Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1918. THE ARMISTICE CONDITIONS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1388, 21 November 1918, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1918. THE ARMISTICE CONDITIONS.

Tin: protests that are being addressed by Germany to President Wilson and Mr Lansing in America and to the Allied Governments through the Spanish Embassy, read uncommonly like an attempt to dictate terms to the* Entente Powers, and to pave the way for that negotiated peace by which Germany hopes to evade her responsibilities in connection with the war. Forced by the conditions of surrender to withdraw their defeated armies from the occupied territories of Belgium and Northern France, the Germans now ask that “the German owners” should bo allowed ‘‘to exploit as heretofore the coal, potash and iron from the mines on the left bank of the Rhino within the old territory of the Empire,” and that they should bo allowed to transport the coal, iron and potash so exploited “up, down and across the Rhine to the right bank.” In plain English that means that Germany wants permission to further exploit the mineral wealth of the provinces forcibly torn from the French in 1871, and to amass further wealth at the expense of her neighbour. She wants, in effect, to nullify the victory gained by the Allies by forcing a declaration that the mineral ores and other valuable deposits of Alsace-Lor-raine are owned by Gormans. It is now well known that one of the impelling motives which induced Germany to go to war with France was that she might add to the wealth of her mineral production by annexing the rich provinces of Northern Franco containing the great iron and coal basins, which have been the mainstay of French industry. It is notorious that all through the war the occupied territories have been deliberately, and systematically looted, for the journals of Hunland have repeatedly referred to the booty “captured,” and the levies made upon Belgian, Polish, French and Roumanian cities as part of the “war indemnity due by the Allies to Germany.” Not so very long ago the Frankfurter Zeitung stated that the war debt, huge as it seemed, could bo largely repaid by the plunder the Imperial armies had taken in the occupied territories and in Russia. While it was impossible to estimate the loss to France through the* devastation caused by the German armies, the gain to Germany by pillage and requisition could bo calculated, and the Frankfort paper triumphantly pointed out that during six months—from October, 1917, to March, 1918—the Central Empires captured a value of £75,000,000 solely in arms, munitions and rolling stock.” To this booty, an English paper points out, “must be added the clothing, oil, fats, copper and rubber seized in Northern France, sufficient for German needs during an extra year. The total plunder of the Imperial armies and German administrative extortions in all invaded countries are cquivalond to a big war indemnity and are most beneficial to German finances.” The looting continued until the very last, and it is well known that the Germans despoiled the French and Belgian factories of all their machinery and appliances, sending what they were unable to use into Germany, and destroying the remainder, so as to prevent Belgian and French manufacturers

competing with them in the world’s markets after the war. The despoiling of Belgium alone has cost King Albert’s people several hundreds of millions, and in face of this and similar despoliations in Northern, France the Germans have the temerity to speak of the “German owners” of the mines of which they deprived France in the Alsace-Lorraine steal of 1871. Their further complaint in regard to the locomotives and waggons they are required to give up is on a par with their impudent request for the continued exploitation oi French territory. It may be accepted as fact that the rolling stock they are required to deliver up merely represents the stock which they have either seized or destroyed in Northern France or Belgium. Prior to the war Belgium alone operated some 1)335 miles of railways, and of the 25,633 miles of railway open in France, approximately one-third had been in possession of Germany for the greater part of the war, with the rolling stock seized from the French companies. The Gormans are, therefore, merely required to restore the property they have stolen from France and Belgium. The other “suggestions” or complaints contained in the German protest may be similarly disposed oi by recapitulating the facts. Ji Germany is faced with starvation to-day, is she in any worse position than the unfortunate Belgians, French, Serbians, or Roumanians, whom .she plundered and robbed of even the necessaries of existence, leaving America and the Allies to feed the unfortunate peoples she so shamefully mishandled and maltreated? The terms of the armistice provide for the maintenance of necessary food supplies; the Allies have made that concession to the nation that starved and bled Belgium white, and that is more than the Hun had a right to expect. His protests are not likely to fall on sympathetic ears, and we may look for all sorts of lachrymose appeals for mercy and consideration on the part of the Hun, for he is a pitiful creature at bis best, with a big streak ol yellow in his composition. The New York Sun was not far wrong in declaring that Germany was all yellow.