Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation that returned to China
their share of the indemnity exacted in consequence of the Boxer
troubles; we alone returned our share to China--sixteen millions. It was
we who prevented levying a punitive indemnity on China. Read the whole
story; there is much more. We played the gentleman, Europe played the
bully. But Europe calls us "dollar chasers." That dear old Europe! Again,
if any conquering General on the continent of Europe ever behaved as
Grant did to Lee at Appomattox, his name has escaped me.

Again, and lastly--though I am not attempting to tell you here the whole
tale of our decencies: Whose hands came away cleanest from that Peace
Conference in Paris lately? What did we ask for ourselves? Everything we
asked, save some repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, yes! we are
quite good enough to keep quiet about these things. No need whatever to
brag. Bragging, moreover, inclines the listener to suspect you're not so
remarkable as you sound.

But all this virtue doesn't in the least alter the fact that we're like
everybody else in having some dirty pages in our History. These pages it
is a foolish mistake to conceal. I suppose that the school histories of
every nation are partly bad. I imagine that most of them implant the germ
of international hatred in the boys and girls who have to study them.
Nations do not like each other, never have liked each other; and it may
very well be that school textbooks help this inclination to dislike.
Certainly we know what contempt and hatred for other nations the Germans
have been sedulously taught in their schools, and how utterly they
believed their teaching. How much better and wiser for the whole world if
all the boys and girls in all the schools everywhere were henceforth to
be started in life with a just and true notion of all flags and the
peoples over whom they fly! The League of Nations might not then rest