SIR, I enclose my check for a year's subscription to THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW's War Weekly. I am sure I can afford to miss nothing from Colonel Harvey's able pen. I could not get along without the REVIEW. LEICESTER, MASS. FRANCIS E. SMITH. SIR,-I enclose one dollar for a year's subscription for your War Weekly. I am a subscriber for the REVIEW for 1918 at above address. Congratulations. I want to hear from you weekly. A whole month is too long between "drinks". ALBANY, N. Y. GEORGE MCLAUGHLIN. Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo discrimine agetur NORTH AMERICAN AMERICAN REVIEW APRIL, 1918 VICTORY-PEACE-JUSTICE OUR FIRST YEAR IN THE GREAT WAR ANOTHER year!—another deadly blow! No American poet, if one did live today, could say with truth as Wordsworth said of his countrymen a century ago, that "We are left, or shall be left, alone; the last that dare to struggle with the Foe"; never before, praise be to God, were England's hearts of oak less daunted or the souls of France more valiant. And yet, indeed, ""Tis well," if at last, as we stand upon the threshold of "another year," distressed if not dismayed by the spectacle of " Another mighty Empire overthrown," we know "That in ourselves our safety must be sought; That by our own right hands it must be wrought.” How blind we were this one short year ago! We had elected to keep out of the war. All the while," said the President in his second inaugural address, we have been conscious that we were not part of it," and, even though Copyright, 1918, by NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW CORPORATION. All Rights Reserved. we should "be drawn on, by circumstances, to a more active assertion of our rights and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself," the "shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves." As late as February 26, he had "thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms" and on April 2 he felt that assurance had been added "to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening happenings in Russia. War there needs must be, but it shall be an academic war and soon ended-this was the great illusion pressed, with utmost good faith, no doubt, for months and months, by the President and his associates upon the minds of the people. We say it in no captious spirit but we say it, as a fact which has been attended by consequences whose continuance and repetition must be averted in the future if the world is to be saved. We have been at war a year, come April 6-technically and confessedly, though Germany had been waging war against us for many months before. What have we accomplished in that year? In the first place, we have suffered disillusionment. We have indeed suffered that in several respects. One relates to our prestige and authority in the world. There were thoseIlium fuit!-who thought, or who thought that they thought, that no nation in the world would dare to stand up against us. Let the United States so much as threaten to take a hand, and the offending nation would incontinently drop its guns and raise the white flag of unconditional surrender. It may be that such was the case at some point in our history. What is certain is, that it was not the case in April, 1917. It may be that such might have been the case then, if we had acted differently during the few preceding years. But we had not acted differently. And so Germany refused to be scared at the prospect of having to fight us in addition to the other Allies. On the contrary, she regarded our advent among the belligerents with at least an affectation of unconcern if not of contempt. Now it may be that Germany made a mistake in so doing; just as she did when she spoke so slightly of “Britain's contemptible little army." We rather think that before the end is reached the Huns will find that it was a very serious thing |