is the people of the world, struggling in protest against despotism, privilege, autocracy and the pretence of the few to play greedily at the master game.  The points break off, or are worn off—­what difference does it make?  Joffre, French, Cardona, Neville, Asquith, Painleve, Kitchener, Haig—­the drill never ceases; the power behind it never falters.  For once in the world the spirit of democracy is organized; organized across lines of race, of language, of national boundary!  A score of million men, in arms, a score of billions of people—­workers, captains of industry, local leaders, little governors and commercial princelets, bosses, farmers, bankers, skilled labourers, and men and women of fumbling hands and slow brains, teachers, preachers, philosophers, poets, thieves, harlots, saints and sinners—­all the free people of the world, giving what talents Heaven has bestowed upon them to make the power of this great machine that moves so smoothly, so resistlessly, so beautifully along the white ribbons of roads up to the battle.

When the battle ceases, of course, that organization will depart.  But always democracy will know that it can organize, that it can rise to a divine dignity of courage and sacrifice.  And that knowledge is the great salvage of this war.  More than written laws, more than justice established, more than wrongs righted in any nation, and in all the nations will be the knowledge of this latent power of men!

CHAPTER IX

In which we return to “The land of the free”

We found when we were leaving England another of those curious contrasts between the nations of the earth that one meets in a long journey.  Coming into Bordeaux we were convoyed for three hours by a ratty little French destroyer and a big dirigible French balloon.  Leaving Liverpool, we lay two nights and a day sealed in the harbour, and then sailed out with the Arabic, the Mongolian, the Victorian, and two freighters, amid a whole flock of cruisers and destroyers.  The protecting fleet stayed with us two nights and three days.  On the French boat the barber practically had no news of sudden deaths and hairbreadth escapes which had happened while we slept.  We sailed into the Gironde River peacefully, almost joyously.  But we left the Mersey with a story that a big fleet of destroyers hovered at the river’s mouth; that the Belgic had been beached out there on a shoal by a “sub,” and that we would be lucky if our throats were not cut in the water as we tried to swim ashore after we had been blown out of our boats.

The French certainly are more casual than the English.  But then, the Germans have sunk virtually no French liners, while the British liner is the favourite food of von Tirpetz!  They even showed us his teeth marks on our American liner, the New York.  On an earlier trip during the summer of 1917 the boat had been torpedoed when Admiral Sims was a passenger, going to England.  The Admiral was sitting at dinner when the explosion occurred and the force of it threw him to the high ceiling of the dining saloon!  At least that’s what they told us.  Caution and conflicting doubts, “fears within and foes without,” were not so unreasonable as one might fancy, coming out of any British port.