AMERICA'S INTERNATIONAL IDEALS
in arresting the present conflict sooner than might otherwise be the case: but where she can aid Europe to a swift recovery after the war is over, in the meantime preserving for her the arts, the sciences, the culture, which for the time are retarded and imperilled by the European struggle.
May the time soon come when not only the true American citizen, but the enlightened European nations, shall realize that there is only one liberty of nations and races as well as of individuals: the liberty which is thoroughly social,—the liberty of each nation to seek the international goal, in accordance with the reason of each nation, indeed, but voluntarily subject to the revision of all.
V
Another thing for which America has stood, although she has scarcely premeditated it, is a cosmopolitan culture: a culture which shall not be narrow and provincial, but which shall be the product of the commingling of the best cultures of all nations and races. While it may be that civilization has not been thoroughly conscious of its trend, still the tendency has been progressively towards an increased interchange of the ideas and ideals of all peoples. Here in America this free interchange of the culture of all races has been best exemplified: so that American civilization is to-day not so much a civilization co-ordinate with the restricted civilizations of other countries, as a synthesis of all the various cultures of the earth. From all peoples America has received her intellectual contributions: we have welcomed equally the best ideas of Slav, Teuton, Latin and Anglo-Saxon. A concomitant of this intellectual hospitality has been the
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