artis

These weak small States, this long thin line, this cordon sanitaire, as it was called in France, was four or five months ago a, subject of the deepest anxiety to all who were concerned with the general problems of European policy, because when you see how weak they were, how short of food, how short of money, how deprived of permanent and well-established institutions or disciplined armies, or organised finances, it seemed almost impossible that, subverted as they were themselves to no inconsiderable extent by the general progress of Bolshevism going on just over their borders, they should withstand any fierce, general, organised attack coming from Russia, and that it would be necessary for the Allies to aid them powerfully, if not indeed with men, at any rate with large supplies of munitions and of money, and in every other way that was possible. These small States have stood. They are intact to-day. They have maintained their existence precariously. Quivering and shaking, but still standing, they have held back not only the Bolshevik armies but the more devastating Bolshevik propaganda which, applied to people in the depths of misery, just recovering from the convulsions of the War, without any of the resources of a civilised State, offers every temptation to internal disorder and anarchy.