and practically all the food must come from the United
States. You can't buy food for export in any country in Europe. The
devastation of Belgium defeats the Germans.--I don't mean in battle
but I mean in the after-judgment of mankind. They cannot recover
from that half as soon as they may recover from the economic losses
of the war. The reducing of those people to starvation--that will
stick to damn them in history, whatever they win or whatever they
lose.

When's it going to end? Everybody who ought to know says at the
earliest next year--next summer. Many say in two years. As for me,
I don't know. I don't see how it can end soon. Neither can lick the
other to a frazzle and neither can afford to give up till it is
completely licked. This way of living in trenches and fighting a
month at a time in one place is a new thing in warfare. Many a man
shoots a cannon all day for a month without seeing a single enemy.
There are many wounded men back here who say they haven't seen a
single German. When the trenches become so full of dead men that
the living can't stay there longer, they move back to other
trenches. So it goes on. Each side has several more million men to
lose. What the end will be--I mean when it will come, I don't see
how to guess. The Allies are obliged to win; they have more food
and more money, and in the long run, more men. But the German
fighting machine is by far the best organization ever made--not the
best men, but the best organization; and the whole German people
believe what the woman writes whose letter I send you. It'll take a
long time to beat it.

Affectionately,
W.H.P.

* * * * *

The letter that Page inclosed, and another copy of which was sent to the
President, purported to be written by the English wife of a German in
Bremen. It was as follows:

* * * * *

It is very difficult to write, more difficult to believe that what I
write will succeed in reaching you. My husband insists on my urging
you--it is not necessary I am sure--to destroy the letter and all
possible indications of its origin, should you think it worth
translating. The letter will go by a business friend of my husband's to
Holland, and be got off from there. For our business with Holland is now
exceedingly brisk as you may un