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Page 8
_Englishman_. Those are undying words.
_American_. And undying names--the lads' names.
_Englishman_. What they and the other Americans did can never die. Not
while the planet endures. No nation at that time realized how vital was
your country's entrance into the war. Three months later it would have
been too late. Your young, untried forces lifted worn-out France and
England and swept us to-victory. It was America's victory at the last.
It is our glory to confess that, for from then on America has been our
kin.
_American_. (_Smiles_.) England is our well-beloved elder sister for all
time now.
_Englishman_. The soldiers who died there (_gestures to the ditch_) and
their like did that also. They tied the nations together with a bond of
common gratitude, common suffering, common glory.
_American_. You say well that there was common gratitude. England and
France had fought our battle for three years at the time we entered the
war. We had nestled behind the English fleet. Those grim gray ships of
yours stood between us and the barbarians very literally.
_Englishman_. Without doubt Germany would have been happy to invade the
only country on earth rich enough to pay her war debt. And you were
astonishingly open to invasion. It is one of the historical facts that a
student of history of this twenty-first century finds difficult to
realize.
_American_. The Great War made revolutionary changes. That condition of
unpreparedness was one. That there will never be another war is the
belief of all governments. But if all governments should be mistaken,
not again would my country, or yours, be caught unprepared. A general
staff built of soldiers and free of civilians hampering is one advantage
we have drawn from our ordeal of 1917.
_Englishman_. Your army is magnificently efficient.
_American_. And yours. Heaven grant neither may ever be needed! Our
military efficiency is the pride of an unmilitary nation. One Congress,
since the Great War and its lessons, has vied with another to keep our
high place.
_Englishman_. Ah! Your Congress. That has changed since the old
days--since La Follette.
_American_. The name is a shame and a warning to us. Our children are
taught to remember it so. The "little group of wilful men," the eleven
who came near to shipwrecking the country, were equally bad, perhaps,
but they are forgotten. La Follette stands for them and bears the curses
of his countrymen, which they all earned.
_Englishman_. Their ignominy served America; it roused the country to
clean its Augean stables.
_American_. The war purified with fire the legislative soul.
_Englishman_. Exactly. Men are human still, certainly, yet genuine
patriotism appears to be a _sine qua non_ now, where bombast answered in
the old day. Corruption is no longer accepted. Public men then were
surprisingly simple, surprisingly cheap and limited in their methods.
There were two rules for public and private life. It was thought
quixotic, I gather from studying the documents of the time, to expect
anything different. And how easily the change came!
_American_. The nation rose and demanded honesty, and honesty was there.
The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy
and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation.
The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were thrown
into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung out the
rinsings and the scourings and left the fabric clean.
_Englishman_. The stress of the war affected more than internal
politics. You and I, General, are used to a standard of conduct between
responsible nations as high as that taken for granted between
responsible persons. But, if one considers, that was far from the case a
hundred years ago. It was in 1914, that von Bethmann-Hollweg spoke of "a
scrap of paper."
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