Beyond this short general statement I shall not for the present attempt to follow the ins and outs of the campaign on this part of the line. Its strategical importance has been far greater than has appeared, and, once the weather conditions permit, there is always a chance of its developing into an attempt at a big offensive movement by one side or the other. But as regards the story of those heroic struggles we have had, I think, our fill of fighting. In the daily engagements on the plain of Alsace and among the fir-clad mountains of the Vosges the men of the armies of the east have shown the same enthusiastic devotion to their country, the same quiet disregard of danger and death, and the same cheerful endurance and unfailing confidence in the final triumph of right as their brother-soldiers who fought and died for the safety of Epinal and Nancy and Verdun and Toul. Higher praise than that they cannot have. The soldiers of France are the fearless sons of a great-hearted nation. As I draw near to the end of this imperfect attempt to show the greatness of the debt which England owes to France, one other thought about them comes to me with increasing force. The French have played the game: they have fought the good fight like knights and gentlemen. That, more than almost anything else, is the reason why Englishmen have come to look upon them as something much more than Allies. Because of it they have forged a bond with us and our children’s children which Time itself will hardly be able to weaken. They are our brothers, not only in arms, but in all that civilization stands for. The Germans are—different. They are our enemies, not only because they are fighting against us, but much more because of the way in which they have fought. As a state, and, in cases that cannot be numbered, as individuals they have turned their backs upon principles and ideals by which all honourable nations and men must strive to rule their lives. Their scutcheon is blackened with arson and murder and pillage and rape. Their hands are red with the blood of the innocent. To the ends of the earth and of time they have made their name a byword and a reproach. But—worse than all this—they glory in their shame. They claim that their dishonour is honour and their wrong the right. Their eyes are holden that they cannot see. Some day they will be opened and they will see themselves and their crimes in all their revolting ugliness. For it is unbelievable that a whole nation of ordinary men and women can continue to allow themselves to be blinded by the false and cruel and iniquitous standards of a few devils in human form. But for the present all their sense of right and wrong is being eaten away by a foul and malignant cancer. Till that cancer has been cut out of their being by the sword they are a deadly danger to the whole world, for their success would infallibly spread its poison into every country on which, in their present condition, they were able to lay their hand.