The first Brest-Litovsk Treaty has been signed, followed in nine days by the German invasion of Russia, an apt comment on what an English paper, by a misprint which is really an inspiration, calls “the Brest Nogotiations.”

The record of the Bolshevist regime is already deeply stained with the massacre of the innocents, but Lenin and Trotsky can plead an august example.  More than fourteen thousand British non-combatants—­men, women and children—­have been murdered by the Kaiser’s command.  And the rigorous suppression of the strikes in Berlin furnishes a useful test of his recent avowals of sympathy with democratic ideals.  By way of a set-off the German Press Bureau has circulated a legend of civil war in London, bristling with circumstantial inaccuracies.  The enemy’s successes in the field—­the occupation of Reval and the recapture of Trebizond—­are the direct outcome of the Russian debacle.  Our capture of Jericho marks a further stage in a sustained triumph of good generalship and hard fighting, which verifies an old prophecy current among the Arabs in Palestine and Syria, viz. that when the waters of the Nile flow into Palestine, a prophet from the West will drive the Turk out of the Arab countries.  The first part of the prophecy was fulfilled by the pipe-line which has brought Nile water (taken from the fresh-water canal) for the use of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force across the Sinai desert to the neighbourhood of Gaza.  The second part was fulfilled by the fact that General Allenby’s name is rendered in Arabic by exactly the same letters which form the words “El Nebi,” i.e. the Prophet.

[Illustration: 

THE LIBERATORS

FIRST BOLSHEVIK:  “Let me see; we’ve made an end of Law, Credit, Treaties, the Army and the Navy.  Is there anything else to abolish?”

SECOND BOLSHEVIK:  “What about War?”

FIRST BOLSHEVIK:  “Good!  And Peace too.  Away with both of ’em!”]

At home we have seen the end of the seventh session of a Parliament which by its own rash Act should have committed suicide two years ago.  Truly the Kaiser has a lot to answer for.  On the last day but one of the session 184 questions were put, the information extracted from Ministers being, as usual, in inverse ratio to the curiosity of the questioners.  The opening of the eighth session showed no change in this respect.  The debate on the Address degenerated into a series of personal attacks on the Premier by members who, not without high example, regard this as the easiest road to fame.  The only persons who have a right to congratulate themselves on the discussion are the members of the German General Staff, who may not have learned anything that they did not know before, but have undoubtedly had certain shrewd suspicions confirmed.  Mr. Bonar Law, in one of his engaging bursts of self-revelation, observed that he had no more interest in this Prime Minister than