NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16266, 27 June 1916, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

WHAT SORT OF PEACE'

Ik a recent interview with a representative of the Chicago Daily News Sir Edward Grey summarises admirably the ideas of the allies on the question of peace. He said the injustice done by this war has got to be set right. The allies can tolerate no peace that leaves the wrongs of this war unredressed. When persons come to me with a pacific counsel I think they should tell me what sort of peace they have in mind. They should let me know on which side they staud. If they think, for example, that Belgium was innocent of offence; that she has been unspeakably wronged; that she should be set up again by those who tore her down, then, it seems to me, they should say so. Peace counsels that are purely abstract and make no attempt to discriminate between the rights and the wrongs of this war are ineffective, if not irrelevant. Nobody wants peace more than we want it. But we want a peace that does justice and a peace that reestablishes respect for the public law of the world. Presumably Germany would like neutrals to think we are applying pressure to keep France, Russia, and Italy in the war. We are not. France, Russia, and Italy need no urging to keep them in the war. They know why they are in the war. They know they are in it to preserve everything that is precious to nationality. It is this knowledge which makes them determined and unconquerable. Unless mankind learns from this war to avoid war the struggle will have been in vain. Furthermore, it seems to me that over humanity will loom the menace of destruction. The Prussian authorities have apparently but one idea of peace—an iron peace imposed on other nations by German supremacy. They do not understand that free men and free nations will rather die than submit to that ambition, and that there can be no end to war till it is defeated and renounced."

VICTORY AT VERDUN. Summing up the position at Verdun in a recent article Mr. HUaire Belloc says: — Even at this date it is not possible to say that the enemy will not go on again. We must pray that he mayand the longer the better. Prussian stupidity and Prussian vanity, its colleague, are here our powerful allies—and they rarely fail us. There may be domestic reasons, too, for his continuing to bleed himself to death He may yet find himself under some political necessity, or suffering from the command of some authority, not wholly military, and thus be condemned to lose another 30,000 or so in the continuation of his blunder. It is unlikely, because the situation has become quite obvious and glaring, but it is possible. It is also indifferent to the general result of the campaign. The battle of Verdun is won. And Verdun can certainly go down to history as the greatest example of woodenness in strategical judgment that any command has ever afforded. Only! the future can show what the fruits will be, but we know already what they should be. And when the harvesting of them begins we owe it to those who died betweefl Vaux and Avocourt to call them more than any other men the victors of the great war.