TOPICS OF THE DAY.

A LESSON FROM HISTORY.

IT is always a hard task to stop a war, but that task is rendered 'far harder when, however good your intentions or however necessary your acts, you are in effect interfering in the internal affairs of some other country. In the last resort such interference is almost sure to bring disaster, even if your motives are of the purest, and you are honestly trying to help the country to free itself from the curse of sonic awful tyranny. The case is no better when your interference is really defensive, to prevent yourself your being attacked by an evil Government—whether that of a military adventurer or of an anarchic oligarchy, whose avowed object is to conquer and subdue its neighbours, an object made none the better for being dressed up with talk about humanity; fraternity, and liberty.

Whenever your war is not against the cause of a whole people, you will have, of course, a proportion of the population on your side, large or small according to the degree in which the Government are detested. But then you are tempted to enrol these people as combatants, and when you have done that you have made engagements of the kind that cannot be broken without dishonour, and yet engagements which may turn out to be well-nigh impossible of fulfilment. At the best such an adventure is full of peril and anxiety, and at the worst you actually do the very thing which you set out to negative. You rivet the tyrant's chains upon the unfortunate people whom you meant to save. You may thereby turn the vilest kind of usurper—the sort of man who if left alone was bound to go down in a welter of blood and mud—into a national hero. You hammer and anneal the soft metal of anarchy into a fine steel blade which may be used to wound you deeply.

If we do not try to stir the British people into action against the Bolsheviks, it is not because we take the selfish or cynical view that the miseries of the vast Russian population do not concern us, or becausewe do not realize that the Bolsheviks are probably the worst enemies that civilization, justice, hunianity, and all the things we care for have ever had. We see also very clearly the dangers of political and moral infection which the great putrefying sore of Ruetia causes.

The history of the French Revolution and of our attempts at intervention impresses us profoundly with the danger of the foreigner interfering with the domestic concerns of any country, and this however great the moral justification for such interference, and however much it may seem to be called for by the best people in the country which is being destroyed by anarchy. External interference in the Revolution gave some of the best elements in France an excuse not to do their prime duty—the putting down of the Jacobins and destroying the bloodthirsty enemies of humanity who maintained the Terror. It incited them rather to wave their swords and, full of patriotic zeal, to rush to the frontier and hurl themselves upon the friendly invader. They loathed the wild beasts of the Committee of Public Safety, but they loathed the foreigner on the soil of France even more. In fine, patriotism became a sort of anodyne with which men drugged their souls. It allowed them to give the home tyrants a free hand. • If we and the other European Powers had not interfered in the affairs of France, the Terror would have destroyed itself, and Europe would never have had a Napoleon or twenty years of Consular and Napoleonic warfare. This, we greatly fear, is the. situation that is being repeated in .Russia. We have been unintentionally giving thousands and thousands of Russians an excuse for tolerating Trotsky and Lenin in the name of the higher patriotism. If we go on with that process, we may produce yet another monster like Napoleon, who, though he may be unsuccessful, will give 'us twenty years of war to put him down. If he is successful, he may, with his slavish Russian and Chinese mercenaries, pass all mankind under the yoke.

Therefore, on the balance of evil, we hold that,subject to the supreme obligation of keeping faith with those to ivhoni our word has been plighted locally, we should' withdraw our troops from Russia as soon as possible and let the Russians work out their own salvation.

The lesson of the French Revolution in the matter of non-interference, and the excuses which interference gives to brave men not to put down but even to tolerate and support the home tyrants, is brought out with extraordinary poignancy in Renan's play, L'Abbesse de JouatTe. Renan held that there were certain things in history, and even in philosophy, which could be much better brought home to men by dramatic action than by any other form of literary interpretation. Certainly the thoughts that we have tried to express were never set forth with greater lucidity and penetration than in this play. We may remind our readers of the dramatic incident which contains this lesson of history. La Fresnais is a young noble who, as far akhoire politics go, feels the greatest loathing and contempt for the Revolution and for those who have made it. His family have been wronged and humiliated by the men of the Terror. Their heads have fallen on the scaffold.

Ali he cares for in France has suffered destruction or degradation at the Terrorists' hands, and his natural impulse is to join in bringing the tyrants to justice. Then comes the interference in French affairs by the Allied Powers. The violation of the sacred soil of France in a moment turns La Fresnais, as was the case with so many other young men, into a patriot, ready to stand by the men whose hands are red with the blood of his nearest and dearest if only he may save his beloved France from the invader. It is the maxim of " My country, right or wrong " carried to the furthest point. All thought of changing the Government of France must be put aside, left behind, until the soil of France is once more free. But he and the thousands of other men who detest the Terror are not moved by this consideration only. Nothing is more difficult, more terrible, than to perform the duties which civil strife forces upon the citizen. It is only natural, only human, for him to clutch at any excuse which perhaps not only saves him from the guillotine and from a hundred other dangers, but gives him an honourable reason for bending to the tyrants' will instead of engaging in a hopeless resistance which would probably end in his being cut off in the forlorn struggle. There was safety from the cruellest and most appalling of deaths as well as honour to be got in the campaigns on the frontier. Foreign interference gave men a seemingly sound excuse for not doing their duty at home.

The dramatic opportunity for La Fresnais to tell all this is afforded by the fact that when he is sent back from the field of Fleurus to announce to the Committee of Public Safety the defeat of the enemy, the delighted Terrorists let him choose his reward. He chooses the reprieve from the guillotine of the Abbesse de Jouarre, the innocent woman whom he has seen condemned by the bloody tribunal of Fouquier Tinville. When h's request has been granted he addresses her as follows - .< . My family was one of those which the Revolution wounded the most deeply. The evil was actual, evident ; the good was still future and uncertain. No matter ; the flag ignores politics and in front of the enemy argument must perforce be silent. My enthusiasm was rewarded by the companionship of the heroes whom I found in the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, in which I was embodied. To tho sound of the battle songs which gripped us in our inmost being, we soon repulsed the most war-hardened troops in-Europe. Our final stroke was delivered at Fleurus. We were at first overwhelmed by numbers, when a young Captain, a friend of mine (whose name, Marceau, you will often hear mentioned, I expect), rallied round him a few battalions determined to die sooner than abandon a position upon which depended the safety of the Army. At the same time the battle joined issue again upon the Sambre. Charleroi fell into our hands ; Beaulieu ordered a general retreat, leaving the road to Brussels open to us. The part which I was able to play in these glorious battles caused me to be chosen to carry the news to tho Committee of Public Safety. For two days I surveyed with hungry gaze this sombre Paris, which knows how to organize at once a victory and a Terror. The desire to see everything led me to the Revolutionary Tribunal. There I saw you, Madame, dignified, calm, and cold, neither provocative nor weak, before those odious judges. Your courage, your resignation, your beauty, wounded me to the heart. My first idea was to perish with you.. Then I reflected that I was able to save you. Carnot had said to me that the bearer of such splendid tidings had but to express a desire to see it fulfilled. What other desire could I have but to rescue you from a frightful death ? I have been successful ; your name has been erased from the fatal list. And what reward would I claim for my victory ? One only, Madame. that of coming to announce it to you. Yes. I confess it ; I have coveted the Tells of messenger of peace in these dismal corridors. I have longed to say to you : ' Through me you shall live to do great things.' Is it too much, Madame ? To-morrow I leave for Brussels, into which place I am aware that my comrades in arms are at this moment making their entry. Holland is calling us ; we cherish no illusions ; it is against an allied Europe that we shall have to fight twenty times over. Our generation will be mown down ; others will follow us.

Julie.

These are high thoughts, Monsieur. You have relieved me for a moment from a terrible anxiety ; in listening to you I have proof that France still exists and that she will revive. But allow me one question : Since you have seen the crimes of Paris, why do you not employ this great courage in driving out the robbers who are beheading our country, filling it with blood and horror ?

La Fresnais.

Nay, Madame, and your great heart will understand us. When the Fatherland is in danger on does not reason. This horrible Medusa's head, which petrifies the hearts of even the bravest, it is France, after all. These horrors, we will put an end to them, I swear it ; but we will put an end to them by victory over the enemy. We shall deliver France from the Terror when we have delivered her from the foreigner. The foreigner defeated, the Terror will cease. At this very moment, perhaps, in the rebel provinces the Army of France is ravaging my lands, burning the home of my ancestors, killing my kinsmen. I weep for such misfortunes, but I do my duty. Little matters it to us that one day the Machiavellis of the future shall say of us : Those men were but poor politicians,' if the patriot says of us : Those were heroes indeed 1 ' " The passage, apart from its application to the Russian situation, is exceedingly interesting as proof of what has been often remarked—that what a Frenchman loves is France, the land, the material thing, the soil which he can stoop to kiss. This almost physical passion the Englishman finds it difficult to understand completely. To him patriotism means something different. What he cares most for is the English kin, and even above that he loves great ideas and great and good causes. Hence such aspirations as Renan sets forth in La Fresnais's speech, though they have weight here, are not so overwhelming as in most other lands.

In the fourth act of the play Renan returns to the point which seems to have fascinated him. Julie's brother, Le Marquis, elaborates a philosophy of national renaissance which is to spring from the foreigner's blood shed even by evil men. It is in battle with the foreigner that the nation finds the elixir of new life it . . . Lecourbe's amazing campaign, where one saw our young soldiers and the veteran troops of Souvarov brought together on the glaciers of the Gothard, there to engage in a gigantic duel, was mainly sustained by La Fresnais. In the birth of this new century he represents an excellent principle ; namely, ennoblement by victory, the pacification of class warfare by heroism. Be proud, my dear friend, of such an alliance. You bore a great name ; our ancestors have served France gloriously ; you will bear a name quite as great, that of one of the men who have played the most glorious part in that work of the resurrection of France.which is the object of all our desires."

No one but a Frenchman could have written such a passage as that. No one but a Frenchman could have for it the sympathy both of comprehension and of approbation. It is not our business, however, to-day to attempt to analyse it, or to expose any of the moral or political fallacies which it represents. It is enough for our purpose that it shows what men will think, and, further, what they will do,. when there is foreign interference with what is after all, in spite of Leagues of Nations and wars, the strongest thing in the world—patriotism cr the sense of nationhood. All history shows that you cannot escape from it, do what you will. With the highest motives and the best, from the practical side, even if not from the theoretical, you cannot make interference really effective.

There remains, however, the right of self-defence. But this must be exercised with the very greatest care lest in trying to save yourself from a Danton you manufacture a Napoleon. If the Russian people by their own action overthrow Lenin and Trotsky, there may yet be peace for that unfortunate land. If we.attempt to accomplish that result, so much to be desired in the interests of humanity, peace, and good government, we may find that instead of having brought peace we have brought a sword. Behind these loathsome figures stands, maybe, some soldier, now as little known as once was the terrible Lieutenant of Artillery, who will bring• the scourge. of war once more upon a world half crazy with its unhealed wounds.