see for
themselves, not only the scenes of the American fighting of last year,
but the vast preparations of all kinds that America was building up in
France for the further war that might have been; preparations which,
as no one doubts, changed the whole atmosphere of the struggle?

"_England has not done her share!_"

How many thousands of British dead--men from every county in England
and Scotland, from loyal Ireland, from every British dominion and
colony--lie within the circuit of these blood-stained hills of Ypres?
How many more in the Somme graveyards?--round Lens and Arras and
Vimy?--about Bourlon Wood and Cambrai?--or in the final track of our
victorious Armies breaking through the Hindenburg line on their way to
Mons? Gloriously indeed have the Dominions played their part in this
war; but of all the casualties suffered by the Armies of the Empire,
80 _per cent_ of them fell on the population of these islands. America
was in the great struggle for a year and a half, and in the real
fightingline for about six months. She has lost some 54,000 of her
gallant sons; and we sorrow for them with her.

But through four long years scarcely a family in Great Britain and the
Dominions that possessed men on the fighting fronts--and none were
finally exempt except on medical or industrial grounds--but was either
in mourning for, or in constant fear of death for one or more of its
male members, whether by bullet, shell-fire or bomb, or must witness
the return to them of husbands, brothers, and sons, more or less
injured for life. The total American casualties are 264,000. The total
British casualties--among them from 700,000 to 800,000 dead--are
2,228,000 out of a total white population for the Empire of not much
more than two-thirds of the population of the United States. There is
small room for "belittling" here. A silent clasp of the hands between
our two nations would seem to be the natural gesture in face of such
facts as these.

II.

Such thoughts, however, belong to the emotional or tragic elements in
the British war-consciousness. Let me turn to others of a different
kind--the intellectual and reflective elements--and the changing
estimates which they bring about.

Take for instance what we have been accustomed to call the "March
retreat" of last year. The dispatch of Sir Douglas Haig describing the
actions of March and April last year was so headed in the _Times_,
though nothing of the kind appears in