"The world in general that had educated itself to regard the German as a phlegmatic and plodding citizen will remove its headgear in token of approbation of the sustained series of sensational feats by German commanders and sailors. The entire aspect of affairs has been changed by the events of two years. The Germans have accumulated as much heroic and romantic material in that time as has been gathered by other nations since the date of the American Revolution." In the second section of this book, I have told why we talk like that. The mixture of races (mixed but not blended), the modern theory of cosmopolitanism, a self-complacency in our attitude toward Europe, an assumption that we alone champion freedom and justice, the fading of our historic tradition--these have caused us to preach internationalism, but fail to defend ourselves or the little nation of Belgium. They have led us to admire successful force. [2] Mazzini's idea of neutrality was this: "A law of Solon decreed that those who in an insurrection abstained from taking part on one side or the other should be degraded. It was a just and holy law, founded on the belief--then instinctive in the heart of Solon, but now comprehended and expressed in a thousand formulæ--in the solidarity of mankind. It would be just now more than ever. What! you are in the midst of the uprising, not of a town, but of the whole human race; you see brute force on the one side, and right on the other ... whole nations are struggling under oppression ... men die in hundreds, by thousands, fighting for or against an idea. This idea is either good or evil; and you continue to call yourselves men and Christians, you claim the right of remaining neutral? You cannot do so without moral degradation. Neutrality--that is to say, indifference between good and evil, the just and the unjust, liberty and oppression--is simply Atheism." TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE -Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected. End of Project Gutenberg's Our Part in the Great War, by Arthur Gleason