e latter years,
with a consciousness that became ever clearer and more persistent. She
grasped the fact that her turn had come to reign over the earth, that
she must take her chance and seize the opportunity that comes but
once. She prepared to answer the call of fate and, supported by the
mysterious aid which it lends to those whom it summons, she did
answer, we must admit, in an astonishing and most formidable manner.

She was within a hair's breadth of succeeding. A little less prolonged
and less gallant resistance on the part of Belgium, a suspicious
movement from Italy, a false step made upon the banks of the Marne;
and we can picture Paris falling; France overrun and fighting
heroically to her last gasp; Russia, not crushed, but weary of seeking
victory and making terms for good or ill with a conqueror impotent to
harm her; the neutral nations more or less reluctantly siding with the
strongest; England isolated, giving up her colonies to staunch the
wounds of her invaded isle; the fasces of justice broken asunder by a
separate peace here, a separate peace there, each equally humiliating;
and Germany, monstrous, ferocious, implacable, finally towering alone
over the ruins of Europe.

3

Now it seems that we have turned aside the inflexible decree. It seems
that we have averted the fate that was about to be accomplished. It
was bearing down upon us with the weight of the ages, with all the
weight of all the vague but irresistible aspirations of the past and,
perhaps, the future. Thanks to the greatest effort which mankind has
ever opposed to the unknown gods that rule it, we are entitled to
believe that the decree has broken down and that we have driven it
into the evil cave where never human force before had compelled it to
hide its defeat.

I say, "It seems;" I say, "We are entitled to believe." The fact is
that the ordeal is not yet past. Even on the day when the war is ended
and when victory is in our hands, destiny will not yet be conquered.
It has happened--seldom, it is true, but still it has happened twice
or thrice--that a nation has compelled the course of fate to turn
aside or to fall back. The nation congratulated herself, even as we
believe that we have the right to do. But events were not slow in
proving that she had congratulated herself too soon. Fatality, that is
to say, the enormous mass of causes and effects of which we have no
understanding, was not overcome; it was only delayed, it awaite