Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-08-27
OUR GREATEST VICTORY
Colonel Roosevelt and Mr.. Hurd, Of the
American Defense Society, Help to
Show Where II Lies

WHEN Colonel Roosevelt rises to de-
" claim upon the affairs of mankind ne
| often exhibits brilliant knack for being
right and wrong at the same time, I'm
questionably the Colonel is the best hater
we have. His magnificent impatience is
| a national asset. And he hates the right
| things-pedantry weakness, pretense,
smugness, complacency. Robust and vo-
| ciferous haters have been power on the
| side of righteousness ever since the days
| of John the Baptist. 1t may be well to
remember that they do not always ex-
| pect us to share an enthusiasm that is
necessarily peculiar to them alone.
In Springfield yesterday Colonel
| Roosevelt dwelt in a mood of fire upon
the conditions that formerly made
America "polyglot boarding house"
and demanded again the singleness OF
allegiance and of purpose in all Ameri-
cans which every one recognizes as
necessity of the future. So, he said,
must we be protected from wars after
the war. For the theories of internation-
alism the Colonel reserved his bitterest
disdain.
It is possible to admit the justice of
such views without altogether sharing
the Colonels hatreds and fears. We are
too deep in internationalism in France,
in England and in Russia to disregard
altogether the principle of this new rela-
ton between peoples. The new man.
power bill was passing TRANQUILITY in
Washington, even while Colonel Roose-
welt spoke, to show, as the other draft
bills had done, that we are polyglot
nation no longer.
There are possibilities of future wars.
In the next newspaper column to
Colonel Roosevelt yesterday was Rich
ard M. Hurd, of the boycott committee
of the National Defense Society, who
camored to know whether we could ever
again grasp the "blood hands of
Germans" in business.
We should like to hear Colonel Roose-
welt discourse with Mr. Hurd.
We shall not have to shake the blood
stained hands of the Germans if we are
willing to kill them all. If We do not
wish to annihilate the Germans COM
pletely we shall have to live with them.
Even though we refuse to live with them
others will not refuse. And yet, even if
such philosophy as Mr.. Hurd's were to
reach it's logical elimination in a power
full group of nations lined up behind
Germany expelled from western civili-
zation, it is doubtful whether any group
will ever in the future consider war
upon America. The reasons are becom-
ing plain.
We have become the most powerful
nation in history and our strength has
nothing to do with our material achieve
ments. 1t rests deeper than that. Since
the war began there is hardly Govern
ment in the world that has not felt its
foundations rock at one time or another.
The ground under our own feet has
grown firmer meanwhile at every step.
Men and women and children-even
those of the sort that made us polyglot
nation-have suddenly developed a new
They have learned to see their Govern
ment as something that they have
created out Of the best that is in them.
Even the dullest men, even the LATEST
minded, will respond to a revelation of
truth and beauty. Scoundrels have been
known to turn from their infamies to
help quest for these things. There is
no one who does not now understand the
purpose of America. 1t is a purpose
that fills the skies. And in his Govern
ment the man in the street does not see
the President or Congress. He sees him
self, his own familiar faults and his
familiar virtues. He sees more. He sees,
indeed, his better self sublimated, freed
somehow from common inhibitions, out
upon a far enterprise that is at once
perilous and noble and infinitely touch
ing. 1t is easy for him to sense the
faults of his Government. Are then not
his very oWn? But to know the integrity
and validity of his Governments purpose
he has only to look within himself to-
ward stray lights that shine in the ways
of memory, toward far moments when
| he-as every man has done-endured
sacrifice and felt the lift of purposes
beautiful or brave or charitable or
| blessed.
Here, then, in this thing that he thinks
of as the Government, he can at last per-
ceive only his own spirit as he has inter-
preted it in deeds, struggling upward with
slips and difficulties, with doubts and mis-
steps, toward the eternal light. 1t is not
too much to say that some such con-
sciousness in a hundred million people is
in reality the greatest of all consequences
of this war. The new relation of the