I knew it might not remain so beautiful always; but if life is worth while at all, it is worth while struggling to keep it so.
I do not know what share one person may have in influencing the current upon which a nation is drifting; but I believe in the power of the individual, and I shall “fight the good fight”—and a hard one it is—and “keep the faith”—although it is not easy to keep it—faith in God and men and in the American Spirit.
Four weeks after the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin left us I received the following letter. I have had some difficulty in translating the involved and rather lengthy epistle into straightforward English, but have done so that I may share it with my readers.
My dear Friend:
We arrived home in safety after a rather stormy and uneventful voyage. On board the ship we met a number of Lake Mohonk acquaintances, and therefore the atmosphere which you tried to create for me surrounded me even in mid ocean, and consequently you ought to be happy and contented.
When we reached Washington half-cooked, for even your excellent provisions for our comfort were unavailing against your terrific summer heat, your friend and his automobile were at the station; just such a friend and such an automobile as met us dozens of times before.
If anything, this friend was a little more persistent than the other species, for we were taken up and down and in and out, to everything within fifty miles of Washington. We shook hands with half your congressmen some of them seem to be professional hand-shakers, and my hand aches at the thought of it.
State Secretary Bryan received me most affably and talked about his peace treaties. He didn’t give me much chance to do any talking myself. He seems so genuinely American; by that I mean simple and childlike in many things, and complex and difficult to understand in others.
He is neither a humbug as some of your papers say, nor a prophet as he thinks himself. His faith in humanity and in himself is pathetically colossal.
It is amusing to find that you Americans, and you are the most American of them all—you Americans who have invented cash registers and time clocks, those symbols of unfaith in humanity, are so full of faith in your relation to big, national and international problems.