The peasants, who form the enormous mass of the Russian people, look with terror on the old regime.  They have occupied the land and will maintain that occupation; they do not want the return of the great Russian princes who possessed lands covering provinces and were even ignorant of their possessions.  One of the causes which has permitted Bolshevism to last is, as I have said, the attitude of the Entente, which on many occasions has shown the greatest sympathy for the men of the old regime.  The Tsar of Russia was an insignificant man, all the Grand Dukes were persons without dignity and without credit, and the Court and Government abounded with men without scruples—­violent, thieves, and drunkards.  If Bolshevik government had been ruin, no one can deny but that a great part of the blame belongs to the old regime, the return of which no honest man desires.

An error not less serious was to allow Poland to occupy large tracts of purely Russian territory.

There remain in Europe, therefore, so many states of unrest which do not only concern the conditions of the conquered countries, but also those of the conquering countries.  We have already seen how Germany and the States which form part of her group cannot now any longer represent a danger of war for many years to come, and that none the less the victorious countries and the new States continue to arm themselves in a most formidable manner.  We have seen what an element of disorder Poland has become and how the policy of the Entente towards Russia has constituted a permanent danger.

But all Europe is still uncertain and the ground is so movable that any new construction threatens ruin.  Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, cannot live under the conditions imposed on them by the treaties.  But the new States for the most part are themselves in a sufficiently serious position.

With the exception of Finland all the other States which have arisen on the ruins of the Russian Empire are in serious difficulty.  If Esthonia and Lithuania are in a fairly tolerable situation Lettonia is in real ruin, and hunger and tuberculosis rule almost everywhere, as in many districts of Poland and Russia.  At Riga hunger and sickness have caused enormous losses amongst the population.  Recently 15,000 children were in an extremely serious physical and mental condition.  In a single dispensary, of 663 children who were brought for treatment 151 were under-nourished, 229 were scrofulous, 66 anaemic, and 217 suffering from rickets.  The data published in England and the United States and those of the Red Cross of Geneva are terrible.

Even with the greatest imagination it is difficult to think how Hungary and Austria can live and carry out, even in the smallest degree, the obligations imposed by the treaties.  By a moral paradox, besides living they must indemnify the victors, according to the Treaties of St. Germain and the Trianon, for all the damages which the War has brought on themselves and which the victors have suffered.