The year ending tomorrow has been a year of decay.
Leafing through the record of its happenings, one comes to realize that it ends where it began.
The Entente and Germany have moved in circles in their mutual relations and have returned to the starting point, only that in the meantime we have all become so much poorer in hopes, and the misery of the German people has multiplied to an alarming extent.
The first half of the year was a period of fierce battles between the forces that want to save Europe from total collapse against the forces of destruction and madness.
The struggle was unfortunate.
It got weaker and weaker and finally came to a standstill.
Standing still in the face of an impending catastrophe means letting yourself drift.
So it came about that Germany sank deeper and deeper into the abyss, often at breakneck speed.
Everyone sees today that the Entente must lower their demands on our ability to perform, just as everyone did a year ago, even though the level of modesty back then could have been far less.
And today, as then, in the recognition of the damage done, the energies that strive for improvement are stirred.
Yet caution and cautiousness are characteristic of them today, whereas a year ago they were full of impulsiveness.
What the slow-moving Bonar Law wants is similar to what was proclaimed by the erratically active Lloyd George.
There is a great deal of similarity in the approaches to reforming our picture, only in the one year the situation has become much worse.
Unite all the nations of Europe into one family
The previous winter felt a fresh rush of new life.
The Washington Conference was in session.
On it the powers of the Pacific should be given a new law of peace and a general restriction of naval armaments should be implemented.
Thus, under America's leadership, a model was set for the peaceless Europe, a model which said that peace is better guaranteed by uniting the disputing and competing parties into a pact than by forming alliances and counter-alliances.
The political principle of the "balance of power" was condemned in Washington.
But the second task of the conference was imperfectly carried out.
Resistance to armament limitations came primarily from France, which did not want to give up the idea of power.
So the work in the spirit of the Washington goals had to be continued in another field, as it was from the outset, whether on the basis of a plan agreed between the United States and Great Britain or unconsciously, to proceed on a broad basis in the interests of development.
In the bosom of the English government, a very intelligent project had come into being that today, if one looks at it from a bird's-eye view of the yearly overview, detached from the quarrels and often petty tricks of the day, one has to call it extremely generous.