ld must be made
safe for democracy. And again, that America is fighting for no selfish
purpose, but for the liberation of peoples everywhere from the
aggression of autocratic powers. This view that the war was remedial,
that it was in the interest of progress, to prevent that which is
belated in civilization from gaining the upper hand, and that it is on
the part of America a war of participation and aid in a cause which
though supremely good might otherwise be lost, is the prevailing idea.
That this spirit of the championship of causes and of justice to other
nations is a stronger motive in the Anglo-Saxon peoples than in others
appears to be an opinion that history on the whole can confirm.

It is relatively easy to obtain the opinion of philosophers about the
"causes" represented in the war; it would be of interest also to know
what the millions of men in the field think. Data are not altogether
wanting, but there appear to be no general studies. That many men, in
more than one army, have no clear knowledge of any cause for which
they have fought, except as these causes are nationalistic is certain.
That there is ignorance even among the men of our own army in regard
to the causes and purposes of the war has been made evident. Knowledge
and enlightenment can hardly have been greater elsewhere. German
soldiers are credited with believing that they are defending Germany
from attack. The French soldier was fighting for France. The invasion
of his country left him no doubt and no choice. The English soldier
has often said that he was doing it for the women and the children,
and one writer says that the deepest motive of two thirds of the
British army was to make this war the last. The American soldier, from
the nature of the circumstances under which he himself entered the war
has been more conscious of a motive of helpfulness and of comradeship
with other peoples who are in distress and danger. Probably the idea
of America's honor, and the more abstract idea still of the cause of
freedom, even though this idea has been, so to speak, our watchword,
have not been the most influential motives in the mind of the
individual. Germany was attacking people who were in distress, and
the American soldier went over to make the scales turn in the
direction of victory for the oppressed.

There is, of course, a literature of the war produced by the soldier
in the field, in which there are expressed high ideals, abstract
conceptions