slightest consequence now
what England may think on any matter American? Who has the curiosity to
ask after an English opinion?

This much the war has done for us. We are at last a _nation_. We have
found a conscience of our own. We have been forced to stand on our own
national sense of right and wrong. We are independent morally as well as
politically, in opinion as well as in government. We shall never turn
our eyes again across the sea to ask what any there may say or think of
us. We have found that perhaps we do not understand them. We have
certainly found that they do not understand us. We have taken the stand
which every great people is obliged to take soon or late. We are
sufficient for ourselves. Our own national conscience, our own sense of
right and duty, our own public sentiment is our guide henceforth. By
that we stand or fall. By that, and that only, will we consent that men
should judge us. We are a grown-up nation from this time forth. We
answer for ourselves to humanity and the future. We decide all causes at
our own judgment seat.

And there is another good, perhaps larger than this, which we have won,
a good which contains and justifies this moral, national independence:
We have been baptized at last into the family of great nations, by that
red baptism which, from the first, has been the required initiation into
that august brotherhood.

It seems to be the invariable law, of earthly life at least, that
humanity can advance only by the road of suffering. It is so with
individuals. There is no spiritual growth without pain. Prosperity alone
never makes a grand character. Purple and fine linen never clothe the
hero. There are powers and gifts in the soul of man that only come to
life and action in some day of bitterness. There are wells in the heart,
whose crystal waters lie in darkness till some earthquake shakes the
man's nature to its centre, bursts the fountain open, and lets the
cooling waters out to refresh a parched land. There are seeds of noblest
fruits that lie latent in the soul, till some storm of sorrow shakes
down tears to moisten, and some burning sun of scorching pain sends heat
to warm them into a harvest of blessings.

By trouble met and patiently mastered, by suffering endured and
conquered, by trials tested and overcome, so only does a man's soul grow
to manliness.

Now a nation is made up of single men. The law holds for the mass as for
the individuals. It took a thousand year