ALLIES CRITICISED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXVII, Issue 9052, 24 July 1917, Page 2

ALLIES CRITICISED.

"BLACKWOODS"' VIEWS ON

WAR AIMS.

Some remarkable "Musings Without Method,"' devoted mainly to our Allies, the United States and Russia, appear in a recent number of "Blackwood's Magazine." We are told:—

President Wilson is led by the nation over which ho presides to make war upon Germany/ when the victory is almost within the grasp of tho Allies, and ho professes that he is lighting, among other things, for the liberation of the German peoples. . . We cannot attribute his opinions about Germany and tho Germans only to ignorance, or to a dosiro to keep the Americans of German blood upon his .side by a trick of flat-

tery. The President's declaration that the world must be safe for domocracy is a " glittering generality."

■ Whether it is safe from democracy is not quite so certain. . . . There is one vies which has atwciys clung to it, the vice of.corruption. ; . . It is not for such trumpery causes as tha.t of democracy that men bloed . and die upon tho battlefield 1. Let politicians amuse, themselves''by di.srcoverinf!: the blameless causes for which thoy think they have drawn .the sword. But let the Allies go' forward oblivious of the politicians, and conscious only that they hayo a single ©nemy—Germany; a single aim—her complete destruction. Noxt he turns to the Russian revolution, which—

Was in its inception a movement not of the people, but of the governing class and of the army. Nor was its object the realisation of any vaguo dreams about freedom and ballot boxes.

It is in danger of becoming the more instrument of fanaticism. Russia is told that—

When peace is signed there will be time to discuss plansl and to invent Constitutions. ,

As to the fate of the Czar—

The sudden deposition of the C^ar seems strange to us who, in spite of IGBB, still believe in the doctrine of primogeniture. In Russia it is but a common experience that a Romanoff should be superseded or suppressed. Peter and Paul and Constantine' are examples which come readily to our mind, and before the country settles down again to enjoy the fruits of an orderly government there may be other instances of tho freedom claimed by a hitherto autocratically ruled people to choose its sovereign. .