366 DAYS EDITORIALS REPRINTED FROM THE EVENING MAIL OF NEW YORK CITY PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK EVENING MAIL 1916 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY "We will never bring disgrace to this our city by any -Oath of the Young Men of Athens COPYRIGHT, 1916 THE TROW PRESS NEW YORK PREFACE The year since September, 1915, has been the most momentous in our history since the Civil War. All in all, it is probably the most vital year in the history of this world in which we live. In the year since September, 1915, great changes have occurred in our national life. Great problems have pressed, and still press, for solution. We have with us Mexico, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, to say nothing of the vast duty of preparing and nationalizing America. Peace is coming. We must cast the weight of America, for America, into that great equilibrium that will be called peace terms. And after peace, what? No administration, Republican or Democratic, can solve these problems alone. In a democracy the determination of the nation's destiny may seem to be in the hands of its government. In reality, if the people be awake, that government's action can be nothing but an echo of the people's will, which we call public opinion. But there can be no clear voice of public opinion, the composite of our individual wills, unless we clarify our own opinions on these great matters. Out of muddy, careless thinking by the citizen will come muddy, careless policies by the nation. America today needs preparedness, above all the preparedness of intelligence. No citizen dares shirk the duty of honest thinking. The editorials, here reprinted without alteration, represent the stand which the Evening Mail took upon the great issues of the present and the future-our stand as taken on the days when those issues arose. Only the question of international policies which were acute in the year September, 1915, to September, 1916, are treated. Hence the omission of the vital problem of Belgium. September 24, 1916. |