ic, flooded our
back areas, reached the edge of the battlefields, were a new guaranty of
strength. Their divisions passed mostly to the French front. With them,
and with his own men, magnificent in courage still, and some of ours,
Foch had his army of reserve, and struck.

So the war ended, after all, by military force, and by military victory
greater than had seemed imaginable or possible six months before.

In the peace terms that followed there was but little trace of those
splendid ideas which had been proclaimed by President Wilson. On one
point after another he weakened, and was beaten by the old militarism
which sat enthroned in the council-chamber, with its foot on the neck
of the enemy. The "self-determination of peoples" was a hollow phrase
signifying nothing. Open covenants openly arrived at were mocked by the
closed doors of the Conference. When at last the terms were published
their merciless severity, their disregard of racial boundaries, their
creation of hatreds and vendettas which would lead, as sure as the sun
should rise, to new warfare, staggered humanity, not only in Germany and
Austria, but in every country of the world, where at least minorities
of people had hoped for some nobler vision of the world's needs, and
for some healing remedy for the evils which had massacred its youth. The
League of Nations, which had seemed to promise so well, was hedged round
by limitations which made it look bleak and barren. Still it was peace,
and the rivers of blood had ceased to flow, and the men were coming home
again... Home again!

VII

The men came home in a queer mood, startling to those who had not
watched them "out there," and to those who welcomed peace with flags.
Even before their homecoming, which was delayed week after week, month
after month, unless they were lucky young miners out for the victory
push and back again quickly, strange things began to happen in France
and Flanders, Egypt and Palestine. Men who had been long patient
became suddenly impatient. Men who had obeyed all discipline broke into
disobedience bordering on mutiny. They elected spokesmen to represent
their grievances, like trade-unionists. They "answered back" to their
officers in such large bodies, with such threatening anger, that it
was impossible to give them "Field Punishment Number One," or any other
number, especially as their battalion officers sympathized mainly with
their point of view. They demanded demobili