If our war experience has proved anything of America, it has been the soundness and beneficence of American institutions and the life they make possible.  Let us realize that truth, and resolve that these institutions shall be strengthened in peace and not weakened, and that the life which has grown up and flowered under their influence shall be jealously preserved for our children and our children’s children, and for the sake of our heroic dead.”

THE CROWNING HUMILIATION

The Crowning Humiliation, or Before and After Seeing Foch, might be the appropriate title for the latest story now added to the pages of world history.

Four years and four months ago the German leadership, fully confident of its strength, assured of its weapons, arrogant beyond anything in recorded history, challenged the organized and unorganized forces of the civilized world to mortal combat.  They thrust the Imperial German sword through all the covenants and commands of civilization and of justice.  Bursting out upon an unprepared and unsuspecting world, they were, despite their incredible strength, checked by France on the battlefield of the Marne, encircled by the British fleets, and like Napoleon after Leipzig, condemned to ultimate defeat.  At the hour when the white flag was brought to the French lines, British armies were approaching the field of Waterloo, American armies stood victorious in Sedan, and French armies were sweeping forward from the Oise to the Meuse.  The crowning humiliation came with the admission of defeat.  Germany sought armistice at the hands of a Marshal of France!

FOCH—­“THE GRAY MAN OF CHRIST”

In the closing days of the great war a striking contrast was drawn by the Los Angeles Times between William Hohenzollern and Marshal Foch, from the religious standpoint.  The former German monarch coupled Gott with himself as an equal, while Ferdinand Foch was called, with apparent reason, “the gray man of Christ.”

“This has been Christ’s war,” said the Times.  “Christ on one side, and all that stood opposed to Christ on the other side.  And the generalissimo, in supreme command of all the armies that fought on the side of Christ, is Christ’s man. * * * It seems to be beyond all shadow of doubt that when the hour came in which all that Christ stood for was to either stand or fall, Christ raised up a man to lead the hosts that battled for him.”  And the Times continues: 

“If you will look for Foch in some quiet church, it is there that he will be found, humbly giving God the glory and absolutely declining to attribute it to himself.  Can that kind of a man win a war?  Can a man who is a practical soldier be also a practical Christian?  And is Foch that kind of a man?  Let us see.

“A California boy, serving as a soldier in the American Expeditionary Forces in France, wrote a letter to his parents in San Bernardino recently, in which he gives, as well as anyone else could give, the answer to the question we ask.  This American boy, Evans by name, tells of meeting Marshal Foch at close range in France.