America has for the moment withdrawn from the European chaos. Her reasons for doing so are intelligible, but the result has been a disaster for the rest of the world. It is not a question, as so many Americans think, of a desire to exploit the better financial position of the United States. It is because America with many faults and crudities has a driving power of idealism behind her--the same motive force which brought her into the war. Some American business men and supporters of the great financial interests have sought--as is the habit of their kind--to exploit the post-war situation to their own profit. As against this must be set qualities of a very different character among the mass of the people. America’s absence from the European council-chamber involves the loss of a great influence at once restraining and constructive. We cannot measure fully as yet the infinite damage caused by her withdrawal from the task of Reconstruction. We know, however, that no blow since the Peace has been so severe. America was particularly fortunate in some of the representatives sent to Europe during the war--men of the highest capacity and honour. Through her absence every undesirable force or principle has gathered weight. Conversely every force working for good has been weakened. The rest of the world looks on in an attitude as helpless as that of the former combatants, as month by month the shattered fabric of European life sags yet wider. The post-war chaos appears so complete that men turn from it in despair. Moral disillusion and weariness have their counterparts in recklessness and wild extravagance. There is a sense of an approaching Twilight of the Gods; of a collapse of the foundations of society. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, on the brink of the chasm though it be, before the darkness swallows us up.