It seems to me quite candidly that the time has come to separate Habsburg from Hohenzollern. We are willing to believe that you acted under duress. During the war you have not befouled your name beyond forgiveness: no Cavell or Fryatt looms up in judgment against you. Your base and cynical over-lord, having compelled you to a gamble in blood, now begins to exhibit the nakedness of soul of every cut-throat cut-purse who finds that he has caught a Tartar. I do not know that any deep hatred of Austria is nourished by anyone in the Allied countries who understands the inner economy of the Central Empires. A _locus pœnitentiæ_ will not be refused you. Come back to the civilisation to which you belong. Make it possible for me once again to renew our old Bruderschaft in Innsbruck, and to rejoice together that the Twilight of the Gods of Cruelty has deepened into enduring night. SILHOUETTES FROM THE FRONT I.--THE WAY TO THE TRENCHES They have a saying among the followers of Mohammed, “Shun him who has thrice made the pilgrimage to Mecca, the Holy City! His conversation is an offence.” It is, indeed, the vice of travellers that they will talk. No man is safe from us if only we have been anywhere he has not been--from Birr, as the song says, to Bareilly. But the temptation of the trenches is the most formidable of all. Who has resisted it? Raw and ripe we have each of us tried to daub his own picture of that amazing fact, of the strange shifts and incredible devisings to which civilised nations have been forced to resort in order to save civilisation. One brush will add a stroke that escapes another. All the brushes and books, and all the cinema films together will never come near the reality. That is the sole rationale of these thumb-nail silhouettes.