Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/306

Counter-Currents absence of a criminal record, as its price. If every man—alien or native-born—who casts his ballot could be made to know and to feel that "all the political forces of his country were mainly occupied for a hundred years in making that act possible," and that the United States is, and has always been, the nation of those "who willed to be Americans," citizenship might become for us what it was to Rome, what it is to France,—the exponent of honour, the symbol of self-sacrifice.

A knowledge of history might also prove serviceable in enabling us to recognize our place and our responsibility among the nations of the world. No remoteness (geographical remoteness counts for little in the twentieth century) can sever our interests from the interests of Europe, or lift from our shoulders the burden of helping to sustain the collective rights of mankind. We know now that the menace of frightfulness has 290