agonies of peoples, there will be a tragic price to pay by victors as well as by vanquished. For the victors are weak too. Their strength was nearly spent. They—except my people—were panting to the last gasp when their enemy fell at last. They need a peace of reconciliation for their own sakes, because no new frontiers may save them from sharing the ruin of those they destroy, nor the disease of those they starve. America alone comes out of the war strong and rich. For that reason we have the power to shape the destiny of the human race, and to heal, as far as may be, the wounds of the world. It is our chance in history. The most supreme chance that any race has had since the beginning of the world. All nations are looking to President Wilson to help them out of the abyss and to make a peace which shall lead the people out of the dark jungle of Europe. My God!. . . If Wilson will be noble and wise and strong, he may alter the face of the world, and win such victory as no mortal leader ever gained. If not—if not—there will be anguish unspeakable, and a worse darkness, and a welter of anarchy out of whose madness new wars will be bred, until civilisation drops back to savagery, or disappears. . . . I am afraid!"
He spoke those last words with a terrible thrill in his rather high, harsh voice, and I, too, standing there in the darkness, by the Rhine, had a sense of mighty powers at work with the destiny of many peoples, and of risks and chances and hatreds and stupidities thwarting the purpose of noble minds and humble hearts after this four years' massacre. . . . And I was afraid.
