PEACE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17946, 13 November 1918, Page 4

PEACE.

What an extraordinary ruin it is that Ups stretched across Europe from the. Baltic to the Black Sea! It is all that is left of Mitt el Europa, of the bigger empire of Pan-Germanism. . And from Hamburg t 6 the Bosphorus there is not a sovereign, big or little, who does not tretable for his throne, and not .a. Government, save those of revolt, assured of popular confidence. What a hopeloss cracking there has been these last few weeks on all the enemy’s home fronts! One by one they have split op*n, letting in the forces of disruption. Serbia could hold together •through four years of defeat; Germany, apparently, through not so many months. The Teutonic schemes have come to nought, and it may well be that when all adjustments have been made, Prussia, .the author of all tho world’s misery during these four years, will he back to the status’ she enjoyed when, her ruler was an elector, and no more. The world, has been saved from' the peril that threatened it, peril of domination by a selfish militarism. The Prussian raised might against civilisation, threw international law and usage and . the customs of humanity to winds, and waged ruthless, bloody, unrelenting war on all people, soldier and civilian alike. The success of this Awful plan was to be its justification. Happily the sane peoples of the world stood solidly together, bore 1 one another’s “trials, shared one another’s burdens, and through' long months of gloomy, prospects never lost faith iii their cause. Scarcely can 'one grasp the fact that the fighting is at an end : scarcely dare one tool it. , The thought -of peace at last brings the *‘ climbingj ' sorrow ’ ’ into 'ofio’s throat. So many a young life has been spent that this evil might not • live/ and now that indeed we know the Prussian evil shall hot live, it is hard to realise < that th© inferminablo sacrifice has terminated, - that the price, of peace has been paid in full, and that there remains only such word as is necessary to guarnpiqo Europe against even a partial-outbreak u?itii the peace terms havo been linai.y settled. This is not tho occasion for an orderly discussion of peaoe issues, because that will come later. And some of the German leaders, one imagines, would be glad enough to postpone it until they have had time to find,an obscurity from which they cannot be dragged to do penance for their crimes. We are rejoicing to-day, not sitting in judgment, and sane Germany, if thore is any of Germany sano ,now, will he joining the Allies in rejoicing that the war is really oyer. *