Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1918. SOCIALISM AND MITTEL EUROPA

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 139, 12 June 1918, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1918. SOCIALISM AND MITTEL EUROPA

Starting with Mittel Europa, the German war-spirit, after a few moments of doubt and hesitation, has returned thereto. A time there was when it seemed that a- change had come over the spirit of the dream. Social Democrats expostulated, Chancellors trimmed, and the Reichstag even passed a resolution against annexations and indemnities. But now, of those Social Democrats and that resolution not one note is heard. Even Austria-Hungary, reputedly the less aggressive of the Central Empires, lias definitely and confessedly annexed strategically important portions of Rumania; the German hand lies heavy over the Slav " border States " and parts of Russia; and the Social Democrat majority party not only makes no appeal to the Reichstag resolution of last year, but suffers its leader, Schiedemann, to become Vice-President of the tamed Reichstag and to " attend the Kaiser and Court." So clear is the situation that it hardly needed the final touch of the German Imperial Vice-Chancellor, Yon Payer, to rewrite in blazing letters the old war-cry Mittel Europa. However, just to complete the picture, Yon Payer has obliged, and has outlined to the Neve Freie Presse " a political and economical union of Austria and Germany with Poland and the northern border States." By the term "northern border States " is meant, apparently, all the new Slavic creations between the Gulf of Finland and the Black Sea, except, perhaps, Ukrainia. But the succeeding sentences in the message imply no restrictions whatever, for since the new Customs union is to include " the Balkan States and even Turkey," it will surely not exclude Ukrainia and Finland. " A great feature of the project," it is added, "is similarity in the training, arming, equipment, and supply system of the armies of the countries concerned." Yon Payer's pen-picture in the ■ Neve Freie Presse is therefore much more than a Customs union like that which united the German States. It is Mittel Europa complete, economic and military, fully armed both for peace and war.

In round figures, seventy odd million Germans and fifty odd million AustroHungarians have much more than held their ground against about 170 million Russians, nearly forty million Frenchmen, forty odd million Britons, and about thirty-six million Italians. Outnumbered as they are, the Central Empires have bo far had much the better of the land war—in Europe—against their scattered and loosely-joined enemies; so much the better of it, indeed, that the Allies absolutely need the Americans in order to save France. Taking this fact as a starting-point, it is not difficult to estimate the danger arising from the recruitment by the Central Empires of another hundred million of people in adjacent countries of Central Europe. Yet that, and more than that, i 3 what Mittel Europa means. Only if America crosses the Atlantic in the strength of millions, and only if France can hold the fort in the meantime, is the enslavement of Europe avoidable; | 1 and in that way alone can the Hohenzollern Eurasian empire be brought to | naught. In France and Italy the Allies fight first for the freedom of the West, and secondly for the freedom of the East; and neither can be assured without the other. The American President lias well summed up the Berlin-Bagdad scheme as a design to militarily outflank all the commerce and all the nations of the world. Mittel Enropa, the groundwork of Eurasian conquest, has already arrived; and the Allies will have lost the war unless they can' reverse the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg decrees and give to the Slavic nations a- real freedom. One word more about the German Social Democrats. Vorwaerts, months ago, so far sacrificed principle to expediency as to declare that as "it is immensely difficult for the Socialist Party of a victorious State to realise their ideal demands," Socialists and conquered enemies must just make the best of it. : " The peace with Russia," says Vov- ' waerts"," "has not turned out as we had | imagined it." Nevertheless, if this bad Russian geaca., and other German poli- I cies, were regarded by the Entente as "proof of the moral obstinacy of Germany," the answer must be that "this is no moral question, but only one of

facts: In such circumstances can idealistic demands, wise or unwise as they may be politically, be described as more than a nouse of cards to be overthrown by any wind that blows? In place of an abstract universally just formula, would it not be better to seek a basis of practical agreement answering to conditions as they now exist? . . . The time for more or less academic considerations is past. All Socialistic effort must be concentrated upon a. peace which is tenable and bearable for all. And why should it be unbearable for England, France, Belgium, and Italy if a peace were concluded which restored in tho main the pre-war conditions in the West?"

Observe that Vorwaerts only contemplates restoration in the West, and even ther« it is to be restoration* only "in iTie main." After this, it is not astonishing to hear that Schiedemann will .go to Court. But it is amazing to hear of world-emancipation per medium of international Socialism, or Leninism; or of any guarantee, of liberty s&ve that which coulee through victory.,won,.