of
second-class human beings in Germany because they have the most complete
and most exhaustive arrangements any nation has ever dreamed of, for
making second-class human beings out of practically anybody--arrangements
for howling down to people, for telling people what they have got to do
as a substitute for the slower, deeper, more productive course of making
them want to do it.

Taking the line of least resistance--the mechanical course in dealing
with human nature, makes America's being a second-class nation a matter
of course.

What we have always been hoping for in America is that in due time we are
going to be a first-class nation--a nation crowded with men and women
who, wherever they have come from, or whether or not they were first
class when they came, have been made first class by the way that all day
every day in their daily work they have been treated by the rest of us
when they come to us, and by the way they treat one another.

VI

A VICTORY LOAN ADVERTISEMENT

May 10, 1919

THE BOY WHO STUCK HIS FOOT IN

A small boy the other day walked up to one of those splendid marble
pillars before the The Victory Arch and stuck his foot in.

I went over and stooped down and felt of the crust. It was about an inch
and a half thick.

Then I stood in the middle of The Avenue, all New York boiling and
swirling round me and looked up at The Arch of Victory--massive, majestic
white and heavenly and soaring against the sky, and my heart ached!

Something made me feel suddenly close to the small boy.

What he wanted to know with his foot, was what this splendid Victory Arch
he had watched his big brave brothers march under and flags wave under,
and bands play through four hours, was made of; how much it amounted
to--how deep the glory had struck in.

I thought what a colossal tragical honest monument it was of our victory
over the Germans ... forty nations swinging their hats and hurrahing and
eighty-seven million unconquered sullen Germans before our eyes in broad
daylight making a national existence from now on, out of not paying their
bills! ... eighty-seven million Germans we have all got to devote
ourselves nationally to sitting on the necks of six hundred years.

I am not sorry the small boy stuck his foot in. Millions of Americans
though in a politer way are doing it all this week. We want to poke
through to the truth. We want something more than a theater property
Victory Arch, our soldier