Winning a Cause | Page 8

America in particular, to see that that reckoning of
von Hindenburg is as false as the one he made about his famous line,
which we have broken already.
The road to victory, the guarantee of victory, the absolute assurance of
victory is to be found in one word--ships; and a second word--ships.
And with that quickness of apprehension which characterizes your
nation, I see that they fully realize that, and today I observe that they
have already made arrangements to build one thousand 3000-tonners
for the Atlantic. I think that the German military advisers must already
begin to realize that this is another of the tragic miscalculations which
are going to lead them to disaster and to ruin. But you will pardon me
for emphasizing that. We are a slow people in these islands--slow and

blundering--but we get there. You get there sooner, and that is why I
am glad to see you in.
But may I say that we have been in this business for three years? We
have, as we generally do, tried every blunder. In golfing phraseology,
we have got into every bunker. But we have got a good niblick. We are
right out on the course. But may I respectfully suggest that it is worth
America's while to study our blunders, so as to begin just where we are
now and not where we were three years ago? That is an advantage. In
war, time has as tragic a significance as it has in sickness. A step which,
taken today, may lead to assured victory, taken tomorrow may barely
avert disaster. All the Allies have discovered that. It was a new country
for us all. It was trackless, mapless. We had to go by instinct. But we
found the way, and I am so glad that you are sending your great naval
and military experts here just to exchange experiences with men who
have been through all the dreary, anxious crises of the last three years.
America has helped us even to win the battle of Arras. The guns which
destroyed the German trenches, shattered the barbed wire--I remember,
with some friends of mine whom I see here, arranging to order the
machines to make those guns from America. Not all of them--you got
your share, but only a share, a glorious share. So that America has also
had her training. She has been making guns, making ammunition,
giving us machinery to prepare both; she has supplied us with steel, and
she has all that organization, and all that wonderful facility, adaptability,
and resourcefulness of the great people which inhabits that great
continent. Ah! It was a bad day for military autocracy in Prussia when
it challenged the great republic of the west. We know what America
can do, and we also know that now she is in it she will do it. She will
wage an effective and successful war.
There is something more important. She will insure a beneficent peace.
To this I attach great importance. I am the last man to say that the
succor which is given to us from America is not something in itself to
rejoice in, and to rejoice in greatly. But I do not mind saying that I
rejoice even more in the knowledge that America is going to win the
right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are being

discussed. That conference will settle the destiny of nations--the course
of human life--for God knows how many ages. It would have been
tragic for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all the
influence, all the power, and the right which she has now won by
flinging herself into this great struggle.
I can see peace coming now--not a peace which will be the beginning
of war, not a peace which will be an endless preparation for strife and
bloodshed, but a real peace. The world is an old world. It has never had
peace. It has been rocking and swaying like an ocean, and Europe--poor
Europe!--has always lived under the menace of the sword. When this
war began two-thirds of Europe were under autocratic rule. It is the
other way about now, and democracy means peace. The democracy of
France did not want war; the democracy of Italy hesitated long before
they entered the war; the democracy of this country shrank from
it--shrank and shuddered--and never would have entered the caldron
had it not been for the invasion of Belgium. The democracies sought
peace; strove for peace. If Prussia had been a democracy there would
have been no war. Strange things have happened in this war. There are
stranger things to come, and they are coming rapidly.
There are times in history when this world spins so leisurely along its
destined