The titanic facts were to the undercurrent of events but as the volcano to the fire at the heart of the earth. The heart of all human life being now ablaze, there was here and there a stupendous outburst which was but a symptom of the raging flame beneath. There was the U-boat blockade of Great Britain, endangering all the maritime nations of the world. There was the American diplomatic break with Germany. There was the guarding of the German ships interned in American ports. There was the torpedoing of an American steamer off the Scilly Isles. There was Mr. Wilson’s invitation to the neutral nations to join him in the breach with the German Emperor. And then on the 26th the President went in person before Congress to ask authority to use armed force to protect American rights. These, I say, were but volcanic incidents. The impressive thing to me was the transformation of a people by a process as subtle as enchantment. Two months earlier they had been neutral, and sitting tight on their neutrality. The war was three thousand miles away. It had been brewed in the cursed vendettas of nations of some of which the every-day American hardly knew the names. It was tragic for those peoples; but they whose lives were poisoned by no hereditary venom were not called on to take part. Zebulun and Naphtali from sheer geographical position might be obliged to hazard their lives to the death; but Asher could abide in his ports, and Gilead beyond Jordan. That had been the kind of reasoning I heard as late as the time of my arrival. On my return to New York in November, I found a nation holding its judgments and energies in suspense. What by the end of February interested me most was the spectacle of this same people urging forward, surging upward, striving, straining toward a goal which every one knew it would take strength and sacrifice to reach. Between this approach to war and that of any of the other great powers there was this difference: They had taken the inevitable step while in the grip of a great stress. They sprang to their arms overnight. They had no more choice than a man whose house is on fire as to whether or not he will extinguish it. Out of the bed of their luxurious existence they were called as if by conflagration. Whether they would lose their lives or escape with them was a question they had no time to consider. They went up to the top notch of the heroic in an instant, not knowing the danger they were facing or the courage they displayed.