Now as these speculations upon the new order came to us as our journey drew to its close in England, the war seemed slowly to change its meaning.  It became something more than a conflict; it seemed to be a revolution—­world-wide, and all encompassing.  Then we thought of “the front” in new terms.

We realized that behind the curtain in Germany, a despotic will, scientifically guided, is controlling the food, the munitions, the assembling of men and materials for this war.  But on this side of the German curtain at the “front” which we knew, a democratic purpose is doing these things.  The view of that democratic purpose at work, to me at least, was my chief trophy of the war.  The laws which make food conservation possible, which direct shipping, mobilize railroads, control industry, regulate wages, prescribe many of the habits of life to fit the war, all rise out of the experience of the people.  There is a vast amount of the “consent of the governed” in this whole war game, so far as the Allies are concerned.  And as it is in democratic finance, so also is it in the taste and talent and capacity for war.  That also is democratic.  What a wide range of human activity is massed in this business of war!

For days and days after we left the continent, in our minds we could see armies moving into the trenches somewhere along the “far flung battle line,” and other armies moving out.  The picture haunted us.  It seemed to me a cinematograph of democracy.  For the change of an army division from the trenches, tired, worn and bedraggled, moving wearily to its station of rest, with another army division, fresh and eager, moving up from its station of rest to the front, is indeed a social miracle.  It is a fine bit of human machinery.  So in terms of our modern democracy it may be well to review the interminable panorama of this democratic war.  Fifty years ago it would have been a memorable achievement.  Waterloo itself was not such a miracle.  Yet somewhere in this war, this wonder is done every day and no record is made of it.  Imagine hundreds of miles of wide, white roads, hard-surfaced and graded for the war, leading to a sector of the line.  To make and keep these roads, itself is a master’s job.  Imagine the roads filled all day with two long lines of trucks, passing and repassing; one line carrying its guns and camp outfit, its whole paraphernalia of war, going to the battle front in the hills; another never-ceasing procession with its martial impedimenta coming out of the hills to rest.  A few horses hauling big gun carriages straggle through the dust.  Here and there, but rarely, is a group of marching men—­generally men singing as they march.  Occasionally a troop of German prisoners marching with the goose step, comes swinging along carrying their shovels at a martial angle—­road menders—­which proves that we are more than thirty kilos from the firing line; now and then a camp-kitchen rattles past.  But ever in one’s ears is the rich rumble of