oratory or by fine phrases, or by resolutions and conferences and leagues of nations. We cannot pay it with eulogies of the dead nor monuments to the living heroes. We cannot pay it by advancing our breasts again against shot and shell.
The debt of the world must be paid by America. We can pay it only by making a new and better democracy in America. We can pay it only by renewed individual sacrifices and a renewed individual courage.
We must remake America. We must purify the source of America's population and keep it pure. We must rebuild our whole theory of citizenship in America. We must care more for the safety of America's homes and the safety of the American ideal. We must insist that there shall be an American loyalty, brooking no amendment or qualification.
That is to say, we must unify the American populace—or we must fail; and the great debt of the world must remain unpaid; and the war must have been fought in vain.
The old polyglot, hubbub, hurdy-gurdy days of America are gone. We are no longer a mining camp, but a country, or should be that. Happy-go-lucky times are done for us. We must become a nation, mature, of one purpose, resolved at heart. Now we shall see how brave we really are, how much men we are.
What is America to-day? What undiscovered soul was there lying under the paint and the high heels and the tambourine and the bubbling glass in the fool's paradise of our excited lives? What was there of sober and resolved citizenship under the American Protective League—a force so soon developed, so silently disbanded? Very much was there. All that a nation needs was there—if that nation shall not forget.
It is one thing if a quarter million men go back to business and forget their two years of sacrifice; if three million soldiers also forget their sacrifices and simply drop back into the old business world which they left. But it is quite another thing if three and a quarter million American citizens, sobered and not forgetful, do take up the flung torch and say that the dead of Flanders shall rest content—not merely for a day or so remembered—not merely for a year or two revenged, but for all the centuries verified and made of worth and justified in their sacrifices.
