Ten years after the beginning of the war there is no sense of security
in Europe or the world. “The war to end war,” as it was called, has
done nothing of the kind. Beneath the surface of the present peace
there is a lava of hatreds and resentments which bode ill for the
future peace of the world. There are larger standing armies in Europe
now than in 1913. There are more causes of quarrel, and none of the
old quarrels have been extinguished—those racial rivalries, those
national ambitions, that commercial competition. The war settled no
argument for more than a period of exhaustion. The idea of a “world
safe for democracy” is falsified ten years after by a swing-back
to extreme forms of nationalism and autocratic government through
the greater part of Europe excepting the British Isles and France.
The German Republic, established after annihilating defeat, is only
biding its time for the return of monarchy, and its present government
is anti-democratic. Parliamentary institutions, the safeguard of
democracy, have been overthrown or contemptuously treated in many
nations. Italy, Spain and Hungary are under military dictatorships.
Russia is governed by a new-fangled tyranny under which there is no
liberty of speech, conscience or economic life. Turkey, powerful again,
is ruled by a committee of generals. Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Belgium,
are in military alliance with France which, under Poincaré, ridiculed
the possibilities of peace based on the goodwill of its neighbours, and
relied for safety on a supreme army and the rule of Force.