My Second Year of the War | Page 2

home to no community until its own sons are dying
and risking death. In nothing are we so much the creatures of our
surroundings as in war. For the first few weeks when I was at home, a
nation going its way in an era of prosperity had an aspect of vulgarity;
peace itself was vulgar by contrast with the atmosphere of heroic
sacrifice in which I had lived for over a year. I asked myself if my
country could ever rise to the state of exaltation of France and England.
Though first thought, judging by superficial appearances alone, might
have said "No," I knew that we could if there ever came a call to defend
our soil--a call that could be brought home to the valleys of the Hudson
and the Mississippi as a call was brought home to the valleys of the
Somme, the Meuse and the Marne.
Many Americans had returned from Europe with reports of humiliation
endured as a result of their country's attitude. Shopkeepers had made
insulting remarks, they said, and in some instances had refused to sell
goods. They had been conscious of hostility under the politeness of
their French and English friends. A superficial confirmation of their
contention might be taken from the poster I noticed on my way from
Paddington Station to my hotel upon my arrival in England. It
advertised an article in a cheap weekly under the title of "Uncle Sham."
I took this just as seriously as I took a cartoon in a New York evening
paper of pro-German tendencies on the day that I had sailed from New
York, which showed John Bull standing idly by and urging France on
to sacrifices in the defense of Verdun. It was as easy for an American to

be indignant at one as for an Englishman at the other, but a little
unworthy of the intelligence of either. I was too convinced that Uncle
Sam, who does not always follow my advice, is sound at heart and a
respectable member of the family of nations to be in the least disturbed
in my sense of international good will. If I had been irritated I should
have contributed to the petty backbiting by the mischievous
uninformed which makes bad blood between peoples.
I knew, too, from experience, as I had kept repeating at home, that
when the chosen time arrived for the British to strike, they would prove
with deeds the shamelessness of this splash of printer's ink and
confound, as they have on the Somme, the witticism of a celebrated
Frenchman who has since made his apology for saying that the British
would fight on till the last drop of French blood was shed. Besides, on
the same day that I saw the poster I saw in a British publication a
reproduction of a German cartoon--exemplifying the same kind of
vulgar facility--picturing Uncle Sam being led by the nose by John
Bull.
Thinking Englishmen and Frenchmen, when they pause in their
preoccupation of giving life and fortune for their cause to consider this
extraneous subject, realize the widespread sympathy of the United
States for the Allied cause and how a large proportion of our people
were prepared to go to war after the sinking of the Lusitania for an
object which could bring them no territorial reward. If we will fight
only for money and aggrandizement, as the "Uncle Sham" style of
reasoners hold, we should long ago have taken Mexico and Central
America. Personally, I have never had anyone say to me that I was "too
proud to fight," though if I went about saying that I was ashamed of my
country I might; for when I think of my country I think of no group of
politicians, financiers, or propagandists, no bureaucracy or particular
section of opinion, but of our people as a whole. But unquestionably we
were unpopular with the masses of Europeans. A sentence taken out of
its context was misconstrued into a catch-phrase indicating the
cravenness of a nation wedded to its flesh-pots, which pretended a
moral superiority to others whose passionate sacrifice made them
supersensitive when they looked across the Atlantic to the United

States, which they saw profiting from others' misfortunes.
By living at home I had gained perspective about the war and by living
with the war I have gained perspective about my own country. At the
front I was concerned day after day with the winning of trenches and
the storming of villages whose names meant as little in the Middle
West as a bitter fight for good government in a Western city meant to
the men at the front. After some months of peace upon my return to
England I resented passport regulations which had previously been a
commonplace; but soon I was