of that prudence which causes the average man to stand very still in the
presence of a savage dog. It was not a very politic attitude, and the
more reprehensible in so far that it seemed to arise from the mistrust of
their own people's fortitude. On simple matters of life and death a
people is always better than its leaders, because a people cannot argue
itself as a whole into a sophisticated state of mind out of deference for
a mere doctrine or from an exaggerated sense of its own cleverness. I am
speaking now of democracies whose chiefs resemble the tyrant of Syracuse
in this, that their power is unlimited (for who can limit the will of a
voting people?) and who always see the domestic sword hanging by a hair
above their heads.

Perhaps a different attitude would have checked German self-confidence,
and her overgrown militarism would have died from the excess of its own
strength. What would have been then the moral state of Europe it is
difficult to say. Some other excess would probably have taken its place,
excess of theory, or excess of sentiment, or an excess of the sense of
security leading to some other form of catastrophe; but it is certain
that in that case the Polish question would not have taken a concrete
form for ages. Perhaps it would never have taken form! In this world,
where everything is transient, even the most reproachful ghosts end by
vanishing out of old mansions, out of men's consciences. Progress of
enlightenment, or decay of faith? In the years before the war the Polish
ghost was becoming so thin that it was impossible to get for it the
slightest mention in the papers. A young Pole coming to me from Paris
was extremely indignant, but I, indulging in that detachment which is the
product of greater age, longer experience, and a habit of meditation,
refused to share that sentiment. He had gone begging for a word on
Poland to many influential people, and they had one and all told him that
they were going to do no such thing. They were all men of ideas and