There is one type of fool, exclusively American, whose stupidity
arises from love and tenderness. Very often she is a woman. She
has been responsible for the arrival in France of a number of
narrow-minded and well-intentioned persons; their errand is to
investigate vice-conditions in the U.S. Army. This suspicion of the
women at home concerning the conduct of their men in the field, is
directly traceable to reports of the debasing influences of war set in
circulation by the anti-militarists. I want to say emphatically that
cleaner, more earnest, better protected troops than those from the
United States are not to be found in Europe. Both in Great Britain and
on the Continent their puritanism has created a deep impression. By
their idealism they have made their power felt; they are men with a
vision in their eyes, who have travelled three thousand miles to keep
a rendezvous with death. That those for whom they are prepared to die
should suspect them is a degrading disloyalty. That trackers should
be sent after them from home to pick up clues to their unworthiness
is sheerly damnable. To disparage the heroism of other nations is
bad enough; to distrust the heroes of your own flesh and blood,
attributing to them lower than civilian moral standards, is to be
guilty of the meanest treachery and ingratitude.

Here, then, are some of the sample fools to whom this preface is
addressed. The list could be indefinitely lengthened. "The fool hath
said in his heart, 'There is no God'." He says it in many ways and
takes a long while in saying it; but the denying of God is usually the
beginning and the end of his conversation. He denies the vision of
God in his fellow-men and fellow-nations, even when the spikes of the
cross are visibly tearing wounds in their feet and hands.