Peaceless Europe

I

EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE

Is there anyone who still remembers Europe in the first months of 1914 or calls to mind the period which preceded the first year of the War? It all seems terribly remote, something like a prehistoric era, not only because the conditions of life have changed, but because our viewpoint on life has swerved to a different angle.

Something like thirty million dead have dug a chasm between two ages. War killed many millions, disease accounted for many more, but the hardiest reaper has been famine. The dead have built up a great cold barrier between the Europe of yesterday and the Europe of to-day.

We have lived through two historic epochs, not through two different periods. Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the terrible World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion to brutality which suggest the fall of the Roman Empire. We ourselves do not quite understand what is happening around us. More than tw