This unpleasant sentiment was
strengthened by our failure to demand satisfaction for the lives lost on
the _Lusitania_, while at the same time our losses in dollars seemed to
distress us so deeply. But more harmful and more unfortunate than any
other word or act was the statement of President Wilson that we might be
"too proud to fight." This struck the French not only as proclaiming us
a cowardly nation, but as assuming superiority over the man who not only
would fight, but who was fighting. And as at that moment several million
Frenchmen were fighting, it was natural that they should laugh. Every
nation in Europe laughed. In an Italian cartoon Uncle Sam is shown, hat
in hand, offering a "note" to the German Emperor and in another shooting
Haitians.

The legend reads: "He is too proud to fight the Kaiser, but not
too proud to kill niggers." In London, "Too Proud to Fight" is
in the music-halls the line surest of raising a laugh, and the
recruiting-stations show pictures of fat men, effeminates, degenerates,
and cripples labelled: "These Are Too Proud to Fight! Are You?"

The change of sentiment toward us in France is shown in many ways.
To retail them would not help matters. But as one hears of them from
Americans who, since the war began, have been working in the hospitals,
on distributing committees, in the banking-houses, and as diplomats and
consuls, that our country is most unpopular is only too evident.

It is the greater pity because the real feeling of our people toward
France in this war is one of enthusiastic admiration. Of all the Allies,
Americans probably hold for the French the most hearty good-feeling,
affection, and good-will. Through the government at Washington this
feeling has been ill-expressed, if not entirely concealed. It is
unfortunate. Mr. Kipling, whose manners are his own, has given as a
toast: "Damn all neutrals." The French are more polite. But when this
war is over we may find that in twelve months we have lost friends of
many years. That over all the world we have lost them.

That does not mean that for the help Americans have given France and
her Allies, the Allies are ungrateful. That the French certainly are
not ungrateful I was given assurance by no less an authority than the
President of the republic. His assurance was conveyed to the American
people in a message of thanks. It is also a message of good-will.

It recognizes and appreciates the sympathy shown to France in her
pres