friendliness in coming to our support.

"But I am told that the secret of the present attitude of our French
critics is that they cannot forgive us for having used the soil of France
in order to defend our own. Is this quite fair or even decent? Let me
refresh their memory of the motive that brought us into this War. The true
motive was not to be found in the duty imposed upon us by Germany's breach
of the Belgian Treaty, though that in itself furnished us with an
unanswerable reason. The true motive was our desire to help you. We had
nothing in those days to fear for ourselves. We knew that our Fleet was
strong enough to protect our own shores. We had not yet appreciated the
submarine menace; we did not recognise what your loss of the Channel ports
might mean for us. We entered the War because we could not look on and see
you overwhelmed.

"You complain, again, that, in contrast to yourselves, we have got all we
wanted out of the War. As a fact we wanted nothing; but let that pass. You
point to the destruction of the German Fleet as if it were a private gain
for us and us alone, and not the removal of a danger to the whole world.
And what of the German armies--now in process of reduction to a mere police
force? Did you derive no advantage from the overthrow of a system which was
always a greater menace to you than the German Fleet ever was to us? And,
though we did not pretend to be a military nation, had we not some little
share in that achievement?

"And what of your _revanche_? How do the German Colonies, which we have
freed and now hold in trust--how do these compare with your solid recovery
of Alsace-Lorraine? No, you have not come badly out of Armageddon.

"Oh, you have suffered, that we know; you have suffered even more than we,