I

THE TREATY OF PEACE

5

reach her. Europe is apart and England is notof her flesh and body. But Europe is solidwith herself. France, Germany, Italy, Austria ,and Holland, Russia and Roumania andPoland , throb together, and their structure andcivilisation are essentially one. They flourishedtogether, they have rocked together in a war,which we, in spite of our enormous contribu-tions and sacrifices, (like though in a less degreethan America) economically stood outside, andthey may fall together. In this lies the destruc-tive significance of the Peace of Paris. If theEuropean Civil War is to end with France andItaly abusing their momentary victorious powerto destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary nowprostrate, they invite their own destruction also,being so deeply and inextricably intertwinedwith their victims by hidden psychic and eco-nomic bonds. At any rate an Englishman whotook part in the Conference of Paris and wasduring those months a member of the SupremeEconomic Council of the Allied Powers, wasbound to become, for him a new experience, aEuropean in his cares and outlook. There, atthe nerve centre of the European system, hisBritish preoccupations must largely fall awayand he must be haunted by other and moredreadful spectres. Paris was a nightmare, andevery one there was morbid. A sense of im-pending catastrophe overhung the frivolousscene; the futility and smallness of man beforethe great events confronting him; the mingledsignificance and unreality of the decisions;