'ACIFIST MOVE IN PARLIAMENT

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 46, 22 February 1917, Page 7

'ACIFIST MOVE IN PARLIAMENT

IDEAS OF CONQUEST CONDEMNED

(BY TELEGRAPH.—UNITED ' PRESS ASSOCIATION.— COF7RIGHT.) (AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, 20th February. In the House of Commons, on the third reading of the Consolidated Fund' Bill, Mr. A. A. W H. Ponsonby (Liberal member for Stirling) urged the Government to disclose its policy for the future conduct of the war. We have always said that we had no selfish motives, that we were not seeking to incraase ouv territory, or to dismember the enemy's territory, yet our Note to America showed otherwise. 'Britain had made great sacrifices from purely disinterested motives, and the^overnment should not degrade these by making the "war one of aggrandisement and supremacy. The German people were suffering, not the military party. We were destroying German Liberalism, the only force capable of crushing militarism. We had entered" the war with clean naiids, and ought to emerge empty-handed. ■ Mr. G. P. Trevelyan (Liberal member for Elland) declared that the fate of Constantinople and the German colonies made it a. war of conquest. The Entente's Note made the Germans fight desperately to avoid national annihilation. The Entente's demand was not characterised by frankness or charity. Whatever our military successes were, we would still be compelled to negotiate for peace, not dictate it. "In Heaven's name," he said,,"why not try now?" Mr. Philip Snowden (Labour member, for Blackburn) said that the longer the war continued the less likelihood there was of securing terms satisfactory to either of the combatants. The Allies' terms were monstrous. Mr. Bona-r Law (Leader of.the House), in reply, said that Germany was acting on the principle that she must win., not merely by fighting, but by tyrannising civilian populations. Britain was not fighting for additional terri* tory, or to secure a glorious victory which would reflect credit on our arms, but for the punishment necessary in order to make the people responsible for these crimes feel that it did not pay. The wai was forced upon. the world with as much calculation and-.cold-bloodedriess as a man moves a piece on the' chessboard. We had no guarantee that if the war ended to-day, with the German military machine unbroken, and the prestige of victory still clinging round it, the power of Germany would not be in the same hands and used for the same purposes. If preparations to fight recommenced, we would have to defend ourselves under worse conditions. Those responsible for the Government were determined that our blood should not be shed in vain. There must be no

"second Punic War." He denounced peace agitation at'a time when the greatest neutral nation recognised that the excesses of; our enemies had reached a limit, which made civilisation impossible.