars were going out 
 of fashion, and that western Europe, any more 
 than ourselves, was not likely to go to war. 
 
 65
 
 66 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 The coming of the conflict was therefore a shock 
 to us, but not one that brought us to realize 
 that we were likely to take part in it. 
 
 When Germany invaded Belgium with no 
 excuse other than that progress through that 
 nation afforded the quickest way to France 
 the people of the United States awoke to their 
 first knowledge of what militarism may mean. 
 Although people of German birth or parentage 
 in America were inclined to accept Germany's 
 attempted justification of military necessity, 
 the sympathies of most Americans went to 
 Belgium and became one of the important fac- 
 tors in determining the country's attitude 
 toward the war. For the United States had 
 always stood for principles of justice and hu- 
 manitarianism. The stories of how Germany 
 treated the civilian population of Belgium, 
 stories which were verified by the later reports 
 of such non-partisan investigators as Brand 
 Whitlock, American minister to Belgium, 
 aroused American sentiment against German 
 military methods.
 
 c 5
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO US 67 
 
 There were people in the United States 
 who believed that our country should go to 
 war in defense of Belgium, just as we had gone 
 to war to free Cuba from the dominion of Spain 
 when the rule of Spain on that island became 
 cruelly oppressive. But our government, be- 
 lieving that the war was not a parallel instance, 
 since it had not yet violated those fundamental 
 principles of our national life that had been 
 struck at by Spain, refused to consider such 
 action, and the people fell back into considera- 
 tion of the causes and progress of the war 
 abroad. 
 
 It began to be clear, as German forces 
 crossed Belgium and plunged into France, while 
 at the same time German forces swept east- 
 ward, that Germany had evolved the definite 
 scheme of world conquest which her later de- 
 mands and movements have proven. The 
 American people, however, were slow to believe 
 this intention of Germany. Bit by bit only our 
 country began to see that Germany was push- 
 ing forward a gigantic plan of territorial ag-
 
 68 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 gression, and with all that we heard and some 
 that we believed, we were slow to see how this 
 plan could affect the United States. 
 
 Because we had lived apart from the rest 
 of the world we would probably have continued 
 to feel that, terrible as the war which Germany 
 had begun was, it was not our war, and that 
 all we were expected to do was to remain 
 genuinely neutral and to give such assistance 
 as the international law permitted neutral na- 
 tions to give the wounded and stricken. But 
 Germany would not allow us to remain apart. 
 The ruling class of Prussia, headed by the 
 Kaiser, grown mad with power and the desire 
 for more power, put into operation methods 
 that forced us toward war. 
 
 Germany's progress into this war had, as 
 we have seen, struck blows at those principles 
 for which America had struggled, the principles 
 of individual freedom, of international peace, 
 of the freedom of the seas. For any one of these 
 ideals the republic might have rushed into war; 
 but it was only when the American people came
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO US 69 
 
 to know that Germany was plotting not only 
 to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine but actually 
 against the American Government here in the 
 United States that we were roused to desire 
 for conflict to uphold our national honor. 
 
 "It is plain enough how we were forced 
 into war," President Wilson declared in his Flag 
 Day Address of June 14, 1917. "The extraor- 
 dinary insults and aggressions of the Imperial 
 German Government left us no self-respecting 
 choice but to take up arms in defense of our 
 rights as a free people and of our honor as a 
 sovereign government. The military masters 
 of Germany denied us the right to be neutral. 
 They filled our unsuspecting communities with 
 vicious spies and conspirators and sought to 
 corrupt the opinions of our people in their own 
 behalf. When they found that they could not 
 do that, their agents diligently spread sedition 
 amongst us and sought to draw our own citizens 
 from their allegiance; and some of those agents 
 were men connected with the official embassy 
 of the German Government in our own capital.
 
 70 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 :< They sought by violence to destroy our 
 industries and arrest our commerce. They 
 tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against 
 us and to draw Japan into a hostile alliance 
 with her; and that, not by indirection, but by 
 direct suggestion from the Foreign Office in 
 Berlin. They impudently denied us the use of 
 the high seas and repeatedly executed their 
 threat that they would send to their death any 
 of our people who ventured to approach the 
 coasts of Europe. 
 
 "Many of our own people were corrupted. 
 Men began to look upon their own neighbors 
 with suspicion and to wonder in their hot re- 
 sentment whether there was any community 
 in which hostile intrigue did not lurk. What 
 great nation in such circumstances would not 
 have taken up arms? Much as we desired 
 peace, it was denied us, and not of our own 
 choice. The flag under which we serve would 
 have been dishonored had we withheld our 
 hand." 
 
 The President of the United States stated
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO US 71 
 
 America's case against Germany mildly. Evi- 
 dence of the bad faith of the government of 
 Germany to the government of the United 
 States is piled in the archives of the State De- 
 partment in Washington. The honest efforts 
 of our government to establish honest rela- 
 tions with them were met by German officials 
 with quibbles, misrepresentations, counter-ac- 
 cusations, and continuing, deliberate delays. 
 German high officials kept us in humiliating 
 waiting while German official agents in this 
 country, protected by the rules of diplomatic 
 immunity from criminal prosecution, used their 
 trust to conspire against our internal peace. 
 Agents of the German Embassy placed spies 
 through the length and breadth of our country. 
 They put their agents at work in Japan and in 
 Latin America while they were professing to 
 be our friends. They bought newspapers and 
 employed speakers for the purpose of rousing 
 distrust of us in those countries. They incited 
 insurrection in Cuba, in Haiti, and in Santo 
 Domingo. They did their best to arouse against
 
 72 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 us the Danish West Indies. They spread sus- 
 picion of us and our motives in South America. 
 They conducted an attack upon the Monroe 
 Doctrine such as no other nation had ever at- 
 tempted. 
 
 For a time the government of the United 
 States tried to take the view that this intrigue, 
 plotting, spying, and insidious warfare was the 
 work of irresponsible agents, not countenanced 
 by the Imperial German Government; but 
 the proof was too strong. The government 
 finally had to request the recall of the Austro- 
 Hungarian ambassador and of the German 
 military and naval attaches, presenting proof 
 of their criminal violations of our hospitality. 
 Their governments offered no reply to us, issued 
 no reprimands to them. 
 
 In spite of all this the temper of the Amer- 
 ican people was that we should keep out of 
 war as long as it was possible to maintain our 
 national honor without war. The President 
 even began the preparation of a communication 
 to the warring nations, asking them to define
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO US 73 
 
 their war aims, as this would be a step toward 
 peace. Before this note was completed, the 
 German Government sent out a communication, 
 asking the same definition. But the German 
 Government issued this document on the idea 
 that the German armies had triumphed, and 
 incorporated in it a threat to neutral govern- 
 ments. From a thousand sources, official and 
 unofficial, word came to our government that 
 unless the United States used her influence to 
 end the war on the terms dictated by Germany, 
 Germany and her allies would consider them- 
 selves free from obligation to respect the rights 
 of neutrals. The Kaiser was frankly ordering 
 the neutral nations of the world to force those 
 Powers which fought him to accept the peace 
 he offered. If they failed to do this, Germany 
 would resume her submarine warfare on neutral 
 commerce with new ruthlessness. 
 
 The President, continuing his own purpose, 
 finished his note to both sides, sending it on the 
 18th of December, 1916. Both sides replied, the 
 Powers who resisted Germany declaring that
 
 74 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 their principal end in the war was the lasting 
 restoration of peace. Germany and her associ- 
 ates refused to state their terms, and merely 
 proposed a conference another method of de- 
 lay. The President, in an address to the Senate 
 on the 22d of January, 1917, outlined the terms 
 of the peace which the United States could hon- 
 orably join in guaranteeing. 
 
 "No peace can last," he stated, "or ought 
 to last, which does not recognize and accept 
 the principle that governments derive all their 
 just powers from the consent of the governed, 
 and that no right anywhere exists to hand people 
 about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if 
 they were property. . . . 
 
 "I am proposing government by the con- 
 sent of the governed; that freedom of the seas 
 which in international conference after con- 
 ference representatives of the United States 
 have urged with the eloquence of those who 
 are the convinced disciples of liberty; and 
 that moderation of armaments which makes of 
 armies and navies a power for order merely,
 
 HOW THE WAR CAME TO US 75 
 
 not an instrument of aggression or of selfish 
 violence." 
 
 Six days earlier, on the 16th of January, the 
 German secretary of foreign affairs had secretly 
 despatched a communication to the German 
 minister in Mexico, informing him that Ger- 
 many intended to repudiate its pledge made 
 to the United States to discontinue submarine 
 warfare on neutral ships, and instructing him 
 to offer to the Mexican Government New Mex- 
 ico and Arizona if Mexico would join with Japan 
 in attacking the United States. 
 
 On the last day of January, 1917, the Ger- 
 man ambassador to the United States, Count 
 Bernstorff, brought to the secretary of state 
 a note in which Germany announced her pur- 
 pose of intensifying her submarine warfare. 
 The German chancellor stated in Germany 
 that the reason that this policy had not been 
 put into force earlier was simply because his 
 government had not been ready to act. 
 
 On the 3d of February, 1917, the Presi- 
 dent announced to both houses of Congress
 
 76 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 the complete severance of our relations with 
 Germany. Count Bernstorff went to Berlin, 
 and James W. Gerard, American ambassador 
 to Germany, was recalled to this country. 
 Count Bernstorff had begged that no irrevocable 
 decision of war be made until he had the chance 
 to make one final plea for peace to. the Kaiser. 
 If he made the plea, he failed. The submarine 
 warfare began again in greater violence. And 
 on the twelfth day of March our government 
 ordered the placing of armed guards on our 
 merchant ships. 
 
 With the Sixty-fourth Congress dissolved 
 on the 4th of March, we had come to the 
 door of the greatest war in the history of the 
 world.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW THE UNITED STATES WENT INTO WAR 
 
 ONE hundred and thirty years before the 
 great war of Europe came to the threshold of 
 the United States a group of wise, far-sighted 
 statesmen met in the city of Philadelphia to 
 make a constitution for the governing of the 
 Colonies whose independence had just been 
 won. They desired, above all things, to estab- 
 lish a government which would stand the test 
 of time and remain a government of the people, 
 by the people, and for the people. For months 
 they deliberated, bringing to the meetings all 
 the wisdom, all the ideals, all the visioning they 
 had acquired from long study, and from vic- 
 torious, righteous warfare. Finally they the 
 fathers of our republic completed a document 
 that has governed the United States of America 
 and become to the world a model of democratic 
 government. 
 
 77
 
 78 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 In this document, which was ratified by 
 the States then existing and which became the 
 law of those States which were admitted to the 
 nation, its makers set down certain rules govern- 
 ing the making of war. 
 
 The Constitution divided the government 
 into three branches: the executive, the legis- 
 lative, and the judicial. In order that no one 
 of them might have too much power, the duties 
 of each were determined and divided. The 
 executive, of which the President is chief, could 
 do certain deeds and duties. The judicial had 
 the final determination of the right of enacting 
 certain laws, saying whether or not later laws, 
 made by Congress, conformed to the original 
 Constitution. But to the legislative, represented 
 by two houses of Congress, the Senate and the 
 House of Representatives, the Constitution 
 granted certain very clear powers. 
 
 Among these powers was the power to de- 
 clare war. In autocracies monarchs declare 
 war; but in a democracy such as ours it is right 
 and just that the power of declaring war should
 
 HOW WE WENT INTO THE WAR 79 
 
 rest with that body most directly responsive 
 to the people of the nation. The Congress is 
 such a body. The Constitution therefore gave 
 to Congress the right of war declaration; and 
 nothing better illustrates the difference between 
 autocracy and democracy than the fact that 
 the Emperor of Germany had thrust his coun- 
 try into war three days before the German 
 Reichstag, which is the limited popular assembly 
 of the empire, knew officially of its existence, 
 while the President of the United States had 
 to summon Congress into special session for 
 consideration of the war problem. 
 
 On the second day of April, 1917, the Presi- 
 dent went before the Congress which he had 
 summoned. Beneath the dome of the white 
 Capitol in the city of Washington, while a world 
 waited breathlessly for the verdict of the great 
 nation, he read his message to the men who 
 represent the people of the United States. In 
 that message he set down the case of the United 
 States against Germany. Only twice before 
 in the history of America at the beginning
 
 80 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 of the War of the Revolution and at the be- 
 ginning of the war between the States had 
 there been so momentous an occasion. Upon 
 the men assembled in the Senate and the House 
 of Representatives depended the honor, the 
 future of the nation, and the honor and the 
 future of democracy. 
 
 "It is a war," the President read to them, 
 "against all nations. . . . The challenge is to 
 all mankind. Each nation must decide for 
 itself how it will meet it. The choice we make 
 for ourselves must be made with a moderation 
 of counsel and a tempera teness of judgment 
 befitting our character and our motives as a 
 nation. We must put excited feelings away. 
 Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious 
 assertion of the physical might of the nation, 
 but only the vindication of right, of human 
 right, of which we are only a single champion." 
 
 In that spirit the Congress listened. In 
 that spirit they heard the voice of the man who 
 was speaking not for himself but for our United 
 States, not for our generation alone but for the
 
 V ; 
 
 a I 
 
 I ii 
 
 -c 
 c
 
 HOW WE WENT INTO THE WAR 81 
 
 generations who have passed and the genera- 
 tions who will come, when he said: 
 
 "The world must be made safe for democ- 
 racy. Its peace must be planted upon the 
 tested foundations of political liberty. We 
 have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no 
 conquests, no dominion. We seek no indemni- 
 ties for ourselves, no material compensations 
 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 made as secure as the faith 
 and the freedom of nations can make them." 
 
 With the weight of the gravest responsibility 
 an American Congress has ever raised falling 
 upon their shoulders, they gave heed as the 
 chief executive brought to them the issue: 
 
 "It is a distressing and oppressive duty, 
 gentlemen of the Congress, which I have per- 
 formed in thus addressing you. There are, it 
 may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice 
 ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this 
 great, peaceful people into war, into the most
 
 82 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization 
 itself seeming to be in the balance. But the 
 right is more precious than peace, and we shall 
 fight for the things which w r e have always carried 
 nearest our hearts for democracy, for the right 
 of those who submit to authority to have a 
 voice in their own governments, for the rights 
 and liberties of small nations, for a universal 
 dominion of right by such a concert of free 
 people as shall bring peace and safety to all 
 nations and make the world itself at last 
 free. 
 
 "To such a task we can dedicate our lives 
 and our fortunes, everything that we are and 
 everything that we have, with the pride of those 
 who know that the day has come when America 
 is privileged to spend her blood and her might 
 for the principles that gave her birth and hap- 
 piness, and the peace which she has treasured. 
 "God helping her, she can do no other." 
 The Congress of the United States deliber- 
 ated, through three days and three nights, while 
 the world waited, upon the question of war.
 
 HOW WE WENT INTO THE WAR 83 
 
 On the 2d of April, the very day of the Presi- 
 dent's message, the war declaration passed the 
 Senate with a vote of 82 yeas and 6 nays. On 
 the 5th of April, it passed the House of Rep- 
 resentatives with a vote of 373 yeas and 70 
 nays. America had spoken, and the voice of 
 America thundered this message to Germany: 
 
 "Whereas the Imperial German Govern- 
 ment has committed repeated acts of war against 
 the Government and the people of the United 
 States of America: Therefore be it 
 
 "Resolved by the Senate and House of Repre- 
 sentatives of the United States of America in Con- 
 gress assembled, That the state of war between 
 the United States and the Imperial German 
 Government which has thus been thrust upon 
 the United States is hereby formally declared; 
 and that the President be, and he is hereby, 
 authorized and directed to employ the entire 
 naval and military forces of the United States 
 and the resources of the Government to carry 
 on war against the Imperial German Govern- 
 ment; and to bring the conflict to a successful
 
 84 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 termination all the resources of the country 
 are hereby pledged by the Congress of the 
 United States." 
 
 The United States of America had gone 
 into its greatest war.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WHAT THE UNITED STATES IS DOING IN 
 THE WAR 
 
 WHEN a military nation of the type of Ger- 
 many goes into war the entrance is but a step 
 forward out of the preparations which it has 
 been making for years; but when a peace- 
 loving, peace-observing nation of the type of 
 the United States goes into war the entrance 
 is a revolution in the thoughts, habits, and in- 
 tentions of the people. 
 
 The declaration by Congress of the existence 
 of a state of war with Germany found the United 
 States with the greatest resources of any nation 
 in the world but without the sort of military 
 machinery necessary for prosecution of the 
 conflict. The readjustment of the nation from 
 ordinary occupations into war-making occu- 
 pations has been a gigantic task, and one that 
 has been accomplished only through the in- 
 
 85
 
 86 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 telligent patriotism of the citizens of the na- 
 tion, co-operating with the government. 
 
 The first concern of the nation was the in- 
 crease of our army and navy to a size commen- 
 surate to the part we were about to take in the 
 conflict. Neither the army nor the navy came 
 near to the strength which the nation knew to 
 be imperative for the winning of the war. For, 
 although the exact part which the United States 
 would take in the struggle was to be determined 
 later by conferences with the war councils of 
 the other nations fighting Germany, it was 
 certain that we would require a vast army and 
 an adequate navy. 
 
 Congress having voted that the United 
 States should undertake extensive military 
 preparation, the duty of providing that prep- 
 aration fell upon the executive branch of our 
 government. It was provided that the army 
 of the United States should consist of the Reg- 
 ular Army, the National Guard, and the 
 National Army. The law provides that, when 
 these armies are assembled, there shall be no
 
 THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 87 
 
 difference between the Regular Army, the Na- 
 tional Guard, and the National Army. Every 
 man in the army, no matter in what service, 
 is equal in dignity, in responsibility, and in 
 opportunity to every other man of the same 
 rank in the army. 
 
 The first year of the conflict has been largely 
 occupied with the assembling of these armies, 
 and in the despatch of those trained for battle 
 duty to France. To insure this despatch in 
 safety the navy has been greatly increased in 
 size and efficiency, although it stands to the 
 honor of America that her navy proved itself 
 instantly worthy of her trust. 
 
 With the beginning of the war there was a 
 rush of men to enlist in the Regular Army and 
 in the National Guard, which was to be part 
 of the army of the United States. The govern- 
 ment, however, decided upon a method of ser- 
 vice, known as selective service and sometimes 
 called "the draft," which would be more dem- 
 ocratic and fair than the enlistment method, and 
 which would supplement the other methods.
 
 88 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 The selective-service law, passed by Congress 
 on the 18th of May, 1917, established a class of 
 men between the ages of twenty -one and thirty- 
 one from which the President may draft soldiers. 
 All men between those ages were enrolled on the 
 5th of June, 1917. The administration of the 
 draft is in the hands of the War Department 
 under the supervision of the President. Every 
 voting district has a local draft board, and every 
 congressional district a board of appeal, which 
 decides contested cases. All men between the 
 ages given are subject to service, unless they are 
 exempted for reasons allowed by law. No ex- 
 emptions can be bought. No substitutions can 
 be made. The richest man in the country of 
 draft age is as subject to service as the poorest 
 man. Exemptions are permitted those men who 
 are supporting dependants who cannot support 
 themselves, those men who are working in occu- 
 pations necessary . for the winning of the war, 
 such as ship-building and the making of muni- 
 tions of war, and those men who are physically 
 unfit for war service.
 
 THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 89 
 
 In the registration 9,659,382 men enrolled. 
 By a drawing system conducted publicly in 
 the Capitol of the United States at Washington 
 the order by which these men were to go in 
 the army was determined by lot. The Presi- 
 dent issued instructions to the exemption boards 
 on the 2d of July, and the first National Army 
 of 687,000 men was called to service on the 5th 
 of September, 1917. 
 
 Following this call every man in the rest 
 of the nearly 10,000,000 men received a docu- 
 ment, known as a questionnaire, which gave a 
 number of questions to be answered, and which 
 he filled out. According to his answers the local 
 board determined to what class he belongs. 
 There are five groups of selective service, ranged 
 according to a man's obligations and his occupa- 
 tion. Single men without dependent relatives 
 head the first class. Licensed pilots, who are 
 so necessary to navigation as to be almost in- 
 dispensable, end the last class. No fairer system 
 of military service was ever devised. 
 
 For the training of this army arrangements
 
 90 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 had to be made. The government set about 
 the building of camps, called cantonments, for 
 the use of the National Guard and the National 
 Army while their various units were being pre- 
 pared for service abroad. Most of these camps 
 are in the South so that the men may have less 
 hardship during the winter season. Some of 
 the camps were completed in September, 1917. 
 The construction of every camp was a great 
 engineering achievement. Camp Meade is the 
 second largest city of Maryland, and every 
 camp is in itself a great community. There arc 
 thirty-three of these camps, or cantonments, 
 extending from Atlantic to Pacific and from 
 the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border in 
 their locations. Here the men are trained into 
 service, and cared for in various ways while 
 they are being trained. 
 
 Training-camps for officers were also estab- 
 lished where men were taught the science of 
 warfare and the leading of other men. In ad- 
 dition to the army, training-camps for the United 
 States marines, who are in the naval service,
 
 aS 
 
 z 

 
 THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 91 
 
 were established. Special branches of service, 
 such as aviation, had special camps. 
 
 On the fourth day of July, 1917, the news 
 came to the United States that the first divi- 
 sion of the American Expeditionary Forces, 
 under the command of General John Pershing, 
 had landed in France. American troops began 
 intensive training with French and British 
 soldiers, and when they were judged ready, 
 took their places on the battle-lines. Day after 
 day the casualty lists have recorded the deaths 
 and injuries of American soldiers in the war. 
 Our country is paying the price for the liberty we 
 have enjoyed, and which we struggle to hold. 
 
 Every day sees new divisions sailing east- 
 ward on their way to Europe. The shipyards 
 of the country are busy night and day in the 
 building of ships to convoy troops and supplies 
 to the battle-fronts, and to the countries of the 
 peoples who fight with us against Germany. 
 
 For upon the United States has fallen the 
 task, not only of supplying men for fighting with 
 the men of France and Great Britain on -the
 
 92 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 western front, but of supplying food, clothing, 
 and ammunition. Depleted by the years of dev- 
 astating warfare, our fellow fighters look to us 
 for sustenance. And we are not failing them. 
 One of the sinews of war is money. Nations 
 must raise vast sums to keep up armies. Sol- 
 diers must be fed and clothed, and given guns 
 and bullets with which to defend themselves. 
 If they have families at home, their families 
 must be supported. The government of the 
 United States does all this for the men in its 
 army and navy. And the people of the United 
 States stand back of the government to pay 
 for these needs. Besides the government, cer- 
 tain private enterprises are aiding the soldiers, 
 sailors, and all the victims of war abroad, as 
 well as those needing aid at home for various 
 reasons connected with the change that war 
 brings. Only a certain percentage of our pop- 
 ulation may go overseas to fight, but to every 
 American is given the opportunity of standing 
 back of the lines and doing the part asked of 
 him.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 
 
 BACK of the firing-lines of battle are other 
 lines which must be held by the fighting na- 
 tions, if a war is to be won. These lines, which 
 may be called the rear-line trenches of conflict, 
 are the means of supply by which the armies 
 at the front are fed and clothed, and given am- 
 munition, and cared for in every way that will 
 make them better soldiers. It is on these lines 
 that the civilian population of a nation gives 
 help to the fighting men. It is in these trenches 
 that the men, and women, and children of a 
 country may do their part for the soldiers and 
 sailors who have to go into the actual battles. 
 
 Because the United States is a democracy, 
 fighting in a great struggle for the principles 
 of democracy, it follows that our country has 
 enlisted the service of every American to win 
 the war. There is no one in the nation who 
 
 93
 
 94 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 may not help, since every one may do some- 
 thing to give actual, immediate, necessary aid 
 to the men at the front, and those who are on 
 their way to the front. 
 
 This aid has been given, and is being given, 
 in many ways. Through food conservation, 
 Liberty Loans, War Thrift and Savings Stamps 
 and Certificates, the Red Cross, the Young 
 Men's Christian Association, the Young Men's 
 Hebrew Association, the Knights of Columbus, 
 the Young Women's Christian Association, and 
 various other organizations which are working 
 for the welfare of the soldiers, sailors, and ma- 
 rines, almost every person in the United States 
 old enough to understand that the country is 
 at war has helped toward the winning of the 
 war. 
 
 Some of these methods, such as food con- 
 servation, and the raising of money through 
 Liberty Loans and the sale of W T ar Thrift 
 Stamps, have been used directly by the govern- 
 ment. Others have been semi-private enter- 
 prises with governmental sanction. All of them
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 95 
 
 have been for the purpose of helping the men 
 who have been doing the actual fighting, so 
 that every one in the nation who has done what 
 he could for these causes has been fighting his 
 country's battles in the trenches back of the 
 front. 
 
 FOOD CONSERVATION 
 
 Napoleon, the one-time Emperor of the 
 French and the greatest general of modern war- 
 fare, said that "an army travelled on its stom- 
 ach." He meant that no army could go faster 
 than its food-supply. Although the method of 
 warfare has changed since the century ago when 
 he fought, the truth of his statement remains. 
 No army can win battles unless it is properly fed. 
 
 When the United States went into the great 
 war the government of our country knew that 
 a vast amount of certain kinds of food must 
 be shipped abroad to feed those soldiers whom 
 we would send across and those soldiers of the 
 nations on whose side we were to fight against 
 Germany. France and Belgium, devastated by
 
 96 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 the invading armies of the Germans, could 
 not raise food enough for their own popula- 
 tions, to say nothing of the defending armies. 
 England, with her men fighting abroad, and 
 with only a comparatively small area of farm- 
 ing land, could not do much more. Canada 
 was sending millions of bushels of wheat and 
 thousands of tons of other food-supplies monthly 
 to the Allies, but the need was infinitely greater 
 than the supply. It therefore became the first 
 duty of our country to send to those nations 
 which were fighting in the same cause all the 
 food which we could possibly spare, in order 
 that their soldiers, and our soldiers when they 
 came, would be properly fed. 
 
 Although the United States produces great 
 quantities of food products every year, only 
 certain kinds of food could be sent abroad. 
 It was necessary to send the kind of food that 
 would take up the least space in shipment and 
 have the greatest nourishment. The greatest 
 demand was for wheat, and even our country 
 could not without saving at home send to
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 97 
 
 Europe as much as was required. In order 
 that the people of the United States might be 
 taught how to save wheat and other foods needed 
 for our troops and the Allies, the government 
 established a food administration for the double 
 purpose of taking over this instruction and of 
 devising other methods of food saving. The 
 success of both branches of service has been 
 due to the intelligent co-operation of the Amer- 
 ican people with the officers of the food ad- 
 ministration; but it has been in the actual 
 savings by individual Americans that the sum 
 of sacrifice has been attained. 
 
 It may not seem a soldier's duty to refrain 
 from eating white bread on certain days desig- 
 nated by the government. It may not seem 
 a patriot's duty to keep from eating sugar or 
 pork on other days; but it is none the less a 
 duty as certain as that one which his command- 
 ing officer assigns to the soldier in the ranks, 
 and one which should be as carefully followed. 
 The following of it has enabled the United States 
 to ship abroad wheat, pork, sugar, and other
 
 98 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 foodstuff in quantities sufficient to keep fed the 
 people who are actually fighting the enemy. 
 The man, woman, or child who has saved at 
 home the kind of food that the government 
 has needed to send abroad, and who has used 
 the substitutes, has done a patriotic duty and 
 his share of keeping the rear-line trench where 
 he is placed. 
 
 FUEL CONSERVATION 
 
 Coal is one of the essential means of making 
 war. Without coal ships cannot cross the seas, 
 bearing soldiers. Without coal the great fac- 
 tories where guns and bullets, powder and 
 cannon, uniforms and equipment are made 
 for our army and navy could not run. Because 
 of many reasons there was during 1917 a short- 
 age of 50,000,000 tons of coal. The govern- 
 ment therefore appointed a fuel administrator 
 for the purpose of finding ways to make up 
 this shortage so that ships would not be de- 
 layed nor factories stopped where munitions 
 for our soldiers and sailors were being made.
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 99 
 
 The fuel administrator ordered the shutting 
 down of the use of electric lights where these 
 were not absolutely needed, and also, when the 
 shortage was most acute, the shutting down 
 of all factories not employed in munitions- 
 making for a certain period of time. This was 
 why there were so-called "lightless" nights and 
 "coalless" days. The people were also asked 
 to save fuel in their homes as much as possible. 
 The result was a saving of fuel that was used 
 for war purpose directly. 
 
 WAR FINANCE 
 
 In the old days, when Kings hired men of 
 other nations to help their own armies fight 
 their wars, it used to be said that the victory 
 went to that side which had the most money. 
 Some wars where countries with practically 
 no money fought against rich nations and de- 
 feated them, because of superior valor and 
 courage of their men, proved that it was not 
 money, but men, which won wars. The fact 
 remains, however, that money is absolutely
 
 100 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 necessary for any country to carry a war to 
 success. Soldiers must be fed and clothed, 
 and given guns and bullets and cannon, as 
 well as proper care. All this takes money. 
 
 A government has two ways of raising 
 money. One of these ways, the older way, is 
 by taxation. The government says to the 
 citizen: "You have property worth so much 
 money. We shall require you to give us a cer- 
 tain percentage of that money. You have an 
 income of so many dollars. We shall take from 
 you part of it, according to your wealth." Or 
 the government may put a tax on tea, or coffee, 
 or clothes, or any other article which people 
 use. All this is perfectly right and legal as a 
 means of raising money for the prosecution of 
 a war in which the government must direct the 
 people, to win. 
 
 The other method of raising money by the 
 government is the sale of bonds. Bonds are 
 really promises made by a corporation to pay 
 at a certain stated time, with interest, the 
 amount which the purchaser gives for them.
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 101 
 
 For instance, when a railroad company wants to 
 get money enough to make some necessary im- 
 provements, it issues bonds at a certain rate of 
 interest, payable at a certain time. If the im- 
 provements help the railroad, and the company 
 makes money by having done this, the person 
 who buys the bond usually finds that his pur- 
 chase has increased in value because of the cer- 
 tainty of the interest payments. It is this 
 certainty of payment, both principal and inter- 
 est, which has always made United States 
 bonds such good investments. It is not hard 
 for a man who has good property to secure a 
 mortgage upon it. 
 
 The United States is the richest country 
 in the world. The government of the United 
 States has at its command the greatest re- 
 sources of any nation. Therefore, the govern- 
 ment could raise more money than any other 
 agency. 
 
 When the war came to our country, the 
 government had the choice of raising money 
 by taxation or by the sale of bonds. In order
 
 102 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 to make the task as easy on the people as pos- 
 sible the government, through its officers, de- 
 cided to combine the systems. Through the 
 Internal Revenue Bureau of the Treasury of 
 the United States the government set about 
 the collection of taxes imposed by Congress, 
 and designed to raise money for the winning 
 of the war. And the secretary of the treasury 
 announced the opening of the first Liberty 
 Loan. 
 
 The Liberty Loans are really bond sales. 
 Through them the government sells to the 
 people bonds, which are promises to pay the 
 money which the government borrows. These 
 bonds are promises to pay the purchasers at 
 the end of a certain number of years the 
 amount which they pay for them. In the 
 meantime they pay semi-annual interest. These 
 bonds are investments. Buying them is not 
 making a gift to the government. It is, rather, 
 letting the government make a gift to you. 
 
 In order to have money enough to purchase 
 bonds, however, hundreds of thousands of people
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 103 
 
 have had to make sacrifices during the course 
 of the Liberty Loans; and it is only when they 
 have made sacrifice, when they have given up 
 clothes they wanted, or vacations they thought 
 they needed, or pleasure they would have sought, 
 that they are really doing something for the 
 country. But so many millions of men and 
 women and children have bought Liberty Bonds 
 and are continuing to buy Liberty Bonds that 
 their purchase has become one of the great pa- 
 triotic movements of our country in this war. 
 
 In the War of the Revolution, Robert Morris, 
 of Philadelphia, loaned money to General Wash- 
 ington's army. History has made famous his 
 name because he had faith enough in his coun- 
 try and love enough for his country to loan 
 money to her in the hour of her need. In this 
 great war every man, every woman, every boy, 
 every girl in the United States has the oppor- 
 tunity of becoming a Robert Morris. 
 
 For, although the lowest denomination of 
 a Liberty Bond is fifty dollars, the government 
 has devised a method by which every one who
 
 104 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 has any money at all can help in the war. The 
 treasury has issued War Thrift Stamps and 
 War Savings Certificates so that any one who 
 has money at all no matter how little may 
 do his share. The stamps may be bought al- 
 most everywhere for twenty-five cents. In 
 January, 1918, a certificate cost $4.12. In 
 every month which followed it cost one cent 
 more. But it will bring back to the holder of 
 it in 1923 five dollars. The stamps may be 
 exchanged for certificates, as soon as the saver 
 has enough of them, with the odd amount added, 
 to make the purchase. 
 
 Since every one in the nation who has twenty- 
 five cents may buy a Thrift Stamp, it is almost 
 certain that every one in the United States 
 can help the government win the war by making 
 the purchase. And it is by the individual efforts 
 that the money will be raised, and the war won. 
 
 THE RED CROSS 
 
 From an auxiliary branch of a great or- 
 ganization the American Red Cross has become
 
 3 5 * 
 
 si
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 105 
 
 one of the great agencies of the war. Before 
 the United States entered the conflict, the Amer- 
 ican Red Cross had been the great relief agency 
 among the peoples of the stricken districts of 
 western Europe. Food, clothing, a new chance 
 at life had been given the stricken. Back of 
 the battle-fields the soldiers, wounded in the 
 struggles, were cared for. Even in Germany 
 the American Red Cross had made easier the 
 lot of the prisoners of war. With our entrance 
 into the war the organization became one of 
 the great factors in our country's means of 
 caring for the welfare of our fighters. 
 
 The American Red Cross, of which the Presi- 
 dent of the United States is honorary chairman, 
 is the means through which volunteer aid is 
 given to the sick and wounded men of the army 
 and navy, to sufferers in the war zones, and 
 to the families of men in the service. 
 
 There are two classes of Red Cross service, 
 civilian and military. The civilian relief in- 
 cludes the care and education of destitute chil- 
 dren in the war zone, the care of mutilated sol-
 
 106 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 diers, the care of sick and wounded soldiers, 
 the relief of the devastated districts of France 
 and Belgium, aid for prisoners of war and 
 civilians sent back from bondage in Germany 
 to France and Belgium, and the prevention of 
 tuberculosis. It also includes care for the 
 families of soldiers and sailors beyond the aid 
 given by the government. Military relief es- 
 tablishes and maintains hospitals for sick and 
 wounded soldiers in the American army in 
 France, and canteens, rest-houses, recreation- 
 huts for American soldiers and also for the 
 soldiers of the other nations at war with Ger- 
 many. 
 
 In the equipment of the hospitals and in 
 the other relief work done by the Red Cross 
 a very great number of special articles, such 
 as bandages, garments, and other articles re- 
 quiring skill in the making were needed. Al- 
 most every woman and child in the United 
 States has been at work since the beginning 
 of the war in making something for the Red 
 Cross, so that this semi -governmental activity
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 107 
 
 has become one of the most wide-spread forces 
 in providing comforts and necessaries for our 
 army and navy, as well as for the relief of con- 
 ditions in the war zone. 
 
 WELFARE WORK 
 
 Both in the camps at home and in the 
 trenches abroad the soldier needs something be- 
 sides the routine life provided for him by the 
 government. In order to give him recreation 
 and pleasures, so that his life may be normal 
 even when he is away from home, several or- 
 ganizations have .been at work since the be- 
 ginning of the war. The Commission on Train- 
 ing-Camp Activities, the Young Men's Christian 
 Association, with its attendant Young Men's 
 Hebrew Association, the Knights of Columbus, 
 and the Jewish Welfare Board have been among 
 the many who have been working to make the 
 fighting men happier. These organizations have 
 built rest-houses and recreation-huts for the 
 men. They have given entertainments for 
 them. They have supplied them with comforts,
 
 108 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 and have kept up a high morality among them. 
 The United Service Clubs have also been busy 
 in providing good lodgings for soldiers and 
 sailors when they have been out of the camps on 
 leave. The Young Women's Christian Associa- 
 tion has also done splendid work both for the 
 men in the camps and for their visiting relatives. 
 In addition to the large organizations smaller 
 ones are busy all over the country in aiding the 
 soldiers. Almost every town has some group 
 of people who are giving service to the men in 
 the camps. In every city and town through 
 which the troop-trains have passed on their 
 way from the camps to the harbors where the 
 soldiers would be placed on board the trans- 
 ports, women have fixed food for the men, and 
 children have aided them in carrying this food 
 to the stations. Large sums have been raised 
 to carry on the recreation service in the camps, 
 both here and in France, and the response of 
 the American people to any request for the 
 soldiers and sailors has been speedy and in- 
 spiring.
 
 REAR-LINE TRENCHES 109 
 
 The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts of the 
 United States have been noteworthy in their 
 work for our country. Three hundred and 
 twenty thousand Boy Scouts aided in the work 
 of selling the bonds of the Third Liberty Loan 
 and of the sale of War Thrift Stamps. The Girl 
 Scouts have done all sorts of clerical and special 
 work for the same cause, as well as for various 
 others. The children of every public school 
 and almost every private school in the United 
 States have worked in some cause or another 
 for the winning of the war. With the men and 
 women of the country they have earned their 
 place on the patriots' roll.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 
 
 ENTERING the great war after it had al- 
 ready waged for nearly three years, the United 
 States learned many of the lessons that experi- 
 ence had taught to the Allies, and outlined a 
 programme that was designed to promote speed 
 and efficiency. Every programme that is de- 
 pendent upon human action is, of course, im- 
 perfect; but the programme of our country in 
 this war has, at least, given to the citizens of 
 our land opportunity for service in the prosecu- 
 tion of the war. No man, woman, or child in 
 the nation need be idle or useless. He has the 
 chance now of helping his country as he has 
 had in no other time in her history. 
 
 Why should the American help America? 
 
 There is, to begin with, in the soul of every 
 human being a love of country that should 
 
 come next to a love of God. Love of country 
 
 no
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 111 
 
 is not only next to love of God, but is part of 
 genuine love of God. No man who loves his 
 God sincerely fails to love his country. Even 
 those countries which have not been kind or 
 just, or fair to their peoples, countries where 
 men are not given the chance for freedom or 
 opportunity, have their patriots. But the 
 United States of America, more than any other 
 country in the world, has given to her people 
 liberty, justice, opportunity, freedom. It is, 
 therefore, the grateful duty of every American 
 to do what he can to keep his country what 
 she has been. 
 
 For those men who are in the army or navy 
 the duty is clear. They are making the supreme 
 sacrifice in standing ready to give their lives in 
 the defense of our nation. For those who stay 
 at home the path may not be as plain, but it 
 is there, and no one should fail to find it and 
 travel upon it, for it is the road of patriotism, 
 and patriotism is a divine duty. 
 
 The United States, as we have seen, entered 
 the war to uphold those principles of right which
 
 112 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 all great Americans, from Washington and 
 Patrick Henry to Abraham Lincoln, have cher- 
 ished. For freedom of the seas, for the safe- 
 keeping of the Monroe Doctrine, for the right 
 of arbitration in international disputes, for the 
 right of small nations to govern themselves, for 
 the preservation of those free institutions of 
 democracy which the autocracy of Germany 
 strives to conquer, our nation took up the 
 burden of conflict. While it is the first war in 
 which we have sent our troops to foreign soil, 
 it is a war in keeping with the basic principles 
 of our nationality. It is being fought for the 
 same freedom for which the thirteen Colonies 
 fought in the War of the Revolution. It is 
 being fought for the same maritime right for 
 which the War of 1812 was fought. Both these 
 struggles were, it is true, against England, who 
 is now our cobelligerent in the war against Ger- 
 many. By our winning of those wars the 
 United States helped the people of England to 
 see that light for which they are now sacrificing 
 everything. There were men in England, even
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 113 
 
 in the times of the War of the Revolution and 
 in the War of 1812, who believed America right, 
 and who proclaimed their belief in the halls of 
 Westminster. Their courage and our success 
 set beacons on the hills of history for the light- 
 ing of those who followed. The same spirit that 
 inspired our nation in its beginnings is the spirit 
 that inspires not only ourselves but those against 
 whom we fought until they, too, are fighting 
 for it now on the fields of Flanders and France. 
 
 It is a war which is being fought for the 
 same basic principles on which the War of the 
 States was fought in the sixties of the last cen- 
 tury. For while the North fought for the free- 
 dom of the slave, the South fought, not for his 
 continuation in bondage, but for the rights of 
 the separate States. Both issues were funda- 
 mentally right. The greater for the freedom 
 of the individual is greater than the constitu- 
 tional right of a State triumphed. But the 
 spirit of both is American, and part of our reason 
 for entering this war. 
 
 Since it is a war in keeping with American
 
 114 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 traditions, it is the part of the American, in 
 service or out of it, to keep up the standard of 
 our country in it. 
 
 How shall he do it ? 
 
 Every man sees his own duty clearest. But 
 there are certain lines of life in which this duty 
 is so clear that it is easy to mark. One of these 
 lines is that of the American of foreign birth 
 or parentage, now a citizen of the United States. 
 Another is that of the families of officers and 
 soldiers. A third is that of the industrial workers 
 of the country. The men, women, and children 
 in any one of these zones have definite standards 
 to uphold. If they fail to do so, they are not 
 less traitorous than the sentry who falls asleep 
 at his post and lets the enemy in. 
 
 The American of foreign birth or parentage 
 is a citizen of this country because he or his 
 parents saw that America offered an oppor- 
 tunity which could not be secured in the old 
 country. He is the recipient of favors of free- 
 dom, liberty, and such wealth as he did not 
 before enjoy. His allegiance is doubly owed.
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 115 
 
 It is therefore his part to do everything in his 
 power to prove his gratitude. It is his part to 
 combat all disloyalty, to uproot all treason, to 
 stand firm for American principles at home and 
 abroad, to proclaim by word and deed his loyalty 
 to our country. 
 
 Because this is a war for democracy it is 
 the part of every American to maintain that 
 democracy at home and in deed as well as abroad 
 and in word. Military organizations have a 
 tendency to create distinctions, unless the peo- 
 ple of the country keep close watch on them- 
 selves. Military discipline must be maintained, 
 but any line drawn between officer and private 
 must end with discipline and not be carried 
 into private life. The private in the ranks is 
 as great an American, if he does his duty, as 
 the general in command; and no one knows it 
 better than the general. It is not in the army 
 or navy, but in the civilian families of soldiers 
 and sailors, that the danger lies. Therefore, 
 it is the part of every member of these to bear 
 in mind constantly and continuously that every
 
 116 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 man in the service is equal; that the commis- 
 sioned officer is giving no more than the man 
 in the ranks; and that both are giving up every- 
 thing else in life for the one thing of paramount 
 importance, the winning of the war. "No snob- 
 bery " is as good and as great an American watch- 
 word as "Give me liberty, or give me death." 
 For snobbery is the death of liberty as surely 
 as the will of a tyrant. The "Junker" class 
 of Prussia is the officer class who look down 
 upon all others, and who have come to believe 
 the world to have been made for their rule. 
 We are fighting "Junkerism" in Europe. It 
 is the American's part to fight the slightest 
 trace of it at home. 
 
 Every war has its home heroes as well as 
 its field heroes. Since this war is, more than 
 any other, a war of resources, it follows that 
 the part of labor is more important than it has 
 been in any previous war. If the working men 
 and women of any one of the great warring 
 nations should refuse to continue at work, that 
 nation would be defeated as surely as if the
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 117 
 
 armies had laid down their arms in the field. 
 American victory is as dependent upon Amer- 
 ican labor as it is upon American manhood. 
 And it is with pride that it may be said that 
 American labor has been found worthy of all 
 American traditions. 
 
 The United States has been pre-eminently 
 the nation of the working man. Its legislation 
 has continuously tended toward the better- 
 ment of his condition. Nowhere else in the 
 world has he enjoyed the lot that has been his 
 in America. Nowhere else has he the voice, 
 the power, the future that our nation accords 
 him. And upon him in this war has fallen the 
 duty of speeding up the war production of the 
 country, a task so important that those men 
 of draft age engaged in such occupations have 
 been exempted from military service in order 
 that they may continue at their work. For 
 the making of munitions is as necessary as the 
 firing of guns. 
 
 It has become the duty of American labor to 
 keep at the allotted tasks. No one must shirk.
 
 118 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 No one must fail. No one must delay. No 
 matter how trivial the task may seem in the 
 sum of the war work, it may be the one whose 
 lack of doing may be the breach in the wall 
 through which the enemy may enter. 
 
 "For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost. 
 For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost. 
 For the want of a horse, the rider was lost. 
 For the want of the rider, the message was lost. 
 For the want of the message, the battle was lost. 
 For the loss of the battle, the kingdom was lost. 
 All for the want of the nail of a shoe." 
 
 And the maker of the horseshoe was one of 
 the factors of his country's defeat ! 
 
 The civilian's part in this war has been out- 
 lined by the President of the United States in 
 his proclamation of the 16th of April, 1917: 
 
 'These, then, are the things we must do 
 and do well besides fighting the things with- 
 out which mere fighting would be fruitless; 
 we must supply abundant food for ourselves, 
 our armies, and our seamen, not only, but also 
 for a large part of the nations with whom we 
 have common cause, in whose support and by
 
 5 ~ 
 
 Jl f
 
 THE AMERICAN'S PART 119 
 
 whose side we are fighting. We must supply 
 ships by the hundreds out of our shipyards to 
 carry to the other side of the sea, submarines 
 or no submarines, what will every day be needed 
 there, and abundant materials out of our fields 
 and our mines and our factories with which 
 not only to cloak and equip our own forces on 
 land and sea, but also to clothe and support 
 our people for whom the gallant fellows under 
 arms can no longer work; to help clothe and 
 equip the armies with which we are co-operat- 
 ing in Europe and to keep the looms and manu- 
 factories there in raw materials; coal to keep 
 the fires going in the ships at sea and in the 
 furnaces of hundreds of factories across the 
 sea; steel out of which to make arms and am- 
 munition both here and there; rails for worn- 
 out railways back of the fighting fronts; loco- 
 motives and rolling-stock to take the places of 
 those every day going to pieces; mules, horses, 
 cattle, for labor and for military service; every- 
 thing with which the people in England, France, 
 Italy, and Russia have normally supplied them-
 
 120 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 selves, but cannot now afford the men, the 
 materials, or the machinery to make." 
 
 America is the factory of the world. The 
 American who stays at home is the worker in 
 the factory, and it is his part to do his work 
 so well that the man who fights overseas for 
 the same cause may hold his hand in the essen- 
 tial brotherhood of equal service.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE UNITED STATES AND INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 
 
 IN the soul of every human being, no matter 
 how clogged it be by traditions, lives the desire 
 for freedom. It is this desire, this spark of 
 fire, which has peopled the continent of America. 
 For, long before the colonies revolted and estab- 
 lished a republic the great territory which has 
 become the United States beckoned to the 
 peoples of the Old World a welcome to a land 
 which would give them opportunity for the 
 freedom they sought. The whole history of 
 the American colonies is a history of the search 
 of mankind for- individual freedom in which to 
 work out his ideals without governmental in- 
 terference. Political refugees, religious refugees 
 dared the dangers of the ocean to come to the 
 new land that they might live and worship as 
 their souls urged them. 
 
 The settlement of Massachusetts was made 
 121
 
 122 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 by the Puritans of England who were seeking 
 a refuge from the oppression they had suffered 
 in England on account of their religious beliefs 
 and practices. They braved the stormy northern 
 Atlantic to come to the wilderness. They braved 
 the Indians to stay. They established their 
 homes, their schools, their meeting-houses, their 
 government, and dwelt according to the dic- 
 tates of their consciences in that freedom which 
 they had desired. 
 
 No less for freedom did William Penn and 
 his colony of Quakers come to the western hemi- 
 sphere. They sought a place where they would 
 be given a chance to worship God according 
 to their belief. A peaceful sect, they sought 
 peace, and they brought into the new country 
 standards of living that set their impress upon 
 the infant nation. Liberal to others as they 
 desired liberality for themselves, they were 
 destined to sow seeds of thought that were to 
 be harvested in the effects of the Constitution 
 of the republic, when it was formulated. 
 
 The Huguenots in the Carolinas, fleeing relig-
 
 INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 123 
 
 ious persecution, found haven. Lord Baltimore 
 established the Maryland colony of English 
 Catholics who could not practise their religion 
 in the old country. And where the motive 
 for the establishment of the colony was not in 
 itself purely a question of finding a place of 
 religious freedom, the interrelationship of the 
 colonies became so close that in time the spirit 
 of religious freedom became warp of the fabric 
 of the country that was to be the American 
 nation. 
 
 Political freedom was promoted, in the be- 
 ginning, by the distance of the colonies from 
 Europe. France, Spain, and England were 
 too far away, and ocean travel too hazardous, 
 to make the bond between the mother coun- 
 tries and the colonies tight. Men and women 
 who had been venturesome enough to cross 
 the seas were not of the sort who would be held 
 for long by mere traditions of allegiance to 
 old lands. Little by little the people of the 
 colonies gained larger measures of political 
 freedom until the time arrived when the un-
 
 124 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 just tax imposed by England aroused them 
 to revolt. The Boston Tea Party expressed 
 the spirit of 'America. The Declaration of 
 Independence voiced America's aspiration and 
 America's intention. The War of the Revolu- 
 tion settled the right of Americans to their own 
 government. The Constitution of the United 
 States guaranteed to Americans their rights to 
 the enjoyment of that freedom which had been 
 the mainspring of the foundation of the nation. 
 Gradually the fact that this was a country 
 where men could have a share in the govern- 
 ment, could speak their minds, could worship 
 God in their own way, could work out their 
 ideals and ambitions without governmental 
 interference as long as these in no way con- 
 flicted with the interests of law and order, went 
 over the earth. It found its way into those 
 countries of Europe where men were eager for 
 its coming. The English, after the War of 1812, 
 when the United States definitely established 
 our standing as a nation, were among the first 
 to come as settlers. And from other western
 
 INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 125 
 
 countries of Europe came other settlers, led 
 by the knowledge that here could they enjoy 
 individual freedom. 
 
 To America, as to the Promised Land, flocked 
 the Irish. Restless under the English yoke, 
 denied economic, political, religious, and edu- 
 cational liberty by a government of an alien 
 neighbor, the Irish people turned westward. 
 The famine and the political revolution of 1848 
 sent them out from Ireland by the tens of thou- 
 sands. To our land they brought a passionate 
 yearning for freedom and a passionate gratitude 
 to the country which opened it to them; and 
 because they were, as a people, gifted with the 
 power of expressing their emotions, they spread 
 the fame of the United States broadcast over 
 the world as a haven for those who sought lib- 
 erty. 
 
 After them came the Germans, led by the 
 political refugees of that country who had in- 
 curred the enmity of Prussia in the Revolution 
 of 1848, which had striven to bring some measure 
 of freedom to the German people. Denied it at
 
 126 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 home, hundreds of thousands of Germans came 
 to America to find liberty in their individual 
 lives, to find opportunity. It is these Germans 
 and their descendants who, understanding what 
 the Prussian yoke means, have become among 
 the best of our American citizens. Knowing 
 what they escaped, they know what America 
 fights against now. 
 
 The third great movement of a people to 
 the United States has been the westward coming 
 of the Jews. In this country, as in no other, 
 they possessed full religious freedom, and to this 
 country they have flocked from every land of 
 Europe where they had huddled, unwelcome, for 
 centuries. Here they have found no opposition 
 to their faith. Here they have had full chance 
 to worship as they would. For the first time 
 in thousands of years the Jew could build his 
 temple unhindered. For the first time since 
 the Roman had gone into Palestine the Jew 
 was a citizen of the land in which he dwelt. 
 
 Then came the peoples of eastern Europe, 
 peoples of the vast empire that is called Austria-
 
 INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 127 
 
 Hungary for lack of a better name. Ruled by 
 a man not of their race, a man of one of the 
 oldest, most corrupt, and autocratic of the reign- 
 ing families of Europe, they were struggling 
 upward toward freedom when the growing com- 
 mercial dominion of the United States took the 
 word to them of our nation's beacon. To us 
 they have literally surged. Among us they 
 have found the freedom denied their peoples 
 at home. 
 
 Another people sought the United States 
 to attain freedom. The Poles, oppressed on 
 one side by Germany, on another by Austria, 
 and on the third by the autocratic government 
 of Russia under the Czars, heard the tale of 
 the land of liberty, and set out for our shores 
 in great hordes. So many have they come that 
 Chicago is the second largest Polish city in the 
 world, having almost as many Poles as Warsaw; 
 and Milwaukee, Buffalo, and other American 
 cities attest the surging of the Pole toward a 
 land of liberty. 
 
 In fact, there has been no country in Eu-
 
 128 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 rope where people were dissatisfied with their 
 government that has not sent its people to the 
 United States. That France has sent the least 
 number in proportion to her population has 
 been due largely to the fact that the people of 
 France had worked out for themselves a genuine 
 democracy that satisfied the souls of her sons 
 and daughters. 
 
 Through the hundred and forty-one years 
 that had elapsed between the calling of the 
 Continental Congress and the entrance of the 
 United States into war against Germany this 
 nation had been solidifying that right of indi- 
 vidual freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. 
 The war between North and South had been 
 fought in defense of the right of a human being 
 to freedom as against the right of a State to 
 separate itself from the national government. 
 The latter issue was lost, not because it was 
 wrong, but because it was not as vitally impor- 
 tant in the history of civilization as the former. 
 For that men and women and children should 
 be held in bondage violated the spirit of America;
 
 An immigrant family qualified to enter the United States 
 
 There has been no country in Europe where people were dissatisfied with their government 
 that has not sent its people to the United States
 
 INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM 129 
 
 and the bondage had to be broken. "No gov- 
 ernment," as Abraham Lincoln said, "can exist 
 half-slave and half -free." 
 
 Some one has called America the melting- 
 pot of the nations. If it is, the fire that fuses 
 the nationalities which have come to our land 
 has been the fire of freedom. 
 
 That is why America's entrance into the 
 world war is so much more vitally significant 
 than a mere attack in defense of certain viola- 
 tions of international law. It is a defense of 
 the principle of individual freedom. Were 
 the United States not to oppose a force that 
 threatened the freedom of the world, we would 
 not be worthy of the trust which the peoples 
 of other lands have reposed in us. The Irish, 
 the Germans, the Jews, the Slavs who came to 
 America would eventually have come in vain. 
 For Germany threatens the liberty of all peoples, 
 if she wins to victory in Europe. Germany 
 stands for all those ideas of government from 
 which these peoples fled. Germany stands for 
 the suppression of the individual as a political
 
 130 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 unit. Germany stands for might. Against all 
 that we have always fought. If we failed to 
 fight now, we would be but deferring the issue. 
 And so to-day the United States sends our sol- 
 diers to France and our sailors out on the seas 
 in defense of that right of mankind which is 
 God's gift, no matter how men have tried to 
 take it from him, the right of the freedom of 
 the individual to live his life as he sees best, 
 according only to the dictates of order, of moral 
 integrity, of justice, and of righteousness.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 
 
 INTERNATIONAL, lasting peace is the third 
 great ideal sought by the Republic of the United 
 States of America, and it is for the enforcement 
 of that kind of peace that the United States 
 is fighting. For, unless such peace is assured 
 by a decisive victory, the menace of German 
 imperialism will so overshadow the world that 
 all civilization will be flung back into one long 
 effort to keep armed to repel the invader. 
 
 Although other nations have struggled 
 toward a standard of international and per- 
 manent peace, the United States was one of 
 the first great nations to put the theory into 
 practice. One of the first instances of this prac- 
 tice came at the close of the war between the 
 States, when the question of the Alabama 
 Claims arose. 
 
 During the war the Confederate States had 
 
 131
 
 132 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 caused to be built in English ports, with the 
 knowledge of the British Government, cruisers 
 to damage Federal commerce on the high seas. 
 The cruiser Alabama was most active of these, 
 and from its prominence gave name to the claim 
 which the United States brought against Great 
 Britain for the offense against international 
 law, particularly since the independence of the 
 Confederate States had not been recognized. 
 Great Britain had paid no attention to Amer- 
 ican remonstrance during the war, but at its 
 close requested settlement of the difficulty. 
 
 The United States was equipped for war, 
 with a victorious army at command, and with 
 a record of two victorious wars over England. 
 It was a chance to launch another, had our 
 nation been inclined toward militarism. In- 
 stead, our country did its part in appointing 
 members of a joint high commission, of five 
 British and five American statesmen, who met 
 in Washington in 1871 and adjusted the dif- 
 ficulty. These commissioners made a treaty, 
 known as the Treaty of Washington, by which
 
 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 133 
 
 it was agreed that the claims of either nation 
 against the other should be submitted to a 
 board of arbitration to be appointed by friendly 
 nations. In 1872 this board met at Geneva, 
 Switzerland, and decided the claims in favor of 
 the United States. Great Britain paid fifteen 
 million five hundred thousand dollars for the 
 damage done by the cruisers built in her ports; 
 but even more important was the precedent 
 established by two great nations. 
 
 Through a period in which the world was 
 singularly free from great wars the peace ideal 
 grew among those countries where the demo- 
 cratic form of government was progressing. 
 The other nations, striving to maintain that 
 elusive standard of political and trade domina- 
 tion known as the balance of power, juggled 
 with the peace idea, but from a different point 
 of view. And it was, strangely enough, the 
 Czar of Russia who proposed the establishment 
 of an international court for the settling of in- 
 ternational disputes. His idea and that of the 
 nations who accepted the plan was to keep
 
 134 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 peace by a settlement of the causes of war, and 
 also to reduce the military and naval armaments 
 of the great Powers. He also brought forward 
 the idea that, if war should come, the conditions 
 of warfare should be made less terrible for the 
 men who were righting. He invited the dele- 
 gates of the nations of the world to a conference 
 at The Hague, in the Netherlands, in May, 
 1899. 
 
 The first conference promoted to all ap- 
 pearances a general good feeling, but did not 
 formulate actual rules. The second, called by 
 the Czar in 1907, at the request of the govern- 
 ment of the United States, and extending from 
 June to October of that year, promulgated 
 certain rules that were regarded until the be- 
 ginning of the war by Germany in 1914 as those 
 which would hold all civilized nations. 
 
 The articles of this conference, known as 
 The Hague Conventions, provided for: 
 
 I. The pacific settling of international dis- 
 putes; 
 
 II. The recovery of debts contracted;
 
 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 135 
 
 III. Rules for the opening of hostilities; 
 
 IV. Laws and customs of war on land; 
 
 V. Rights and duties of neutral states and 
 individuals in warfare on land; 
 
 VI. Treatment of enemy's merchant ships 
 at the opening of hostilities; 
 
 VII. Transformation of merchant ships into 
 war vessels; 
 
 VIII. Placing of submarine mines; 
 
 IX. Bombardment of undefended towns by 
 naval forces; 
 
 X. Adoption of humane standards author- 
 ized by the Geneva Convention to maritime 
 warfare ; 
 
 XI. Restrictions on right of capture in 
 maritime war; 
 
 XII. Establishment of an international 
 prize court; 
 
 XIII. Rights and duties of neutral states 
 in maritime war. 
 
 In addition to the adoption of these thirteen 
 articles, which were designed to keep peace or 
 to make war less terrible, if it came, the con-
 
 136 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 ference established a permanent court of arbi- 
 tration which has had its place at The Hague, 
 and which is known as The Hague Tribunal. 
 This court is really a number of judges from 
 whom some are selected to try cases of inter- 
 national dispute. It is noteworthy that the 
 first case laid before The Hague Tribunal for 
 settlement was the Pius Fund matter between 
 the United States and Mexico. The govern- 
 ment of the United States took the dispute to 
 The Hague, the first time in history when a 
 great nation had appealed to an international 
 court for settlement of a claim against a small 
 nation. 
 
 Since The Hague Conference the United 
 States has concluded about thirty peace treaties 
 with as many nations. They are all modelled 
 on one general idea which is expressed in the 
 opening article of each in this way: 
 
 'The high contracting parties agree that 
 all disputes between them, of every nature 
 whatsoever, shall, when diplomatic methods 
 of adjustment have failed, be referred for in-
 
 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 137 
 
 vestigation and report to a permanent inter- 
 national commission to be constituted" Cby the 
 contracting parties) "... and agree not to de- 
 clare war nor to begin hostilities during such 
 investigation and before the report be sub- 
 mitted." 
 
 Thirty-five nations had accepted this plan 
 "in principle" before Germany flung war upon 
 the world, and thirty treaties had been signed. 
 France, Russia, Great Britain, and Italy had 
 signed the treaties. Germany professed ap- 
 proval of the plan, but avoided all definite ar- 
 rangements, her attitude apparently growing 
 out of her dislike of arbitration. 
 
 This opposition to arbitration on Germany's 
 part was due to the fact that for many years 
 she was actually preparing for war, and be- 
 lieved that her best chance of winning it was 
 in the unpreparedness of the nations against 
 which she intended to wage it. The utterances 
 of her statesmen, philosophers, and editors re- 
 vealed the German official attitude of mind. 
 There can be no doubt but that Germany de-
 
 138 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 sired to keep the world lulled in a false security 
 until she had made ready to strike the blow 
 against world pe&ce. Nothing else explains 
 her refusal to bind herself with the terms that 
 other nations accepted in the hope that wars 
 were becoming things of the past. 
 
 Just before the United States was forced 
 into the breaking off of diplomatic relations 
 with Germany the President of the country- 
 went before the Senate to set forth the prin- 
 ciples which should govern our nation in the 
 making of any peace with which we would as- 
 sociate ourselves. The principles which he set 
 forth were: 
 
 I. An equality of rights between nations, 
 to be based on justice and not on the old prin- 
 ciple of balance of power; 
 
 II. Recognition of the principle that gov- 
 ernments derive their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed; 
 
 III. The right of all great peoples to have 
 a direct outlet to the sea, either by territorial 
 acquisition or by neutralization;
 
 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 139 
 
 IV. The freedom of the seas; 
 
 V. The limitations of armaments on land 
 and sea; 
 
 VI. Refusal to permit any nation to ex- 
 tend its policy over any other nation or people; 
 
 VII. A concert of nations to guarantee 
 peace and the rights of all nations, no entan- 
 gling alliances creating a competition for power, 
 but a league for the enforcement of interna- 
 tional peace. 
 
 "These are American principles, American 
 policies," the President stated. "They are also 
 the principles of forward-looking men and 
 women everywhere, of every modern nation, 
 and of every enlightened community." 
 
 To the very last, until the action of Germany 
 in restricting the freedom of the seas for which 
 the United States had fought and won a war in 
 days when she was ill-prepared for any conflict, 
 our country had stood out for peace. Only 
 when our vital rights were threatened, our vital 
 principles violated, did war come. And, when 
 it came the United States entered into the
 
 140 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 conflict, not in hot passion, but with the high 
 purpose of establishing a real peace that cannot 
 be broken by any one vandal nation. 
 
 The kind of peace which is the ideal of the 
 United States, and the one toward which we 
 are now fighting, is not to be the sort which 
 may be patched up over a council-table for a 
 brief space. There is only one way of curing 
 a cancer of the human body. It must be cut 
 out. And so it is with the world. The only 
 way to cure the world of war is to cut out the 
 cancer of militarism. The only way to cut it 
 out is to defeat the armies of militarism. 
 
 The United States and the Allies are not 
 fighting to impose on Germany and her fellow 
 fighters any particular form of government; 
 but they are fighting to defeat that form of 
 government which has precipitated the war, 
 the so-called Junker policy of the German Em- 
 pire. The Junker, who is a member of the Prus- 
 sian nobility and a man devoted to militarism, 
 has been the instrument of war, forcing it on 
 the world that Germany, which for him means
 
 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 141 
 
 only a certain small class of rulers in Prussia 
 headed by the Kaiser, shall be rich and power- 
 ful over all the earth. It is to end his reign 
 upon earth that hundreds of thousands of men 
 are dying on the fields of France and Flanders. 
 It is to end that policy of Germany which aims 
 to keep men always at war that we are warring. 
 For, if Germany is not totally defeated, every 
 country in the world will have to build up a 
 military machine of the same kind as Germany's 
 in order to be ready to fight her when she makes 
 up her mind to invade their territories; and 
 no one will know when she might do that. The 
 policy of Germany will threaten every democ- 
 racy in the world; for democracies cannot 
 exist while military establishments continue. 
 Nothing but a total, annihilating defeat of 
 Germany in this war will make the world "safe 
 for democracy" and sure for peace. 
 
 When the war is won the United States 
 will, it is sure, insist upon a just peace that 
 will insure these ideals, a peace that will make 
 impossible another such outrage as the inva-
 
 142 MY COUNTRY'S PART 
 
 sion of Belgium, another Lusitania outrage, an- 
 other defiance of all civilized standards, a peace 
 that will remove militarism, make free the seas, 
 and give to the individual that freedom that 
 has made the United States the haven of the 
 whole world.
 
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