Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/111

SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR And when she hears the truculent boast of our enemy that after he has disposed of Russia, he will destroy Italy as a Power in Europe, she answers calmly, "Yes, when the last Roman capable of bearing arms lies dead in Roman soil—perhaps then, but not sooner."

  THE PART PLAYED BY THE NEUTRAL NATIONS And then the neutral countries—what is the part which they have played in the drama of the past 365 days? I think I may fairly claim to have had better opportunities than most people for studying one aspect of it, its moral aspect, and therefore I trust I may be forgiven if I make a personal reference. Seeing, in the earliest days of the war, that Germany was doing her best to divert the eye of the world from the crime she had committed in Belgium, and being convinced that Britain's hope both now and in the future lay in keeping the world's eye fixed on that outrage, I moved the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph to the publication of "."

What that great book was it must be quite unnecessary to say, but it may be permitted to the editor to claim that it constituted the first (as it may well be the final) impeachment of the  Rh