Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/307

Americanism overshadowed us. We know that, however cautiously we picked our steps, we could not, and did not, escape molestation. But even if we had saved our own skin, if we had suffered no destruction of property, and if none of our dead lay under the water, the freedom of Europe, the future of democracy, and the rights of man would be to us matters of concern.

It is true, moreover, that friendship and alliance with those European states whose aspirations and ideals respond to our own aspirations and ideals, are as consistent with Americanism as are friendship and alliance with the states of South America, which we are now engaged in loving. It is not from Bolivia, or Chile, or Venezuela, or the Argentine that we have drawn our best traditions, our law, language, literature, and art. We extend to these "sister Republics" the arms of commercial affection; but they have no magic words like Magna 291