now apparently the Chief of the Government in Warsaw), should take the
field against the Russians. In reality it did not matter against which
partner in the "Crime" Polish resentment should be directed. There was
little to choose between the methods of Russian barbarism, which were
both crude and rotten, and the cultivated brutality tinged with contempt
of Germany's superficial, grinding civilisation. There was nothing to
choose between them. Both were hateful, and the direction of the Polish
effort was naturally governed by Austria's tolerant attitude, which had
connived for years at the semi-secret organisation of the Polish Legions.
Besides, the material possibility pointed out the way. That Poland
should have turned at first against the ally of Western Powers, to whose
moral support she had been looking for so many years, is not a greater
monstrosity than that alliance with Russia which had been entered into by
England and France with rather less excuse and with a view to
eventualities which could perhaps have been avoided by a firmer policy
and by a greater resolution in the face of what plainly appeared
unavoidable.

For let the truth be spoken. The action of Germany, however cruel,
sanguinary, and faithless, was nothing in the nature of a stab in the
dark. The Germanic Tribes had told the whole world in all possible tones
carrying conviction, the gently persuasive, the coldly logical; in tones
Hegelian, Nietzschean, warlike, pious, cynical, inspired, what they were
going to do to the inferior races of the earth, so full of sin and all
unworthiness. But with a strange similarity to the prophets of old (who
were also great moralists and invokers of might) they seemed to be crying
in a desert. Whatever might have been the secret searching of hearts,
the Worthless Ones would not take heed. It must also be admitted that
the conduct of the menaced Governments carried with it no suggestion of
resistance. It was no doubt, the effect of neither courage nor fear, but