the northwest frontier of India. Britain cleared twelve hundred thousand
square miles of the enemy in German colonies. While fighting in
Mesopotamia, her soldiers were reconstructing at the same time. They
reclaimed and cultivated more than 1100 square miles of land there, which
produced in consequence enough food to save two million tons of shipping
annually for the Allies. In Palestine and Mesopotamia alone, British
troops in 1917 took 23,590 prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine from
September 18th to October 7th, they took 79,000 prisoners.

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

With "French's contemptible little army" she saved France at the start--
but I'll skip that--except to mention that one division lost 10,000 out
of 12,000 men, and 350 out of 400 officers. At Zeebrugge and Ostend--do
not forget the Vindictive--she dealt with submarines in April and May,
1918--but I'll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did, either at
the start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular moment during
those four years and three months that she was helping to hold Germany
off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick book. But I
am giving you enough, I think, wherewith to answer the ignorant, and the
frauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 1916 to 1918 Great Britain
increased her tillage area by four million acres: wheat 39 per cent,
barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50--in spite of the shortage of labor. She
used wounded soldiers, college boys and girls, boy scouts, refugees, and
she produced the biggest grain crop in fifty years. She started fourteen
hundred thousand new war gardens; most of those who worked them had
worked already a long day in a munition factory. These devoted workers
increased the potato crop in 1917 by three million tons--and thus
released British provision ships to carry our soldiers across. In that
Boston speech which one of my correspondents referred to, our Secretary