woods of France--soon to welcome a third army, your own, to their great
fellowship!--are the foundations to-day of all the rest; and next come
the efforts that have been made by British and Americans to help the
French in remaking and rebuilding their desolated land, efforts that
bless him that gives and him that takes, but especially him that gives;
of which I shall have more to say in the course of this letter. But a
common victory, and a common ardour in rebuilding the waste places, and
binding up the broken-hearted: even they will not be enough, unless,
beyond the war, all three nations, nay, all the Allies, do not set
themselves to a systematic interpenetration of life and thought,
morally, socially, commercially. As far as France and England are
concerned, English people must go more to France; French people must
come more to England. Relations of hospitality, of correspondence, of
wide mutual acquaintance, must not be left to mere chance; they must be
furthered by the mind of both nations. Our English children must go for
part of their education to France; and French children must be
systematically wooed over here. Above all the difficulty of language
must be tackled as it has never been yet, so that it may be a real
disadvantage and disgrace for the boy or girl of either country who has
had a secondary education not to be able to speak, in some fashion, the
language of the other. As for the working classes, and the country
populations of both countries, what they have seen of each other, as
brothers in arms during the war, may well prove of more lasting
importance than anything else.

* * * * *

But I am wandering a little from Nancy, and the story of our long
Sunday. The snow had disappeared, and there were voices of spring in the
wind. A French Army motor arrived early, with another French officer,