n idle moment
between one front and another.

Mr. ROOSEVELT's position can be best defined in his own words. "We
Americans," he says, "must pay to the great truths set forth by Lincoln
a loyalty of the heart and not of the lips only. In this crisis I hold
that we have signally failed in our duty to Belgium and Armenia, and in
our duty to ourselves. In this crisis I hold that the Allies are
standing for the principles to which Abraham Lincoln said this country
was dedicated; and the rulers of Germany have, in practical fashion,
shown this to be the case by conducting a campaign against Americans on
the ocean, which has resulted in the wholesale murder of American men,
women and children, and by conducting within our own borders a campaign
of the bomb and the torch against American industries. They have carried
on war against our people; for wholesale and repeated killing is war,
even though the killing takes the shape of assassination of
non-combatants, instead of battle against armed men."

Here again is a passage which is not lacking in emphasis: "Of course,
incidentally, we have earned contempt and derision by our conduct in
connection with the hundreds of Americans thus killed in time of peace
without action on our part. The United States Senator or Governor of a
State or other public representative who takes the position that our
citizens should not, in accordance with their lawful rights, travel on
such ships, and that we need not take action about their deaths,
occupies a position precisely and exactly as base and as cowardly (and I
use those words with scientific precision) as if his wife's face were
slapped on the public streets and the only action he took was to tell
her to stay in the house."

This, too, on the hyphenated is good: "As regards the German-Americans
who assail me in this contest because they are really mere transported
Germans, hostile to this country and to human rights, I feel, not
sorrow, but stern disapproval. I am not interested in their attitude
toward me, but I am greatly interested in their attitude toward this
nation. I am standing for the larger Americanism, for true Americanism;
and as regards my attitude in this matter I do not ask as a favour, but
challenge as a right, the support of all good American citizens, no
matter where born and no matter of what creed or national origin." That
puts the matter in a nutshell.

I might continue with pithy extracts until the columns of _Punch