the prisoners’ line leaps suddenly to such a height that a new piece has to be added perpendicularly to the chart, and the wall can hardly take it in.  What does that leaping line mean? Simply the collapse of the German morale—­the final and utter defeat of the German Army as a fighting force.  I hope with all my heart that the General Staff will allow that chart to be published before the fickle popular memory has forgotten too much of the war.[3]

[3] By the kindness of General Sir Herbert Lawrence, Chief of the General Staff, I am able to give a small reproduction of this chart, which will be found at the end of the book, with an explanation written by Captain W.O.  Barton.

Let me then say, in recapitulation, and as presenting the main thesis of these papers, that to the British mind, at any rate, so inarticulate often, yet so tenacious, the Western campaign of last year presents itself as having been fought by three national Armies: 

(1) The veteran and glorious French Army, which, while providing in Marshal Foch the master-spirit of the last unified effort, was yet, after its huge sacrifices at Verdun, in Champagne, and many another stricken field, inevitably husbanding its resources in men, and yielding to the Armies of its Allies the hottest work in the final struggle;

(2) The British Army, which, after its victorious reaction from its March defensive, was at the very height of its four years’ development in men, 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 although Germany might still attack, it was now certain that, so long as the British Army was in the field, she could not win the war:  and finally;

(3) The young and growing American Army, which had only been some six months in the fighting line, and was still rather a huge promise, though of capital importance, both politically and militarily, than a performance.  It was brave and ardent, like a young 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 war was finally won, under the supreme command of a great Frenchman, by the British Army, acting in concert with the French and American armies—­and supported by the British naval blockade, and the British, French, and Serbian military successes in the East.

In such a summary I am, naturally, merely a porte-voix, trying to reproduce the thoughts of many minds, as I came across them in France.  But if this is the general upshot of the situation, and the general settled conviction of the instructed British mind, 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 habit of running ourselves down, is not, indeed, supporting the League of Nations from any sense at all of lost prestige or weakened power, but from an idealism no less hopeful and insistent than that of America, coupled with a loathing of war no less strong.