You tell the Americans the FRENCH WILL SEE IT THROUGH...if a new
offensive is necessary...we'll do it! It's the only chance anybody
has to have a world fit to live in!'"

When she had finished her story, Dorothy Canfield concluded something
like this: "That's what they all come back to, after their fit of
utter horror at their life is over. It does them good, apparently,
to talk it all out to a patient listener. They always, always end
by saying that even what they are living through is better than a
world commanded by the Germans...what a perfectly amazing distrust
that nation has accumulated against itself!"

They are sick of war; war weary and sad. Yet they will fight on.
The will to fight is outside the individual will; yet it is not
the will of the leaders, nor is it the will of the many combined
in a common will. For the many are tired unto death of war. But for
all that they will fight on without flinching. It is the national
will--the will deeper than the will of leaders, stronger than the
molten will of the many in one purpose. It is the tradition of
centuries; it is the unexpressed purpose, perhaps unconscious habit
of an old, old people, united far down in the roots of them; not
so much by race, for the Franks are of many breeds; not so much
by industrial or geographical ties or even political unity, though
it approaches that; but bound most surely by the sense of national
tradition. A people is fighting. From a thousand villages with
their primeval temples, with their lovely cathedrals grown out of
the hearts of the race buried in the shadow of their spires, from
the shining rivers that flow through green pastures, from soft hills
rich in folk tales of heroes, come the millions; and from Paris,
ever radiant in her venerable youth, come other millions who make