CHAPTER VII
The Military Power of Russia
IT is fondly to be hoped that when these words come to be printed, peace between Russia and Poland will have been satisfactorily established. The need of Europe and the world for a real peace and the awful possibilities of the alternative ought to be the subject of everybody's prayer and the impulse to everybody's endeavour until peace becomes an accomplished fact.
The situation as it now stands is this. The Russians have everywhere defeated the Poles, as they told us they would, and are threatening to move on Warsaw. The Poles have cried to the Allies for help. The Allies have sent a note to Russia asking for an armistice between Russia and Poland on certain well-defined terms. The Russians have replied carefully, expressing a desire for peace, but requesting the Poles themselves to sue for it, and promising them better terms than the Allies themselves suggest in the matter of their boundary line.
The territory claimed by the Poles and for
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