FROM A BERKSHIRE CABIN 181 



feeble the results in real thinking! One city slum 

 confutes us. The question is, will one world war 

 awake us? 



A paradox confronts and cheers me. There was 

 probably never a time in the world's history when 

 more men were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice 

 for an unselfish ideal, with no hint of hysteria, but 

 only reasoned conviction in their attitude, than in 

 America to-day. Taking no credit away from 

 France and England, yet it is a fact that French- 

 men and Englishmen were and are fighting for the 

 physical integrity of their homes. Perhaps we are, 

 too, but so long as the mass of us do not have an 

 emotional realization of the fact it is, therefore, prac- 

 tically pure idealism behind us. We have struck 

 the pitch, of course, in a moment of national stress, 

 when " crowd psychology" plays a large part; there 

 is no sense of denying that. Can we hold the pitch 

 when the tension is relaxed? Can we continue to 

 think in terms of the not-ourselves, can we continue 

 to realize that no individual happiness, no individ- 

 ual attainment of the beautiful, no national pros- 

 perity, even, is worth much in the sight of the All 

 Beautiful unless it is part of a larger world happiness 

 and beauty? If we can send an army of three 

 million men, animated by an unselfish ideal, to 

 fight abroad, cannot we mobilize an even vaster 

 army of men and women with an unselfish ideal to 

 fight at home, to put the community above the 

 individual, the world above the nation? The for- 

 est seems to whisper hope. It seems to say that 

 this, my so beautiful country, has above all others, 

 perhaps, the mission in the immediate after-years 



