But here in England our land is fruitful and productive, owing to the pressure of the submarine campaign, as it never was before; British farming and the American fields have cause to bless rather than to curse the war.  Only in France has the tormented and poisoned earth itself been blasted by the war, and only in France, even where there are no trenches, have whole countrysides gone out of cultivation, so that in the course of a long motor drive, the sight of a solitary plough at work, or merely a strip of newly ploughed land amid the rank and endless waste, makes one’s heart leap.

No!—­France is quite right.  Her suffering, her restoration, her future safety, as against Germany, these should be, must be, the first thought of the Allies in making peace.  And it is difficult for those of us who have not seen, to feel, as it is politically necessary, it seems to me, we should feel.

Since I was in France, however, a fortnight ago, the proceedings in connection with the extension of the Armistice, and the new restrictions and obligations laid on Germany, have profoundly affected 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 for himself on the spot what France has suffered.  If so, some deep, popular instincts in France will be at once appeased and softened, and Franco-American relations, I believe, greatly improved.

No doubt, if the President made a mistake in not going at once to the wrecked districts before the Peace Conference opened—­and no one has insisted on this more strongly than American 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 Nations idea, on which not Governments only, but peoples are hanging, should be rapidly “clothed upon” by some practical shape; otherwise the war is morally and spiritually lost.

Certainly the whole grandiose conception of the League, so vague and nebulous when the President arrived in Europe, has been marvellously brought out of the mists into some sort of solidity, during these January weeks.  Not, I imagine, for some of the reasons that have been given.  An able American journalist, for instance, writing to the Times, ascribes the advance 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 very deeply; the moral effect of the submarine warfare in its later phase, and of last year’s desperate campaign, have left their marks upon the Englishman, and find expression in his conduct....  British comment frankly recognises that it will never again be within the power of Great Britain, even if there were the desire, to challenge America in war or in peace.”