"We have been patient and made allowances. We know that a great nation like
yours cannot overthrow an age-long tyranny without being shaken through
every fibre of its being. Time was needed for you to recover your balance
and to resume a sane view of your obligations to others than yourselves. So
we have been patient, and are patient still, though the inaction on your
Front and your withdrawal from your part in the common struggle have made
our burden in France far harder to bear.

"If you fail us, we shall no less fight on, we others. 'We shall march
prospering--not through your presence.' We shall fight on till the ideals
of Kaiserism, your worst enemy, are crushed. America, that great Republic
that loves peace as passionately as you, will take your place, will fill up
the gap that you leave in the ranks of those who fight for freedom. And we
shall fight till we get the true peace that we want--not the peace which
some of you have advocated, fraternising with the common foe, listening to
the specious pleas of those who shirk the one test of their honesty when
they are asked to revolt against a tyranny as least as deadly as that which
you have yourselves overthrown.

"But you will not fail us, I know. Your hearts, as a nation, were once in
this War; heavy as our sacrifices have been, yours have been heavier still.
Why should you change? Why should the birth of your own freedom be the
death of your sympathy with the cause of the freedom of the world? No, you
cannot fail us; you are too great for that.

"Forgive me," Mr. Punch concluded, "if, in speaking from a full heart, I
have allowed myself an excess of candour. At home they have always been
very kind and let me have a charter to say just what I think; and I have
been doing it, without much distinction of persons, for seventy-five years
and more. If to you, who have been dumb so long, this seems beyond belief,