- tria disintegrated, Russia groping her way with bloodshot
eyes to a new democracy, a complete set of Fears has been removed. The spirits of the peoples will be uplifted, the darkness of fear having passed from them. We are coming out into the broad sunlight of sanity, and mankind will march to better conquests than those of conscript armies. Thank God, the United States of America (and don't you forget it!) will play a part in this advance to another New World."
It was absurd to argue with the little man in a sodden field on the road to Liège. Besides, though I saw weak links in his chain of reasoning, I did not want to argue. I wanted to believe also that our victory would not be a mere vulgar triumph of the old kind, one military power rising upon the ruins of its rival, one great yell (or many) of "Yah!—we told you so!" but that it would be a victory for all humanity, shamed by the degradation of its orgy of blood, in spite of all pride in long-enduring manhood, and that the peoples of the world, with one common, enormous, generous instinct, would cry out, "The horror has passed! Never again shall it come upon us. . . . Let us pay back to the dead by contriving a better way of life for them who follow!" The chance of that lay with living youth, if they would not allow themselves to be betrayed by their Old Men. That also was a mighty "If," but I clung to the hope with as passionate a faith as that of the little American doctor. . . .
The way to the Rhine lay through many cities liberated from hostile rule, through many wonderful scenes in which emotion surged like a white flame above great crowds. There was a pageantry of life, which I had never before seen in war or in peace, and those of us who went that way became dazed by the endless riot of colour, and our ears were tired by a tumult of joyous sound. In Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Liège, Namur, Ver-
