Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/212

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has left behind it a legacy of percipience. It was an Englishman who discovered during those years that the French officers snored "with a certain politeness." It was a great American who said that France had "saved the soul of the world." It was a Frenchman who wrote comprehensively: "To disregard danger, to stand under fire, is not for an Englishman an act of courage; it is part of a good education." When gratitude is forgotten, as all things which clamour for remembrance should be, and sentimentalism has dissolved under the pitiless rays of reality, there remains, and will remain, a good understanding which is the basis of good will.

At present the nations that were drawn together by a common peril are a little tired of one another's company, and more than a little irritated by one another's grievances. The natural result of this weariness and irritation is an increase of sympathy for Germany,