number of unfortunates who mourn and who are ruined
by the war, there are others, on the contrary, who have profited very
well, who have enriched themselves and been raised to a privileged,
fortunate class, who will find it quite natural to demand war or whose
children will demand it later; while the mass of unfortunates, without
strength, without resources, without protection, will need years to
reconquer in peace the rights which they legally enjoyed before the war,
and which the war suddenly took from them.

If to this class, more powerful than numerous, of natural partisans of
the war in Europe you are going to add the American partisans of the
European war, you will commit a grave fault, for the Americans have more
than ever everything to gain by peace and all to lose in war, which they
will not be able to limit if it breaks out again in the world.

The truth is that the Americans evidently gain in the war, but they lose
more. Europe is something else to them than a market over which to
dispute, she is a reservoir of experiences, good and bad, but of
experiences which you cannot do without. To wish for the continuation of
the war in Europe or even to take sides with it as a sort of half evil
is for the Americans a crime, a sort of suicide; that would be to
applaud the destruction of models which civilization seems to have
collected for your edification and for your development. Later, the
United States can do without many of these lessons which she learns from
Europe, but she will always have need of the inspiration of the
masterpieces of our civilization. It is only a barbarous reasoning which
allows one to see in the European war profit for the United States; it
is a loss, a mourning, a shame for the whole world, and particularly for
the free countries which are the guides of other peoples and which can
only fulfill their mission in times of peace.

I have often heard the profits of war discussed. The undertakers of
impressive funeral services can also congratulate themselves over
catastrophes. A railroad accident which puts an entire country in
mourning can enrich them. The most murderous battles bring profit in the
final reckoning to somebody, if it is only to the jackals and the crows;
but it is the whole of a country, and for the United States it is the
whole world, which must be considered, and the more the whole world
prospers the more will the United States find friends, collaborators,
and clients. The