SOCIALIST WAR AIMS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 48, 25 February 1918, Page 5

SOCIALIST WAR AIMS.

FREEDOM OF SMALL NATIONS. MO ECONOMIC BOYCOTT. (Received 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, February 24. The Inter-Allied Socialist Conference j has ended. It reached complete agree-j ment on war aims, and is taking steps to' notify its decisions to the Socialist; parties in the Central Empires. It is j sending a delegation to confer with Presi- j dent Wilson and Mr Sairiuel Gompersj (president of the American Federation of Labour). At the farewell luncheon, Mr Arthur Henderson, who presided, expressed gratification that the conference had substantially accepted the British labour party's war aims. The conference had decided for the absolute freedom and integrity of Belgium, Serbia, Rumania, and Montenegro, and that every territorial change be based on justice and right making for the permanence of the world's peace. These were their irreducible minima, and when they were secured the Socialists desired to begin the fullest intercourse with all nations. They repudiate every attempt to institute an economic boycott or the commercial and financial isolation of. Germany. The conflict could only be ended in three ways, namely, militarism, exhaustion, and conciliation. The conference was convinced that all belligerents must eventually resort to conciliation. Nothing was further from the trbth than the allegation that Labour was only concerned in holding out the olive branch to the enemy. They would not negotiate with the olive branch while the enemy' hand held the sword. Both sides must be prepared to abandon militarism before a settlement was possible (A. and N.Z. Cable.)