hese Eastern nations
were not far removed from a savage state. Their economics were yet at
the stage of scratching the earth and feeding the pigs. The
highly-developed material civilisation of Europe could not allow itself
to be disturbed by a war. The industry and the finance could not allow
themselves to be disorganised by the ambitions of an idle class, or even
the aspirations, whatever they might be, of the masses.

Very plausible all this sounded. War does not pay. There had been a
book written on that theme--an attempt to put pacificism on a material
basis. Nothing more solid in the way of argument could have been
advanced on this trading and manufacturing globe. War was "bad
business!" This was final.

But, truth to say, on this July day I reflected but little on the
condition of the civilised world. Whatever sinister passions were
heaving under its splendid and complex surface, I was too agitated by a
simple and innocent desire of my own, to notice the signs or interpret
them correctly. The most innocent of passions will take the edge off
one's judgment. The desire which possessed me was simply the desire to
travel. And that being so it would have taken something very plain in
the way of symptoms to shake my simple trust in the stability of things
on the Continent. My sentiment and not my reason was engaged there. My
eyes were turned to the past, not to the future; the past that one cannot
suspect and mistrust, the shadowy and unquestionable moral possession the
darkest struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace.

In the preceding month of May we had received an invitation to spend some
weeks in Poland in a country house in the neighbourhood of Cracow, but
within the Russian frontier. The enterprise at first seemed to me
considerable. Since leaving the sea, to which I have been faithful for
so many years, I have discovered that there is in my composition very
little stuff from which travellers are made. I confess that my first
impulse about a projected journey is to leave it alone. But the
invitation received at first with a sort of dismay ended by rousing the
dormant energy of my feelings. Cracow is the town where I spent with my
father the last eighteen months of his life. It was in that old royal
and academical city that I ceased to be a child, became a boy, had known
the friendships, the admirations, the thoughts and the indignations of
that age. It was within those historical w