threat of national bankruptcy and ruin, which has of late pursued the
nations Like an evil dream, might pass away. But in that matter of
finance it cannot be disguised that a terrible period still awaits the
European peoples. Already the moneylenders sitting on their chests form
a veritable nightmare; but with fresh debts by the thousand million
sterling being contracted, there is great danger that the mass-peoples
beneath will be worse paralysed and broken even than they are
now--unless, indeed, with a great effort they rouse themselves and throw
off the evil burden.

That the world is waking up to a recognition of _racial_ rights--that
is, the right of each race to have as far as possible its own
Government, instead of being lorded over by an alien race--is a good
sign; and a European settlement along that line must be pressed for. At
last, after centuries of discomfort, we at home are finding our solution
of the Irish question in this very obvious way; and it may be that
Europe, tired of war, may finally have the sense to adopt the same
principle. Of course, there are cases where populations are so mixed,
as, for instance, the Czechs and Slovaks and Germans in Bohemia and
Moravia, or where small colonies of one race are so embedded in the
midst of another race, as are the Germans among the Roumanians of
Transylvania, that this solution may be difficult. That is no reason,
however, why the general principle should not be applied. It _must_,
indeed, be applied if Europe is not to return to barbarism.

And it interests us--having regard to what I have said about _class_
rule being so fruitful a cause of war--to remember that the rule of one
race by another always does mean class rule. The alien conquerors who
descend upon a country become the military and landlord caste there.
Thus the Norman barons in England, the English squires in Ireland, the