Presently came a resting-spell. One of the squad approached me, whom I
recognized as a young man I had met in the Harvard Union.

"If you write about this," he said, "just tell our people that we're
going to take that sergeant home with us when the war's over. He's too
good to lose."



IV

It is trite to observe that democracies are organized--if, indeed, they
are organized at all--not for war but for peace. And nowhere is this
fact more apparent than in Britain. Even while the war is in progress
has that internal democratic process of evolution been going on,
presaging profound changes in the social fabric. And these changes must
be dealt with by statesmen, must be guided with one hand while the war is
being prosecuted with the other. The task is colossal. In no previous
war have the British given more striking proof of their inherent quality
of doggedness. Greatness, as Confucius said, does not consist in never
falling, but in rising every time you fall. The British speak with
appalling frankness of their blunders. They are fighting, indeed, for
the privilege of making blunders--since out of blunders arise new truths
and discoveries not contemplated in German philosophy.

America must now contribute what Britain and France, with all their
energies and resources and determination, have hitherto been unable to
contribute. It must not be men, money, and material alone, but some
quality that America has had in herself during her century and a half of
independent self-realization. Mr. Chesterton, in writing about the