As for the continent of Europe—­forget it.  We have paid far too much attention to it.  It has ceased to be worth it.  And now it’s of far less value to us—­and will be for the rest of your life—­than it has ever been before.  An ancient home of man, the home, too, of beautiful things—­buildings, pictures, old places, old traditions, dead civilizations—­the place where man rose from barbarism to civilization—­it is now bankrupt, its best young men dead, its system of politics and of government a failure, its social structure enslaving and tyrannical—­it has little help for us.  The American spirit, which is the spirit that concerns itself with making life better for the whole mass of men—­that’s at home at its best with us.  The whole future of the race is in the new countries—­our country chiefly.  This grows on one more and more and more.  The things that are best worth while are on our side of the ocean.  And we’ve got all the bigger job to do because of this violent demonstration of the failure of continental Europe.  It’s gone on living on a false basis till its elements got so mixed that it has simply blown itself to pieces.  It is a great convulsion of nature, as an earthquake or a volcano is.  Human life there isn’t worth what a yellow dog’s life is worth in Moore County.  Don’t bother yourself with the continent of Europe any more—­except to learn the value of a real democracy and the benefits it can confer precisely in proportion to the extent to which men trust to it.  Did you ever read my Address delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain[87]?  I enclose a copy.  Now that’s my idea of the very milk of the word.  To come down to daily, deadly things—­this upheaval is simply infernal.  Parliament opened the other day and half the old lords that sat in their robes had lost their heirs and a larger part of the members of the House wore khaki.  To-morrow they will vote $1,125,000,000 for war purposes.  They had already voted $500,000,000.  They’ll vote more, and more, and more, if necessary.  They are raising a new army of 2,000,000 men.  Every man and every dollar they have will go if necessary.  That’s what I call an invincible people.  The Kaiser woke up the wrong passenger.  But for fifty years the continent won’t be worth living on.  My heavens! what bankruptcy will follow death!

     Affectionately,
     W.H.P.

     To Frank C. Page[88]
     Sunday, December 20th, 1914.

     DEAR OLD MAN: 

I envy both you and your mother[89] your chance to make plans for the farm and the house and all the rest of it and to have one another to talk to.  And, most of all, you are where you can now and then change the subject.  You can guess somewhat at our plight when Kitty and I confessed to one another last night that we were dead tired and needed to go to bed early and to stay long.  She’s sleeping yet, the dear kid, and I hope she’ll sleep till lunch