The Germans have taught us to hate—and perhaps that is their greatest moral crime. To this new passion, but lately still unknown to us, we had for long ages closed our hearts. We should not have allowed it to enter them, if, whether as conquerors or conquered, we had been challenged by our enemies to an honourable combat. Under the repeated blows of their outrages our hearts ended by giving it admittance; hatred has entered into them, it has settled itself there, and taken up its abode. It will stay there till justice has been done. Our soul will not be freed from hatred till the day when the expiation of the chief culprits has been carried out. Then, and then only, humanity will be able to resume its enthusiastic and yet halting march in the direction of Progress. These are not the extravagant visions of a solitary dreamer. You recognize these sentiments, friend Campbell. You have felt how strongly they were imposed upon upright consciences, however enamoured of the ideal, by the stern contact with realities. No one can remain a stranger to that fact who has made the melancholy pilgrimages which you have in the murdered lands,—for example, in the wasted fields of Lorraine or Champagne—if, in the cities of Reims or of Pont-à-Mousson, in Sermaize or Clermont en Argonne, in Nomeny or Gerbéviller—and all the other places, alas! where innocent blood has flowed—he can hear and remember with a brotherly heart the cries of the martyrs, as he passes through the midst of the ruins. * * * * * Is it impossible to realize these projects? Is it an idle fancy to talk of such conditions and to demand such punishments, while the enemy is still burrowing in trenches dug in our soil? No! No! Whatever trials we may still have to submit to, whatever long sufferings we may still have to endure, in France, as in England, in Russia, in Italy, in Belgium, and in Servia, we all know perfectly well—as the rest of the world is beginning to know—that absolute victory, with the conditions dictated by us, will without any doubt be the prize of our efforts, if we pursue those efforts with enough resolution and method, that is to say if we are determined to have it, if our determination and our actions are in proportion to the importance of the object we have to attain. And you, friend Campbell, will have the honour of being of the number of those who, from the first hour, have had a clear vision of the future, of those who have taught your noble Nation to _understand_ and to be _determined_. And so with all my heart I give you my hand. Yours truly, LÉON MIRMAN. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND DECCLES. ------------------------------------------------------------------------