row a view, because all summary judgments of foreign nations are that, whether they end in praise or blame. "La noble, l'incomparable Angleterre" of M. Briand is just as remote from fact as the "brutal and bloody Britain" of Mr. Hearst. Nations are made up of masses of individuals, who differ among themselves within each nation just about as much as the citizens of one nation differ from those of another. In every nation there are numbers of criminals and numbers of fine men. In every nation's past there are black places and white. Only it so happens that just now, after a time of hideous suffering and wrong-doing, in the midst of a time of savage resentments and passions and great material difficulties, the nations of the world are from the depth of their hearts longing for some way of avoiding war and treating one another in future a little more openly and fairly than they have in the past. They know they must have disputes, and that when the disputes come it is one of two things; they must either talk them out or fight them out. They are meeting to talk them out. But how can the talk be quite frank and free, or how can the promises of peace and fair dealing carry full conviction, while the greatest and the least wounded of all the nations refuses to join in them, but sits aloof in silence, from time to time sharpening her sword? G. M. OF FOREIGN POLICY CHAPTER I GERMANY AND FRANCE I. THE PREDICAMENT OF GERMANY A FRIEND of mine was recently travelling in Germany in a third-class railway carriage. The engine was slow and in lack of oil. The carriages, once so clean, warm, and well lighted, were unlit, dirty, and bitterly cold. There was an air of broken nerves and misery among the passengers, and one woman was still sobbing from some indignity offered to her by a foreign official in the occupied area. Presently an old gentleman, apparently a lawyer of some eminence, broke out: "A reckoning must come. My little grandchildren are drinking in revenge with their mother's milk. In thirty years or thereabouts we shall settle accounts with France, and then we shall make" he swept the air with his hand-"tabula rasa!" |