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Caption: Convocation - 1921 (Armistice Day)
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became clear, was the insubstantial fabric < l a dream. Ind > lg V'K/ate it U*. ;il liovc firmly in anti-trust Ici'isl m and ollcn ilmouin "b\y l>usincss^H__ merely be tuse it is big, thereby affirmin in one breath th i ai <, individuals competiti< n is life and among nations if is the ontrary. #f**" But it" internationalism—in the sen e that Mr. II. ( Well t instance, understands the word—seems much luiilin off now than IOC I And this is the third and last point to which I referre 1 a win! ago jg0D as one of the lessons of the war. K\ n in this i . at first, it seems 0| f as if we are on doubttul ground. • ^^ Kings, it is true, have become largely a dead i ue. William Hohenzollern, a broken half-imbecile old man, h putterin about the ^ grounds of a Dutch country house; the former hmperor of Austria is on his way to unknown exile; he who was a Czar of all the Russians lies somewhere in an unmarked, hasty, and bloody n\ ve. :,r • There is hardly a sovereign by blood of any real political importance trut|] in the world any more, and the "divine right" is as impossible to time bring again into existence as the mastodon. But are democracies 6 ~b any safer for the world than they were before the war: CTW Russia has gone farther along the line of democratic *also L^ theory than in any other country. The rights of man as Gcr man are more emphasized in the plan of the Soviet government than in any other. Believe that Lenin, Trotzkv, and the rest are mere human devils greedy for power or believe them to lead be sincere intelligent lovers of humanity, it is all one. Their system now ow of democracy without training has made Russia a ghastly caricature « n of a nation, in which millions starve on grass and roots, and the j. 8 dire bodies of little children are carried daily in" wagons like garbage and unt dumped by hundreds into great pits. Russia is the reductio ad abl F surdum of democratic theory, the unspeakably horrible example of a Wa country which has escaped from tyranny before it was ready for abl< freedom. And what of the western democracies of Europe—Em*- I } a land (monarchial in name only), France, and the new Germany? France and Germany are both near financial ruin; Germany is bankrupt and France is nearly so. It can be a matter of only a few IK months now when Germany will announce her complete inability Yo pay even the interest on her debt of reparations. France, which has ^ _ rid been clinging to the slender hope of these payments to'reduce the X fearful burden of her national debts, will then demand the Ruhr \ \\^ ley. If she takes it, she will be financially no better off; to hold it and 0t develop it will cost her all she could get from it in taxes and tradeprofits. And what will follow on her discovery that she is no better off, no man can prophesy, except that it will be perilous to her national existence. mi 12
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