Washington spread his gospel so clearly that all persons were sure to learn and inwardly digest it, and many of them assented to it in their minds, although they did not follow it In their conduct. His paramount exhortations--"Be united"--"Be Americans"; "do not be drawn into complications with foreign powers"--at times had a very real living pertinence. The only doctrine which still causes controversy is that which touches our attitude towards foreign countries. During the late World War we heard it revived, and a great many persons who had never read the "Farewell Address" gravely reminded us of Washington's warning against "entangling alliances." As a matter of fact, that phrase does not appear in the "Farewell Address" at all. It was first used by Thomas Jefferson in his first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801, sixteen months after Washington was dead and buried. No doubt the meaning could be deduced from what Washington said in more than one passage of his "Farewell." But to understand in 1914 what he said or implied in 1796, we must be historical. In 1796 the country was torn by conflicting parties for and against strong friendship, if not an actual alliance, between the United States on one side and Great Britain or France on the other. Any foreign alliance that could be made in 1914, however, could not have been, for the same reason, with either Great Britain or France. The aim proposed by its advocates was to curb and destroy the German domination of the world. Now Washington was almost if not quite the most actual of modern statesmen. All his arrangements at a given moment were directed at the needs and likelihood of the moment, and in 1914 he would have planned as 1914 demanded. He would have steered his ship by the wind that blew then and not by the wind that had blown and vanished one hundred and twenty years before.