her treasury
to build a monument of reproach to international integrity. They
criticize the vast appropriations for the navy and declare that
America is starving her poor that she may more pompously parade the
seas. They protest against the "war-game" on the Rio Grande[1] and
even charge that in the interest of a Wall Street king America invites
the world to arms. And these are not illusions. The lure of gold has
turned the nation from her mission. The spirit of commercialism has
eclipsed the sentiment of brotherhood and tempted the Republic to
barter her honor for the price of imperial supremacy. Wherein, then,
again asks the world, finds America hope for the future? And to the
charges of her critics, with their dismal prophecy of a "wrong forever
on the throne," this is the nation's answer and defense--that an
eclipse is never permanent, that the world stays not in the valley of
the shadow forever, and that the solution of the problem, the
fulfillment of a national mission, and the hope of world peace find
their common assurance in the changing ideals of America's aspiring
young men.

[1] Part of the United States army was mobilized on the
frontier for maneuvers, in 1911, owing to the Mexican
revolutionary disturbances.--_Editor._

The young American is essentially ambitious. He is wont to seek the
shortest path to leadership, and, when blocked at one highway, to turn
with undiminished ardor to another. And his ideal is a mirror of the
age in which he lives. In revolutionary days he covets the glory of a
minuteman, and in the deeds of Warren and Putnam finds the
consummation of his hopes. Again, in the hour of civil war his eyes
turn toward the battlefield--and from her boys under twenty-one the
Union draws eighty-five per cent of her defenders. But fortunately for
America this drama of the youth's ideal has one more act. The lure of
fife and drum has become a thing of the past. The glamour of military
life has become a dream of yesterday. The young man is learning that
the prize of battle is never equal to the price. And with the growing
conviction of the folly and futility of international strife must
disappear the last apology for war. Nations will cease to struggle,
not when they have learned that war is a tragedy but when they have
discovered that it is a farce.

And the youth of to-day is learning it. In the same deplorable
conditions which the nation's critics have regarded as an alarming
tend