[2] These pages were written in the first week of February.

"All is well. The Peace Conference is sitting in Paris."

"Yes--_but what about France_?"

"President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George have gradually brought the
recalcitrant elements into line. The League of Nations is a reality."

"_Yes--but what about France?_ Has the President been to see these
scores of ruined towns, these hundreds of wiped-out villages, these
fantastic wrecks of mines and factories, these leagues on leagues of
fruitful land given back to waste, these shell-blasted forests, these
broken ghosts of France's noblest churches?"

"The President has made a Sunday excursion from Paris to Rheims. He
saw as much as a winter day of snow and fog would allow him to see.
France must be patient. Everything takes time."

"Yes!--so long as we can be sure that the true position is not only
understood, but felt. But our old, rich, and beautiful country, with
all the accumulations on its soil of the labour, the art, the thought
of uncounted generations, has been in this war the buffer between
German savagery and the rest of Europe. Just as our armies bore the
first brunt and held the pass, till civilisation could rally to its
own defence, so our old towns and villages have died, that our
neighbours might live secure. We have suffered most in war--we claim
the first thought in peace. We live in the heart and on the brink of
danger. Our American Allies have a No Man's Land of the Atlantic