My correspondent says that we differ as a race from the English as much as
a celluloid comb from a stick of dynamite. Did our soldiers find the
difference as great as that? I doubt if our difference from anybody is
quite as great as that. Again, my correspondent says that we are bound up
in our own success only, and England is bound up in hers only. I agree.
But suppose the two successes succeed better through friendship than
through enmity? We are as friendly, my correspondent says, as two rival
corporations. Again I agree. Has it not been proved this long while that
competing corporations prosper through friendship? Did not the Northern
Pacific and the Great Northern form a combination called the Northern
Securities, for the sake of mutual benefit? Under the Sherman Act the
Northern Securities was dissolved; but no Sherman act forbids a Liberty
Securities. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, is England's gift to the
modern world. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, is the central purpose
of our Constitution. Just as identically as the Northern Pacific and
Great Northern run from St. Paul to Seattle do England and the United
States aim at Liberty, defined and assured by Law. As friends, the two
nations can swing the world towards world stability. My correspondent
would hardly have instanced the Boers in his reference to England's
misdeeds, had he reflected upon the part the Boers have played in
England's struggle with Germany.

I will point out no more of the latent weaknesses that underlie various
passages in this letter, but proceed to the remaining letters that I have
selected. I gave one from an enlisted man and one from a sailor; this is
from a commissioned officer, in France.

"I cannot refrain from sending you a line of appreciation and thanks for
giving the people at home a few facts that I am sure some do not know and