Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1919-02-25

not forget these things.
'And so they do not resort to one
another for a dispassionate view OF
! the matters in controversy They
resort to that nation which has Won
| the enviable distinction of being re-
| garded as the friend of mankind.
! Whenever it is desired to send a
small force of soldiers to occupy a
piece of territory where it is
| thought nobody else will be well
come, they ask for American sol
/ dters. And where other soldiers
would be looked upon with sus-
/ picion and perhaps met with resist
ance the American soldier is vel
coined with acclaim.
Grounds for Pride.
'1 have had so many grounds for
| pride on the other side of the wa
ter that 1 am very thankful that
they are not grounds for personal
pride. Otherwise I'd be the most
stuck up man in the world. And 1t
has been an infinite pleasure to me
to Sc those gallant soldiers of ours
! of whom the constitution of the Uni
ted States made me the proud COM
! mander. You may be proud of the
Twenty division, but l COM
manded the Twenty-sixth division,
and see what they did under my d.
rectiOni
And everybody praises the Am
erican soldier with the feeling that
in praising him he is subtracting
from the credit of no one else.
81 have been searching for the
fundamental fact that converted
Europe to believe in US. Before this
war Europe did not believe in us as
she does now. She did not believe
in us throughout the first three
years of the war. She seems really
to have believed that we were hold
ing off because we thought we
could make more by staying out
than by going in.
Entire Verdict Reversed.
~And all of a sudden, N a short
is months, the whole verdict is
reversed. There can be but one
explanation for it They saw what
we did-that without making a
single claim we put all our men
and all our means at the disposal
of those who were fighting for
| their homes, in the f1rst instance,
but for a cause, the cause of hu-
man rights and justice, and that
we went in not to support their ma
tional claims but to support the
great cause which they held in
! common.
And when they saw that Amer
| lea not only held ideals but acted
| ideals they were converted to
America and became firm partisans
of those ideals.
81 met a group of scholars when
! l was in Paris-some gentlemen
! from one of the Greek universities
who had come to see me, and In
| whose presence, or rather in the
presence Of those traditions OF
| learning, I felt young indeed.
81 told them that l had one of
tho delightful revenges that some
times comes to a man. All my life
l had heard men speak with a sort
of condensation of ideals and of
idealists, and particularly those
separated. encloistered persona
whom they choose to term academ-
ic, who were in the habit of utter
ing ideals in the free atmosphere
7 when they clash with nobody in
particular.
And I said I have had this
sweet revenge. Speaking with per
/ feet frankness, in the name of the
people of the United States, 1 have
uttered as the objects of this great
war ideals, and nothing but ideals.
and the war has been won by that
inspiration.
Fighting for Ideals.
Men were fighting with tense
muscles and lowered head until
they came to realize those things,
feeling they were fighting for their
lives and their country, and when
these accents of what it was all
about reached them from America
they lifted their heads, they raised
their eyes to heaven, when they
saw men in khaki coming across
the sea in the spirit of the cru
saders, and they found that these
were strange men, reckless of
danger not only but reckless be-
cause they seemed to see some
thing that made that danger worth
while.
Men have testified to me in Eu-
rope that our men were possessed
by something that they could only
call religious fervor. They were
not like any of the other soldiers.
They had a vision, hey had a
dream, and they were fighting in
the dream, and, fighting in the
dream, they turned the whole tide
of battle and it never came back.
One Way Soldiers.
zone of our American humorists,
meeting the criticism that Amer
lean soldiers were not trained long
enough, said: 1t takes only half as
long to train an American soldier
as any other, because you have to
train him one way, and he did only
go one way, and he never came
back until he could do it when he
pleased
And now do you realize that
this confidence we have established
throughout the world imposes d
burden upon us-if you choose to
call it a burden? 1t is one of those
burdens which any naticn ought to
be proud to carry. Any man who
resists the present tides that run
in the world will find himself
thrown upon a shore so high and
barren that it will seem as if he
had been separated from his hui
man kind forever.
Europe Full of Hope.
''The Europe that l left the other
day was full of something that it
had never felt fill its heart so full
before. 1t was full of hope. The
nP Soonnd of ba