Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1919-02-25


 To Assist Humanity
 And l don't see how any man can fail to have been subdued by those pleas, subdued to this feeling, that he was not there to asert an individual Judgment of his own, but to try to as- sist the case of humanity.
 And in the midst of it all every interest seeks out first of all, when it reaches Paris, the representatives of the United States. Why? Because, and l think l am stating the most wonder full fact in history-because there is no nation in Europe that suspects the motives of the United States.
 Was there ever so wonderful a thing seen before? Was there ever so moving thing? Was there ever any fact that so bound the nation that had won that esteem forever to deserve it |?
 l would not have you understand that the great men who represent the other nations there in conference are disesteemed by those who know them. Quite the contrary. But you under stand that the nations of Europe have again and again clashed with one an- other in competitive interest. It is impossible for men to forget those sharp issues that were drawn between them in times past. It is impossible for men to believe that all ambitions have all of a sudden been foregone. They remember territory that was coveted; they remember rights that it was attempted to extort; they re- member political ambitions which it was attempted to realize-and, while they believe that men have come into a different temper, they cannot for get these things, and so they do not resort to one another for a dispas- sionate view of the matters in con- troversy. They resort to that nation which has won the enviable distinct ion of being regarded as the friend of mankind.
 Soldiers Are Welcomed.
 Whenever it is desired to send small force of soldiers to occupy piece of territory where it is thought nobody else will be welcome, they ask for American soldiers. And there other soldiers would be looked upon with suspicion and perhaps met with resistance, the American soldier is welcomed with acclaim.
 l have had so many grounds for pride on the other side of the water that l am very thankful that they are not grounds for personal pride. I'd be the most stuck up man in the world. And it has been infinite pleasure to me to see. those gallant soldiers of ours, of whom the constitution of the United States made me the proud You may be proud of the 26th division, but l commanded the 26th division and see what they did under my direction! And every body praises the American soldier with the feeling that in praising him he is subtracting from the credit of no one else. l 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 holding off be- cause we thought we could make more by staying out than by going in. And all of a sudden, in short eighteen months the Whole verdict is reversed. There can be but one explanation for it. They saw what we did-that with out making single claim we put al! our men and all our means at the of those who were fighting for their homes, in the first instance, hn Nf rights and justice, and that we went in, not to support their national claims, but to support the great cause which they held in common.
 American Ideals.
 And when they say that America not only had ideals, but acted ideals, they were converted to America and became firm partisans fthose ideals.
 l met 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 felt very young indeed. I told them that l had one of the delightful revenges that sometimes comes to a man. All my life I had heard men speak with a sort of condescension of ideals and of idealists, and particularly those separ- ated, encloistered persons whom they choose term academic, who were in the habit of uttering ideals in the free atmosphere when they clash with mo- body in particular.
 And l said 1 have had this sweet revenge. Speaking with perfecE frankness in the name of the people of the United States I have uttered as the objects of this great war ideals and nothing but ideals and the war has been won by that inspiration. Men were fighting with tense muscle and lowered head until they came to real ize 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 crusaders, and