THE MENACE OF PEACE

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 208, 31 August 1918, Page 13

THE MENACE OF PEACE

THE WAY OF THE WILY HUN. CAMOUFLAGING THE " MAILED "I'nlees all signs fail, the German i« getting ready for a new peace offensive. It will be the most dangerous of all, because with everything at stake he will make it so. If it fails, like his present military offensive, then he will lose the war. If he succeeds, he will win the war, even if he never gets another mile nearer to Paris and ultimately surrenders Metz and Strasburg."'

Thug wrote Mr. Frank Simonds, the celebrated American author, in July last, commenting on the speech of Baron yon Kuhlmann, German Foreign Secretary, in which he stated that "military ineaeures alone cannot lead to victory , ' —that there 'would have to be negotiations around a green table after the fighting is ended. This is what Germany wants — a Peace Conference that would enable her to win by negotiation a free hand in the East, after ehe ha« agreed to restore Belgium and to placate France by returning the lost provinces of Alsace and Lori-nine. Although things have assumed a changed complexion since the article wae written, there is much that 13 cogent in what Jlr. Simonds says, hence we quote the more striking passages.

If (ears the, writer) Germany docs not win the decision slie seeks in the campaign of 1918 she cannot win the Avar and she cannot longer believe that victory k possible. The best site can hope for is to keep a portion of her conquests, and she can only hope to do this if ehe gets peace before American troops begin their share in the campaign of 1919. What has happened in the way of sending Americans to Europe has eurprised our enemy even more than our allies, we may be cure of that. But the German saw at all timee that if the United States meant business he would have to accomplish what he had to accomplish in 1918 on the battlefield, or thereafter, and in a smaller measure, around the green table. GERMANY'S FAILURE. Hie military leaders declared that they could take Paris and crush the British Army in the campaigning eeaeon of 1018. They also told him that even if they were unable to do either of these things they could win sufficient successes to enable German diplomats in the peace negotiations which would come at the end of the fighting season to save for the Kaiser a substantial portion of hie conquests. Xcra , , the first part of the contract is obviously getting beyond German resources to perform. (The chances of realising the second part are less since the successful counter-offensive of the Allies.) But, Mr. Simonds proceeds, if the year 1013 ends with the German army still holding considerable areas of France won in the fifth campaign of the war, then the army can rest in the trenches for the winter season and let German diplomacy have its chance. ■

In the last analysis German diplomacy j is bound to seek to achieve a German peace by transforming any negotiation into a bargain counter and making sacrifices, and conceivably real sacrifices, in the 'west to insure the preservation of what has been conquered in the Bast. There is nothing novel about this scheme. Everyone has seen from the beginning that at the precise moment when Germany saw she could not crush the Western nations sne would etrive to buy them off by such concessions, in the way of restoring to them their own, as would leave her. still supreme on the road from Berlin to Constantinople and beyond, and aJso in the disintegrating Russian Empire. THE HOPE OF THE HUN. If Germany can preserve her.corridor from the Baltic to the Bosphorue she may hope, ultimately, to resume the advance upon Ca : ro and upon India. If she can hold the Black Sea and the Transcaucasian provinces ehe has still another and more eecure route to the Indian frontier. If she can preserve the ohaoe in Russia, the jumble of disorganised and disjointed States she has created from the Arctic to the Pinsk niarehes, ehe can look forward to immediate economic supremacy in what was once the Russian Empire and an enduring insurance against a reunion of the fragment? of that empire into a State which can bar her road to the Pacific. AIM OF THE ALLIES. What Germany has to fear is thai her enemies will continue the war until they are victorious in the field and can, in their turn, erect, not shadow States, but real States, out of the subject and suppressed nationalities along ■ her own boundaries or within Austrian and Balkan limits. A real Poland, with 25,000,000 people, with a gateway upon the Baltic at Danzig, with German Poles united to Austrian and Russian, would close the way to Russia, would be a sentinel on Germany's Eastern marches like that which Europe again aud again erected in the Lo»- Countries against France in other centuries.

A restored Poland, a unified Rumania,' a Southern State on the Danube, an international control of Coa-itantinople and the Straits—these things would moan the end of all of Germany's ambitions and the destruction of "all her hopes. If. in addition, Austria could be resolved into ite component parts, or transformed into a real federation of States baaed upon race, the 'work would be complete, but this last is perhaps beyond the -power of the most victorious alliance Europe has ever seen. THE REAL ISSUE. It must be transparent to every thoughtful man that the real issues to be settled are not those issues which, because of their western character, are moat familiar to the Allied publics. Certainly Belgium must be liberated and restored, France must have AlsaceLorraine, and Italy her Irredenta, but (iermany could pay all these prices out of her collected resources and still win the war. She might resign to Britain tlie title to all her own lost colonies, from (Samoa to Togoland, nnd not feel the cost, if she were permitted to hold on ii. the Baltic provinces, in Poland, in tin- Ukraine, in the Crimea, and in Asiatic Turkey.

The real danger to the world lies in that opportunity which Germany niay win in this war to organise the millions of Slavonic and Latin peoples along her frontiers and along Austrian frontiers. The host hope of permanent defeat of Uerman purpose to rule the world, to restore the domination of the Russian Empire, must be found in the creation along the pathways of (German expansion of strong States capable of developing into still stronger States and effectively barring the road for ever. Such States are Poland. Rumania, and Serbia: while it is exactly as important that German ruh* should be abolished at C'-.ns-tantinople and the OsmaiiM Kmpi v resolved into its natural elements.

THE PROBLEM IX THE EAST. The Europe which existed before August, 1014, has been swept away; Russia is in an upheaval which no man can measure, but there is a Poland to be made with almost as great case as Italy was made in the last century. Poland is the natural Slav sentinel along the Vistula, and for long centuries she maintained that role heroically and successfully. Serbia is the natural sentinel of the Balkans against invasion coming out of Europe from the north or .out of Asia from the south. Rumania and Serbia together, can hold the Danube barrier if only the Rumanian and Serbian races are united within their own natural and racial frontiers. No man understands the Russian problem, and there ie a manifest readiness on the part of the European nations which bave suffered most by reason of Russia's desertion to abandon the Russians to German fate with little sj'mpathy. The temptation is natural, but the cost of euch a course would b« enormous. On the other hand, no man can suggest a way in which to insure Russian regeneration, no matter what help be furnished. By contrast the reconstitution of Poland is not only possible, but carries with it the hope that behind the Polish barrier Russia may regain her national health without fear of German domination. As it stands, 75,000,000 Germans and 10,000,000 Magyars dominate populations of other races as numerous or even more numerous, and unless those races are now freed the slavery may be perpetual, and out of these enslaved races Germany will construct new armies and in due course of time make new attacks upon Europe. This is the ctory of Prussia; this is the story of the Hohenzollerns; and as long "as the way is open and the human material is at liana the Germans are bound to keep on in their determination to restore the Roman world under German control. HOW WE MAY LOSE THE WAR. We are winning the war on the battlefield. Despite the dangers in the Immediate future, there ie dear water not too far ahead, so far as the military problems are concerned. The German is preparing his new line of attack and hie new methods of combat. We still have every artifice in his whole stock employed for the precise purpose of blinding Uβ to the real ieeues at stake and keeping open the roads to new expansions and the hopes of new conquests. If we permit our eyes to be blinded, our wounds to weary us. our mistaken conceptions of Germans or of German ideas to deceive us, we shall have it all to do over again and the German -will win the war. In the German mind a peace campaign is a war measure, and as his fighting chance* diminish he turns more and more ! eagerly to the second arm. When we talk about peace, we Allies, it is with the thought of ending the conflict, but with the German it is merely the effort, to use a desire for peace among his enemies as a means of winning something he has not won by the sword or perceives he cannot hold by the sword if the battle goes to its logical conclusion. It is getting close to the time when the German will have to win his military decision or go back to his second line. and his second line is diplomacy. And we have got to be ready for him there, for we can lose the war there just as easily as on the battlefield, and it will be harder to win back once we have lost it in this fashion.