As to the whole business, my experience has, I suppose,
been everyone's, that the dominant emotion provoked in the first instance by the Paris news was not indignation —that came later—but stupefaction. " Simply in- credible " was the prevalent comment last week, " Worse and worse " on Monday, when the White Paper, with its disclosure of British pressure on the Emperor appeared. The ultimate. and enduring emotion, as the thing sank in, and the comments came in from every country in the world, . are a universal sense of humiliation and shame. The debate in the House may have done something to dispel that before these lines appear, but there is no visible reason for believing it will. The single con- solation is that the national revolt against the Paris plan has been so astonishing that foreign (and Dominion) commentators are finding it necessary to revise their first verdicts. But their first verdicts were just enough —however unpalatable contempt from Warsaw may be.
* * * *
Previous page
