Whatever else the war and its horrors may have done or not done, you will agree with me that it has made an end of the dreams of military and naval steam-rollering in which the whole wretched business began.  At a cost which the conquest of a whole continent would hardly justify, these terrible armaments and the heroic hosts which wield them push one another a few miles back and forward in a month, and take and retake some miserable village three times over in less than a week.  Can you doubt that though we have lost all fear of being beaten, (our darkened towns, and the panics of our papers, with their endless scares and silly inventions, are mere metropolitan hysteria,) we are getting very tired of a war in which, having now re-established our old military reputation, and taught the Germans that there is no future for their empire without our friendship and that of France, we have nothing more to gain?  In London and Paris and Berlin nobody at present dares say “Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another?”; for the slightest disposition toward a Christian view of things is regarded as a shooting matter in these capitals; but Washington is still privileged to talk common humanity to the nations.

An Advantage of Aloofness.

Finally, I may remind you of another advantage which your aloofness from the conflict gives you.  Here, in England and in France, men are going to the front every day; their women and children are all within earshot; and no man is hard-hearted enough to say the worst that might be said of what is going on in Belgium now.  We talk to you of Louvain and Rheims in the hope of enlisting you on our side or prejudicing you against the Germans, forgetting how sorely you must be tempted to say as you look on at what we are doing, “Well, if European literature, as represented by the library of Louvain, and European religion, as represented by the Cathedral of Rheims, have not got us beyond this, in God’s name let them perish.”  I am thinking of other things—­of the honest Belgians, whom I have seen nursing their wounds, and whom I recognize at a glance as plain men, innocent of all warlike intentions, trusting to the wisdom and honesty of the rulers and diplomatists who have betrayed them, taken from their farms and their businesses to destroy and be destroyed for no good purpose that might not have been achieved better and sooner by neighborly means.  I am thinking of the authentic news that no papers dare publish, not of the lies that they all publish to divert attention from the truth.  In America these things can be said without driving American mothers and wives mad; here, we have to set our teeth and go forward.  We cannot be just; we cannot see beyond the range of our guns.  The roar of the shrapnel deafens us; the black smoke of the howitzer blinds us; and what these do to our bodily senses our passions do to our imaginations.  For justice, we must do as the mediaeval cities did—­call in a stranger.  You are not altogether that to us; but you can look at all of us impartially.  And you are the spokesman of Western democracy.  That is why I appeal to you.