1. “Gott Strafe England” “and Scotland”

At the crossroads near the city of Ypres is a sign-board giving the directions and the distances to various towns. One day the Germans captured that highway.

There was a man in the company who had lived in some German-American city of the United States. He knew that but for England Germany would have gotten through to the Channel towns and looted Paris. Climbing up on the sign-board that German-American wrote in good plain English these words: “God England!”

That afternoon the Australian and the New Zealand army pushed the Germans back and recaptured the highway. Among other soldiers was a Scotsman named Sandy.

He read the sign, “God England!” with ever increasing anger. Finally he flung his arms and legs around the sign-post, pulled himself up to the top and, while his companions watched him, they saw him do a most amazing thing.

They were cheering him because they expected him to rub out the word “England.” But not Sandy! Holding on by his left hand, with his right Sandy added to the words “God England!” these words, “and Scotland.”

He felt that it was an outrage that Scotland should be overlooked in any good thing. Blessed was the people who had won the distinction of being hated by the German, and therefore Sandy added the words “and Scotland”!

Now Scotland deserved that high praise. When the historian comes to write the full story of this great war it will make a large place for the words “and Scotland.” Wonderful the heroism of the British army! Marvellous their achievements! But who is at the head of it? A great Scotsman, Sir Douglas Haig.

What stories fill the pages of the achievements of English sailors ever since the days of Nelson, standing on the deck of the Victory, down to the battle of Jutland! But that gallant Scot, Admiral Beatty, holds the centre of the stage to-day. There came a critical moment also when a man of intellect and a great heart must represent Great Britain in her greatest crisis in the United States, and in that hour they sent a Scotsman, Arthur James Balfour, philosopher, metaphysician, theologian, statesman, diplomat and seer.

And what shall one more say save that the finances of this war have been controlled by a Scotch Chancellor of the Exchequer, and her railways organized by a Scotch inventor. Wonderful the achievements of England that “dear, dear land.” Marvellous the contribution of Wales, through men like the Prime Minister, Lloyd George!

Who can praise sufficiently the heroes of Canada, Australia and New Zealand? In Ireland, for the moment, things are in a muddle. “What is the trouble with the Emerald Isle?” was the question, to which the Irishman made instant reply: “Oh, in South Ireland we are all Roman Catholics, and in North Ireland we are all Protestants, and I wish to heaven we were all agnostics, and then we could live together like Christians.”

But Ireland will soon iron out her troubles. To the achievements of the various people of the great British Empire let us make a large place for the contributions of Scotland. The Germans hate with a deadly hatred any country and any race that has stopped them in their headlong career towards crime.

But the next time that a German-American has gone back to Berlin and has reached the western front and puts up a sign reading “Gott strafe England” let him not fail to add these words, “and Scotland.”

2. “England Shall Not Starve”

Despite all warnings, rumours, and alarms, no dire peril known to passengers disturbed our voyage. The nearest approach came on a morning when the ship was two hundred miles off the coast of Ireland.

The steamer was making a letter S and constantly zigzagging, when suddenly the lookout called down that there was a rowboat dead ahead. With instant decision the officer changed the ship’s course and we passed the life-boat a half mile upon our right.

The usual rumour started up and down the deck that there were dead bodies in the boat, but the petty officer answered my question by saying that it was 2,000 lives against one possible life that every drifting boat must be looked upon as a German decoy; that if the steamer stopped to send sailors with a life-boat to investigate it would simply give a German submarine a chance to come up with torpedoes. At that very moment one of the men beside the gun sighted a periscope and a moment later the gun roared and then boomed a second time and then a third. Because the object disappeared, all passengers said it was a submarine, but the officers said it was a piece of driftwood, tossed up on the crest of a wave.

That night, on deck, a close friend of the purser came for an hour’s walk around the deck. The memory of those three shots rested heavily upon his mind.

It seemed that some months before he had been a purser on an East Indian liner. On the home voyage, twenty-four hours after they left Cairo, when well out into the Mediterranean, this officer went below for an hour’s rest. Suddenly a torpedo struck the steamer. The force of the explosion literally blew the purser out of his berth. Grabbing some clothes, he ran through the narrow passageway, already ankle deep in rushing water. The great ship carried several thousand soldiers and a few women who were coming home from India or from Egypt. Despite the fact that all realized the steamer would go down within a few minutes, there was no confusion and the soldiers lined up as if on parade.

The boat went down in about eight minutes, but every one of the women and children had on their life-preservers and were given first places in the life-boats that had not been ruined by the explosion.

The purser said that he decided to jump from the deck and swim as far as possible from the steamer, but despite his struggles he was drawn under and came up half unconscious to find himself surrounded with swimming men and sinking rowboats that were being shelled by the German submarine. Suddenly a machine-gun bullet passed through his right shoulder and left an arm helpless. For half an hour he lay with his left arm upon a floating board, held up by his life-preserver. The submarine had disappeared. At distances far removed were three of the ship’s boats and one raft. It was plain that there was no help in sight.

Near him was a woman, to whom he called. The purser told the woman that he had been shot in the right arm and could not help her nor come near to her. She answered that it was good to hear his voice.

The water was very cold. He began to be alarmed and reasoned as to whether the cold water would not stay the bleeding. From time to time he would call out to the woman to keep up hope and courage and not to struggle, but at last he saw she was exhausted. With infinite effort, swimming with his left arm, he managed to draw near to her.

“Is drowning very painful?” the woman asked.

“No,” answered the officer. “Once the water rushes into the lungs one smothers.”

To which the English girl answered, “Then I think I will not wait any longer. Good-bye! Good luck!”

Utterly exhausted she let her head fall over and in a moment the life-preserver was on the top and that was all that he saw.

“The next thing I remember,” said the officer, “was waking up to find a nurse trying to pour a stimulant down my throat.”

A destroyer had come up in response to the signals for help and picked up the survivors.

For months he was in the hospital before he could be carried to England. Even now he was not able to lift a hat from his head with his right arm, but he could write a little. This was his first voyage to test his strength to prove to the Government that he could take his old task as purser.

“How did you feel, purser, when you heard that cannon roar this morning against that submarine?”

You should have seen the fire flash in the man’s eyes.

“How did I feel?” answered the officer. “I felt like a race-horse snuffing the battle from afar. Let them sink this ship I will take another. Let them sink every steamer, I’ll take a sailing vessel. Let them sink all our sailing vessels, we will betake ourselves to tugs.

“We have 5,000 steamers that come and go between any Sunday and Sunday. Some are old cattle-boats, some are sea tramps and some are ocean hounds. They have carried 10,000,000 men and 20,000,000 tons of war materials, and 8,000,000 tons of iron ore and $3,000,000,000 worth of goods.

“We have lent six hundred ships to France and four hundred ships to Italy. Our ancestors smashed the Spanish Armada. Our grandfathers baffled Napoleon and their sons defy the Hun and his submarine.

“When I go down my son will take my place. When Germany beats England there will not be an Englishman left to tell how it happened.”

Then, leaning over the railing of the ship, the officer pointed to the setting sun, and lo, right out of the sea, sailing into our sight, came a fleet of English merchantmen, laden with wheat, and the purser said:

“By God’s help, England shall not starve.”

3. German-Americans Who Vilify England

The biography of Grant holds many exciting incidents. One of them concerns a spy who nearly wrecked Grant’s plans. It seems that a rumour came saying that Sheridan had been defeated at Winchester. A telegram came a few minutes later saying that Sheridan was recovering from the disaster. Meanwhile, Grant noticed one of his young assistants was endeavouring in vain to conceal his pleasure over the news of Sheridan’s defeat. That feeling seemed inexplicable to Grant. The Commander-in-Chief had three armies Sherman’s in the South, Sheridan’s in the Valley of the Shenandoah, and his own army of the Potomac. How could a young aide rejoice over Sheridan’s defeat without down in his heart wanting Grant defeated, the Union destroyed, and secession made a success? Grant became more and more alarmed. He told one of his associates to follow this youth, whom he feared was a spy. Shortly afterwards the man was discovered sending signals, was tried, the proofs of his treason uncovered, and finally he was executed.

To-day certain German-Americans never tire of announcing their Americanism. Their favourite expression is: “Germany was the Fatherland, but the United States is the wife.” Not daring, therefore, to attack our Government, afraid to confess that they want Germany to succeed, and when that time comes expect to hold certain offices under Germany, they spend all their time vilifying Great Britain. There is one absolute and invariable test of the German-American’s treason to this country, and that is bitterness towards England, because England is doing all she can to prevent Germany’s victory. One thing has saved this country during four years, giving us a chance to prepare Great Britain’s fleet, holding Germany’s battle-ships behind the Kiel Canal. To-day our Republic is defended by three armies General Pershing’s, Marshal Foch’s and Marshal Haig’s. But whenever a German-American vilifies Haig and attacks England you may know that down in his heart he wants Pershing defeated, the United States conquered, and Germany made victorious. The German-American who vilifies Great Britain is angry because Great Britain has prevented Germany from loading a million German veterans upon her six or eight thousand passenger ships, freight ships, sailing vessels and war fleet, and sailing to New York and assessing fifty billion dollars indemnity upon us.

In a certain Western State a German professor of electricity resigned from his institution. He was receiving about $3,000 a year. Many months passed by. One day this man was heard defaming England. “England has destroyed the freedom of the seas. England controls Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. England is the great land pirate. England is the world butcher.” A Secret Service man followed the German professor, and found that he was working as fireman at the wireless station of that great city. This German professor of electricity had resigned a $3,000 a year position to work for $75 a month as fireman. As soon as he found that the United States Government was upon his track he fled to Mexico. This spy’s camouflage was love for the United States, but his treason was revealed through his hatred of England. That man should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak.

There is a newspaper reporter in this country. This German-American was caught by a trick. Another reporter faked a story, writing out on his typewriter an account of several German submarines getting into the harbour of Liverpool and blowing up half a dozen English steamers and killing several thousand Englishmen, and this German-American reporter lifted his hands into the air in glee, and in the presence of half a dozen fellow reporters shouted: “I knew it! I knew it! I knew the Germans would smash Hades out of them!” In that moment he revealed his real attitude towards the United States. Any man that wants Admiral Beatty defeated wants the American transports sunk and American soldiers murdered. That reporter should also have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak.

In another city there is a young Irish writer. He fulfills all the proverbs about the crazy Irishman. In connection with the Sinn Fein conspiracy this young writer proposed a toast to the memory of Sir Roger Casement, the success of the revolution, and poured forth such bitterness upon England as cannot be described by those who hate ingratitude towards a country that has given us a chance to prepare. Wherever that man goes he carries hate with him towards Great Britain. His atmosphere is malign; his presence breathes treason towards England. That is another man who should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak. No man can serve God and Mammon. No man can be faithful to the United States who hates England and loves Germany. He must love the one and hate the other; he must hold to the one and despise the crimes of the other. No man can serve God and the Allies, Germany and the devil, at one and the same time.

4. British vs. American Girls in Munition Factories

To-morrow morning at eight o’clock one million British girls will enter the munition and related factories. To-morrow afternoon at four o’clock another million girls will enter the same factories, to be followed at midnight by the third shift of women.

These factories average forty feet wide, and end to end would be 100 feet in length. The roar of the machinery is never silent by day or night.

In one factory I saw a young woman who was closely related, through her grandfather, to a man in the House of Lords. Her arms were black with machine oil, her hair was under a rubber cover, she wore bloomers. Her task was pouring two tons of molten steel into the shell moulds. The great shells passed from the hands of one girl to another until the fiftieth girl, 1,500 feet away, finished the threads into which the cap’s screw was fastened.

Every twenty-four hours these women turn out more small calibre cartridges than all England did the first year of this war. Every forty-eight hours they turn out more large cartridges than all England did the first year of this war. Every six days, with the help of men not fit for the battle front, they turn out more heavy cannon than all England did the first year of this war.

They have sent 17,000,900 tons of ammunition to the front. Their shells are roaring on five battle fronts in three continents. When the British boys thrust their huge shells into the cannon these boys literally receive the shells at the hands of the millions of English girls who are passing them forward.

Wonderful the heroism of the British soldiers! The reason why the men fight well at the front is because there are women at home worth fighting for. In all ages battles have been won, partly by the strong arm of the soldier, but chiefly by the heart that nerves the arm. That is why John Ruskin once said that “the woman in the rear generally wins the victory at the front.”

It stirs one’s sense of wonder to find that all classes and all social conditions are represented in these factories. Thousands of young school-teachers have left the schoolroom behind, closed the book and desk and gone to the factory. Tens of thousands of young wives and mothers have left their little children with the grandmother. Many rectors and clergymen and priests, unfit for service at the front by reason of age, work all day long in the munition factory. Many a professional man crowds his work in the office that he may reach the factory for at least a few hours’ work upon shot and shell.

One day in France, as I was entering the factory, I saw perhaps twenty young women come out, hurry across the street to a building where two old crippled soldiers were taking care of the little children. These young mothers nursed their babes, looked after the other children and then hurried back to the factory. Every minute was precious; every day was big with destiny. Their young husbands and brothers and lovers, when the German push came, must have their cartridges and shells ready and in abundance.

Watching these women with their strained, anxious faces women who cut each thread in the shell with the accuracy of the expert you could see the lips of the woman murmuring, and needed no confession from her that she was silently praying for the man who would use this weapon to defend her beloved France, her aged mother and her little child.

When the beast is slain and the Potsdam gang tried and executed for their crimes, and the boys come home with trumpets and banners, the ovations will be for the soldiers; but after the soldiers have had their parade and their honour and their ovation on the first day of the triumph, there should be a second great parade, in which, while the soldiers stand on the streets and observe, and the merchants and working men and the professional classes stand as spectators, down the street shall march the munition girls, who fashioned the weapons with which the soldiers slew the common enemy.

For while the boys at the front have defended liberty the girls at home have armed the soldiers. Neither one without the other could have made the world safe for democracy.

Through the imagination these women have a right, while they toil, to watch the shell complete their work. The smith who forges the chain for the ship’s anchor has a right to exult when he looks out through his imagination upon the great boat held firm by his chain in the hour when the storm threatened to hurl the craft upon the rocks. The inventor has a right to say: “That granary full of wheat is mine; I invented the reaper.” The physician has a right to rejoice over the battle and victory over the youth whose life was saved by the surgeon’s skill. Not otherwise, the munition girl has a right when the long day of battle is over to say: “I safeguarded that cottage; I lifted a shield above that little child; I built a wall against the cathedral and the gallery and the homes of yonder city.”

For American girls of vision there is nothing that they so much desire as the immediate condemnation by our Government of 10,000 luxury-producing plants in this country, which should immediately be taken over by our Government for munition purposes, and before the daybreak of the first morning there would be ten million American girls standing before the doors, trying to break their way in to obtain a chance to fashion the shells that would protect American boys in danger at the front.

5. The Wolves’ Den on Vimy Ridge

The bloodiest battle of 1917 was fought on the slopes of Vimy Ridge. That ridge is seven and a half miles long and is shaped like a dog’s hind leg. Lifted up to an elevation of several hundred feet, the hill not only commands an outlook upon the German lines eastward, but protects the great plains that slope westward towards the English Channel.

To hold that ridge the Germans constructed a vast system of trenches, barbed wire barriers, Portland cement pill-boxes and underneath the ridge, at a depth of sixty feet, they made their prisoners dig a gallery seven and a half miles long, with rooms for the officers opening out on either side of the long passageways.

One morning the Canadian troops started up the long sloping hillside, under skies that rained cartridges, shells and gas bombs. So terrific was the machine-gun fire that some cartridges cut trees in two as if they had been cut with a saw, while others did not so much strike the Canadian boys as cut their bodies into two parts.

Lying upon their faces they crawled up the hillside, cutting the wires as they crept forward. Not until the second afternoon did the shattered remnants reach the German trench that crowned the hillcrest. Then they plunged down into the trench, while the Germans rushed down the long stairs into the underground chamber and fled through the lower openings of their long gallery northward towards safety.

Not until the Canadian officers led us into one of those German chambers did we understand the black tragedy. The room was shell-proof. The soft yellow clay was shored up by rough boards. All around the walls were bunks. In that chamber the German officers had kept the captive French and Belgian girls. There were two cupboards standing against the wall. One was made of rough boards; the other was a large, exquisitely carved walnut bureau for girls’ garments. When the German officers fled from the trench above they had just time to escape to the lower shell-proof rooms, grab some of the treasure and flee. Unwilling to give these captive girls their freedom, since they could not have the girls they determined that their French and Belgian fathers and sweethearts should not recover them.

There was just time during the excitement of the flight to unlock the door, rush in and send a bullet through each young woman. A few minutes later the Canadian boys swarmed through the long connecting chambers and side rooms.

In one of those rooms they found these young women now dead or dying. Gas bombs had already been flung down and the rooms were foul with poisoned air. Protected by their masks the Canadian boys had time to pick up these girls and carry them up the steps into the open air, where they laid them down on the grass in the open sunshine. But help came too late. Beginning with an attempt to murder the souls of the girls the German officers had ended by slaying their bodies.

An officer saw to it that the official photographer kept the record of the faces of these dead girls. Once they must have been divinely beautiful, for all were lovely beyond the average. One could understand the pride and joy of a father or lover when he looked upon the young girl’s face. The slender body made one think of the tall lily stem, crowned with that flower named the face and glorious head. Strangely enough they seemed to sleep as if peace had come, after long pain. Plainly death had been longed for.

Weeks passed by. The photographs of the dead girls were shown in the hope that if possible word might reach their parents, but no friend had been found to recognize them. One day a Canadian officer, making slow recovery in a hospital near the coast, was asked by his nurse for the photograph.

It seemed there was a Belgian woman working in the hospital. Her village had been entirely destroyed. Her home was gone and all whom she loved had disappeared. By some accident the Red Cross nurse remembered this photograph and decided to show it to the Belgian woman who had passed so swiftly from abundance and happiness to the utmost of poverty and heart-break. Almost unwillingly at first the woman looked at the print. A moment later she held the picture out at arm’s length, rose to her feet, then drew it to her lips and hugged it to her breast.

With streaming eyes she almost shouted, “Thank God! Julia is dead! Thank God! Julia is dead! Now I know there is a God in Israel, for Julia is dead, is dead is dead! Thank God! Thank God!”

Though for a long time the doves had been in the clutches of the German hawks; though for a long time the lambs had been in the jaws of the German wolves; when all else failed death came and released the lovely girls from the clutch of German assassins.

6. “Why Did You Leave Us in Hell for Two Years?”

For British soldiers it had been a long trying day on Messines Ridge. For many nights the boys had been coming up towards the front trenches. The next morning at 3:50 they were to go “over the top”; a feat which they accomplished, driving in a mile and a half deep, on a long, long line, only to be stopped by four days and nights of rain that drowned the trenches and drove them back out of the flooded valley to the hillside. Because the Germans knew what must come the next day, the German cannon were trying to bomb out the British guns.

That night tired out we drove back eighteen miles behind the line for one good night’s sleep. After dinner an English lieutenant told me this tragic tale:

“It was an April night last spring. All day the wind and fog and rain had been coming in from the North Sea. The chill and damp went into the very marrow of the bones. When night fell a few of us officers crept down the long stair into a shell-proof room. There we had our pipes and gossiped about the events of the day and talked with the French captain, our guest, who was spending a week studying our sector. Finally the time came when we must go back into the trench to take our turn in the rain.

“We were putting on our raincoats, when in my happiness I said, ’Well, men, you should congratulate me. One week from to-night I shall not be here in this rain and mud. I shall be home in England and have my little wife and my baby girl. Just one week! It seems like seven eternities instead of seven days and nights!’

“I little dreamed the little tragedy that I had precipitated. My colonel was very kind. He told me that he would have his permission in three more months. The rest of the boys also said nice things. Suddenly we realized that the French captain was acting very strangely and saying excited things with his back towards us. We did not know how we had insulted him, nor could we understand what had happened. Finally my colonel said to him:

“’Captain, I hope you will have your vacation soon and have a chance to go home and see your family.’

“He turned on us like a crazy man. He put his fists in the air, he half shouted and half sobbed at us.

“’How do you men dare talk to me about going home? Your land has never been invaded, nor your families ruined. Home! How can I go home? The Germans have had my town for a year. In their retreat they carried away my little girl and my young wife, and now the priest has gotten word to me that in six weeks my little girl and my young wife will both have babes by the German beast who carried them off.’

“And then the Frenchman cursed God and cursed the devil! Cursed the Kaiser and cursed the Fatherland. Oh, it was so terrible. Doctor, I often wonder how Americans could have left the women and girls of Belgium and France in hell for two and a half years, while you men stood in safety and in peace.”

The historian will find it hard to answer that question. History will have it to say that England was the good Samaritan who helped the Belgians who had fallen among thieves, while Americans were among those who passed by on the other side.

7. “This War Will End Within Forty Years”

A New Zealand officer was giving directions to a group of his soldiers. They were in the field at the foot of Bapaume. The immediate task was that of cutting and rolling up the barbed wire. In that territory the Germans had left trenches foul with fever, wells filled with the corpses of men and horses, springs polluted with every form of filth, but worst of all, the barbed wire entanglements. Every sharp point was covered with rust and threatened lockjaw. Looking in every direction, the whole land was yellow with the barbed wire. The work was dangerous. The rebound of the wire threatened the eye with its vision, threatened the face and the hand, and all the soldiers were in a mood of rebellion. In an angry mood, the officer exclaimed, “There are a hundred million miles of German barbed wire in France!”

And when later I asked the first lieutenant how long this war would last, he made the instant answer, “This war will continue forty years more! One year for the fighting, and thirty-nine years to roll up the wire.”

Because every soldier at the front hated the wire entanglements, that bright sentence ran up and down the entire line from Belgium to the Swiss frontier. And for men of experience there is more truth in the statement than one would at first blush think. It will take one more year for the fighting, but it will take thirty-nine years more to grow the shade trees. Five centuries ago the French began to develop the love of the beautiful. On either side of the roads running across the land they planted two rows of poplars, oaks or elms. When long time had passed the fame of the French roads and the shade trees went out into all the earth. Under these trees the French farmer stopped his cart, fed his horses and refreshed himself beneath the shade. Under these trees the old men at the end of their career rested themselves, and gossiped about old friends that had gone.

And when the German found he could not hold the land and enjoy the shade trees, the splendid orchards, the purple vineyards, he determined that the Frenchman should not have them, and so he lifted the axe upon every peach and pear, plum and grape, cherry and gooseberry tree. Perhaps it was as black a crime to murder the land as it was to murder the bodies of the farmers, since the soul is immortal.

“One more year of fighting and thirty-nine years” not to roll up the wire, but to rebuild the cathedrals and churches, the colleges and universities, the halls of science, the temples of art, the mills for the weaving of cotton and linen and wool, and above all for the rebuilding of the railways, the reconstruction of the canals and the bridges, great and small. But the most grievous loss is the human loss. Think of 1,500,000 crippled heroes and poor wounded invalids in the land of France alone! Think of another 1,500,000 young widows, or lovers and mothers! Gone the young men who promised so great things for the French essay, the French poem, for the paintings and the bronzes! Dead the young lawyers, physicians and educators! Gone the young farmers and husbandmen! Perished 1,000,000 old people and 500,000 little children, all dead of heart-break. The German beast has been in the land. Like a wolf leaping into the sheepfold to tear the throats of the young lambs and the mother ewes.

What! Thirty-nine years more to recover ruined France and Belgium, Poland and Rumania? France will never be the same again. The scar of the beast will abide. That is why no man of large mind and great heart will ever make friends with a soldier from Germany, will ever buy an article of German stamp, so long as he lives, will ever read another German book, or support another German business. It is our duty to forgive the transgressor who is repentant, but it is a crime to forget the unspeakable atrocities, the devilish cruelties of the German Kaiser, the German War Staff and the German army, with its 10,000,000 criminals.

8. “Why Are We Outmanned by the Germans?”

Many thoughtful men have lingered long over the despatches announcing that Great Britain called thirty thousand farmers to the trenches, thus threatening the loss of a part of her harvest. One of the British editors and statesmen explains this event by the frank statement that for the moment the Allies are outmanned, and will be until another million Americans reach France. Many men are puzzled to understand what this means, but the explanation is very simple. The combined population of Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria is not far from 140,000,000. To this must be added seventy millions of conquered and impressed peoples of Belgium, Poland, Rumania, with the Baltic provinces of Russia, Ukraine and other regions. Over against this population stands the 125,000,000 living in Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the English people of South Africa, and India, and the Isles of the Sea. Concede, therefore, that the army of six millions of Allies are over against six millions of Germans. Why are we outmanned?

Back of that British editor-statesman’s statement lies a most dramatic fact. Our Allies keep their treaties, and will not use German prisoners to fight against their brothers. Therefore the six million of Allies’ soldiers have no support behind them. But the Germans impress all conquered peoples and lifted into the air if the observer had a glass powerful enough, he would behold back of the German six millions another six millions of impressed prisoners and conquered peoples, who support the German army. These men, driven forward by an automatic pistol and the rifle, work within half a mile of the rear German trench. They dig ditches, fill shell holes, repair roads, bring up burdens, care for the horses, scrub the mud from the wagons, and the slightest neglect of the task means that they are shot down by the German guards. All this releases the German soldier from the deadly work that breaks the nerve, and unfits a man to go over the top. That means that the German soldier can fight eight hours, and have sixteen for rest and recreation.

But over against this German army fighting eight hours, with the deadly work wrought by several million of impressed servants and slaves, stands the Allied army. But our men after eight hours of active service must then begin to dig ditches, fill shell holes, repair bridges, clean the mud from the wagons, bring up the munitions, and this deadly work for eight hours, added to their eight hours of active service, means only eight hours for sleep and recovery, while the German has sixteen hours off duty for recovery and sleep. The Allies keep their treaties, and do not ask a German prisoner to fight against his brother. The Allies obey the laws of right and wrong, but the Ten Commandments are a great handicap in time of war. Is there any one who supposes that six million of Allied soldiers, working sixteen hours a day, are as fresh and as fit as six million Germans, working only eight hours a day? That is why the situation is so perilous. Fortunately victories are not won by muscle without but by the soul within. The sense of justice in the heart lends a form of omnipotence to a youth. In a moral universe, therefore, we must win. The great problem is, how to carry on until we can get another million Americans across to France, with full equipment, and fifty thousand aeroplanes.