One other thing was certain. Having been relieved of the Russian menace, Germany was free to withdraw her armies on that front and use all her striking force in the west. It should have cautioned our generals to save their men for the greatest menace that had confronted them. But without caution they fought the battles of 1917, in Flanders, as I have told.
In 1917 and in the first half of 1918 there seemed no ending to the war by military means. Even many of our generals who had been so breezy in their optimism believed now that the end must come by diplomatic means—a “peace by understanding.” I had private talks with men in high command, who acknowledged that the way must be found, and the British mind prepared for negotiations, because there must come a limit to the drain of blood on each side. It was to one man in the world that many men in all armies looked for a way out of this frightful impasse.
President Wilson had raised new hope among many men who otherwise were hopeless. He not only spoke high words, but defined the meanings of them. His definition of liberty seemed sound and true, promising the self-determination of peoples. His offer to the German people to deal generously with them if they overthrew their tyranny raised no quarrel among British soldiers. His hope of a new diplomacy, based upon “open covenants openly arrived at,” seemed to cut at the root of the old evil in Europe by which the fate of peoples had been in the hands of the few. His Fourteen Points set out clearly and squarely a just basis of peace. His advocacy of a League of Nations held out a vision of a new world by which the great and small democracies should be united by a common pledge to preserve peace and submit their differences to a supreme court of arbitration. Here at last was a leader of the world, with a clear call to the nobility in men rather than to their base passions, a gospel which would raise civilization from the depths into which it had fallen, and a practical remedy for that suicidal mania which was exhausting the combatant nations.
I think there were many millions of men on each side of the fighting-line who thanked God because President Wilson had come with a wisdom greater than the folly which was ours to lead the way to an honorable peace and a new order of nations. I was one of them … Months passed, and there was continual fighting, continued slaughter, and no sign that ideas would prevail over force. The Germans launched their great offensive, broke through the British lines, and afterward through the French lines, and there were held and checked long enough for our reserves to be flung across the Channel—300,000 boys from England and Scotland, who had been held in hand as the last counters for the pool. The American army came in tidal waves across the Atlantic, 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
