- many. That is hard doctrine? Yes. But it was Germany
that lost the war.
It is altogether likely that not the best writing in the world, not the most partisan history in the world, will ever be able to give a clean bill of health to America's conduct of this war, or to restore the old American confidence that we were the one great people of the world. The scales have fallen from the eyes at least of our soldiers. They know, and presently all the world will know, our shortcomings. Three million men will have something to say about the politics of this country. Perhaps they will say that our next war shall not find us so unprepared. Perhaps they will say that our next war shall not find us with an army of 2,000,000 spies, propagandists and pro-enemies who claim American citizenship. The Army man is the worst foe of the censorship which has held back the truth from America for so long. Perhaps the Army man will be able to settle accounts with that politician whose stock in trade is the holding back from the American people of the knowledge of themselves. It is time to raise the real banner of America. It will take courage to march under those colors. But if we cannot march side by side and shoulder to shoulder, then we have lost this war, we have lost the Monroe Doctrine, we have lost the League of Nations.
Why should we try to avoid the truth? Nothing is gained by that. The truth is that the reckoning of this war is not yet paid. Eventually it must be paid through the resolution and individual courage of those citizens who are not ashamed to be called American. Ostracism of the hyphen, where it is known still to exist; fearlessness in the boycott of blood-soaked German goods; rejection of the blood-soaked German hand; the wiping out of the foreign languages in the pulpit and press of America; the revocation of citizenship based on a lie; the deportation of known traitors—those are some of the things which must go into the oath of the next A. P. L. Until we can swear that oath and maintain it, we have lost the war.
It is a far cry enough. We have not shot one German spy out of those thousands whom we have found working here in America. We have not deported one man. We have revoked the citizenship of only two men—the above men-
