In Europe and in England, however, the case was different. International relations were better understood by those who were closer to them than we were; more questions were raised and more demands made. Hence the Allied politicians and propagandists were kept busy upon the defensive. When from time to time the voice of popular discontent or of some influential body of opinion insisted on a statement of the causes of the war or of the war-aims of the Allies, they were confronted with the politician's traditional difficulty. They had to say something plausible and satisfactory, which yet must be something that effectively hid the truth of the situation. As the war hung on, their difficulty became desperate and they threw consistency to the winds, telling any sort of story that would enable them for the moment to "get by." The publication of the secret treaties which had been seined out of the quagmire of the old Russian Foreign Office by the revolutionists made no end of trouble for them. It is amusing now to remember how promptly these treaties were branded by the British Foreign Office as forgeries; especially when it turned out that the actual terms of the armistice--not the nominal terms, which were those of Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points, but the actual terms--were the terms of the secret treaties! The publication of the secret treaties in this country did not contribute much towards a disillusionment of the public; the press as a rule ignored or lied about them, they were not widely read, and few who did read them had enough understanding of European affairs to interpret them. But abroad they put a good deal of fat into the fire; and this was a specimen of the kind of thing that the Allied politicians had to contend with in their efforts to keep their peoples in line.