He thought hard while we paced round our side of the Jardin d’Eté where the moonlight made the bushes glamourous, and streaked the tree-trunks with a silver line. “This war is going to have prodigious effect on nations. On individuals, too. I’m scared. We’ve all been screwed up to an intense pitch--every nerve in us is beyond the normal stretch of nature. After the war there will be a sudden relaxing. We shall be like bits of chewed elastic. Rather like people who have drugged themselves to get through some big ordeal. After the ordeal their nerves are all ragged. They crave the old stimulus though they dread it. They’re depressed--don’t know what’s the matter--get into sudden rages--hysterical--can’t settle to work--go out for gaiety and get bored. I’ve seen it many times in bad cases. Europe--yes and America too--is going to be a bad case. A neurotic world--Lord, it’ll take some healing!” For a time his thoughts wandered round the possible terms of peace and the abasement of Germany. He prophesied the break-up of Germany, the downfall of the Emperor and of other thrones. “Crowns will be as cheap as twenty cents,” he said. He hoped for the complete overthrow of Junkerdom--“all the dirty dogs,” as he called the Prussian war-lords and politicians. But he hoped the Allies would be generous with the enemy peoples--“magnanimous” was the word he used. “We must help the spirit of democracy to rise among them,” he said. “We must make it easy for them to exorcise the devil. If we press them too hard, put the screw on to the torture of their souls (defeat will be torture to a proud people), they will nourish a hope of vengeance and go back to their devil for hope.” I asked him whether he thought his President would lead the world to a nobler stage of history. He hesitated at that, groped a little, I thought, among old memories and prejudices. “Why,” he said, “Wilson has the biggest chance that ever came to a human being--the biggest chance and the biggest duty. We are rich (too darned rich) and enormously powerful when most other peoples are poor and weak--drained of wealth and blood. That’s our luck, and a little bit perhaps our shame, though our boys have done their bit all right and are ready to do more, and it’s not their fault they weren’t here before--but we’re hardly touched by this war as a people, except spiritually. There we’ve been touched by the finger of Fate. (God, if you like that better!) So with that strength behind him the President is in a big way of business. He can make his voice heard, stand for a big idea. God, sonny, I hope he’ll do it! For the world’s sake, for the sake of all these suffering people, here in this city of Lille and in a million little towns where people have been bashed by war.” I asked him if he doubted Wilson’s greatness, and the question embarrassed him.