But America, traditionally resourceful, now suddenly agonized in the discovery of treachery at her own table, has out of the very anguish of her indignant horror, out of the very need of the hour, suddenly and adequately risen to her emergency. She always has done so. When the arms of the appointed agents of the law ever have wearied, she has upheld them. She has done so now, at the very moment of our country’s greatest need. The story of how that was done; how the very force of the situation demanded and received an instant and sufficient answer; how the civilians rallied to their own flag; how they came out of private life unasked, unsummoned, as though at spoken command of some central power—that is a great and splendid story of which few ever have known anything at all. It is a great and splendid story because it verifies America and her intent before all the high courts of things. These men did obey the summons of a vast central power. But it was no more than the soul of America that spoke. It was no more than her theory of the democracy of mankind which issued that unwritten order to assemble the minute men, each armed and garbed in his own way and each resolved to do what he could in a new and tremendous day of Lexington. It was not autocracy which gave the assembly call to these silent legions. They mobilized themselves, so rapidly as to offer one of the most curious psychological problems of history. Why did these men leave their homes almost all at once, each unknown at first to the other, in large part each unknown to the other even now? How did it come about that an army of a quarter of a million men enlisted themselves and then offered their services to a government which needed them but never had asked for them? How did it come that—contrary to all European traditions—this tremendous striking-power began at the bottom in our democratic war-born instinct, and worked upward into the Government itself, as a new institution, wholly unrecognized in the constitution of state or nation? Usually the Government issues the order for mobilization. But here the greatest band of minute men ever known in the world mobilized as though unconsciously, as though to some spiritual trumpet call. Having done so, it offered itself to the Nation’s heads, saying, “Here we are. Take us and use us. We ask no pay. _We enlist till the end of the war._” It was the spirit voice of anguished America which mobilized the American Protective League. There never was a time when America could lose this war. The answer was always written in the stars. Somewhere, high up in the heavens, blind Justice let fall her sword in a gesture of command; and that was all. The issue of the war was determined from that moment. It was certain that Germany, brutal, bloody, autocratic, destructive, would be defeated beyond the sea. Yes, and on this side of the sea.