France, under the leadership of Poincaré, scoffed from the beginning at the League of Nations, although supporting it over the Corfu incident, and although one representative, M. Léon Bourgeois, was a loyal friend of the League idea. After the refusal of the United States to ratify the pact of security for France against another war of German aggression, followed by the withdrawal of Great Britain, the France of Poincaré saw no safety except in the power of her Army in alliance with other forces which she could link in a military chain around her defeated enemies. No one ought to blame France for that philosophy, in view of her agony and her future peril. But it resulted inevitably in actions which checked the recovery of Europe, aroused all the old hatreds, filled the defeated peoples with a sense of profound injustice, and raised the old devils of national pride, vengeance, and belief in force which for a time had been banished to the houses of the German Junkers and had lain low in German hearts. It was the cause of increasing friction, spasms of passionate ill-will, between France and England, and a long campaign of scurrilous abuse in the French Press which poisoned the old Entente Cordiale, wiped out the memories of war comradeship, and was a tragic and painful chapter in recent history. France under Poincaré demanded her pound of flesh from Germany, including the lifeblood of the German people in the arteries of its economic health. Germany could not recover nor, before recovering, pay. Afterwards, when the Ruhr was invaded, their chief source of wealth and of payment was strangled. The French objects of “security” and “reparations” were in hopeless antagonism, and defeated each other. There could be no reparations, on a large scale, if French security demanded the expulsion of those who directed and worked the Ruhr and its railways. There could be no “security” for France in the long run if, instead of German reparations, she goaded the German people into nationalism and a war of vengeance by every means, fair or foul. While the policy of Poincaré was dominant, Europe sank deep into despair, and the nations most stricken by war saw no hope of revival. The first three years after the world war provided terrible proofs of the disaster which had happened to humanity in that deadly struggle. Those who wish to convince the future generations of the devastating effect of modern warfare upon highly organised nations, as a frightful warning, must summon up the picture of Europe in 1919, 1920 and 1921. I saw it from end to end, and it haunted me. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION