is a long and hitherto unpublished secret letter sent by Lloyd George
to Nitti, Wilson, Clemenceau, and the other members of the Peace
Conference_.




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
two-thirds of Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there
prevails a vague sense of uneasiness, ill-calculated to encourage