It is a fact that not only the Germanophil but the Francophil Swiss were genuinely and deeply astonished when they learnt—from the official _communiqués_—that we intended to intervene in the war because the soil of Belgium had been invaded. When the thing was done they accepted it as a fact. They were bound to. But they did not anticipate it. They found it hard to believe that with an army, as they thought—and they were not so far wrong—of only 150,000 men, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, we would be so quixotic as to throw ourselves into a contest in which we were not directly concerned, and to send our “contemptible little army” (even smaller than their own) to fight in a foreign country the battles of another state against the overpowering military might of Germany. It is also a fact—and to me a still more astounding revelation—that a month after the war had begun there were people in France, and among them soldiers of high standing, who were honestly surprised at what we had already done in the war, as well as profoundly grateful, and who even then honestly doubted whether we really meant to put our backs into it to any purpose. One can understand their astonishment at what we have done since. Even an Englishman may say, without excessive national conceit, that the work of our Navy, the huge volunteer armies raised in a year from the Mother-country and our Dominions and Colonies and India, and our subsequent if only partial acceptance of the principle of National Service, are not everyday affairs. But the initial Swiss doubt or scepticism as to our possible action, once the neutrality of Belgium had been violated, and the fears of our friends in France at the beginning, that having set our hand to the plough we might turn back before the furrow was finished, are not so easy for us Englishmen to comprehend. We had thought that they knew us better. No matter what Government had been in power, once the Germans had declared their intention of passing through the country of the Belgians, we must inevitably have drawn the sword to defend or avenge them; more than that, even if Belgium had not been invaded, we must no less have put our sword at the disposal of invaded France, for the one wrong was in reality as great as the other. And, no matter what Government may be in power to-morrow or the day after, the spirit of England will not change. We stand by the side of France and our other Allies to the end. And by now, I fancy, the French have found that out.