MISCHIEVOUS PEACE TALK

Evening Star, Issue 16032, 8 February 1916, Page 6

MISCHIEVOUS PEACE TALK

- . So virulent has been the epidemic of peace proposals set on foot by Germany —to say nothing of tho fantastic) pilgrimage of the Ford fools, which was initiated at Berlin—that a vigorous article from the pen of M. Victor Augagneur, ex-Minister of Marine, who has written to the Paris ' Journal, 5 has been accepted as a. needed corrective, and as a reminder that the price of an immediate peace is far too great for the Allies to possibly contemplate. M. Augagneur writes:—

" Immediate peace, such as Germany would consent to, is German militarism still armed and threatening, and a fresh war to-morrow. All that we have suffered and lost will have been useless. Our brothers have fallen on the blood-stained fields, not for any wish of conquest, not from any ambition of glory, but to assure to younger generations a life in peace nobler than the life of the last 45 years, a peace more durable because guaranteed by the impotence of the adversary." M. Augagneur goes on to appeal to all sections of Franco to be on their guard against the various agencies that are attempting to hatch up a peace, draws attention to the German Internationalists, and the present toleration of Liebknecht by the German Emperor, and concludes:—

_ " Among you, kind native Internationalists in France, there will be som< to insist in the name of International proletarian solidarity that our conditions of peace should not be too hard for the conquered. A recent statement made in the French Chamber is the preface of this evolution. During war, and until a peace has been signed, dictated by a purely national spirit, there is no room for any_ forms of Internationalism. Unconsciously the Internationalists are working against the country, because they have instincts other than those of the country itself. It is various forms of Internationalism that at the present moment are agitating for the chances of peace, and are discussing its conditions. This propaganda must be repressed, stifled on the one hand by the revolt of the consciences of the French people, and on the other by Government declarations that leave room for no uncertainty, or for no consideration of any extranational entente.'-'-