Fields of Victory

Februa

aps of ugly wreck that men call Lens and Lieviny and Souchez; and that long line of Notre Dame de Lorette, with the Bois de Bouvigny to the west of it-where I stood among Canadian batteries just six weeks before the battle of Arras in 1917. The lamentable ruin of once beautiful Arras, the desolation of Douai, and the villages between it and Valenciennes, the wanton destruction of what was once the heart of Cambrai, and that grim scene of the broken bridge on the Cambrai-Bapaume road, over the Canal du Nord, where we got out on a sombre afternoon, to look and look again at a landscape that will be famous through the world for generations: they rise again, with the sharpness of no ordinary recollection, on the inward vision. So too Bourlon Wood, high and dark against the evening sky; the unspeakable desolation and ruin of the road thence to Bapaume; Bapaume itself, under the moon, its poor huddled heaps lit only,

eems to me, realise its effects on the national feeling of the country. And in this third journey of mine, I have seen much more than Northern France. In a motor drive of some hundreds of miles, from Metz to Strasburg, through Nancy, Toul, St. Mihiel, Verdun, Chalons, over the ghastly battle-fields of Champagne, through Rheims, Chateau-Thierry, Vaux, to Par

Peace Conference i

what abou

radually brought the recalcitrant elements in

wiped-out villages, these fantastic wrecks of mines and factories, these leagues on leagues of fruitful

ms. He saw as much as a winter day of snow and fog would allo

might live secure. We have suffered most in war-we claim the first thought in peace. We live in the heart and on the brink of danger. Our American Allies have a No Man's Land of the Atlantic between them and the formidable and cruel race which has wreaked this ruin, and is already beginning to show a Hydra-like power of recuperation, after its defeat; we have only a river, and not always that. We have the right to claim that our safety and restoration, the safety of the count

terial loss. One of the French Ministers has lately said that France has lost three millions of population, men, women, and children, through the war. The fighting operations alone have cost her over a million and a half, at least, of the best manhood of France and her Colonies. One million and a half! That figure had become a familiar bit of statistics to me; but it was not till I stood the other day in that vast m

ess, heart-wearing labour which had produced those trenched hillsides, but also of that irony of things, by which that very labour which protected the mysterious and spiritual thing which the Frenchman calls patrie, was at the same time ruining and sterilising the material base from which it springs-the soil, which the Frenchman loves with an understanding tenacity, such as perhaps inspires no other countryman in the world. In Artois and Picardy our own British graves lie thickly scattered over the murdered earth; and those of America's young and heroic dead, in the battle-fields of Soissons, the Marne, and the Argonne, have

ese should be, must be, the first thought of the Allies in making peace. And it is difficult for tho

ected the situation in the direction that France desires. And when the President returns from the United States, whither he is now bound, he will surely go-and not for a mere day or two!-to see

merican correspondents-it is clear that it was an idealist's mistake. Ruins, the President seems to have said to himself, can wait; what is essential is that the League of Nat

ce of the League of Nations project entirely to the close support given to the President by Mr. Lloyd George and the British Government; and he explains this support as due to the British conviction "that the war has changed the whole position of Great Britain in the world. The costs of the struggle in men, in money, in prestige (the italics are mine), have cut

son's ideas means that British statesmen are conscious of a loss of

way. We are indeed anxious and willing to share responsibilities, say in Africa, and the Middle East, with America as with France. Why not? The mighty elder power is eager to see America realise her own world position, and come forward to take her share in a world-ordering, which has lain too heavy until now on England's sole shoulders. She is glad and thankful-the "weary Titan"-to hand over some of her responsibilities to America, and to share many of the rest. She wants nothing more for herself-the Great Mother of Nations-why should she? Sh

days of battle (September 26th-October 5th), the First, Third, and Fourth Armies stormed the line of the Canal du Nord, and broke through the Hindenburg line, upon the subsequent course of the campaign, was decisive.... Great as were the material losses the enemy had suffered, the effect of so overwhelming a defeat upon a morale already deteriorated, was of even larger importance." Again: "By the end of October, the rapid succession of heavy blows dealt by the British forces had had

modest and reticent in statement, indicate any consciou

Belleau Wood, fought their hardest under General Mangin in the Soissons counter-attack of July 18th, and gallantly pushed their way, in spite of heavy losses, through the Argonne to the Meuse at the end of the campaign-there is yet no doubt in any British military mind that it was the British Army which brought the war to its victorious end. The British Army had grown, after the great defensive battle of the spring, by a kind of national rebound, of which there have been many instances in our history, to a wonderful military strength and efficiency, and to it fell, not by any choice of its own, so to speak, but by the will of the gods, and the natural disposition of events, the final and decisive strokes of the war.

falling of our bayonet strength, the length of line held, casualties, prisoners-everything was there-and when finally the Hindenburg line is broken, after the great nine days of late September and early October, the prisoners' line leaps suddenly to such a height that a new piece has to be added perpendicularly to the chart, an

hat to the British mind, at any rate, so inarticulate often, yet so tenacious, the Weste

fied effort, was yet, after its huge sacrifices at Verdun, in Champagne, and many another stricken field, inevitab

, training, and morale, and had already shown by the stand of the Third Army at Arras, at the very fiercest moment of the German onslaught, that

ung eaglet, "with eyes intentive to bedare the sun;" but it had its traditions to lay down, its experience to buy, and large sections of its military lesson still to learn. It could not, as a fighting force, have determined the war last year; and the wa

as I believe it to be, our alliance with France and our friendship with America, so passionately upheld by all that is best in our respective nations, have both of them nothing to lose from its temperate statement. Great Britain, in spite of our national h

ase, a dream, on which in the dark days of last spring it seemed a mere waste of time to dwell? And y

five or six visitors round her, members of the Murat family, come to pay a visit to the illustrious guest to whom they had lent their house-the Princesse Murat, talking fluent English, her son in uniform, her widowed daughter and two delicious little children. In little more than five minutes, the President came in, and the beautiful room made a rich setting for an interesting scene. He en

, the easy, attractive presence of the man whom this old Europe, with one accord, is now discussing, criticising, blaming or applauding. The President talked with perfect simplicity and great apparent frankness. There is a curious mingling in his face, it seemed to me, of something formidable, at times almost threatening, with charm and sweetness. You are in the presence of something held in leash; that something is clearly a will of remarkable quality and power. You are also in the presence of something else, not less strongly controlle

ng to the President's conversation, I understood what M. Jusserand had felt, and what a weapon at need-(how rare also among public men!)-is this skilled excellence in expression, which the President commands, and commands above all, so some of his shrewdest observers tell me, when he is thrown suddenly on his own resources, has no scrap of paper to help him, and must speak as Nature and the Fates bid him. It is said that the irreverent American Army, made a little res

y at the Conference, of Siberia and Japan, of Ireland even! There was no difficulty anywhere; no apparent concealment of views and opinions. But there was also no carelessness and

t without seeing, how can any man f

and the end of war, each one of us must turn to, and work, each in our own way. Since the day of the first Conference resolution, the great scheme, like some veiled Alcestis, has come a good deal further down the stage of the world. There it stands while we debate;

corresponding and anxious sense of the fierce vitality of Germany, and of the absence of any real change of heart among her people. Meanwhile the relations between Great Britain and America were never closer, and the determination of the leading men in both countries to forge a bond beyond b