The World On Fire

Anything the Belgians may have got they asked for. . . . We have received and fêted the would-be assassins of their Tsar; we have imagined Red Sunday in St. Pe- tersburg, and fulminated against pogroms, and preached against vodka and brutal Cossacks till anyone who has even been to Russia wants to go away quietly and die. England has spent about nine centuries in hating and despising France, in crying out on her for Atheism and immorality and all the rest of it; Edward VII, one night upon Mont Martre, shwears the French are jolly good shportsh, bigod, and lo! the Angel of the Entente Cordiale. It is disgusting to have to foul clean paper with the name of Servia. These swineherds who murdered and mutilated their own king and queen; whose manners make their own pigs gentlefolk; these assassins who officially plot and execute the dastard murder of the Crown Prince of a nation with whom they are at peace; these ruffians so foul that even cynical England hesitates to send a minis- ter to their court of murderers — these be thy gods to- day, O England! "Heroic little Servia!" I have not a word to say against the Montenegrins. They are decent, honest cutthroats. And now we come to the treacherous monkeys of Japan, the thieves and pirates of the East. Who makes the shoddy imitations of European and American ma- chinery, forges the names of famous firms, sticks at no meanness to steal trade? Who, under cover of alliance with England, fostered in China a boycott of all English goods? Only yesterday Japan was at the throat of Russia — or at least trod heavily on one big toe. Today in Tokio they sing the Russian national anthem, and cheer the ambassador whenever he appears. Why not? of course. It is natural, it is human; it is all in order. But it is fickleness and treachery; it is hy-