God, forbid! So says the whole English-speaking race, you on your side of the sea, and we on ours.

But the feeling of abhorrence which is not, at such a moment as this, sternly and incessantly translated into deeds is of no account!  So let me return to a last survey of the War.  On my home journey from Nancy, I passed through Paris, and was again welcomed at G.H.Q. on my way to Boulogne.  In Paris, the breathless news of the Germans’ quickening retreat on the Somme and the Aisne was varied one morning by the welcome tidings of the capture of Bagdad; and at the house of one of the most distinguished of European publicists, M. Joseph Reinach, of the Figaro, I met, on our passage through, the lively, vigorous man, with his look of Irish vivacity and force—­M.  Painleve—­who only a few days later was to succeed General Lyautey as French Minister for War.  At our own headquarters, I found opinion as quietly confident as before.  We were on the point of entering Bapaume; the “pushing up” was going extraordinarily well, owing to the excellence of the staff-work, and the energy and efficiency of all the auxiliary services—­the Engineers, and the Labour Battalions, all the makers of roads and railways, the builders of huts, and levellers of shell-broken ground.  And the vital importance of the long struggle on the Somme was becoming every day more evident.  Only about Russia, both in Paris and at G.H.Q., was there a kind of silence which meant great anxiety.  Lord Milner and General Castelnau had returned from Petrograd.  In Paris, at any rate, it was not believed that they brought good news.  All the huge efforts of the Allies to supply Russia with money, munitions, and transport, were they to go for nothing, owing to some sinister and thwarting influence which seemed to be strangling the national life?

Then a few days after my return home, the great explosion came, and when the first tumult and dust of it cleared away, there, indeed, was a strangely altered Europe!  From France, Great Britain, and America went up a great cry of sympathy, of congratulation.  The Tsardom was gone!—­the “dark forces” had been overthrown; the political exiles were free; and Freedom seemed to stand there on the Russian soil shading her bewildered eyes against the sun of victory, amazed at her own deed.

But ten weeks have passed since then, and it would be useless to disguise that the outburst of warm and sincere rejoicing that greeted the overthrow of the Russian autocracy has passed once more into anxiety.  Is Russia going to count any more in this great struggle for a liberated Europe, or will the forces of revolution devour each other, till in the course of time the fated “saviour of society” appears, and old tyrannies come back?  General Smuts, himself the hero of a national struggle which has ended happily for both sides and the world, has been giving admirable expression here to the thoughts of many hearts.  First of all to the emotion with which all lovers