'Above all we may be sure that his attention is concentrated on England and Germany. So long as Germany remains aloof and feelings of bitterness against the Allies are allowed to grow still more acute, Lenin can rub his hands with glee; what he fears more than anything is the first sign that the sores caused by five years of war are being healed, and that England, France, and Germany are preparing to treat one another as neighbours, who have each their several parts to play in the restoration of normal economic conditions in Europe.' As to the policy of preventing Germany's economic restoration for fear that she should once more possess the raw material of military power, this writer declares that it is precisely that Carthaginian policy (embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) which Lenin would most of all desire:-- 'As a trained economist we may be sure that he looks first and foremost at the widespread economic chaos. We can imagine his chuckle of satisfaction when he sees the European exchanges getting steadily worse and national antagonisms growing more acute. Disputes about territorial questions are to him so much grist to the Bolshevik mill, as they all tend to obscure the fundamental question of the economic reconstruction of Europe, without which no country in Europe can consider itself safe from Bolshevism. 'He must realise to the full the lamentable condition of the finances of the new States in Central and South-east Europe.' In putting forward these views, The _New Europe_ is by no means alone. Already in January, 1920, Mr J. L. Garvin had declared what indeed was obvious, that it was out of the question to expect to build a new Europe on the simultaneous hostility of Germany _and_ Russia. 'Let us face the main fact. If there is to be no peace with the Bolshevists _there must be an altogether different understanding with Germany.... For any sure and solid barrier against the external consequences of Bolshevism Germany is essential._' Barely six months later Mr Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War in the British Cabinet, chooses the _Evening News_, probably the arch-Hun-Hater of all the English Press, to open out the new policy of Alliance with Germany against Russia. He says:-- 'It will be open to the Germans ... by a supreme effort of sobriety, of firmness, of self-restraint, and of courage--undertaken, as most great exploits have to be, under conditions of peculiar difficulty and discouragement--to build a dyke of peaceful, lawful, patient strength and virtue against the flood of red barbarism flowing from the East, and thus safeguard their own interests and the interests of their principle antagonists in the West.