. In America the conscientious objector is not regarded; he
is listened to as only one of two things--a deserter or a traitor. The
earnestness of America's fighting man requires no proving; his only
grievance is that he is not in the trenches. Yet so long as the weight
of America is not felt to be turning the balance dramatically in our
favour, the earnestness of America will be open to challenge both by
Americans and by the Allies. What I saw in France in the early months
of this year has filled me with unbounded optimism. I feel the elated
certainty, as never before even in the moment of the most successful
attack, that the Hun's fate is sealed. What is more, I have grounds
for believing that he knows it--knows that the collapse of Russia will
profit him nothing because he cannot withstand the avalanche of men
from America. Already he hears them, as I have seen them, training in
their camps from the Pacific to the Atlantic, racing across the
Ocean in their grey transports, marching along the dusty roads of two
continents, a procession locust-like in multitude, stretching half
about the world, marching and singing indomitably, "We've got four
years to do this job." From behind the Rhine he has caught their
singing; it grows ever nearer, stronger. It will take time for that
avalanche to pyramid on the Western Front; but when it has piled up,
it will rush forward, fall on him and crush him. He knows something
else, which fills him with a still more dire sense of calamity--that
because America's honour has been jeopardised, of all the nations
now fighting she will be the last to lay down her arms. She has given
herself four years to do her job; when her job is ended, it will be
with Prussianism as it was with Jezebel, "They that went to bury her
found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her
hands. And her carcase was as dung upon the face of the field, so that
men should not say, 'This is Jezebel.'"

As an example of what America is accomplishing, I will take a sample
port in France. It was of tenth-rate importance, little more than
a harbour for coastwise vessels and ocean-going tramps when the
Americans took it over; by the time they have finished, it will be
among the first ports of Europe. It is only one of several that they
are at present enlarging and constructing. The work already completed
has been done in the main under the direction of the engineers who
marched through London in the July