The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1919. WILL PEACE LAST?

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 111, 10 May 1919, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, MAY 10, 1919. WILL PEACE LAST?

1 m For ihe cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the fut-ure in ihe distance, And the good that we can. do.

Now thnt the final hour of reckoning with Germany has come nnd the terms of the settlement are at last before the world, we must not be content with the satisfaction that we naturally feel about the comprehensiveness of the scheme devised by the Allies und the justice of the conditions imposed upon the vanquished foe. Even more important than the precise nature of such n settlement is the question of its permanence, anfl even in the culminating hour of their triumph the Powers will do well to consider carefully the degree of the probability or improbability of the ultimate success of their nttempt to make this great war the last. We cannot afford to forget that a hundred years ago the civilised world was facing a situation which in its main features closely resembled that which confronts the Powers to-day; and we know only too well that the settlement of 1813 was a hopeless and irremediable failure. Now the absolute and disastrous collapse of nil tho plans and schemes so carefully conceived nnd elaborated for the settlement of Kurnpe and the maintenance of peace by the Powers a century ago is not to be explained by any malevolent intention or by any lack cither of intellectual ability or sincerity of moral purpose on the part of the rulers of the nations or their representatives in those now far-off days. But the outstanding fact of the history of Europe ever since has been the prolonged and unqualified failure of all their plans and purposes, and today, facing the very problems thnt so completely bewildered and baffled them, we may well ask the reason why. Happily it ls not at all difficult to sc'. f«>rth in general terms the cause* which, from the very outset, militated with such overwhelming force against the success of the settlement which in I 81."> was acclaimed as the liar binger of universal and enduring peace. In tho tirst place the whole of the scheme which the U'owera adopted was founded on the assumption that the rulers of the various Stales could be trusted to speak for all their subjects, and that they were, as the words of the Holy Alliance programme precisely phrased it, incapable of acting except in ways benelicis] to those who acknowledged their authority. The whole conception of sovereignty iriu still mediaeval and dynastic; the king was not only the absolute ruler of hi* people. !>ul the owner of their lands and possessions, and he could deal with them as he pleased like pawns in a game. As a natural corollary to this assumption the principle of nationality was wholly repudiated; nnd with it was contemned and rejected the inherent nnd indefeasible right of nations to rule themselves and to control their own destinies. It would he impossible to overestimate the injury that the cause of peace sustained a century ago through the determined efforts of the Powers to assert the absolute authority of kings, and to ignore the will of peoples and their right to freedom and autonomy, and its effects are written large in letters of blood across the pages of European history. But nn even more fruitful source of discord and danger is to be found in the evident resolve of

the To ~-crs to make the settlement o 1815 absolutely rigid and immutable, am thus to force the European nations int< the framework of a sort of castiron system which could not fail cither to cripple them o- to break itself in fragment; when once they began to develop an. expand. Wo may say then that a hundred years ago the settlement of Europe ther arranged was foredoomed to failure because it exalted autocracy, it repildi atcd nationalism, and with it frecdon and democratic, progress, and lit the same time it imposed an unyielding and unnatural system upon the civilised world without making any allowance foi the necessities of true evolutionary growth. Granting all this, we may con elude that to secure the permanent and enduring peace for which the whole world longs, the Towers must avoid Hit errors of their nineteenth century proto types; nnd the chances of success for the great experiment that the world is now making therefore depend on the extenl to which the Peace Conference hue avoided the repetition of these fata blunders. And when we survey the whole project of the new settlement oi broad and general lines the prospect: seem nt first sight distinctly favourable Both in the punishment they have in dieted on Germany and in their attemp' to reconstruct the map of Europe tin Towers have declared emphatically against Absolutism and in favour o Nationalism, and though the difficultie. that have arisen between Italy and lb. Jugoslavs and between China and Japai mark unfortunate exceptions to thi. general rule, the outlook is on the wind. eminently satisfactory. There remain the grave question that must certainl; arise sooner or later—the necessity fo readjusting international compacts h accordance with the growing needs o progressive States and peoples. No pro vision was made for this a hundred year a<*o. But the covenant which is to forn the basis of the new Grand Alliance o the Powers supplies an opportunity fo the periodical revision of such agree

ments with the consent of all parties and in the interest of all; and this is the principal reason that the League of Nations—crude and complicated as it still appears—supplies the world with good hope of safety and peace for the future.