"The thing is preposterous and impossible; and yet is not that what the whole course and action of the German armies has meant wherever they have moved? I do not wish, even in this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what the German arms have accomplished with unpitying thoroughness throughout every fair region they have touched. "What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am ready, ready still, ready even now, to discuss a fair and just and honest peace at any time that it is sincerely purposed--a peace in which the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But the answer, when I proposed such a peace, came from the German commanders in Russia and I cannot mistake the meaning of the answer. "I accept the challenge. I know that you accept it. All the world shall know that you can accept it.... "Germany has once more said that force, and force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether right as America conceives it or dominion as she conceives it shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore, but one response possible from us: "_Force, force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant force which shall make right the law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust!_" Germany only recognized physical force; no other force counted. President Wilson, in countering, set at its true measure the might of the United States, joined with the might of the other active belligerents, Great Britain, France, and Italy. CHAPTER XLII THE AMERICAN LEGIONS When the German spring offensive of 1918 came and hewed a great dent in the western front, the cry went up from the Allied capitals for American aid. "Hurry!" entreated Lloyd-George. "Hurry!" came the echo from Paris. Then, almost like an answering echo, was heard the tramp of American legions on the soil of France. Week after week, through the spring and summer, United States troops spread their columns fanwise from their ports of debarkation, until their multiplying presence was felt, where not seen, along the entire fighting line from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier.