the day
has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for
the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she
has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other."

How many Americans caught the real significance of Wilson's thought with
all its consequences is doubtful. The country certainly looked upon the
war as a crusade. But there was in the national emotion much that did not
accord with the ideals of Wilson. The people hated Germany for the
sinking of the _Lusitania_ and all the other submarine outrages, for her
crimes in Belgium, for the plots and explosions in this country, for the
Zimmermann note, and finally for her direct and insulting defiance of
American rights. They recognized that the Allies were fighting for
civilization; they sympathized with the democracies of Europe, of which,
since the Russian revolution of March, the Allied camp was composed, and
they wanted to help them. They feared for America's safety in the future,
if Germany won the war. Most Americans entered the struggle, therefore,
with a sober gladness, based partly on emotional, partly on quixotic, and
partly on selfish grounds. But nearly all fought rather to beat Germany
than to secure a new international order. Hence it was that after Germany
was beaten, Wilson was destined to discover that his idealistic preaching
had not fully penetrated, and that he had failed to educate his country,
as completely as he believed, to the ideal of a partnership of democratic
and peace-loving peoples as the essential condition of a new and safe
world.

CHAPTER VI

THE NATION IN ARMS

When Congress declared that the United States was in a state of war with
Germany, on April 6, 1917, the public opinion of the country was unified
to a far greater extent than at the beginning of any previous war. The
extreme patience displayed by President Wilson had its reward. When the
year opened the majority of citizens doubtless still hoped that peace was
possible. But German actions in February and March had gone far towards
the education of the popular mind, and the final speeches of the President
crystallized conviction. By April there were few Americans, except those
in whom pacifism was a mania, who were not convinced that war with Germany
was the only course consistent with either honor or safety. It is probable
that many did not understand exactly the ideals that actuated Wilson, but
nine persons out of te