Every country is a mixture of many strands. There is a Base America,
there is a Dull America, there is an Ideal and Heroic America. And I
am convinced that at present Europe underrates and misjudges the
possibilities of the latter.
All about the world to-day goes a certain freemasonry of thought. It is
an impalpable and hardly conscious union of intention. It thinks not
in terms of national but human experience; it falls into directions and
channels of thinking that lead inevitably to the idea of a world-state
under the rule of one righteousness. In no part of the world is this
modern type of mind so abundantly developed, less impeded by antiquated
and perverse political and religious forms, and nearer the sources of
political and administrative power, than in America. It does not seem to
matter what thousand other things America may happen to be, seeing that
it is also that. And so, just as I cling to the belief, in spite of
hundreds of adverse phenomena, that the religious and social stir of
these times must ultimately go far to unify mankind under the kingship
of God, so do I cling also to the persuasion that there are intellectual
forces among the rational elements in the belligerent centres, among
the other neutrals and in America, that will co-operate in enabling the
United States to play that role of the Unimpassioned Third Party, which
becomes more and more necessary to a generally satisfactory ending of
the war.
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