It is difficult to maintain true perspective in large affairs. I have criticised the work of Paris, and have depicted in sombre colours the condition and the prospects of Europe. This is one aspect of the position and, I believe, a true one. But in so complex a phenomenon the prognostics do not all point one way; and we may make the error of expecting consequences to follow too swiftly and too inevitably from what perhaps are not all the relevant causes. The blackness of the prospect itself leads us to doubt its accuracy; our imagination is dulled rather than stimulated by too woeful a narration, and our minds rebound from what is felt ‘too bad to be true’. But before the reader allows himself to be too much swayed by these natural reflections, and before I lead him, as is the intention of this chapter, towards and ameliorations remedies and the discovery of happier tendencies, let him redress the balance of his thought by recalling two contrasts—England and Russia, of which the one may encourage his optimism too much, but the other should remind him that catastrophes can still happen, and that modern society is not immune from the very greatest evils.

In the chapters of this book I have not generally had in mind the situation or the problems of England. ‘Europe’ in my narration must generally be interpreted to exclude the British Isles.