nyone, while the
_Triple Entente_ before it is eight years old has involved Europe,
America, Africa, and Asia in a world conflict. We must find the motive
for England allying herself with France and Russia in an admittedly
anti-German "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the
present war and why it is that many besides Bernard Shaw hold that
"after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was
idle for the British Government to assume a death-bed solicitude
for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel
for the gun. When that motive is apparent we shall realise who it
was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any
certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal
to arms.

The _Entente Cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. There is nothing
in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone
else. It is wrongly named. It is founded not on predilections but on
prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. To put it crudely it is
a bond of hate not of love. None of the parties to it like or admire
each other, or have consistent aims, save one.

That satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the
greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their
ensuing quarrel.

Great Britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all)
is a democracy.

Russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy.

Great Britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her
dealings with the great white communities of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa. She is not democratic in her dealings with
subject races within the Empire--the Indians, notably, or the Irish.
To the Indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing
in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by
force; to the Irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating
the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing
them with cattle for British consumption.

In both instances Britain is notably false to her professions of
devotion to democratic principles. Her affinity with Russia is found
then, not in the cases where her institutions are good, but in those
where they are bad.

An alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil.

To such it gave birth in Persia, to such it must give birth in the
present war.

In Persia we saw it b