Our sufferings in this War are great, but
they are not so great that we cannot recognize virtue in a new recruit
to the cause. No nation, in the whole course of human history, has ever
made a more splendid decision, or performed a more magnanimous act, than
America, when she decided to enter this War. She had nothing to gain,
for, to say the bare truth, she had little to lose. If Germany were to
dominate the world, America, no doubt, would be ruined; but in all human
likelihood, Germany's impious attempt would have spent itself and been
broken long before it reached the coasts of America. America might have
stood out of the War in the assurance that her own interests were safe,
and that, when the tempest had passed, the centre of civilization would
be transferred from a broken and exhausted Europe to a peaceful and
prosperous America. Some few Americans talked in this strain, and
favoured a decision in this sense. But it was not for nothing that
America was founded upon religion. When she saw humanity in anguish, she
did not pass by on the other side. Her entry into the War has put an
end, I hope for ever, to the family quarrel, not very profound or
significant, which for a century and a half has been a jarring note in
the relations of mother and daughter.
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