The American army came in tidal waves across the
Atlantic, flooded our back areas, reached the edge of the
battlefields, were a new guaranty of strength. Their divisions passed
mostly to the French front. With them, and with his own men,
magnificent in courage still, and some of ours, Foch had his army of
reserve, and struck.
So the war ended, after all, by military force, and by military
victory greater than had seemed imaginable or possible six months
before.
In the peace terms that followed there was but little trace of those
splendid ideas which had been proclaimed by President Wilson. On one
point after another he weakened, and was beaten by the old militarism
which sat enthroned in the council-chamber, with its foot on the neck
of the enemy. The "self-determination of peoples" was a hollow phrase
signifying nothing. Open covenants openly arrived at were mocked by
the closed doors of the Conference. When at last the terms were
published their merciless severity, their disregard of racial
boundaries, their creation of hatreds and vendettas which would lead,
as sure as the sun should rise, to new warfare, staggered humanity,
not only in Germany and Austria, but in every country of the world,
where at least minorities of people had hoped for some nobler vision
of the world's needs, and for some healing remedy for the evils which
had massacred its youth.
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