We had been waiting long for them—too long as some thought, not realising the diversity of racial views in that great country and knowing little of its historical character and meaning. Vast numbers of its people had come from Europe in the past, distant or recent, to escape—Europe. They had wanted to get away from the very hatreds and rivalries which had led to this monstrous conflict. They desired to live secure, in a civilisation where the common man might work in peace and liberty without being flagged to fight for some Kings’ quarrel or the ambitions of diplomats, or the fever of racial passion. Great numbers of them could not understand what the European quarrel was about when all was said and done. Anyhow, it had nothing to do with them, in the Middle West and the West, though New York seemed to be worried. Many intelligent Americans, shocked to the soul by this breakdown of civilisation in Europe, believed sincerely that the best service they could render the world was to stand on one side, to act finally as arbitrators between the exhausted nations among whom neither side could win—it looked like that—and to lead the stricken peoples back to sanity and peace. German Americans had a natural sympathy with the old fatherland though dismayed by its ruthlessness. Irish Americans still disliked England too much because of bitter and traditional memories to weep tears over her sacrifice or to glow with pride at the splendour of her spirit. Czechs, Slavs, Swedes were utterly neutral. In any case, apart from all racial strains, the war in Europe was enormously distant to the souls of men on isolated farmsteads, or to the crowds in the main streets of little towns west of New York. They elected President Wilson to keep them out of the war, and that strange man, with his mingling of mysticism and practical politics, his moral eloquence, and his autocratic methods, his mental disgust at war and violence, and his belief that the spiritual destiny of the United States was not to be fulfilled in terms of military force, or by any entry into the quarrels of the Old World, made them resist for a long time the strain of almost intolerable pressures, such as the German U-boat war and the rising passion of American opinion, in many classes not neutral, not indifferent to the cause of France and Great Britain, but tortured by shame, impatience, rage, because the Government of the United States refused to call its people to a crusade on the side of right and justice.