will back up whatever of their original programme can be carried through. Particularly is this true after the President’s chiding of Russia. The animus behind the enthusiasm for Pershing in France is the conviction that American force will be the decisive factor in the winning back of Alsace-Lorraine. It is no mere sentimental pleasure at American alliance. It is an immense stiffening of the determination to hold out to the uttermost, to the “peace with victory” of which Ribot speaks. Deluded France carries on the war to complete exhaustion on the strength of the American millions who are supposedly rushing to save her. The immediate effect of American participation in England and Italy as well has been an intense will to hold out not for the “peace without victory” but _pour la victoire intégrale_, for the conquest so crushing that Germany will never be feared again. Now the crux of American strategy was the liberalization of Allied policy in order that that peace might be obtained which was a hopeful basis for a League of Nations. American participation has evidently not gone one inch toward liberalizing the Allies. We are further from the negotiated peace than we were in December, though the only change in the military and political situation is the Russian revolution which immensely increased the plausibility of that peace. As Allied hope of victory grows, the covenant of nations fades into the background. And it is Allied hope of victory that our participation has inflamed and augmented.