The next day I discussed with a young, curly-headed Communist whose English was better than my own the wonders of art in Moscow. “Yes, yes,” he said, “We were never able to have anything like that in London. It cost too much. And the cheap seats were always full. It is very fine indeed. But let me whisper something,” and here he gave a half-rueful, mischievous smile, “it would be good to see and hear dear old George Robey again!” CHAPTER VII The Military Power of Russia It is fondly to be hoped that when these words come to be printed, peace between Russia and Poland will have been satisfactorily established. The need of Europe and the world for a real peace and the awful possibilities of the alternative ought to be the subject of everybody’s prayer and the impulse to everybody’s endeavour until peace becomes an accomplished fact. The situation as it now stands is this. The Russians have everywhere defeated the Poles, as they told us they would, and are threatening to move on Warsaw. The Poles have cried to the Allies for help. The Allies have sent a note to Russia asking for an armistice between Russia and Poland on certain well-defined terms. The Russians have replied carefully, expressing a desire for peace, but requesting the Poles themselves to sue for it, and promising them better terms than the Allies themselves suggest in the matter of their boundary line. The territory claimed by the Poles and for which they entered upon this foolish and wicked adventure is an area of about four hundred square miles, containing a population which is not ten per cent Polish. The remaining ninety per cent do not wish to belong to the Polish Empire. The claim of the Poles to this territory is of the shadowiest description and dates back to the time when the United States of America was still a part of the British Empire. Undoubtedly, the claim upon this land rests upon the ambition of the Poles to make it a jumping-off ground for an imperialist adventure which would establish Polish rule from Warsaw to Odessa. No Russian Government, whatever its name or quality, would accept such an arrangement, and it is the most natural thing in the world that the insolent campaign of Poland should have united behind the Soviet Republic every section of the Russian populace.