Page:America in the war -by Louis Raemaekers. (IA americainwarbylo00raem).pdf/28

 The End of the Hindenburg Line

The Hindenburg line is a menace to every courthouse in America. In my recent journeys through the West I have never seen a courthouse tower printed against the sky without relating it to the great world conflict. We are fighting for all that is embodied and expressed and safeguarded in these citadels of democracy. A little while ago I looked with reverence at a log hut preserved at Decatur, Illinois, the first courthouse of the county. In that little room Abraham Lincoln appeared as attorney for pioneer citizens who understood perfectly the promise of American democracy. The laws invoked to preserve their rights were a crystallization of the thought and the hope of liberty-loving peoples, and no settler in wilderness or prairie, no matter how humble, but felt himself a partner in the benefits of American institutions and the great tradition of English law. Every American courthouse is founded upon Magna Charta. If we are indebted for anything in our democracy to the Teutonic-Turkish combination I am unaware of it. Dull of wit indeed, the Hohenzollern BEAST, to think his mailed fist could ever splinter the door of one of these American courthouses! The price our fore-*fathers paid for their liberty was too great for any yielding to a devil gone mad and attempting to bestride the world. During the Civil War Lincoln once remarked to Seward, speaking of Weems' "Life of Washington" which he had read before the fireplace in his father's cabin in Spencer County, Indiana, "It occurred to me that it must have been something pretty fine those men were fighting for." It was; and it is for that same fine thing that America has again drawn the sword.

MEREDITH NICHOLSON.