I rejoice that I have lived to see the greatness of America dawn upon the world. I rejoice that when the hour struck for the flag of universal liberty to “go over the top,” it was carried there by the substance of our fields, by the power that came from our mountains of coal and iron, by the whirring wings of our liberty motors, and by the unbeaten and unbeatable soldiers of the United States.
For one hundred and forty-seven years the individuality of the American soldier has defied the analysis of military critics and upset the theories of every nation that has met him on the battle field.
Since his first far-off shot of Lexington, the makers of war maps have been unable to chart his power from his visible numbers, for in his unconquerable spirit there is the might of unseen legions and the unmeasured force of just and democratic purpose, as an armed host, is bivouacked in his soul.
You may follow his history from his advent into the world of political contention, through his almost unbelievable and unbroken line of successes, and you will find him, always and everywhere, the one unbeatable force which cannot be weighed in the scales that determine the military values of all other peoples. If other evidences were lacking to establish these facts, certain incidents of the World War alone would prove them. In no case did he fail to meet the test of fire; and the anxious world stood aghast when the German staff reduced the question of fighting ability to an absolute test in the hope of proving the weakness of our “raw recruits” when pitted against soldiers not only trained, but bred and born, in the iron atmosphere of the “Great Empire.” The Germans, confident of their superiority, man for man, felt that such a test would weaken the morale of the American soldier and boost the waning German hope at Berlin.
On April 20, 1918, at Seicheprey, in the Toul Sector, a picked German column, the product of a century of militarism, assaulted an American force of approximately equal numbers.
Not only was it a clash of men; it was the deadly embrace of principles—the death grapple of human systems.
The world knows the result. The individuality of the American soldier was asserted before the astonished eyes of all nations, and the Stars and Stripes floated triumphantly over that field of death.
Unafraid of all the military camps of the earth, this strange civil soldier, while fostering and guarding the greatest of all republics, has eschewed the damning principles of militarism, ever preferring to keep his sword sheathed in the peaceful scabbard of industry, drawing it only when Liberty is endangered.
Of that deadly war, which, directly or indirectly, involved every square inch of the earth’s surface and the fate of every human being, living and yet to live, Hendrick Van Loon has beautifully said:
“The human race was given its first chance to become truly civilized when it took courage to question all things, and made ‘knowledge and understanding’ the foundation upon which to create a more reasonable and sensible society of human beings. The great war was the ‘growing pain’ of this new world.”