To our eternal shame as a nation our Government has evaded, up to this hour, pronouncing the expected verdict, has preferred to quibble and define, in its vain attempt to hold the barbarian to a "strict accountability"--whatever that may mean. France does not want our army or our navy, not even our money and our factories, except on business terms, but she has looked in vain for our affirmation as a nation of our belief in her great cause, which should be our own cause--the cause of all free peoples. * * * * * What a timid and verbal interpretation of neutrality has prevented our Government from affirming, the American people, let us be thankful, have done generously, abundantly. They have pronounced a not uncertain verdict, and they have followed this moral verdict with countless acts of sympathy. The cause of France, the faith of the French, have roused the chivalry of the best Americans. Our youths are fighting in the trenches, our doctors and nurses are giving their services, our money is helping to stanch the wounds of France. As a people we too have affirmed our faith in the cause and are doing generously, spontaneously, as is our wont, what we can to win that cause for the world. The splendid hospital of the American Ambulance at Neuilly, equipped and operated on the generous American scale, is the real monument to the beliefs, the hopes, the faith of the American people. In that modification of the Anglo-Saxon tradition which America is fast evolving, there is a subtle sympathy and likeness with the Latin, which this crisis has brought into evidence. We are less English than French in spirit, in our ideal of culture, of life. VI _The New France_