e world, could bring about the true
world-fatherland in a generation; and one human heart so established
begins to touch from the first moment the profound significances of
life.

Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is
beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a
patriot. It is not _my country_ that is of interest, but humankind.
America's political interests, her trade, all her localisations as a
separate and bounded people, are inimical to the new enthusiasm. The new
social order cannot concern itself as a country apart. American
predatory instincts, her self-worship, her attempt at neutrality while
supplying explosives for the European slaughter arenas, her deepening
confinement in matter during the past fifty years, have prepared her for
the outright demoralisation of war, just as surely as Europe is meeting
to-day the red harvest from such instincts and activities. For action
invariably follows the thought.

Yet the hearts of men in America are changing. I do not write as a
religionist, but as one very much of the world. For the hearts of men do
change, and it is only through such changes that the material stagnation
of a people can be relieved without deluges of blood.

The high hope is upon us. In being apart from war, America has been
enabled to see. One must always remove himself from the ruck to see its
movement. Within these western shores, the voices of true inspiration
have recently been heard. From a literary standpoint alone, this is the
most significant fact since Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau and Lanier took
pen in hand, forgetting themselves a little while each day. There is a
peculiar strength upon American production of all kinds as a result of
the very act of getting out from under European influence.

England and France and Germany have fallen into mere national voices.
The voice of the partisan is but a weak treble, against the basic rumble
of war. War in this century is a confession, as suicide is a
confession, as every act of blood and rage is a confession, of the
triumph of the animal in the human mind.... If you received letters from
friends in England or Germany or France during the war--friends whom
formerly you admired for their culture and acumen--you were struck by
the dulness and misery of the communications, the uncentred points of
view, the incapacity of human vision in the midst of the heaviness and
blackness of life there; if, indeed,