More than half the month has passed (I am writing, as a matter of evidential data, on the 17th of January), and I desire to record with the utmost accuracy gleanable in such affairs, the general feeling of the inhabitants of London with regard to the war. Briefly, then, a huge wave of optimism—for which God be thanked—has roared over the town. Peace Notes, and the replies to them, and the replies to those replies have been probably the wind that raised that wave, or, in other words, the super-coxcomb who rules the German Empire has expressed his "holy wrath" at the reply of our Allied nations to his gracious granting of peace on his own terms. But England and France and Russia and Italy have unanimously wondered when, in the history of the world, a nation that proclaimed itself victor has offered peace to the adversary it proclaimed it has conquered. Germany, not only belligerent, but also apparently umpire, has announced that she has won the war, and therefore offers peace to her victims. That was a most astounding piece of news, and it surprised us all very much. But what must have surprised Germany more was the supposedly-expiring squeal of her victims which intimated that they were not conquered. Hence the "holy wrath" of the World-War-Lord, who had intimated, as out of Sinai, that they were conquered. They don't think so—they may be wrong, but they just don't think so. Instead they are delighted with his victorious proclamation, and take the proclamation as evidence that he is not victorious. German newspapers have been, if possible, more childishly profane than he, and tell us they are ready to grasp the hand of God Almighty, who is giving such success to their submarine warfare. They said just that; it was their duty to shake hands with God Almighty, because with His aid they had sunk so many defenceless merchant ships. Perhaps that "goes down" in Germany, for it appears that they are short of food, and would gladly swallow anything.
But here we are, the conquered beleaguered nation—and by a tiresome perversity we delight in the savage glee of our conquerors, for we happen to believe that it expresses, not glee of the conqueror, but the savage snarl of a fighting beast at bay. Rightly or wrongly, we think just that, and the louder the pæans from Germany, the brighter are the eyes here. Though still the bitterness of this winter of war binds us with stricture of frost, a belief in the approaching advent of spring, now in mid-January, possesses everybody. Reports, the authenticity of which it is no longer possible to doubt, are rife concerning the internal condition of Germany and Austria, which is beginning to be intolerable. There is not starvation, nor anything like starvation, but the stress of real want grows daily, and we all believe that from one cause or other, from this, or from the great offensive on the Western front, the preparations for which, none doubts, are swiftly and steadily maturing, the breaking of winter is in sight. Perhaps all we optimists, as has happened before, will again prove to be wrong, and some great crumbling or collapse may be threatening one of the Allies. But to-day the quality of optimism is somehow different from what it has been before. Also, the black background of war (not yet lifted), in front of which for the last two years and a half our lives have enacted themselves, has become infinitely and intensely more engrossing. But here in England and France and Italy and Russia, it is pierced with sudden gleams of sunshine; there are rifts in it through which for a moment or two shines the light of the peace that is coming. Only over Germany it hangs black and unbroken.
A king gave a feast to his lords and by his command there were brought in the spoils and the vessels which he had taken from the house of God which he had sacked and destroyed. In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote on the wall of the king's palace. Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed and his knees smote one against another. For he had lifted himself up against the Lord of Heaven, and he knew that his doom was written. There was no need to call in the astrologers and soothsayers, or to search for a Daniel who should be able to interpret the writing, or to promise to him who should read the writing and show the interpretation thereof a clothing of scarlet, a chain of gold, and that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom, for the king's captains and his lords, and the king himself, knew what the meaning and the interpretation of the writing was. In silence they sat as they read it, and they sat in silence looking in each other's eyes which were bright with terror, and on each other's faces which were blanched with dread. But most of all they looked at the king himself, still clad in his shining armour, and the cold foam of his doom was white on the lips that profaned the name of the Most Highest, and the hand that still grasped the hilt of the sword which to his eternal infamy he had unscabbarded and to his everlasting dishonour had soaked in innocent blood, was shaken with an ague of mortal fear. And this is the writing that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN, for God had numbered his kingdom and finished it; he was weighed in the balance and found wanting; his kingdom was divided.
Even so, as in the days of King Belshazzar, is the doom written of him who, above all others, is responsible for the blood that has been outpoured on the battle-field of Europe, for the shattered limbs, the blinded eyes, for the murder of women and children from below on the high seas, and from above in their undefended homes. God set him on the throne of his fathers, and out of his monstrous vanity, his colossal and inhuman ambitions, he has given over the harvest fields of the East to the reaper Death, and has caused blood to flow from the wine presses of the West. East and West he has blared out his infamous decree that evil is good, might is right, that murder and rape and the unspeakable tales of Teutonic atrocities are deeds well pleasing in the sight of God. And even as in the days when, with his fool's-cap stuck on top of his Imperial diadem, and the jester's bells a-tinkle against his shining armour, he paraded through the courts of Europe and the castles of his dupes, as Supreme Artist, Supreme Musician, Supreme Preacher, as well as Supreme War Lord, and fancied himself set so high above the common race of man that no human standard could measure him; so now his infamy has sunk him so low beneath the zones of human sympathy that not till we can feel pity for him who first left the love-supper of His Lord and hanged himself, we shall commiserate the doom that thickens round the head of the Judas who has betrayed his country and his God in hope to gratify his insensate dream of world-wide domination.
There still he sits at the feast with his lords and captains, but the wine is spilt from his cup, and his thoughts are troubled and voices of despair whisper to him out of the invading night. Low already burn the lights in the banqueting-hall that was once so nobly ablaze with the glory of those who in the sciences and the arts and in learning and high philosophy made Germany a prince among nations. He and his dupes and his flatterers have made a brigand and a pirate of her, have well and truly earned for her the scorn and the detestation of all civilized minds and lovers of high endeavour, and in the Dämmerung that gathers ever thicker round them the fingers of a man's hand trace on the wall the letters of pale flame that need no Daniel to interpret. The painted timbers of the roof are cracking, the tapestries are rent, the spilt wine congeals in pools of blood, and the legend of the decree of God blazes complete in the ruin of the shambles where they sit.
It is then this belief that ruin is moving swiftly and steadily up over the Central Empires that causes the war once more, as in its earlier days, to engross the whole of our thoughts. It is coming, as it were, in the traditional manner of a thunderstorm against the wind, for there is no use in pretending that, as far as military and naval operations go, the wind is not at the moment being favourable to our enemies. By sea the submarine menace is more serious than it has been since the war begun; there is still no advance on the West front, while on the East the complete over-running of Roumania cannot be called a success from our point of view. But in spite of this, there is the rooted belief that the collapse which we have so long waited for is getting measurably nearer. None knows, and few are rash enough to assert when it will come, or what month, near or distant, will see it, and in the meantime the broom of the new Government, to judge by the dust it raises, may be thought to be sweeping clean, and the appalling bequests of our late rulers, the accumulated remains of sloppy Cabinet puddings, are being vigorously relegated to the dustbins. With the ineradicable boyishness of the nation (which really has a good deal to be said for it), we still tend to make a game out of serious necessities, and are having great sport over the question of food. For a few weeks we amused ourselves over one of the most characteristic inventions of the last Government, and tried to see how much we could eat without indulging in more than three courses for dinner or two for lunch, which was what the late Food Controller allowed us. This was an amusing game, but as a policy it had insuperable defects, as, for instance, when we consider that the bulk of the working population takes its solid meal in the middle of the day, and would no more think of eating three courses in the evening than of eating four in the morning. There was a regular tariff: meat counted as one course, pudding another, toasted cheese another, but you were allowed any quantity of cold cheese, bread and butter (those articles in which national economy was really important) without counting anything at all. In the same way you could have as many slices of beef as you wished (as the Government wanted to effect a saving in the consumption of meat), but to touch an apple or a pear, about which there was no desire to save, cost you a course. Altogether it was one of the least helpful, but most comic schemes that could well be devised. Matilda, I fancy, thought it out and communicated it to Mr. Runciman by the telepathy that exists between bird-like brains. It is in flat and flagrant violation of human psychology, for you have only to tell the perverse race of mankind that they may only eat two dishes, to ensure that they will eat much more of those two dishes than was comprised in the whole of their unrestricted meals, while to allow them to eat as much cheese as they wish is simply to make cheese-eaters out of those who never dreamed of touching it before. But there is a rumour now that we are to go back to our ordinary diet again, which I take to be true, for when this morning I gave Matilda a list of the regulations to show her how it looked in print, she uttered a piercing yell and tore the card into a million fragments.
But with the new broom has come a powerful deal of cleaning up: there is a new Food Board, and a Man Power Board, and a fifty per cent. increase in railway fares (which will be nice for the dividends of railway companies), and hints of meatless days and sugar tickets, and there are ideas of ploughing up the parks and planting wheat there (which will be nice for the wood-pigeons). Indeed, as Francis said, we are perhaps beginning to take the war seriously, though, on the other hand, since he left the prevalent optimism has largely remedied the absence of the gaiety which he so much deplored.