The war has brought this fact out in high
relief. As to the United States, it is a strong federation of
forty-eight heterogeneous States which has been proving for a hundred
years that freedom and democracy are safer and happier for mankind than
subjection to any sort of autocracy, and affords far the best training
for national character and national efficiency. Republican France has
not yet had time to give this demonstration, being incumbered with many
survivals of the Bourbon and Napoleonic regimes, and being forced to
maintain a conscript army.
It is an encouraging fact that every one of the political or
Governmental changes needed is already illustrated in the practice of
one or more of the civilized nations. To exaggerate the necessary
changes is to postpone or prevent a satisfactory outcome from the
present calculated destructions and wrongs and the accompanying moral
and religious chaos. Ardent proposals to remake the map of Europe,
reconstruct European society, substitute republics for empires, and
abolish armaments are in fact obstructing the road toward peace and
good-will among men. That road is hard at best.
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