an cast out Satan; but as the job is not exactly
one for an unfallen angel, we may as well let him have a try.

*The Blank Cheque.*

In the meantime behold us again hopelessly outwitted by Eastern
diplomacy as a direct consequence of this ill-starred outburst of
hypocrisy about treaties! Everybody has said over and over again that
this war is the most tremendous war ever waged. Nobody has said that
this new treaty is the most tremendous blank cheque we have ever been
forced to sign by our Parliamentary party trick of striking moral
attitudes. It is true that Mr. J.A. Hobson realised the situation at
once, and was allowed to utter a little croak in a corner; but where was
the trumpet note of warning that should have rung throughout the whole
Press? Just consider what the blank cheque means. France's draft on it
may stop at the cost of recovering Alsace and Lorraine. We shall have to
be content with a few scraps of German colony and the heavy-weight
championship. But Russia? When will she say "Hold! Enough!" Suppose she
wants not only Poland, but Baltic Prussia? Suppose she wants
Constantinople as her port of access to the unfrozen seas, in addition
to the dismemberment of Austria? Suppose she has the brilliant idea of
annexing all Prussia, for which there is really something to be said by
ethnographical map-makers, Militarist madmen, and Pan-Slavist
megalomaniacs? It may be a reasonable order; but it is a large one; and
the fact that we should have been committed to it without the knowledge
of Parliament, without discussion, without warning, without any sort of
appeal to public opinion or democratic sanction, by a stroke of Sir
Edward Grey's pen within five weeks of his having committed us in the
same fashion to an appalling European war, shews how completely the
Foreign Office has thrown away all pretence of being any less absolute
than the Kaiser himself. It simply offers _carte blanche_ to the armies
of the Allies without a word to the nation until the cheque is signed.
The only limit there is to the obligation is the certainty that the
cheque will be dishonoured the moment the draft on it becomes too heavy.
And that may furnish a virtuous pretext for another war between the
Allies themselves. In any case no treaty can save each Ally from the
brute necessity of surrendering and paying up if beaten, whether the
defeat is shared by the others or not. Did I not say that the sooner we
made up our minds to the terms of