hill.

[Illustration: One of our party climbed to the roof of the dugout
and began turning his glasses toward the German lines]

The view from the observation trench on the hill-top, when we
finally got there, was a wonderful view, sweeping the whole Champagne
battle field. Hill 208 lay in the distance, still in German hands,
and before it, wallowing in the white earth were a number of English
tanks abandoned by the French. Lying out there in No Man's Land
between the trenches, the tanks looked to our Kansas eyes like worn
out threshing machines and spelled more clearly than anything else
in the landscape the extent of the French failure in the Champagne
drive of the spring of 1917. It may be profitable to know just how
far the pendulum of war had swung toward failure in France last
spring, before America declared war. To begin: The French morale
went bad! We heard here in America that France was bled white. The
French commission told us how sorely France needed the American
war declaration. But to say that the morale of a nation has gone
bad means so much. It is always a struggle even in peace, even
in prosperity, for the honest, courageous leadership of a nation
to keep any Nation honest. But when hope begins to sag, when the
forces of disorder and darkness that lie subdued and dormant in
every nation, and in every human heart are bidden by evil times
to rise--they rise. Leadership fails in its battle against them.
For a year after the morale of the French began to come back strong,
the French newspapers and French government were busy exposing and
punishing the creatures who shamed France in the spring of 1917.
German money has been traced to persons high in authority. A network
of German spies was uncovered, working with the mistresses of men