VICTORY is in the heroism of our soldiers. It is in them, provided we give them all the means needed by them to conquer. It is for that that we have to use all our energies and will. And if we receive you with so much fraternal eagerness, it is because we know what resolution and tenacity have been shown in your country by the two assemblies of which you are the delegates. You will find here the same desire of Parliament and Government to attain the same end. * * *

This morning I brought before you the beauty of our cause, and I added that what gives us our strength in this war is that we have not wished it. We hold our heads up; our conscience is clear. There is no stain on our alliance. Nevertheless we have always exerted curselves to settle all rivalries amicably and peacefully. Remember all the provocations which have come to pass in the world during the last twenty-five years. Not one has come from us. To these provocations we have replied with the persevering pursuit of peaceful solutions.

It is not because there was fear in us. Our nations are too fine, too noble, too strong not to be above such suspicions. We took care to save the world from the horrors of a war of which we foresaw the extent and the ravages., Yet we French had a very painful wound in the side. If we have shown so much patience, it is because we expected the necessary reparation only through right. But a people drunk with pride and fascinated by the desire of achieving the domination of the world has unexpectedly thrown itself on us and unchained war at the very moment when we were endeavoring to find an amicable solution. Now we are fighting. We mean to win. We will win.

Germany, using in turn force when

To

she believes herself strongest and craft when she feels herself growing feebler, is today resorting to craft. She is spreading abroad the illusive word "peace." Where does this word come from? whom has it been spoken? And on what conditions? And to what end? By her ambiguous manoeuvres Germany reckons on dividing the allied countries. No one among us will fall into such a sorry trap. I have said, and I repeat, that when blood flows in streams, when our troops with so much self-sacrifice are giving up their lives, the word "peace" is a sacrilege if it means that the aggressor will not be punished and if tomorrow Europe runs the risk of again being delivered up to the despotism, fantasy, and caprice of a military caste athirst for pride and domination. It would be the dishonor of the Allies! What should our reply be if tomorrow, after having concluded such a peace, our countries were dragged anew into the frenzy of armaments? What would future generations say if we committed such an act of folly and if we missed the opportunity which is offered us of establishing on solid foundations a lasting peace?

Peace will come out of the victory of the Allies; it can come only out of our victory. Peace must not be an empty formula; it must be based upon international law, guaranteed by sanctions, against which no country will be able to take its stand. That peace will shine on humanity and bring security to the peoples who will be able to work and evolve according to their genius. Blood will no longer be upon them.

It is this ideal which gives our task its greatness. It is in the name of this ideal that our soldiers are fighting and exposing themselves so light-heartedly to death; it is in the name of this ideal that mothers, wives, daughters, and sis

ters in mourning are keeping back their tears, knowing that the sacrifice of a son, husband, father, or brother will not have been useless to their native land and to humanity. That is the only peace for which we must strive. It is by that peace that our countries will grow nobler and finer. We shall obtain the victory of our arms, which will assure us this peace, by united action and by a ceaselessly active and increasingly intimate fraternization. We owe this victory to humanity-and it is coming.

Although she has ravaged Belgium and Serbia, although she still occupies several of our départements, although she

has penetrated into Russian territory, Germany today is not triumphant. More and more she appears sinking in the world. Germany is living in anguish, anxiety, and remorse. This is the power of the ideal which is at work. This is the beginning of the end. This is the certainty that the hour of our victory will soon be striking. We are today one vast country, fighting for the same cause the Allies using in common their blood, their men, and their resources.

And now, gentlemen, let us turn our hearts and minds toward those who are fighting out there, and on whom glory is already shining brightly.

W1

WHEN Germany challenged us nearly two years ago to uphold with our lives the ideals by which we professed to live, we accepted the challenge, not out of madness, nor for glory or for gain, but to make good those professions. Since then the Allies and our empire have fought that they may be free and all earth may be free from the intolerable domination of German ideals. We did not foresee the size of the task when it opened. We do not flinch from it now that the long months have schooled us to full knowledge and have tempered us nationally and individually

to meet it. The nations within the empire have created, maintained, and reinforced from their best the great armies they devote without question to this issue. They have emerged, one by one, as powers clothed with power through discipline and sacrifice, strong for good by their bitter knowledge of the evil they are meeting, and wise in the unpurchasable wisdom of actual achievement. Knowing as nations what it is we fight for, realizing as men and women the resolve that has been added to us by what each has endured, we go forward now under the proud banner of our griefs and losses to greater effort, greater endurance, and, if need be, heavier sacrifice, equal sponsors for the deliverance of mankind.

We are not mere disconnected lookerson. The longer the war lasts the more deeply do we become concerned that it should be brought to an end and the world be permitted to resume its normal life and course again. And when it does come to an end we shall be as much concerned as the nations at war to see peace assume an aspect of permanence, give promise of days from which the anxiety of uncertainty shall be lifted, bring some assurance that peace and war shall always hereafter be reckoned part of the common interest of mankind.

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind is inevitably our affair

as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia.

One observation on the causes of the present war we are at liberty to make, and to make it may throw some light forward upon the future as well as backward upon the past. It is plain that this war could have come only as it did, suddenly and out of secret counsels, without warning to the world, without discussion, without any of the deliberate movements of counsel with which it would seem natural to approach so stupendous a contest. It is probable that if it had been foreseen just what would happen, just what alliances would be formed, just what forces arrayed against one another, those who brought the great contest on would have been glad to substitute conference for force.

If we ourselves had been afforded some opportunity to apprise the belligerents of the attitude which it would be our duty to take, of the policies and practices against which we would feel bound to use all our moral and economic strength, and in certain circumstances even our physical strength also, our own contribution to the counsel which might have averted the struggle would have been considered worth weighing and regarding.

And the lesson which the shock of being taken by surprise in a matter so deeply vital to all the nations of the world has made poignantly clear is that the peace of the world must henceforth depend upon a new and more wholesome diplomacy. Only when the great nations of the world have reached some sort of agreement as to what they hold to be