ek just as they are now
occupying themselves with the war, and one paper actually devoting a
special edition to a single word in my play, which is more than it has
done for the Treaty of London (1839). I concluded then that this was a
country which really could not be taken seriously. But the habits of a
lifetime are not so easily broken; and I am not afraid to produce
another dead silence by renewing my good advice, as I can easily recover
my popularity by putting still more shocking expressions into my next
play, especially now that events have shewn that I was right on the
point of foreign policy.

*East Is East; and West Is West.*

I repeat, then, that there should be a definite understanding that
whatever may happen or not happen further east, England, France, and
Germany solemnly pledge themselves to maintain the internal peace of the
west of Europe, and renounce absolutely all alliances and engagements
that bind them to join any Power outside the combination in military
operations, whether offensive or defensive, against one inside it. We
must get rid of the monstrous situation that produced the present war.
France made an alliance with Russia as a defence against Germany.
Germany made an alliance with Austria as a defence against Russia.
England joined the Franco-Russian alliance as a defence against Germany
and Austria. The result was that Germany became involved in a quarrel
between Austria and Russia. Having no quarrel with France, and only a
second-hand quarrel with Russia, she was, nevertheless, forced to attack
France in order to disable her before she could strike Germany from
behind when Germany was fighting France's ally, Russia. And this attack
on France forced England to come to the rescue of England's ally,
France. Not one of the three nations (as distinguished from their tiny
Junker-Militarist cliques) wanted to fight; for England had nothing to
gain and Germany had everything to lose, whilst France had given up hope
of her Alsace-Lorraine _revanche_, and would certainly not have hazarded
a war for it. Yet because Russia, who has a great deal to gain by
victory and nothing except military prestige to lose by defeat, had a
quarrel with Austria over Servia, she has been able to set all three
western friends and neighbours shedding "rivers of blood" from one
another's throats; an outrageous absurdity. Fifty years ago the notion
of England helping Russia and Japan to destroy Germany would have seemed