Mexico City. In the President's Flag Day address, delivered at Washington on June 14, 1917, appeared the following: They [meaning Germany] sought by violence to destroy our industries and arrest our commerce. They tried to incite Mexico to take up arms against us and to draw Japan into an hostile alliance with her; and that, not by indirection, but by direct suggestion from the Foreign Office at Berlin. As the storm of ridicule and criticism of his policy of watchful waiting beat fiercely upon him, I often wondered if he felt the petty meanness which underlay it, or was disturbed or dispirited by it. As the unkind blows fell upon him, thick and fast from every quarter, he gave no evidence to those who were close to him of any irritation, or of the deep anger he must have felt at what appeared to be a lack of sympathy on the part of the country toward the idealistic policy in the treatment of Mexican affairs. Never for a single moment was he driven from the course he had mapped out for himself. He had given his heart and soul to a great humane task and he moved toward its consummation amid a hurricane of protests and criticisms. There was a time, however, when I thought he displayed chagrin and disappointment at the obstacles placed in his path in settling the affairs of Mexico. It was in a little speech delivered at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the occasion of the burial of the Marines who fell at Vera Cruz. The following paragraph contained a note of sadness and even depression. Perhaps, in the following words, he pictured his own loneliness and utter dejection: I never went into battle; I never was under fire; but I fancy there are some things just as hard to do as to go under fire. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. When they shoot at you, they can only take your natural life; when they sneer at you, they can wound your living heart, and men who are brave enough, steadfast enough, steady in their principles enough, to go about their duty with regard to their fellow-men, no matter whether there are hisses or cheers, men who can do what Rudyard Kipling in one of his poems wrote, "Meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same," are men for a nation to be proud of. Morally speaking, disaster and triumph are imposters. The cheers of the moment are not what a man ought to think about, but the verdict of his conscience and of the consciences of mankind. CHAPTER XXI PANAMA TOLLS