New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-03-08

realization That the lie Oh DfltalH
is at stake-a perception that 1t IS
Britain that the German would Kill.
Nor should one fail TO take &C
count of the fact that the British
woman has gone to war with full
heart and a grim determination that
leaves her nrale brethren not a little
puzzled. She has put on trousers
and gone into the field. She has
donned CATERS and assumed the nav
igation Of the London bus. She has
gone into the munitions factory by
the thousands and she has accumu-
lated a full measure Of determine
ton to stick it out" Innumerable
Englishmen have told me that the
spirit Of the women in England was
at least a shade better than that of
the men. and that those who talked
peace without victory did not reckon
WlIN Lie WOllltI'
Ones impressions are made up OF
SO many little things that 1t IS al
most impossible to give any accurate
statement of the sources Of the con-
viction that the British have en-
listed, as they say, for the dura-
ton" / have talked with boys at the
front who have endured every sort
of horror. The other morning / SAL
at breakfast with one, in his early
twenties, who had recently "gone
over the top" in an attack upon a
German trench, an unsuccessful at
tack. lain eleven hours in q shell
hole under barrage fire and es-
caped with one man at night from
the hole, in which three men had
died; and this was his second ex-
perience.
have talked with men who year
ago spoke in deepest pessimism of
conditions and prospects, and | found
them this time calm and confident,
satisfied that the fortunes of the
country were in safe hands and that
the great peril and the chief danger
had passed with Mr.. Asquith and
his associates into private life and
out of mind. eve are at last united
as never before in our history; how
can any one misunderstood US now"
was the inquiry of man who has
been assailed all over England as
Cassandra and worse than a Cas-
sandra.
The thing that one feels in Lon
don to-day is that the whole British
nation, the whole empire, to be exact,
mas at last enlisted for the war.
Confidence in the larger sense there
is in unmeasured quantities, but real
ization that blunders, defeats, pri-
vations are TO come, that the harvest
of death will he terrible this sum
mer, is not less evident.
A year ago ! talked with women
whose sons had been wasted in the
shambles of some politicians mis-
taking. felt on all sides the lack
Of confidence, the lack of trust. the
bewilderment, the misunderstanding
which grew out of misinformation
rurposefully disseminated to conceal
the folly of statesmen or the blum
ders of Cabinet Ministers. The truth
was concealed, and without the
knowledge Of the truth there could
be no general appreciation of the
danger-only the men at the front
knew the facts. and for the most part
their lips were sealed.
All has changed now. After a
year the truth is in a great measure
in the minds of all Englishmen.
There has been a wide grasp of the
fact that the future of the empire
and of the nation depends upon the
outcome of the war. There Is the
primitive gripping Of the fact that
i is impossible to negotiate a peace
with a man who has been for years
plotting to murder and if such a
peace were made would still retain
the knife. 1t is a life or death
struggle now in the minds of millions
of Englishmen who a year ago were
still in the dark. Germany has
taught them, the things that Ger
mans have said and done have con-
WINGED that great, inert, slow think
ing British mass that there is no
peace to be had or thought or bought
until there is abolished from the
world the German idea-the German
doctrine of "terribleness."
Several More Years,
IF Germany Holds Out
And it is for the reasons which ]
have tried to set forth mere, together
with the reasons that | found in
France and have already described,
that have come home satisfied that
we shall have not one but several
years more Of war, if Germany holds
ont hnfnre fhnre is any real chance