anthropy could
stretch that far, but not the risking of human lives. Moreover, the
American nation is not racially a unit; it is bound together by
its ideal quest for peaceful and democratic institutions. It was a
difficult task for any government to convince so remote a people that
their destiny was being made molten in the furnace of the Western
Front; when once that truth was fully apprehended the diverse souls
of America leapt up as one soul and declared for war. In so doing the
people of the United States forewent the freedom from fear that they
had gained by their journey across the Atlantic; they turned back in
their tracks to smite again with renewed strength and redoubled hate
the old brutal Fee-Fo-Fum of despotism, from whose clutches they
thought they had escaped.

America's is the case of The Terrible Meek; for two and a half years
she lulled Germany and astonished the Allies by her abnormal patience.
The most terrifying warriors of history have been peace-loving nations
hounded into hostility by outraged ideals. Certainly no nation was
ever more peace-loving than the American. To the boy of the Middle
West the fury of kings must have read like a fairy-tale. The appeal to
armed force was a method of compelling righteousness which his entire
training had taught him to view with contempt as obsolete. Yet never
has any nation mobilised its resources more efficiently, on so titanic
a scale, in so brief a space of time to re-establish justice with
armed force. The outraged ideal which achieved this miracle was the
denial by the Hun of the right of every man to personal liberty and
happiness.

Few people guessed that America would fling her weight so utterly into
the winning of the Allied cause. Those who knew her best thought it
scarcely possible. Germany, who believed she knew her, thought it
least of all. German statesmen argued that America had too much to
lose by such a decision--too little to gain; the task of transporting
men and materials across three thousand miles of ocean seemed
insuperable; the differing traditions of her population would make it
impossible for her to concentrate her will in so unusual a direction.
Basing their arguments on a knowledge of the deep-seated selfishness
of human nature, Hun statesmen were of the fixed opinion that no
amount of insult would compel America to take up the sword.

Two and a half years before, those same statesmen made the same
mistake with regard to Great