Day 665
Judgement Day
The settlement at the end of The Great War will be effected, let us hope, not by a regimental mess of fire-eaters sitting around an up-ended drum outside the Kremlin, but by some sort of Congress at which all the Powers will be represented.
Now I foresee a certain danger of Ukraine being taken by surprise at that Congress, and Z making himself unnecessarily tedious and unreasonable. Such a Congress will most certainly regard Ukrainians as being, after the Irish, as the most quarrelsome animals in the universe. I am quite conscious of the surprise and scandal this anticipation may cause among my more highminded readers, including Russian opposition leaders, who will not be represented. If just contemplating such a venue is unbearable, consider the alternative proposed by Maxim Mironov in his essay at Politico1.