Page:Patriotic pieces from the Great War, Jones, 1918.djvu/147

Rh the irresistible energies of love;" to "combat wrong by a sustained appeal to conscience;" to assert "the constructive principles of good-will"? God knows, we had tried to do these things. We had tried, as decent-living men and women, to establish relations of decency with the Central Powers, and we had failed. They struck at us treacherously again and again, plotting in secret at our doors, repaying our hospitality and our trust by making bombs for our destruction on the ships which were sheltered in our ports. It was time, and more than time, that we turned the "irresistible energies of love," the "constructive principles of good-will," to the aid of those allied nations who were bearing on their galled shoulders the burden of a war they had not provoked, and upon whose triumph or defeat rests the hopes of an assaulted civilization.

It is imbecile to prate about the glamor of war and the infection of the military spirit. There is no glamor left in war. We know the truth about it. There is no military spirit, unless it is expressed in Mr. Wilson's words, "The world must be made safe for democracy." No man likes to endure hardships. Few men care to face danger and brave death. This is why we apply the word "heroic" to a nation's defenders. A French soldier, blinded