at the facts. You will see that no matter how acrimoniously England has
quarreled with us, these were always family scraps, in which she held out
for her own interests just as we did for ours. But whenever the question
lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or Germany, or any foreign
power, England stood with us against them.

"And another thing. Not all Americans boast, but we have a reputation for
boasting. Our Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the whole credit for
transporting our soldiers to Europe when England did more than half of
it. At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing a big American sailor
with a doughboy on his back, and underneath the words, 'We put them
across.' A brigadier general has written a book entitled, How the Marines
Saved Paris. Beside the marines there were some engineers. And how about
M Company of the 23rd regiment of the 2nd Division? It lost in one day at
Chateau-Thierry all its men but seven. And did the general forget the 3rd
Division between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans? Don't be like that
brigadier general, and don't be like that American officer returning on
the Lapland who told the British at his table he was glad to get home
after cleaning up the mess which the British had made. Resemble as little
as possible our present Secretary of the Navy. Avoid boasting. Our
contribution to victory was quite enough without boasting. The
head-master of one of our great schools has put it thus to his schoolboys
who fought: Some people had to raise a hundred dollars. After struggling
for years they could only raise seventy-five. Then a man came along and
furnished the remaining necessary twenty-five dollars. That is a good way
to put it. What good would our twenty-five dollars have been, and where
should we have been, if the other fellows hadn't raised the seventy-five
dollars first? "