Page:Scott Nearing - The American Empire (1921).djvu/18

 Rh treason!" he faced the objector with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude," wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who felt a consuming passion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over the future and hoped grandly for the human race. {{nop}