Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: (CHAPTER III THE ARMIES ON THE WESTEKK FEONT How is any one, psychologist or materialist, to describe the Allied Armies that are fighting Prussian militarism, and give the man who knows none of them a grasp of their fundamental differences of racial pride and feeling, and at the same time make perfectly obvious the cohesiveness of the common cause before which every difference is "sunk without trace," every personality and racial aspiration subordinated ? We think and speak cheerfully of the "Allies" in the war. But why "Allies" ? Why are the Nations allied—what does it all mean ? How many of us have ever thought of it seriously, or done anything but smile when a helpless miniature republic like Costa Eica or Monaco, or an effete oriental monarchy like Siam, .casts in its lot with its greater neighbors ? There is a meaning: be sure of that. Otherwise why should a score of Nations all around the earth band together—white and black, yellow and brown, great and small, weak and powerful, rich and poor—to fight the Teutonic Powers? Ah, one man says wisely, the reasons are too clear to require any great thought. Here one nation entered the war for sheer self-preservation. Here one is init for the most selfish and sordid of reasons—acquisition of territory; this one for indemnity; another for revenge; still another to curry favor with the stronger Powers. On only one point is every one agreed: that we, the United States, are in the war for absolutely unselfish and altruistic purposes. As Americans, we could enter the war in no other spirit—yet, even we were under suspicion at first. To some extent the wiseacres' strictures may be founded on truth. Human nature is human nature, and very few motives are purely disinterested—even American motives! But I also affirm that back ...