(3) The young and growing American Army, which had only been some six
months in the fighting line, and was still rather a huge _promise_,
though of capital importance, both politically and militarily, than a
performance. It was brave and ardent, like a young eaglet, "with eyes
intentive to bedare the sun;" but it had its traditions to lay down,
its experience to buy, and large sections of its military lesson still
to learn. It could not, as a fighting force, have determined the war
last year; and the war was finally won, under the supreme command of a
great Frenchman, by the British Army, acting in concert with the
French and American armies--and supported by the British naval
blockade, and the British, French, and Serbian military successes in
the East.

In such a summary I am, naturally, merely a _porte-voix_, trying to
reproduce the thoughts of many minds, as I came across them in France.
But if this is the general upshot of the situation, and the general
settled conviction of the instructed British mind, as I believe it to
be, our alliance with France and our friendship with America, so
passionately upheld by all that is best in our respective nations,
have both of them nothing to lose from its temperate statement. Great
Britain, in spite of our national habit of running ourselves down, is
not, indeed, supporting the League of Nations from any sense at all of
lost prestige or weakened power, but from an idealism no less hopeful
and insistent than that of America, coupled with a loathing of war no
less strong.

_The League of Nations!_--A year ago how many of us had given any
serious thought to what was then a phrase, a dream, on which in the
dark days of last spring it seemed a mere waste of time to dwell? And