FOREWORD
they have in observing the correlation of mental forces; and I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that future historians, when they are farther removed from the events of to-day, will lay stress upon the latter, not neglecting, but at least less emphasizing, the former. When you are near the trenches the biggest thing in the world is the man in the trenches, and he is a very big thing in the world while the war is on. Our minds are fascinated by the presence of Americans in France. We see stretching over France the products of our mills and our factories; we see the boys we have taken from field and workshop and factory and office and school manufactured overnight into an altogether unsuspected stature of heroism and capacity for sacrifice in the field. We see the trained and veteran armies of the countries which have long maintained a great military policy caught up with by our own recruits, hastily trained; we see the ocean, filled with new and difficult perils, carrying larger numbers of American soldiers than have ever been transported in the history of mankind. Perhaps the greatest foreign army that ever crossed a sea in the history of the world prior to the present war was the Persian army of a million men, which bridged and crossed the Hellespont, and here the American army has sent two millions of men across the Atlantic. We sec workshops and factories in America transferred from civilian occupations and learning new and difficult arts, accustoming their tools to the manufacture of war supplies, and we see American labor learning new skills, new mechanical inventions brought into quantity production among us.
So we think of the physical things accomplished because we are close to them and because they are visible to the senses. Our minds naturally dwell chiefly upon the physical things that have been done. There are many people in this room who have been in Europe since we entered this war, and nobody could possibly go to France,
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