a few troops worthy of taking the places of French and British reserve divisions and releasing them to the front. It was that plugging up of the tiny hole in the dyke that let the Allies hold on. Had we not shown an unbelievable efficiency over all of our other wars, after we got into the fight, and had not Villa crossed our border in 1916, the hole could not have been plugged--and America would have been on the losing side. Our unreadiness before war--not so good. Our surprising efficiency after we got into the war--not so bad. Our dependence upon a Mexican bandit for partial preparation--not so good. But suppose we had been forced to fight our enemy alone. Suppose we hadn’t had Allies to spend their lives in defense for a whole year. Suppose in wandering off for brass knuckles and boxing lessons we’d have been left alone with him. Can you picture the frightful, extravagant, tremendous deaths we would have dealt out to our own young men? _XIII_ NOW One very rainy day my regiment was marching through that gloomy red-mud country of North Georgia. We were cold and tired, and our shoes were heavy as suit-cases. Our camping-place was to be at a little town of Jasper. We had trudged along for about ten miles when we came to a sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” That was encouragement. Only seven more miles. The old Sergeant near me set his jaw. In a few minutes we came to another sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” The old Sergeant glared at the words as if he could bite them. In about ten minutes we came to a third sign which said: “Seven miles to Jasper.” It was too much for the Sergeant. He plunked his foot down in the mud. “Well,” he said, “thank God, we’re holding our own.” As we look over the history of our country, we can sincerely thank God that we’ve held our own. For we didn’t do much of the holding ourselves. In every one of our major wars, some outside influence, some accident, some big defect of our enemies, some miracle pulled us through to safety. In every big fracas we were caught napping--caught saying there wouldn’t be a war--caught in the midst of brazen defiance of simple protection. Our utter weakness didn’t keep us out of war. In fact we chose our weakest times because our extreme anger wouldn’t wait for anything. We’d have gone in with pitchforks, we were so hot. That was courage all right, but it was stupid courage--and slaughter--unnecessary slaughter of our finest young men by the hundreds of thousands--young men we hadn’t given even a fighting chance, young men whose dying voices call to us today to give our manhood a little break--a little break against that sudden hurricane of anger which dashes a whole people into war.