In my appeal I leave the fighting men out of the question. Death is
a universal teacher of charity. At the end of the war the men who
survive will acknowledge no kinship save the kinship of courage. To
have answered the call of duty and to have played the man, will make
a closer bond than having been born of the same mother. At a New York
theatre last October I met some French officers who had fought on the
right of the Canadian Corps frontage at the Somme. We got to talking,
commenced remembering, missed the entire performance and parted as old
friends. In France I stayed with an American-Irish Division. They were
for the most part American citizens in the second generation: few of
them had been to Ireland. As frequently happens, they were more Irish
than the Irish. They had learned from their parents the abuses which
had driven them to emigrate, but had no knowledge of the reciprocal
provocations which had caused the abuses. Consequently, when they
sailed on their troop-ships for France they were anti-British almost
to a man--many of them were theoretically Sinn Feiners. They were
coming to fight for France and for Lafayette, who had helped to lick
Britain--but not for the British. By the time I met them they were
marvellously changed. They were going into the line almost any day
and--this was what had worked the change--they had been trained for
their ordeal by British N.C.O.'s and officers. They had swamped their
hatred and inherited bitterness in admiration. Their highest hope
was that they might do as well as the British. "They're men if you
like," they said. In the imminence of death, their feeling for these
old-timers, who had faced death so often, amounted to hero-worship. It
was good to hear them deriding the caricature of the typical Briton,
which had served in their mental galleries as an exact likeness for
so many years. It was proof to me that men who have endured the same
hell in a common cause will be nearer in spirit, when the war is