to-morrow may barely avert disaster. All the Allies have discovered that. It was a new country for us all. It was trackless, mapless. We had to go by instinct. But we found the way and I am glad that you are sending your great naval and military experts here, just to exchange experiences with men who have been through all the dreary, anxious crises of the last three years.

America has helped us even to win the battle of Arras. She has been making guns, making ammunition, giving us machinery to prepare both; she has supplied us with steel, and she has got all that organization and she has got that wonderful facility, adaptability, and resourcefulness of the great people who inhabit that great continent. Ah! It was a bad day for military autocracy in Prussia when it challenged the great Republic of the West. We know what America can do, and we also know that now she is in it, she will do it. She will wage an effective and successful war.

There is something more important. She will insure a beneficent peace. I attach great importance—and I am the last man in the world, knowing for three years what our difficulties have been, what our anxieties have been, and what our fears have been-I am the last man to say that the succor which is given us from America is not something in itself to rejoice in, and to rejoice in greatly. But I do not mind saying that I rejoice even more in the knowledge that America is going to win the right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are being discussed. That conference will settle the destiny of nations-the course of human life-for God knows how many ages. It would have been tragic for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all the influence, all the power, and the right which she now has won by flinging herself into this great struggle.

I can see peace coming now-not a peace which will

be the beginning of war, not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife and bloodshed; but a real peace. The world is an old world. It has been rocking and swaying like an ocean, and Europe-poor Europe!— has always lived under the shadow of the sword. When this war began, two-thirds of Europe was under autocratic rule. Now it is the other way about; and democracy means peace. The democracy of France did not want war; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before they entered the war; the democracy of this country shrank from it-shrank and shuddered-and never would have entered the caldron had it not been for the invasion of Belgium. The democracies sought for peace; strove for peace. If Prussia had been a democracy there would have been no war. Strange things have happened in this war. There are stranger things to come, and they are coming rapidly.

There are times in history when this world spins so leisurely along its destined course that it seems for centuries to be at a standstill; but there are also times when it rushes along at a giddy pace, covering the track of centuries in a year. Those are the times we are living now. Six weeks ago Russia was an autocracy; she is now one of the most advanced democracies in the world. To-day we are waging the most devastating war that the world has ever seen; to-morrow-perhaps not a distant to-morrow-war may be abolished forever from the category of human crimes. This may be something like the fierce outburst of winter which we are now witnessing before the complete triumph of the sun. It is written of those gallant men who won that victory Monday 3—men from Canada, from Australia, and from this old country, which has proved that in spite of its age it is not decrepit -it is written of those gallant men that they attacked with the dawn-fit work for the dawn!-to drive out of

3

forty miles of French soil those miscreants who had defiled it for three years. "They attacked with the dawn." Significant phrase!

The breaking up of the dark rule of the Turk, which for centuries had clouded the sunniest land in the world, the freeing of Russia from an oppression which had covered it like a shroud for so long, the great declaration of President Wilson coming with the might of the great nation which he represents into the struggle for liberty are heralds of the dawn. "They attacked with the dawn,' and these men are marching forward in the full radiance of that dawn, and soon Frenchmen and Americans, British, Italians, Russians, yea, and Serbians, Belgians, Montenegrins, will emerge into the full light of a perfect day.

Compare Lloyd-George's literary and oratorical style with that of President Wilson.

Had the United States ever formed a military alliance with Great Britain previous to this war?

Show, if you can, how all the wars in which America engaged had liberty for their objective.

What was Lloyd-George's meaning when he said "democracy means peace"?

Did America, as Lloyd-George hoped, profit by England's mistakes?

Compare the peroration with the closing of one of Wilson's great addresses.

What effect was produced in England by America's entrance into the war?

PRESIDENT WILSON'S FLAG DAY SPEECH

June 14, 1917

As soon as Congress had passed the resolution declaring war with Germany, the United States government began to put forth its utmost resources to prepare an army. It seemed best to adopt universal military service, since volunteer service was neither efficient nor truly democratic. On May 18, 1917, Congress with some opposition passed the selective draft law; and the President issued a proclamation in which he said the word conscription was used, not because any were unwilling. It signified "rather a selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass."

The hopes thus expressed were realized. On June 5, the day of registration, "ten million men, rich and poor alike, left their occupations and responded to the call quietly, gravely, willingly." As they prepared to leave their homes and all that they most prized, they could not help considering whether country and institutions were worth the sacrifice. The result of their deliberation was a more complete devotion, a more ardent patriotism, and a deeper reverence for the flag.

It was, therefore, to a nation serious-minded and deeply devoted to its new duties, that President Wilson spoke on June 14, 1917. It had been planned, in connection with an elaborate celebration of Flag Day in the Capital city of the nation, that the President should deliver an address in the park near Washington Monument. The weather proved to be unfavorable. Several thousand people, nevertheless, gathered in the rain

about the speaker's stand and awaited eagerly the address of the Chief Executive. Most of the members of the cabinet were present. Robert L. Lansing, secretary of state, introduced the speaker. The President made use of the occasion to speak to those who were soon to follow the flag into foreign lands of the occurrences which had caused the nation to cast aside its old traditions and adopt new views. He told of the evils to be overcome, and spoke eloquently of purposes and principles that were destined, with the help of our army, to bring a better day to the world and to add a new luster to the flag.

THE FLAG DAY SPEECH

WOODROW WILSON

MY FELLOW CITIZENS: We meet to celebrate Flag Day 1 because this flag which we honor and under which we serve is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character 2 than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us-speaks to us of the past, of the men and women who went before us and of the records they wrote upon it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and from its birth until now it has witnessed a great history, has floated on high the symbol of great events, of a great plan of life worked out by a great people. We are about to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will draw the fire of our enemies. We are about to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be millions of our men, the young, the strong, the capable