PLAIN QUESTIONS FOR GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 54, 27 November 1917, Page 5

PLAIN QUESTIONS FOR GERMANY

SPEECH BY MR. ASQUITH

NO MORE VEILED WAR

Mr. Asquith, speaking at a receni War Aims demonstration at Leeds, enunciated two plain questions to Germany:—

1. Is she prepared to restore what she took away from France in 1871? 2. Is she ready to givo back to Belgium her full indopcndenco and with a complete indemnity? A plain answer to these questions would bo better than a lot of pious ' . platitudes, Mr. Asquith said, in a caustic. comment on the "unctuous" German reply to the Pope. Ho cm- ' phasised that wo are still at war with Prussian militarism, but pointed out that it is impossible not also to blame the German public, which "applauds with fervour" the worst of tlio Kaiser's crimes. We arc fighting for peace, said Mr. Asquith, for the pcaco of the world—based on a solid rock of right, internationally recognised and guaranteed. Peace in this sense —the only real peace —is not to be found in n cessation of active hostilities, followed by a process of territorial bargaining, to bo embodied ultimately in paper protocols and pacts, and left there at the mercy of the Chapter of Accidents, ■which, as someone has wisely said, is the Bible of Fools. A Crucial Example. We have a crucial example of tlie folly of transactions of this kind in the Treaty of 1871, when victorious Germany insisted on dismembering conquered France by appropriating, in defiance of the will of the inhabitants, her two provinces of Alsace and LorTaine. Is there in the German Chancellor's reply to the fapal Note or in any recent and authoritative declaration of the German Government any indication that it is prepared not only not to repeat the crime of 1871, but to tako any of the practical steps which alone can open the road to a real and lasting peace? Is Germany Teadv to restore what she then took away from France? Or, to put again another concrete test in a question which I havo asked before—and which is still unanswered: la she ready to give back to Belgium her full independence—political and economic—without fetters or reservations, and with as complete an indemnity as any merely material compensation can provide for the devastation of her territory and the sufferings of her people? Negatively, it Jb no part, and never has been any part, of our war policy, as the pan-Germans pretend, to aim at the annihilation of Germany or the permanent degradation of tho German people. It is true that not only the manner in which the war was engineer-

Ed and launched, but, still more, the methodsi first of callousness and brutal cruelty, then of refinod and inventive wickedness, by which it has been carried on have profoundly affected, and must for a long time continue to af.fect, the whole world's estimate of German character and temperament.

There is nothinpr in this war that has aroused more worTd-widb surprise and consternation than that German opinion should have, iu the early stages, condoned with tolerance, and should now have come to applaud with fervour, the worst and most barßarous transgressions of the German Government. It shows us, at any rate, from what unmeasured perils, from what a set-back to the whole machinery of civilisation, mankind has been delivered now that the Allies have shattered for ever the dreams of German hegemony. (Cheers.)

On the positive side tho poace for which wo are fighting has two aims, ono immediate, tho other ulterior, neither of which should be left out oi view. The first is—not the restoration of tho status quo, not the revival in some revised shape of what used to be called tho balance of power, but the substitution for the one and the other of an international system in which there will be a placo for great and for small States, and under which both alike can ho ensured a stable foundation and an independent development. No More Vailed War. I have referred already to AlsaceLorraine and to Belgium. But wherever you turn in Central and Eastern Europe you seo territorial arrangements which are purely artificial in their origin, which offend the wishes and interests of tho populations most directly concerned, and which have been, and so long as they remain will continue to be, the seed-plots of unrest and of potential war. There are the just claims, long overdue, of Italy and Rumania. There is heroic Serbia, who must not only be restored to her old home but also given tho room to which she is entitled for her expanding national life. There is Poland, as to whom I, and I believe all our people, heartily endorse the wise and generous words of President Wilson. (Cheers.) 'P'ore are the cases not to be forgotten of Greeco and the Southern 'Slavs. As to tho second and not less important aspect of the case when we are endeavouring > to forecast the lineaments of an enduring peace, a poace, however well initiated by tho' necessaT.v ethnical and geographical changes, will not be worth many years' purchase if it purraits the opening or reopening of an era of what I may call veiled warfare. We must, banish once for all from our catalogue of maxims the timeworn fallacy that if vou wish for peace yon mnst make ready for war. Speaking not as a Utopian or a dreamy idealist, but as one who has had a lone and close experience of the hard realities of politics, I assert that we are waging not-only a war for, peaco, but also a war. against war-