"Gentlemen, we have taken up the duty of government in order to carry on the war with renewed energy and to obtain a better result from our concentrated efforts. We are here with but one idea in our minds, the war and nothing but the war. The confidence we ask you to give us should be the expression of confidence in yourselves. . . . Never has France felt more keenly the need for living and growing in the ideal of power used on behalf of human rectitude, the resolve to see justice done between citizens and peoples able to emancipate themselves. The watchword of all our Governments since the war began has been victory for the sake of justice. That frank policy we shall uphold. We have great soldiers with a great history led by men who have been tested and have been inspired to deeds of the highest devotion worthy of their ancestral renown. The immortal fatherland of our common humanity, overmastering the exultation of victory, will follow, on the lines of its destiny, the noble aspiration for peace, through them and through us all. Frenchmen impelled by us into the conflict have special claims upon us. We owe them everything without reserve. Everything for France: everything for the triumph of right. One simple duty is imposed upon us, to stand by the soldier, to live, suffer and fight with him, and to throw aside everything that is not for our country. The rights on our front, the duties in our rear must be merged in one. Every zone must be the army zone. If men there are who must cherish the hatreds of bygone days, sweep them away. "All civilised nations are now arrayed in the like battle against modern forms of ancient barbarisms. Our Allies and ourselves together constitute a solid barrier which shall not be surmounted. Throughout the Allied front, at all times and in all places, there is nothing but solid brotherhood, the surest basis for the coming world. . . . The silent soldiers of the factory, the old peasants working, bent over their soil, the vigorous women who toil, the children who help in their weakness--these likewise are our _poilus_ who in times to come, recalling the great things done, will be able to say with the men in the trenches, 'I, too, was there.' . . . Mistakes have been made. Think no more about them save only to remedy them.