Thursday, November 26, 1914. To-day is Thanksgiving. Filled with an immense gratitude for all that I have to be thankful for: health, a beloved and loving husband, a warm house, plenty to eat, a faithful helper, farther off a circle of kindly neighbors, and, not too far away, dear sisters, a beloved brother, nieces, nephews, friends, and oh, my country! Well may we Americans hold our heads high. This is our hour of success, in spite of Roosevelt’s defeat--if he is defeated! With the world gone war-mad and murderous hate beside us in Mexico, beside us in Canada, we cling to our ideals of peace, we are the courted of all the belligerents and we, out of our plenty, are the naturally appointed helpers and friends of all who are wounded, ravaged, desperate, bankrupt. “Golden Hope of the World,” said Roosevelt, and said it well. Never shall this golden hope be dragged in the dust. In this _dies irae_ the Americans are proving to be all we hoped. The women of fashion, many of them only known as society belles, are nursing the wounded in France and in England. Everywhere is the same story of help and sacrifice, warm generous giving, giving, giving. And yet let us not forget two words of the hour,--Kaiser William’s advice to his army “to remember Attila and the Huns and strike terribly”, and Kipling’s “The Hun is at the Gate”! This conscious savagery from a highly intellectual people like the Germans seems new in history. There is something deadlier in this barbarity that knows it is barbarous and openly admits that it is using barbaric methods than in the unconscious brutality of the wild Moroccan hordes of savage men whose gospel is war. The cynicism of the man who assumes that he is acting as God’s partner and representative on earth, and yet is willing to lead his people through the Red Sea of blood, in order that they may win to the fat lands of his rivals, passes anything I remember in history. Beginning with his treatment of his mother and following with his treatment of his enemies and of Belgium, his record grows from bad to worse. And Belgium? On the scroll of History she has written a deathless name, for as long as men shall tell over the stories of great heroic acts, they will thrill at the names of Thermopylae and of Liège.