Pleasant sentiments of brotherhood evade the point at issue.
The way of just peace is by "converting" Germany. There is only one cure
for long-continued treachery, and that is to demonstrate its failure.
To pause short of a thorough victory over the deep, inset habits and
methods of Germany is to destroy the spirit of France. It will not be
well for a premier race of the world to go down in defeat. We need her
thrifty Lorraine peasants and Brittany sailors, her unfailing gift to
the light of the world, more than we need a thorough German spy system
and a soldiery obedient to commands of vileness.
Very much more slowly England, too, is learning what the fight is about.
It is German violation of the fundamental decencies that makes it
difficult to find common ground to build on for the future. It is at
this point that the spy system of slow-seeping treachery and the
atrocity program of dramatic frightfulness overlap. It is in part out of
the habit of betraying hospitality that the atrocities have emerged. It
isn't as if they were extemporized--a sudden flare, with no background.
They are the logical result of doing secretly for years that which
humanity has agreed not to do.
Some of the members of our Red Cross unit--the Hector Munro Ambulance
Corps--worked for a full year with the French Fusiliers Marins, perhaps
the most famous 6000 fighting men in the western line.
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