an unfortunate fact that the merely foolish person constitutes
as grave a danger as the deliberate plotter. His words, if they are
acid enough, are quoted and re-quoted. They pass from mouth to mouth,
gaining in authority. By the time they reach the friendly country
at which they are directed, they have taken on the appearance of an
opinion representative of a nation. The Hun is well aware of the value
of gossip for the encouraging of divided counsels among his enemies.
He invents a slander, pins it to some racial grievance, confides it
to the fools among the Allies and leaves them to do the rest. Some
of them wander about in a merely private capacity, nagging without
knowledge, depositing poison, breeding doubts as to integrity, and
all the while pretending to maintain a mildly impartial and judicial
mental attitude. Their souls never rise from the ground. Their
brains are gangrenous with memories of cancelled malice. They suspect
hero-worship; it smacks to them of sentiment. They examine, but
never praise. Being incapable of sacrifice, they find something
meretriciously melodramatic about men and nations who are capable. Had
they lived nineteen hundred years ago, they would have haunted Calvary
to discover fraud.

Then, there are others, by far more dangerous. These make their
appearance daily in the morning press, thrusting their pessimisms
across our breakfast tables, beleaguering our faith with ill-natured
judgements and querulous warnings. One of our London Dailies, for
instance, specializes in annoying America; it works as effectively to
breed distrust as if its policy were dictated from Berlin.

I have just returned from a prolonged tour of America's activities in
France. Wherever I went I heard nothing but unstinted appreciation
of Great Britain's surpassing gallantry: "We never knew that you
Britishers were what you are; you never told us. We had to come over
here to find out." When that had been said I always waited, for I
guessed the qualifying statement that would follow: "There's only
one thing that makes us mad. Why the devil does your censor allow the
P---- to sneer at us every morning? Your army doesn't feel that way
towards us; at least, if it ever did, it doesn't now. Are there really
people in England who--?"

At this point I would cut my questioner short: "There are men so
short-sighted in every country that, to warm their hands, they would
burn the crown of thorns. You have them in America. Suc