I am certain that millions of men are thinking
these things, because I found the track of those common thoughts,
crude, simple, dangerous, among Canadian soldiers crossing the
Atlantic, in Canadian towns, and in the United States, as I had begun
to see the trail of them far back in the early days of the war when I
moved among French soldiers, Belgian soldiers, and our own men.
My own belief is not so simple as that. I do not divorce all peoples
from their governments as victims of a subtle tyranny devised by
statesmen and diplomats of diabolical cunning, and by financial
magnates ready to exploit human life for greater gains. I see the evil
which led to the crime of the war and to the crimes of the peace with
deep-spread roots to the very foundation of human society. The fear of
statesmen, upon which all international relations were based, was in
the hearts of peoples. France was afraid of Germany and screwed up her
military service, her war preparations, to the limit of national
endurance, the majority of the people of France accepting the burden
as inevitable and right.
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