* * The anniversary of the Declaration of War compels
us to contrast the condition of Europe to-day- with that of fourteen years ago. However fully and rightly we now try to work for the common good with the enemies of those days, and to forget and forgive the part they took, we have no right to relax our earnest feeling of thankfulness that the cause of the Allies was allowed to triumph, or to forget the responsibilities of victory. They lay upon us obligations to Europe which are no less serious because, happily, we can now share them in co-operation with the vanquished, or can shift on to the League of Nations, of which we are only a part, the responsibility of many decisions and the exercise of some authority. Perhaps the worst blot upon Europe now is the condition of several " minority " populations, and for this every signatory of the pertinent treaties bears responsibility. There are other sources of uneasi- ness, such as the eastern frontiers of Germany and her neighbours. For these the time must soon come for consideration, when cool and judicious consideration is possible. So, too, with the intransigeanee of Poland and Lithuania, Rumania and Hungary. *
