The American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it never bestows in a niggardly way; it gives all or nothing.
What is not generally understood of the American people is their wonderful idealism.

Nothing so completely surprises the foreign-born as the discovery of this trait in the American character.

The impression is current in European countries--perhaps less generally since the war--that America is given over solely to a worship of the American dollar.

While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans the dollar.
I do not claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism; often he is not.

But let a great convulsion touching moral questions occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his idealism.