f honesty, veracity, equity,
liberality, or unselfishness. This national honour is of the nature of
an intangible or immaterial asset, of course; it is a matter of
prestige, a sportsmanlike conception; but that fact must not be taken to
mean that it is of any the less substantial effect for purposes of a
_casus belli_ than the material assets of the community. Quite the
contrary: "Who steals my purse, steals trash," etc. In point of fact, it
will commonly happen that any material grievance must first be converted
into terms of this spiritual capital, before it is effectually turned to
account as a stimulus to warlike enterprise.

Even among a people with so single an eye to the main chance as the
American community it will be found true, on experiment or on review of
the historical evidence, that an offense against the national honour
commands a profounder and more unreserved resentment than any
infraction of the rights of person or property simply. This has latterly
been well shown in connection with the manoeuvres of the several
European belligerents, designed to bend American neutrality to the
service of one side or the other. Both parties have aimed to intimidate
and cajole; but while the one party has taken recourse to effrontery and
has made much and ostentatious use of threats and acts of violence
against person and property, the other has constantly observed a
deferential attitude toward American national self-esteem, even while
engaged on a persistent infraction of American commercial rights. The
first named line of diplomacy has convicted itself of miscarriage and
has lost the strategic advantage, as against the none too adroit finesse
of the other side. The statesmen of this European war power were so ill
advised as to enter on a course of tentatively cumulative intimidation,
by threats and experimentally graduated crimes against the property and
persons of American citizens, with a view to coerce American cupidity
and yet to avoid carrying these manoeuvres of terrorism far enough to
arouse an unmanageable sense of outrage. The experiment has served to
show that the breaking point in popular indignation will be reached
before the terrorism has gone far enough to raise a serious question of
pecuniary caution.

This national honour, which so is rated a necessary of life, is an
immaterial substance in a peculiarly high-wrought degree, being not only
not physically tangible but also not even capable of adequate