* * * * *

What is the moral of this story?  I have chosen it to illustrate again the historic words which should be, I think—­and we know that what is in our hearts is in your hearts also!—­the special watchword of the Allies and of America, in these present days, when the German strength may collapse at any moment, and the problems of peace negotiations may be upon us before we know.

Reparation—­Restitution—&sh
y;Guarantees!

The story of Vareddes, like that of Senlis, is not among the vilest—­by a long, long way—­of those which have steeped the name of Germany in eternal infamy during this war.  The tale of Gerbeviller—­which I shall take for my third instance—­as I heard it from the lips of eye-witnesses, plunges us in deeper depths of horror; and the pages of the Bryce report are full of incidents beside which that of Vareddes looks almost colourless.

All the same, let us insist again that no Army of the Allies, or of America, or of any British Dominion, would have been capable of the treatment given by the soldiers of Germany to the hostages of Vareddes.  It brings out into sharp relief that quality, or “mentality,” to use the fashionable word, which Germany shares with Austria—­witness the Austrian doings in Serbia—­and with Turkey—­witness Turkey’s doings in Armenia—­but not with any other civilised nation.  It is the quality of, or the tendency to, deliberate and pitiless cruelty; a quality which makes of the man or nation who shows it a particularly terrible kind of animal force; and the more terrible, the more educated.  Unless we can put it down and stamp it out, as it has become embodied in a European nation, European freedom and peace, American freedom and peace, have no future.

But now, let me carry you to Lorraine!—­to the scenes of that short but glorious campaign of September 1914, by which, while the Battle of the Marne was being fought, General Castelnau was protecting the right of the French armies; and to the devastated villages where American kindness is already at work, rebuilding the destroyed, and comforting the broken-hearted.

No. 9

May 24th, 1917.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,—­To any citizen of a country allied with France in the present struggle, above all to any English man or woman who is provided with at least some general knowledge of the Battle of the Marne, the journey across France from Paris to Nancy can never fail to be one of poignant interest.  Up to a point beyond Chalons, the “Ligne de l’Est” follows in general the course of the great river, and therefore the line of the battle.  You pass La Fertee-sous-Jouarre, where the Third Corps of General French’s army crossed the river; Charly-sur-Marne, where a portion of the First Corps found an unexpectedly easy crossing, owing, it is said, to the hopeless drunkenness of the enemy rear-guard charged with defending