“Oh, I know that the best of France is loyal to us; that her true chivalry understands.  But what of your public that is all ear for the so-called Echo de Paris, with its constant incitement to jealousy and suspicion of England?  What of your second-rate Press and its pin-pricking policy, connived at, if not actually encouraged, by your Government?

“Of course I recognise that you never really liked the idea of all those British soldiers making themselves at home in your country, though they did it as nicely as it could be done, and made hosts of friends in the process.  I can believe that we should not have been too well pleased at having a like number of French troops established between Dover and London.  I don’t say we should have charged you rent for every yard of their trenches or claimed heavy damages for any injury they might have done to our roads in the course of defending the Metropolis from our common enemy.  But we certainly should not have been depressed when we found that they needn’t stay any longer.  Still I hope we should have registered on the tablets of our hearts a permanent record indicating that we appreciated their friendliness in coming to our support.

“But I am told that the secret of the present attitude of our French critics is that they cannot forgive us for having used the soil of France in order to defend our own.  Is this quite fair or even decent?  Let me refresh their memory of the motive that brought us into this War.  The true motive was not to be found in the duty imposed upon us by Germany’s breach of the Belgian Treaty, though that in itself furnished us with an unanswerable reason.  The true motive was our desire to help you.  We had nothing in those days to fear for ourselves.  We knew that our Fleet was strong enough to protect our own shores.  We had not yet appreciated the submarine menace; we did not recognise what your loss of the Channel ports might mean for us.  We entered the War because we could not look on and see you overwhelmed.

“You complain, again, that, in contrast to yourselves, we have got all we wanted out of the War.  As a fact we wanted nothing; but let that pass.  You point to the destruction of the German Fleet as if it were a private gain for us and us alone, and not the removal of a danger to the whole world.  And what of the German armies—­now in process of reduction to a mere police force?  Did you derive no advantage from the overthrow of a system which was always a greater menace to you than the German Fleet ever was to us?  And, though we did not pretend to be a military nation, had we not some little share in that achievement?

“And what of your revanche?  How do the German Colonies, which we have freed and now hold in trust—­how do these compare with your solid recovery of Alsace-Lorraine?  No, you have not come badly out of Armageddon.