WE must now turn back a little. In various ways France and the United States had worked together. Victory in 1918 had crowned the combined efforts of the two Governments. Social welfare rooted in the Aisne bore witness to the full success of private cooperation. But here as there, in public as in private endeavour, what had been the road travelled? What in either case had been the secret of the success achieved? A question rarely asked, and one not undeserving of answer.

On April 16, 1917, ten days after America had declared war, it fell to my lot to direct on behalf of France our common effort.(41) Actor and spectator for thirty-one months, I am still, ten years later, amazed at the prodigious results obtained by the two countries. Ever-memorable days, when twice the war seemed lost; days pregnant with victory; days during which the initial effort of 1917, so weak and halting, grew beneath the spur of danger, grew by the progress of mutual understanding. Every nerve was strained to victory; trains rushed from the borders of Mexico to the ports of New England, transports dotted the Atlantic, the Channel, the Mediterranean; men, guns, shells, tanks went forward unceasingly to the front, to the battle of the Allies which roared on the plains of Flanders and along the Cambrian fen, on the plateaus of Santerre, of Valois, and of Champagne, in the forest of the Argonne, on the slopes of the Alps, in the valleys of the Piava, on the hills of Macedonia and the sands of Syria.

Astounding figures tell of the effort made, the help mutually furnished. In less than eighteen months the United States armed itself to the teeth: its army grew from 190,000 to more than 5,000,000 (2,000,000 actually landed in France); its output of war material increased 800 per cent; its shipping increased from 2,000,000 to 6,000,000 tons; it spent $33,000,000,000 (nearly $3,000,000 an hour); it supplied Europe with food and arms; it sent to France alone 2,000,000 tons of steel (170,000,000 shells for 75s), 5,000,000 tons of foodstuffs (the ration of nearly 12,000,000 Frenchmen for eighteen months); it placed at our disposal 680,000 tons of shipping. An almost unbelievable achievement if one remembers the past, the existing circumstances (both material and moral), the absence of military preparedness, the total ignorance of things European. During all this time, France and Great Britain held the front waiting for the arrival of American reënforcements, the one providing transport, the other arms for the United States army. At the armistice, more than a million American soldiers had crossed the seas in British ships, and France had supplied all the cannon, 75s and 155s short, all the tanks, 81 per cent of the aeroplanes, 57 per cent of the heavy artillery used by the American army, as well as all the 65,000,000 shells fired by its artillery. The splendour of this achievement led people to believe that it had been spontaneous.

None had been more difficult. It had been difficult even in matters military, where the spirit of coöperation was intense. Without American reënforcements, the war might have been lost in 1918. But where were these reënforcements to come from? Regular army: 190,000 men; National Guard: 150,000 men; increase possible under the law of 1916: insignificant. Once the draft had been voted, how were the recruits to be instructed when there was a shortage of 12,000 officers? How were the recruits to be armed and equipped when American factories, which since 1914 had been supplying the Allies only with raw material or unfinished forgings, were not equipped for the rapid production of finished pieces of artillery or aeroplanes, and in any case had to continue their deliveries to the Allies if defeat were to be averted? That, in all its unrelenting rigour, was the problem of coöperation: how to pass from numbers to organization, from manufacture to armament, from inexperience to efficiency; and, in each of these, how to conciliate contrary necessities. The undertaking, every one admitted, might well have proved beyond human possibility.

When I assumed responsibility for it, I knew that even those in whose name I was acting had no faith in its success. My Government, in bidding me Godspeed, had said: 'Do the best you can.' Our generals had confided to me that they did not believe it possible to create a great American army in a few months. General Foch said: 'Send me American regiments to be incorporated in our brigades.' General Pétain said: 'Recruit volunteers to fill up our losses.' Our Air Service said: 'Don't let the Americans try to build aeroplanes and motors. Let them specialize on raw materials and parts.' Every one looked upon the United States as a vast reservoir from which European forces and supplies could be fed. No one believed it capable of creating a new army to be added to those already in line. Every one believed it would be dangerous to make the attempt.

Yet the creation of an American army was the only thing that could key America up to the necessary pitch. The passive rôle that Europe expected the United States to play would have discouraged its enthusiasm. When a nation of one hundred and ten millions goes to war, to so distant a war, it cannot consent to be merely a recruiting depot for others. If it goes to war, it must be its own war, with its own army and under its own flag. If we had refused to recognize the military autonomy of the United States, if we had insisted upon amalgamation, coöperation would have been a failure. What was true technically was psychologically wrong; but a choice had to be made. My choice, made from the very first, was opposed by our military leaders for months.(42) As late as February, 1918, General Foch kept on repeating that an independent American army would be only of small assistance in 1918, or indeed in 1919. Only extreme peril could silence these discussions which hampered action and brought men and ideas into conflict.

There was the same difficulty of agreement in connection with army training. When I landed in the United States, some of the French and British officers attached to the Viviani and Balfour missions were unconsciously assuming an attitude of instructors. They took advantage of their experience to force upon America lessons which she willingly gives but dislikes to receive. Proud of West Point and of its War College, the American army balked and refused the would-be mentors. 'They treated us,' an American general told me, 'like Moroccans.' In addition to this ruffling of pride, there was real divergence of views. Americans wanted the American army to be fashioned by American methods and had little use for foreign instructors. Marshal Joffre was asked to send only thirteen. It took three months to get three hundred instructors accepted. In many divisions these instructors, even when camouflaged as modest informateurs, were confined to their own arm, excluded from Officers' Training Camps, rarely consulted on tactical instructions or on staff training, and at times left totally unemployed.

'After all,' said General Morrison, the Chief of Instruction, to General Vignal, head of our military services, 'I find your tactics and those of the English pretty poor. We want to do something different.'

But for the English defeat of March, 1918, we should have waited months for the order of April 3d which made coöperation real by ordering all division commanders to use 'in full extent' the allied instructors and to follow their advice on the training of units and the order of departure for 'the front.(43)

After instruction difficulties came those of equipment. That it seemed would be a simple matter, unaffected by preconceived ideas. The United States had but little artillery and what it had was of inferior quality. It was unprepared for intensive production. The advantage of uniform equipment was admitted by all. As early as May 26, 1917, I was able to inform General Pershing officially that my Government, if it received the necessary raw material, would undertake to supply his army with field artillery, light howitzers, and shells. And yet at the first trials of the 75s brought over from France, the two colonels attached to General Crozier, Chief of Ordnance, refused to leave their car to see them. Opposition began to appear in Congress and in the press. American manufacturers were losing orders; Congressmen were irritated over having voted credits for war material that had been discarded; experts were humiliated because models they had invented and constructed were rejected. Obstacles, both economic and psychological, presented themselves; two months elapsed before common sense triumphed, and a little later General Crozier, who had courageously assumed the responsibility, paid for it with his post.

When it came to the transportation of the troops, things were even worse. What illusions subsisted! On January 1, 1918, we had 143,000 Americans in France; 50,000 more on February 1st; 39,000 more on March 1st; and, during this time, General Foch was asking for 140,000 men a month, failing which, he assured me, America would miss the 1918 campaign. On the other side, in Washington, General March was saying: 'An army? I was ordered to supply one. Here it is. Where are the ships?' Meanwhile, from the liberated Russian front, the enemy was bringing up three divisions a month, and we were transporting only one across the Atlantic. Without the blow that fell in March and induced England to give up half of her shipping, thus bringing the monthly arrivals of American troops up to 300,000, these sterile discussions would have gone on indefinitely. Two months later in Chaumont, at the request of the Supreme Command, which did not think victory possible before the autumn of 1919, we drew up plans for the embarkation of more than 8,000,000 men before September of that year.(44) We had made progress indeed!

In France, as the reënforcements which brought the certainty of victory landed on our soil, a maze of material and moral complications wove itself around them. The whole military machine was at sixes and sevens; nothing worked smoothly. There were Americans --- billeted or in encampments --- in the four corners of France. When they wanted anything, they applied to our various Government agencies, to every service of every ministry. These contacts were complicated enough for the French; for the Americans they were inextricably confusing. Everywhere there was delay and misunderstanding, offence was given and taken, little or nothing got done. In order to make coöperation possible, it was necessary to create a Government department in Paris, the General Commissariat of American Affairs, which transported the centre of our services from America to France.(45) After having sought in the United States the things that France needed, it fell to my lot to seek in France the things that the American army needed. The scene changed, but not the problem.

As before, the problem had its material and its moral aspects. The limited capacity of our ports and railroads, the lack of open spaces for training, for encampments, for depots, the inadequate supply of horses, of aeroplanes, of hospital beds, all led to daily difficulties. Also, to obtain every available ounce of tonnage, it was necessary to impose fresh sacrifices on France in the matter of supplies. Old men, women, and children, whose unrelenting labour had saved our crops, saw their last horses taken from them; hotel keepers saw their business wiped out; houses and furniture alike were requisitioned for the American army; complaints, no matter how justified, had the steam-roller of general interest passed over them. The humble and thankless effort made behind the front was never seen by the public, and yet its patient performance saved the fighting forces.(46)

Nations remember only the high spots of wars. What did they grasp of the tragic period of 1917-18? The Rumanian disaster, Caporetto, the British Fourth Army, the Chemin des Dames. Were those the decisive events of the great struggle? No! The essential things were the problems of transportation, rotation of shipping and submarine sinkings, the financial problem, the problems of coöperation. Any shortcoming in the adjustment of effort, any breakdown in the machinery of supply, might have left our soldiers weaponless. Here are some of the cabled orders sent from Paris to the French High Commission in Washington between May 27th and June 16th:

May 27th, from Food Ministry: 'The cereal supply is threatened. Rush shipments as quickly as possible.'

May 28th, from Ministry of Munitions: 'Send 1,000 lorries urgent.'

May 29th, from Transport Ministry: 'Indispensable secure immediately 80,000 tons shipping for food-supply devastated regions.'

June 3d, from Ministry of Munitions: 'Increase shipments copper to 10,000 tons monthly.'

June 5th, from Ministry of Agriculture: 'Send all haste 400 reapers binders.'

June 6th, from Ministry of Marine: 'Send 12,000 tons gasoline for merchant marine and 24,000 tons for navy.'

June 11th, from Ministry of Munitions: 'Increase shipments nitrate to 46,000 tons monthly instead of 15,000. Vital for national defense. You must arrange for this in addition to programme.'

June 13th, from Ministry of Munitions: 'Send 2,000 tons of lead monthly.'

June 16th, from Ministry of Munitions: 'Send 6,500 small trucks.'

June 16th, from Food Ministry: 'Arrange for 80,000 tons wheat in excess of programme. Most serious situation ever. Any failure or delay may prove dangerous.'

Day after day the orders came over the wires: now for 300 locomotives, or 2.000 kilometres of rails, or 3000 tons of tin, monthly; then coal for Algeria or food supplies for the West Indies; and, in December, 1917, 150,000 tons of oil; in January, 1918, an additional 200,000 tons of foodstuffs. This list reads like a nightmare. For how were all these demands to be met?

From 1914 to 1917, relying on the immensity of British resources, France did not order a single ton of shipping in the United States. Between January and May, 1917, Germany sank five million tons, and England was so hard pressed that she had to withdraw 500,000 tons from French charter. On the docks in America, 600,000 tons of goods for France were waiting their turn for shipment. The French Government, after reducing the demands of the armies by thirty per cent, asked me to ship 780,000 tons monthly instead of the 240,000 sent previously. There was a shortage of 490,000 tons a month. That meant a shortage of everything that was essential in food supplies and war material, the things to eat and to fight with. And I was getting cables, 'Ask the United States.'

But the United States was no better off than we were. The German vessels seized by the authorities had all been subjected to scientific sabotage, and six months at least were needed to put the vessels in commission. Neutral shipping? It was protected by international law, and fifteen months passed before we were able to use the Dutch boats. American? There was not much of it, and it was badly needed to fetch nitrates from South America which were turned into high explosives in the United States. New construction? At once, as in matters military, a conflict of views and of opinions arose. France looked upon the improvised shipyards as a reservoir for cargo boats; America looked upon them as the cradle of a great and purely American merchant marine. From the 2d of August, 1917, the United States commandeered everything: shipyards, tonnage building and tonnage afloat. The United States even took back the steel cargo boats that I had ordered in May. Later it restricted us to wooden bottoms. For weeks it refused to charter the tonnage I needed on the ground that the condition of our ports and their methods were unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, we managed to obtain, under the French flag, 87,000 tons of steel and 70,000 tons of wooden shipping intended for Channel and Mediterranean transport, which brought over 200,000 tons of wheat and nitrates on their first voyage; and, under the American flag, 36,000 tons of German cargo boats, 90,000 of American cargo boats, and 145,000 tons of tankers.(47) But after what endless discussions, what careful adjustments!

Then what of finance, the sinews of this war of industry and coalition? Without means of payment in dollars- and since November, 1916, such means of payment had been lacking-the Allies would have been beaten before the end of 1917. America's entry into the war saved them. Before the American soldier, the American dollar turned the tide. Every one rushed to this opening source. But it did not flow freely. The United States was unprepared to absorb the Liberty Loans that the Government was to float to help its associates. The banks were unprepared to sell the bonds on a market which had hitherto always borrowed. From 1914 to 1917, we had been able to raise, in Wall Street and elsewhere, only some $685,000,000. To make up our purchases we had been obliged to borrow $4,000,000 from England, and in April, 1917, England herself was overdrawn some $400,000,000. After the note of the Federal Reserve Board,(48) the American market had been closed to us. The relations of our financial agents with the American banks were more than strained.

At last the law which authorized the Treasury to make advances was voted. For Europe, what a stream of gold! But its approaches were crowded. Banker of her Allies since 1914, England came first. France, who had suffered more than England, wanted to be served equally well. The others pressed behind, a clamouring crowd whose enormous estimates frightened the Treasury officials. In Paris a bouquet of illusions bloomed, only to fade immediately. On the strength of a press dispatch, the 'Give France $1,000,000,000' campaign raised hopes which were soon blasted. After conversations rife with misunderstanding between our Ambassador and the Secretary of the Treasury, the misplaced hope of preferential treatment for France which had never been promised. After M. Viviani's brief mission, the mirage of a definite undertaking to supply France with $150,000,000 a month, together with an alleged promise to meet our payments in London. On my first visit to the Treasury on May 18, 1917, this dream picture vanished. Associated, but not Allied, the United States had authorized its Secretary of the Treasury to grant advances to Europe, but not to enter into definite undertakings. There were to be no bilateral negotiations, no general agreements, no mutual stipulations. The United States in financial matters was to play the part of distributor and arbitrator. That was to be its financial policy.

This independent policy was justified and strengthened by the unbridled competition of the borrowers, by their ever-outstretched hands, by the astuteness of their ever-increasing demands.(49) American mistrust increased when, in June, both London and Paris, on the ground of their financial autonomy, stubbornly opposed the American proposal for an interallied finance board. Henceforth only short-term credits were opened to us, first month by month, then fortnight by fortnight. Only once, in November, thanks to the Paris Conference, to which Northcliffe and I were both summoned, were we able to obtain for France and England two months' credit at once. Every day my Government called upon me to obtain regular agreements, which it considered indispensable. Every day the Treasury told me, as it told my colleagues, that it did not intend to enter into any binding agreements. The American Congress had limited the object, the amount, the form of financial assistance. No one could complain that this assistance was not forthcoming. But no one had the right to count upon it.

To the end of the war France was never to lack a dollar. During the thirty-two months of American neutrality, France, by paying 7 per cent and at times 11 and 12 per cent, had raised only $685,000,000 in New York banks and was, besides, in debt to Great Britain. During the next twenty months, France received $2,985,000,000 at less than 5 per cent. Thanks to these advances, she was able to repay her debt to England, to repay half of what she had borrowed in America during the days of neutrality, to pay for all her purchases in the United States, to transfer to the British Treasury the amount of purchases it made for her in dollars or sterling, and to meet the needs of the Bank of France to enable French business to carry on, as well as to maintain the parity of exchange, when, all the while, supplementary receipts were being derived from sales to the Expeditionary Forces in France.

It was a generous and magnificent, but by no means an easy financial achievement. What vexations our constantly granted requests entailed! If to spare Allied credit the costly renewal of loans made in neutral days, I used my monthly advances to repay them, approval of my course was heavily coated with remonstrance. If, to maintain the parity of the franc, our Minister of Finance asked for extra assistance, the refusal of a gold deposit was followed by a conditional advance only after two months of negotiation. When the francs we supplied to the American army furnished us with an additional resource, an interminable discussion arose between the two Treasuries as to what was to be done. Washington wanted to deduct the amount from its monthly payments; Paris maintained it was entitled to keep both. In the end we always managed to agree. But always the first impulse was one of mutual contradiction, and it was a long, long way from initial contradiction to final agreement.

Already the contrast of our mentalities was clear. During the war, it was overcome by the pressure of events and the will of men, but it foreshadowed trouble for the future. On the one side, French logic; on the other, Anglo-Saxon empiricism. With us, the hope that we could bind the United States by definite undertakings; in America, the unswerving determination to be bound only for the present. Even the giving of the bonds, in respect to the Allied debt, led to inextricable debates. In the summer of 1917, my Financial Service raised the question: there was no reply; then, a formal refusal to discuss the matter. The Treasury feared a pitfall; feared that England would obtain priority of repayment, that France sought special advantages. Hampered by their need of daily assistance, the Allies were in no position to discuss, and by their lack of a common policy they increased the mistrust. England was anxious that terms of repayment should be settled at once. France sought to link the debt settlement with reparations. The United States, without assenting to either proposal, waited till the day when electoral considerations prompted it to adopt the most brutal attitude, that of the threatening ultimatum of February, 1919. But that is another story.

The same phenomenon was in evidence everywhere; the war effort was complicated by the reactions of public opinion and required psychological adjustment. The Catholics wrongly criticized the use to which the French Government was putting the funds collected for war orphans. The Jews reproached France with her lack of sympathy for Zionism. Privations the American people so magnificently endured to help the Allies prompted a campaign against French waste. Even to our internal disputes, which caused anxiety for the safety of the American Expeditionary Force. 'Take action,' we were urged during the defeatist campaign, 'take action against the accused or against the accusers.' Every mail from France, bringing letters from newly landed soldiers, inexperienced witnesses of our feverish excitement, after a reverse at the front or a tumult in the Chamber, spread a wave of discouragement on the other side of the ocean.

From first to last during my mission, I felt achievement influenced by invisible forces; day after day I had to combat them. In May, 1917, I was faced with the insidious campaign which represented France as 'bled white,' incapable of holding till the arrival of the American army.(50) In the following spring, I had to cope with the panic started by the disaster of the British Fourth Army. All day long on March 22d, Lord Reading and I received a succession of anxious visits and appeals. That evening, at the Tricolor Ball given for war charities at the New Willard Hotel, as the only Allied representative present, I had to reply to looks and questions of alarm. The next day in New York, I learned, as did the public, of the bombardment of Paris. The Allied army experts were unanimous in asserting that no cannon in the world could possibly fire a distance of more than sixty miles and so the newspapers jumped to the conclusion that, as no such guns existed, the communiqués must be false and the Germans within twenty miles of Paris. On Monday a storm threatened at the opening of the New York Stock Exchange. To maintain the parity of the franc, I was obliged to intervene. The same anxiety made itself felt again two months later, after the Germans broke through on the Chemin des Dames.

All these daily difficulties and exceptional crises were overcome ---the shipping crisis in November, 1917, the oil crisis in December, the coal crisis in January, 1918, the food crisis in March, the reënforcement crisis in April. They were overcome by the invincible will to conquer and by well-ordered efforts which were to furnish a triumphant answer to the dangerous antinomy of American and European needs, to the deep-seated contrasts of mentality, of methods, of feelings.(51) Had America, in her haste to arm herself, allowed Europe to be beaten for lack of food; had America, by helping Europe to excess, delayed her own arrival at the front: in either case defeat was inevitable. The pressure of moral factors favoured defeat, for self was the first thought of each. Victory sprang from the conciliation of opposite tendencies.

The United States was the first to bow to this necessity. It was in no way prepared so to do, for to no country is centralization more repugnant. Yet by the autumn of 1917, centralization was an accomplished fact. It found expression in half a dozen great boards of control: War Industries Board, Shipping Board, Food Administration, War Trade Board, Fuel Administration, Railroad Administration, Committee on Public Information. These domineering controllers of the economic and intellectual life of the United States left a bad taste in the mouths of many citizens; yet they were the price of victory. Thanks to their control, a market glutted with orders, a market in which unbridled competition had led to an insane increase in prices, was reduced to order within a few weeks, with equality of treatment for all and a general fall in prices. Every need of America, every need of Europe, was satisfied. Demand here and supply there were adjusted to one another. Government, taking over factories and regulating transportation, became the absolute master of all production and distribution. An undreamed of America was being created for the purpose of war.

This new America imposed the same law of uniformity upon its associates. Without Woodrow Wilson's support, I dare not say that the Supreme Command would ever have been instituted.(52) The same was true in other matters. When Americans fall in love with an idea, even if their enthusiasm does not last, it is always intense. In 1917 and 1918, they had a passion for the organization of interallied war machinery, the weight of which was not always borne gladly by Europe. McAdoo did not succeed in forcing absolute financial unity, although with Northcliffe and myself he had drawn up plans for it, and doubtless the debtors lost more than the creditors. But in every other field the Americans finally had their way. After America's entry into the war, the interallied boards in London and Paris, boards of control for steel, wood, oil, wheat, food, shipping, assumed their definite form and produced their best results. After four years of experiment and dispersion, control reached something in the nature of perfection towards the end of 1918. Had the war lasted another year, the machinery would have been running with incredible smoothness.

In turn each of the Allies felt the influence of this control. To secure the working of the methods it had imposed, the United States insisted that Europe should follow suit. It demanded the official intervention of the country concerned for all exports. It reserved the right to modify all contracts as to quantities, specifications, prices, and even the choice of manufacturer. It delivered purchasing licenses only on a double declaration by an Allied Government that the export was essential and that tonnage was available to carry it to Europe. Subjected to this system, Europe was obliged to assume like authority over its nationals, for whom it was responsible. This led to those unpopular organizations known in France as 'consortiums,' which were the instruments of official authority. Through them monopolizing and speculation, the two banes of war economy, were made virtually impossible. Important savings were made. Towards the end of the war, the final stages of this prolonged organized effort gave the non-initiated the illusion that interallied coöperation was easy. It was not!

France, in order to do her share, was obliged to build up an enormous organization. In May, 1917, French services in America presented a spectacle of anarchy. There were independent missions not only from every Government department, but from different services of the same department. There was an artillery mission, an engineering mission, an aviation mission, a railroad mission, a naval construction mission, all of which claimed joyful independence, corresponded directly with Paris, and competed against each other, sending the price of steel to ever-dizzier heights. At the end of 1916, something in the nature of centralization had been attempted, but evil habits still prevailed. In June, 1917, however, everything was organized. The various departments were all under a single direction, which alone had the right to give the signature of France. Each of our ten services did its own business directly with the American authorities, but all received their impetus from the same source. A staff of three hundred Americans and nine hundred French carried on the work of this living organization. Between May, 1917, and November, 1918, the French High Commission in the United States handled some three billion dollars and exchanged more than fifty thousand cables with the Paris Government.

This material effort was supplemented by psychological action. In addition to their technical duties, I required each of my collaborators to accomplish a moral and political task: to be, in the United States, an exponent of French life. Not in the indiscreet and dangerous form of propaganda, but by returning a sound and logical answer to every question about France. From a central bureau in Washington there emanated ideas, facts, and figures. It was in constant contact with the Committee on Public Information, the national lecturers, the Four-Minute Men, the Rotary Clubs, the recognized or inspired interpreters of official thought. From this office, our four hundred military instructors, our two hundred factory inspectors, who were everywhere in close contact with local life, received every week a substantial telegram which furnished them with information and ideas. Whenever a meeting was organized by any one of the countless bodies which shape public opinion in the United States, one of our men was there, ready, if necessary, to assert the rights or explain the motives of France. In this way more than sixteen thousand speeches were delivered in English. Countless misunderstandings were avoided by this wholesale expression of our national aims and aspirations.

All my life I shall remember the United States as it then was. A vast war machine, quickened by patriotism; its soul aflame; one hundred million men, women, and children with every nerve strained towards the ports of embarkation; chimneys smoking; trains rushing through the warm nights; women in the stations offering hot coffee to troops on their way to the front; national hymns rising to heaven; meetings for Liberty Loans in every church, in every theatre, at every street corner; immense posters on the walls, 'You are in it, you must win it.' Immense and unhoped for achievement which despite the extremity of our peril and the righteousness of our cause had demanded weeks and months of preparation. In order to understand one another, to adjust both principles and their application, it had been necessary to adapt, to explain, to coördinate. The triumph of this adjustment spelled success. Haphazard methods would have meant failure.

As soon as the armistice was signed, a dual tendency became manifest: the weakening of centripetal and the strengthening of centrifugal forces. The end of the war, the disruption of war organizations, the awakening of economic interests, the conflict of political ideals, the restoration of the empire of old habits, were the underlying causes of the phenomena. The mistakes of men did the rest.

I have explained the origin of those disagreements in writing the story of the Peace Conference.(53) Fifteen months of preparatory work made it impossible for me to share the surprise of most of my colleagues when brought face to face with them. I remembered the summer of 1917, when the vast majority of American public opinion refused to understand our claim to Alsace-Lorraine; when the Inquiry(54) suggested a plebiscite by sections, splitting up the two provinces into a dozen fragments. I knew that, even after the Fourteen Points of January 8, 1918, which reflected our own war aims and constituted such a real advance for us, many other opportunities of disagreement would occur. It suffices to mention President Wilson's stubborn scruples against military occupation of any kind, his uncompromising theories, in blind ignorance of European facts, about plebiscites, the tragic debate over the Sarre, which nearly led to a breakdown of the negotiations. The policy of association, so difficult of application in war-time, proved neither less arduous nor less stormy once the war was over.

Despite such disagreements, later events have made us regret those days --- the only ones, from the armistice to the present day, when France could rely upon American support. During the crises of the Peace Conference, President Wilson, except on one or two occasions, proved himself a staunch supporter and honest friend of France. Without him, in April, 1919, we could never have overcome Lloyd George's opposition to the occupation of the Rhine. Thanks to him, in May, we were able to save Upper Silesia from the grasp of Germany. Above all, it was his support which, in June, 1919, enabled us to break down England's opposition to all the treaty clauses: territorial, military, political, and financial. Woodrow Wilson had a strict and often imperative conception of the duties of the United States to Europe. At least he disclaimed detachment, such as his successors have shown. When he fell, struck down by paralysis, he had just entered on a campaign for the ratification of the treaty and participation by the United States in the political responsibilities born of victory and of the peace.

And yet, even in those fleeting days of union, the bonds slackened. Economic interests, so prone to egotism, were the first battleground. When the war ended, the United States found itself in a changed situation. Formerly a debtor nation, it had become a creditor. Its monetary circulation had increased from three billion dollars to six. Its gold holdings had risen from two billion to four. Bank deposits had increased from thirteen billion to twenty-five. Prices had trebled. Its production, agricultural as well as industrial, had enormously increased. Proud of its success, the United States was determined to profit by it. Prouder still of its strength, it was determined to make it felt. In its optimism, it saw a simple solution for the problem. The reconstruction of ruined Europe was to make the fortune of untouched America for the good of Europe itself. To sell to Europe, away with war-time control, which had laid its mailed fist upon the law of supply and demand. There was to be, 'fresh and joyous' competition at home and abroad. Factories, railroads, shipping, were to break loose from the heavy restraints of interallied control, and according to tradition, executive intervention was to be reduced to a minimum, equality of opportunity restored, and might the best man win.

Both parties vied in this, so keen, so truly countrywide was the demand for a return to freedom. Democrats and Republicans alike attacked the Administration. To satisfy his supporters, the cotton and wheat growers of the South and West, as well as to placate his opponents, the iron and steel and banking interests of the East, which had just scored against him in the congressional elections of November, 1918, Woodrow Wilson agreed to the restoration of untrammelled competition. In a few weeks the interallied boards of control disappeared. Raw materials, transportation, exchanges were liberated from State control. Was not the armistice signed? Amid general rejoicing, no one asked whether this sufficed to restore to 'normalcy' conditions produced by five years of storm. Neither did any one ask whether the expected buyers would respond to the vendors' hopes, nor whether trade, instead of being increased, would not be killed. Export prices rose with a bound. When the immediate consequences made themselves felt ---the fall of European exchanges, the narrowing of markets, lack of outlets, unemployment, strikes, etc. --- America laid the blame on Europe.

This American mistake was to be matched --- and parallel instances will not be lacking --- by a French mistake which only added to the first. At the very time when the United States gave itself up to unrestricted production, we closed the French market to America. I have already referred to my negotiations with William Gibbs McAdoo in November, 1918, for French reconstruction credits, and also to the refusal of the French Government, of which I was a member, to avail itself of such credits for a work it had planned and was carrying out on a strictly protectionist basis.(55) During the early months of 1919, the leaders of American industry all came to Paris. They made offers to my colleagues, offers fully in keeping with the credits we had been promised. They found closed doors. One after the other, they met with polite but firm refusals. They went home convinced that there was nothing doing in France. In May, the bill for credits introduced in the House of Representatives in November was withdrawn. The date is worth remembering. To America saying, 'I want to sell,' France replied, 'I am not buying.' That common interest, so essential in Anglo-Saxon countries to common aspirations, was shattered. Henceforth nothing linked the United States to the material or financial progress of our reconstruction. Between us there was but one business tie --- a dead and putrid tie --- our debts. Of which more anon.

If business men returned disgruntled, the soldiers went home dissatisfied. France had done everything to prevent this disappointment. Officers and soldiers had been welcomed by our universities and had lived in our families; personal tributes, decorations, diplomas, medals, souvenirs, had been given to the soldiers lavishly. But of the two million men who had crossed the seas to fight, only a portion had tasted of battle. Those who actually fought cherished sentiments of affection and respect for their French comrades, but they were not more than a third of the total. The others who, when the armistice came, were still in camp, or those who, in the service of supplies, had seen only the drudgery of war and none of its glory, went back disgusted with their long stays in our poverty-stricken villages, filled with that mingled disillusionment and disgust men feel for barrack life. Spectators of great things, they had seen them only from afar and through the wrong end of the telescope. We relied upon them as witnesses of our trials; we found in them only critics who complained of extortionate prices and out-of-date methods. Forgetting, amid the outbursts of official eloquence, that their country had gone to war for itself and not for us, they indignantly complained of what they regarded as the extortion of those they had come to save. To what extent public sentiment was warped is strikingly shown by the ineradicable legend of the hired trenches. For months, for years, people have said and are still saying that the American army was made to pay rent for the trenches it occupied in France. Whence could such an absurd rumour have sprung? From the inventories every force signed when taking over a new sector? From the tallies kept between the quartermaster's departments for shells, guns, aeroplanes, transportation? No one has ever been able to find out. But the poison spread. Neither denials by the French Government, nor by the American command, were able to stem the tide of falsehood. Even in August, 1925, a speaker who was presenting the case for France before a cultured and well-informed audience at Williams College was called upon for an explanation on this subject. Millions of men have believed, and continue to believe, that France charged them for the blood they shed upon her soil. In every class, from top to bottom of the social ladder, disaffection spread apace.(56) It only. needed politics to take a hand to make the cleavage complete.

And politics did take a hand. Even at the Peace Conference repeated discussions ruffled the feelings of both sides, and one by one deprived us of our supporters. I do not refer specially to the leaders. They, even in their worst differences, retained a mutual respect for opposing points of view and for the men who defended them. But among the rank and file there was no such restraint. Subordinate members of the American delegation threw oil on the fire raging around the left bank of the Rhine or the Sarre, whispered aloud that the breaking-up of the Conference was certain when it was merely a possibility, announced the President's return home and the resumption by the United States of its splendid isolation. Once agreement was reached, they accused President Wilson of having betrayed his principles; they accused France of having tricked him. They spread throughout the world the absurd fiction of an imperialist France anxious to crucify Germany, of a resigned Wilson willing to accept everything rather than not sign the Peace. This initial conflict is at the bottom of a campaign which our subsequent concessions have not succeeded in disarming. The left wing of the Democratic Party was henceforth against us. Anti-French, and, because anti-French, anti-Wilson, it reminded the United States of first principles, --- a cult which was not to lack popularity.

At the same time, the battle waged in France against Clemenceau dealt Wilson not a few of the blows intended for his colleague. Wilson had been painted as a docile plaything in the hands of Clemenceau; now Clemenceau was accused of having been the passive instrument of Wilson. The French campaign, designed to restore to power pre-war politicians, made common cause with the American campaign to bring the Republican Party back to office. In order to undo Wilson, the American colony in Paris, nearly all Republicans, furnished arguments to the French campaign against Clemenceau. This alliance gave birth to the murderous charge that France had been ill defended by its Government against the autocratic insistence of a pro-German visionary. Wilson Democrats were indignant to see an important section of the French press arrayed against them. They upbraided us for having betrayed the man who saved us, for passing from servile admiration to libelous ingratitude. What love for France remained among them was badly shaken. The second half of the Democratic Party, in turn, was lost to France.

Was Republican support to compensate the loss of Democratic friendship? No! The very force of things made that impossible. Encouraged by its success of November, 1918,(57) the Republican Party, just before the 1920 campaign, was seeking a platform issue. Home politics could furnish none, for the country was resplendently proud and prosperous. An issue had to be sought in foreign affairs. The error of trying to use international problems for party purposes is traditional in the United States. The beginnings of American history were poisoned by foreign factionalism. In 1849, Secretary of State Clayton did not hesitate to rely upon the British Minister against the Senate, and the opposite has also happened. Immigration and the foreign vote have but increased the tendency. To obtain both an issue and votes, the opposition directed its attacks against the Treaty of Versailles. An issue! Since the Democrats, by party discipline, were bound to support the Wilson peace, the Republicans would be against it. Votes! The votes of all the immigrants, German, Austrian, Italian, Irish, Bulgarian, whose atavistic aspirations had been disappointed by the treaty. The rules of the electoral game so dictated, and they were supreme. Neither sentiment nor doctrine had anything to do with it.

No anti-French feeling inspired the Republicans. Among them, many firm friends of France attacked the Wilson Treaty without realizing that France would suffer if the peace were rejected. On the contrary, they thought to serve her. An extraordinary illusion, defying all facts and reason, coupled in their minds the downfall of Wilson with the good of France. At the very time when a separate peace with Germany was being prepared, these men were making speeches in which the triumph of the party about to sign this separate peace was heralded as a blessing. A Republican victory meant, according to them, that France and the United States would get on together without difficulty, that war debts would be cancelled, that Germany would be made to pay, that French peace would reign over the world. The majority of those who spoke thus did so in good faith. Nothing is more human than to believe what one desires. 'It is,' as Bossuet said, 'the worst of mental aberrations'; but it is also the most common. In the electoral campaign, the necessities of victory obliged the Republicans to injure France by destroying solidarity. Most of them knew not what they were doing.

They were no more guided by tradition than by feeling. To listen to them in 1920 one would have thought that isolation had always been a Republican policy. Nothing more false. From 1912 on,, and in every platform of the Republican Party since, the League of Nations has had its place. Without going back to the time of Blaine or Hay,(58) recent facts are eloquent. On August 28, 1916, the United States Senate by unanimous vote called upon the President to place himself at the head of a league of the nations. In innumerable speeches Henry Cabot Lodge lauded such a body.(59) Theodore Roosevelt appealed again and again for a world league.(60) Unanimously in favour of the League, the Republicans were equally against any separate peace. Lodge in the spring of 1918 denounced it as dishonourable and ruinous.(61) Roosevelt wrote that if Wilson did not make peace side by side with the Allies, he would be nothing but a deceiver.(62) But principles went the way of feelings. As soon as it appeared politically expedient, the whole Party united as one man against the League of Nations and against the Peace of Solidarity.

To justify its attitude the Republican party appealed to tradition, to the mainspring of tradition: the political immorality of Europe. 'No foreign entanglements!' The slogan of George Washington, of Thomas Jefferson, of James Madison, of James Monroe was familiar to all Americans. What better condemnation of Wilson's compromise could there be? Recall the circumstances: The long and difficult peace negotiations which had given rise to so many and such serious clashes of interest and ideals had just been concluded. What an opportunity to harp upon the rapacity of European countries, their territorial greed, their unquenchable national conflicts! In the centre of the picture France, painted by newspapers of various political hues as the heir in 1919 of Prussian militarism. Let us be Americans, one hundred per cent Americans! Leave to their own quarrels associates who show that they are incapable of understanding the Gospel of Justice! That was the part of historical truth, of moral dignity, of political wisdom. The indictment of Europe formed the basis of the decision to return to isolation. The situation was not the same as after the War of Independence; but the desire for isolation was just as keen. In one case as in the other, so much the worse for France.

An incomprehensible reversal of policy, it has been said. Incomprehensible only for those who do not know the violence of political passion in the United States and the utter indifference of its people to foreign affairs. The United States is a land in which domestic considerations always prevail over foreign ones. Slow to become involved, Americans at all periods of their history have always been quick to release themselves from entanglements. They have never bothered about continuity of international policy. A change of majority suffices to free them, and they have no fear of reversing themselves.

I have recalled the events of 1783. Their reverberations may be traced in the relations of the United States with Mexico or with China. The plea of 'special interest,' rejected when France put it forward in connection with the Rhineland, was advanced by the United States against Spain in connection with Cuba. Holland, in 1918, saw herself refused by the United States, which had become a belligerent, the very rights which the United States as a neutral had demanded of Great Britain. American diplomacy is empirical. It reminds one of a saying of James Bryce, who knew America well: 'It is a question whether democratic institutions are compatible with the respect of international undertakings.' By sacrificing their inclinations, their principles, their promises to party advantage, the Republicans were true to American political habits. To be shocked over this is quite as futile as to be angry about it.

This feeling was so strong that it led individuals and the party further than they wanted to go, led them to extremes which at first they had not foreseen. Senator Lodge and Senator Smoot had begun their attacks upon the Treaty by mere reservations which they believed would be sufficient to defeat Wilson's aims without jeopardizing a settlement in common. Within a few weeks they were swamped; and from reservations they passed to a separate treaty. Wilson was beaten, so it was no longer political expediency but the force of things that impelled them. Senator Knox had started the ball rolling with his resolution.

The speech in which Senator Harding, on July 22, 1920, accepted the Republican nomination for the Presidency, cut the bridges with the past: 'I promise you,' he said, 'formal and effective peace, so quickly as a Republican Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican Executive to sign.' To make it with whom? With Germany. And the separate treaties of 1921, the work of Lodge's party, gave effect to what Lodge in 1918 had branded as ruin and dishonour. One thing led to another. The campaign against the treaty had won the hyphenated vote for the Republicans, and those voters had claims. The principle had won support. Support strengthened the principle. The 'associated Government' of 1917 was to sign a separate treaty with Germany, taking the profits of peace, but rejecting its burdens.

To so many adverse circumstances due to American causes, France by her own acts added others. To begin with, France backed the wrong horse. Although the Republicans were tending towards that separate peace which the Democrats denounced as a new Brest-Litovsk, as 'an insult to those who served in that whirlwind of war and a denial of our national purpose,’(63) the vast majority of the French people hoped for the victory of the Republicans and the defeat of the Democrats. Can this be explained by the vain promises with which we were lulled? No. The truth is that in those tragic hours the play of French internal politics and of American internal politics was interwoven. Between the victorious opponents of Clemenceau and of Wilson an unholy alliance had sprung up. The two campaigns gave each other mutual support. And France, carried away by the same mistaken enthusiasm as so many of her allies, was eager to acclaim the victory of the American party which was opposed to the Treaty and pregnant with a separate peace. An historical error, following on that of 1916, which joined all the political forces of the United States against us: the Republicans because their platform demanded it, the Democrats because their feelings had been outraged.

The only thing left to lose was the esteem of the masses. We lost it when the French Parliament dismissed Clemenceau. The general public in the United States could not be expected to possess an exact knowledge of European politics. It was familiar with the names of two or three outstanding figures. The 'Tiger' was the legendary hero of France. The day the blow which struck him down was dealt, the American people felt that a tie between them and France had snapped. The same cry of anger arose from the newspapers in the great cities as from the country weeklies in the South and West. A sentence from an Ohio paper sums up this outburst of public opinion: 'The overthrow of the "Tiger" has wiped out part of the esteem felt for France.' After that, popular feeling was either hostile to France or indifferent. Lloyd George, who was anything but a sentimentalist, said: 'It's the French who are burning Joan of Arc now.' After big business, after the soldiers, after the politicians, the man in the street was turning away from us. Four orders of events were, in less than five years, to transform this cleavage into an abysmal chasm.

Six months after the conclusion of the separate peace treaties, the Washington Conference of December, 1921, for the reduction of naval armaments opened. It left France and the United States at loggerheads. France was peeved at America; America was peeved at France. Conscious of being a danger to none, conscious of our naval traditions and of the duties imposed upon us by the extent of our coast line and by our colonial Empire of sixty million inhabitants, we bitterly resented the accusation of imperialism and the manner in which our delegation was treated. Our deception was all the more bitter because a complacent press had led France to believe that, rid of Clemenceau, she could expect everything from the United States, rid of Wilson. The effect was such that eighteen months elapsed before any one dared present the agreements for ratification to the Chambers. In America equal rancour prevailed. We gained the reputation of militarism, as well as of being weak. We were, the paper said, 'the only nation which refused to disarm.' Mark Sullivan wrote: 'France has acted badly. She has obstructed a great and ideal undertaking. The part she has played cannot and will not be forgiven.' Another wrote: 'France has ceased to be our well-beloved.' One of our best friends, Elmer Roberts, added: 'I who knew you so different, I no longer understand you.' Henceforth American pacifism was arrayed against us.

After pacificism, evangelicalism. The Christian feeling which, rising above creeds draws them closer together, took sides against us in connection with events in the Near East. France, in the summer of 1921, had supported Turkey to offset the pro-Greek intrigues of Great Britain. English mistakes were matched by French mistakes. On both sides there was the same lack of measure. But the American public, brought up to despise the Turk, paid attention only to French mistakes and denounced France as the protector of the Crescent against the Cross. France was accused of sacrificing the Christians by the very nation which in refusing the Armenian mandate had washed its hands of their defence. France was denounced as the ally of barbarians against civilization, denounced in the churches, denounced in the press. France was hissed in the moving-picture theatres, and the British fleet was greeted with cheers. The missionary spirit also was arrayed against us.

Then came the occupation of the Ruhr. The evolution of American public opinion during that twelve month is most instructive. At first and by habit we were accused of grinding peaceful Germany beneath the heel of militarism. Later, when the occupation had been successfully carried out, it was admitted that if the United States had been in the place of France it would have done as we did, and our seizure of the second iron district of the world somewhat restored our prestige. Senator David A. Reed, the American Legion, Dr. Henry van Dyke, former Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Governor H. R. Allen, President Harry Pratt Judson, the New York Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Transcript, the Providence Journal were among those who paid tribute to our 'efficiency.' But this state of mind did not survive the end of the occupation.

Now we come to the debt discussion. I have traced its origins in the war and post-armistice periods.(64) Months passed, and years; sleeping debts were allowed to lie. From time to time a French minister would proclaim our desire to pay and our inability to give effect to that desire. Or else some member of Parliament would repudiate the very principle of our debt by talking about the number of our dead, the importance of our front, the extent of our ruins --- all of which we knew, alas, when we accepted the advances. Other nations settled their debts, and began their payments. France waited. And while she waited, France borrowed at eight and ten per cent from Wall Street, and the politicians in America said: 'The French leave our people to bear an interest of four per cent, and they pay more than twice as much to money dealers in New York.' The veterans blamed France for the delay in obtaining their bonus. The taxpayers blamed France because their burdens were not reduced. The debt question, like the treaty itself, became a party issue. There was a debt to be collected. More power to the party that could get it paid. The question became political rather than economic and international.

Not once in this discussion did France put forward the arguments or seize the opportunities which events placed within her reach. In none of the successive encounters treating of the debt question did France advance the political argument which dominates the financial discussion. I do not refer to the countless speeches(65) in which Democrats and Republicans alike asserted, in both Houses, that the advances to the Allies had served to save American lives and that such being the case the question of repayment was negligible. I refer to the fact that the United States having made these advances officially as an associate in a common cause was not entitled after having abandoned its associates to demand repayment without a thorough revision of the amounts involved.

Turn to paragraph 8 of the Fourteen Points, applauded by the whole Congress; turn to the terms of the Armistice; even to the separate peace with Germany: reparations invariably appear; and Carter Glass's letter of January, 1919, admitted the connection which exists between German reparations and the French debt.(66) In 1920, the United States had the right to repudiate its former war aims---that was a legal luxury it could afford; but it had no right to make its allies pay the price. France, prepared to pay the United States three billion dollars when, with American assistance, she was to collect thirty-two billion dollars from Germany cannot remain saddled with the same debt if, by the fault of the United States, the amount she is to receive is reduced by three quarters. That is an issue of common sense, of fair play, which France has never raised.

There was one rift in these clouds: Clemenceau's visit to the United States at the end of 1922. When, at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York the Great Old Man of France got into touch with the public, he said: 'If we had known that we were to be left in the lurch by English ill-will and American indifference, we should not have signed the armistice .... You came too late and you withdrew too soon .... You had the right to withdraw. But not, when you had gone, to make a separate peace without even trying to reach an agreement .... It was you who laid down the terms on which you were willing to cease war. Those terms were not and are not complied with .... Of all your war aims, tell me which you have attained.' And in conclusion, this lofty summing up of unfulfilled destiny: 'Remember a nation may be the prisoner of its own greatness. It cannot choose to be great in history one day and small the next.' This strong and gentle appeal made the United States look within itself and upon Europe. There was a mingling of astonishment and regret, a desire for introspection which it would have been easy to kindle and make glow.

This is where we stand in 1926. Two great nations which I have seen so splendidly able to work together are parted further asunder than at any time in their history. The contact of their citizens repels rather than attracts. How few weigh things and apportion the responsibilities of each; how few say with Baruch, 'Our attitude in 1920 forbids us to criticize what followed'; or with House, 'No nation ever rejected more lightly a greater heritage.’(67) If this picture appears too dark, here is the testimony of the American who knows Europe best and is most friendly to France, Frank H. Simonds: 'It is impossible,' he wrote at the end of 1923, 'to imagine a greater or more complete misunderstanding than that which exists to-day between the American public and the French public.' What was true in 1923 is even more painfully true in 1926.,

DEEP and complete as was this misunderstanding, at times and by certain methods it was tempered by some measure of relief and comprehension. Let us turn from the curve of public relations between France and the United States to that of private relations. On the whole the two follow each other closely, difficult during the war, insignificant or bad thereafter. The latter displays peaks which do not appear in the former, and this difference conveys a valuable lesson.

When in April, 1917, American organizations, which for two and a half years had been working for France, saw their example followed by the Government, they believed their work would be greatly facilitated. On the contrary, it was rendered infinitely more difficult. The declaration of war, hurled like a thunderbolt from the Capitol, released a new and pent-up force which hitherto had been immobilized: the Red Cross. Buttressed by public authority the Red Cross necessarily followed the official example of relentless centralization. Associated with the Government's efforts, proud of its initial triumph, the Red Cross aspired to the sole control of philanthropy, as the Government had attained sole control of industry. So two opposing forces were in presence. On one side the powerful machine for absorbing all resources, demanding unshared authority; on the other, the countless war relief organizations, strong with the strength of good work well done, determined neither to disappear nor to be merged in the militarized mass of the Red Cross.

Many unofficial war organizations, especially those of more recent date, were in danger of disappearing. The American Fund for French Wounded, rightly proud of the immense services it had rendered, saw its Boston committee, its San Francisco committee, its Paris services, recommend fusion with the Red Cross, pure and simple, against the wishes of its own executive. The newly formed 'civil section' of the Fund for French Wounded, so recently established in the Aisne, which to its war programme had dared to add a programme of peace rehabilitation, was threatened and opposed. The breaking of the Allied front in March and May, 1918, and the loss of the region in which the civil section had done its work, led to a renewal of the criticisms levelled against its creation. The Fund for French Wounded decided to separate itself from the civil section, which, in a few days, 'a few hours, under pain of disappearance, had to obtain, in the United States and in France, a new legal status, a new organization and fresh resources. This was the stormy beginning of the American Committee for Devastated France.(68)

The war over, other obstacles arose --- created by a changed state of mind. Liberty was restored to philanthropy, as to big business. The autocracy of the Red Cross disappeared. But the comradeship of arms was dead. While the Senate was rejecting the Treaty of Versailles, while the Washington Conference was sitting, while France was aiding the Turks, occupying the Ruhr, or delaying the settlement of her debts, it was by no means easy to work for her. Resistance, both active and passive, had to be overcome. Success would not have been possible if only appeals to sentiment had been made. Sentiment is vain if not enlightened. Emotion is sterile if not canalized.

In the initial stage an appeal was made to the most modern of American arts: the art of publicity. I say art and not business, for in America publicity is taught in universities and has a literature of its own. Publicity has been a national force for fifty years and more. At first business alone utilized this force. Banks and insurance companies looked down upon it. To-day they are its largest patrons. Political parties rely upon publicity to make known their platforms. The American Government utilized it, from 1917 to 1919, to win recruits before the draft was in effect, to educate the American people to subscribe to Government loans, to make popular its war aims, to furnish information about its Associates of whom the American people knew but little. The Publicity Section of the Committee on Public Information, under William H. Jones, did splendid work. Every means of publicity taught in the textbooks: personal letters, professional circulars, newspaper advertising, posters --- at times containing 'reason why' copy, at others 'human interest' copy --- were all employed with constant and unvarying success.

Equal success crowned the efforts of private organizations which despite the official cleavage were continuing their pro-French campaign by the same methods. They were working for an ideal, not for business ends; but to achieve its aim the ideal employed business methods. In the one case as in the other, it sought by appropriate means to establish contact with the public, to increase the power of penetration simultaneously with the receptiveness of the public mind. It was what publicity experts call a good-will campaign: seeking to touch the individual in his inmost feelings without allowing the appeal to be deflected by conventional beliefs, preconceived ideas or habits. The case for France was to be sold to the American people on the same lines as Ford cars or Arrow collars.

A primary condition of success in such a campaign is the diversity of objects within an invisible whole. People subscribing to the same fund must not be made to feel that they are paying several times over for the same thing. Instead, therefore, of harping upon an abstract idea, concrete instances were multiplied. If for five years one had kept on appealing for money for the civil victims of the war, the public would have tired. Other abstractions would have. neutralized those presented to it. If, on the contrary, you showed in its true aspect the well-defined thing for which you asked support, if you varied the needs, illustrating them by facts, by figures, by pictures, by signed testimonials, you created, in the place of a slow mental process, a quick sympathetic reaction. One day the appeal was for money to provide luncheons for school children; another, to buy saucepans or kitchen utensils for housewives, or eggs for setting to repopulate the poultry yards, or milk for the babies, or trained nurses to visit the dwellers amid the ruins, or playgrounds for the youngsters, or libraries for the grown-ups, or a bell to hang in the restored belfry of a village church. And the variety of needs multiplied the subscriptions.(69)

Alter the variety of needs, diversity of methods. Care was had not to fall into the mistake of the French Government, which persisted in sending over generals or politicians to arouse sympathy in the United States, as if the army and politics alone represented France. The flag flown from the Eiffel Tower on the day the United States declared war was displayed in twenty-one cities with its escort of Boy Scouts. Processions of trucks paraded through New York with speakers from among the best-known and most influential women in the city. Boxing matches, organized by one of them to the scandal of the conservative, were attended by the leaders of American society. National bridge tournaments were participated in by twenty-four thousand men and women, playing at the same time in the same cause. By concentric waves, curiosity, the forerunner of attention, was excited, and attention fixed by the renewal of interest.

Yet---and this was the second period---as the cleavage between France and the United States grew wider, these normal methods of publicity no longer sufficed. This, too, at the time when, to perpetuate by endowment the work done in the Aisne, the American Committee for Devastated France needed almost as much money as it had collected during the five preceding years. It was necessary either to abandon the effort or to strike a telling blow. For this business methods were abandoned. In future political methods were to be used. Divided into two great bodies --- Republicans and Democrats --- American citizens deploy their political activities in two ways: in local organizations which group the regulars and in national campaigns which prepare the election. Organization, campaign, election: such the plan of the American Committee's final effort: the Good-Will Elections of 1922.

Local committees had long since organized the élite; but if an ideal needs the élite for organization, it can triumph only by the support of the masses. The idea was to make the masses vote, which in America they are accustomed and like to do. But to make them vote on what? Not on a direct appeal in favour of France, which would run counter to the then political tendency, but on a side issue, the election of delegates to carry the American gospel to the French people. The idea was not to say to the public, 'Give money for France,' but, 'Vote to elect American women who on your behalf will carry words of goodwill and friendship to France.' The idea took, and, what is more, it paid. It took because it meant voting, voting for the most popular social class in America --- the woman who earns her own living. It was successful also because the mission entrusted to these women was entirely novel: it was the people calling to the people, without official go-betweens. It paid, because each ballot was sold for ten cents, and ten million ballots meant a million dollars to the American Committee for Devastated France.

To obtain this result three agencies were employed; In each centre, a strong local committee.(70) Then continuous and abundant publicity. Finally the influence of special interests worked up by the candidates themselves. Threefold support had thus to be obtained: from influential individuals to work on committees, from the press to afford the publicity, from business to interest in the balloting the great corporations from whose ranks the candidates were to come. There was no flaw in the plan thus conceived, but serious obstacles had to be overcome, especially so far as the press was concerned. For success it was essential that they be overcome. Overcoming them was a triumph of psychology.

This is neither, they were told, propaganda nor politics. This is a matter of sentiment. There are no official strings to it, and we are entirely free from Paris as from Washington. It is the people of the United States who are called upon to place themselves in contact with the people of France, regardless of timeworn routine. Every American is at heart a crusader and intimately convinced that he could carry on the foreign affairs of his country far better than the people who are doing it. So the suggestion met with spontaneous response. Politics had muddied the relations of the two countries. The people themselves would clarify them.. Thus, after receiving the idea coolly at first, the press finally adopted it. They took it up to such purpose that they made the American Committee a gift of $300,000 worth of space and made history in the annals of free advertising. Sixty-two great papers published two million lines of copy --- some seven thousand columns --- to champion the cause of the Good-Will campaign, to report the elections and their results. The press kindled the fires of competition.(71)

This competition interested the leading industrial and commercial corporations in the United States. What attracted them? First, the novelty of the idea; also, the opportunity it gave them of asserting their power and of coöperating with their employees. By contributing money and influence to the support of the members of their staffs who were candidates, they had both the honour of serving a disinterested cause and of helping those who worked for them to prove their merit. A quaint example of that practical idealism which one finds in all great Anglo-Saxon movements and which explains their intensity. And then words have power. It was a stroke of genius to call the war loans 'Liberty Loans.' The two words 'Good Will,' the slogan of the 1922 campaign, were equally successful. American optimism has always loved such expressions of confidence: good feeling, good will. Amid the monotony of post-war bickering this programme was a relief. It was a modest programme which did not promise to change the face of things, and was unhampered by logic. Good will! Good will expressed by plain people to plain people, to old war comrades somewhat forgotten, by women earning their own living. It is impossible to analyse the springs of popular impulse in detail. In things immaterial, it is the unexplainable which counts most.(72)

The campaign began. It was carried on in twenty-three States and in seventy-eight cities according to the classic rites of political contest. Posters, parades, public meetings, band wagons: all the puerile playthings of democracy. Just as if they had been electing a President of their Republic, there were, one following the other, a nominating campaign to choose the candidates, a balloting campaign to elect the delegates. Any American girl or woman, not under eighteen, working for her own living, was eligible. There were a thousand candidates. Every time that one hundred thousand votes were cast a delegate was declared elected and thereafter one for every sixty thousand. The number of votes cast was twenty million. The number of delegates elected was two hundred and eighty-nine. The gross receipts totalled two million dollars. In the seventy-eight cities in which the contest was held there was the same delirious excitement as during an election. The streets were filled with crowds and parades. The formation of this feminine embassy about to leave for France excited the anti-French as well as the pro-French. It thrilled even the indifferent.(73)

This embassy represented every form of feminine activity from the most modest to the most exalted, from the least. paid to the most remunerative. Among them were a few 'gold star' mothers. It was a faithful and complete image of American womanhood which does not believe that in obtaining the right to vote it has exhausted its claim to equal rights with men and is carrying on the struggle in every sphere of human endeavour. An ideal, the defence of which was entrusted to them, had every chance of penetrating. That it did vas abundantly shown by the results, moral as well as material.

Material results? Money was sought and money was found. Bear in mind that it was more difficult to raise ten dollars in 1920 than one hundred in 1918; more difficult to raise five dollars in 1922 than ten dollars in 1920. Yet the Good-Will Elections, with their gross receipts of two million dollars, produced at the worst time of political tension more than had been collected in the five years preceding.(74)

Moral results? What slumbered was aroused. What was potential became real. First, because of what the delegates themselves did. Their initial movement had been one of curiosity. Their second was one of interest. In France they were surprised and touched by the welcome they received. When they visited our battle-fields and our devastated regions, when they mingled with official France and with the French people, they learned much about our country that they did not know. The public authorities showed them every attention. French families received them as friends. They discovered a France of whose existence they had no inkling. A country of patient labour, not of frivolous luxury; a country of calm and peace, not of imperialism; a country of silent virtue, not of empty persiflage. The spectacle they beheld was everywhere the same: in the regions where the ruins were being restored and in those whose secular traditions had been spared the ordeal of fire. On their return to the United States these women told of what they had seen, they spoke and wrote and answered the questions of newspaper reporters, they lectured and decided to meet together once a year. They were listened to. They were believed because they were of the people, because they were the people. France, at a time when she was bitterly assailed, found in them ardent champions.

The change in their opinions was reflected among those who had rendered their embassy possible. It was reflected in business spheres whose support had built up the enterprise and who in countless ways showed their gratitude to the organizers and to the delegates, paid tribute to their methods and to their ideas.(75) It was reflected in the press, which regretted its early hesitation and recanted its initial objections, for it asserted that it was both feasible and desirable to appeal from the troubles of the present to the forgotten traditions of friendship.(76) Even in States where the anti-French feeling was strongest everybody was happy that a current of mutual understanding had been restored. An atmosphere of tolerance issued from the fruitless conflicts of diplomacy and finance.

A fugitive atmosphere, I well know, which vanished as did the atmosphere of victory. The fact remains that if nothing was done to preserve it, it had been possible to create it. This, according to one's standpoint, is a consolation or a lesson. The time to draw conclusions has now arrived.