It is but natural that in the atmosphere which surrounds you and under existing circumstances, a man even of such sober, clear and independent mentality as yourself should think and feel in the way manifested by your letter. Even if it were in my power, I would not try _at this time_ to shake your faith and patriotic determination. Since, however, you ask me to continue this exchange of opinions, I will endeavour further to make plain to you my ideas as to this most deplorable and accursed war. The views I am expressing are, I believe, the views as well of the great majority of thinking people in America. And I would remind you that America as a whole, by reason of the racial composition of her population, is essentially free from national prejudice or racial bias. With her many millions of inhabitants of German origin, her disposition could not be anti-German in the ordinary course of affairs--and indeed never was so before the war. With her millions of Jews and her liberal tendencies she cannot be pro-Russian. With her historical development in the course of which her only serious wars have been fought against Great Britain (which country, moreover, during certain critical periods in the Civil War between North and South, evidenced inclination to favour the South and thus aroused long continuing resentment in the Northern States), and for many other reasons, her disposition cannot be that of an English partisan--and was not so before the war. The predominant sentiment of the American people in the Boer War was anti-English; in the Balkan War their sympathies were pro-Turkish; in the Italian-Turkish War, anti-Italian; in the Russo-Japanese War, pro-Japanese, although it was fully realized that from the point of view of America's material and national interests, the strengthening of Japan was hardly desirable. It may sound to you very improbable, yet it is none the less true that America, of all the great nations, is probably the one least swayed by eagerness to attain material advantage for herself through her international policies. I do not claim that this arises necessarily from any particular virtue in her people. It may be rather the result of her geographical and economic situation. America returned to China the indemnity growing out of the Boxer Rebellion. To Spain, conquered and helpless, she paid, entirely of her own free-will, $20,000,000 for the Philippines. She refused to annex Cuba. In spite of strong provocation she abstained from taking Mexico. Although not a land as yet of the highest degree of culture, America is a land of high and genuine humanitarianism and of a certain naïve idealism. I hear your ironic rejoinder, "and out of pure humanitarianism, you supply arms to our enemies, and _thus prolong the war_."