It may interest you to know that on the 9th,—­just a week ago—­a Zeppelin nearly got to Meaux.  It was about half past eleven in the evening when the drums beat “lights out,” along the hillside.  There weren’t many to put out, for everyone is in bed at that hour, and we have no street-lights, but an order is an order.  The only result of the drum was to call everyone out of bed, in the hope “to see a Zeppelin.”  We neither heard nor saw anything.

Amelie said with a grin next morning, “Eh, bien, only one thing is needed to complete our experiences—­that a bomb should fall shy of its aim—­the railroad down there—­and wipe Huiry off the map, and write it in history.”

I am sorry that you find holes in my letters.  It is your own fault.  You do not see this war from my point of view yet—­alas!  But you will.  Make a note of that.  The thing that you will not understand, living, as you do, in a world going about its daily routine, out of sight, out of hearing of all this horror, is that Germany’s wilful destruction is on a preconceived plan—­a racial principle.  The more races she can reduce and enfeeble the more room there will be for her.  Germany wants Belgium—­but she wants as few Belgians as possible.  So with Poland, and Servia, and northeast France.  She wants them to die out as fast as possible.  It is a part of the programme of a people calling themselves the elect of the world—­the only race, in their opinion, which ought to survive.

She had a forty-four years’ start of the rest of the world in preparing her programme.  It is not in two years, or in three, that the rest of the world can overtake her.  That advantage is going to carry her a long way.  Some people still believe that advantage will exist to the end.  I don’t.  Still, one of the overwhelming facts of this war is to me that:  Germany held Belgium and northeast France at the end of 1914, and yet, all along the Allied fronts, with Germany fighting on invaded territory, they cried:  “She is beaten!” So, indeed, her strategy was.  At the end of 1915 she had two new allies, and held all of Servia, Montenegro, and Russian Poland, and still the Allies persisted:  “She is licked, but she does not know it yet.”  It is one of the finest proofs of the world’s faith in the triumph of the Right that so many believe this to be true.

You are going to come some day to the opinion I hold—­that if we want universai peace we must first get rid of the race that does not want it or believe in it.  Forbidden subject?  I know.  But when I resist temptation you find holes in my letters, and seem to imagine that I am taking no notice of things that happen.  I notice fast enough, and I am so interested that I hope to see the condemnation, already passed in England, against Kaiser, Kronprinz and Company, for “wilful murder,” executed, even if I cannot live to see Germany invaded.

This is what you get for saying, “You make no comment on the overrunning of Servia or the murder of Edith Cavell, or the failure of the Gallipoli adventure.”  After all, these are only details in the great undertaking.  As we say of every disaster, “They will not affect the final result.”  It is getting to be a catch-word, but it is true.