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U. S. SAVED EUROPE AND CIVILIZATION PARIS, France. January IS. President Poincare in his address of welcome at the opening of the peace conference today said the American people in entering the war wished to end the greatest scandal that lias ever sullied the annals of mankind. Hi- added: "The intervention of the United States was something more, something greater than a great political and military event. It was a supreme Judgment passed at the bar of history by the lofty conscience of a free people and their chief magistrate on the enormous responsibilities incurred in the frightful conflict which was lacerating humanity. "It was not only to protect itself from the audacious aims of German megalomania that the United States equipped fleets and created immense armies, but also, and above all, to defend an ideal of liberty over which it saw the huge shadow of the imperial eagle encroaching further every day. America, the daughter of Europe, crossed the ocean to rescue her mother from the humiliation of thraldom and to save civilization."
