ion was crouching.

"That was not enough to appease the bitter blood lust of the Germans in
defeat. Cellars may give protection from fire or melinite; but they are
worse than death traps against the heavy fumes of poisonous gas. So the
murderous order was given, and faithfully the boche gunners carried it
out. There were no gas masks for the civilians and no chemicals that
might permit them to save lives. Many succumbed."

FINAL ACT OF THE HUN AT SEA

The final act at sea was almost concurrent with this tragedy. The
16,000-ton battleship Britannia was torpedoed off the entrance to the
straits of Gibraltar, November 9, and sank in three and one-half hours.

FOLLOWING THE DAYS OF RECKONING

And so, spewing murder in its last writhing, the monster died. It had
begun by furiously ravaging Belgium in August, 1914; it ended with the
awful, wanton murder of noncombatants at Mezieres in November, 1918.
Throughout four years, three months and ten days, it had ramped and
raged over the land, under the sea and in the air, slaughtering,
poisoning, ravaging, without cessation, killing wherever it could,
robbing with colossal greed, defiling what it could neither kill nor
carry away, leaving across the pages of history a trail of blood and
filth and slime that all the tears of all the angels cannot ever wash
away.

But it left a world of nations free to work out their several destinies,
self-determining, not subject any more to the threat of causeless war at
the hands of a government steeled to barbarity. A world cemented by the
blood the monster itself had caused to be shed; by the memory of brave
sons fallen that others might live; by the tears of countless women and
children made widows and orphans; by a new understanding between all the
nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth, because of mutual
sacrifices in a common cause; by a knowledge that the long night of
medieval tyranny had faded out and a new day had come, in which power
shall arise from and be wielded by the peoples, never again by kings or
emperors. And so our planet shall be ruled as long as man inhabits it.
Out of bitter darkness, in the splendor of this new day the spirit of
liberty has risen, with healing on its wings.

We who have lived through the struggle may say with gratitude, each of
us, "I saw the light! I saw the morning break!"

AMONG THE LAST SHOTS FIRED

While Berlin was trying to get into touch with Marshal Foch, and the end
was