There is a wolf at the gates of civilized Europe.  If he gets inside nothing can stop him from ravishing us.  This war has bound us so closely to Europe that we are, in a sense, one and the same.  He who strikes our brother strikes us, even though he be so far away that the distance is measured by an ocean.  We must get over the idea that distance makes a difference.  The Atlantic ocean has just been crossed in sixteen hours.  Remember, thought travels even faster.

The wolf that I mentioned is a Mad Thought.  He is Bolshevism.  He has the madness because of hunger, a hunger not only of body but of mind; the century-long hunger of the Russian peoples for Freedom.  Russia has run in a circle.  From the autocracy of the classes it has arrived at the autocracy of the masses.

Then, too, all our European brothers are war worn; tired, tired nearly to death with struggle and sacrifice, and this is not a frame of mind calculated to help reseat reason in the world.

Why the American Legion?

One of our great bankers recently returned from an intimate study of affairs abroad.  His name is Frank A. Vanderlip.  In an address before the Economic Club in New York City he said that Europe is paralyzed and that our task is to save.

I give the introduction to his address as it appeared in the New York Times: 

“Frank A. Vanderlip, who spoke last night at the Hotel Astor, at a dinner of the Economic Club, which was held for the purpose of hearing his story of conditions in Europe, whence he has recently returned, said that England was on the verge of a revolution, which was narrowly averted in February, when he was there, and the conditions on the Continent of Europe are appalling beyond anything dreamed of in this country.

“He said that the food conditions in Europe would be worse instead of better for a year ahead, because of the dislocation of labor and the destruction of farm animals, and that the industrial and economic outlook, generally, points to a period after the war, which will equal, if not exceed the war period in suffering and misery.

“He said that Italy was afraid to disband her army, because she could not employ the men and was afraid of idleness.  He said that the differential, which had kept England preeminent in international trade, was the underpayment of labor, and that this differential was now being wiped out, forcing England to face tremendously serious problems for the future.  He quoted a British minister as saying that means would have to be found to send six or seven millions of Englishmen out of the British Isles and closer to the sources of food production, if continental conditions continued long as at present.

“He said that the best printing presses in the world to-day, except those in Washington, were at Petrograd, and that they were turning out masses of counterfeited pounds, francs, marks, lira, and pesetas, so skillfully made that detection was almost impossible.  He said that these counterfeits were being spent largely by Germans to foment Bolshevist propaganda.