In Lorraine, at any rate, and for
the first time, I felt this "something" gone. Let us only carry forward
_intelligently_, after the war, the process of friendship born from the
stress and anguish of this time--for there is an art and skill in
friendship, just as there is an art and skill in love--and new horizons
will open for both nations. The mutual respect, the daily intercourse,
and the common glory of our two armies fighting amid the fields and
woods of France--soon to welcome a third army, your own, to their great
fellowship!--are the foundations to-day of all the rest; and next come
the efforts that have been made by British and Americans to help the
French in remaking and rebuilding their desolated land, efforts that
bless him that gives and him that takes, but especially him that gives;
of which I shall have more to say in the course of this letter. But a
common victory, and a common ardour in rebuilding the waste places, and
binding up the broken-hearted: even they will not be enough, unless,
beyond the war, all three nations, nay, all the Allies, do not set
themselves to a systematic interpenetration of life and thought,
morally, socially, commercially.
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