knew next to nothing about the
affairs of Europe; and Germans had long been busy poisoning their minds
against the French and British. Then, Washington and other Presidents
had often advised them not to meddle with anything outside of America;
and President Wilson had even said there was such a thing as being "too
proud to fight."

Of course the Pacifists were against all war, even when their refusing
to fight on the side of right forced them to help the side of wrong.
They had plenty of money, some of it German, and they made almost as
much trouble as the Germans and pro-Germans themselves. Then, the
Germans, pro-Germans, and Pacifists raised the bogey of trouble for the
United States at home, while there did not seem to be much danger of
getting hurt from abroad. Finally, business was booming as it had
never boomed before. The Americans made twelve-and-a-half thousands of
millions of dollars out of the war, clear net profit up to the end of
1918.

The War Party said the whole war was about a question of right and
wrong, and that the French and British were right, while the Germans
were wrong. They said that Americans were safe because the British
Navy barred the way, that all the British oversea Dominions had fought
from the first, though not obliged to send a ship, a dollar, or a man
except of their own free will. They said that every American patriot
should be very proud to fight for the freedom of the world and very
much ashamed to let the French and British uphold the cause of right
alone. They said that the German submarines had already murdered many
Americans, that many other Americans, ashamed to see their country
hanging back, were already enlisting in Canada, England, and France,
and that although business was certainly booming, beyond the wildest
dreams of the keenest money-makers before the war, yet this vast wealth
was too much like blood-money, since the French and British were
suffering immense losses in lives and money and in everything but
honour, while the Americans, losing nothing in lives, were making vast
hoards of money out of a cause that really was their own--the cause of
right and freedom.

Slowly but surely the War Party gained, as more and more members of the
Peace Party began to see the truth. But still, after twenty-seven
months, the most popular cry among those who voted President Wilson in
for a second term was "he kept us out of war." Three months later the
German "Submarin