He shifted grimly in his chair, and took up the pen.

What a long, heart-rending strain it had been! His mind went back to the
golden August day when the telegram was laid on his desk announcing that
the old civilization of Europe had fallen into fragments. He remembered
the first meeting thereafter, when his associates, with grave, anxious
faces, debated the proper stand for them to take. He remembered how, in
the swinging relaxation of an afternoon of golf, he had thoughtfully
planned the wording of his first neutrality proclamation.

In those dim, far-off days, who had dreamed what would come? Who could
have believed that great nations would discard without compunction all
the carefully built-up conventions of international law? That murder in
the air, on land, on the sea, under the sea, would be rewarded by the
highest military honours? That a supposedly friendly nation would fill
another land with spies--even among the accredited envoys of diplomacy?

Sadly this man thought of the long painful fight he had made to keep one
nation at least out of the tragic, barbaric struggle. Giving due honour
to convinced militarist and sincere pacifist, his own course was still
different. That his country, disregarding the old fetishes of honour and
insult, should stand solidly for humanity; should endure all things,
suffer all things, for humanity's sake; should seek to bind up the
wounds and fill the starving mouths. That one nation--not because she
was weak, but because she was strong--should, with God's help, make a
firm stand for peace and show to all mankind that force can never
conquer force.

"A nation can be so right that it should be too proud to fight."
Magnificent words, true words, which one day would re-echo in history as