Where Are We Going?

Note:    London edition (Hodder and Stoughton Limited) has title: Is it peace? with a different arrangement of the articles and addresses.

The chapters collected in this book represent a running comment on the European situation during the past ten months. Although in the haze that covers the Continent it is difficult always to see clearly what is happening, and still more difficult to forecast what is likely to occur, I have not deemed it necessary to revise any of the estimates I made from time to time in these periodic reviews on the position. In the period covered by them peace has gone back perceptibly and unmistakably. Of the years immediately after the end of the Great War it may be said that up to the present year each showed a distinct improvement over its predecessor. The temper of the warring nations showed a gradual healing and improvement, and East and West there was a return to reason and calm in their attitude towards each other. In the Cannes discussions of January 1922 the atmosphere of hostility which poisoned the Spa discussions in 1920 had largely disappeared, and the applause which greeted Herr Rathenau's fine speech at Genoa in April 1922 was cordial and general. The electric messages from Paris failed to provoke a thunderstorm, and one of the speakers, at the last meeting of the Assembly, drawing an illustration from the weather outside, said the Conference had broken up under blue skies and a serene firmament.