New-York tribune., 1917-07-14

as France emerged from the Revolution
intact. But German domination of Europe
was dream impossible of realization when
Won Kluck and Won Buow led beaten
masses back across the Marne and through
the hills of Champagne. The victory Of
ideas was assured; the triumph, the per-
sistence Of the ideas which are American
as we'll as French and British was no
longer in doubt when the French troops
from Paris to the gates Of Nancy leaped
forward to the charge and to the advance
in the early days of last September.
Nearly a year has passed since those
terrible days, and it is still France who is
holding the line. Russia has advanced and
retreated. England has still fallen far
short of her share in the world struggle.
Early hopes of speedy victory have faded.
But from Switzerland to Flanders the
French line has held all that it won in the
Battle of the Marne and added thereto new
fields. new hectares of the fatherland, won
back at the cost Of incredible effort and
sacrifice.
And in all this terrible time, when more
than a million and half of Frenchmen
have gone to death, foreign prison or the
hospital, there has come from the French
people not a murmur. There is about the
silence of forty millions something more
impressive, more terrible, than all the thun-
ders of protests that come from other ma
tions. 1t is as if a whole race had with a
complete unity Of mind recognized that its
final hour had come that the issue joined
was one of life or death, and in that reali-
zation had gone forth to battle, not boast
fully, not animated by oyerconfdence or
unwarranted optimism, but with the COM
plete foreknowledge that only victorious
could they, could France, survive.
All this means more to US in America
than we have yet seen, than we shall real
ize for years to come. Alone of all the ma
tions at war France is democracy in the
full sense in which we are. Her armies
are armies ruled by her citizens, officered
by her sons without regard to rank in
social scheme. Her equality is our equal
ity. her ideals are our ideals. Her revolu-
ton and ours have permeated and pene-
trated the whole structure Of our respec-
tive national lives. The dreams Of world
peace, disarmament, arbitration which we
have cherished and sought to champion
France has hailed and served. Her very
weakness last August was due to the fact
that her statesmen and her citizens, like
our own, had listened too willingly to the
voice of those who would have them be-
lieve possible what France longed to see
accomplished.
If France had failed the German idea
would not necessarily have conquered the
world permanently. To believe this is to
believe that all that centuries have won
can be lost in an hour and that mankind
does not advance through all the ages. But
it would have meant that all over the
world, in America as in Europe, all men of
all races would have had TO send their sons
to the barracks: civilization would tempo
rarily have had to give the soldier first
place. We should not have been able to
live according to the will of our race, but
according to the necessities imposed from
without.
But France did not fail. Rather she won
not her fight alone, but our fight. She
saved the democracy she had bestowed
upon Europe She held the line of our civ
ilization against the magnificent but de-
structive barbarism of the German idea.
She not only held the line, but she threw
the invader back. After the Battle of the
Marne the Teutonc dream of world power
was as completely shattered as that OF
Napoleon was destroyed in Leipsic. Had
France done no more, had she died in doing
it, her service would have been out of pro-
portion to her responsibility. But she did
more; she is doing more now. Alone of the
foes of Germany she is to-day at the height
Of her task.
Happily on this, Bastile Day, the whole
world is beginning to appreciate the mag
nitude of French service. Indeed, nowhere
more frankly than in German ranks does
French courage, devotion, efficiency find
lust appraisal. And in America, for our