The Marietta journal. (Marietta, Ga.) 1918-1944, 1919-02-28

the United States made me the proud
commander. You may be proud OF
the Twenty-sixth division. but / com
manded the Twenty-sixth division and
see what they did under my direction!
And everybody praises the American
soldier with the feeling that in prais-
ing him he is subtracting from the
credit of no one else.
81 have been searching for the fun
,damental fact that converted Europe
to believe in us. Before this war Eu-
rope 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 holding OF be-
cause we thouhgt we could make more
by staying out than by going in. And
all of a sudden, in a short eighteen
months, the whole verdict is reversed
There can be bat one explanation for
it. They saw what we did-that with.
out making single claim we put all
our men and all our means at the dis
posal of those who were fighting for
their homes, in the first instance, but
for a cause, the cause of human
rights, and justice-and that we went
in, not to support their national
claims, but to support the great cause
And when they saw that America
not only had ideals, but acted ideals,
they were converted to America and
became firm partisans of these ideals.
II met group of scholars when /
was in Paris-some gentlemen from
one of the Greek universities who had
come to see me, and in whose pres
ence, or rather in the presence of
those traditions of learning, felt very
young indeed. / told them that ]
had one of the delightful revenges
that sometimes comes to man. All
my life / had heard men speak with
a sort of condescension of ideals and
of idealists, encloistered persons whom
they choose to term academic, who
were in the habit of uttering ideals
in the free atmosphere where they
clash with nobody in particular.
"And / said / have had this sweet
revenge. Speaking with perfect frank
ness In the name of the people of the
United States, | have uttered as the
objects of this great war, ideals, and
nothing but ideals, and the war has
been won by that inspiration. Men
lowered head until they came to real
ize those things, feeling they were
fighting for their lives and their coun-
TRY, 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 khokhi coming across the
sea in the spirit of the crusaders, and
they found that these were strange
men, reckless of danger not only, but
reckless because they seemed to see
something that made that danger
worth while. Men have testified to
me in Europe that our men were pos.
sessed by something that they could
only call a religious fervor. They
were not like any of the other sol
oilers. They had vision, they had
dream, and were fighting in the dream,
and, fighting in the dream, they turned
the whole tide of battle and it never
came back.
"One of our American humorists,
meeting the criticism that American
soldiers were~not trained long enough.
said: 1T takes only half as long to
train an American soldier as any 9TH
er. because you only have to train him
to go one way, and he did only go one
way and he never came back until he
could do il when he pleased
! "And now do you realize that this
confidence we have established
throughout the world imposes a bur
den upon us-if you choose to call 1t
a burden. 1t is one of those burdens
which any nation ought to be proud to
carry. ANY man who resiSts the pres.
ent time that runs 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 nu-
man kind forever.
THE Europe that / left the other
day was full of something that 1t had
never felt fill it's heart so full before:
It was full of hope. The Europe OF
the second year of the war, the Eu"
rope of the third year of the war, was
sinking to sort of stubborn desper-
alton. They did not see any great
thing to be achieved even when the
war should be won. They hoped there
would be some salvage; they hoped
that they could clear their TERRITORIES
of invading armies; they hoped they
could set up their homes and start
their industries afresh. But they
thought it would simply be the resump-
ton of the old life that Europe had
led-led in fear, led in anxiety, led In
constant suspicious watchfulness. They
never dreamed that it would be a Eu,
rope of settled peace and of JUSTIFIED
hope.
land now these ideals have wrought
this new magic, that all the peoples OF
Europe are buoyed up and confident IN
the spirit of hope, because they be-
lieye that we are at the eve of new
age in the world when nations will
understand one another, when ma.
tions will support one another in ev-
cry Just cause, when nations will unite
every moral and every physical
strength to see that the right shall
prevail.
to fail the world, what would come OF
it? | do not mean any disrespect to
any other great people when l say
that America is the hope of the world,
and if she does not justify that nope
the results are unthinkable. Men Will
be thrown back upon the bitterness OF
Disappointment not only, but the bit
| terness of despair All nations will be
set un as hostile camps against the
men at the peace conference will 60
home with their heads upon their
breasts. knowing that they, have fall
ID - for they were hidden not TO
ONE home from there until they DID
~o~othing more than sign a treaty OF
peace.
Suppose we sign the treaty of peace
and that it is the most satisfactory
| .,oo+rr of Y,aoca that the confusing ele-