As an American, ardent alike for Americanism and the Americanization of
our foreign born, I have often enough been accused of narrowness. I saw
others burning with enthusiasm over the hope of the League of Nations,
but I felt my own heart chilled by the sense of the shortcomings of my
own country. With the majority I was hesitant. The map of the world
to-day, in all its parts, strikes suffering into the heart that feels.
The blood lines in every direction indicate that the world as a whole
is drifting from failure unto failure. Europe is struggling helplessly
in the midst of storm and crying piteously for help which never comes.
With the German financial system broken down, France, denied the
reparation she expected, is immersed in gloomy despair. The smaller
nations East and Southeast of Germany are collapsing, if not already
fallen down, starving and diseased; their peoples are becoming every
day more helpless and hopeless. Italy, wasted by the war, is now in the
throes of civil strife and revolution. Russia, the first white nation
of the world, continues to rot in her insane orgies. With the passing
months and years hope for the early salvation of Russia no longer
deceives us. The battle lines of the Greek army, facing the Turks in
Asia Minor, are awaiting reinforcements and supplies in order to resume
the offensive. The four hundred millions of China, torn from without
for a generation, lacerated by revolution and civil wars for ten years,
have merely proven to us their incapacity for self-help. India is in
revolution and Egypt cut adrift. All the world is more decadent to-day
than when America entered the war. Again and again the nations come
to us begging for the strong arm of leadership. Again and again they
go from us, broken hearted and bowed down by the weak words of our
indecision and failure. Yet again they come because elsewhere there is
no help to ask.
[Illustration: The Imperial Wizard Kneeling and Kissing the Flag, the
only Flag to which a Klansman Kneels.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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