human wrecks. Increasingly the crusader spirit was finding a gallant
response in the hearts of America's girlhood. By the time that
President Wilson flung his challenge, eighty-six war relief
organizations were operating in France. In very many cases these
organizations only represented a hundredth part of the actual
personnel working; the other ninety-nine hundredths were in the
States, rolling bandages, shredding oakum, slitting linen, making
dressings. Long before April, 1917, American college boys had won a
name by their devotion in forcing their ambulances over shell torn
roads on every part of the French Front, but, perhaps, with peculiar
heroism at Verdun. Already the American Flying Squadron has earned
a veteran's reputation for its daring. The report of the sacrificial
courage of these pioneers had travelled to every State in the Union;
their example had stirred, shamed and educated the nation. It is to
these knight-errants--very many of them boys and girls in years--to
the Mrs. Whartons, the Alan Seegers, the Hoovers and the Thaws that I
attribute America's eager acceptance of Calvary, when at last it
was offered to her by her Statesmen. From an anguished horror to
be repelled, war had become a spiritual Eldorado in whose heart lay
hidden the treasure-trove of national honor.

The individual American soldier is inspired by just as altruistic
motives as his brother-Britisher. Compassion, indignation, love of
justice, the determination to see right conquer are his incentives.
You can make a man a conscript, drill him, dress him in uniform, but
you cannot force him to face up to four years to do his job unless the
ideals were there beforehand. I have seen American troop-ships come
into the dock with ten thousand men singing,

"Good-bye, Liza,