published by the National Geographic Society

“ Duke's son and cook's son are fighting shoulder to shoulder; great ladies do the waiting in the soldiers' refreshment buffets; work like sewing maids in the Red Cross arsenals; like factory hands in the munition works; a shop walker and a grocer's assistant wear the Victoria Cross—the new patent of nobility; for the convalescent wounded there is a boundless outpouring of hospitality and affection, free from the remotest tinge of condescension; the impulse to succor, to link hands, to know and understand one another, is universal. ”

“ You must not be dismayed by talk of a counter-revolution. No counter-revolution is possible, for the simple reason that there is no imbecile who will dare to rise against the will of the entire army, the entire peasantry, the entire labor democracy, and the will of entire Russia.
“We will attain all, provided we can grapple with the only danger facing us, provided we can battle with those who will take a notion of reaching out a hand from outside, and thus help the hidden reaction; those who will want to vanquish the front, to vanquish liberty. ”

“ Light is the grain; there is lack of crops and of all kinds of food. Each man has become a thief to his neighbor. They desire to hasten and cannot walk. The child cries, the youth creeps along, and the old man; their souls are bowed down, their legs are bent together and drag along the ground, and their hands rest in their bosoms. The counsel of the great ones of the court is but emptiness. Torn open are the chests of provisions, but instead of contents there is air. Everything is exhausted.”
Thus runs the first chronicle of mankind's suffering in days of famine. ”

“ Should we have departed from our time-honored custom of making America a homeland for whoever loves freedom for himself and craves liberty for his children, whether he be literate or illiterate? Would our polyglot population be a menace in war time, or would it, as we have proudly thought in the past, be fused into one liberty-loving, flag-defending race? ”

“ It is a ten or a twenty to one chance against success. But what does that matter when it is her only chance?
She sees and sees correctly that our control of the oceans is not a mere adjunct to the strength of the Alliance. It is its basis. It supports the whole edifice. Without it all that the Allies have built up would crumble to pieces. With it they can erect, as on a rock, the instruments of certain victory.
But sea-power is not the only, though it is by far the greatest, of the contributions that make Great Britain the mainstay of the Alliance. ”

“ Unafraid of wreck and change, untouched even by “time's remorseless doom,” they have come down to us through centuries—aye, through millenniums; and now will live on through other centuries, a link to bind the future with the past.
Whoever has stood beneath these towering giants of the forest feels a reverent love for these grizzled patriarchs! The oldest living thing! There is not a nation on the face of the earth today but what was born, mayhap, a thousand years after they reached their maturity. ”

“ Twentieth century civilization, with science and industry for its allies, grappled with these potent forces of destruction, and there were those who, as recently as the early summer of 1914, believed that the good fight had been won; that never again would the pleasant places of earth be baptized in the blood of a peaceful people; that never again would ravening plague, following through the fields harvested by cannon, claim its victims by the tens of thousands; that never again would the silent specter of hunger stalk through the world with but one nation to stay its progress. ”

“ But an absolute democracy, a democracy that sets no bounds to its own arbitrary will, a democracy that is based on impulse and appetite, and not on reason and justice, is for any community of men an illusion and a danger. Any nation that is capable in the full sense of realizing this truth is ripe for self-government. A nation that does not realize it, no matter how glorious its past, is falling into decay and will not long survive as a free and independent republic. ”

“ The silence of London and Paris, and of our great cities in France and England; the prevalence of black as the color in which most of our women are dressed, an eloquent testimony to the mourning that is in the hearts and homes of nearly every family in the land; the streets full of wounded in hospital uniforms, either walking or being driven out for an airing—these are some of the outward and visible signs of the ravages of war. ”

“ When we contemplate in the distant past the luminous presence of Washington, in nearer times the majestic figure of Abraham Lincoln; when we respectfully salute President Wilson, the worthy heir of these great memories, we at once glance measure the vast career of the American people.
It is because the American people proclaimed and won for the nation the right to govern itself, it is because it proclaimed and won the equality of all men, that the free American people at the hour marked by fate has been enabled with commanding force to carry its action beyond the seas ”

“ Freedom and revolution are in peril. The time has come when our army must accomplish its duty. Your commanding general, beloved through victory, proclaims that each day lost adds new strength to our enemy, and that only an immediate decisive blow can disrupt the plans of the foe.
“Therefore, being fully conscious of the great responsibility of the country, in the name of the free Russian people and its Provisional Government, I call upon the armies, strengthened with vigor by the revolutionary genius, to start the offensive. The enemy must wait before celebrating victory. ”

“ Thirty-three million people have made the long voyage from alien shores to our own since it was proclaimed that all men are born free and equal, and liberty's eternal fire was kindled first on American soil! It is as if half the German Empire should embark for America, or all of England except the county of Kent. ”

“ We count confidently upon you to rouse, and it should not be difficult, the deep-seated spirit of humanity that permeates this Northern Continent of America—to rouse that soul of your people to translate itself into terms of hard cash; as an earnest that those who cannot fight will pay, and that, if it be the will of God that wars shall continue in this imperfect world, then you are determined to relieve and mitigate its horrors for its victims to the utmost of your power. ”

“ It is because the British navy is preying upon her vitals; because the pressure of our naval thumb upon her windpipe is never relaxed for one moment; because all triumphs on land are illusory and untenable, with privation and discontent mounting up at home; because by commanding the seas we hold the master key to all economic vitality and to all strategic mobility.
Germany has really had no option but to use her submarines for all they are worth. Her one chance of staving off defeat is to raise the British blockade, to break British sea-power, to starve Britain into surrender. ”

“ Let me suggest, also, that every one who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practices strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance.
Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure as a public duty, as a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgiven for ignoring. ”

“ The pages of India's history are black with the blotches of famine. This vast and densely populated peninsula has been the very haunt of hunger for ages. Its peasants are among the most frugal in the world and its valleys are among the most fertile; but it has suffered more from lack of food than any other nation on the face of the earth, not even excepting China. ”

“ Whoever has stood at the gate at Ellis Island and watched the human tide surge through, and whoever has traveled among the peasants of Europe must realize how narrow before the war was the margin between their total income and their necessary outgo. Against these things must be matched the efficiency that the war has forced upon the people and the nations and the spirit of self-sacrifice it has engendered.
America has always been a polyglot nation, although all tongues do finally melt into hers. ”

“ What was it that our kinsmen in America realized as the issue in this unexampled conflict? The very things which, if we are worthy of our best traditions, we are bound to vindicate—essential conditions of free and honorable development of the nations of the world, humanity, respect for law, consideration for the weak and unprotected, chivalry toward mankind, observance of good faith—these things, which we used to regard as commonplaces of international decency, one after another have been flouted, menaced, trodden under foot, as though they were effete superstitions of a bygone creed. ”

“ Let the freest army and fleet in the world prove that in liberty there is strength and not weakness; let them forge a new and iron discipline of duty, and let them raise the battle strength of the land ”

“ O'er Fritz and Pierre and Jack to mend
What shells have torn.
I go wherever men may dare,
I go wherever woman's care
And love can live;
Wherever strength and skill can bring
Surcease to human suffering,
Or solace give. ”

“ America alone can defeat man's third foe There is still a chance, however, to defeat mankind's third great foe—famine.
Is the struggle to feed the world worth the sacrifice which America will be called upon to make? Here are presented a few pages from history's black chronicle of the suffering and the degradation which famine has wrought in every clime and among every people. If to save mankind from a recurrence of these horrors is a goal worthy the industry and the resources of our republic, the answer is plain. ”

“ German troops are lined across her border, ready to walk over her prostrate body as they walked over the body of Belgium; to shoot her civilians if they express sympathy for themselves against the German enemy; to burn down her schools, her libraries, and her cathedrals, as the Germans burned down those in Belgium. Holland is cowed.
A brave race are the Dutch. They faced Spain in its pride and power, with the help of England. They fought and died for liberty to speak and to worship. ”

“ The band of blackened land now given over to desolation is the visual testimony of the what the war has meant to France. But it is not only the losses of today, but what those losses mean in the future, that must be reckoned as part of the burden France bears. This is a sacrifice no man can gauge.
When democracy rises triumphant from the struggle with despotism, and when the last page of war history is written, the world will gladly acknowledge its debt to France. ”

“ By day every man shoots at every dog save the few that cling close to an inhabited cottage. They slink, coyote fashion, behind rocks. At night one hears their feet padding behind him on the lonely roads. Their eyes shine in the flare of the electric torch. Every one carries arms in Macedonia at night, not against man, but as a protection against the dogs.
The fighting here has been of an oddly personal character. On the western front war is confusing in its immensity. Hundreds of guns roar. Thousands of men advance over a front miles long. ”

“ The war in Europe has largely closed the gates of that continent to the emigrant. But three short years ago Ellis Island, the greatest immigrant gateway in the world, was one of the busiest places on the face of the earth. The wheels of the great machine that carried the incoming alien through the doors of America turned fast and long. Morning, noon, and night, the men who manned this wonderful mechanism labored as seldom men have to work in order to keep the machine moving fast enough to take care of the vast flood of humanity presenting itself there for inspection and adoption. ”

“ At once and unhesitatingly, for whatever they may happen to need, the Allies with one accord come to us; and it is our proud privilege to satisfy, as far as we can, every one of their demands.
A nation rewrought industrially I am not sure that in this country there is much more than a very hazy conception of the industrial revolution that has been wrought by the war in Great Britain. It is not merely that we have scrapped old machinery with a more than American ruthlessness. ”

“ Never does he give way to the lust of battle for battle's sake. He sees in this war an evil, a scourge laying waste his beloved country, and he conceives it to be his duty to his forefathers, himself, and his children to rid the earth of this plague. The cultivated Frenchman will take pains to explain to you how illogical, unintelligent, uncivilized is war; yet you will see this same cultivated Frenchman wearing the uniform of his motherland racing like a fighting fury to the muzzles of the machine-guns. ”

“ The Red Cross is perhaps founded fundamentally for the care and comfort of soldiers, but we are not fighting this war alone for the direct efficiency of battle. We are fighting here for infinitely greater objectives, and there is no support that can be given to the American ideal, to the American objective of this war, better and greater than a proper organization of that side of our civilization which we believe is today imperiled.
We are fighting against an enemy who had become dominated with a philosophy, with an idea, for which there is no room in this world with us. ”

“ Our debt to England I have a hearty contempt for the man who does not know his environment and his kindred and his friends and his country. It may be narrow, but I love my plantation better than any other plantation, my county better than any other county, my State better than any other State in the Union, and my country better than any other country in the world, and my race—the English-speaking race—better than any other race. ”

“ Interpreting French patriotism It is no easy task to try to interpret French patriotism to our home-staying Americans. Only sympathetic hands can inscribe the long, sad stories of sacrifice which mark the stations of the war in France. When one has lived in the sacred atmosphere of a people daily immolated on the altar of patriotism, one feels a certain unworthiness in sounding the depths of this feeling, of analyzing its springs, of calculating its results. ”

“ Peter the Great could not have done what he did in bringing his country into the ranks of modern States if he had not had an autocratic form of government. He realized fully the influence of the army in establishing him firmly in the new absolutism, and in 1716, in his military statutes, he declared: “His Majesty is sovereign and autocrat. He is accountable to no one in the world.”
From the time of Ivan the Terrible it was autocracy which, more than anything else, contributed to the long history of territorial extensions of Russia and her prestige, such as it was, abroad. ”

“ While most warblers are prodigal enough with their music and sing early and often, especially prior to and during the nesting season, their music is frequently so faint as to be audible only to the trained ear of the bird lover.
As if aware of their musical inferiority, few display much enthusiasm in their vocal efforts, but sing while they work, or while pausing for a brief moment as they move among the foliage hunting for food. With them, singing appears to be an audible expression of general content and well being, and, no doubt, an effort to please and attract their mates. ”

“ As it is, Americans in general seem even now to have but an imperfect idea of what Great Britain has accomplished in this war. It is not, in my judgment, that they do not wish to know. It is mainly, I think, that they have been deluded by our old and deceptive trick of taking what we do well for granted and saying nothing about it, while we shriek our blunders from the housetops.
We are by all odds the worst advertisers in the world. We are the most inveterate self-detractors in the world. We are the most persistent grumblers in the world. ”

“ America sees in this clear issue something of wider import than the vicissitudes of the battlefields, or even of a rearrangement of the map of Europe on the basis of nationality.
The whole future of civilized government and intercourse, in particular the fortunes and faith of democracy, has been brought into peril. In such a situation aloofness is seen to be not only a blunder, but a crime. To stand aside with stopped ears, with folded arms, with averted gaze, when you have the power to intervene, is to become not a mere spectator, but an accomplice. ”

“ Doubtless you were resolved to avenge the insults offered your flag, which the whole world respected; doubtless through the thickness of these massive walls the mournful cry of all the victims that criminal hands hurled into the depths of the sea has reached and stirred your souls; but it will be your honor in history that you also heard the cry of humanity and invoked against autocracy the right of democracies. ”

“ As if America should raise 11,500,000 troops Meanwhile to make the rounds of any of the British fronts at any of the theaters of war is to view a microcosm of the Empire. It is, indeed, the climax to all our other services and achievements that we should have turned ourselves into a military power of the first order. People talk of Great Britain being slow to wake up to the realities of the war. ”

“ Now that America has entered the world war and, in spirit if not by treaty, has become one of the Allies who are engaged in this incomparable conflict for the idea of world democracy, it becomes of fundamental importance that we, as a people, realize, and at once, the factors in this war with which and through which we must work in order that by our united effort we may consummate the sacrifice of blood and treasure by the achievement of an enduring peace in Europe and throughout the world. ”

“ For it must be admitted that in this country one of the strongest reasons for not entering the war, either actively or passively, on the side of the Allies has been the thought that in so doing we were backing Russian absolutism, the antithesis of everything for which our own form of government stands, the symbol of absolutism and terrorism, of autocracy against democracy, of darkness against light. ”

“ There is not a single selfish element, so far as I can see, in the cause we are fighting for. We are fighting for what we believe and wish to be the rights of mankind and for the future peace and security of the world.
To do this great thing worthily and successfully we must devote ourselves to the service without regard to profit or material advantage and with an energy and intelligence that will rise to the level of the enterprise itself. We must realize to the full how great the task is and how many things, how many kinds and elements of capacity and service and self-sacrifice it involves. ”