part in the greatest of the world's wars, had come
to nothing, and were abandoned. Pompous plans for her reorganization,
superior homilies to the German people on peace and freedom from their
wicked masters, good advice on the improvement of their culture--all
these had been written to a shred. To preserve its dignity the world
wished to forget them. Its dull, avid gaze saw not beyond the moment
toward which it had strained, leaving its mind and simple sincerity of
soul behind.

This was the night of the final assault. In a circle of three hundred
miles, the word was written, on land and sea, in seven tongues and among
a score of races--"AT MIDNIGHT." We were then to draw tight the halter
upon the throat of Germany. Der Tag had become The Hour--Ours. The
mailed fist was to have its gauntlet stripped from it and a naked hand
should pay us tribute.

Steadily we had battered down the stone and steel chain about her. We
stood before the Rhine in dead of winter. At one sweep we were to
stretch our arm across it and with the other crush the mighty militant
menace that lay at bay between.

The slopes that were old in story, that had sustained the surge of
unnumbered hordes from East and West and South and North; in whose
grapes were the bloods of Roman, Teuton, Slav, Mongol, and Frank; that
had been the source and shelter of a race's song, science, and
story--lay in silent slumber, muffled in midwinter's snows.

That race stood at bay before its fellow's vengeance. By this time
all those of alien blood had dropped away from its single body like
engrafted limbs. Its trunk stood bare and barkless before the blast,
we to wring from its bloody, unbowed head, obeisance to our will--a will
that had begun in covetousness of commerce, in rancor of humiliating
reminiscence, in rage of race rivalry, a will that had grown beyond our
grasp, beyond our consciousness. We lusted for the day that should press
from Germany's lips, "Your will be done."

Unthinking were we that then would come the days of dull and devious
diplomacy, of division of domain, of dragging indemnity from a people
dumb and disheartened by devastation and death. At all costs to beat the
breath from her body! The hour had come when this resistant something
should be ours, ours, the Briton's, the Frenchman's, the Russian's, the
Italian's, the Serb's, the Rumanian's, the Montenegrin's, the Dane's,
the Mongol's!

At midnight we moved, in silence. It seemed as if we h