By a strange turn of fate, I meditate this fragment of past memories down by the waters of Old Nile. Behind me rise the columns of a temple, whose capitals portray the Lotus and Papyrus, signs of the River God. Before me lies the tank, where the god lived three thousand years ago. By the same path on which I stand were hurried shrieking victims, as sacrifices to a crocodile, an animal so dangerous to river folk that they worshipped it, and sought to propitiate the object of their fear with their own flesh and blood. Man’s nature has changed little since those days; his cruelty takes more subtle forms, but is not a whit less harsh. His god is Mammon, and his victims the poor and weak, or those who, by innate superiority, are an unconscious menace and reproach. The sacrificial act does not consist in killing--to Mammon, oblations must be made in such a way as not to roughly kill the victims but first to spoil their lives. CHAPTER XI THE DISASTER IN RUMANIA--1916 During the early months of 1916, Bucharest had been comparatively neglected by the Foreign Offices of the belligerent States. So far as could be seen, the Central Empires had abandoned the hope of obtaining Rumanian co-operation against Russia. Count Czernin[25] had expressed himself openly to that effect, and his German colleague, though more discreet, in all probability shared his views. The French and Italian Ministers were a prey to exasperation and suspicions; to them it seemed outrageous that a little Latin State should refuse to act on French advice or to follow Italy’s example; their prejudices warped their judgment, they lost their sense of dignity, and sank to the level of mere partisans. Such men could not influence the coldly logical mind of Bratiano, who treated them with scorn. The British and Russian Ministers were the buttresses of allied diplomacy in Bucharest. Both stood for so much; one was the spokesman of a people whose good faith and love of fair play were still unquestioned, the other was the envoy of the only Allied Power in direct contact with Rumania, a Power whose past conduct had justified mistrust but whose size inspired fear. Through no fault of their own, these two men were unable to exert their proper influence; neither of them had definite instructions from his Government, and both had learned, from past experience, that under such conditions it was better to “wait and see.” To any dispassionate observer on the spot, this meant--to wait on events and see disaster come.