That seems to inhere
in human nature.
[Sidenote: American Leaven]
[Sidenote: The American Idea]
"Not only the American money and letters, but the American ideas are at
work abroad," says the Rev. F. M. Goodchild, D.D.,[8] in a recent
address: "The praises of America are told abroad by every person who
comes here and gets along. Some things to be sure, these people
miss--the blue skies of Italy and the vineyards on the hillside. But
they have for them the compensation of such a liberty as they never knew
before. The real reason why all southern Europe is in a turmoil to-day,
is that American ideas of liberty are working there like leaven. We get
our notions of liberty from the Bible and from the men who forced the
Magna Charta from King John at Runnymede, but all other peoples in the
world seem to be getting their ideas of liberty from us. That is what is
the matter with the Old World to-day. The American idea is working like
leaven. That is the force at work in France, where absolute divorce has
just been proclaimed between Church and State. That is at the bottom of
the movements in Russia, where the Stundists have just won religious
liberty, and where, let us hope, all classes of people ere long will
have won complete civil liberty.
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