The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1919.

Evening Star, Issue 17085, 2 July 1919, Page 4

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 2, 1919.

Ik the course of an address to a gathering

After Peace— What?

of V\ eaington citizens on. Monday last Sir James Allen said: “I do not know that I feel much jubilation to-day. I do feel thankfulness that the war has come to an end and that peace has been signed ; but one can hardly jubilate when one comes to look back over the past four or five years.” > This, probably, was hardly the note which nearly five years ago the now Acting Prime Minister of an important Over- - seas Dominion would have thought it reasonable to assume he would be called upon to strike at the close of the greatest and most triumphant war history. Yet, possibly, it is the note that was most ,jp harmony with the spirit of the nous 1 ; and this because the war which 3t long last had reached its close was not ilone the greatest and the most victorious In history , but that it was the most terrible aa well. Sir James might well turn from thoughts of jubilation as ho contemplated .the ravages of the years, and- pondered the loss of precious lives and the host of maimed and wounded who are the living witnesses from that valley of the shadow of death through which they were called upon to pass- And as he turns from longer contemplation of the havoc am) Tnm and loss that are to be met on «v«iy hand ha may well grow anxious aa t ja pi-it aSU”

It is not a new question; it has been asked insistently and persistently from the earliest days of conflict, and with increasing eagerness and fear as month by month and year by year the battle area enlarged its bounds and the toll oi death and wounds and heartbreak grew ever heavier. Nor is it a question that can be avoided; it must be answered. Whether that answer comes by way of a League of Nations or the Church, or is to be found in the moral reformation of each oue of us, we, in common with the Acting Prime Minister, do not know. What we do know is that a change has to come. We cannot continue to live, no matter how greatly we may wish, as we lived before the wax.' - Writing an hour after the British declaration of war on Germany on August 4,- 1914, a London journalist said: “Europe is going down into a terrible trough of blood because the War Lords have been guilty of ‘ flagrant violations of the law of nations.’ But this war will see an end to the War Lends . . . and we shall have to begin all over again. When tho body of the last dead soldier is buried and the last gun is silenced, and when the nations are at peace through exhaustion, they will turn back again with sorrowful steps to the, hills of Galilee, and ask once more to be told the tale of the Carpenter who spoke as never man spoke before. Then, perhaps, they will listen.” The words are' within a few weeks of five years old, bub they are true almost to the letter of what \Ve know and' feel ie everywhere moving around ns. Our own Prime Minister, to whom possibly they are unknown,,.at an hour whop the world is date with the joy of confirmed victory, asks: “ Have wo during tho last four years reformed ourselves and regenerated our natures, and are we in a position to create a new and a bettor world? ... 1 do nob know what answer tho Churches can give, and what answer the men and women of our country can give, bub I have mv own doubt whether we can. do all wo ought to do unless we have learned some of the lessons of the past- years.” We shall do well to ponder these and the like sayings, and the thoughts to which they give rise, at a time when possibly the larger-half of the world is concentrating the major portion of its attentfbn upon those things which have no permanent stability, and are impotent to aid us along that road we must travel or fm' ever miss, perhaps, the opportunity that is ours. Germany had hers and lost it, and would appear to be on the brink of losing it yet again. Whether under an a utocracy or a democracy, she prefers protesting against the “ tyranny ” and “ brutality ” and “ hatred of her enemies rather than offering a frank but contrite admission of her guilt, and declaring her intention to submit herself to such reparation as the representatives of the outraged nations have demanded. Whether it come from Herr Erzberger, Prime Lichnowsky, or Herr Stampfer, of the ‘ Vorwarts,’ the cry is tho same. Tho new Germany, it is asserted, has been tricked and doomed to annihilation by her ruthlessly vindictive foes, and it is for that Germany to resist them. “If it lasts for years,” save the Socialist editor, “we must not be weak; wo have before ns the heroic example of little Belgium, which in similar circumstances held out for four years. What Belgium could do we must do!” To which amazing tirade' the terrible Maximilian Harden makes answert “Cease chattering about Germany’s honor, and refuse if you can the Allies’ statement concerning Germany’s guilt.” Heir Harden knows, whereof ho speaks. No more scathing indictment has been brought against Germany a-bd her rulers and those who now speak for her than by this writer. “ Germany,” he wrote last May, “can only proclaim her own rights when she lias with courageous dignity confessed.the wrong committed by her. Because not a wend of regret or of readiness to atone came from the head of our Republic the peace will now be hard. He who rejects it stands before the judgment seat of the nations. A •clear answer is due from him to the question; ' What has he done to prove to the world the birth of a new spirit in his Fatherland?’” No such “clear answer” was made. Germany, as a nation, chose rather to defy the verdict of history. She would not see

the lightning’s gleaming rod Reach forth and write upon the sky The awful autograph of God. She preferred to continue protesting rather than express repentance for her crimes, and in her pride to plunge her people yet deeper in the mire into which -they bad been led. Germany’s restoration to peace and prosperity depends not upon the sowing of a fresh crop of hatreds, but on the planting and cultivation of a spirit of sanity and reason among -all classes of her people.