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THE NEW EUROPE

selves — our own old ways, our own old prejudices and preconceptions, social, industrial, but, above all, educational — is the only road to the future peace, prosperity and power." Taken all in all, the intelligence of our people, regarded as a raw material, is as good stuff as exists anywhere, and, when properly trained, is second to none. But, in the past, it has gone to seed for lack of guidance in industry, education and in politics. The war has brought an awakening; it is our business to see that the old sloth does not come over us once more when the stress of war is removed; and particularly is this true in the realm to which The New Europe is devoted. Never in our whole history has the whole people been aroused to so active an interest in Europe as to-day; never has the public mind been so hospitable to continental teaching, so eager to understand the meaning of European events; never has there been such an opportunity of giving our insular fellow-countrymen a taste for foreign affairs. As far as lies in our power the founders of The New Europe will not allow the opportunity to pass. This journal exists for the two-fold purpose of supplying British readers with information which can hardly be available elsewhere, and of creating in their minds that permanent bias towards continental affairs which was so conspicuously lacking before the war. Only by close study of the contrasts between our ways and other ways can we possibly understand and select the true policy from the false; only by ridding ourselves of insular prepossessions which have no bearing whatever upon foreign situations can we ensure the success of our diplomacy in peace or in war. Guided in great questions by well-tried principles, we must be thorough-going realists in our estimates of persons and things abroad; for to judge a politician of Central Europe by the measure of Westminster leads to nothing but mortification. And this study is its own reward. The further one penetrates into the history of contemporary Europe, the deeper becomes the fascination of the pageant of men and affairs which it presents.

A. F. WHYTE.

Russia and the Dardanelles.

So far as we are aware, The New Europe was the first to publish the details of Germany's "infamous proposal" to Russia for a separate peace and the partition of Roumania — a proposal which was an even

grosser insult than that made to the British Government on the eve of war, and which was greeted with the same indignant refusal. The New Europe was also alone in this country in announcing (in its issue of 23 November) that the agreement of the Allies concerning Constantinople and the Straits was about to be published. This is now publicly confirmed by the speech of the new Russian Premier, Mr. Trepov, in the Duma on 2 December. "The agreement," he tells

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