some energy in Russia or keep upon them. Single-mindedness out of it altogether. The is as far beyond their reach as policy of sending a handful justice. They negotiated with of men at a time is expensive Germany while their thoughts both in lives and money. were far away. "Mr Wilson Moreover, it is not likely to had to keep his eye on Congress succeed. That we should do and on the Senate," said the what we can to save Russia political correspondent of the from the Red Terror should Times' one day. "Mr Lloyd be obvious to all, and had George had to remember his Mr Churchill refrained from electioneering pledges and obapology altogether we should tain recognition in some form have had a greater faith than or other for them in the Peace we have in his ability to Treaty." Never was a heavier settle difficult question. nor a juster indictment made But Mr Churchill, like Mr against those who boasted that Lloyd George, is afraid of the they were "plain men." So electorate, is afraid of the plain were they that they could House of Commons, is afraid not keep their eye on the of any organised mob of citi- Peace, they could not rememzens. And so long as fear ber what the business was dominates our politicians, we which brought them to Paris. can hope for peace neither at And their tricks and tergiverhome nor abroad. The same sations prove with a lucidity, spirit, which asks the country's fatal for their own pretensions, pardon for doing a hundredth that the representatives of part of its duty in Russia, in "great democracies are unsheer fright pays an unem- able to uphold the burden of ployment wage, subsidises the diplomacy. bakers that the proletariat may get cheap bread, and offers the working man for eight shillings a week a house which is worth twenty-one. So that it is a mere matter of time before we become dishonoured abroad and bankrupt at home, unless indeed at the eleventh hour statesmanship takes the place of panic fear. The representatives of the four Great Powers, then, have delayed the making of peace, to their own undoing and the undoing of others. They are as little able to help themselves as to help those dependent VOL. CCVI.-NO. MCCXLV. Our first duty was to see that Belgium came out of the war as strong and as prosperous as she went into it. The brave decision which she took to oppose the passage of German troops through her territory, the courage with which her small army withstood the assault of the German legions, entitled her not only to our respect, but to all the practioal help we could give to her. If ever there was a debt of honour, it was the debt we owed and still owe to Belgium. Even the Germans recognised their obligation, in words at least, and promised on a scrap K of paper to repair the damage which they had done. That damage is not repaired, and is not likely to be repaired. The Great Powers, in their tender solicitude for Germany, have discovered that the guilty nation cannot afford, without great inconvenience, to pay for the breakages in which during her years of triumph she loudly exulted. The peculiar savagery with which the Huns fell upon Belgium has left her towns and villages pulverised and bereft her of her wealth. Four and a half years of German occupation has completed the work begun by arson and destruction. The factories of Belgium, stripped with a cold deliberation of their machinery, will be useless for many a year to come. And what have the Allies done for Belgium? They have allotted to her, according to a well-informed correspondent in the 'Morning Post,' two milliards and a half of franos from the German indemnities. Of what use is that sum to Belgium? It does no more than pay back the sum which Germany exacted from Belgium during her oooupation-a sum which should have been restored, as a first charge, without discussion or argument. The Germans treated Belgium as burglars would treat a safe-deposit if they were fortunate enough to get into it, and they are permitted, by an inexcusable laxity, to merge the swag in an indemnity. And that is all the comfort which Belgium will receive. For her broken towns, her murdered citizens, her useless factories, the cost of the war— for all these she gets no compensation at all. The Allies, kindly still to the Germans, are content that Belgium shall suffer. They will not even compel the Huns to buy back at their face value the seven milliards and a half of marks which they forced upon the Belgians' acceptance, which have and already depreciated by some twothirds. No wonder that Belgium is unhappy and depressed. She rose in arms against a robber, and she is asked to pay for the robber's depredations. And we can easily believe that, as a consequence of the Allies' supineness, she will be driven back into the arms of the Germans. Such, indeed, is the opinion of the correspondent already cited. "The only remedy for Belgium " is, he writes, "having failed at the Peace Conference, to submit to the enemy's deliberate war policy. Germany destroyed Belgian industry in order that her viotim might be forced to purchase from the German industrial, and to-day Belgium finds that the Allied Powers are forcing her to inevitable acquiescence in the German plan." If this be so, the Allied Powers wear a stain of dishonour that shall never be washed away. After all, we begin to think that it is the Germans who have won the war. Their country is packed with loot and plunder. As no battle We know what she would have done with the pictures and statues and books and furniture which she had collected from Belgium and Northern France had victory been hers. Vast museums would have been built in Berlin to hold the stolen treasures. The Germans, systematic even in thieving, attached experts to their armies, and it was the experts' business to steal and catalogue while the fighting went on. M. Louis Marin, in a French parliamentary paper, has made a list of the German thefts, and has explained where the Germans had stored the loot, which they intended to send into the Fatherland. One depot at Brussels contained the costly spoils, gathered in 1917-18, of Lille, Douai, Cambrai, La Fère, and Laon. Neither museums nor private houses were spared. From the princes downward the Huns were accomplished robbers, and they did their work thoroughly. In the Palais de Justice at Brussels were 15,000 cases of books and MSS., collected from Valenciennes, Cambrai, Laon, and the rest, as well as from such private libraries as the Prince of Monaco's. The modern gallery at Brussels contained more than 2000 stolen oil-paintings, and there were large hoards also at Maubeuge, Charleville, Sedan, and Metz. The policy of the marauding Huns, in truth, was unsparing and deliberate. Had they won the war they would have left behind for their enemies not a book, not a painted canvas, not a piece of sculpture. And their policy should have given us a of the pictures as found no olue in diotating terms. Since homes in the public galleries they will not have expiated of the Allies might have been their sins until they have paid sold at auction for the benefit for the damage they have done, of the hapless nations, who see the Allies should have stripped no chance of recovering from Germany of all the works of Germany the money which is art which she possesses, and their due. This reasonable which she is not fit to possess. policy doubtless seemed harsh We might have left her for her to our plenipotentiaries, who enjoyment the works of Menzel, agree with the Huns in believLenbach, and other native ing that what is sauce for the painters, and taken from her goose is not sauce for the the masterpieces of Italy and gander—that the Huns may France and Spain, of Belgium steal a horse without offence, and Holland and England. where a Frenchman or an Here was a simple method of Englishman or a Belgian may paying a portion of the in- not look over the wall. So the demnities which she owes the Huns, beaten in war, are likely Allies; here was a simple to triumph in peace, because method of teaching the lesson our sentimental and never disthat they must be punished interested politicians find it who make war an exouse both amiable and profitable to for the stealing and deface- protect them from the conment of works of art. Such sequences of their crimes. Printed by William Blackwood and Sons. BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCCXLVI. AUGUST 1919, VOL. CCVI. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. IRELAND is happy in her harbours. Any one who has left on a summer evening the flat and forlorn shores of Lancashire, to arrive on a summer morning in Dublin Bay or Belfast Lough, will not need to be told this. As the boat enters Dublin Bay you see on the north "the ould Hill of Howth" rising steeply out of the sea, and on the south Killiney Hill, "with the spike on the top of it," and the noble piers of Kingstown at the bottom of it; while in front of you the long seawalls of the Liffey run into the shallow water as the sea-walls of the Porto di Lido run into the sandy Adriatio. In the same way, on reaching the entrance of Belfast Lough, you have on your left hand the Copeland Islands with their lighthouses, and behind them the soft heavily-wooded hills of Down; and on the right hand the black cliffs and stern bare mountains of VOL, CCVI.—NO. MCCXLVI. Antrim, with the castle of Carrickfergus standing in the sea like an Irish Chateau de Chillon. In both Bay and Lough you have a pearly sky above you and a pearly sea below you and a transparent haze all around you, through which you see on each side the little square thickly - hedged evergreen fields, and away in the distance the faint outlines shimmering in the early sun of the domes and spires of a great city. Travellers will always differ as to which of these scenes is the more fair; but travellers will always agree that both of them are superbly beautiful. Both, too, have 8 ologe family likeness: they are true offspring of the Irish land, light, and air. Once, however, your boat glides out of the Bay and between the seawalls of the Liffey and out of the Lough and into the artificial channel of the Lagan, all family likeness ends. The L |