BATTLE IN THE M U I> ±97

Though the exhausted French and the broken Russians
and the still untried legions of the United States a <! contributed
to victory, the dominating force in the world on \oveniber nth.
1918, were the five million fighting men—the gixater purr of
them volunteers and amateur soldiers—drawn frrni a scatter id
community of thirty-five million English, feu*" and a hal*
million. Scots, two million Welsh, perhaps tve and a h;J£ riillicn
loyal Irish, eight million Canadians, s:x and a half million
Australians and. New Zealanders, and one anu a h£f nr :i:cn
South Africans—in all rather less than sixty million free people,
of whom more than three-quarters were English or of English
descent. Contrary to all expectation, they had given the German
army the thrashing it needed and taught a would-be despot the
lesson that, though imperial Britain herself would not give rule
to Europe, no one else should.1

*A page of drawings by Fougasse in P^nch In the yv^r cf the victory *.:iybr,:t:-ns,
showed how the process had been accomplished. rt \\V*I I'm trltr.Ttd," s«/"* :Iie £.r. c**Ah
civilian of 1914, first in his shirt-sleeves by the fire and then in his ilL-£::::.: 1 ,.*s, tr-.iL:r,g
suit. "What good can I be, turning out to fight tLem blooming Germans v>iti all their
guns and millions of men!w And thereafter one sees him with incr^asir.,..* C3:icai*:y'.
learning amid hardships and great dlciciilties to do the jcb in hand, until in tie aid,
it is the professional and military German who is out-gaimed, cat-ur.kvd ar.J
out-manoeuvred. "It's not as if we were a military nation,' adds the victor cnce inert
by Ms fireside, "or took kindly to u at all. I don't wonder it's taken n* fju* }c*is to
finish the job I n—funch CL F//s 28.