ion was resumed.

I state these things in order to make it clear that America will start
at a disadvantage when she starts upon the mission of salvage and
reconciliation which is, I believe, her proper role in this world
conflict. One would have to be blind and deaf on this side to be
ignorant of European persuasion of America's triviality. I would not
like to be an American travelling in Europe now, and those I meet here
and there have some of the air of men who at any moment may be
dunned for a debt. They explode without provocation into excuses and
expostulations.

And I will further confess that when Viscount Grey answered the
intimations of President Wilson and ex-President Taft of an American
initiative to found a World League for Peace, by asking if America
was prepared to back that idea with force, he spoke the doubts of all
thoughtful European men. No one but an American deeply versed in the
idiosyncrasies of the American population can answer that question, or
tell us how far the delusion of world isolation which has prevailed in
America for several generations has been dispelled. But if the answer
to Lord Grey is "Yes," then I think history will emerge with a complete
justification of the obstinate maintenance of neutrality by America. It
is the end that reveals a motive. It is our ultimate act that sometimes
teaches us our original intention. No one can judge the United States
yet. Were you neutral because you are too mean and cowardly, or too
stupidly selfish, or because you had in view an end too great to be
sacrificed to a moment of indignant pride and a force in reserve too
precious to dispel? That is the still open question for America.

Every country is a mixture of many strands. There is a Base America,
there is a Dull America, there is an Ideal and Heroic America. And I
am convinced that at present Europe underrates and misjudges the
possibilities of the latter.

All about the world to-day goes a certain freemasonry of thought. It is
an impalpable and hardly conscious union of intention. It thinks not
in terms of national but human experience; it falls into directions and
channels of thinking that lead inevitably to the idea of a world-state
under the rule of one righteousness. In no part of the world is this
modern type of mind so abundantly developed, less impeded by antiquated
and perverse political and religious forms, and nearer the sources of
political and administrative power, than in Amer