Points of friction. Agnes Repplier

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      In the last melancholy pages of that able and melancholy book, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," Mr. ​Keynes describes the apathy of victorious England, too spent to savour victory. "Our power of feeling or caring beyond the immediate questions of our own material well-being is temporarily eclipsed. We have been moved already beyond endurance, and need rest. Never, in the lifetime of men now living, has the universal element in the soul of man burnt so dimly."

      Never perhaps in the centuries, for when in the centuries has that element been so ruthlessly consumed? England is like a swimmer who has carried the lifeline to shore, battling amid the breakers, tossed high on their crests, hurled into their green depths, pounded, battered, blinded, until he lies, a broken thing, on the shore. The crew is safe, but until the breath comes back to his labouring lungs, he is past all acute consideration for its welfare. Were Mr. Keynes generous enough to extend his sympathy alike to foes and friends, he ​might even now see light shining on the horizon. It would do him—it would do us all—good to meditate closely on the probable state of Europe had Germany triumphed. The "hidden currents" of which we are warned may be sweeping us on a reef; but the most imminent and most appalling calamity has been averted. "Events are wonderful things," and we may yet come to believe with Froissart, lover of brave deeds and honourable men, that "the most profitable thing in the world for the institution of human life is history."