Not an ear in court or market for the low, foreboding cry Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim ⚫ unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is

great,

Slow of faith, how weak an arm may turn the iron helm

of fate,

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant

brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer

day,

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey ;Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit and 'tis prosperous to be just;

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands

aside,

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam

incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood, and to God's supreme design.

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, Worshipers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts, Unconvinced by ax or gibbet that all virtue was the

Past's:

But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in moldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the sea.

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altarfires;

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's bloodrusted key.

THE PRUSSIAN MENACE TO AMERICAN

FREEDOM1

ELIHU ROOT (1845- )

By entering this war in April, the United States availed itself of the very last opportunity to defend itself against subjection to German power before it was too late to defend itself successfully.

For many years we have pursued our peaceful course of internal development protected in a variety of ways. We were protected by the law of nations to which all civilized governments have professed their allegiance. So long as we committed no injustice ourselves we could not be attacked without a violation of that law.

We were protected by a series of treaties under which all the principal nations of the earth agreed to respect our rights and to maintain friendship with us. We were protected by an extensive system of arbitration created by or consequent upon the peace conferences at The Hague, and under which all controversies arising under the law and under treaties were to be settled peaceably by arbitration and not by force.

We were protected by the broad expanse of ocean separating us from all great military powers, and by the bold assertion of the Monroe Doctrine 2 that if any of those

1 Mr. Root was Secretary of State under President Rocsevelt. In this and many other offices of trust Mr. Root, through his broad statesmanship and keen intellectual powers, has been an instrument in establishing the American spirit.

From an address delivered at Chicago, Illinois, September 14, 1917. In pamphlet, "Plain Issues of the War," issued by the Committee on Public Information, Washington, D.C.

2 See page 74 for the foreign policy formulated under President

powers undertook to overpass the ocean and establish itself upon these western continents that would be regarded as dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, and would call upon her to act in her defense.

We were protected by the fact that the policy and the fleet of Great Britain were well known to support the Monroe Doctrine. We were protected by the delicate balance of power in Europe which made it seem not worth while for any power to engage in a conflict here at the risk of suffering from its rivals there.

All these protections were swept away by the war which began in Europe in 1914. The war was begun by the concerted action of Germany and Austria - the invasion of Serbia on the east by Austria and the invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium on the west by Germany. Both invasions were in violation of the law of nations, and in violation of the faith of treaties.

Everybody knew that Russia was bound in good faith to come to the relief of Serbia, that France was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Russia, that England was bound by treaty to come to the aid of Belgium, so that the invasion of these two small states was the beginning of a general European war.

These acts, which have drenched the world with blood, were defended and justified in the bold avowal of the German government that the interests of the German state were superior to the obligations of law and the faith of treaties, that no law or treaty was binding upon Germany which it was for the interest of Germany to violate.

All pretense of obedience to the law of nations and of

Monroe in 1823, which announced that the United States would view as a hostile action any attempt of European powers to acquire territory on the American continents.