s not among the vilest--by
a long, long way--of those which have steeped the name of Germany in
eternal infamy during this war. The tale of Gerbeviller--which I shall
take for my third instance--as I heard it from the lips of
eye-witnesses, plunges us in deeper depths of horror; and the pages of
the Bryce report are full of incidents beside which that of Vareddes
looks almost colourless.

All the same, let us insist again that no Army of the Allies, or of
America, or of any British Dominion, would have been capable of the
treatment given by the soldiers of Germany to the hostages of Vareddes.
It brings out into sharp relief that quality, or "mentality," to use the
fashionable word, which Germany shares with Austria--witness the
Austrian doings in Serbia--and with Turkey--witness Turkey's doings in
Armenia--but not with any other civilised nation. It is the quality of,
or the tendency to, deliberate and pitiless cruelty; a quality which
makes of the man or nation who shows it a particularly terrible kind of
animal force; and the more terrible, the more educated. Unless we can
put it down and stamp it out, as it has become embodied in a European
nation, European freedom and peace, American freedom and peace, have
no future.

But now, let me carry you to Lorraine!--to the scenes of that short but
glorious campaign of September 1914, by which, while the Battle of the
Marne was being fought, General Castelnau was protecting the right of
the French armies; and to the devastated villages where American
kindness is already at work, rebuilding the destroyed, and comforting
the broken-hearted.

No. 9

_May 24th_, 1917.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,--To any citizen of a country allied with France in
the present struggle, above all to any English man or woman who is
provided with at least some general knowledge of the Battle of the
Marne, the journey across France from Paris to Nancy can never fail to
be one of poignant interest. Up to a point beyond Chalons, the "Ligne de
l'Est" follows in general the course of the great river, and therefore
the line of the battle. You pass La Fertee-sous-Jouarre, where the Third
Corps of General French's army crossed the river; Charly-sur-Marne,
where a portion of the First Corps found an unexpectedly easy crossing,
owing, it is said, to the hopeless drunkenness of the enemy rear-guard
charged with defending the bridge; and Chateau Thierry, famous in the
older history of France, where the right