hen, in death, suffering and that wealth which
represents the accumulated labour of men, have the liberties of Europe
been rescued from the German attack. We are victors indeed; we have
won to the shore; but the wreck of the tempest lies all round us; and
what is the future to be?

It is four months now, since, in the splendid rooms of the Villa
Murat, I listened to President Wilson describing the sitting of the
Conference at which the Resolution was passed constituting the League
of Nations--four months big with human fate. The terms of peace are
published, and at the present moment no one knows whether Germany will
sign them or no. The League of Nations is in existence. It has a home,
a Constitution, a Secretariat. But the outlook over Europe is still
dark and troubled, and the inner League of Three is still the surest
ground in the chaos, the starting-point of the future. The Peace Terms
are no final solution--how could they be? On their practical
execution, on their adaptation year by year to the new world coming
into being, all will depend. German militarism has met its doom. The
triumph of the Allies is more absolute than any of them could have
dreamed four years ago. Nor can the German crime ever be forgotten in
this generation, or the German peril ignored. The whole civilised
world must be--will be--the shield of France should any fresh outrage
threaten her. But after justice comes mercy. Because Germany has shown
herself a criminal nation, not all Germans are criminal. That same
British Army which as it fought its victorious way through the German
defences in the last four months of the war, and, while it fought the
enemy, fed and succoured at the same time 800,000 French
civilians--men and officers dividing their rations with starving women
and children, and in every pause of fighting, spending all their
energies in comforting the weak, the hungry, and the sick:--that very
Army is sorry now for the German women and children, as it sees them
in the German towns. It is our own soldiers who have been demanding
food and pity.

The Allies, indeed, have been for some time sending food to their
starving enemies. Mr. Hoover--all honour to the great man!--is
ceaselessly at work. If only no hitch in the Peace interrupts the
food-trains and the incoming ships, so that no more children die!

Some modifications in the Peace Terms would, clearly, be accepted by
the public opinion of the Allied countries. No one, I believ