PLEASING THE ENEMY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 59, 3 December 1917, Page 4

PLEASING THE ENEMY

An admirable test is afforded today of tho merits'of Loud Lansdowne's letter to tho newspapers, which has provoked a discussion of matters that need no discussion, and has been repudiated and denounced as it deserves to be by tho Unionist Party. In Germany tho letter has been acclaimed. Hun newspapers printed it on their front pages, and hailed it "as tho beginning of reasonableness in England." All Germans are, of course, bound to warmly welcome Lord Lansbowne's strange proposal that Germany, loaded down with crimes, should bo met on even terms by the nations whom, she outraged and sought to onslave—nations which arc freely spending their best blood in order that these crimes may be punished and their repetition made impossible. . Consideration for an aged statesman with a great record of loyal service must not bo allowed to obscure the fact that Lord Lansdowne could hardly havo done more than he has done to assist tho minority factions in Allied countries which are prepared to make peace on the enemy s terms, "blindly or traitorously indifferent to tho fearful consequences entailed; or to encourage the enemy in tho belief that such a peaco is possible. Since it is difficult, as an American writer observes, to conceive Lord Lansdowne as a German partisan, we can only conclude that no has failed miserably to envisage tho crucial issues at stake in this war. The extent to which his vision is clouded is gauged by his proposal that the nations which are fighting as tho champions of liberty, justice, and all that makes civilisation possible should treat as an equal tho nation which has violated every law and canon of civilisation and reverted to unfettered barbarism in endeavouring to satisfy its insensate ambitions. His proposal is in short that tho Allies should inform Germany that they are prepared to disquss tho bogus issues which Germany has raised in tho hope of diverting attention from her crimes, that Germany is to unpunished, and that her word is to be taken as to tho- future. Germany is steeped in infamy. She has violated not one treaty, but all treaties. To the direct violation of her binding obligations under international treaties, including Tho Hague Convention, she has added a long series of inhuman atrocities against men, women, and children, making not the slightest distinction between combatants and peaceful non-com-batants and wayfarers. A great part of tho German'nation not only does not repent theso crimes, but regards them as laudable and a proof of sterling quality. It follows that an inconclusive peace with Germany would not merely involve the abandonment of tho specific aims, calculated to safeguard the future peaco of the world, which tho Allies have set before them, but would ushor in a nightmare era marked by the elimination of the essential features which distinguish tho life of man on this planet from that of the beasts.

Making such approaches to Germany as Lord Lansdowne suggests, the Allies would be taking tho same course as a nation which proposed a fiendly composition with its criminal population, and obtained no guarantee that crime should cease. It is no more possible to compound with crime on the international than on tho national scale. Unless Germany as sho is now constituted _ is compelled to surrender at discretion and to undertake internal reforms, we shall pass from an age in which justice, liberty, and the sanctity of treaties have a place in the accepted code of civilised humanity into one in which any depth of crime would be regarded as permissible, provided it were crowned with' a measure of success. Mr. Bonar Law has said that if we fail to seo the war through the unity of the British Empire will bo destroyed. This undoubtedly is true, but it only partially covers the ground. Germany to-day is in the toils, plainly doomed to dofeat and punishment if the Allies stand loyally together to tho end. _ If through any failure of determination or loss of unity on the part of the Allies she is granted an easy way of escape, tho nations by whom tho ideals of civilisation are still held dear will never again band together in defence of these ideals. The lesson of the_wa,r will then be, not that crime invites and meets its appropriate punishment, but that aggression unfettered by law is a force against which it is vain to contend. There would bo an end of all seaurity. and liberty. These are tho consequences invited by the letter to which Lord Lansdowne has set his name. Germany's sole remaining hopo of crowning crime with success is to tire out the Allies; break their fortitude, and destroy their unity. As the Imperial Chancellor sayß, her watchword is to wait, $ndure, hold out. For what it is worth, Lord Lansdowne's letter is calculated to_ assist her to gain her ends. Happily it has aroused in Allied countries other than Russia such a storm of reprobation that it may be regarded not as a symptom that tho Allies are weakening, but merely as evidence that its author has joined tho feeble minority who are incapable of justly weighing the crucial issues of the war.