s of the universe.
Because we declared political independence, does any one still harbor
the delusion that we are independent of the acts and fortunes of
monarchs? If so, let him consider only these four events: In 1492 a
Spanish Queen financed a sailor named Columbus--and Europe reached out
and laid a hand on this hemisphere. In 1685 a French King revoked an
edict--and thousands of Huguenots enriched our stock. In 1803 a French
consul, to spite Britain, sold us some land--it was pretty much
everything west of the Mississippi. One might well have supposed we
were independent of the heir of Austria. In 1914 they killed him, and
Europe fell to pieces--and that fall is shaking our ship of state from
stem to stern. There may be some citizens down in the hold who do not
know it--among a hundred million people you cannot expect to have no
imbeciles.
Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo, in 1914, the hand of Europe
has drawn us ever and ever closer.
Yes, indeed; we are all in the same boat. Europe has never forgotten
some words spoken here once: "That government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." She waited
to hear us repeat that in some form when The Hague conventions we
signed were torn to scraps of paper. Perhaps nothing save calamity
will teach us what Europe is thankful to have learned again--that some
things are worse than war, and that you can pay too high a price for
peace; but that you cannot pay too high for the finding and keeping of
your own soul.
[FINIS]
* * * * *
Printed in United States of America.
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| of Macmillan books by the same author|
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By OWEN WISTER
=The Virginian=
=A Horseman of the Plains=
WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
BY ARTHUR I. KELLER
_Cloth, 12mo, $1.50_
"There is not a page in Mr. Wister's new book which is not
interesting. This is its first great merit, that it arouses the
sympathy of the reader and holds him absorbed and amused to the
end. It does a great deal more for him. 'Whoever reads the first
page will find it next to impossible to put the book down until he
has read every one of the five hundred and four in the book, and
then he wil
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