Page:Secrets of Crewe House.djvu/231

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INTER-ALLIED CO-OPERATION
169

kind of religion. Germany and Austria-Hungary would listen intently to the words that we should say—not necessarily in that Conference, but to the words of our Governments. Political action and propaganda would have very great importance at the end of this campaign, and therefore he hoped that Italians would be able to make their contribution to the shortening and to the victorious decision of the war.

One circumstance that gave them absolute certainty of victory, and was a certificate of the moral purity of the Allied cause, was the action of the United States, whom no one—not even the enemy—could accuse of any selfish motive or interest. While it was conceivable that the European Allies might be charged, however unjustly, with having some thought of their direct interests, the United States could not by any stretch of imagination be regarded as having intervened for any issue save that of high principle. Therefore, he agreed entirely with Lord Northcliffe and M. Klobukowski that the more the significance of the American effort, both in its material and its moral aspects, were brought to the knowledge of enemy peoples, the more rapid would be the decline of their moral, and the surer the attainment