Test the nature of our feelings by what was after all perhaps the most dramatised situation in the whole drama: the fact that in the Western world a single man, or a little junta of military chiefs, could by a word send nations into war, millions to their death; and--worse still in a sense--that those millions would accept the fact of thus being made helpless pawns, and with appalling docility, without question, kill and be killed for reasons they did not even know. It must be made impossible ever again for half a dozen Generals or Cabinet Ministers thus to play with nations and men and women as with pawns. The War is at last over. And in Eastern Europe, the most corrupt, as it was one of the potentially most powerful of all the military autocracies--that of the Czar--has either gone to pieces from its own rottenness, or been destroyed by the spontaneous uprising of the people. Bold experiments, in entirely new social and economic methods, are attempted in this great community which may have so much to teach the Western world, experiments which challenge not only old political institutions, but old economic ones as well. But the men who were the Czar's Ministers are still in Paris and London, in close but secret confabulation with Allied Governments. And one morning we find that we are at war with the first Workers' Republic of the world, the first really to try a great social experiment. There had been no declaration, no explanation. President Wilson had, indeed, said that nothing would induce the Allies to intervene. Their behaviour on that point would be the 'acid test' of sincerity. But in Archangel, Murmansk, Vladivostock, the Crimea, on the Polish border, on the shores of the Caspian, our soldiers were killing Russians, or organising their killing; our ships sank Russian ships and bombarded Russian cities. We found that we were supporting the Royalist parties--military leaders who did not hide in the least their intention to restore the monarchy. But again, there is no explanation. But somewhere, for some purpose undefined, killing has been proclaimed. And we kill--and blockade and starve.