The Huns will acquiesce only to such peace terms as they will be forced to.
The Allies are better to be guided in consequence in their unfaltering determination to realize a Just and Durable peace by a Glorious Victory.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CONCLUSION.
My ardent desire to speak the plain truth and only the truth, is just as strong to-day as it was when, in concluding my French work, I summarized the situation such as it was at the end of the year 1916, to show the hard duty incumbent on all the Allies, Canada included. It has been perhaps still more intensified by the outrageous efforts of those amongst us whose sole object has been, since the outbreak of the hostilities, to discourage our people from the herculean task they had bravely undertaken.
Two years have since elapsed—years full of great events, and of untiring heroism on the part of the glorious defenders of Justice and Right—and I do not see the slightest reason to modify the conclusions I then arrived at as a matter of strict duty. Unworthy of public confidence is the man who, pandering to the supposed prejudices of his countrymen, refrains out of weakness, or of more guilty considerations, to tell them what they are bound to do for their own country, for their Empire, for the world, in the supreme crisis of our time.
True every one is longing for the restoration of peace. But few are those who, even before being tired of the war, were ready to curb their heads under the German yoke, are now praying for a compromise between the Allies and their enemies. There are some left, it is sad to admit. Everywhere they are chased by the indignant public opinion daily growing more determined that millions of heroes shall not have given their lives in vain, that millions of others, wounded on the fields of battles, shall not, until the last of them is gone for ever, be the betrayed victims of Teutonic dastardly ambition.
True, peace is sorely wanted, and would be welcomed by the thanksgivings to the Almighty of grateful peoples, who have borne with undaunted courage such untold and admirable sacrifices to uphold their Rights and their Honour. But it cannot be sued for by the nations whom Germany wanted to enslave by the might of her crushing militarism operating under the dictates of a new code of International Law of her own barbarous creation.